One of the recurring questions about my spindle sticks, especially from modern spinners, is "Why don't they have a hook?" followed by "why don't they have a notch?" and "how do you fix the yarn without hook or notch?"

Finds of medieval spindle sticks are not too common (wood has that tendency to rot, and can be burned, and a spindle stick is not very spectacular so you'd want to carefully preserve it somewhere like you would a wooden altar, for instance) and they are published here and there, so putting together a good collection takes some rootling around. Even with surviving sticks, they are not always complete (the tips are often broken off), and then they may not be published in detail, with a drawing of the tips.

However... it does seem that the plain, un-notched and un-hooked spindle was very, very common, and I personally usually spin with the plain tips and am very comfortable with them.

There are instances of notched spindles in the medieval finds, though, and since I've been asked time and again about notches, I have finally looked through my sources, sharpened my little knife, practised some more... and am now offering optional notch cuts with my spindle sticks.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="900"] Notches! From left to right: plain un-notched tip, horizontal notch, diagonal notch for z-spun yarn, diagonal notch for s-spun yarn.


They are available both in horizontal, where they will very securely keep a half-hitch for either spinning direction, and in diagonal, where they will either keep a half-hitch, or, if the thread is thin enough and you wind it around the spindle in the right way, hold the thread all by themselves. I've tested the diagonal notches, and they usually need a bit of getting used to, but then they work fine. They accommodate a thin thread, and the notch sort of latches onto the thread to hold it securely enough for spinning. It's not as secure as the hitch, though, so the probability of the spindle slipping out and falling down is a bit higher throughout.

When it works, though... it's really, really fun!

Sometimes, things change unexpectedly, and while that can be a nuisance, it's somehow also an opportunity. Or at least t can be seen as such.

And something like that happened semi-recently, when my woodcrafter, who has been quick and friendly and reliable for years now, suddenly decided not to answer my mails anymore. Which is weird, and annoying, and I'm debating with myself whether to give them one last try now or not, but let's say that I am not amused at all about this situation.

Something similar happened to me twice ago. In one case, the crafter had changed his line of work, which I found out through a common contact later. In the second case, I never found out why - a supplier suddenly broke contact and there was no reaction anymore. Weirdly, I got a number of letters a good while afterwards asking me to update my customer information.

In the previous case, I was rather annoyed as well - but in the end, I found a new supplier, and the result was good - the linen yarn I carry now is even closer to the yarns used historically than what I had before, and it is at a better value as well.

So. Now I'm sitting here, using the opportunity to go through the wooden things that I offer and review whether I want to change anything, add anything, or take something out of the stock while I am at the search for someone new to make things according to archaeological originals.

As always, your input is welcome. Any wooden textile tools you're aching to have available?

You remember that ridiculously large package of wool I sent away recently?

It has returned from its adventures... looking still very large, and slightly (ahem, well, maybe more than slightly) battered.



And it contained wool, beautifully combed into top.

Lots of it. Obviously.



Of course I had to take a little bit of the fibre right away, and a spindle, and give it a little twirl - and just like I expected, it spins absolutely wonderfully.



So now I finally have Rhoen sheep wool and Valais Blacknose wool, already prepped ready to spin, in the shop! I'm ridiculously happy about this - and I hope other people will be just as much in love with these two rare sheep fibres as I am!

It's busy bustling around here, both with my fingers on the keyboard, with more ETF website work (almost done far enough to launch, though!) and other kinds of bustling. Kinds that have resulted in something like a wool explosion in the wintergarden... all due to new things planned for the shop.

I've been offering both washed, uncombed wool and carded/combed for a good while now, and there's a very, very obvious preference in regards to what gets bought more. Guess what? Of course - the ready-to-spin, prepared fibre. And I totally get this - while combing wool is a fascinating process and allows for extremely fine control of what goes in and what does not, it is a good chunk of work that requires both time and appropriate tools. So in most cases, I would also prefer to take readily prepped fibres and sit down and spin, skipping the prep step.

I have now found a small fibre mill that is willing to process a chunk of fibres I send them, so I'm planning on having Valais Blacknose wool combed up into a band, good for spinning without having to work on it first. That's exciting, and that also means I have to sort and pack the wool to send it to the mill. Hence: Wool Explosion as I sort my way through the fleeces I have here from the last shearings.

It's all very exciting - partly because it is very hard to estimate how much of a price I will have to ask for that wool in the end; that depends on how much of a weight loss there is through combing, and that is hard to impossible to guess. So I'm hoping I will end up with a sensible number to put onto that price tag - and that it will all turn out nicely!

First of all - I've again managed to not mention Talk Like A Pirate Day on this blog in time, and it has whooshed past, like dates (and deadlines!) tend to do. And that even though my Pirate Roberts hat pattern has been featured in a blogpost on the Interweave Press site - together with a bunch of other pirate-themed patterns. So if you are feeling pirate-y, or know someone who is in touch with their inner buccaneer and would care for such a knit, check out the link (there's also a free pattern for tiny colourful parrots)!

