Nalbinding Up Island!

Ah yes! Very exciting things happening in our lovely (not so little anymore) nalbinding world!

This past weekend we had the absolute pleasure of heading up island (the weather was incredible) to meet with Linda and Lynn, two members of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc.), a worldwide community dedicated to re-creating the arts and skills of Middle Ages and Renaissance. Lynn welcomed us into her home for the afternoon, and Linda drove down from further up island to teach us the ins and outs of nalbinding!

We arrived at the house to a table covered in hats, fingerless gloves, needles and yarn. Linda kindly indulged us in a short history of nalbinding, as well as her history with the textile art form. Lynn, who was also trying her hand at nalbinding for the first time, was just as interested as we were in what we were about to take part in!

Linda helping Teresa with
her stitch

For the next four hours we worked on the Oslo stitch. Teresa, Kelsey and I were using a thick, fluffy yarn that varied in thickness, so trying to get the yarn through the hole of our needles (!!!!) was slightly challenging! The yarn we brought is a good texture for nalbinding because it can be felted easier; this means that the yarn can be manipulated and washed to alter the size, density of the stitch, and the shape of the item after it has been completed. Lynn was attempting to use a thinner, slightly more slippery yarn, which we learned does not felt the same way as our more fibrous yarn. Not to fear, this kind of yarn can do the same job as ours, but requires knots to connect the different pieces of yarn together instead of abrasive rubbing and a bit of good old fashioned spit on the palm!

Kelsey's first attempt!

The process starts by ripping off about an arms length of yarn from the ball. Nalbinding is an entirely different process from other types of needle working, as you don't use one continuous string to make your item, but you fasten short pieces together so that you can create a continuous series of knots (again different from knitting in that you can't easily undo stitches messy stitches).

My test stitch!
(pretty good, no?)

Linda had us start by doing a test stitch to practice our technique.

Once we felt comfortable with this we started on another, which we soon turned into a "cuff" and continued stitching in a round. We learned to increase (add stitches to make the row longer) and decrease (drop stitches to make the row shorter) stitches. I found increasing stitches to be a little bit difficult, especially with such thick yarn because it was hard to see if you had done one or two stitches already, and often I forgot what were I was at and either added a third stitch, or only put one stitch instead of two. My poor attention span caused my cuff to be a little lopsided.. a little bumpy here, a little tight there... Whoops. Next we learned how to start a hat from the top and work downwards. This was interesting because Linda prefers to build her hats in the opposite direction of most nalbinders. She does this to avoid having a pointy tip at the top where the last stitches are placed, kind of like a smurf hat! To avoid this she begins at the top in a tight loop (using a kind of draw string method) to create a circle of stitches, and then works her way out and down in order to create the shape of the hat, and then terminating at the bottom of the hat, instead of the top.  

My wonky, first cuff!

Once we felt fairly comfortable, we got ambitious!

We all bought beautiful yarn to use for this project and we decided there was no time like the present to start out hats!    

Here's to throwning caution to the wind! There is no going back now!

Thanks again to Linda and Lynn for the lovely educational Sunday afternoon!
Stay posted to see pictures of the progression of our hats!

-JF

Adventures with Antler

Happy Monday, everybody!

We hope you all enjoyed the lovely, sunny fall weekend that we just had. Our group certainly did - we had the opportunity to meet with an experienced nalbinder and Medieval re-enactor, Linda, as well as her friend Lynn. Lynn so graciously invited us into her home for the afternoon, while Linda shared her time for an amazing four-hour nalbinding lesson! Unfortunately, however, that is not the topic of this evening's blog post - stay tuned over the next few days to hear more about it! ;)

Now, back to our needle-making extravaganza.

We used antler as our second material in the attempt to create nalbinding needles. On a trip to the pet store for her two dogs at home, Teresa was able to find some pretty ideal "100% naturally shed" antler tips that we would use as our primary material.  Remembering the success and relative ease of that we experienced making wood needles, we began this project with enthusiasm, and were quite sure that it would go swimmingly!

We learned right away that it would be a much longer process. The antler was extremely dense, making it difficult to saw through as we had with the wood needles. It was decided that we would need to anchor the piece of antler in order to stabilize it for cutting, so we used three screws to hold it in place on a small wooden platform. This helped greatly, as we were then able to work at it with a saw in an effective way. It did still, however, take much more time than sawing the wood needles, partly because we decided to use a hack saw in an effort to remain close to the tools that would have been used during the Viking Age.

It also became quickly evident that the choice to work outside was a good one. The 'dust' that came from the antler as it was sawed could be smelled from several feet away, and let me tell you - it was not pleasant! But this small bit of smell-oriented discomfort was well worth it, as soon we had cut the antler piece into three different sections and were able to finish up and produce a beautiful nalbinding needle.

Fine and medium metal files were used to shape the piece of antler into the shape of a needle, as well as to smooth out the sides. We used a drill to make the hole again, as it would have taken even longer than the wood needles to produce a hole without this tool.

If I were to do this again, I would follow the suggestions of some others who have made nalbinding needles from antler - try visiting this link to Genvieve's SCA blog, for example. In particular, I would try soaking the antler in water for a few days prior to the experiment, and would boil it right before use so that it was still wet for working. I can imagine that this step of Genvieve's would work to help control the smell and powder-like dust that comes from the antler as it is being sawed.

Our finished antler needle product!

