Haithabu Towel and the joys of cold mangling

Over the summer I was asked to weave a towel for a peerage elevation for a woman I have a tremendous amount of respect for. She has an iron age Danish persona (i.e. Viking, but I sort of hate that term as most people in the SCA use it) and has taught several classes on the garments of the Haithabu (Hedeby) finds, so I did the towel using a 2/2 twill check based on a wool fragment from the dig.  There were in fact linen checked fragments from the same find, however the rep weave (plain tabby) seemed very dull so I went with the wool example.

The towel was woven with 20/2 linen for both warp and weft, with the contrasting colors done in 8/2 Cottolin.  From the pictures I have been able to find of the original fragment, it seems that the chevrons in the twill are somewhat irregular, so I replicated by changing my threading direction at random.

Where I really stretched myself with this project was in the finishing.  The towels/napkins were cut off the loom and hemmed as usual, but I got out my lovely glass smoothing stone and decided to see how it worked on handwoven fabric.

Smoothing stones, often made of glass like mine, have been found all over iron age Europe.  The smoother would have been used in conjunction with a wooden smoothing board and operates in much the same way as a modern cold mangle*.  It's just much, much, much slower.  The smoother is rubbed firmly over the cloth, compressing the linen fibers and polishing them.  This takes a fair bit of time and upper body strength.  If nothing else, mangling fabric this way will give you nice upper arms.

The difference in the hand and texture of the cloth was truly amazing!  It's not that easy to see in the pictures, but the mangled fabric is smooth, lustrous, and almost liquid in it's drape while the unmangled cloth is rough and rather sad by comparison.  No amount of steam ironing will produce the same smooth, slick appearance.

*Cold mangles operate by rolling fabric between heavy,smooth rollers, usually stone.  You can still find these in homes in parts of northern Europe, but the practice seems to have totally died out in the United States.  Linen sheets and table cloths (by which I mean all textiles used on the table, not just the largest one) were finished this way after laundering to give them that characteristic cool, smooth linen feel.  I have also found reference to mangle boards and rollers, which accomplish the same thing only with more upper body strength and less equipment.  The cloth is rolled onto a hard wood dowel, much like a giant rolling pin, and then pressed and rolled back and forth with a smooth wooden board.  So far I have not been able to show that mangle boards were in use during the SCA period, though they certainly were by the end of the 17th century.  It stands to reason these, like three-legged stools and spindle sticks, might not survive in the archaeological record due to their highly utilitarian function.  Linen presses, which again accomplish the same thing only by means of plates and a large screw mechanism, date back to Roman times.

Another Queen's Shawl

My latest large weaving project was another spinner's guild queen's shawl.  I've posted about this in the past but for those of you new to the program, I am a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group.  In my kingdom, Atlantia, we have a spinners guild (the Company of the Silver Spindle) of which I am a part.  Every time we have a new, first-time queen, the guild spins wool to weave a shawl for that queen.  This is the third such shawl project for which I have done the weaving.

I have done a shocking lack of research for this particular shawl (I got a bad case of I'm-a-peer-now-I don't-have-to), rather I chose a structure that looked pretty and interesting (M's and W's).  As it turns out, M's and W's is a period threading, but the reason I don't have sources is that most of them are in German or Danish or some other language I do not speak.  Also I only have a 4-shaft loom and many of the extant textiles are done on 8 or more shafts.  There is a good article on one such pattern in this issue of Medieval Textiles.

Molly the Wonder Pup "helping" me warp the loom
She "helps" with the weaving and spinning
as well.

The most interesting thing (to me anyway) about the M's and W's threading is the huge range of complex looking patterns you can get from just one threading.  I chose a fairly simple treadling pattern for the shawl, but one which I think turned out well.

The warp is two-ply handspun superwash wool and the weft is a light grey Jaggerspun Heather.  The current queen's colors are blue and white.  In heraldry, white is technically silver so I elected to use the grey which I think provides lovely contract but also more depth than a flat white would have done.  The warp was set at 16 EPI.

The finished piece has very nice drape and an amazing sheen.  Overall I am pleased though I am still hoping to do at least one shawl project that is closer in structure to a period textile (singles throughout, documentable two-color wool weave).  It would be really amazing to do one on the warp weighted loom with appropriate headers and everything.  I'm not quite there yet with the WW loom but it's good to have goals.

Tips for Spinning for Weaving:

This little guide is intended to provide some basic information for members of the SCA’s Kingdom of Atlantia spinning guild, who handspin and weave a shawl for each new queen. Group projects like this can be intimidating, but a bit of information and some practice anyone who has successfully met the requirements for the Guild’s apprentice level (even if they have not submitted their packet yet) should be able to participate.

Spinning for weaving need not be frightening or complicated. By and large, weavers want many of the same things from their yarns as do knitters, just on a slightly smaller scale. A nice, lofty worsted weight knitting yarn may produce a lovely sweater but will make a very thick, stiff and dense fabric when woven. Conversely, high twist singles produce knitting with a sharp bias and unpleasant hand, but work beautifully on a loom.

 First a few terms.

