After wasting some more of my precious green yarn, I have succeeded in starting my second round on a green starting chain with reasonably even stitches. The chain is kind of twisty-looking, but I think I can straighten it out. This is fortunate for me, since I have yet to find the tapestry needle I could swear I've seen no more than six months ago.
Here's a more interesting nalbinding tidbit about nalbinding. This costume blogger suggests that nalbinding may have come about as a way to use up loom waste--odd bits of thread cut from a loom during the cloth weaving process. Her suggestion may not be provable, but if one considers it in light of the importance in early times of carefully using every bit of handspun thread possible it makes a certain amount of sense. I intend to think about it some more.
That's a really good idea, as the pre-cut lengths would be convenient for nalbinding, rather than a draw-back (like in knitting). Loom waste might work for sewing too, depending on the thread quality, but that would only use up part of the waste.
ReplyDeleteI've had similar thoughts about medieval cloth pouches with tablet weave edging, fingerloop braided strings, and tassels. The strings and tassels probably used up the "loom" waste from the tablet weave.
Of course, to have enough loom waste to twine strings and make tassels, you'd have to do a lot of tablet weaving. Also, for a pouch, you'd need specific lengths of at least some strings in order to make an appropriately-sized set of strings and tassels. With nalbinding, of course, you can use strings of different sizes.
Delete> With nalbinding, of course, you can use strings of different sizes.
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely an advantage!
As the tablet weave often was silk, I guess they had to find a use for the loom waste other than nalbinding. But you're right, tassels use up a lot of silk, so the waste from a single tablet weave probably wouldn't be enough. It should be plenty for the drawstrings though; they were mostly made from 5 or 7 loops, and the pouches were just around 10 cm (4") square, so the waste from 5 or 7 tablets would suffice for two drawstrings. And one could start the tassels from loom waste, and then continue with new silk, leftover from making the warp.
An alternative thought, which may contradict that: naalbinding belongs to the knotted/twisted forms of textile working, not the woven forms. Knotted/twisted forms tend to pre-date woven forms (see, e.g. sprang). I'm not sure what the earliest naalbinding is (Coptic Egyptian?) but there's potential that it pre-dates weaving.
ReplyDeleteA lot of surviving early nalbinding is Coptic, yes; many items that appeared to have been knit actually were nalbinded. However, the surviving Coptic stuff is around 4th-7th century CE which is way after the development of weaving. To predate weaving you'd have to go pretty far back indeed. I'll have to keep an eye out for very early nalbinding finds to see if they substantiate that theory.
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