Well it’s been a while since my last post! I’ve been very busy (sadly not with spinning related things) including helping organize a major event to raise money for a local museum.
The first reenactment event for the year, History Alive, is here already and takes place on Saturday and Sunday. The plan is for me to arrive on Friday morning and help set up and stay through until Sunday night. I say that’s the plan because, with rather ill timing, I am sick! I am resting up and hoping to be well. This is our winter in the Southern Hemisphere and though many of my readers might not think our weather is cold, it gets very cold (for me!) at night time this time of year, especially in a 15th century style tent.
I have a Victorian ball dress to make for the 27th but I’m not feeling up to fitting the mockup of the bodice right now so I’ve been working on my spinning and using this time to get it all ready for HA as well as the next major event, the Abbey Medieval Tournament.
I’ve had a few UFOs sitting on my spindles so I’ve cleared most of them off. I had been spinning my first attempt at hand combed wool (I used dog combs because I can’t justify the expense of real combs) which was turning out ok, but a little coarse and lumpy. I’ve taken that off my distaff and have put on some more of the organic wool I’ve been spinning for the most part. I wanted something easy to spin at the event! But also I’ve been inspired by a thread on one of my ravelry groups entitled “large cop, small spindle” and want to make an entry on it and I have plenty of this wool to spin and nothing to stop me. I’ll be interested to see how big the skein turns out. It will be good to say to people “a full spindle of my usual spinning weight can give me around this many metres of yarn.” And if people ask how long spinning takes I can say “it takes me this time to fill up a spindle and that time to ply the same amount.”
I started spinning for my large cop, small spindle yesterday afternoon.This is my first spindle of singles so far. I’m already down to my smallest whorl (a new addition from ebay, a stone whorl that is supposedly from ancient Rome) but I think I’ve got a lot of yardage left to spin before I go no whorl and a lot to spin after that. I move to a lighter whorl when my thread keeps breaking.
At the Abbey Medieval Tournament I’ll be presenting a talk/have a try on my spinning method so I’ll need to prepare for that also. I want to put together some pictures showing the process of taking flax from seed to cloth (as many medieval images as I can!) as well as some images showing the spinning method used. I also need to get my dad to help me with my flax distaff. I’ll also be carving some spindles out of wooden dowels and making some more clay whorls for people to have a go on. Finally I need to put together some starter spinning kits to sell, not to make money but to give people the chance to try their hand at spinning now rather than having to go away and source/make the materials themselves. My mission is to get more people (especially reenactors) interested at recreating 15th century spinning techniques and if I break even money wise then that’s a bonus!
I hope to do a proper update soon talking about my current techniques and my new whorls (I have two!) but for now that will have to wait.
15thcenturyspinning 