Posts

Book Review: Bog Fashion by Nicole DeRushie

Bog Fashion: Recreating Bronze and Iron Age Clothes by Nicole DeRushiePublisher: ChronoCopia PublishingHardcover, 192 pagesPublication date: April 2025Find a retailer hereReview by Karen Robinson I heard about this book from the author, Nicole DeRushie, who has an article on lime bast in our forthcoming Plants issue (Autumn 2025), and as someone who is intrigued by […]

By the Books: Using Older Texts to Inform Our Modern Understanding of Fiber 

There seems to be a lot of crossover between book people and fiber people. It is part of why I spend so much time researching fiber arts.

A Wool Lover’s Visit to the North of England

The trip I went on in May with Rowan Tree Travel to southwestern England was so wonderful that I had to go again on a similar trip in northern England at the end of September.

The World’s Oldest Pants

(Bet you didn’t see that headline coming …) A pair of 3000-year-old pants was found in western China’s Tarim Basin. The wool trousers were most likely worn by horse riders. Along with studying how they were made, a modern reproduction of these pants has also been created. Find out more about this archaeological find at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/pants-oldest-ancient-horseman-asia-culture-origin and https://www.sciencenews.org/article/first-pants-worn-horse-riders-3000-years-ago

Recent Textile Discoveries in Archaeology

Archaeologists have made some textile discoveries in the past year that are of interest to spinners and clothmakers. In Turkey, at a rather large Stone Age settlement known as Çatalhöyük, cloth was found in 1962. It took decades of discussion and new data and discoveries to determine if the cloth was made from wool or […]

How to make a 2,000 year old slipper (part 1)

Today Christina Pappas returns to the blog to walk us through the process of replicating a 2000-year-old slipper!   Today we are going to focus on getting to know the slippers for this project. (Have a look at my post from last week to learn more about my replication project.) Footwear from 2,000 years ago […]

The Accidental Textile Archaeologist

We are thrilled to have regular contributor Christina Pappas back on the blog today – take it away, Chris! So here’s the thing – I wasn’t supposed to be an archaeologist, let alone a textile archaeologist. When I was in high school, I was the epitome of the nerdy art student. I always had paint […]