I had a lot of fun yesterday preparing for a tablet weaving workshop testrun - which, unsurprisingly, proves to be a lot of work. I last posted about this almost one and a half years ago, so it's been stewing for a really, really long time now. That is mostly due to logistics problems. One of the large stumbling blocks for me were the questions "How do you enable up to eight people to warp simultaneously?" and "How do you get the warps tensioned?"

The answer to both, in my case: F-clamps. I love those things, especially those single-hand F-clamps, and I've used two tiny ones for years now. I should probably say "abused", though, because, well, they are not intended to be clamped down onto something upside down and then get stuff attached to the stem sticking upwards. There's high-quality ones that will withstand this kind of abuse, though, and cheap ones that will eventually give up and come loose with rather little tension on their stem. Which means the sensible thing is to go for the higher quality tool... with the higher price.

Unfortunately, regarding my two questions, "F-clamps" is not the full answer. The full answer is "a shitload of F-clamps", and it has taken me a while to get to terms with that, bite the bullet, and invest. But I have found a good clamp, they have arrived, and I'm now working on finalising my teaching script, getting the handout (which will be a how-to-make-your-pattern cheat sheet) all done and lined up, and then there will be three nice guinea pig ladies coming over next week to try their hand and my teaching ideas.

It's all quite, quite exciting - and if it all works as planned, the course will cover warping in the "endless" method, the basic system and mechanics underlying all tablet weaving, how to read and write patterns, and how to do 3/1 twill on tablets, including how to work (and design) patterns in this method.

[caption id="attachment_3213" align="alignnone" width="4272"] One of the possible pattern bits that will be part of the workshop - and part of learning how to design swirls and stuff.


The course will then have its first proper appearance at the Nähtreff in October - which right now seems rather far in the future, but with the way time is flying, it will probably be happening before I know it!

There are a few workshop opportunities coming up in autumn - one of them is the spinning workshop that I'll be giving in Bielefeld at the Ravelry meeting. Courses are online now, and can be booked via the website bielefeldspinnt.de.

There's another workshop event, though, that I am very excited about - a while ago, I was contacted regarding a meet-up with workshop opportunities, and after a bit of calendar wrangling, Anja and I were able to fix a date, she managed to find a beautiful spot to run the event (it's in a youth hostel in a castle, how fitting), and now we're happy to announce that there will be a weekend of workshops on October 20 - 22:


I'm especially excited about the tablet weaving workshop, which is a concept I've been brooding about for quite a while.

If you're interested, all booking is handled by Anja, who is organising the whole thing (and I'm very grateful she does this, it is lovely to not be on that end for a change). If you have questions regarding the workshops, you can either ask Anja or me!

There's planning going on here - planning where your input would be more than welcome...

I've been discussing, with one of the organisers, the workshops at the Hochmittelaltertreffen Jerichow. I will definitely offer my spinning workshop and teach spinning with distaff and spindle, but there is ample room for more than one workshop during the week-and-a-bit that I will be there.

However, it's always hard to guess what people would like to see, or learn. I was thinking about a tablet-weaving class to teach brocading, or one that teaches the broken twill technique for tablet weave, but there's so many other options too... embroidery (including gold embroidery), loopbraiding, theoretically also netting (but only theoretically, since I don't have enough netting needles at the moment, and will probably not get more in time), ...

If you could have your perfect workshop - what would you like to learn? Or what would be your expectations? Please let me know in the comments, that would be really helpful for me. (And if you are going to the event, do tell me, too!)

Do you know that feeling that the plan of the year slowly emerges out of fog and nothingness? January and February are the two months when plans are made and dates are fixed, and the calendar becomes spattered and sprinkled with colourful spots all over. It's an exciting time every time it comes around!

And for 2014, there are a few things fixed that I am really looking forward to already.

As usual, I will be in Freienfels with my market stall. Freienfels this year is April 30 to May 4, and the market is open for all visitors during the weekend.

Next on my calendar is the International Museum Day on May 18, which I will spend at the Stadtmuseum Bietigheim-Bissingen, demonstrating spinning technique both with distaff and spindle and with the Great Wheel.

Right after that comes the NESAT in Hallstatt, a conference I've been looking forward to for, as usual, the last three years.