Grist - usually stated as yards per pound, refers to the relationship between weight and length. The higher the grist, the finer the yarn. This NOT exactly the same thing as yarn numbers (8/2, 20/1, etc)
Twist per inch or twist rate - how many turns are put into the yarn over a given length or period of time? Twist rate will influence grist as well as the relative hardness of the yarn. The main thing that makes a yarn strong is the amount of twist. High-twist yarns will be firmer and stronger than low-twist.
Wraps Per Inch (WPI) - measures yarn diameter. Usually used by knitters to determine the the gauge of the yarn, can also be used to determine grist.
Warp - The lengthwise lengths of thread or yarn attached to the loom. Warp threads are manipulated using heddles (usually metal) to create woven patterns. Warp threads tend to be under significant tension and can be abraded by the workings of the loom.
Weft - Width-wise threads used to produce cloth. Weft threads are wound around a bobbin or a shuttle stick and pass back and forth between the warp threads. Very little tension is placed on these threads.
Yarn Numbers - You will often see weaving yarns labeled with odd little fractions or ratios, like 8/2 or 20/1. These numbers contain two different pieces of information. The larger number refers to the number of hanks of a pre-set length that make up a pound. This standard hank size varies a bit based on the fiber but the number always refers to singles. The smaller number refers to the number of plies. So a 20/2 yarn and an 10/1 yarn would be about the same length. These numbers can be useful but are generally not helpful to the beginning weaver. What matters is yard per pound (the actual grist of the completed yarn) and the number of plies. In general, the higher the number, the finer the yarn. 

Singles: 
Singles are wonderful for period weaving! In our period, nearly all woven fabrics were made with singles for both warp and weft (there are a few exceptions, but the general practice seems to have been to weave with singles in nearly all cases). Here are just a few reasons (other than historical accuracy) why working with singles on a loom can work better than plied yarns:

1. Time - you spend less than half as much time spinning. With no need to create a second ply then ply your singles together, you will get much more bang for your spinning buck 
2. Grist - You do not have to spin frog-hair singles to stack together into the right weight of yarn, just spin to the target grist and you are done 
3. Balance - when weaving, we do not need to worry about perfectly balanced yarns (i.e. those that will not bias when knitting). Extra twist will even out in the weaving process and be locked into place by the interaction of warp and weft. Extra twist can even make the finished cloth smoother as there tend to be fewer loose ends of fibers in higher twist yarns. High-energy yarns can also be used to create interesting textural patterns. 
4. A little more room for variation - because you are not stacking multiple strands of yarn together, there is a little more room for variation in your singles yarn in a weaving project. Any thick or thin sections in the single are wrapped around equally variable singles in the plying process, sometimes balancing them out but also often compounding the variation. When weaving, these large swings in grist can become very problematic and are nearly impossible to correct for. With the smaller, smoother singles it is easier to spread out the variation and still produce a consistent, unified looking cloth. 

Slow Down! 
When trying to match a yarn, be it someone else's handspun or a commercial yarn, do not let yourself fly on autopilot. Slow down, take time to breath, and let yourself pay attention to the small nuances of what you are doing. Yes, this will be a challenge at first, but you will find a rhythm and the process will smooth out and speed up as you continue to work. This is especially critical with group projects, as great swings in variation can be detrimental to the finished project.

Keep Samples Close: 
If you are trying to spin a nice consistent yarn, keep samples of the target yarn close to hand when spinning. I like to keep an index card with small lengths of both the component singles AND the plied yarn next to my wheel when working on large projects so that I remain consistent. It takes very little effort or thought to compare what is going into the wheel orifice and what is on my sample card if the two things are close together.

Twist Direction:
This is really important! Pay attention to twist direction (usually you will see this described or Z or S spun). If you have a sample you are trying to match, make sure you are spinning in the same direction. Variations in direction can make some interesting patterns when used with deliberation but can look a hot mess if not intended.

 In many period wool textiles, you will see different twist direction used for warp and weft, which produces a firmer and stronger fabric than one in which all threads have the same twist direction. Where all threads have the same direction of twist, the cloth will be more lustrous and softer. It seems like a small thing but it can impact how well the finished cloth holds together and the overall appearance of the project. Modern spinner/weavers often play with twist direction when designing textiles but this is done with a high degree of intentionality to produce a pleasing cloth.

“Aging” your singles
 Like wine, singles benefit from a bit of aging. This means leaving the finished singles on the bobbin for a day or more before winding it off into skeins or onto weaving bobbins. You will notice that fresh singles tend to have a more uneven distribution of twist than those that are allowed to age a bit 

Twists Per Inch:
I usually don’t think about this much at all except when choosing the right ratio setting on my spinning wheel. My fingers monitor this almost automatically. However, if you are consistently producing yarns that are too hard or too soft, or singles that fall apart, you may want to give TPI some thought. Switching your wheel to a lower drive ratio will usually solve the problem of over-hard yarns, likewise a higher ratio will help with soft, weak yarns. Sometimes you may need to adjust your rate of treadling.

Remember that a smooth, strong worsted yarn will have more TPI than a soft, loftly woolen yarn. Note that if you are spinning yarns for warp (the lengthwise yarns on a loom, which are under a great deal of tension) you will need to spin higher twist yarns. Twist is what determines yarn strength, and warp needs to be fairly strong. It also needs to be fairly smooth, which you can control with twist. 

Angle of Twist
In looking at extant textile fragments, you will often see the yarns described as having a given angle of twist. By and large, this works out to telling you something about the twists per inch. A yarn with a 45 degree angle of twist is more tightly spun than one with a 30 degree angle of twist. This can be hard to measure, but it’s not impossible. There are twist gauges out there and Knitty has put together a good guide here  that will suffice for most projects. (if you like math, this is a great post explaining all about twist in yarn)

Much like twists per inch, angle of twist comes down to wheel ratios and speed. If your twist angle is too shallow, speed up your treadling or switch to a higher drive ratio. If it’s too steep, go lower. You will eventually train your fingers to feel when you have achieved the right angle of twist in your spinning.

