#gt nalbinding

[giant-tiny-fiber-friends]

Nalbinding in G/T

Fiber Arts | Knitting | Crochet | Sewing

Honestly, this was the post I was most excited to make when I started this blog! I haven't seen many people talking about nalbinding, as it's not as widely known, but I think it could be a dark horse g/t fiber art.

The name nalbinding comes from Danish, literally meaning needle binding. It's a way to produce fabric from short pieces of wool yarn, using a large and blunt sewing needle-shaped tool to create stitches looped through one another. Tension can be kept over the thumb or the needle itself, and when torn or worn down, the fabric will not unravel!

It predates knitting and crochet by many centuries, although in form it is most similar to the latter. One stitch is worked at a time by running the needle through the working loops and the ever-growing fabric. There are many types of stitches with differing densities, tensions, and functions. Like crochet, nalbinding is very good for making things with odd or circular shapes, like socks or mittens or hats.

Nalbinding came into my radar when someone adjacent to my crafting circles asked about it, and I fell down the rabbit hole. It's still a relatively new craft to me, but it's gotten me so excited by the idea of sharing this with the g/t community!

For a brief history and demonstration of nalbinding (mostly to keep this post from being entirely too long) I highly recommend this short video. It certainly piqued my interest when I first heard of nalbinding!

The Potential

Nalbinding would be one of the easiest crafts to maintain by a tiny or a giant, in my opinion! For one thing, it's designed to use shorter amount of yarn at a time compared to knitting or crochet, which could be handy in environments of scarce wool sourcing (like a giant or tiny scavenging for materials). Wool would be ideal, since the fibers at the end of the yarn can easily be felted together in order to join a new strand, but it could likely be done with any fiber available.

The needles would be easy to come by as well since they can be made of wood, antler, or bone. So long as those materials are around, one can make a long, wide, and flat needle to use!

There are also more open-weave forms of nalbinding that could be great for mesh fabrics! Great for hunting/fishing for more outdoorsy giants/tinies, or bags for carrying larger items made with more conservative amounts of materials. Here's a tutorial video of someone using this looping style of nalbinding with plant fibers:

Nalbinding is a newer craft for me, and I'm still taking time to learn more about it! The project I have on the needle right now is going to be a small pouch-style bag; I'm not working from a proper pattern, sort of using the intuition I've learned from crochet to start a circular shape for the base, and now I'm working up the straight sides. It's still in the early stages, so it resembles a shallow bowl more than anything at the moment, but it's coming along!

This is definitely more of a ramble than previous posts at this point, but this is a craft I don't see talked about a ton and I more so wanted to put in on the g/t community radar to hopefully get a conversation started! Let me know if this sparks interest, I'd love to see other ideas for the g/t potential with this fiber art!

[borrowedtimeandspace]

A Learning Day

10. Ancient

From this list of gt prompts

AU: Borrowed Time (and Space)

~~~

Zepheera was usually inclined to hide when she and the Doctor landed anywhere and anytime on Earth. A lifetime of keeping a distance from human beings formed habits that were difficult to break, and that was one of them. She did trust the Doctor to shield her, but it still felt sort of wrong to be seen by humans.

That changed the day the Doctor decided to land in a small farming village in 10th-century Iceland.

There, he’d explained, she could easily pass as one of the ‘hidden people’, basically seen as elves by the locals. They were thought to be reclusive, so the Doctor walking up with one on his shoulder would surely be seen as a blessing. And indeed, they were welcomed with open arms.

Once word got around, the Doctor managed to swing a group of women to take Zepheera under their wing for the day while he wandered the village looking for ways he could repay them for their hospitality. He wondered to himself why it took him so long to think of this.

Though it was difficult, he did try to keep track of the relative passage of time for the sake of his companions. It was all too easy to let milestones fall to the wayside for time travelers. This one felt important, particularly for Zepheera, so the Doctor wracked his brain for weeks to think of something special that she would enjoy.

It finally came to him after a long talk with the borrower, and he picked up on the little details, Zepheera mentioned how she learned to sew clothes when she was young, and quite missed knitting, but it became more difficult to find decent amounts of wool all at once over time, so she’d fallen out of practice. That sparked a tickle of a memory somewhere in the dusty expanse of the Doctor’s mind, and when he was alone he followed that metaphorical thread until he had the perfect idea.

As he hoped, when he returned to find Zepheera at the end of the day, she was right in the middle of a circle of women, each working with the wool from the sheep their village raised. Two were spinning it into yarn, one concentrating on making hers as fine a thread as she could manage, while the others held up their half-made hats or socks for Zepheera to see the technique they used.

They each had what looked like large, flat sewing needles in hand, carved from wood or bone, with long bits of wool threaded through the eye. The fabric in their hands built up as they ran those needles through it and loops they held wrapped around their thumbs. When they ran out of wool, as one woman did mid-instruction, they simply broke off another piece from what the others had spun and grafted it to the one she’d been working on. The wool fibers made that part look incredibly easy to the Doctor, and he couldn’t hide his fascination watching this ancient craft in real time.

Zepheera seemed just as enthralled, to the point that she barely noticed the Doctor for a while. She’d carved her own needle since they had none small enough for her, and used the freshly spun wool that her new friends were kind enough to make. While the women were respectful of her space, they did their best to observe her work and give her pointers, happy to see that she’d picked it up fairly well.

When Zepheera finally spotted the Doctor, she perked right up. He gathered her for dinner, giving the women a very warm thanks for taking the time out of their day for this. Zepheera raised a hand high above her hand while she stood on the Doctor’s, showing off the mitten she’d been able to make over the course of the day. The Time Lord had never heard his friend speak so much all at once, and it seemed she couldn’t stop. She went on about all she’d learned, and how it would have been much harder for her to knit such mittens when all she had to work with was loose, dull pins. How this was such a brilliant idea, since one didn’t need to have a mass of wool in order to get started, and could simply add on more once it was found and gathered. 

She was in the middle of wondering why borrowers hadn’t thought of or picked up on such a useful skill sooner when the Doctor interrupted her by reaching up a finger to ruffle her short hair.

“I take it you enjoyed yourself,” he commented.

Zepheera’s look, despite the brief indignation of being poked at, said all he needed to know. It had been a while since he’d seen her deep violet eyes lit up so bright. “This was…amazing!”

The Doctor couldn’t hide a grin. In all his travels throughout time and space, it warmed his hearts to see that such a simple trip with very few bells and whistles and flashy sights could still impress his companion. That was all he’d hoped for.

“Happy birthday, Zepheera.”

~~~

If anyone's curious, what Zepheera's learning is called nalbinding, or needle-binding! It's an incredibly old craft that predates even knitting, and I think it would be an insanely useful skill for giants and tinies alike to learn, in this essay I will