Silly Hats

I am a huge fan of the silly hats.  Whole outfits have been worked around the wearing of silly hats.  This particular hat is not only silly but mysterious.  It looks like it's fur, but one could knit and full such a hat just as easily (in fact I think I saw someone at a Ren Faire once with just such a hat, though slightly smaller than the one in the portrait).  As I am planning to go to Pennsic this year anyway, I need more cloths, and starting with a silly hat makes as much sense as anything else, so here goes.  Now to figure out how it's constructed and what the best way to reconstruct it will be.

More information on the original portrait can be found at the National Gallery.

There's also this hat:

which to me looks like a mini version of one of these:

They both like a variation on a knit and fulled beret, or possibly a brimless wool flat cap like you see later on.  Of course the top lady is English and the bottom one is German, and a few decades apart, but the basic shape looks pretty similar.

Here's another portrait with a fabulous hairdo and headpiece I sort of love and may have to copy and thus work a whole outfit around as well (maybe the same outfit).  This one should be much cooler (duh) than the one above, and gives me a good reason to not cut off my hair.  I am sort of wondering if it's a beaded piece or a metal band though.  Beading would be far easier for me to do, as I already know how to do that.

Supply issues

I'm waiting on yarn for what I sincerely hope will be my last competition entry as Baronial Champion (Spring Coronation)*.  It should have been here and warped a week ago, but the warp yarn was backordered, and rather than sending a coherent backorder notice, the supplier sent a very cryptic email with the missing item highlighted in red (nothing else, just red font), and then didn't respond to my emails asking for a different color for 4 days until they sent a shipment notification.  Really, you run a WEB BUSINESS, must I pick up the phone to check order status or get a question answered in a timely manner?  I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect that an email would get a response in 24 hours.  So something is on it's way, but I don't actually know what color warp yarn I'm getting for this project.  Nice.  Cuz I'm not under a time crunch or nervous about this entry at all or anything.  sigh.

At least this gives me time to work on my documentation and do the spinning samples I had wanted to do.  The current plan to weave the cloth for the actual project out of commercial yarn, but spin yarn to weave samples to show something closer to what the actual artifact was made from.  We'll see how that goes over.  I just don't have time to handspin for the whole project and I've never spun for warp (never mind spun singles for warp), so trying to sort that out in the amount of time I have is just not realistic.

*though now that I think about there will probably be at least one more...I should probably look into that.

EDIT - the wool has arrived!  It's the right color, though darker than I thought it would be.  It'll be fine.  And upon further investigation there is one more competition but as it's "best use of raw wool" it should be fairly easy to come up with something.

Pentathlon and Triathlon thoughts

Since winning the Baronial Championship last May, I've competed in one A&S Pentathlon and one Triathlon.  For those of you not familiar with this competition format, it's pretty masochistic.  You have to enter five (or three) items that one persona (not necessarily your own) might have owned or used that fall into three of five broad categories for the pentathlon or two categories for the triathlon.  The goal, I think, is to make you stretch your skills, since really most people are comfortable with at most two of the categories, so to get all three usually requires you branch out of your comfort zone.

Aside from being a great opportunity to learn more about a particular time and place, these two competitions have been educational in and of themselves for a couple of different reasons.  As I am teaching a class on documentation and competition next month, here are my thoughts on the format.

1.  You are entering 5 distinct projects, not one entry with 5 parts.  What I mean by this is that each part of your entry needs to stand on it's own in terms of presentation and documentation.  This is where I fell short on my first try, I assumed the documentation would be judged as a whole, not as individual parts.  Yes, its longer, but if you are doing the research anyway it's not really any more work.

2. Hot food at a camping event is a bad plan!  I tried to present a hot drink for the first competition at a 4-day camping event, and this cause a great deal of needless stress.  Plus the coleman stove on the display table was ugly.

3.  Test your display idea and then be prepared for a totally different setup.  I like to do this at home then pack everything I need for the display in it's own box or basket, at least in so far as I can get into one container.  It's fewer things to forget when I'm packing the car.

3 (a). Ask for set-up help!  You will probably have a lot of stuff to carry and be a little stressed (maybe that's just me, I'm always vertain I've forgotten part of my entry).  Having someone to help you schelp and offer a second opinion about your display can do wonders to sooth the nerves. 