Use a Yarn Balance
A yarn balance, usually called a McMorran Balance, is used to measure grist (yards per pound). The balance is a small plastic scale that will help you determine how much yardage you have in a skein of yarn and also if you have achieved the target balance of twist and diameter. The tool is not expensive (less than $30) and will help you become a more proficient technical spinner.  You really should have one of these in your kit even if you never spin for a weaving project.

Expand your Drafting Repertoire
Most of us have a drafting technique that we are more comfortable with and can do almost without thinking. Take the time to practice both long and short draw drafting. A short draw, typically used for worsted yarns, will generally work better for weaving yarns as the yarn is smoother and firmer than that produced by long draw. A nice smooth yarn will produce a nice smooth fabric. Lofty yarns are going to produce loftier fabrics which may be more prone to pilling and excessive fulling but are great for knitted garments.

Fibers 
In period, woven textiles were made out of all kinds of fibers, wool and linen being the most common in Northern Europe. Typically, for a group project you will be given prepared fiber to spin. If you need to select fiber to spin for weaving, here a few things to keep in mind:

1. Long staple lengths work best for spinning warp. This is not to say they cannot be used for weft, but if you are trying to spin warp specifically you want a longer fiber. In wool fabrics, you will typically see the long fibers from dual coated sheep (tog) used for warp, while the short downy thel is used for the weft. Linen should all be from long strick, rather than small short cuts. 
2. Preparation matters. You should be familiar with this idea from learning about woolen vs. worsted spinning. By and large, worsted will make a nicer finish cloth. Worsted yarns are made from combed fibers and then spun short draw. Woolen yarns are made from carded batts and spun long draw. For weaving, combed fibers will usually produce a better result regardless of spinning technique. 
3. Predrafting is your friend.  When working with commercial prepared top or sliver, I often find it easier to spin a consistent yarn if I break the length of wool into smaller section then split them lengthwise to create something like pencil roving. Drafting is easier as the fibers are loosened up a bit, and you have less bulk to manage in the drafting zone. 
4. Superwash should be avoided. Because superwash wool it treated so that it does not full, it can be difficult to finish the cloth once it comes off the loom. The warp and weft will not lock together properly, resulting in a cloth prone to fraying. It can work out ok for a shawl type project, but ONLY if the warp is regular wool and the handspun superwash is left soft enough to have some grab. A better option if you wish to avoid excessive fulling is to use a wool blended with silk or some other non-felting fiber. 

In short, take some time to practice and gain control of your spinning tools.  This will help you become a better spinner and produce exactly the yarn you want for whatever project you are working on.  This is a process and you should be getting better and more controlled over time, but also keep in mind that the beauty of the shawl projects is that you can see the work of many hands.  Each skein is a little bit unique and that adds to the beauty of the project.  Our goal is make it easier for you to participate in these projects and produce something that will add to the beauty of the whole.

Recommended Reading:
I have found these books to be invaluable in learning to spin.  There are also a number of resources on YouTube if you are a more visual learner or want tips on specific techniques.

The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning: Being A Compendium of Information, Advice, and Opinions On the Noble Art & Craft by Alden Amos. Interweave Press, 2001
Probably the most complete book out there on handspinning. Includes all you need to know about working with any fiber as well as wheel maintenance and fiber preparation. It’s the spinning Bible.

The Spinners Companion by Bobbie Irwin. Interweave Press, 2001
Handy small reference. Lots of good tips, not as complete as Alden Amos but a good quick reference. Currently available in a Kindle edition as well, which is free is you have KindleUnlimited.

The Ashford Book of Spinning by Anne Field, SHoal Bay Press, 1986
Concise and clear instructions for all the basics of spinning and fiber preparation. Very beginner friendly.

Hand Woolcombing and Spinning: A Guide to Worsteds from the Spinning Wheel by Peter Teal. Robin and Russ Handweavers, 1993.
Every last thing you might ever want to know about spinning perfect worsted yarns. The author is very passionate about his subject and provides a lot of really great information that will improve the quality of your spinning. Probably don’t need this unless you want to comb fibers as well, but if that’s the case this is a great book.  There is now a Kindle edition of this which should be very handy.

Perugia Style Turban

Last year at Ymir (a Viking themed SCA event held in North Carolina every February) I displayed my Perugia style towel for the first time.  One of my fellow spinners was so excited about it that she commissioned me to weave her a similar turban for her Italian kit.  What with one thing and another, it took a full year to get the sucker done but I did and was able to deliver it to her at Ymir.

The basic idea was to produce something along the lines of the turban shown in The Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano, 1423.  There are a couple of other similar paintings with simpler color work on the cloth but this one looks the most like a typical "Perugia" design to me.  As I found when weaving the original towel, the complex pickup pattern is a bit beyond my looms capabilities, especially when working with 40/2 linen at a fine set, so I opted to create a simplified pattern based on Rose Path twill.

The finished turban is 22 inches wide and about 80 inches long.  I've found that for me and other anatomically large-headed folks this works well for a nice turban wrap.  If you want to do something similar for yourself, I would suggest starting with the circumference of your head as the width and experimenting with the length you will need for the wrap style you want in purchased linen before you commit to a warp width and length.  Linen ain't cheep and everything about warping with fine linen is a huge pain.