Next up is a semi-private medieval event in Herzberg, running from June 27 to July 6. The event after that is the exact opposite to private, however: Together with Margit Ströbele from Alte Künste, I will be running a dealer's table at LonCon3! I will also give a paper about textile techniques on the academic programme there. If you are at LonCon, make sure to drop by!

If you want to learn a textile technique or need assistance in tailoring a garment, I have course dates planned for September 6-7 and October 25-26. As usual, details and booking info can be found on my shop page.

And the last date already fixed and agreed upon for 2014 at the moment is our next Textile Forum, which will take place 3-9 November, again in Mayen (we love it there). If you want to keep informed about the Textile Forum, you can subscribe to our newsletter on the Forum homepage.

And if you want to keep informed about my upcoming events and dates, you can always check the list of them on my homepage.

As you can see, the year promises to be full of interesting events already, and I am looking forward to maybe meeting a few more of you this year.

The last workshop I gave turned out a little differently than planned - a little smaller due to some illnesses, and a little more open-themed, partly as a consequence of that.

The result of this change toward more openness, and more diverse topics, pleased all of us no end. So much, in fact, that I have decided to rethink my workshop/course structure in general. Since one of the issues for workshops is to get enough people interested in the course topic together, on that one specific date, having an open-topic workshop takes out this major issue, so it's easier for me to have a workshop. An added benefit? Participants can have a look at what the other participants do, and maybe widen their interest.

So while I will keep up the offer of courses catering to a specific topic - especially for groups or museums that want to have a course or workshop tailored to their topic of choice - I will also offer small, open-topic workshops hereabouts.

These will be small because it's not possible to run multiple topics in a large group. A small one, however, allows for it since all the textile work is a bit of instruction, a bit of working on it by yourself. So basically, the open-themed courses are going to work like this: you book your course spot, and we will figure out what you are going to focus on during the workshop. I will then prepare your topic accordingly, and you can work on it during the course day(s), getting the instruction you need and want, with the opportunity to soak up some extra knowledge from what other participants focus on. (Or even switch focus, if you want that.)

I'm currently sorting out dates for the next three workshops of this type and am writing up the info text for the shop... so it will be online soon. And I'm already looking forward to the first of these workshops - since the last one was such a nice experience!

As of yesterday evening, I am the (middling) proud owner of a (mediocre, but functioning) model of a warp-weighted loom.
Well, to be honest, it's not completely finished yet - I need to fiddle with the position of the heddle rod brackets a bit more before fixing them.


It was made out of scrap wood that was hanging out in our basement plus two Y-shaped pieces of hazel wood, straight in from the garden. It's even set up already, and I have woven the first few wefts.



As you can see, the starting border is totally out of dimension in comparison to the huge loom size (about 30 cm width), as is the rest of the weave. That is the problem with models regarding textile - it's very hard or impossible to scale down the actual textiles, and that changes the overall look of both production models and garment models. In case you ever wondered why a small doll dressed up to model a set of garments looked ever so subtly wrong, that is probably the reason: if you don't scale down the fabric itself, the drapes and folds will be too large and too stiff.

In my case, however, that is irrelevant - I only want the small model to take along for workshops and seminars, to be able to explain the basics behind weaving and warp-weighted weaving. So scale, in this case, is not the issue.

(The starting border and weave is that narrow for a reason, by the way - not only because I wanted to save time in setting up the loom. It's the start of a form-woven tunic. I do not expect the piece to ever see the day of actually getting the body of the tunic added in... but it could happen. Theoretically. One day.)

Last week has been insanely busy, stuffed full with the doing of things I had wanted, or planned, to do for a long time. Not least of them my wool-display-making shenanigans! I also managed to give myself sore muscles due to willowing the washed, dried wool (yes, historical wool preparation can substitute a gym session).

This week is, normal-desk-work-wise, a very short one - it's just today and tomorrow, since Herzberg starts on Wednesday. So I am going to be quite busy wrapping up everything that needs to be wrapped up before Wed, packing my stuff, doing the last preparation for the two private workshops I will teach there (and I'm immensely looking forward to that, it's going to be much fun), and so on. The weather is forecast to be very nice, and I've already put "sun hat" on my list of things to take, along with a goodly whack of small and medium-sized projects that have been waiting for some attention for way, way too long.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled computer work... and already look forward to a few days without the machine, and with lots of nice people instead!