4.  Bring a table cloth.  Bring more than one table cloth, especially if you are serving food as something is guaranteed to spill.

5.  Look at the entry categories and judging sheets BEFORE you start you project.  Trying to fit something you already made and wrote up into a category after the fact is going to suck.  Know what the criteria are so you can address them in your writing.  This happened with my spindle and probably cost me points.

6. Get a comment book and leave it with your display so people other than the judges can leave you feedback (the judges might not leave you anything other than your scores so this can be very helpful).  Feedback is the real goal here, so do whatever you can to get as much of it as you can.

7.  Take lots of pictures!  Take picutres of your display, take pictures of you with your display, and take pictures of the other displays.  It's nice to have a record of what you and others did, and you might get some ideas for next time.

A&S 50: 10 - Spindle from Coppergate Finds

Spinning fibers into thread is one of the most basic and time consuming steps in the textile production process. Nearly every woman during the Viking period would have learned to spin at an early age, and would likely have owned many spindles during the course her life. It is not surprising then than spindle whorls are such a common, though frequently misidentified, archeological find.

HISTORY
Surviving Viking-age spindle whorls are made from a wide range of materials, including different types of stone, pottery, glass, bone and antler, amber, and metal with stone being the most common. It is interesting to note that in her analysis of whorls found at Hedeby, Anderson identified ceramic as the most commonly used material. This seems to be somewhat exceptional, as stone is more common at the other sites she examines and at the Coppergate site discussed in Walton. Whorls could be made in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the preference of the spinner, intended use and local custom. According to Anderson's analysis, weights range from less than 5 grams to well over 50 grams, with the most common weight range being between 10 and 30 grams. Diameter can range anywhere from 2 centimeter to over 10 centimeter, with most soapstone whorls falling in the 3 to 5 centimeter range.

Whorl shape varied tremendously, from flat disc shapes, to round, to conical or even bi-conical. The most common during the Viking period seems to have been plano-convex, that is, one flat and one rounded side. The rounded side can range from hemispheric to bun shaped. Based on the wear to the center holes, it appears that the flat side of such whorls would have faced towards the center of the spindle shaft.

It appears that stone whorls in particular could be made in several different ways. The simplest method would be to drill a hole through an appropriately shaped stone, and the most sophisticated would involve the use of a lathe. Based on surviving examples, it is clear that some whorls were carefully shaped on a lathe, but many others were cut and shaped by hand using simple tools. Soapstone in particular is very easy to shape to in this way. The finished whorl could then be left plain or decorated with bands and hashes as the maker saw fit. Once completed, the whorl would be fitted to a shaft.

Comparatively few spindle shafts have survived, but those that have are made of a variety of hard and soft woods, yew, oak, pine, birch and ash being but a few. The shafts are generally tapered so that the whorl is held in place with nothing more than friction and careful fitting. Some are notched at one or both ends, others are not. Based on an examination of the whorl holes, it appears that the diameter of most shafts typically ranged from seven to twelves millimeters. It is difficult to determine how long the shafts might have been, one surviving shafts is as long as 30 centimeters, other as short as 13.

It is not clear how spindle shafts were shaped and finished. At least some were likely lathe-turned. Others might have been shaped by hand from suitable sticks. They do not seem to have had a great deal of decoration on them, though a few have been found with what appear to be decorative grooves around the middle (though some of these may be wear marks from snug-fitting whorls as suggested in Anderson) and sticks which may be spindles were found in Bergen with elaborate knob terminals. It seems likely that they would have been as smoothly finished as possible, so as to prevent fine threads from snagging on the wood.

REPRODUCING THE WHORL AND SHAFT
In reproducing this spindle, I elected to work with soapstone. Soapstone was readily available in Northern Europe and soapstone whorls have been found all over Viking Age Europe. It is also very easy to carve and shape and can be worked with wood tools. The actual soapstone used came from a craft store and had been rough-shaped by a friend into a disk using a circle cutter. I elected to shape this into a plano-convex whorl, as this is most common, and also seemed easier to shape and balance than some of the other options. The finished spindle measures just under 5 centimeters in diameter and weights 50 grams, falling well within the range of common extant examples, if on the larger side of average.

