An Unusual Early Medieval German Plying Tool

Mack in May 2023, Micky Schoeltzke, a French textile dyer and weaver I follow, wrote about a Merovingian gathering she attended in Marle. As usual, there were loots of gorgeous pictures of her work, but one that particularly caught my eye was an odd bowl with multiple spouts. It was made for her by la Poterie des Grands Bois.

Pottery bowl with multiple spouts, surrounded by various textiles and textile tools. Photo used with permission.

Micky included this photo which gave me some clues about where to look for more info, and there is a whole article about it in NESAT VI.

A black and white drawing of a reconstruction of how the pot would have been used, with the information that it came from Grave 74 I. Pfakofen, which is near Regensburg in Germany.

Armed with a grave number and location, I found a colour image that looked very similar, with the information that it was found with a spindle and two whorls, that the grave was from the late 6th C and it is on display at the Historical Museum in Regensburg.

The finds from Pfakofen grave 74 provide an insight into yarn production. The spindle, the two whorls and the spout vessel were probably used to twist particularly fine threads. Spindle, two whorls, spout vessel. Pfakofen, Kr. Regensburg, grave 74. Last third of the 6th century. Bone, clay. Regensburg, Historical Museum. Photo: Condreanu-Windauer, Regensburg.
https://www.hdbg.de/frauen/fbc5-1ce.htm

A close-up of the original pot

My reproduction pot, made by Karina at https://www.horuseyepottery.ca

This week I was able to get a copy of Antja Bartel’s article “Das Tüllengefässvon Pfakpfen, Lkr. Regensburg – ein seltener Fund aus dem frühen Mittlalter, published in NESAT VI. I haven’t had time to read it in my painfully slow German, but I did study the drawings of the grave finds and skim through the rest. My pot may be a little too big, but is still reasonable.

The next thing to do is to make myself a suitable bone spindle and whorl (and get Karina to make me the clay whorl). The spindle is about 8 inches long with a tiny hook at the top. The bone spindle is about 1 inch at its widest, and maybe 3/4 of an inch tall. The clay whorl is one of those cylinders that come to a point at the “equator”, with flat top and bottom. It is about 3/4 of an inch at its biggest dimensions for both height and width. Obviously, I’ll take more careful measurements before starting to work, but I was excited to share this and I look forward to testing the whole assembly soon.

I never did get around to trying this plying method either. And I have been looking at other techniques and tools for making rope; maybe this is the summer I get back to playing with string.

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Spinning in Honour of Friends Who Are Gone Too Soon

I learned to spin when I first moved to Caldrithig 37 years ago. Dame Enid Aurelia of the Tin Isles, our baroness, taught a class on drop spinning at our first Practicum (I think it was that winter). I didn’t love it, but I did putter away at it from time to time.

My best friend from university (Etaoin o’Fearghal) eventually became Enid’s apprentice and then a Laurel for her textile skills (notably spinning and dyeing). After she died, I found myself drawn back to spinning and even took up dyeing.

Dame Enid died suddenly on Sunday. This isn’t the best picture of her, but it is one that captures her joy while being in the kitchen at an event – a place she loved.

Photo is courtesy of Michael Cohen.

There were many conversations about it, and other string arts, with Enid. The wool I am working with was a gift from Etaoin, some time before she died 15 years ago.

One of my fondest memories of Enid is the time when she trusted me to cook a huge feast. It was the barony’s 10th anniversary, the King and Queen were coming (- vanishingly rare occasion at that time), and I had never cooked a feast before.

At the last minute, I found out I had to write a six-hour exam for a job competition – something that was only run every 2-3 years. Enid (along with Etaoin) bailed me out and never gave me grief about it. In fact, she encouraged me to keep cooking, and shared many of her primary sources as I learned.

I miss both these women something fierce.

A drop spindle with some yarn spun on it. A larger pile of unspun yarn sits above it.