When all is said and done, I'd say the antler needle turned out exceptionally well. Although it took a bit more time than the wood needle did, it is smooth and sturdy, making it both nice to hold and unlikely to break. I am excited for the next step - giving this needle a try after I have a little bit more experience with the nalbinding stitch first under my belt.

Well, thanks for stopping by nalbinders! Feel free to ask us any questions if this is something you are interested in trying at home!

Wishing everyone an awesome week ahead.

-KA

Needles You Say?

I can’t believe how fast this month has flown by! We’ve been experiencing amazing fall weather which has swung between stunning sunshine and the damp misty fog I envision when thinking of the first views our Vikings would have seen of Northern Scotland and the British Isles.

During our initial stages of planning for this nalbinding adventure, we decided we were going to try our hand at making our own needles. After researching the needles online through re-enactor sites, I found a crafter, Deanna, in Ontario who sells handcrafted nalbinding needles through her shop Chesnut Tree Creations. After using these as inspiration, we decided to try and make a needle from wood. We contacted a local woodworker who was kind enough to help us with our project including helping us handle the tools safely. Thanks Dad!  We gathered the materials required and got to work on Monday night. 

We tried to use tools that would not have had realistic results based on the tools the Vikings would have had access to. This includes an axe, a hand saw, a pocket-knife, files, screws/nails and sandpaper. We know similar tools existed due to The Mastermyr Find and we were amazed at how simple the process actually was. 

Kelsey's mad axe skills

We started out using a smallish piece of BC softwood (pine or cedar), and using the axe, split it into smaller slices. These were split again into rectangles and then carved or whittled down into the rough needle shape using the pocket-knife and then smoothed it all out with the sand paper. Once it was in the almost finished state, we then “cheated” and used a power drill to create an eye. This unfortunately caused the wood to split leaving us to start over. Trial and error!

After repeating the process up to the rough needle shape, we then re-drilled the eye and once it reached the desired size and shape, we finished sanding it. This whole process took about 7 minutes the second time! We created a few more and are very pleased with how they have turned out. We know the modern use of a drill reduced the overall amount of time required to create a needle, but with a sharpened tool such as a tiny chisel or boring tool, it could still become an incredibly fast item to produce. Of course the right woodworker's skills would be a welcome asset! 

Stay tuned over the next few days to see samples of all of the amazing needles we have made! Stay classy nalbinders, and thanks for stopping in! -TK

Yarn Shopping!

Well hello there!

Knotty by Nature Fine Arts!

This past Wednesday evening, the three of us barrelled into Teresa's car and raced from UVic to "Knotty By Nature". Time was of the essence as we fought the winding trail (A.K.A.: Foul Bay Road) to make it there before close. We arrive in the nick of time and quickly made nice with the owner. To our surprise, we were not the last customers as we had feared. We quickly became overwhelmed as our senses were overloaded with different colours, textures, fabrics and the smell of Kelsey's childhood: she walked around with a soap in her hand the entire time, full of nostalgia, claiming that THIS was the quintessential smell of her youth!

Us girls grabbing our wool!

After a few exchanges with Linda, an experienced nalbinder up island, we had a list of proper nalbinding supplies to procure. The owner of the shop was unfamiliar with nalbinding, but was extremely helpful in showing us the right kinds of wool, spun our yarn into balls, and graciously took our information so that he could put us into contact with any other nalbinders if he came across any! We were there well after close; Kelsey and myself couldn't decide on our yarn colours for ages! She ended up with a red/ purple colour pallet, while mine is a blue/green. Teresa quickly picked out a beautiful grey! --We know these aren't authentic viking age colours... but hey, we wanted to be able to enjoy our end product, and pretty yarn will definitely help with that!

Ring Pins?!

The only downside to our beautiful fluffy wool is that Teresa had originally bought nalbinding needles online for us to use to authenticate the process, however, our wool is too thick for the eye of the needle so we will have to rely fully on our own creations! Lets see where that takes us!

The moon outside the shop!

(Clearly we left after the 6:00 store close, look how 

beautiful the sky was when we left the shop!)  
-JF

 

   

Casting On

Hello, and welcome to our blog! We are Jenny, Teresa, and Kelsey, and this is the first post of a very exciting project that we will be partaking in over the next month. We are Anthropology students from the University of Victoria, and have chosen to try our 'needle' hand at Viking textiles, for our Archaeology of Vikings class. Please feel free to follow us here on our blog to check up on our progress over the next month!


We will be looking into nalbinding, a practice that appears to have been commonly used during the Viking Age. We will research archaeological sites containing evidence of nalbinding, including needles and any samples that may have been preserved. We will also research what kinds of garments may have been made, who would have worn these, and who would have produced them. 

We hope to gain this information partially from academic research, but also, importantly, from our experiment itself. Our first-hand experiences working with the materials will give us a good idea of what textile working may have been like during the Viking Age.

Some research questions we hope to answer for you... 

1)      How effective or durable are the different needles made of various materials, such as wood, antler, or bone? Although it is clear that wood products would decompose over time and appear not to have existed through a glance at the archaeological record, was this true of wooden nalbinding needles? We hope to be able to gain some insight to this from comparison of the needles we make.

 

2)      Which stitches and materials were used in Viking Age nalbinding? Based on our experiments with the different stitches, what do we think the different stitches may have been used for in the Viking Age? We will research various techniques that appear to have been used, and see if our finished products could be used for what they may have used them for.

 

We hope that you will enjoy following us on our little adventure! If you want to take a quick peek into what nalbinding is all about, just click on the link!

Happy nalbinding!

-T, K, & J