Warped.

Or is it Obsessive Compulsive behavior?

I warped up a small piece--about two yards--in black and white and red all over.  I was trying to re-create a woven piece I found online, but it appears that you need six hole cards to make it.  I don't have six hole cards.  :o(  Yet.  :o)  But I got out a spreadsheet and marked the colors in it and when I was satisfied, I strung it up and started weaving.  This is what I ended up with.  Not what I was aiming for, but it's still pretty.  I may donate it to some largesse or prize tourney.

When I pulled that off, I warped up a longer piece--all four yards--in red, purple and yellow of something that looks like Korba, but I put a dot in the center of the piece instead of the edges.  Maybe I'll call it "Zorba".  It's weaving up nicely and distracts me from some gloomy thoughts; a life-long friend of my sister's is very ill.  I've known her since I was about 3 years old, and she is the funniest, weirdest person I've ever met.  And I'm good with weird...I love weird!

Looking forward to doing more, but I think I need to order more Maysville carpet warp.  If anyone has ideas of other supplies I could use (other than crochet cotton, which is OK, but it's not light fast), please let me know!

Also, I need more patterns.  In particular, I want to see *period* patterns for four-hole cards without having to lay down huge piles of cash for out-of-print books.  I have the Crockett beginning cardweaving that everyone has, and put a few on my Amazon wish list, like Sara Lamb, Egon Hansen, Peter Collingwood, John Mullarkey (awesome name!), and Nancy Spies.  I have another of Nancy's books on the Modelbuch, and she *signed* it.  How awesome is that?  I didn't know that I was buying it from the author when I got it online!  Score!

I'm about 3/4 done with the Zorba piece.  I may donate this to Ursulmas largesse as well.

Elewys

More stuff!

Just a few more things I was working on...

A 25 card piece using An Tir and Aquaterra colors!  I hoped that it might represent the barony within the Kingdom, sort of surrounded by it, but yet woven firmly into it.  Since I'm not an experienced weaver, it was sort of an experiment that I thought wasn't working until I realized that I had the cards flipped the wrong way, so I was looking at the reverse side of the weaving on the top.  Then I decided that it was a success, although I hadn't thought about it at the time.

Here is the finished piece, which measures roughly 4 yards (based on my body measurement of fingertip to far shoulder, not some mundane tool lying around the house).  For this piece, I finished it by twisting the ends and knotting them to create a sort of fringe.  I like the effect and will have to do that for future pieces.

I used this pattern that I found on a web site owned by Camilla Whitney, aka the Evil Queen of Spades (EQOS).  I found this sheet on a Google image search for Card Weaving patterns.  The Baronial/Kingdom weave is the Andred pattern in the lower left.  There are a few other patterns on this page I'd like to try as well.  My next project may be Korba or Pilka, or maybe Vytine.  I love that these are mapped out, but there are several more that she has made that I would like to try, but not all her patterns are available.  I tried emailing her, but it seems the only way to comment is to sign up for the web site and I do not need any more subscriptions to anything.  I did sign up for SCA Card Weavers Yahoo group, however the email I sent does not appear to have gone through yet--and it was a couple days ago.

I'd love to try some period weaving, but I am having difficulty finding something that is easy enough for a beginner--most of the extant pieces and patterns are quite advanced, or at least have cards moving in opposite directions, which I don't know if I can master at this point.  I haven't seen all of it yet, of course, but I'm looking.  Luckily, I have my Emergency Back Up Laurel I can consult with.  I should probably do that.

Elewys

Slow Season

Greetings, fair friends!  It has been a slow season, indeed.  A great deal of attention has been paid to the stocking of the pantries for the winter and tending to the children, and not nearly so much in my creative outlets, save for some necessary work to keep food on the table and pocket money to purchase supplies for my crafts.

Lately, I met with my young friend, Aenor, who taught me a new pattern for my loom using four-hole cards.  I haven't been able to finish any project using cards, mostly due to my frustration with making it look right, but she taught me a simple enough pattern to allow my simple mind to grasp it.  I warped up 18 cards' worth and wove this piece that is just a bit longer than I am tall.  It will make a nice belt, I think!

 The only clothing I have made of late is a pair of outfits for two young girls.  This young lady was celebrating All Saints Day by dressing as Margaret Ward, a brave woman who rescued a priest from prison and was killed for it. She had smuggled a rope into the prison but the priest was injured during his escape and left the rope behind.  A similar outfit was made for my own daughter to wear.

Little else to report at this time, although this completes three more items for my A & S 50 challenge!

Elewys

YURT!

