I have been continuing my nalbinding practice and finished a small sample that I began and included pictures of in my last post. I learned how to do to decreases by stitching two loops together and resulted in what looks like a tiny doll hat:
I did a decrease stitch about every other stitch and it does look very hat-like!
I then tried to start another practice piece with some pure wool in an attempt to be a bit more authentic. The yarn I was using, however, was plied and while it wasn't a problem with the part-acrylic yarn, the wool made nalbinding with the needle I was using a lot more difficult. I went to Michael's and purchased some single ply yarn and might attempt an actual pattern next, perhaps a hat or mittens.
So, I too went to the Beehive wool shop. I purchased tapestry needles as well as single pile wool. To my surprise, the worker at the shop knew what I was talking about when I mentioned nalbinding, although she said she didn’t do it herself, and was able to give me some good advice on what to buy supply-wise.
My starting materials: A tapestry needle and non-plied yarn
My first attempt at nalbinding was not what one would call a ‘success’. In fact, after a lot of yarn breakage, stitch dropping, and restarting, I formed a very solid mass of knots.
I found one of the biggest struggles in beginning to be the starting stitches. It seemed as if there were a lot of different methods that people use to start off their projects, so I had to find one that worked for me. I couldn’t find an official name, so this ended up being what I call the ‘make a pretzel and stick it on your thumb’ method. It ended up working pretty well for me, although it took a while before I didn’t have to look at my resource video while I did it. The video I found myself referring to the most is linked below:
Another struggle I faced was my left-handedness since the tutorials I found were all right handed. I thought it would be easy enough to switch to the other side, but I ended up getting a lot more confused with what direction the yarn should be overlapping and going in then I’d thought I would. So, I drew out a lefty diagram for myself and with a little practice I got this down as well.
Next, it was time to actually start stitching. I decided to go with the Oslo stitch since it seemed to be both the most prominent in tutorials and the simplest. The first strand I produced was full of gaps, twisted, and had unevenly sized stitches. As illustrated below, it wasn’t pretty, and my second try wasn't much better.
My first two attempts: quite twisted, with uneven stitching
However, as I kept nalbinding, I found it easier to get more uniform segments. From looking at tips on various sites, I learned that keeping the tension and placement of the yarn on your thumb constant is the key to this. I found that as I progressed, the strands started looking better, and I didn’t have to pay as much attention to every little thing I was doing.
Left: First attempt at joining into circle, uneven, twisted stitches, Right: Later attempt, more uniform and 'clean' looking.
Once I felt like I had this down, I thought I’d give nalbinding in the round a try. Once again I ended up getting mixed up. My first attempt didn’t seem to be going well, and was beyond fixing, so I decided to re-try. After a lot of practice, it seemed to be going pretty well. I thought I had completed a second joined row, when I noticed that somehow, someway, I had joined up two opposite sides and turned the project into a figure eight.
First Attempt in the Round
'The Figure Eight'
I’m still working on this whole ‘nalbinding in the round’ business. Hopefully, I’ll get better by my next post!
Here are various links to enthusiast sites and videos that are helping us along the way.
So at the end of last week, I went to Beehive Wool Shop to purchase my materials for my first proper nalbinding attempt! Because I won't be spinning my own wool and have not yet experimented with creating my own needles, I had to search through modern tools and yarns to try to find the closest parallels to Viking-Age materials as I could. For this project, I'm aiming for the most historically accurate reenactment of nalbinding as possible so I can compare samples to modern day knitting, although I may use cheap modern acrylic yarns for initial practice just so I can get used to the technique.
So far in my research, I haven't learned a lot about wool production, but I know not to use multiplied yarns, so instead I searched for singles yarn. I found a one-ply yarn (recommended to me by the clerk at Beehive) produced by the company Patons. In the next couple days I will do more research and contact Linda, a nalbinding expert on the island, for advice as to the types of yarns that would be the most historically accurate. I'm also wondering if I can use goat hair yarn (mohair is the yarn derived from the hair of angora goats) because it's one of my favourite materials to knit with and it would be exciting to use!