The initial shaping had produced a rather crooked disk with a hole through the center, which I shaped and smoothed using a saw and different grades of sandpaper. I then straighten the center hole using my Dremel, as I did not have a rasp of the appropriate shape and size. I finished the whorl with a small amount of beeswax based polish to give the stone a bit more shine. It is not clear if any of the extant whorls were polished or waxed in any way, but many have a very smooth finish and decorative carving so it seems reasonable to take an extra step to enhance the beauty of the piece. Some of the soapstone whorls, in particular that found at L'anse Aux Meadows were made from old cooking pots and have oil residue on them as a result but I was unable to find mention of any other oil or wax being employed on a whorl.

The spindle shaft was shaped using sandpaper from a purchased dowel cut to length. Once the desired shape had been achieved and the whorl fit, I cut my notch and finely sanded the shaft and finished it with the same beeswax polish to provide a smooth finish that would not snag my thread as I spun. The spindle shaft is 9 millimeters wide and 19 centimeters long, about average based on extant examples.

While I did much of my shaping of both the whorl and the shaft using coarse sandpaper as that is what I had at hand, it is more likely that this would have been accomplished with files and rasps in period. It would certainly be easier to shape the stone with files, and the shaping would proceed more quickly, though using a slower process was probably for the best on my first attempt. As I plan to make more whorls in the future, I plan to invest in a good set of files and rasps to make this easier. I would also like to explore shaping the stone and the shafts on a lathe, as this would make it easier to get a balanced shape. The most challenging part of the shaping process is drilling the central hole, as this must be centered and perpendicular to the flat side of the whorl. It seems that drilling the hole first, then shaping around the hole on a lathe would be the simplest way to get an even, well-balanced whorl.

CONCLUSIONS AND LEARNING
Even working with comparatively unsophisticated equipment, I was able to produce a quite serviceable spindle. There is a small amount of wobble when the spindle turns too quickly, which I suspect could be minimized by shortening the shaft or adjusting the notch. My whorl ended up weighting in at 50 grams, which is on the heavier side, but still allows me to produce a reasonably fine wool thread. It is interesting to note that this qualifies as a fairly light spindle by modern standards.

Sources:

Anderson, Eva. Excavation in the Black Earth 1990-1995; Tools for Textile Production from Birka and Hedeby. The Birka Project, Stockholm, 2003.

Østergård, Else. Woven Into the Earth: Textiles From Norse Greenland. Aarhus University Press, 2004.

Walton, Penelope. The Archaeology of York: The Small Finds Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate. The York Archaeological Trust, 1997.

Priest-Dorman, Carolyn. Medieval North European Spindles and Whorls (http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/spindles.html) Last accesses January 17, 2011.

Gaslee, Sarah. Viking Textile Tools (http://www.stringpage.com/viking/spindles.html) Last accessed January 18, 2011.

Williamson, Roland. Regia Anglorum: Stoneworking (http://www.regia.org/stone.htm) Last accessed January 18, 2011.

Weekend Report

I survived Ymir and another A&S competition! This time I entered a persona triathlon, with a Viking theme. Viking is out of my own personal period but as I also do Viking reenactment this isn't much of a stretch. I made a soapstone spindle and spindle shaft (part of my A&S 50 challenge), a Dublin style hood out of handspun and hand-dyed wool, and a pair of mustard's based on archeological evidence of Anglo-Scandinavian cooking. All of these things could be placed in Viking northern England in the 10th century. I came in a very close second, which is a respectable showing, but more importantly lots of people I respect had nice things to say.

I was also apprenticed to one of our local Laurels who knows a great deal about weaving. It was a very nice little ceremony, I got meet my new apprentice sister who gave me an "I don't Suck Box" to keep my display tokens in. Margret, my Laurel, gave me a really neat cup and some linen in accordance with my indenture agreement, and I presented her with a towel I had woven. It's got some mistakes, but better ones are on the way!

Overall it was a very nice event. The weather was lovely, I got to see lots of friends, and make some new ones. I think the hubs even had fun, and he's not usually that excited by these things.

A&S 50 - 32: Learn to Weave Mary's Veil Huckweave

AND 35*: Weave Napkins for Feast Gear Box

Pictures of the finished cloth are in my previous post.

