Naalbinding and Fingerloop Braiding

Surprised to see me back so soon? After a crazy busy week at work, I was very ready for this weekend. Didn't really go far...to knitting Saturday morning - I actually took my Lendrum and the beautiful green Corriedale that I've been spinning for a while. Between Saturday morning, then Saturday night going to the coffeehouse to see L sing, I finished all the singles and made a good start on plying it. Will finish that up soon and show you pics.

Remember this yarn I showed you before? The first yarn spun on my great wheel.

You also might remember that I mentioned a new interest in historical fiber arts, including Naalbinding. Well, I wanted to make something useful but period-ish, so dug out the wool shown above and dove into my first naalbinding project head-on! It turns out, I was in need of an accessory bag for my great wheel. I got a little stuck on how to do the eye-holes to thread the drawstring through, but I sorta improvised. Then there was making the actual drawstring. I decided to learn another very old technique, called Fingerloop Braiding. It worked pretty well, and only took about 15 minutes to create the entire braid once I got moving on it.

Here you can see the bag with the accessories it is designed to hold. The wool finger, a block of rosin, and an oil bottle. And thank goodness FOR the bag....I recently started looking for my wool finger and could NOT find it! It was starting to really worry me, I looked everywhere! Talked to a friend, reviewing all of the places I'd already looked.... and thought of one more...under the stove. Dug out a light and laid down on the floor...and.... there it was! Way at the back of course. Tried to fish it out with the broom handle, but no luck there either. Coathanger to the rescue! As you can see, it is safely back, and now has it's own pouch to be stored in.

And since it hangs right on the wheel, I won't have to worry about losing it!

Now that the wheel pouch was completed and the wool finger found, I can spin!

This is about 2 oz of Holly Birch Fibers "Turquoise in the Rough" - 45% wool, 45% alpaca, 5% silk, 5% tencel, purchased at Hanks Yarn & Fiber in Gainesville.

It's a lovely fiber with a nice hand, including a lot of the natural grease still in the wool. Here's the first single on the great wheel:

Two cops plyed together:

And here it is, the final result! It came out to just over 100 yards for the 2 oz.