Thursday 28 January 2010

It's not spectacular... or is it?

After all the paperweight is off my back for a while ( it will be time for taxes soon - more paperwork), here are some things that are not really spectacular, but give me a nice feeling of something actually moving forwards.

First of all, these dropped-off stitch markers


  - and yes, I use bits of knotted silk thread and an old, single earring - these dropped-off markers mean that I have progressed on my second slouchy hat (with better maths for the hem this time),




and am now almost into the first round of ribbing. This means slipping half the stitches to a holder and knitting the other half. Just what happens here:



Then, there's that other idea that I have had. And now I am swatching - not spectacularly either:



But other things have happened, too. Non-knitting things. Like this:



This is where the seam on the tent is today. Which is almost one metre from where it was yesterday in the early evening, and that means actually almost two metres of stitching done, half by me and half by the most patient man that lives on Earth (I'm sure he must be the most patient man on earth, after all, he lives with me). Only a few metres to go on that first bit! And it looks as if there would be sewing time tonight as well. And tomorrow.

And finally... something spectacularly unspectacular.



They have been fired for a while and are now finally in my workspace. "They" are the ceramic disks that are supposed to go on an equally unspectacular stick and there to serve as a spinning whorl.
For those of you who are not recognising these whorls, originally they were made as the reference whorl of the Textilforum Experiment, and they got a lot of praise for running extremely well. However, the experiment whorls were not intended to be sold, and they were purely functional, including all rough edges and unsmoothed surfaces. These are made for actual use - with smooth edges and smooth surfaces. The whorls are made from modern clay, and with a modern technique - I'm using a specially-made little cookie-cutter-like implement. But that modern procedure is what makes them exactly alike and as close as humanly possible to the weight and MI of the original 12th century whorl, which is what we needed for the experiment. I will weigh them today to make sure they are all on a par, and then they are going into the Marketstall tomorrow.

4 comments:

Arachne said...

Oh, lovely! The Spindle from History as opposed to the Spindle from Hell that we were subjected to at Eindhoven. I suppose there's not a huge market for the lollipop-whorl... My spinning has progressed in leaps and bounds since September - that experimental week was what I needed to really get spinning again! I've made three wooden whorls for the spindle stick I bought from you (and they all spin wonderfully). I'll put them and the resulting thread on my blog any day now...I really will...

a stitch in time said...

No, I guess the Spindle from Hell wouldn't get too many takers : )
It's good to hear that Eindhoven got you spinning again - and I'm really looking forward to the day that your blog comes up again on my "new blog posts" list (and containing threads too)! Please do!

Anonymous said...

Save one for me. Although, I must say that nowadays I spin with a spindle with a ball shaped whorl that almost spins like the spindle from hell and I like it. If I would get a second chance on that spindle my spinning would probably be just as smooth as Kerstin's was on the second series. It just is a spindle for very thin spinning.

Arachne, please start blogging again. I'm very interested in what you are doing now.

Harma

Anonymous said...

I've uploaded three pictures of my spindle in with my Flickr pictures. Take a look.

Harma