Aside from measuring the warp, which was doubly miserable as I warped two projects at once (more on that later, I wove two head wraps on the same warp so make the best use of my time dressing the loom) the weaving was not too bad.  I need a warping mill.  6 1/2 yard lengths on a warping board suck and most of what I want to work on right now are long lengths of cloth for clothing.   I used boiled flax seed dressing, diluted and sprayed on with a spray bottle, and tried to keep the level of humidity around the loom as high as I could.  This helped with getting a clean shed and maintaining even tension, though was difficult as I did the bulk of the weaving in the dead of winter when the highest temperature we had was in the low 20s.  A humidifier might have helped.

I also started out the project with fishing line running along with my floating warp.  This made adding a bit of tension to those threads to keep them from getting lost in the selvages much easier and prevented them from abrading too much and breaking.  I still quite a few extra weights attached to the back of my loom (it looked like a Christmas tree back there) but overall it worked out very nicely.

Angel wings (brackets that hold the lease sticks in place and at a fixed width) were a HUGE help.  It was much easier to find broken ends and I was able to warp by myself with very little trouble.  Not only was I able to maintain the cross in the warp, but it helped to even out tension and spread the warp out properly behind the lease sticks.

The only major problems I still need to work out are some weird tension issues that developed when I got to the second project on the warp.  I started having a lot of breakage and tangling that I didn't run into on the turban.  I suspect I need to wind onto the back beam with help when working with linen.  Some of the problems might have been fixed had I used a warping mill.  I don't have any plans to weave linen in the near future, by the time I get around to it again I will hopefully have a mill.  

The turban came out beautifully in the end and my client was very happy with it.  I was a little sad to see it go, but I know it's gone to a good home and will be worn with pride and love.

Kira's Shawl and some leg wraps

My second Queens Shawl weaving project was to be presented to HRM Kira at Pennsic last year.  The weft was hand spun by members of the spinning guild, and I wove the finished piece in a herringbone variant using Brown Sheep's Nature Spun sport at the warp.

Overall I am very pleased with how the finished shawl turned out.  It could have been a little longer and maybe a touch wider, but that's pretty knit-picky.  There were some interesting variations in the hand spun weft skeins that I tried to spread out through the shawl to create subtle textural stripes.  I think this worked out pretty well, there are no wide runs of any one skein so the finished cloth is fairly consistent and even.  It's also quite soft and warm.  Working with the thicker yarn this time around did produce a heavier shawl but it still has a nice drape.

I love the way the white and purple combined together.  By itself the purple was really bright.  When woven together with the white. it toned down quite a bit, resulting in some nice depth of color and just enough shimmer to stand out when HRM wears it.

I also wove some leg wraps for my early period/iron age kit.  The original plan had been to do this on my warp weighted loom, however I discovered that the alpaca/wool blend I was using as warp was far to stretchy to stand up to this week.  Also the very narrow strips were difficult to stabilize on the loom so I moved the project over to my table loom.

Just for future reference, I do NOT recommend moving warp from one loom to another mid-project.  I got it to work out but it was sloppiest warping job I have ever seen.  I think I set this as something around 36 EPI, maybe a little looser, but I was working with a lace weight warp so it's fairly tight.  The west is Nature Spun fingering, which I love and gives a very nice pack at a surprising rage of sets.

The finished wraps feel amazing!  They are soft, light, warm, and the cloth has a beautiful hand.  It would make a lovely garment.  They took forever to weave, each wrap is 15 feet long, but the end result was worth the effort.  I'm looking forward to doing more cloth in fine wools, it's such a joy to work with and the results are worth the extra effort to warp up all of the threads.

Finished Queen's Shawl

Hurray for a finished  project!  I've been running through my list of Things To Do and getting a bit freaked out this week or so (ok, more than a bit freaked out, more like I look at the list and run away and hide) so it's super nice to have a Very Big Thing Indeed crossed off.  And with time to spare even!  I decided to buckle down this weekend and marathon watched Season 3 of Downton Abbey and the Olympics while I got it done.

I think warping the shawl took longer than actually weaving.  The weave is the same diamond twill used for the Preugia towel, set at 16 EPI.  There are a total of 524 warp ends.  This seemed like a paltry number of warps after the 1200+ I had to deal with for the linen towel, but still it took more than half the season of DA to thread them all.  Once that was done the weaving went very smoothly.  It was a lot of fun to see how the colors in the hand spun changed, and how the different skeins of hand spun varied since each spinner dealt with the color variation a little bit differently.  I am mostly pleased with my selvages, there are some places that are better than others but I think I have an idea of how to improve that next time.  I just need to figure out where to get fishing line.  Twisting the fringe took awhile but it's nice and mindless and I got a nifty little fringe twister from an etsy seller that made the processes a bit easier.  It's not hard to do this by hand but after awhile it's murder on the fingers and the tool helps with that.  Plus the twists are much more even where I used the tool.

The fabric was finished with a cold water and Eucalan soak to preserve the sheen of the hand spun wool.  HRM will need to hand wash or dryclean this going forward but I think she can manage that.  The sample I wove was lightly fulled and it looked ok but lost a lot of the beautiful shine that the mohair in the hand spun gave the piece, so I went with a simpler finishing.  If she does accidentally full it a bit it won't damage it any, the thing is pretty big and she's not a tall woman so it will still look nice on her.

Overall this was a really fun project.  Not being 100% sure what sort of yarn I was going to get from the spinners was both fun and stressful, but I really enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the project.  Now that I have a better idea of what to expect and how to plan, I am looking forward to doing this again in the future.  I've already got some ideas for future project percolating away in the back of my head!