The Original Cloth:
The original cloth is a relic purporting to be a fragment from the veil of St. Mary, now housed in the Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren, Belgium. The relic is part of a seven-yearly celebration and veneration of Virgin known as the Coronation, or Kroning, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the town, and last took place in 2009. The cloth dates to the eleventh or twelfth century. As I am not able to read Dutch, I was not able to read De Jonghe's original study of the relic to obtain any more details about the fabric, such as thread count or fiber content. However, as the cloth is purported to have been used as a veil one can presume it to be quite fine, and likely linen or silk.

Weaving details:
As this was to be my first real weaving project on my new (to me at least) floor loom, and I had been asked to make a towel for a Laurel elevation, I wanted to use a thread that would be fairly forgiving and work well as a hand towel (i.e. be absorbent). The cloth was woven using Louet Cottolin, a 60% cotton, 40% linen blend thread at 34 wraps per inch. I threaded my loom at 24 ends per inch, using 400 warp ends, for an initial weaving with of just under 17 inches. After washing, the finished cloth measured 13 inches wide and 2 2/3rd yard long. I did not measure the initial length but I had at least 1/3rd yard in shrinkage over the length. The drawdown can be found on Carolyn Priest-Dormans website, linked below.

The finish towel measures roughly 22 inches long, one quarter the length of the finished cloth. The remaining cuts of cloth will be hemmed and used as napkins or finger towels for my feast gear box.


Learnings and Conclusions:
- Working with Cottolin in particular requires that the warp be kept under a fair amount of tension to avoid to snagging the warp or skipping warps when throwing the shuttle. It makes it hard to get a clean shed with things are even a little bit loose, and they just get looser as things snag. Also, knots from warp repairs will cause problems with getting a clean shed.
- I CAN warp my loom by myself! It's just slower.
- Measure the finished cloth, length and width, before you wash it!
- This is the first time I had woven anything more complicated than simple tabby or twill, and getting the hang of the treadling took a bit of practice. Taping the drawdown to the loom helped a great deal, and stopping in the same place every time I stepped away kept me from getting lost or making too many mistakes.

Sources:

Priest-Dorman, Carolyn. 2001. "Some Medieval Linen Weaves." Complex Weavers' Medieval Textiles, Issue 30 (December 2001), pp. 1, 4-5.

-----. A Four-Harness Medieval Huck Weave. (http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/medhuck.html) Last accessed February 17, 2011.

De Jonghe, Daniël. 1988. "Technologische Beschouwingen," pp. 65-88 in Textiel van de vroege middeleeuwen tot het Concilie van Trente. Tongeren Basiliek O.-L.-Vrouw Geboorte, vol. I. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters.

-----. 1989. "Niet op trapweefstoelen geweven linnen weefsels met ruitpatronen?," pp. 222-241 in Middeleeuws Textiel, in het Bijzonder in het Euregiogebied Maas-Rijn [Medieval Textiles, Particularly in the Meuse-Rhine Area], Proceedings of the [First] Congress, Alden Biesen, 13.02-16.02.1989. Sint-Truiden, Belgium: Provinciaal Museum voor Religieuze Kunst.

Walton, Denzil. There's Something About Mary. http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/there%E2%80%99s-something-about-mary

*Note that these numbers have very little to do with how many projects I have completed. It just reflects where the project is on my master list of projects, which is linked to the right.

One more down!

The Mary's Veil towel is done!  Yay!  I ended up with enough cloth that I will be able to do not only the elevation towel I was I was asked to do but several napkins for my feast gear box as well, so that's a bonus.  My soon-to-be-Laurel* suggested that I make sure to weave enough of towels I do for elevations and gift baskets and the like to at least keep a sample if not a napkin for myself, so I have a record of what I have done.  She said she didn't do this herself when she doing lots of that sort of thing and it still bothers her.  Wise advice and duly heeded. 

I really like the way the cottolin wove and washed up.  I had a little trouble getting a clean shed at a few points in the weaving, which resulted in some long weft floats on the back, but I'm pretty sure I know what happened.  Most of the time the problem was resolved by tightening up the warp, any amount of slack and I'd get snagging as I threw the shuttle and skip warps.  I wouldn't go any looser than 24 EPI with this thread.  Really, I have no idea what yarn manufacturers are thinking with their recommended warp sets, or what modern weavers are doing. 

The actual A&S 50 challenge write-up will follow, but for now here are pictures of the finished cloth!

*I am being apprenticed at Ymir this weekend to a weaving and textile arts Laurel.  For you non-SCA type people, this is someone who has been recognized as Very Good Indeed in the Arts and Sciences, and she will be my officially recognized mentor.

