helwen

Did most everything on yesterday's list, except yoga and sewing. Not bad. We stayed for quite a while at the scribal workshop. I gave a few tidbits of advice, answered some questions and did a small rescue on one scroll when a paint drop went in the wrong place. Looks like we'll have to schedule a class on repairs at some point, once the production madness has slowed down a little. I'll speak with Eleanore about that at some point.

gwynt_y_storm kindly offered to make the scabbard for a sword I have. It's supposed to be lined with a piece of lambskin that still has the lanolin in the fleece. Pretty much impossible to find in the US, at least for sale as a regular thing. It occurs to me that if one could find a sheep farm where they sell meat sheep, it might be possible to contact them before lambing season and get one that way. But since we're trying to do this now, there's no guarantee that we can find someone who'll sell one, and lambing season is a while away, we're going to try faking it.

Now, in the Middle Ages, while they probably didn't bother doing this for sword scabbards, they did used to make fake fur. Yup! An article in Medieval Textile Society by Alexis Abarria was very helpful. She did a lot of her research at NESAT (North European Symposium on Archeological Textiles). She wrote "Pile cloths can be found from Viking times to Ireland of Henry VIII, who forbade his subjects to wear such barbarous clothing." And goes on to list extant examples from Anglo-Saxon England (350-1050 AD), a 9th c. Icelandic fragment, an Anglo-Scandinavian find, and other pieces at: Lund, Sweden; Wolin, Poland; York, England; Dublin, Ireland; Heynes, Iceland; and Birka, Sweden. Her article gives a good basic background on s- and z- twist for weaving, type of weaving patterns used, thread count, etc. Then she focuses on making an 11th c. Irish brat, including of course mentions in period documents of said furry mantles.

Both twill and tabby weaving were used for these. Twill would create a tighter, denser weave. Last night I wound warp for it and

fitzw kindly helped me with putting the warp on the loom again. I'm remembering more as we do this, so I might even be able to teach someone else how to do it pretty soon. I have to say though, it goes a lot faster when two people do it! We've done it so that it can be woven either as tabby or a twill, so I can try it both ways. Personally, if I were doing it for clothing I'd probably go with twill, but since it's going to be glued down I don't have to worry as much about stability and certainly not about warmth, so tabby would probably be just fine. And I was going to use lamb fleece, but Lady H forgot to bring it with her to scribal. We talked about the fleeces I have at home, and thought that some of the Romney would be about as soft as lamb, and certainly has plenty of lanolin in it. It's been sort of cleaned -- no muck or twigs, but a stronger scent than a lamb would have -- makes me wonder if that's why the preference for lambskin... so, we'll see what happens!

The two finished woven pieces washed up well. Some of the blue dye came out in the wash, but it didn't bleed onto the yellow, so it's all good. I wrung the heck out of both of them and they stood up to that quite well. I expect they'd make marvelous toweling. Not sure how well they'd sell on the open market, as I don't know if they'd shrink in a dryer and don't really want to find out quite yet. They don't really need to be put in a dryer as far as softening goes - quite nice to the touch just hung dry. And I have to try making towelling now with fibers that I can actually get more of (these were made from 30 year old yarns from my mom's old weaving supplies).

Well, what's going on today? A bit of weaving, a possible trip to Sunderland, Concentus at 3pm, and then hopefully more weaving. Oh, and weight training and fitness stuff too.