For needles, I bought a package of Clover jumbo tapestry needles and Tailorform yarn needles. The tapestry needles, which I saw were used in one video demonstration of the Oslo stitch, I don't think will work well; Beehive only had bent point needles in stock and every nalbinding needle I've seen from archaeological contexts has had a straight point. The larger of the yarn needles, although being straight, is a bit too short I think. Nalbinding needles, from what I've seen, tend to be rather long. These needles are also made of metal, and from what I know, most needles were made from bone, but I don't think I could get my hands on bone needles unless I make them myself. I will do further research on needles as well in the next coming days, but I will commence my initial nalbinding attempts with the materials I have been able to find.
Having some basic materials in my possession, I'm getting quite excited to try nalbinding! I'll start posting photos of my completed swatches hopefully by the end of the week!
For my first foray into the realm of nalbinding, I decided to try the york stitch, also known as the coppergate stitch instead of the more common oslo stitch. I have had some experience in the textiles here and there but I'm not particularly enthusiastic about knitting as soon as the cold hits. I began by watching tutorial videos for about half an hour, I settled on this one as my primary guide...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7eOlUDyy1Q
Initially I found the method simple enough, however, when I actually did it, I felt like I was banging my head on a wall. As easy as it may look in the video, there are plenty of smaller things that you need to pay attention to, the placement of your fingers, the tightness of the loops as well as which loop you're picking up, not letting your hand slip (learned that the hard way). Picking up the wrong loop can result in what I saw as a strange floaty hole, and overall it looks like a pretty obvious mistake on your part at the end. For a little while I was confused as to why my piece looked nothing like the one in the video, so I was constantly re-starting (what a waste of yarn...). It took me a while to realize that the motion of looping was causing the yarn to twist and seem like I was doing it wrong but once it was stretched out and untwisted, it better resembled the one from the video. Now I say better resembled but what I really mean is, it was still pretty far off from the video, I just felt somewhat better about myself knowing that I wasn't entirely inept at nalbinding.
I have been keeping a short journal on my first attempts at nalbinding and I will hopefully be including pictures.
October 9th
Spent around an hour and a half watching (and re-watching many times) videos on how to start nalbinding (Oslo stitch). It took a long time and many frustrated attempts ending with knotted yarn before I began to get the hang of it. I ended up with three short pieces, one with a mistake I made when I lost my grip. I found it hard to get the back loop sorted out and how to shift it in my hand so that the previous loop stayed in position.
The videos that I used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcuUqeKQZ5Q (mostly this one, the other was too hard to see what was happening). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8PXk5lTIZo
October 19
Today I learned how to join nalbinding into the round, which
is apparently the only way that you can do it. Knitting can be done in the
round but it can also be done working back and forth.
I had trouble figuring out how to join yarn once I had run
out of it. I looked for a videos or explanations but couldn’t really find any.
In the end I just made some loops with the new yarn and added them to the loop
on my thumb and continued on from there. This seems to have worked but I have
the problem of loose yarn ends sticking out and getting caught in my work. I
cut most of them off but some of them I weaved in. It was essential to keep a
pair of scissors next to me all of the time. The area where I first joined the
ends was quite messy after a few rounds (especially since I seemed to always
run out of yarn when I got around and back to that spot) so I fixed it up the
best I could.
Also… I am afraid of putting down my work (taking the loop
off of my thumb) for fear that it will get lost somehow and I won’t be able to
figure out how to pick it up again. I worked on it for about 45 minutes, (maybe
less) from the beginning to when I took the pictures.
The yarn I have been using is not 100% wool but I figured it
would be ok since I am just practicing.
We are five students from the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC Canada. As part of ANTH 398, Life and Death in the Viking World, we are studying the ancient textile art of Nalbinding. This technique is single needle knotting, similar to knitting or crochet. This blog will follow our learning process and research over the next month or so. Along with learning to nalbind, we will also be researching:
Nalbinding in archaeology - what has been found and where?
Sociocultural aspects of nalbinding - who was doing it, what were they making?
Practical knowledge and comparisons - how was it done? How does it compare to contemporary methods such as knitting? What materials were used?
Most of our research will come from enthusiasts and reenactors, but also from academic research and archaeological excavation reports. Keep an eye on our links page for instructional videos and enthusiast pages that we have found helpful.
We are very excited to get started and share our learning experiences with everyone!
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