To find and read all the entries for this project, you can go here. In the last week, I’ve made some important decisions to the plan for weaving the Rus Kaftan cloth and made quite a bit of actual progress on moving the project forward. The first thing I decided to do was to make the warp narrower and longer. This decision was predicated on the desire to reduce loom waste and to make it a…
This week, we started making wooden trenchers based on ones in the Oseberg grave finds. I don’t have a lot of information on the extant trenches like size and the type of wood from which they are made. We are just going off this one picture I was able to find. In the wood shop, we had some nice 5/4 X 9 inch fir boards that were bought for a different project and never used.…
Started measuring the warp threads for the Rus kaftan point diamond twill cloth today. I am 1/3 of the way done, as I took long breaks to teach a friend some beginning lampworking techniques and to brainstorm viking age food options for some upcoming reenactor events. I’ve decided to weave at a 37 inch width rather than the full width of my reed. I hope it will reduce the time needed for threading and also…
After I cut the linen warp off the loom and cut the towels apart, I hand washed and air-dried one of the towels to see how it would react. That came out well, so I screwed up the courage to throw all the towels in the washing and drying machines. They came out well! The weave and the fiber relaxed into a nice drapey hand. Next step was to press them and hand…
Finished up the linen weaving project tonight. Seven loom-controlled-lace towels complete! They are cut apart, the edges sewn and ready to be washed tomorrow. After that I’ll hem them by hand and they will be ready to use. Its hard to believe that this project was started just a week ago. What a fast, fun experience. I really enjoyed weaving with linen and I can’t wait to do another project. So many plans in my…
Part 1 of this series can be found here. The yarn I ordered arrived today for the Rus Kaftan cloth project. I am very pleased with the colors. The reddish color is exactly the dark maddery red-orange I was hoping it was from the little bit on the sample card. I was inspired to calculate the warp length I will need. My process is a little different in that I work backwards from the amount…
Last winter, my husband built a new door and frame for the jurta. The primary requirement was that it would easily break down for transport, unlike the red and black doors,which were transported in one piece. The construction was inspired by a yurt door design in “Yurta: a Central Asian Nomad’s Hearth and Home”, a video produced as part of a kirghiz yurt exhibit at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego in 1997. In…
Spent most of the weekend working on getting the linen weaving project on the loom. Saturday, I sleyed the reed and completed threading. Sunday, with some help from a friend, I was able to wind on the seven yard warp and start weaving. The sleying and threading wasn’t all that different from the wool warps I’ve done before. The big difference was in the winding on. It went FAST. No tangling. No fuzzies. No stretching.…
Tonight I made good progress on the linen weaving project. The warp ends have all been measured and are hanging in chains from the hanging beater of my loom (because I have a cat). There are a total of 386 warp ends at 7 yards long. The ends will be sleyed in a 10 dent per inch reed. This weekend, I’m hoping to get the sleying, threading and winding on of the warp completed…
For years, I’ve been puzzling over a picture in the book, “Ancient Hungarians” as it is literally the only picture in the entire book that shows textile fragments. In the picture, there is a strange metal object; a tube. It looks unlike any textile tool I’ve ever seen. Clearly, the authors were as stumped as I for the description of the object is as follows: “Bronze tube bent of sheet metal. One end tapers slightly,…