I finished the yurt!  I set it up at September Crown on Saturday night, after a day of finishing the build, putting in rivets in the walls and the roof covering, and making a flap out of some leftover canvas (I need a larger piece, but it worked fine for the night).  Friday night we all shared the 16' Regency tent, which was a bit of a tight fit for the five of us.  The doorway on my yurt is covered up by overlapping pieces of canvas, which can be opened up and tied back for airflow and an "open house" to welcome visitors.

Avelyn also finished hers--we worked on them at the same time--and her family was able to sleep in it on Saturday night.  Friday night they spent a very uncomfortable evening sleeping in the van (they wouldn't recommend it) because the rafters were too long and caused all kinds of issues with the roof.  In the end, the roof covering was somehow still too small for the yurt--we'll have to figure out how *that* went wrong...they have a little bit of a peek-a-boo roofline for anyone over 5 feet tall...not a problem for me, but it is for just about everyone else I know.  We're going to have to sew a 10" flap around the entire edge, which will keep the wind, rain, and eyes out of the tent.  Avelyn's door is a hinged piece of plywood with a clever locking mechanism, which helps keep the little ones in the structure--their littlest one is not quite two years old and prone to adventure-seeking (he's a wanderer). 

I'm starting back to work on the Turkish socks--I had to rip the first one back to the toenails and add a few more stitches to make it a more comfortable fit.  I'll get to try it on soon to see if the extra four stitches will be enough.

Now that the tourney season has drawn to a close, it's time to begin repairs to favorite garments and replacing outgrown clothing.  Ben needs a new wardrobe of tunics--light, medium and heavy as well as lightweight and warm pants; Cammie needs a couple medium and heavy tunics; and Emma needs a complete wardrobe.  She chose the type of dress she wants, and I didn't get very far in creating it--ran into several stumbling blocks.  However, she changed her mind and decided she wanted kimonos instead.  Now I just need to make a few coordinating garments--warm kimonos, pants, cloth hose, etc.  Kelly would like a couple of lightweight tunics and a couple of heavy tunics, and a couple more pairs of pants (and I have to repair the brown pants I made for him last year where the seam tore out).  Not to mention the tunic I still have to make for Tyrssen...one more for that guy. 

I also have to finish doing some stitching on the 12th century Anglo-Saxon tunics for presentation at 12th night (if we end up going)...it's going to be held in Coeur d'Alene, which would be best without children in tow...we'll have to see if we can have the kids go visiting relatives for a couple days.  This is as much as I've gotten done--I still need to do some embroidery around the bottom, around the wrists, and refinish the hems.  I may also do some very light embroidery around the yellow undertunic, but something much simpler than this.

In the meantime, I have to get a sampler done for Girl Scouts.  Since I still don't have any books for leaders or girls (they're replacing everything), I don't have any lesson plans or ideas of how to achieve goals or badges.  I decided to go a little retro and teach them things from the old badge books.  From what I can tell, there are *no* needlework or fiber arts badges for Juniors...and that's my specialty.  But I'm going to teach them how to do blackwork anyway.  I've got Lesley Wilkins's "Beginner's Guide to Blackwork" and will pull a few designs out of the book to do in a sampler and show the girls how to do one or four of those.  Maybe I'll talk about how there are many samples in the Victoria and Albert Museum and how during Victoria's reign, they opened the museum and schools and how she was such a pioneer and leader.  Something like that.

Elewys

Finish lines

I have good news!  I finished the Thistle Socks!  That makes 32 finished pieces, and completes the Heraldic Rainbow!  Oh, wait...I still need white and black, but I've got Argent, Or, Vert, Azure, and Purpure.  I may have more projects that I'm missing in the list...I'm still finding projects that I was working on or finished, but forgot.

Also, I'm coming to a finish on the yurt.  I guess that could be considered and A&S project, so we'll call it 33.  The khana is done, the tono and uni are finished, and we were able to erect the bulk of the structure the other day.  The canvas is still being worked on, but there's an end in sight for that as well.  It needs to have one more seam finished on the roof and the walls need the rivets, and I have to make a smoke hole flap and door flap.  THEN it'll be done!

I have a few papers/documentation that I'm working on that *could* be considered an A&S entry, and thus, an A&S project, so I may add those to the list as well, bringing it to 37 or so.  I'll have to figure that out.

I'm also working on another pair of Turkish socks for myself out of alpaca.  I started them before but they turned out to be much too small to fit my wide feet.  I'm part duck, you see...or SEAL...not sure.  Anyway, some water-drelling creature that requires wider footwear.  I tore it all back to the toenails and am starting again.

