A Bit of Nalbinding, and a Status

I have done nothing relating to costuming this month.  Mostly that's because I've undertaken a temporary job, working for the US Census Bureau.  It has left me with zero time and energy to do anything extra.

But I did find a video that mentions an insole with nalbinding on it.  The video is by the Medeltidmuseet in Stockholm, and as you might expect, it is in Swedish.  However, it gives a look at a leather sole with a bit of nalbinding along one edge.  This find is dated to 1300-1400 CE.  The link can be found on the Nalbound blog, here, which is in English and gives a bit of perspective on the find.  (Kudos to Anne Marie Decker, who writes the Nalbound blog.)

Was this bit of nalbinding part of an insole?  Or is this evidence of a nalbinded sock with a leather sole attached?  The blogger at the Nalbound blog thinks it's an insole because the "row [of nalbinding] appears to follow the edge of the leather sole. That direction under and along the arch does not match the row direction that I see in contemporaneous nalbound socks."  It's an interesting look into a different way that nalbinding might have been used during the medieval period.

Skoldehamn Socks--Finished!

The finished pair of socks.

In wear.

Here is the pair of wool socks I made, based upon the socks in the Skoldehamn find.  I've included photographs of the socks alone, both right-side out and inside-out, as well as showing them on my feet.

Each sock is made from only two pieces of cloth, but it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out how the pieces had to go together to fit my feet. Once I did so, however, the socks went together quickly.  I seem to have twisted them in sewing them together, just a little, and both are a bit large in the heel and narrow through the toes (which is no surprise, since I have very narrow heels relative to the width of the front part of my feet).  Overall, though, the fit is good if a bit closer than I prefer.  However, I think that if I put the socks on my clean feet right after I wash them, while they are still wet or at least damp, I will obtain a more comfortable fit.

In wear, from the side.

I have more sensitive feet than average, but even so the under-the-foot seam did not bother me as much as I expected.  I attribute this primarily to the qualities of my wool (which had been pre-washed before it was sent to me).  The wool is both soft and surprisingly stretchy, and I think those attributes enabled me to get a satisfying result; I'm not sure it would be possible for me to get a comfortable fit using the Skoldehamn pattern with stiffer cloth.

Inside-out (on the left) and right-side out (right).

The original socks were worn with leg wraps, which extended over both the trousers and the tops of the socks.  However, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the Skoldehamn shoes were pretty low--no higher than the top of the ankle bone at the sides.  Both pairs of shoes I use with my Viking costumes come up well over the ankle bone.  As the picture shows, they are high enough to support the open sides of the socks without leg or foot wraps or other ties.

Worn with the Viking boots I usually wear.

The Skoldehamn socks also appear to have been worn with pieces of wool wrapped around the foot; Hilde Thunem notes that it's not possible to tell whether the foot wraps were wrapped directly over the naked feet before the socks were put on, or were simply wrapped over the outside of the socks.  I don't have enough fabric left over from this project to try to make proper footwraps, but I may look through my stash to see if I can find enough wool fabric to make some and then try wrapping them at least over the outside of the socks, because my socks fit too snugly for an inside-the-sock approach to work.

As the above comments imply, this project turned into more of a learning experience than I had anticipated, and took longer to complete than I'd expected (Susanna Broomé's booklet classifies the socks as an elementary level project) .  However, it was still a success, since I got a usable set of socks out of it, and was a short project despite the minor difficulties.

After I finished the socks, it occurred to me that this project also falls within the ambit of the HSM challenge for August--Extant Originals.  However, since the Skoldehamn originals are not complete, and I finished this pair in September, not August, I prefer to submit my socks under the September challenge.  

Sole-side up.

The Challenge:  September--Hands and Feet

Material:  100% woven wool fabric, in a 2/2 twill weave.

Pattern:  Susanna Broomé's pattern for the Skoldehamn socks (part of the clothing of the person whose remains were found at Skoldehamn) in her booklet, Smaller Garments.

Year:  Late 10th-early 11th century CE.

Notions:  White linen Guttermann thread from my stash; I drew each thread across a cake of beeswax for ease in sewing.

How Historically Accurate Is It?:  About 80%.  The actual Skoldehamn socks have survived only as incomplete pieces.  Photographs of those pieces, along with detailed descriptions in English, can be found in Hilde Thunem's article on Viking age hose, here.  For my socks, I acquired a similar wool twill, and have sewn the socks in running stitch with the seam felled by folding over the sides away from the running stitch and whipstitching them down, consistent with the seams on the originals.

But my pair differs from the original in certain respects.  For example, some of the original sock pieces have blanket stitch along the edges instead of folded-over, overcast edges, but I decided to go with the whipstitching all of the outside edges down instead because I am more comfortable with that technique.  Also, because of the shape of my feet (as noted above), I altered the placement of seams some.  In addition, I used linen thread instead of wool thread, and double-folded all seams and edges, instead of simply finishing seams by folding the edges away from the location of the running stitches and whipstitching across the raw edges.

Overall, the resulting pair of socks is by no means a copy of the originals, but is, I think, made with appropriately historical techniques and materials.

Hours to Complete:  About 5 hours.

