I have been a Very Bad Ursula lately.  I didn't even write in my blog last week, which is due to a lot of factors, mostly health issues, work, and school stuff.  I have a couple of different things to share this week, though, and hopefully more in the future.  

I *finally* finished hand-felling all of the seams on my dolphins dress (that's always what it will be to me, lol).  It was something I'd grab and work on a bit when I needed a hand sewing project and didn't have anything in mind.  I don't bother to do hand-finishing on all of my garb.  I sometimes do French seams like I did with my Italian camicia.  This is much quicker, and it's not that different from the seams in one of the Hedeby find, where a seam was sewn with running stitch, then the raw edges turned in toward each other and whip-stitched.  Sometimes I just get creative like I did with my ultramarine bliaut and some of my other projects, where I am able to use the full width of the fabric and take advantage of the selveges.  Now that I have a serger I've done several garments that way, including my Slavic dress.  Clearly, there are advantages to doing things quickly.  Garb gets finished.  I don't get overwhelmed by long-lasting projects.  As long as there isn't visible evidence of the modern techniques it passes my standards.  That said, though, I love the look of hand-finished seams.  I think it looks lovely, and garments are so comfortable with the seams felled flat.  They don't tend to shift and bunch as much, and they wear very well.  While you can get sewing machine feet that will do flat-felled seams, it's fairly obvious they're machine-done.  

So, anyway.  Over the past year or so I've done a bit here, a bit there, and now the dolphins dress is fully finished.   The felling was done with natural-colored flax thread, waxed with beeswax. Here's a photo of the top of one gore.  The aqua looks a little washed out in this picture, but it's just a trick of the light.  I tend to like running stitch best for this, because it goes so quickly, but hem stitch is also pretty, as I did on my red bliaut and gold underdress.

So, that's a second FO for February, and another item from my list of goals for the year. 

I haven't made any progress with the weaving project yet.  I got her all opened up and the castle lowered in preparation for tying-on.  Here's a picture of the loom all set up, as has remained for the past two weeks.

The problem is that when I was looking everything over and dusting off, I noticed that the ratchet arm piece (what's the real name?) for the cloth beam (the one in front, to the right of this picture) had broken at some point.  It was some rather cheap aluminum, and the broken piece was still nearby, but this little bit makes it impossible to warp up the beast. Here's the broken part:

My husband was able to fix it temporarily with epoxy, a thin sheet of metal, and a couple of screws, but I have a friend who is an armorer (why yes, I am a lucky girl!) who said she could cast a new one for me in steel, so I'd rather do that before I wind a project on.  I saw her yesterday and forgot the part, so hopefully next time we get together I'll remember.  That girl is getting such a nice skein of handspun in trade.  You know she's extra cool because she's a knitter.

​Finally, my husband just found this photo of my sister and I on his work computer.  It's from the Renaissance Faire last October when we got to hold some beautiful falcons.  I still really need to even out the neckline on this dress, but I think it's a great photo of us even with that and my veil slipping off in the wind.  :)

Well, we're more than halfway through February and I'm still trying to have one FO (finished object) per month for 2016.  I think this counts as a FO, even though it's a long-term project, but take a look at let me know.

I got my FolkTalesPL spindle in the mail on Friday, and it was so fun to open!  I can't believe how fast it got to me from Poland, and the spindle was lovingly packaged in bubble wrap, then padded with a variety of wool in natural colors.  The spindle shaft is just how I like them, no rough spots to catch my thread, but not so smooth that the yarn will slide off.  It's got a nice hand to it.  There is a good notch in the shaft, which feels sturdy but not at all clunky, and the whorl was firmly wedged onto the shaft, but it does slip off if/when you want it to (like if you were lucky enough to have a bunch of spindle shafts, which then become storage bobbins/primitive shuttles, or if you spun enough wool on that the spindle started getting heavier than you wanted it to).  Here's a picture of my pretty new toy and its fantastic packing material:

I decided to use the included wools to start acclimatizing myself to using the tool.  There are periodic murmurations among those of us who spin and like period tools that medieval spindles were supposed to be used as supported spindles (like Russian spindles or Indian tahklis), but time and again we see period art depicting women spinning (presumably drawn by those who had seen the activity) and they certainly aren't spinning like you would with a supported spindle (where you spin it like a top resting on a table or in a bowl or something).  The spindle is either in the woman's hand, or hanging from the thread.    There are tons of images of this on my pinterest board on spinning, but here's a particularly fun one of a traveling juggler with some serious balance skills spinning while she rides her mule. (source)

 The issue here, though, is that medieval spindles have a few characteristics that are challenging for those of us who learned to spin on modern equipment.
1) Medieval spindles have small dense whorls, often with the weight very close to the shaft.  This means they don't spin by themselves for very long.
2) Medieval spindles aren't always very balanced, with whorls tending to be kind of asymmetrical, and spindle sticks sometimes curved, or notched, all of which can make the spindle wobble with increasing fervor until it slips its knot, falls on the floor, the whorl pops off, and all is despair (ask me how I know).
3) Medieval spindles are almost ALWAYS used with a distaff, which few modern spinners use. 

The short spin time and wobble of medieval spindles means in order to use them you basically have to be constantly flicking them to spin with your fingers, then using your fingers to reduce the wobble, which means one hand is on the spindle all the time.  That's why you need a distaff, to give you a third hand to hold the fiber, so you can use your non-spindle hand for drafting.  

I had mostly experimented with using short distaffs in the past, and after watching some videos on using a hand distaff I thought I'd try that for my first experiment.  Not having a bunch of distaffs to hand, I used a wooden spoon, which worked just fine for the task.  After a lot of fiddling around, dropping the spindle, having the whorl fall off, getting help from the cats, etc. I finally got the hang of it.

Here's the white wool all spun up next to my empty "distaff."  With this technique you essentially use a few fingers to grip the distaff (I used my ring finger and pinky) and the other fingers to draft out the fiber.  This took a lot of getting used to for me, and my fingers were sore and tired by the end, but as you can see it wasn't hard to get some nice fine thread out of this relatively coarse wool.  I wound it into a ball so that I could have my spindle back for more experiments.  Here's a photo with a US dime so you can see the fineness of the thread.  With finer fiber it would be very easy to get something as thin as sewing thread with this spindle, or something thicker and fluffier if that's what you were after.  This counts as a FO, right?  I finished all the white fiber, so...

So, to try to find something more comfortable and to try a new experiment, I decided to try using a longer distaff, which you often see in period images stuck under a woman's arm or through her belt.  Here's another fun period image showing both a long underarm/belt distaff and a cat assisting her mistress (source).

After trying the distaff from my spinning wheel (too short) I found a sawn-off broom handle in the cabinet of unidentified wonders that came with my laurel's loom.  It's about four feet long and was the right height for sticking in my belt (okay, the waist of my jeans), which I found more comfortable and ergonomic than gripping it under my arm.  I tend to get tense shoulders from long spinning sessions, and by this point I'd been at it for several hours.

I dressed the distaff with the tan fiber, which I suspect is alpaca, by pulling the roving into shorter sections, overlapping them, and tying them onto the  distaff with yarn.  For long-term use I would want something that doesn't have slippery paint on it with some grooves carved in to help keep the fiber from slipping down, but this worked fine for temporary experimentation.  

As soon as I started spinning with this setup I knew it was right for me, and the key to making medieval spindles work.  My left hand was completely free to draw the fiber off of the distaff, and I could easily work the spindle in my right hand.  It also showed me just how important the fiber prep is to this whole system.  For this to work the fiber can't be too condensed or misarranged.  it has to be fluffy, light, airy, and free of any "sticky" spots where a clump could grip together, since that really requires two hands to manage.  That said, it's not hard to tuck the spindle under my right arm and then have both hands free to deal with any fiddly bits.   I'm not done with the tan yet, but here's how it looks.  So pleasing, right?  Even with a yellow broom handle for a distaff.

