Net Bag

 Over the weekend, I netted a medium-sized bag after Sally Pointer's Roman Net Bag video. While she used it for an pre-medieval impression, it's quite similar to the bags seem holding vegetables in Ruth's 13th-century cottage in Secrets of the Castle, while the knots and technique are the same I've seem in 19th century books and on modern craft kits.

Net bag and the shuttle/mesh used to make it.

It's diamond-netting, worked in a spiral from an initial set of 18 loops in a circle, expanded to 24 stitches per round, and then continued until I ran out of cordage (about 10 rounds?). The material is a hemp cord I found in a thrift-store grab bag. I used color remover on a hank from one of the three purple cakes, which gave a nice neutral-looking pale brown shade. I used a wooden shuttle I've had for ages, with the tail acting as a mesh. This was very tricky on the initial half-sized rows, since the shuttle was passing through loops its exact width, but was easy and convenient for subsequent rows.

Despite a few unsightly errors, the bag seems to be both strong and light. It can hold two loaves of Wrocław Trencher Bread, with room for a third. I think it'll also come in handy during the onion harvest later this summer.

Hallstatt Hair

Elise sent me Morgan Donner's video on recreating prehistoric hairstyles from the iron age (c.200-800BCE) graves in Hallstatt, Austria, and suddenly I'm brushing off my German vocabulary to read the source papers describing archeological experiments in hairdressing.

Pins and spiral made of brass and bronze wire.

Hallstatt Museum gallerie has images of the original pins. While there are now a few artists selling reproduction pins on Etsy, the handmade bronze hairpins are a bit outside my budget. So instead, I used Morgan's tutorial to make my own pins and spiral out of brass and bronze jewelry wire. For the spiral, I started with the 1-2cm diameter cone of 22 wire wraps, as described in the video.  

"Wreath" at the back of the head. The simple bun
looks the same, just more compact.

I rather like the hanging braids.

Low side buns.

I skipped the top-of-head "wreath" variant for now, but will need to try it at some point. The simple bun was just like the coils I wear every day. The braids hanging by the side of the face (and meeting over the head) were fun, and I want to find excuses to wear them. The pins weren't any different to use that the straight-sided U-shaped pins I usually use for historic hairdressing. Like those, these bronze pins need a little more 'weaving' to place than a modern wavy hairpin (though the technique helps with modern pins, too). I didn't have any trouble with pins sliding out or hair getting caught in the loops, which were may main concerns. 

For the low side buns, I simply tucked the ends of the braids, without fastening them off. The single-braid wreath and bun were finished off with the spiral, as were the joined hanging braids. I found that the ends of my hair were a little too thick and even for this size spiral, but still worked on the individual braids. The joined braids were even less tapered toward the ends, and this cone just didn't fit over them.