Elewys

Back to the Yurt...

Although my computer is down, I can still get online and do some posting.  My research has come to a screeching halt, temporarily, but I can get a little bit of work done on the yurt. 

We ordered 15 boards of 1" x 4" x 10' from a local millworks, which turned out to be cheaper and of higher quality than buying it from any of the chain home improvement stores.  It only took about three days for it to arrive, and the 10 footers fit easily inside my grand caravan. 

On Monday, Avelyn came by and we ripped all the boards into 3/4" x 3/4" strips for her rafters.  Only a couple of them "reacted" and twisted into a funny shape.  We finished this by lunchtime, so we took a break, got some sandwiches, and then made plans to drill the tono. 

We made a jig using a block of wood cut into a 30-60-90 triangle, and started drilling the tono.  Shortly afterward, we discovered that our block was growing just a little bit with each hole drilled, and the angle was changing.  Rather than continue to drill bad angles, we announced an all-stop to the project and called it a day. 

After thinking about it for a few hours and talking with Kelly, we decided that we needed a bushing to prevent the hole from growing with every cut, and I thought a metal tube of some kind might work.  The next day, Kelly suggested that instead of finding a tube, why not just stack a bunch of washers and glue them into the hole?  Well, heck yeah!

Rummaging through our collection of washers, I found some that would fit the bill!  5/8" washer with a 1/4" hole.  There were quite a number of them, so I knew that it would be plenty for what I was doing.  The only thing I was worried about was whether or not I'd have a long enough drill bit to go through the jig and the tono.

I took a new 30-60-90 block and drilled a 7/32" hole with the drill press (slightly bigger than the 3/16" pencil rod).  This the same size hole that would go into the tono.  To make sure it was the right height, I took a piece of pencil rod and ran it through one of the previously-drilled "good" holes and the block.  The 30-60-90 block was taller than I needed (intentionally so), which allowed me to trim the jig block to length.  Off to the chop saw, one quick cut (OK, two...) and the block was the right size.

Back to the drill press, I then replaced the 7/32" bit with a big, fat 5/8" bit, the same size as the washers.  I drilled the 5/8" hole about 3/4 the way through the block--NOT all the way through.



I stacked about 6 or 7 washers into the hole, until the top washer was level with the shallow end of the hole.  I then took some Gorilla Glue and put a drop onto the hollow on the deeper end of the hole.  Gorilla Glue swells as it cures, so I put a small 1" x 1" block of wood into the hole and clamped it down for a couple hours while we took a dinner-and-karate break.

Fast forward a couple hours, the glue is dry, and I pull the block out of the clamp and carefully run the drill through it to make sure there was no glue in the channel.  I then lined it up with a previously-drilled hole to make sure it lined up the way I wanted--measure twice, cut once!  Looks good, and it still lines up with my pencil marks the way I want. 

Time to go for it.  Lined up the next hole, gripped the jig firmly, placing my fingers carefully so they weren't in the way of the emerging bit on the hand drill (sliced a finger a few weeks ago with that kind of carelessness), and drilled.  The bit didn't emerge, but after a quick adjustment, lengthening the bit, I gave it another go, and...success!  I made quick work of the rest of holes and they look good and consistent.  I'm very pleased with this result! 

I still have to cut the rafters to length, then I have all the parts ready to set it up!  Due to some poorly drilled holes, a few of them may have to be filled and re-drilled, but I will have to consult with my woodworking guru to see if it's necessary, especially after the test-run of the set up. 

Digging Up Dirt on an Old Mystery

I finally found the documentation I was looking for on the elusive "bog coat".  I was told that it was a leather shirt worn by a man in the Iron Age.  Turns out it was a wool shirt worn by a woman from the bronze age.  About 2000 years before the SCA period.  Interesting stuff and I putting together an article on it, but I don't know if it'll be accepted by the Costumer's Guild since it'll be a de-bunking the Bog Coat article.  

But how should I write the article?  Should I approach it with the "Here's where the SCA research went wrong..." and then show how to make it anyway because it's easy and give approximately the right silhouette?  Or should I do the "Here's where the research went wrong..." and then show them how to do an easy coat the RIGHT way?  I wrote to the FTSO editor and two other major players in the guild to see what they think.  Or do they want something completely different?  For now, I'm editing two different articles, just in case.

The other thing I'm wondering is, can I borrow someone else's drawings of exploded tunics and things, or do I need to re-draw what someone else has already done?

As always, standing on the shoulders of giants,

Elewys