Brick Stitch Relic Bags

Just a quick update to say that I have posted my KASF documentation for the brick stitch relic bags.  The link is to the right.

Some other great on line resources for those of you interested in brick stitch:

Historical Needlework Resources  - has links to all kinds of extant pieces of needlework, including a number of examples of brick stitch.  They also have a great write up on the Goss Vestments
A Stitch Out of Time  - the article that started it all.  Great analysis of the V&A bags
Finishing the seams of 14th/15th cen. pouches  - an excellent tutorial on the braided seam treatment seen on many extant bags
Medieval Silkwork  - a blog about all kinds of medieval embroidery, including patterns for 2 brick stitch bags in hard-to-get-to (at least for me) collections
Taschen: 13th cen. brick stitch pattern - another pattern I want to try, from another blogger and very accomplished embroiderer.
Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage Search  - where you can find the original lattice bag and other goodies (though you have to do text search in Dutch or French)
Joyce Miller's Embroidery  - charts for two brick stitch projects, a box and a cushion.  The cushion is quite similar to a book cushion in V&A and charted out by Master Wymarc, so similar it took me awhile to figure out they weren't actually the same.  I wonder if they were worked by the same person or in the same convent?  Very curious and interesting.
Brick Stitch Box This is a photo taken from a book in German. The same stitch pattern is on the alter hanging at the Met in New York.

Weaving progress!

I've been making some good and steady progress on my weaving projects for the A&S 50 challenge, though I have not yet written them up.  The new loom is so much more satisfying to work with!  Harder to warp, yes, but I discovered yesterday as I warping for my first real project on it (an elevation towel using the Mary's Veil huck pattern) that it's not impossible to do it by myself.

Here are some pictures of my progress so far.  The pink and red cloth is my first attempt to use the loom and experiment with twill.  The cloth ended up fulling a lot more than expencted, so the finished peice as a much denser and fuzzier appearnace than you will see here.   I think if I set a denser warp next time the fulling will be less.  This was done at 12 ends per inch, which worked out fine for the tabby piece, but apparently twill wants to be denser.  I find this strange as the website I bought the yarn from claims a 12 DPI set should be fine for twill this yarn, but they also said 10 DPI would be fine for tabby, and that turned out to be a disaster with my rigid heddel, as least in so far as I might want to have better control over the fulling process.  I think next time I use this particular yarn for warp I will start at 18 for twill and work from there.

The Mary's Veil pattern is going quite well.  I'm working with cottolin set at 24 ends per inch.  The draft can be found here.  The threading is pretty simple and the pattern is quite pretty as it's developing on the loom, the only issue (and it's a tiny one) is that the treadling pattern is a little complicated.  I sat down to start this with a nasty cold, all hopped up on the cold meds, so that might have had something to do with it.  I'm getting the hang of it quickly though and can just about read my weaving to tell where I am if I have a brain fart mid-repeat.  Luckily I cut my warp long enough that I should have enough for the elevation towel I am actually trying to make and a napkin or something to keep for myself.  I like this weave quite a bit.  It'll be neat to see how it washes up in this particular fiber.

Other than the weaving, I have very little to report.  I have made almost no progress on my lattice worked bag since KASF.  I really needed a break, and then I got a cold and for some reason making tiny eyelets with a head-cold just isn't working.  I have been playing around with fingerlooped braids, which counts towards a little bag progress as I will need to make cords for the bag soon.  I can now make 3 kinds of braid all by myself, and as soon as I get that written up, check one more thing off the A&S 50 list. 

Quick update

KASF is done (and there was much rejoicing!), though alas my bag was not.  I will post pictures and my documentation shortly, as soon as I get it converted to PDF and uploaded.  The whole competition part of the event was a little bizarre and once again I fell victim to math errors (addition is hard it seems), but I made a very good impression where it really counts and made some new friends and connections and that's what really matters.   Now I've got a little less than two weeks to get things wrapped up for Ymir, and I will have a tiny bit of a break from competing, at least until Spring Coronation.  I still am not 100% sure what I want to do for that one but I have to submit an application to compete with a short summary of my entry on the 15th though so I need to get it sorted out.  I might revisit my woven hood project from WOW, now that I know more about weaving and have a loom better suited to the task, I think I can come pretty close to reproducing one of the Greenland hoods.  If I had more time I could spin the wool as well, but that's going to take a bit more experimentation for the warp than I have time for.  I should at least be able to do some sampling with handspun to include in my presentation.