​My husband can attest that I was immediately spinning just as quickly as on a wheel or a modern drop spindle, and crowing with how easy it was.  I spun like this for probably at least four hours without getting fatigued or uncomfortable, and it was so neat to think about how many women and children spent their days this way.  This has inspired me to try out the distaff on my spinning wheel, which I've always just ignored before.  Once you try a distaff, you'll see that it really is the key to period spinning.  Suddenly I understand why this is the tool that defined medieval women.  I see why they celebrated St. Distaff's Day in period and why maternal lineage is described as on the "distaff" side of the family.  I can see why distaffs became intricate lovers' gifts boys gave to girls in Scandinavia, and it also gives credence to the theory I've seen before that the symbol of the witch's magic wand evolved from the image of the distaff, a simple stick that is instrumental in the transformation of fiber into thread.  Do I sound like I've fallen in love?  Because I have.  

Next, I'd like to try a distaff stand, like the one in this image of a spinning monkey from the Isabella Breviary, or a bench distaff/sit-on-top distaff (they're basically a board you sit on with a distaff sticking out of one side at a 90 degree angle), both of which keep both hands more free but are less portable.  The second image below is of what is probably a bench distaff in an image known as The Virgin and the Niddy-Noddy (being held by the angel on the left).

I'm planning to spin up all these samples and weave a small fabric sample with them.  I have never woven fabric with singles yarn before, but lots of period fabric is made up of singles, and the colors will make a nice plaid/striped piece.  I hope I've inspired y'all to try period spinning tools.  They are just as efficient and quick as modern tools, and so delightful to use.  It's a great way to help develop a more period persona at events, when it's so important to have handwork to entertain yourself.

Another long-term project that I listed on my "to accomplish in 2016" list was to figure out my laurel's loom and weave a table runner with the wool Mistress Giliana gave me for Hanukkah this year.  She started me off by helping me calculate the wool needed for my project, and teaching me how to use the warping board a friend from the synagogue gave me.  I've always just direct-warped my projects on my rigid heddle looms, but this is a bit more extensive.  I'm using Jaggerspun Maine Line wool for the project, the lace-weight version (aka 2/20), and for an 18 inch-wide table runner her fancy spreadsheet calculator came up with 597 warp threads.  I rounded up to 600 for ease of counting, and measured it all in bundles of 100 threads.  I'm so grateful to Mistress Giliana for helping me learn.  She's a total wealth of knowledge.  Here's all my warp threads prettily measured out.

Then I kind of got stuck.  The holiday break ended.  Life happened.  I looked at the giant loom in my family room and I was sore afraid.  I mean, look at this thing.  1) it's not mine, extra motivation to not screw it up. 2) it's huge, with LOTS of moving parts and doodads.  3) It's got all these extra parts, but almost nothing is labeled.  4) It's old, and the bench contains the original shipping manifest from when it was sent from Seattle to Honolulu in 1956.  How it got back here, we'll never know.  Here's a picture of the beast, all folded up.  I think she needs a name, don't you?  Ariadne?  Sadhbh (first wife of Finn MacCool?  Didn't she weave stuff in some of the stories?  Or was that his second wife, Grainne?)?  Beelzebub (ha kidding, please loom don't kill me)?  I feel like I'll be talking to this thing a lot, or maybe just begging for mercy and the intercession of the various fiber-related goddesses who make up my personal pantheon.

I started by flicking through a book the same friend from the synagogue gave me.  She said she had two copies at home.  I think she's just trying to nudge me over the ledge and into weaving-land.  I mean, I've done little stuff on rigid heddle looms, etc, but this 8-shafter is a heck of a thing.  Anyway, the book is from the 60s, and it's called Elements of Weaving.  It's got some very basic info on yarn, fabric construction, terms, etc. in it, which was interesting but already stuff I knew, but then we got down to business.  Look at these great diagrams.

I eventually got totally overwhelmed, but I know my brain will start to make sense of it all as I let things percolate.  I've learned that if I think about a problem for a while and then just ignore it and go on with my life, things organize themselves in my head eventually.

