One of the fruits of the EuroWeb Cost Action is the freshly-published thematic dossier in the open access journal Ophiussa. Some of the talks presented in May 2022 in the conference in Muro Leccese are collected and published here - and the texts are, at least partly, in English, so don't be scared off by the Portuguese titles in the website and dossier contents.

You can access the full journal including the dossier here.  

Yesterday's blog post fell by the wayside - I was away all day going to set up the loom for the exhibition in Bamberg... and it was great fun. (I also learned a lot! Including a new knot, which is actually a big deal for me, as I seem to be a bit of a knot dyslexic sometimes.)

The loom standing in the exhibition now was the result of a lot of thinking, planning, and the effort of many people. Our idea was to show something about weaving in the era around 1000. Now... that's the time when there's already an inkling of the horizontal loom, but we have next to no good evidence for that (as in "good enough to build a reconstruction from"). So we decided to make a warp-weighted loom.

The original plan was to have a regular one, but the building (which is old) does not allow for a loom to touch the walls. (That's also a possible security issue in an exhibition, as a loom only leaning might fall, and attaching it to the wall was out of the question, as the building itself is under heritage protection). The second plan, having an iron/metal holder for the loom, was out because of budget reasons, so we did end up with a free-standing wooden loom.

It's a proper, nice one, though, not looking as if somebody went collecting a few sticks in the wood and cobbled them together.

(The curious thing is that you can build a functional loom from mostly odd sticks from the woods, provided you make sure that the essential bits that need to be straight are straight. That's harder to do nowadays, though, than making one from cured, available, straight bits of wood, though. So that's what we have.)

The main thing that we wanted to do with the loom was to show that textile production at that time was a high-standing, important, and highly developed part of production, and the resulting objects were of high quality. So we found an expert in warp-weighted loom weaving in Sweden - Marie Wallenberg - who worked together with us to get the idea across to the woodworker, who made an almost perfect loom. One of the folks from Kaptorga made the loomweights (scaled down a little to be lighter, because that helps to not wear out the threads over time - the normal fitted loom is not intended to stay for months or years with the loomweights hanging), and Marie wove a fabric to fill the loom.

If you've seen warp-weighted looms in exhibitions, they are often a crooked thing, with a crooked bit of coarse weaving on them. While that may have happened occasionally, it is not what we would expect them to be in general - after all, they were used to make fine, straight, high-quality fabrics in the past. And that is exactly what we wanted to portray.

So once the loom had arrived from the woodworker and the fabric had arrived from Sweden and I had finished making the Rod of Many Holes to attach the weave to the loom's top beam, I set out to set things up in Bamberg, with Marie coaching me through the process. 

One of the things I really love about my line of work? Getting to work with professionals from adjacent fields and learning new things. Another thing I love is getting to work with many different materials - especially since I'm also working with textile techniques and tools, that does not just encompass the many different variations of fibres, yarns, and fabrics, but also other materials. Wood. Clay. Metal.

It has definitely proven helpful to have a little bit of basic skill working with these things, and a small but versatile selection of tools. One of my favourite ones: The so-called "Bssst". (You may guess why it's called that.) 

 I have this stand and another stand/holder for it, and it's been drilling holes and polishing things for me a lot. (My dad bought the original Bssst many years ago, and I've just recently had to replace it with a new one, as it absolutely refused to do anything anymore.)

This time, it was my little helper drilling many, many holes in a stick:

I've finally made more photos of things to go into the shop - needles, to be specific.  

When I'm sewing, I like to use non-ferrous needles for wool fabrics, but strongly prefer iron or steel needles for linen. Usually also for silk, but that may be due to the fact that I can usually get thinner needles in iron than in brass or bronze.

Anyways, these are hand-forged in Germany, and they will finally go into the shop in the next few days! 

EuroWeb has something more coming up: A webinar on traditional wax batik printing! It will take place on September 6, 10 am CET start.  

I'm already looking forward to this - it's always interesting to see traditional textile techniques!

The Great Wheel had its little outing, I once again got to appreciate how much more evenly I can spin with the spindle and distaff as compared to the wheel, and on the other hand how much faster the wheel is. 

As usual on an event like this, I got to take one quick break (when the guys from the next tent over were doing their fighting show) to dash out of my spot, re-fill my water bottle, get a coffee and a bite to eat, and go back. It was also very sunny on Sunday, so even though the tent provided shade, it got quite hot. Enter the Glorious Medieval Cooling System: The linen underdress and linen headwear will be very, very cooling if wet. Thus part of my water bottle's contents did not go inside of me, but into my dress to wet some of the underdress, and on my head. That worked very well, and kept me comfortable even through the hottest bits of the day.

Then, at the end of our festivities, I found one of the friendly museum ladies to take some pictures of me spinning:

As you can see on the floor, I didn't even make too much of a mess! 

The thing about a medieval-style Great Wheel? It's really Great, as in Large. Looking at images, the wheel appears to be really huge, compared to the spinners. And when one thinks about it, that is sort of understandable - after all, the aim is to get a lot of twist quickly, and there are no gears involved. So the size difference between the wheel and the disc on the spindle (often called whorl, but I find that confusing) has to be as large as possible.

When I built my reconstruction, I was thus looking for a size that would compare to the illustrations we have, and of course with a look at its intended use - demonstrations. Which meant it also had to come apart easily, and the single pieces had to fit into the car. 

Which they do. The wheel itself has its own special spot right under the roof, where it's built to fit perfectly:

The board end in the foreground belongs to the bottom (main) board. The rest is one box with the small pieces (like the wedges, drive band, and spindles) and one pack with legs and the holders for spindle and wheel. 

So now I just have to add the rest of the equipment, and we're ready to roll!

(Ingelheim. Sunday. See me there if you can, and say hello!)