I've also been asked to weave a towel for an elevation at the end of the month, which is exciting.  Hopefully all will go well.  This will be my first actual project on the big loom and my first time weaving with cottolin (more forgiving than 100% linen but not as kind as wool), and handing the results over to a new Laurel in the company of a whole bunch of other Laurels is a little scary, but it should be ok.  That it's The First One should make it all the more special.  Or so I keep telling myself.

A&S 50 - 4: Madder Dyeing Wool

NB: This write-up is one section of a longer piece of documentation written for an upcoming A&S competition.

A number of natural dyestuffs were known and used in northern Europe during the Viking Age, principal among them madder, weld and woad. These would have been used along with mordants such as alum, iron, copper and tannin to produce a wide range of bright colors on wool, linen and silk.

Madder was the most commonly identified dye plant found in the Coppergate digs, and the most commonly identified dye found on textiles in the same area and might easily have been grown in the vicinity. Madder does require a mordant in order to adhere to fibers. While alum would have been difficult to find in England during the period, Walton argues that large quantities of imported clubmoss found in the area were probably used as an alum substitute. There is also evidence of iron having been used as a mordant on the caps found in Dublin. Copper and tannin were also used as mordants during the period.

Wool could have been dyed at any stage during processing, either as unspun fleece, yarn, or finished fabric. Fulling was not commonly used as a finishing technique until the medieval period (see Walton), so it is likely that most dyeing was done prior to weaving as the dye bath tends to continue the fulling process and most extant textiles from the Anglo-Scandinavian digs do not have a compacted, fulled appearance.

Not all cloth during the period would have been dyed. Wool comes naturally off the sheep in a wide range of colors, and many textiles from natural wool colors have been found. As seen on the Dublin caps and discussed above, not all caps were dyed, but colored caps were not unknown. In addition, utilizing the natural colors of wool in combination with dyes can produce a broader range of possible colors, Walton points to one textile from Anglo-Scandinavian York which had proved to be grey wool dyed with madder.

For my cap, the finished cloth was dyed using madder with an alum mordant. I elected to use alum as it is safer and easier to use than iron, and was was used in conjunction with madder during the period. The fulled cloth was wetted and soaked overnight. I then dissolved 4 ½ tsp cream of tartar and 4 ½ tsp alum in boiling water, added this to cool water in my dye pot and added the cloth. The mordant bath was heated slowly to simmering, and held there for an hour. The cloth cooled in the alum solution over night.

While my fibers were in the mordant bath, I prepared my dyestuff. I used 4 ounces of madder root, and chopped it roughly and set it to soak overnight. I removed the wool from the mordant, filled my dye pot with clean water and added the soaked madder root and liquid. I then replaced the wool, and gently heated the dye pot, taking care not to overheat the dye as this can result in duller shades. I stirred the pot occasionally and after a day was able to exhaust the bath and produce a bright reddish-orange cloth.

According to all of the sources on madder dyeing I had consulted, the roots needed to be soaked overnight prior to dyeing. Unfortunately, all I was able to find to put the roots in was a plastic pickle jar. Knowing that vinegar is an acid and that acid is a modifier which will significantly change the color natural dyestuffs, I took care to wash the jar thoroughly before soaking my roots. The next day I carried on my dyeing, but noticed after about an hour that my wool was turning a brilliant shade of reddish orange rather than a clear red. After soaking the wool for a day in a warm bath, the result was the exact color my dye book said I would get if I followed an alum mordant with an acid modifier, rather than the clear red I had intended. Apparently the plastic had retained just enough acetic acid to alter the color of my dye bath.


Sources:

Crowfoot, Elisabeth. Textiles and Clothing c.1150-c.1450. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 4. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1992

Walton, Penelope. The Archaeology of York: The Small Finds Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate. The York Archaeological Trust, 1997.

Lead, Drea. Dye Recipes from The Innsbruck Manuscript c.1330 (http://www.elizabethancostume.net/dyes/innsbruck/) Last visited January 18, 2011.

Dean, Jenny. Wild Color. Watson-Guptill Publications, 1999.