 Some help from Google helped me learn more about the loom.  It is a Bergman Loom, built by a family of Swedish immigrants in eastern Washington in the 1930s-1960s.  They take up relatively little space, with bits that fold in on the front and back.  When it's folded up, it's about the size of a standard upright piano.  It's quite a bit bigger when opened out, and I'll have to get some old sheets to cover it once I start putting actual thread on there.  My cats would have a field day otherwise, and they already think it's a very fascinating jungle gym.  Anyway, the Bergman loom is based on traditional Swedish models, and the original model  lives in the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle.  Isn't that cool?  I loved going there as a child, and between that and the Selbu mitten collection there I really need to go back.  Anyway, I managed to find the original manual that was sent out with the looms, though it feels totally over my head right now.  What did we do without google, though?  How nice that this info is out there.

I learned that the Bergman is a type of loom called a countermarche loom.  Countermarches have two sets of levers, and two ties for each heddle, which allows you to tie it in such a way that each treadle can either lift or lower a heddle.  This, along with the fact that it's an eight-shaft, means the possibilities are really endless as far as what I can do with this thing.  It also means there are SIXTEEN sets of ties, and things get pretty intimidating pretty quickly.  One of the other features of a Bergman is that it has string reeds, not metal ones, which makes it operate more quietly and easily, apparently.  I have no idea how old the reeds are on this thing, but they seem to be in decent shape.

Anyway, the next step is warping the thing.  It's kind of an intimidating prospect, since I've done this only once before on a "real" loom, at Mistress Giliana's house, with her help/supervision, along with that of our friend Aelia Sophia.  The lovely twill pattern I chose for my project (which looks like Brigid's crosses on a diaper background, and is not medieval at all, from what I can tell) should be a fairly easy one to thread, but it does use all eight heddles, and I'm still fuzzy on a lot of this stuff.  I know I need to do the tie-up first, and that part is fairly complex, and I also don't really understand tie-ups yet.  Add to that that this loom is, according to the internet, notoriously non-ergonomic.  There will be a good bit of  crawling around on the floor, reaching, bending, twisting, etc.  I'm glad I'm young and limber, at least relatively speaking.

Anyway, even though all I have to show so far is a half-read book and a bag of warps, I am making progress in my brain.  I'll keep sharing as things actually start to happen with this project.

For now, below is the draft from handweaving.net, from Donat's Large Book of Textile Designs (1895), a German book of a bazillion patterns.  Mine will be green and gold.  Pretty, eh?

I have to brag on my friend Cynthia again, because her zakuski spread for the Russian ball was so awesome.  She was the talk of the evening, and everything was awesome.  Here's her full menu:

Russian Zakuskis:

Caraway Havarti
Smoked Gouda
Dill Pickles
Salted Mushrooms
Black Olives
Marbled Wine Eggs
Marbled Tea Eggs
Savory Buckwheat Blinis with Crème Fraiche and Caviar
Black Bread (Chorni Chleb) with European Butter
Rye Crackers
Olivier (Potato) Salad
Cucumber Salad
Georgian Kidney Bean Salad (Lobio)
Smoked Whole Salmon
Kolbasa
Chicken Liver Pate with Red Wine & Cranberry Jelly
Vol-au-vents with Creamy Mushroom & Shrimp Filling topped with Caviar
Russian Teacakes
Black Russian Cake

Today I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the spinning project I mentioned last week.  The fleece is from my laurel's Icelandic ewe, Rainy, and she has a fleece just the color of rainy skies.  One of the things that makes this special is that my husband and I got to help with shearing the sheep and goats that year, 2014,, and I came home with a great haul, several Angora goat fleeces, plus Rainy's fleece.  I got quite a bad nip on the finger with the shears (we used manual ones, which were very sharp) while shearing her.  Luckily my tetanus shot is up to date (which it should be if you work with fleece/animals) and it made me feel better about nicking the sheep.  The shears were so sharp I really didn't feel anything, though I had some numbness in my finger for months afterward and still have a scar.   Anyway, I think I earned this fleece, and I think we did a pretty good job.  Here's a handful of her wool.  You can see the characteristic long hair coat (tog) and the downy undercoat (thel).

