It seems as if Winter took his job seriously this year - while we had good weather with no snow and not too much rain until the last week of November, it's now snow and more snow - and the cold temperatures that go with it.

Aside from low temperatures, winter always means shorter days and less available light, but I have a good way to counter this. For projects where I need a lot of good light, I have an adjustable lamp with a daylight spectrum bulb. A few years ago, daylight spectrum lamps were really pricey and hard to get, but it has become much easier now, and I can really, really recommend them. Not only do they provide wonderful light for working, with very little to no perceived colour changes in your workpiece, they are also a good countermeasure against light winter depressions that occur when the body doesn't get enough natural daylight. So if you are still looking for a lamp for the dark months, or need to replace the bulb in your workplace lighting fixture anyway, I can very much recommend daylight spectrum bulbs!

There's another aspect to modern spinning - and "historical" hand-spindle spinning as it is done today - that has recently started to raise my neck hairs. It's a trap that most modern hand-spindle spinners fall into and do not ever get out of - mostly, I think, because they are not aware of it.

It is spinning without a distaff. When I learned how to spin, I did it on my own, knowing nothing of fibre prep and use of distaff. It's only quite recently, on the first Forum, that I actually met somebody who spins with a distaff as a rule and never without, and a second spinner (friends with the first) who pre-drafts her fibre to wear it around the wrist, thus having more or less the function of the distaff without the stick. Most spinners I know are just holding a piece of the fleece or top in their one hand, the upper drafting hand, and spin from there.

This has several negative effects. One, your hands are never perfectly dry, and you move your upper drafting hand when spinning - not much, perhaps, but you do. And as we all know, the combination of friction between fibres (movement), warmth and moisture leads to felt, not nice spinnable fibre; this means less quality in the thread as you near the end of your in-hand batch or a lot more prepared fibre thrown away - a huge waste of material and time. Two, you have to hold the batch of fibre in your upper hand, thus having two things to handle - the wool and the spinning. The wool in your hand does impede your movement a bit, and that might be the crucial bit - the reason why you are not spinning as regularly and evenly and fluidly as you could. Three, when you put away your spindle, the little batch of fibre attached to it can hang free and untwist the bit of thread between the spindle tip and itself. Four, you have to have an additional fibre supply if you do not want to mangle all the unwieldy stuff in your hand right away. Five, it is not historical (and that's a big deal to me).

These are all disadvantages that are as true for a spinner today as for a spinner of yore (well, except the last one, of course). So why are almost all modern spinners holding a wad of fibre in their hand? Probably because they learned to spin this way and never saw somebody using a distaff while their spinner-self was still young and malleable - and excited to try new things. But then, a distaff is so handy! And it doesn't even need to be so long. I am now working with a quite short tuck-under-the-arm distaff, and it is only 45 cm long. That is shorter than those distaffs depicted on medieval sources and those surviving completely in the archaeological records - which seem to be about 80-100 cm long at a rough estimate - but just long enough for me to tuck into the armpit and short enough to fit into my bags to take with me. Even shorter is also possible: a spare spindle stick can serve as a hand-held distaff like they were used in Roman times.

The difference between working with hand-held fibre and with non-hand-held fibre, whether it is fixed on a hand-held short distaff, on a underarm (or belt-held) medium or long distaff or wrapped around the wrist is enormous, especially for very fine yarns.* One, you don't felt your fibre, because you only pinch and do not hold. Two, your fibre is stored safely and out of your hand, thus impeding hand movement much less (this is less pronounced with the hand-held distaff). Three, when you use a medium to long, tuck-under distaff, you can turn the distaff with the spindle hanging on a short bit of yarn so that the upper spindle tip rests against your fibre on the distaff, thus keeping the spindle from turning backwards and untwisting the yarn. (Amazing, huh? And so easy! And it frees your hands, both of them, to do other chores, unless they require you stretching both arms. Might not work with extra-thin yarns and a heavy spindle, though.) Four, you can store a goodly-sized amount of fibre on your distaff, even on a hand-held one, to last you a while; so you can wander off and spin without taking a bag with extra fibre with you. And five, it looks like in the pictures.


I have used a distaff once before, years ago, and already found then that it was a valuable tool, and that's long ago when my spinning was far from where it is today. And to this day, I'm not sure why I didn't stick with it; probably because I mostly spin for explanation and demonstration purposes and shied from taking the additional stick with me, and from taking it up and putting it down again. But now that I've finally seen the wonders of the distaff, I promise to amend my ways and to at least try to spin strictly historical from now on - and even more important, I promise to only teach new spinners to use spindle and distaff from now on.