Queens Shawl, full sized!

As much as I loathed worked on the linen for the faux-rugia towel, I think it improved my weaving by leaps and bounds.  Nightmare projects tend to do that, which always makes me grateful for them after the fact.  In looking at how my first Queens Shawl project is coming along, things are going much more smoothly, my selvages are looking much better (not perfect, but better), they are more symmetrical, and I am finding it easier to following the treadling order and see where I am when I walk away from the loom.  Plus I'm not finding as many funky floats.  So yay for getting better!  I'm not mistake-free yet, but I will not be in any way ashamed to present this to Important People.

The hand spun yarn is subtly variegated with purples and blues and a tiny bit of teal blue, all peacock colors to pull in the personal heraldry of our queen.  That color variation didn't show up well in the photos, but in person it adds a very pretty shimmer to the shot fabric.  Not a period shimmer, but a pretty one.  It will look really pretty out in the sun when we present the finished shawl (assuming of course that we have sun on the day, one can only hope!)

First attempt at overshot

How I am loving my little table loom!  Warping still takes forever, but it's so much easier to set up a short (ish) length of something to play around with for napkins of towels to try something out.

I've decided to finally give overshot a try as the technique is similar to what I suspect was used to weave Perugia towels, the main difference being that overshot is done on a ground of tabby whereas Perugia towels are done on ground of some sort of diamond twill.  To weave the Perugia designs (or at least the geometric ones) efficiently, you can set up a series of secondary heddles using what's called ophamta weaving.  I wasn't able to do this when I did my towel as I have small eyes on my heddles, and the secondary tie ups need extended eye heddles on the main shafts to work.  What we see in the Perugia towels are bands of patterns woven over a tabby ground separated by diamond twills.  Overshot basically works the same way, but with fewer shafts.  The pattern weave is threaded into usually 4 shafts and woven on a tabby ground.  Working with 2 shuttles, you then weave the pattern using a contrasting color that floats over the tabby.  The patterns used are different, as are the fibers, but the basic principals are not at all dissimilar.

Anyway, overshot is far easier than I thought it would be!  And fun!  I'm not 100% happy with how this first pattern section turned out, I think a heaver pattern thread would look better, but for a first attempt it's much better than I thought it would be.  The ground is 10/2 pearl cotton set at 24 epi.  Nothing fancy but it will make a nice, functional towel that people will be will to use.  The blue is cottolin.   I have enough warp to do 3 good sized towels, and I plan to do all 3 with different fibers for the bands.  One will be a heaver linen, and one will be cotton.  I can do at least 2 different patterns with the threading I have as well, so that should add some additional interest to the weaving.

Shawl for a Queen

My kingdom's spinning guild makes a hand spun shawl for each new queen as a group project.  Sometime this means we do nothing for several reigns, but usually we end up making a shawl at least once a year.  The women who had been doing the weaving got her Laurel last year just before Pennsic when the last shawl was presented, and decided that she didn't feel it was right to continue doing the weaving, and as her first act as a Peer, volun-told me to weave the next one.  Eeep.  This will be presented at an event in February.

Things have been a little nuts for me the last couple of months.  In addition to the usual holiday madness of my little business and going home to visit, I've had the flu since New Years eve and have been dealing with some ongoing health issues that have been making getting anything done increasingly difficult.  My focus is not as good as it once was, I get confused easily, and I am in a lot of pain a lot of the time.  In the last week my neurologist diagnosed me with fibromyalgia.  Not great news, but at least we now have an idea of what the problem is (or really in this case isn't) and how to proceed with managing the symptoms.  Knowing you need to slow down and adjust your expectations from yourself and understanding why are two totally different things and for me at least the why turns out to be a key piece for my coping abilities and peace of mind.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is it's taken me longer to get started on the shawl project than I had planned.  But I finally got the Perugia towel off my loom, and have started doing the sampling for the shawl on my new table loom!  Yay for awesome Christmas presents that make sampling possible!  It's a 4-shaft 18 inch wide Dundas loom, which they do not make anymore, that we were able to pick up used, even though it had never been used by the previous owner.  The heddles were still tied together.  Warping it was so much easier than warping the floor loom, and weaving on it is fun though it's a bit of an adjustment going from tie-ups to manually controlling each shaft.  I'm using the same diamond twill pattern I used for the towel for the shawl, set at 16 EPI with a commercial warp and the hand spun weft.  We decided to use a high contrast for the warp to give the cloth a shot effect, which I think will look well when it's finished and should have a nice bit of shimmer.  So far I am happy with how the sample is working up.  I plan to weave a bit more and wash it before I warp the big loom, but I should have that done by the end of the weekend and be able to get the warping done this week.  The actual weaving won't take all that long.  With the larger yarns the whole project will go much more quickly than the linen did.

Finished Faux-rugia towel, finally

The faux-Perugia towel is finally, after long last and much swearing, gnashing of teeth, moving of the loom, and tearing of hair, done!  It's off the loom, washed, and I am actually pretty happy with how it turned out.  Yay!  This has been by far the most difficult and possibly overly ambitious weaving project I have done so far, but I have learned a lot.  I can't honestly say the result were quite worth all the agony, but adding in the educational piece and the fact that it's off the loom and I can now get on with my life it's all good.