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Spinning

I spent several hours yesterday and today doing some spinning with drop spindles. The orangey wool is some of my hand-dyed from a few years ago. The lovely blue silk was dyed by Mistress Enid Aurelia of the Tin Isles, using woad, if I remember correctly. Spinning silk is a new challenge for me; it is much slipperier, without the curls of wool that help it stick together in a thread.

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Pit Fired Spindle Whorl

While at l’Anse aux Meadows, I got to make a clay spindle whorl that we fired in the cooking fire. It turned out fairly well, with only one small portion exploding due to an air bubble. I filled in the hole with beeswax at the same time as I coated the whorl to protect it, then made a spindle out of a broken arrow I had laying around. The result was a very light spindle that produced an incredibly fine thread, once I got the hang of keeping it spinning. It tends to stop spinning much faster than a heavier spindle. Here is a picture of the spindle in action, and a close-up showing the thread I was able to produce. The wool was dyed with comfrey.

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Spinning for Etaoin

Well over a decade ago, possibly as much as 20 years ago, my friend Etaoin gave me some beautiful merino wool that she had dyed with cochineal. It is a gorgeous red, wonderfully soft, and I have never figured out quite what to do with it.  Today I began spinning it on a drop spindle. Though I still hope to use some in a tablet weaving project, my first goal is to produce one of the wools for a two-colour knitted reliquary pouch. One of the patterns incorporates hearts. It’s a typical medieval German design, which is perfect for my persona. Plus, I miss Etaoin very much since her death a couple of years ago, and this will be a nice way to think of her.

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Spinning

Last week, I was spinning some brown wool from my stash when my friend Gaerwen stopped by for a visit. She had some of her freshly dyed wool (woad in a urine bath, I think). She was worried that it still smelled, so of course we all had to smell her wool. Then she wanted to smell mine – wool geeks are weird.  She was horrified at the awful stuff I was trying to spin. The fibres are incredibly short and it is frustrating to spin. It was one of two wools purchased when I first got interested in spinning, many years ago, and I have avoided working with it because it made me feel incompetent. Turns out, it’s lousy wool, not a lousy spinner, which is immensely reassuring. As a result, I am spinning it up like mad so I can get rid of it an move on to some of the more enjoyable textiles I have found in my stash. This week’s finds include some beautiful blue silk and some undyed linen.

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Walnut dye, and other weekend activities

This weekend I was given a large bag of walnuts. From a quick read at http://www.practicalprimitive.com/skillofthemonth/blackwalnutdye.html, I have enough walnuts for five gallons of dye. I have started hulling them, but without gloves it is messy (even using a plastic bag to protect my hands). I have done the first 15 walnuts and set the rest out to dry. I’ll keep working at them over the next few days.

I did several hours of drop spinning this weekend, and ended up with two nice skeins of plied wool. I talked with someone else who spinning dyed wool and she said she hadn’t had major problems with felting, so perhaps I will try dyeing some of my unspun wool, to compare with what I get using skeins. If nothing else, this would allow me to clear bags of prepared dye baths out of my freezer. Another friend admired my soapstone spindle whorl, so now I know what to do with another chunk of soapstone; that will only leave five more spindles to make up and give away….

Late last week, my friend the jeweller told me that I have more than enough work to do cleaning up one brooch and getting it cast before November 12. I have pondered her advice all weekend and decided she is right. I will aim to have one completed brooch, one mould as near to finished as I can make it, and one repaired mould for comparison purposes.

In other news, I am half-way through another netted vegetable bag; I had fun teaching my friend Sarah how to do net on the weekend. I also decided that one of my fleeces was too disgusting to do anything with and threw it in the trash this morning. I still have at least three fleeces to deal with, plus a huge amount of prepared wool and yarn, so I’m reasonably certain I will be able to complete 50 things towards my challenge.

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Spinning, brooches, blueberry melomel and pickles

Not all at once! But I did want to report on a moderately productive weekend.

