In September/October 2009 Piecework, they've reprinted the article on simple looping that they first ran in 1994!

Not only that, they're running a pattern for a pouch in simple looping. I haven't actually made the pouch, but the pattern looks to be a really good primer on simple looping. This is a GREAT resource for any Roman or Egyptian early-period reenactor..

Check it out!

So I'm procrastinating by reading the "What makes you hate a lys?" thread on Ravelry. One of the running themes seems to be (entirely justified) hatred of LYS's that sneer at crocheters. (Which entirely boggles my mind. While I don't crochet, I have many friends who do - including my mother - and I don't see how it's any less valid than knitting or any other fiber art, for that matter. And I would think that a yarn store wouldn't care, because, you know, crocheters buy yarn.)

In one of the posts, the author tells the story of a LYS owner who called crocheting the "bastard stepchild" of knitting.

Well! Coming from from a knitter, that's pretty rich! Considering that I think we can argue that knitting is nothing more than corrupted naalbinding! Come back and snark when your craft has been around for multiple millennia, ya two-needle sissies!

(The last is said with tongue firmly in cheek. :) I love knitting, for all that I'm not very good at it...)

I gotta say, prepping your house to put it on the market sure does cut into your fiber time!

So what's new?

I put together a sock class for Estes Park... a book that goes over the four major food groups in terms of naalbinding heels, and goes over the Russian stitch as taught by Krista Vajanto. There's some tweaking I want to do to it, and will definitely spread it out over a longer time, but I feel pretty good about it.

In other news, again, join me in the rare book acquisition Dance of Joy:

I am now the proud owner of Ancient Danish Textiles From Bogs and Burials.

A book, I might add, which will never be entrusted to the USPS.

I'm having great fun... I need to read it cover-to-cover, now that I can, but I'm playing with some of the stitches therein. There's a very nice complex stitch (Type VI) that may work well for a glove/mitten hybrid. We'll see how it goes!

I have been playing with the Åsle stitch and color switching... much fun to be had there! And I totally owe Oogie a post on joining on both the top of the row and the bottom.

So there will be more to come soon. :)

Well, it's been a rough few months...

The New York class was great, despite the Great USPS Unpleasantness. (No word on my stuff yet.) I went to the very nice stitch 'n' bitch at Saratoga Needle Arts (Thursday nights, if you're in the area), and immediately had my problems put into perspective when one of the ladies came in and announced that, yay, the doctor said that there had been no resurgence of her brain tumor.

O.o

Well. There you go then. Maybe I'll just stop griping about my broken box. :)

But none of my classes have made since then; unfortunately, people just haven't been signing up. But so it goes, and I would imagine that, when folks are feeling uncertain about the economy and eyeing their budgets, the first to go are obscure fiber arts classes. :)

Nil desperandum, at any rate. I have a demo at Taos tomorrow, which should be fun. :)

OMG.

So, ok, when I go to classes, I have a bunch of stuff. I have lots of samples to show people, examples of garment construction, and the first lousy pair of socks I ever made. I have some books with lots of good pictures to show the history. I have my books printed up and ready to hand out.

Or, I should say, I once did.

Because THEY'RE GONE.

VANISHED INTO THE MAW OF THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE.

Now, it's nothing irrecoverable. I can deal. I'm going to have to spend an assload of money that I didn't want to spend, but it's only money. I can re-make the samples. Nobody died. It'll be ok. I have a number I can call to talk to someone about damages.

Once I stop having to breathe into this paper bag.

( aka There and Back again... )

Oh, Alibris, how you torment me.

Ancient Danish Textiles From Bogs and Burials is on sale again.

For more than I can reasonably afford right now.

How I want that book! I've been trying to get it for years. It's got great line drawings of the stitches, wonderful pictures of various naalbound bog finds... a whole chapter on naalbinding!

But, alas, at least for right now, it is not to be....

While up in Colorado Springs, one of my students, Patty Premovich, brought in a beautiful scarf and asked me to identify whether or not it was naalbinding. While it is definitely done in the simplest looping possible, I would argue that it still qualifies as a naalbound item. Patty found it in, of all places, a thrift store, so provenance is definitely unknown. The yarn is a lace-weight mohair, and the loops are (more or less) the diameter of a US size 3 knitting needle.