The original plan had been to weave a length of plain

weave to do some embroidery with on the same warp, but somehow I ended up not having quite enough warp to do it or enough patience, so I have what you see.  The towel was 53 inches long and 29 inches wide before washing, and 50 inches long and 23 inches wide after washing.  This is right in the low to middling range of extant Perugia towels, and in looking at it a very useful size.  I will be able to use this as a small table covering, a large lap napkin (large napkins are really good for covering garments made of expensive, hard to wash fabrics), or for using while serving at table.  It also works nicely as a head covering.  The 40/2 linen was a huge PITA to work with (mostly warping), but the end result is a lovely fabric with a nice hand that drapes well and is thick enough to make a good napkin but still fine enough to look like real fabric and not a rug.  I'm a little sad about not being able to do proper pick-ups but the end result looks more like what you see in the art work actually being used by servants and more middle class people than what has survived in museums, most of which seem to be have been used as part of church vestments.

A couple of critical things I have learned about weaving with linen for next time -
1 - wet/damp linen is much easier to work with.
2 - sizing is your friend!  I used boiled flax seeds.  It's much easier to apply this diluted in a spay bottle than attempting to brush it onto the warp.
3 - For whatever reason my floating warps kept snapping.  I was able to fix this by soaking the warp thread in the sizing then reinforcing it with a thread of fine beading wire.  Fishing line would probably work better but I didn't have any on hand.  Next time I am working with a fine, inflexible warp, I will get some fishing line.
4 - I need a better cushion on my weaving bench.  Ouch.

Warp weighted weaving

Following up on my last post, I've finished setting up the warp weighted loom that has now taken over a not insignificant portion of my living room and have actually successfully woven a whole inch of leg wrap!

Knitting the heddles was by far the trickiest part of the whole business.  Finding clear instructions on how to do this was  not so easy, but I managed to work it out for myself after much google searching and watching YouTube videos on knitting heddles for barn looms (not the same sort of heddle at all but it managed to explain the idea).  I think the biggest thing left out of the instructions (if you can call them that) that I was able to find is that you really need to work with a small shuttle or netting shuttle, not the ball of yarn.  Once I figured this out and got out one of my small table weaving shuttles life was much easier.  Also, it was a lot easier (and I do mean A LOT easier, like I might actually do this again easier) to manage everything once I had the idea to pick up the shed I was trying to tie up with a pick up stick and hold it in the forward position with an extra leese stick I tied to my shed stick.  This arrangement might not be that clear in the picture, but the idea is to hold the threads in front of the stationary warps so you are not trying to knit the heddles through another set of warp threads.  The only problem with this plan is that you have to be extra careful not to twist your warps if you chained them together at the bottom.  I twisted a few of them the first time I knit the heddles and ended up having to un-do the heddles AND un-chain the back warp threads to fix the mess.  Not a big deal as this is a narrow warp but something to keep in mind time.  Knit first, chain second.


Anyway, once that was done (and it went much faster the second time around), the actual weaving has been pretty straight forward.  Beating upwards is a little awkward, but I'm actually having a harder time managing the shuttle stick and the sword beater all at the same time.  I feel like I need an extra hand.  Luckily with this particular yarn I can do most of my beating with the shuttle stick so I'm not having to use the sword much but it's a bit of a juggling act.  Overall the process is not any slower than weaving on a rigged heddle loom.  You can see we had some trouble with the table woven header on this piece, which has created a little unevenness in the warp spacing, but I think that will work itself out as I go and when I wash the finish piece.  Thinking on it, I think I didn't choose a very good yarn to use for the header, it's not quite the right thickness for such a fine warp.

I still can't quite get my head around tying the heddles for complex twills.  I know this can be done, all sort of patterned twills were woven on this type of loom, but with one set of warp threads being stationary I'm not quite sure how you would make something like a diamond twill happen.  This might be another example of walk-before-you-run, which I have never been very good at.  I'll figure it out.

Warping the Warp Weighted Loom

I got a warp weighted loom for my birthday (yay!) and what with it taking longer than expected to get here, fiber show season, crazy event season, and general life stuff it's taken until today to get started warping it.  Very shameful but at least it's getting done.  For now I'm just planning to weave some simple tabby legwraps for myself, as this will be relatively easy and I need some legwraps.  I'm using an alpaca blend laceweight yarn that was on sale at my local yarn shop.  The warp is a honey color and the weft will be a wine red.  They should be rather pretty when done.

I've got as far as tying the weights to the warp bundles and chaining the warps together.  I was not planning on doing the chaining, but because I ended up sing fewer weights than I had planned the chains are really helping to keep the warp spread evenly.  Plus I can anchor the bottom of the work to the sides to the loom which will help prevent draw in.  I still need to knit my heddles, once I get that done I can start weaving!

I do have to say, the 5 inch wide warp looks pretty silly on the 4 foot wide loom, but what are you gonna do?  Once I get the hang of this I plan to do a large piece of fabric, perhaps for a hood, and that should not look quite so silly.

Naked Underwater Linen Weaving

In one of my books, which I can't seem to put my hands on at the moment, there is a very silly picture of a guy sitting at loom in his drawers and nothing else weaving linen in a pool of water.  I now understand exactly why he is doing this.  I finally sat down this morning to work on the long-languishing Perugia towel and holy cow does weaving that blasted linen ever work better if it's damp!  Hurray for naked under water linen weaving!