So the next time you take up your spindle, try taking up a distaff with it. Pre-draft or diz your fibre top into a narrow band (the top as it is delivered is very wide and not really suitable for a distaff yet), or tear off a long narrow bit of your carded batt, wind it around a stick - any stick will do - and give it a try. And I'd be delighted to hear what you think!

* Personally, I prefer the medium length tucked under the arm; I can work with hand-helds, but my upper draft hand then tends to get cramped after a while, possibly because I have very small hands.

Picture source: Gies, F. and J. Gies (1999). Daily Life in Medieval Times. A vivid, detailed account of birth, marriage and death; food, clothing and housing; love and labor in the middle ages. New York, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.

I feel like I need an energy boost - somehow I'm still tired even though I slept long enough. At least it's Friday, which means that the week is about over.

But before I kick myself in the behind, go brew myself a pot of (hopefully energy-boosting) tea and settle down to some more work before the weekend, here's a totally non-medieval and non-textile but very funny link for you:

So much Pun.

As the title hints (who'd have thought?), it is a website with puns - including photos. So if you have a thing for weird jokes with language, go check it out. This page regularly makes both of us here utter the typical "I-just-got-that-one"-groan - they are that good (or with puns, is that bad?)

We had some fun in the evening in the garden yesterday, taking care of some of the sweaty tasks like starting to build a slightly raised vegetable bed with old compost earth and removing some of the lawn thatch. Slowly but surely, things are coming along in the garden - and of course the tulips are growing! But to me, the best thing about the garden is the gazillions of birds landing on the front lawn and the flower beds for their breakfast. Blackbirds especially - and I am very fond of blackbirds!

Slowly but surely is the proper description for the tent progress as well, and the rest of today will also be tent-sewing time. I have dug out a radio drama CD full of stories from "Jonas, der letzte Detektiv" (Jonas, the last Private Eye), a sci-fi detective story with a really high body-count - but wonderful to listen to. The series is from 1984 and following years, and the author, Michael Koser, did write about some things that are getting more and more realistic, which makes the series a little unnerving at times. If you understand German and can get your hands on that series, I can highly recommend it!

Poppy seeds have a long history - there have been finds of poppy seeds from Germany dating back to about 4600-3800 BC. While opium, also derived from the poppy plant, was used only for medicinal reasons in Europe during the Middle Ages, poppy was listed in about every compendium of plants for food and medicinal use - the Capitulare Karls des Großen, the plans for the garden of St. Gallen, and so on. Poppy seed oil was not only used for food purposes, but also for mixing paints, since it dries up. (All after Körber-Grohne, Nutzpflanzen in Deutschland).

And why do I write all this? Because some years ago, we became acquainted with the family recipe of a good friend of ours - a poppy seed cake. And what a poppy seed cake! It combines all good things - poppy seeds, freshly ground and heated up with milk to release all the flavours; yeast dough; streusel topping and finally an icing of lemon juice and sugar. This cake is heavenly, and the recipe I have is just too good not to share. So here you go - a typical German-style family recipe:

Mohnrolle mit Streusel (Poppy seed cake roll with streusel)

For the dough:
Ingredients: 500 g flour, 30 g yeast, 1/5 litre milk, 60 g butter, 60 g sugar, 1 pinch of salt.
Instructions: Make yeast dough from this.

Poppy seed filling:
Ingredients: 500 g ground poppy seeds, about 1/2 l milk, about 3 tblspoons semolina, 2-4 eggs, a little bitter almond aroma, ample sugar.
Instructions: Cook a thin soup from milk and semolina, put in poppy seeds. Stir well and let it cool. When cool: mix in eggs, sugar and aroma until mass is spreadable. Sugar to very sweet taste because poppy is slightly bitter in taste. Amounts needed may vary; add in only 2 eggs at first to keep the filling from getting too liquid. Should it be too stiff, add boiling milk.

Streusel:
Ingredients: 200 g flour, 125 g butter, 125 g sugar
Instructions: Mix flour and sugar; knead in butter (cut into pieces) until streusel result.

Icing:
Ingredients: 250 g icing sugar, lemon juice
Instructions: Mix until spreadable.

How to make the cake: Roll out dough until thin. Spread poppy seed filling on it and roll cake into a roll. Place on baking sheet. Moisten roll with cold water and place streusel on top. Bake 50-60 min. at 190-200° C. When cool, ice the cake.

As you can see, it's quite... non-elaborate, and thus always reminds me of medieval recipes - "hey, anyone knows how to make this or that, so there's no need to describe it". However, here are some add-ins from me to make it a little less non-elaborate. (If you don't know how to make yeast dough, I will not describe it here. Go find out - it's totally worthwhile to acquire "make yeast dough" as a basic cooking skill!)

