Cloth Reflections

I recently finsihed weaving 4 meters of commissioned cloth for a friend. Although she does intend to use it for re-enactment, she was not particularly concerned with an authentic weave structure. She had seen what I can only really describe as a tabard on a website and really liked the cloth, which was listed as jacquard. Over the course of many months, I drafted a cloth in a similar style, which resulted in an undulating point twill. I originally used 8 shafts,  then was able to take it to 4 shafts, which  Medieval weavers used.
In the course of being commisioned to weave this cloth my life went a bit topsy turvy. I became pregnant and moved 2 times in the span of 7 months. The first move 1 month before giving birth and the second 3 months after. Needless to say it was nearly a year before I was able to warp uo this cloth. In the meantime, I "accidentally" bought a Glimakra Ideal on Ebay. I decided this cloth should be my fiest cloth on the Ideal.
So off to warp the new loom I went, no biggie I had become quite accomplished at warping. Well acconplishment comes with practice, which I had not had recently. Thus started a series of warping mistakes, which were likely a result of being out of practice and deciding to use my warping board bottom to top. The catastophic mistakes I discovered before the warp went on the loom. I had skipped a peg on the warping board. The first bout I wound again. The second I was able to fix on the board. The final issue I faced was a twist in several warp bouts. I noticed this before threading and properly fixed all but one. I thought I had fixed them all properly, but the last twist was not apparent until the warp was under tension. I weave with the lease sticks in and decided to kerp my fingers crossed and hope for the best. After weaving .5 meter sample to allow my friend to make a final choice of weft colour, I was confident I could make it through the rest of the warp. I was correct. Since the twist was behind tge lease sticks, my experience allowed me to carefully seperate the warp and move tge lease sticks back. This made weaving take a bit longer, but probably not as long as the otger options.

Once the cloth was all warped up and the decision was made to soldier on, I was a bobbin and a weavin'. One of the things which really sank in while weaving this cloth, was the impirtance of winding a good bobbin. A well wound bobbin not only speeds up the weaving, but also helps keep selvedges even. A poorly wound bobbin will catch and come to an ubrupt halt. This can cause several problems. First the sudden halt will pull in the selvedge more. It will also cause the bobbin to jump in the shed, which may result in the bobbin going over and undr tye wrong threads. Finally it will waste time in having to reach in the shed to retrievw thw bobbin. I realized how important well wound bobbins are, because I wound my bobbins quite well this time and thus experienced to true joy of weaving with good bobbins!
I inititially used an aide de memoire to help me track my treadling. I treadled the cloth straight through 3 times, then treadled backwards 3 times. I think a small abacus would be a useful medueval tool to use for this purpose. By the time this occured to me, I had feel into a goid rhythm and found myself rarelt using the aid.
Finding your rhythm in your weaving is essential to efficient weaving. It also produces a very pleasant weaving experience. Finally, a rhythm allows you to reach a meditative state. This is one of thw tru joys of weaving and can be found in every step of weaving.
Finally there are 3 places in the 4 meters which areb't quite right. I could not decide if these are missed picks or picks which were improperly packed. In the grand acheme of things 3 picks of approximately 1500 picks isn't much of a flaw. They are only visible on one side, which is odd. I am exceptionally pleased with the cloth. I look forward to my Laurel having a look at it and giving me feedback.
For now I will just say ta ta!

Progress for the sake of accomplishment.

As a working mother, I have to plan the time my son sleeps carefully. I spend every one of his waking minutes with him, unless I'm at work, there's an emergency, or a rare opportunity. Recently, I've been using GTasks to do this. But that's the boring big. My two main weaving goals right now are weaving the cloth bought by a friend and a research paper on cloth in Europe and the Middle East from the 1st to the 14th C.

As of today I have woven about 30" of 5 meters. I would really like to have this done by the time we leave for a week in Wales. I have 8 days yo meet this goal, which means 21" per day. See what I mean about planning? If I don't calculate things like this then I won't meet my goals.

My research paper will include samples of tye weaves discussed. I have most of the samples woven. I need to weave samples of the more obscure weaves. I am currently in the process of revising about 35 pages of text and tieing a cotton warp onto the failed linen warp, picture below. I can document both for taquete and samitum, but the peak of the pattern harnesses is not conducive for linen warps. Once I can extend my loom more linen should work. For now it's cotton.