It's also helping that I took a friends recommendation to use paperclips and small weights to keep the floating warp in place.  It was tending to get lost in the first few warp threads, making my selvages messy and ugly.  With the clips on I am getting a much neater edge.   I've decided to abandon the idea of doing a proper Perugia towel with the pick-up brocaded sections though, that's just not working well on this particular loom and I have other things I want to weave sometime in the next year, so I'm doing a faux-rugia instead.  I'll just be weaving in some stripes of the indigo dyed cotton at either end.  Given that my edges are still kind of funky looking, I am happy with this compromise.  Just getting this linen woven off will be a huge accomplishment.  It's still slow going but now that I have my handy spray bottle (and some flax seed sizing, that's a big help too) it's a whole lot easier to make progress.

Edited to add that I found the picture of the naked underwater linen weaver!  It's in the Textile Production at Coppergate book, plate 821, which you used to be able download here but seems to be currently unavailable.

Weaving update

After much hemming and hawing and gnashing of teeth, I've finally started actual work on weaving my Perugia towel.  Or at least trying to warp the bloody thing.  It's not going well.  I decided to use 40/4 linen, which is pretty close to what was used on the original, and have ended up with a total of 1278 warp ends.  I ended up having to scrounge up more heddels for my loom to accommodate all of these threads and rearrange the ones I already had to work with the pattern draft.

Once I got almost halfway done threading, I realized that the pattern draft I was using (from the CA on Perugia towels) has a mistake.  It will not allow you to treadle tabby, which you need to do for the actual Perugia part of the towel (the blue brocaded bands).  So I re-drafted the draw-down and started re-threading the loom only to discover that I now had my heddles arranged such that I did not have enough on the 3rd and 4th shaft of the loom.  I've now solved that problem, only to snap one of my warps in the process.

Fixing a snapped warp is not that hard, it just sucks to have to do it this soon.  I mean, I don't even have the whole thing threaded yet.  I'm hoping and praying that I actually have the warp arranged on the loom correctly, since I an so short of heddles for this project I need to have exactly half the threads on each side of the center mark on the shafts, or I'm going to run out of heddles.  They make clip-in repair heddles, which are sort of expensive but I may have to break down and order some just in case.

To make things just that much more annoying, I discovered that I made a mistake on the brick stitch book cushion, right in the middle no less, and had to rip out about 4 hours worth of work.  So I spent the better part of a day last week ripping out and re-doing what I had already done.

Some weeks are like that I guess.

Perugia brainwaves

Yesterday was KASF (Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival, an SCA event dedicated to all things artsy) and I had the very great pleasure to share my display space with some of my most favorite people from the northern part of the state, who I hardly ever get to see.  We're all apprentices, and all interested in the same things though with a focus on different time periods and geographic regions, so it's always fun to talk and see what we've all been working on.  We're also at different places in our skill sets and research, so it's fun to share sources and help each other out.

Besides, there are only so many people in the world who would get it when you mention that you want to eat a lot beets sometime to see if that really will turn your cloths pink, and not only that but then make plans to try it out with you.

Anyway, I'd been mulling over my Perugia towel project, and one of the women had what may be a solution to the very slow and tedious process of picking up every single blue pattern row with a pick up stick!  And it might actually be period! Opphampta weaving is something she's been doing on her drawloom, but you can do this on a 4-shaft loom like mine with a set of tie-up sticks and a sword. The idea, as far as I was able to gather in looking at the book while at the event, is that you tie up the draft for the pattern section on these supplementary sticks behind the sheds using string heddles. The sticks rest on the warp while you weave the plain weave sections in whatever pattern you are doing, then when it is time to do you damask or opphamta pattern, you pick up the appropriate sticks, slide in the sword to create the shed, throw you contrasting weft, and proceed. No more picking up each row and counting out each row by itself! Yay! Still slower than plain weaving but a whole lot faster than the other way of doing this, and totally within the skill set of the people who wove the original towels. I suspect this will work better for the more geometric designs, which is what I want to do for now anyway, but it could be set up to work for the more complicated patterns too.

 I also got a copy of a whole book dedicated to the cotton industry in Italy from 1100 to 1600 lat week, which I am very excited to start reading.  So far I've only thumbed through it, but it looks like it's well researched and should be an interesting read.  Since cotton was used in these towels, it will be useful to know more about where it came from and how it was produced as I write my documentation.  I'm also hoping to find out how else cotton might have been used during that period.  From my thus far very limited understanding, it was fairly expensive stuff, but it was cultivated in parts of the Mediterranean.  And interestingly, according to Marion at The Curious Frau, who is one of the most knowledgeable people about late period German costume out there, cotton was used to make those fun German headdresses that look like a doughnut stuck on the back of your head.

After all this, I still really wish I had an 8-shaft table loom to do some sampling on.  Oh well.  If anyone would like to buy me one...or failing that if you see a good deal on a used one that is somewhere on the east coast, do let me know!

Perugia towel research

I'm finally starting to make some headway on my long-delayed Perugia towel project.  This is a Very Good Thing Indeed, as I think it will be a fun challenge and produce something useful and (hopefully) beautiful in the process.

I'm starting to compile my visual sources on a pintrest board, a new (to me anyway) tool that I find wonderfully useful for this sort of research and also totally addictive.  What a great way for visual people like me to keep links organized!  Hurray!

Anyway, I did the indigo dying for the cotton contrast bands yesterday with very good results.  The blue came out nice and bright and even, so that's ready to go.  I have 3 tubes of 40/2 linen ready to go, which should be more than enough for one napkin sized towel.  I'm just starting to wonder if the 40/2 is too small.  20/2 is definitely too big, but I can't seem to find anything in between.  Last year I was given a tube of what I think is 30/2, but I'm not sure and can't find more anywhere anyway.  Gah.  Hopefully the 40/2 will work, that's the best I'm going to get.  Having to work at 48 EPI or small is a little terrifying, especially when I get to thinking about the pickup part (the blue bands are all done with a pickup stick, by hand), but this is supposed to be a challenge after all.