Ground poppy seeds are best used fresh. You can use a poppy seed grinder, which will process absolutely nothing but poppy seeds, or buy freshly ground poppy seeds - though that can prove a bit difficult.
I use about 360-400 g of sugar for the filling, and usually only 2 eggs. The icing will take the freshly pressed juice of one to two lemons.
Roll out the dough really thin; to transfer the roll to a baking sheet, roll out on a clean tea towel, spread filling on it, roll by lifting one side of the tea towel and carry the roll to the sheet on the towel, there to let it roll off. Handle very carefully, or it will burst. When spreading the filling, don't spread it all the way, but concentrate on the side where you will start rolling and leave the opposite end free - the filling will spread more while rolling.
Baking in our oven takes about 50 min at 170° C in our fan oven.

This cake is a fair bit of work - grinding the poppy, preparing all the different bits - but is totally worth it. And I will now go and have a piece of the little that is still left from the weekend...

First of all, thanks for your kind wishes to yesterday's post!

I am already much better - if I get a cold or a flu-like thing, it usually hits me hard, totally flattens me into bed for a day or two, but gets rapidly better from there. However, every time I had a cold and am able to think again, I am fascinated by all of the different cold-battling techniques that different people adopt. I had never heard of oranges with honey, for example - but it is certainly a good idea, plus it leaves the honey unheated.

So here are two tried-and-true cold medicines from my family.
My Dad absolutely swears by something he calls "beekeeper's tea" - it's just honey dissolved in warm to hot water. As always with honey conconctions, it is best if you get the water to a temperature that will feel like a hot drink when you consume it, but is not too hot - honey loses some of its beneficial ingredients if it is heated to more than 40° C.
It's only recently that I really tried beekeeper's tea against a cold, and it did ease things a lot. I don't know why I never tried it before - maybe the urge of youth to seek one's own solutions? One very big plus of beekeeper's tea is that if you have a mug, a spoon, a glass of honey and some warm or hot water, it is very quick and easy to make - no need to wait for tea to steep or similar things. I like to spice mine up with ground or fresh ginger - I feel that this improves it once more.

When I was younger, I found out by chance that a winter juice concoction would also work very well to ease cold or 'flu  symptoms - hot apple juice with spices and honey.
Take a litre of apple juice (pure juice, of course) and put it into a pot; add about one and a half to two teaspoons of cinnamon, a good teaspoon of cloves, and fresh or ground ginger, and heat; do not let the juice come to a boil, just heat it until it is hot enough to pass as a hot drink when put into cups or mugs. Stir occasionally. Once it's hot, take out the cloves and sweeten to taste with honey. This tastes nice (I think), is suitable for children and, after drinking more than one mug of it, has the side-effect of making you quite tired (I don't really know why, but it does) and ready for some health-promoting sleep. When I was properly stricken, I would drink almost the full litre all by myself and then keel over and sleep.
It also makes for a nice depth-of-winter drink, a kind of alcohol-free substitute for mulled wine.

And for food... nothing cries "comfort food" more to me than noodle soup when I'm unwell.

We have finally managed to resurrect a nice old personal tradition... one that has (sort of) a long (not personal) history before it became almost extinct.

Back in those days long before radio, TV and computers were there to spend the evenings with, but spinning was still a necessity for every rural household, there was a German tradition called "Rockenstube" or "Spinnstube" (literally: "distaff parlour" or "spinning parlour"). These were more or less regular meetings where women (including young women, of course) would get together to spin and chat. As helpers with the chat and other amusements (yes, all kinds) the young men of the community would come along to chat, sing, and do whatever else young people of differing sex might do on an evening that might, in some cases, have drifted off more towards the "party and amusement" thing than to a productive evening of spinning.

As a result of these drifts, Rockenstuben were banned in some regions of Germany, and later, the need for such spinning get-togethers got smaller and smaller until they died out completely. But the basic fact that once was the reason for Rockenstuben still rings true: It is much more fun to do crafty chores in good company than on your own at home.

Which is why, years ago, we introduced the "Hutzenabend" into our lives - "Hutzenabend" being another word for "evening where you get together to do crafty things in company" but less spinning-centred. In our case, we fixed one evening per week and told our crafting friends that that would be the evening where we would sit down and work on our projects, and they were very welcome to join us. I always loved those get-togethers, but after they had run successfully for a while, less and less people came, and finally, we were mostly alone on those evenings - jobs took too much time, folks moved away, other things in life got into the way, and for a while, we had no Hutzenabend anymore. But now, in the new home, we have gone off to a very glorious start with the first one - and I sure hope that our reborn tradition will continue strong from now on!