First Worn:  I tried them on while sewing them to help adjust the fit, and wore them for a bit before taking the photographs with this post to see if wearing them helped make them more comfortable.

Total Cost:  $10.50 (including shipping) for the 18 inch (approx. 46 cm) by 29 inch (approx. 74 cm) piece of wool fabric I used.  I already had the pattern, and the linen thread.

Behold...a Sock!

The first sock!

I have finished the first sock of my pair of Skohldehamn socks.  A picture of the sock appears to the left.

The project is taking longer than I expected because, even though each sock is composed of only two pieces of cloth, it took me a while, even with the directions, to figure out how to orient and sew them together properly.  I also came to realize that the socks would not work with a less stretchy fabric than wool.

When I finish the other sock, there will be more pictures and explanations.

New Project--Skoldehamn Socks!

One of the patterns in Susanna Broome's booklet is a pattern for cut-and-sewn socks like the ones that are part of the Skoldehamn find.  Though the experts still debate whether the Skoldehamn find is Viking or Sami, the socks are a practical item in a style that would have been useful for people living in either culture, so I have decided to sew a pair to wear as a part of my völva outfit.

I found some splendid, soft, heathered, cream-and-light brown wool cloth from an Etsy vendor that should be perfect for the purpose--a picture of the cloth can be seen to the left.  As usual, click on the image for a larger version that gives a better view of the weave.

Susanna Broomé's pattern indicates that because the top of the stocking is not closed in the center, the socks need to be worn with leg wrappings or puttees.  I'm not sure if that's true if I wear them with boots that come up a little way on my leg.  I need to think about that some more.  This should be a quick project to make, though.  I probably will finish it in a few weeks at most.  

Fuzzy Hose

Yucca utahensis (Photo:  Wikimedia Commons)

From a very good friend, I learned of several similar, fascinating archaeological finds from the New World.  The write-up, complete with excellent  pictures (some of which are zoomable, to show greater detail), can be found on the Arizona State Museum's website, HERE.

The finds were made in Arizona about a century ago and date to about 1100-1300 C.E.  They are from the Anazazi or Pueblo culture. They are a kind of sock made from two fibers; the main weave is an open-mesh cotton, to which animal hair was originally fastened, though little animal hair remains on the surviving socks.  The socks, in turn, were originally twined onto sandal soles, which provided better durability.  The animal hair made the shoe/sock/sandal combination warmer, which matters at night in the desert.  The sandal sole part is made from braided yucca leaves;  Yucca is now, as it must have been then, a plant easily available in and about the American southwestern desert.

According to the Museum's description, the mesh part of the socks was made by a "looping" or "knotless netting" process that sounds a lot like what is called nalbinding with regard to ancient European finds, though to my inexpert eye the pattern of mesh looks rather different from the nalbinding patterns with which I am familiar.  No attempt to identify the type of animal hair used to cover the mesh is made in the museum write-up.  It does not look like any kind of wool, but is fine and fairly short, like the hairs of a dog's coat, which makes me wonder whether it's coyote hair; coyotes are also native to the area.  The result is a very practical piece of footwear for an arid desert environment such as the American southwest.

These finds show that the fact that, even with limited technologies, people can devise, and have devised, items of apparel that are attractive and provide the kind of function required by the climate of the area in which they live.  Although I typically find European costume history more interesting, the ingenuity of these shoe-socks (as the Museum calls them) is impressive and should not be ignored by people interested in the history of clothing.

HSM #3--Stashbusting!

I was prepared to make my early Norwegian overdress/peplos for the Historical Sew Monthly's Stashbusting challenge until I discovered one unfortunate fact.  I no longer have 5 yards of dark blue flannel, because I used some of the fabric for my Byzantine mantion a while ago.  I found the scraps of it, along with the remaining straight piece I used as a non-sewn wrap last summer, earlier this week.  The straight piece is about two yards long--but that length isn't quite enough to make a nicely draped peplos overdress on me.

I still plan to make the overdress, but now I need to acquire fabric for it all over again--and that fact makes it ineligible for the "stashbusting" challenge.  The point of the "Stashbusting" challenge, after all, is to use up fabric and notions you already have--not to buy more fabric!

So I'm back to the idea of making cut-and-sewn stockings for the March clallenge.  I can still make some out of the badly dyed light blue wool I wrote about before--or I can use the scraps of my dark blue flannel.  I like the idea of using the dark blue fabric better; it's thinner fabric and likely to be more comfortable than the light blue fabric.  Although that may no longer be the case if I pre-wash the fabric, which I plan to do since stockings need to be washable.  Watch this space to see where I end up with this plan.

Quick Nalbinding Update

So at this point, I have two proto-socks, which I work on alternately, as Shelagh Lewins suggests on her page about nalbinding socks. What I have, right now, are two curved pieces of nalbinding, each about the size of my (rather small) fist. They still show plenty of holes and  missed (or misplaced ) stitches, but they also have plenty of good areas, and are noticeably growing in size. They are also a bit big for my feet, wide though my feet are, but I figure that shrinking them when finished is a more viable option than stretching a too-small sock over my (usually) achy feet.

When they look a bit more sock-like, I may photograph them again for this blog.