Last night I continued cleaning up my brooches. The first mold needed adjustments to the bow. I also removed a lot more wax from the second mold. It is about triple the required thickness now. My next step on the first mold is to file everything as smooth as possible before carving the design. I will continue cutting away wax on the second mold. I also want to try mending the broken molds, just to see how that will work.

I spent part of this afternoon drop spinning with my norse soapstone spindle. This is a reproduction and I love the weight of it. I find I can get a nice fine thread with little effort.

This evening I racked my blueberry melomel. It needs to sit for another 10 days. The instructions aren’t clear about whether it is to sit for 10 days and then cleared, or whether I should add a clearing agent now and let it sit for 10 days. I’ll ponder overnight and re-read the instructions tomorrow.

I’m finishing up the sour pickles. After three weeks in brine and then three weeks in vinegar and spices, they are definitely tangy! I have ended up with five quarts, though there wasn’t quite enough of the spiced vinegar that the pickles have been soaking in, so one jar had to be topped up with plain pickling vinegar. Unlike fresh pickles, the trimmed ends of these pickles look a bit discoloured. It doesn’t affect the flavour, but I can see why canning became an attractive alternative (in addition to the reduced likelihood of food poisoning).

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Inspirational Crown Tournament

Crown tournament was a local event this year and I had a really good time. I wanted to work on my lace, so decided to dress up in Italian Renaissance, which turned out to be way too hot. It didn’t exactly serve the purpose either, as I started the morning spinning with a drop spindle to ready more wool for extensions to my friend Aelfwyn’s socks. I had made her some naalbinding socks a while ago but she finds they are too short for her boots, so I will be turning them into knee socks.

I served out all the candied violets. Here’s what they looked like:

Eventually I did switch to making lace and got a couple of inches done. I also acquired a rigid heddle loom and a niddy noddy. Making a rigid heddle loom is on my list of things to do, and I will still make my oown, but I am delighted to have another to play with until such time aas I get mine built.

My friend Marina was welcomed into the Order of the White Wolf Fian, a challenge order for the arts. She challenged to research and make a late period Ukranian meal.  My friend Alais did some amazing illumination on a diorama scroll. I’m hoping she took pictures so I can share.  I had a fine time sitting and chatting with Marina and Eluned as they did embroidery and naalbinding, respectively, and tasting Catherine’s homemade pickles. All in all, it was a lovely day.

Now that I have some spinning started, and I’m going on the lace again, I can’t wait to go to an A&S afternoon with a bunch of friends tomorrow.

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Sausage and lace

My friend Rozalynd and I made more sausage today. We helped my sister with some basic stuff first (chorizo and hot Italian). For ourselves, we did another batch of bratwurst, which is not documentable to the middle ages, but all ingredients are plausible. Then we did smoked andouille, which contains allspice (dating to Columbus’ voyage to the West Indies, or very shortly thereafter). All the rest of the ingredients (cloves, mace, thyme, pepper) were well known. This was a very complex flavoured sausage, which we smoked on my barrel smoker. The final experiment was saucisse sec, a dry cured sausage that should be ready in about a month. It contains a bit of sugar, but otherwise seems totally period. Depending on how it turns out, the next batch could be done without sugar, or possibly with a bit of honey. Here is a picture of it hanging up in my basement to dry.

It is an an area that is insulated but has no heat source. I have closed it off from the rest of the house, so hopefully the temperature will stay near the ideal 60F.

Earlier in the day, I went to the annual fabric flea market and met a friend who said she is interested in making bobbin lace. Another friend has also said she is interested, so I am now planning to organize a pillow making session. It will be nice to have people to lace with; when I last did a lot of lace, there was no-one, and I eventually gave it up.

At the same sale, I scored a kilo of merino roving. I really need to get on with the spinning and dyeing! I just obtained a new tablet weaving book, and I think I am almost brave enough to start weaving, once I have some nice wool to work with.

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