If you are at all interested in these towels, here are some on-line sources that might be of use to you:

http://larsdatter.com/perugia-towels.htm - tons of links to extant towels and art work with towels in it
Perugia Towels - a blog about Perugia towels and the weaving techniques used to make them.  Lots of useful information
Bibliography of Sources - Thora Shaprtooth's bibliography of sources on Perugia-wares.  Very helpful.
Affordable reproductions from Historic Enterprises.  Sort of makes me wonder why I want to make my own sometimes...

A&S 50: 33-Rosette Twill

Twill and its variants make up nine of the sixteen mostly commonly found textiles identified in Bender-Jorgensen’s North European Textiles Until AD 1000.  In my continuing effort to understand weave structure and improve my weaving skills in an historical context, exploring some of these twills presented an excellent challenge.  The rosette twill in particular appealed to me as both a technical challenge, and an attractive and appealing pattern.

For this project, I decided to make napkins using two colors of weft on the same warp.  Using ivory cottolin warp set at 24 ends per inch, I wove two lengths of the same pattern using tan weft and light green weft.  Unlike some of my previous twill experiments, this time I used a floating warp to ensure a neat selvedge, which was a big help.

  

Learnings:

•  Floating warps really do make a huge difference!  My selvedges not only are free of the weird floaters I was getting on the Greenland twill, but they are much more even.  It took some getting used to and slowed me up a bit at first, but once I got used to working with them it was worth the extra effort.
• Patterns like this are far less forgiving of mistakes in tredling than plain twill.  You can see every little mistake.  My usual strategy of warping up twice what I actually needed too to get two usable napkins proved to be a good one here, as I had quite a few tredling mistakes at the beginning.
•  I need to do some work on color combining.  I was surprised that the tan and cream pattern had better contrast that the green and cream.  This is not at all what I would have thought would have happened.  I suspect that doing white-on-white would have a better effect that I had initially thought as well, given how nicely the cream/tan combo came out which bodes well for my Perugia project.

Sources:

Bender-Jorgensen, Lise.  North European Textiles until AD. 1000.  Aarhus University Press (December 1992)

McKenna, Nancy.  Medieval Textiles: North European Textiles (http://www.medievaltextiles.org/lbj.html) Last accessed Jan. 19, 2011

A&S 50: Nine: Learn to Weave – Basic Tabby Structure, Rigid Heddle Loom

Tabby, also called plain weave, is the most basic of weave structures and a great place to start for new weavers.  For my first weaving project, I decided I use to use the small 24 inch rigid heddle loom I already had, and work with tabby (partly because rigid heddles work best for tabby and partly because I had almost no prior weaving experience).

The basic structure is very simple.  The weft threads travel over every other warp thread, alternating each row to create the weave.  This can be achieved with finger manipulation or needle weaving, but the rigid heddle makes manipulating the warp threads much quicker and simpler, allowing the weaving to raise or lower the threads all in one motion.  The primary disadvantage to this style of loom (aside from having only one heddle or shaft) is that the heddle is free-floating and doubles as the beater, making it difficult to maintain an even beat and keep the selvedges straight.

The cloth was tabby woven using a rigid heddle loom at 10 DPI at the full loom width of 24 inches. After weaving, the cloth was fulled in a washing machine. Pre-fulling, the weave was quite open and relatively even, though some areas were packed more tightly than others (this was my first major weaving project and the first time I had worked with a wool warp, so there was a bit of a learning curve in this process). After fulling, the weave evened out a great deal and packed down considerably. By the end of the fulling and dyeing process, the warp and weft were barely visible and a compact, water repellent fabric had been produced, as can be seen in the finished piece. This is significantly thicker and denser than the cloth used in the extant Dublin caps, but will serve as a useful warm layer at cold and wet events.

The cloth used to make my Dublin-style Viking hood had been intended for another project, but due to excess shrinkage in the fulling and dyeing process was not suitable for my intended use (a later period hood). After making a pair of mittens out of part of the length of fabric, I had a piece left which was just large enough to make this cap if I placed the fold along the back of my head rather than across the top (kismet!). As conservation of resources seems within the spirit of the time period, this alteration of the basic pattern seems to be plausible if not entirely supported by the archeology in Dublin and Jorvik.

Of the twelve caps and three remnants of caps studied in Heckett, nine of the caps and two of remnants are wool. All of the examples are tabby woven, with an even weave structure. All but one are classified as having an open weave. The wool caps are woven at a range of 12 to 23 warps per centimeter, with wefts ranging from 9 to 20 per centimeter. The cloth for all of the caps is lightweight and quite fine, and some of the silk is very delicate. At least some of the hoods seem to have been purpose-woven on narrow warps. All of the wool caps analyzed in Heckett have selvedges along two sides, while the silk caps all appear to have been cut to size from wider pieces of cloth. Most have not been analyzed for dye, but of those that have two were undyed, two showed traced of iron mordant.

Sources:

Heckett, Elizabeth Wincott. Viking Age Headcoverings from Dublin. Royal Irish Academy, 2003.

Walton, Penelope Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate,Council for British Archaeology, London, England 1989.

Viking Silk Cap, Yorkshire Museum (http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/life-in-viking-york/viking-silk-cap).

Crowfoot, Elisabeth. Textiles and Clothing c.1150-c.1450. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 4. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1992.