I'm baaaaaaack!

I am back from the longest Freienfels I ever had - eleven days away, counting the day for arrival and departure.

Freienfels was chock-full of things that would make blood boil either with pleasure and joy or with outrage. It was full, full, full of wonderful people with amazing talents, and there was beautiful craftspersonship to be seen, just as I had expected. More things happened than I can tell in this little blog entry, especially since I still have my heap of paperwork left to do from before Freienfels, but maybe I'll tell a story or two one of the next days.

Running my own little stall right beside the Wollschmiede meant that I did not find the time for a leisurely walk and shopping trip all over the market, though nevertheless I managed to spend some money for more or less needful things - we now have a good bread-box, made of birch bark, and I am the proud and happy owner of a "Zwirngefäß" after a find from Pfakofen:


It is a pot with a large  central opening and six smaller spouts all around; together with this go six small bowls. The setup can be used for plying multiple yarns together, but (as we were able to test at the last Textile Forum) it is also a wonderful help when warping for tablet-weaves. I had always lusted after one of these tools, and after testing it at the Forum even more - so at Tannenberg, I ordered one from Anke, specially prepared for fine, delicate threads. It is polished at all the places where a thread will touch the surface - and I am totally looking forward to testing this little darling.

Yeah, my very own Spouty Pot!


Picture from: Bartel, A. (1998). Das Tüllengefäss von Pfakofen, Lkr. Regensburg - ein seltener Fund aus dem frühen Mittelalter. Textiles in European Archaeology. Report from the 6th NESAT Symposium 7-11th May 1996 in Borås. L. Bender Jørgensen and C. Rinaldo. Göteborg, Göteborg University, Dept. of Archaeology. Series A, vol. 1: 139-150. Picture on p. 142.