( Patty was kind enough to give it to me, so here are some pictures: )

I would DEARLY love to know how this one was made... presumably using a dowel or something for the gauge, and I'm pretty sure it was worked from the center out.  I'll have to play with some of my lace-weight yarn and see what can be done.

And a big thank you again to Patty!  Regardless of how it was done, it's beautiful!

I'm a bit late coming in with this entry, as things are just now starting to settle down from a very hectic few weeks.  Nonetheless, I'm here to report that on January 18th,  I went off to Colorado Springs, to teach a class at Green Valley Weavers, owned by Kathleen Orr.

( Warning: Travel Woes Behind the Cut... )

I hope everyone had a great holiday! :)

( Shameless Christmas present bragging and upcoming classes behind the cut... )

( Behind the cut for a really long post with big pictures... )

( Behind the cut for a very long post with pictures... )

Thanks to the forbearance of my parents, who were quite happy to watch my boys while I ran off for the day, I visited the library of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which ranks as one of my favorite libraries on general principle. It's 26 stories tall, with a REALLY FAST elevator. Everything is contained in the one 26-story building: no trekking off to the hinterlands of campus to visit the Fine Arts Library which is only open on alternate Sundays from 10:00am to 2:00pm. (Also, 26 stories makes it VERY EASY to find.)

While hunting down books and fighting vertigo every time I got too close to a window, I ran across a very promising set of leads on naalbinding by the Native American tribes of the Mississippi River Valley. As you might expect, there weren't too many actual textile remnants, but the archaeologists were able to determine the type of textile from the impressions left on wet clay. These are all very likely the simple looping; I would be very surprised if the stitches ran to anything in the higher orders, but it's nonetheless an interesting avenue to explore.

We'll see where it leads... in my Copious Spare Time. :)

And totally inflaming my tendonitis by naalbinding hats!

(Pictures soon!)

I saw a few things on my trip to the MFA that have actual pictures in their databases.

Here's a very interesting naalbound cap with human hair braids:

http://tinyurl.com/ypwk4k

A modern naalbound basket made of rattan:

http://tinyurl.com/2elfms

A cap from Peru, circa 700-900 AD. It's listed as being knotted netting, not knotless, but it looked an awful lot like some of the naalbound pieces I've seen in various Peruvian histories:

http://tinyurl.com/2fhlzt

Well, I took my kids to see my parents in upstate New York. As always, this provided a great opportunity to visit libraries and museums Back East. (And to visit my family, of course, but that's not what I post about here. :) )

The first naalbinding-related stop was to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and their library.

For fiber-arts related research, I have to say, the MFA Library ROCKS. The best! Better than the New York Public library, recently the occupant of the Number 1 spot on my list. No book too obscure, except for some of the Finnish language ones, and I realize that that was asking a bit much. They even have the elusive NESAT 1!

The downsides: They're only open from 1-5pm on weekdays. Also, you have to specially request books that are not in their main stacks at least 48 hours in advance, with a maximum of 5 books requested at any given time. (In future, I will request the books at least a week in advance, as the books have to be transferred in from off-site departments.) The staff was very nice and helpful, even if they weren't able to get me everything I needed at that time.

And, of course, I actually went to the Museum itself. If you can get to the MFA between now and March 5, I highly recommend you visit the exhibition entitled "Ed Rossbach: Fiber Art from the Daphne Farago Collection." There are several pieces of naalbinding on display (though they're identified as "looping," not naalbinding), including several really interesting Nazca pieces.

More soon...

A big website upgrade! Check it out at www.copioussparetime.com.

The blog is now embedded directly on the page, so you can post from there.

Two pieces of good news! My Blue Swirly hat was accepted to be shown at the Fiber Arts Fiesta, and I'm teaching again at the Taos Wool Festival! Yay!

( And now for the bag.. )

Well, the deadline for entries has come and gone, but with one minor screw-up (the check for the entry fee goes INSIDE the envelope), my hats are off to be judged.


( Here are the pictures: )

In other news, I got a really neat bilum bag from New Guinea that is made with a naalbinding variant... I'll post pictures in the next couple of weeks!

I'm working up a hat pattern with the vertical stripes, and here's what I've got so far.

( Behind the cut... )