I have been able to do a little weaving on the patterned gauze weave sample currently on my rigid heddle loom.
I have been able to do a little weaving on the patterned gauze weave sample currently on my rigid heddle loom.
My big project for last year’s season was to begin to put together a better encampment kitchen setup. I made some good progress and expect to continue to work on it this year. Here is a gallery of photos showing what we were up to. I hope you enjoy these pictures.
Many of the best books for research are in languages other than English. Russia, in particular, has the most amazing archaeological books. Yum! Most of the ones on topics of interest to me are in Hungarian, Russian, German, or Danish. Since I speak none of those languages, translation is necessary. Currently, I am working on translating the clothing section of Die Gräber der Moščevaja Balka by Anna A. Ierusalimskaja into English. I thought you might be interested in…
Yesterday, I pulled the Rus kaftan cloth off the loom. There is something so lovely about an armful of handwoven yardage. I prepped the cloth for wet finished by pulling out the float warps (I use fishing line), checking for snags, and snipping off loose threads. I cut a piece off to save for my weaving notebook and tossed the entire lot into the washing machine. A few of might be horrified to know…
I spent a good portion of yesterday on the rigid heddle loom, measuring the warp and warping the loom. I am indebted to the information contained in Betty Linn Davenport’s invaluable book “Hands on Rigid Heddle Weaving“, without which I would probably still trying to get the patterned gauze sample on the loom. The key piece of information I learned during this process is that when tying on, the heddle has to be in…
It immediately became clear, upon graphing the gauze weave draft, that the rigid heddle loom was going to impose its own limitations upon this effort. Not having any direct experience with weaving with a rigid heddle, that had not occurred to me until that point. Each line in the paper pattern at right represents 4 warp threads. My rigid heddle is 10 ends per inch and is 21 inches wide, giving me a maximum warp…
I’ve a friend who studies the Scythian and Pazyryk cultures and she introduced me to a book from an Abegg-Stiftung exhibit in 2001 called “Fabulous Creatures from the Desert Sands“. The book details woolen textiles from the tombs of Shanpula in Xinjiang, China. Textiles range from gorgeous polychrome horizontal tapestries, to pile rugs, to wide, multi-strand flat braids used as flounces on skirts to embroidered textiles and my current obsession, hand-manipulated lace cloth. I’ve been studying…
I have completed weaving eight yards of the madder warp/brown weft combination. That is enough, I feel, to make the Rus kaftan. The rest of the warp is being woven with a higher contrast light brown/old gold weft. I have set a goal to have finish this project on the loom by the end of the year. This project has been quite challenging and not very fun as evidenced by the many months it…
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.…
