Based on the Age of the artifact and the details of the illustration that we have. I was way too early for knitting as we know it. They were talking about some sort of primitive (Early) type of nalbinding.........
Not really my area sorry don't have much

Marc Adkins

wanderer wrote on Jun 9^th, 2009 at 9:43pm:

Well, I tried an experiment today with knitting. I knit a pouch out of some linen rug warp I had on hand to see how it would come out. I still can't say one way or the other whether the original was knitted, but I can say that it wasn't knitted the way I tried to do it. Some features of my test look like they match the original, and some don't.

Aside from looking somewhat sloppier than I'd envisioned, the shape is much too short for how long it is. This could easily be fixed by knitting more rows between increases, but the problem is that the borders on the original are even and continuous, so whatever is done at the edges would have to be done every row. Unless of course the borders were made after the center part, in which case my idea of comparing different samples would not work since the same border could be put on any type of center. The borders of my test don't match the sketch, although they do bare a slight resemblance.

One thing that did seem to match was the end of the pouch when I finished the decreases. The first photo shows this stage, and I think that it does look similar to the sketch.

A note on the stubs of the cords:

Assuming that the little piece of cord pictured above the sketch is from the sling, I used a technique that I learned from the Ashley Book of Knots, in the chapter on chain sinnets. It's a sort of two-stitch knit-like chain that is almost impossible to tell apart from an 8-strand square braid without examining the internal structure. Looking at the sketch, it seems that the cord was made with loops, and since this type of chaining transitions to and from knitting with ease, I opted to use it.







It’s a pity we can't look at the reverse side of the sling, because that would be a dead give away to the construction.

Comments and criticisms are most welcome.

-Timothy Potter

Doing a quick mental comparision between the sketch we have and the sling that you created I wouldn't kick it out of a historical competition that i was running

Hopefully after I get some stuff on the Gdansk sling done, this sling is on my to do list.  Should start learning nalbinding here in a couple of months and see how that technique works for this.

Marc Adkins

With the pouch try slipping one stitch purlwise at the beginning of every row. It is the same, which is what you were looking for, and it produces a curl for thicker edges. It was in Matthias's instructions and is what I do. I don't think it matches the cortaillod sling but it is a good jumping off point.

I have just noticed that there is a scan of an English translation of Keller's work on "The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland...." which is the source for the illustration of the Cortaillod sling. Freely downloadable for those who wish it/

Very little discussion of the sling in the text, but more extensive discussion of a number of other fabric artifacts, for those who are interested .

The sling is on plate LXXXVI (nr.86). The plates are towards the back of the book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ILQLAQAAIAAJ&dq=flax%20sling&lr=&as_brr=1&pg=PR...

How quaint it is, that even in 2010 when flying cars and implants were meant to be the done thing, we still "spin yarns" and "post threads" .

Not to string anyone along, now...