In other news, I'm busy (what's new, though) preparing for the next fair, which is in Weikersheim. That included sorting the new spindle whorls, and that led to my finally upgrading my sorting/storage boxes for a bit more space to pile up the whorls, and preventing them from mixing when the box is tilted.


(The mixing was previously prevented by stuffing the lid with paper, but that, obviously, cuts down on storage space...)

Having the whorls pre-sorted into 2 g wide slots is an enormous help for me - and it is so much fun to whip out one of these boxes at a fair when a customer is asking for a specific weight or weight range, and offer the whole selection.

I still tend to weigh the whorls again before sending them out for a shop order, trying to get as close to the gram weight requested as possible - but that's just my personal obsession with getting it as perfect as I can.


It's also interesting to see that I seem to have a preference for a certain weight range each time I make whorls, and that weight range does change from batch to batch. This time, it seems to have been at 16-22 g of whorl weight, which is not bad, though I could have used a few really heavy ones too.

Finally there's more restocking - such as restocking distaffs, and distaff DIY kits as well. Bands have already been cut...


...and now they need to be hemmed on one end, and then mounted onto the distaff stick, or packed up with the rest of the bits for the DIY sets. Nice work for podcast catch-up!

Bielefeld spinnt is over, and I've sort of regenerated a bit - thanks to a nice, relaxing day off work yesterday. It's sort of funny to turn a Tuesday into a personal Sunday, but nice in its own way. Plus you can go shopping (which in Germany is not possible on a real Sunday, as all the shops are closed.)

The fair was lovely, but altogether also quite a trip, and quite exhausting. Going to a fair with a booth is always a wild ride, with a lot of delight but also a lot of stress. (In case you are interested, I can give you a rundown on my days - let me know!)

In Bielefeld, Margit and I were in the larger hall of the main building, on the ground floor. That meant we were smack dab in the middle of a light, airy room, and right beside a coffee booth too. It's always good to be near a coffee source!

[caption id="attachment_3386" align="alignnone" width="1223"] View of my bit of the fair - the table all set up and ready for the fair!


With the courses that both Margit and I gave, together with alternately manning both booths when the other was teaching, we did keep busy all weekend long.

[caption id="attachment_3385" align="alignnone" width="1306"] Margit's stall and mine, side-by-side or whatever you call it when two stalls form an L-shape...


So busy, in fact, that I didn't get to knit a single stitch the whole weekend, including the evenings. Which means that neither the Baton Rouge jacket nor the Moyen Age sweater are finished yet.

But after all, I can knit at home and all the time, but at the fair, I had the opportunity to meet and chat with lots and lots of nice people, and I sold so many distaffs and spinning kits that I have to make more straightaway to have a bit of a selection to bring to Weikersheim. That's part of the obligatory After-Fair-Homework. (There is no fair without homework. Never. There's always something you discover that needs mending, or changing, or some other kind of attention - and that's on top of the usual after-fair work such as taking stock and doing the book-keeping.)

So thanks to the organisers for all their hard work, and thanks to all the helpers at the fair - I had a lovely time, and I'm looking forward to the next German Ravelry meetup!

 

Just before the year runs out, there are a few new things in the shop - two new kinds of combed top and two versions of a really helpful little tool.

Have I made you curious?

One of the new wools is Gotland wool, consisting of light and dark fibres of similar diameter, which results in a grey overall appearance - but the yarn will, on closer look, show the dark and light fibres. It makes for a fascinating spinning, and a similarly fascinating yarn!

[caption id="attachment_2821" align="alignnone" width="640"] Black and white... makes grey. A really beautiful one in this case.


The other wool is similarly inhomogenous - but it also has different fibre diameters. It's light almost-white to dark brown in the individual fibres, resulting in a light to medium brown wool overall:

[caption id="attachment_2820" align="alignnone" width="640"] Have some variety. In your fibre diameter and in the colour!


I'm even happier, though, about finally having a special kind of helpful tool in the shop: Thread Counters. One a little pricier, but with a higher-quality lens and made from sturdy metal:

[caption id="attachment_2819" align="alignnone" width="640"] Metal Thread Counter


and the other, as the even more affordable option, made from high-quality plastic with a very good lightweight plastic lens:

[caption id="attachment_2818" align="alignnone" width="640"] Plastic Thread Counter


Both kinds are made by Eschenbach Optik (that have their company in the next large town over, which delights me no end, being a believer in regional trade and such) and they are made in Germany. Both have a tenfold magnification, which is the upper end of what thread counters usually do. I've used a thread counter for ages now (it's what I use for checking spinning angle, for instance), and having a good one really is incredibly helpful.

You can get more information about all these things in the shop - click the links in the text to get directly to the individual items, or this one here to get to the shop front, where they should all be waiting for you with their new friends...