Wish me luck getting tied on before we go too!

Thoughts on Spinning

Those of you who follow me elsewhere will know I spent about a month traveling around the US. I did quite a bit of spinning while traveling, because weaving just does not fit easily in an airline suitcase. Yes there are looms that will, but i have leant those out or have group projects on them at the moment. You will also know that since my return to the UK I have been having a hard time getting to sleep at an hour which is normal for me! My toddler is a 5-6 am wake up kind of kid, so I need to get to sleep early. I find my mind very active between 21:00 and 0:00 these past few nights. One of the things I have been thinking about is spinning and, unsurprisingly, weaving.
 Right: the yarn I spun on our way from Vegas to Salt Lake City.


I was recently pondering my spinning and why it fits my life more easily now. As a working mom, it is far easier for me to take a drop spindle to work and do a bit of spinning on my breaks. A drop spindle is also easier to carry around while spending time outdoors with my son.

 Me spinning and chasing TAJ at the cabin.

This lead me to ponder the transition of spinning, which was in ancient and early medieval times primarily women's work, to a male dominated profession. Well this is at least my current understanding. Admittedly I have not done the in depth research into weaving and spinning guilds which I have intended to do. However, it does at this time, make sense to me that while spinning was done on a drop spindle it would fall in the domain of women, who are in charge of rearing children. It is easy to understand how, particularly in Norse culture, spinning and weaving were tasks accomplished by women. In the morning while supervising the children, one can easily get out the drop spindle when the children are occupied and still be able to supervise them. It  is also an easy and quick matter to put down your spindle to redirect your child's attention, pick something up for him/her, etc. Weaving is thought to have been done by every women in Norse villages. Each women could take her turn tending the village children and then have a turn at the loom. I have wondered if Norse children were all put down to nap together, so the women could tend to lunch, cleaning up, and possibly weaving.

We assume the children were taught to help with chores as soon as they were able, which was likely far sooner than they are now. Abby Franquemont writes that Andean children were taught to spin as soon as they could sit up on their own! I'm hoping to learn the trick of this form her next weekend! I would love to teach TAJ to spin. He loves watching my spindle and this past summer began to turn the spindle for me, though his method is a bit more batting the spindle than turning/flicking the spindle, we'll see what we can do.

Spindle from Wild Craft's Spindle and Fibre Club 2014

As spinning and weaving technology advanced and they became more mechanized and organized into guilds, it is assumed they became male dominated professions. Some of this may have been due to the prevailing attitudes of the time, but I think some of this has to do with the arts becoming less compatible with  the rearing of children. I used to be a far more productive weaver. I had hundreds of hours to while away at the loom. Now those hours are spent with my son, who as previously stated loves to watch me spin and in fact weave too. Although he likes to watch me do these things, he does eventually want to help. He is able to help spin, a bit, but his intended aid and small attention span takes me away from spinning or weaving much sooner than I would on my own. I do not weave on a vertical loom often, mostly for tapestries which I intend to focus on eventually, but cloth always draws me back. Vertical looms, as we know were used by Norse weavers, are more easily left at any interval and picked back up. I can imagine Norse weavers with talismans which would be hung on the next heddle rod to quickly mark one's place. This is not so easily done on a treadle loom. I can simply stand up from my horizontal loom and walk away but unless I have left it at the starting point it takes a bit more time to figure out where I was when I left. So now we find ourselves back at the beginning, I spin more often now, because it is easy to do while also spending time with my son. I rarely however spin on my wheel. Anyone who has spent more than 5 seconds with a child will know why, if you have a child and a big spoked wheel turning round and round the child will stick their hand in the wheel. This will of course end in tears. Children are creatures of habit so to speak, and although they do learn, I'm not yet ready to find out how many times my son would stick his fingers in the wheel before he learned not to do so again!

So there you have it my thoughts on why, as spinning and weaving progressed they became more a man's profession than a woman's. I am happy that we all enjoy these hobbies together now. It is pleasing that they are predominantly women's hobbies now, but the men who join in are good crack and teach us just as much as our fellow woman.