Tuesday 17 August 2010

Spinning for Hallstatt

To give you more than just text and promises of broken-off thread bits at the Forum, here are a few pictures of the spinning.

This is the single for the first of the three different plied yarns, on the spindle. That should be enough for the length required, so I will start to spin for the second ply now, with a different spindle stick.



You see the "full" (well, not really, but full enough for my purpose) spindle and the distaff with the fibre stored on it both in the picture. I will not sing the praise of the distaff now, since that would make this post explode. I'll sing it tomorrow for you.

And this is my little comparison card to check if the threads I spin are like they should be:


You can see the three different threads used in the tablet-woven band that is going to be reproduced. Thinnest of the three is the Z-ply on the right, thickest is the one in the middle. I am currently working on the leftmost, medium-thickness S-ply. The little comparison card - the white bit - is an old business card of mine. That should give you a first rough idea about the thread thicknesses.

But I'll make it easier for you. You probably know Gütermann Silk sewing thread? The one on the blue spools, Nm 100/3? Yes?

That's the extra thread meandering across the card in this picture.


I've left the first picture quite big, so you can click it and zoom in quite far. And these are original thread sizes of the thread used in the tablet-woven band.

If you'd like to find out a little more about the band, there's a tiny picture of the original at the bottom of this (German) page, and there's a German text about the project I am spinning for on this page.

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