A&S 50/50 Challenge: Stitch Types by Margrethe Hald - Type I, Type Ia

I was extremely lucky to find someone who had a photocopy of the nalbinding chapter from Margrethe Hald's book "Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials", a book that is now out of print and very hard to find. When I was told this person had a copy of the entire nalbinding a.k.a. Needle-Looping chapter (pages 285-312) I begged, pleaded, and generally made a nuisance of myself until they shared their copy with me.


Now that I had a copy of the nalbinding section the fun of trying to figure out the stitches she lists and match them with the stitch names I know. To accomplish this I took a needle and some heavy white cotton cord and followed the directions in the book, compared the results with the pictures and drawings from the book, and finally matched stitch type with the modern name that I know the stitches by.

There was some difficulty with the text and images being labeled differently. An example is the first stitch Mrs. Hald analyses on page 285 and illustrates on 286. The text refers to the stitch as Type I while the illustration refers to stitch Type Ia. Since she never mentions Type I again I must assume that Type I and Type Ia are in fact the same stitch and list them as both.

I also found the text descriptions of the stitches hard to understand. But this was not a surprise. I learn easier by seeing something being done and following along, rather than reading the text and doing after, or even during the listed steps. Because it is taking me so long to replicate the stitches in the book and then find them online if they are unknown to me I have decided to make separate entries for each stitch type.

Along the way I took pictures and here are my results.

Type I, Type Ia - Not a stitch I am familiar with. Searching Neulakinnas Nalbinding and comparing it to all the stitches she lists I found  directions for the Danish stitch. I was pretty sure I had used the Danish stitch before but the needle motions are unfamiliar to me. Have I actually been doing the Danish stitch or is it one that I simply skipped over in my project to date?

Hald's version is created in the round, and as far as I can tell she does not create the stitch in a chain. Would she still consider it Type I or Ia if it was done as a chain? One advantage to using the Danish Stitch to start a loop is that fact that you can pull on the starting thread's tail and close the loop in on itself.