  I've been working with the fleece unwashed, since I love how soft the lanolin makes my hands.  I find it easier to spin greasy wool anyway, and it's easier to wash yarn than it is to wash a fleece.  There are a couple of different ways to deal with Icelandic fleece.  You can use Viking combs (so-called because they are found in various Viking graves), which have only one row of teeth, the theory being that when you draw the sliver off the combs you can keep the tog and thel together, unlike English wool combs with multiple rows of teeth.  However, when you draw wool off of combs the long fibers come first, so what you really end up with is a sliver that has most of the tog at the beginning, and most of the thel at the end, and it really wants to separate at the point where you pull most of the tog off.   My theory is that the viking style combs weren't necessarily intended to keep the two coats together, especially since they aren't all that good at doing it.  

The two coats are very different.  The tog is smooth and fairly straight, and at least twice as long as the wooly, crimpy, soft thel.  Anyway, if you wanted to spin the wool with the tog and thel together, I'd suggest either a drum carder prep, or just spinning from the locks after opening them up in your fingers.

Historically, though, I think it's more likely the coats were separated, and the combs used to split the tog away from the thel, which would be used for different things.  Tog yarn would be strong and smooth, but not terribly soft.  I've heard that that's what was used for ship's sails, as well as ropes, etc, but it could also make great sewing thread, or in my case, warp thread.  The thel, spun into a singles yarn, would be awesome for nalbinding, would full readily, and make a soft, warm, but not terribly strong yarn.  For my project I've decided to use the tog as warp, and the thel as weft for a small weaving project.  The fleece is probably only 2-3 pounds, so it's not going to make a ton of fabric.

Anyway.  The combs make it really easy to clean most of the hay and dust out of the fleece, and it's easy to draw the tog off of the thel into nice long slivers for worsted spinning.  I would guess it would be pretty easy to spin the thel from the cloud in handfuls without further processing, but it will be easier to get onto a distaff if I card it, so that's what I've been doing.

Rainy's fleece actually sort of seems to be triple-coated.  The longest tog fibers are silvery gray, but there are also shorter black hair-like fibers the same length as the thel, and I've just been leaving them in there.  Hopefully they won't be too prickly/itchy.  Really, Rainy's fleece has a lot more thel than tog as it is, which makes sense for modern spinning uses, where the coat is usually kept all together, and that ratio would result in a softer yarn., but part of that is likely that some of the tog is shorter and mixed in with the thel.

Here's a photo of my basket, with the combs/cards.  The little nests of tog sliver are on the right, and the big poofy rolags of thel are on the left.  You can really see the difference in volume of the two coats here, as well as the shiny/smooth texture of the tog combined with the wooly/soft look of the thel.  This silver gray would take dye very well and make a lovely color, but I like it as-is, especially the natural color vartiations, so I'm not planning to dye the finished fabric at this point.

As a bonus, here's a picture of the project on my spinning wheel, a lovely chocolate brown Merino fleece from a local shepherd that i had machine-carded by a place in Utah.  Merinos, and Saxony wheels, are a bit late for my persona, but this isn't an SCA project.  It's going to be a sweater for my day-to-day wardrobe.

Finally, here's my spinning support staff, Betsy the dog and Marbles the cat, who are usually passed out next to me while I spin.

I'll share more updates of the project when I start spinning.  For now, though, if you're looking for more info on Icelandics, check out this page from Tongue River Farm.  I have also been lusting over the spindles from Hershey Fiber Arts, and she's got a gorgeous blog with good stuff on period spinning too.  Ditto all the fiber tools from Medeivalcrafteu on Etsy.  I really want to make my own spindles and whorls, but for now I opted for a bargain price on a medieval spindle (she uses wool as her packing material, bonus!) from FolkTalesPL, since I'm realistic and accept that I'm still in grad school and I have to prioritize right now.  Pics, reviews, and chatter about using period tools to come.