Priest-Dorman, Carolyn. Colors, Dyestuffs, and Mordants of the Viking Age: An Introduction
(http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikdyes.html) Last visited Nov. 18, 2010.

Mckenna, Nancy. Madder dyeing. Medieval Textiles issue 29. Sept. 2001. (http://www.elizabethancostume.net/dyes/medtex.pdf) Last visited Nov. 18, 2010

Leed, Drea. A Lytel Dye Book (http://www.elizabethancostume.net/dyes/lyteldyebook/index.html) Last visited January 18, 2011.

A&S 50 - 5: Tablet Weave Monochrome Twill Band (Museum of London Braid 450)

The original band was woven in silk with four strands of silk threaded through each card hole and may have been used as a girdle or spur strap.   The band is a total of twelve cards wide, with the center eight cards creating the twill pattern. The original recipe for the pattern required that the cards be divided in packs, and each pack turned in alternate direction to achieve the twill effect. I quickly discovered that I could simplify this by alternating the threading of the center cards, which allowed me to turn them all in the same direction as a single pack, leaving only the border cards with a different turning pattern.

I elected to use linen, which produced a less soft, somewhat wider band, but will work well as a garters against linen hose.   The ends of the bands are finished in simple braids, held together at the end with wrapped threads.  Reproduction buckles from Ramond's Quiet Press  complete the garter.


Threading Pattern:
Cards 1,2 11 and 12 are the borders. These cards will always turn forward. The remaining cards will turn two turns forward, followed by two turns backward

A
B
C
D
	S	Z	S	Z	S	Z	S	Z	S	Z	Z	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12

Sources:
Crowfoot, Elizabeth. Textiles and Clothing, c.1150-1450 (Medieval Finds from Excavations in London). Boydell Press, 2001.

Carolyn Priest-Dorman. Three Recipes for Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Tablet Weaving. (http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/3recipes.html) Last accessed Aug. 31 2010.

Revising expectations

I guess I am the only one who cares, but it bothers me when for one reason or another I don't get things done on time.  Really, I should have known trying to get two fairly major projects done and competition ready soon after the holidays would be unrealistic, but I am still vaguely annoyed with myself.  That being said, I've decided to scrap my plans to enter our local 12th Night competition at all, and will be entering a partly finished project into the Interbaronial Championship at KAS.  The incomplete project really upsets me, but the embroidery pattern ended up taking a whole lot longer than I thought it would, and I have two other completed relic bags to go alongside the incomplete bag, so it should not be so bad.

On a plus note, I should be able to get a Triathalon entry together for Ymir in mid-February, which will even get a few steps closer to my A&S 50 goal.  I still have some hand-woven madder dyed wool I will be making a Jorvik hood out of, along with a soapstone spindle whorl and a nice mustard recipe (or two) to round it out.  The hood is basically done,   I just need to hem it and make the ties.  The spindle whorl has been shaped, I just have to polish it and make the shaft, and I already have the mustard sauce recipes picked out.  Hopefully this means I'm getting past my mid-winter malaise and will get back to my usual productive self soon!

Lacking motivation

For some reason I am really lacking motivation to finish my two latest A&S projects.  I'm working on another silk embroidered bag for Kingdom A&S based on this reliquary bag and a beaded filet/circlet/headband thingie more or less based on this picture.  Both are moving along, but I just don't want to work on either one right now.  Nor do I have any drive to write up my other A&S50 projects that are actually done.  I'm blaming this on the holiday's and some piles of knitting and sewing I've been doing for gifts and for commissions.  With any luck, that part of my life will soon turn profitable and help to fund some of the work I like to do (like relic bags, and tablet weaving and the like!)

In other news, I got a grown up loom!  For free!  It's a 36 inch LeClerk Artisat 4 harness floor loom a friend had gotten used a number of years ago and since grown out of.   I'm calling her Bertha, anything that takes up that much of my living room has to have a name.  She's bigger than I had planned to get, but free makes up for a lot, and this way I won't outgrow the loom in six months like I would with a small table loom.  This should last me a good while.  Now I just have to build a warping board, which I should be able to get done after Christmas, and get some boat shuttles and bobbins and decide on my first project.

A&S 50 - 3: Learn to dye with Indigo, modern method

 Indigo is unique in the universe of dyes in that it requires no mordant to produce a clear, lightfast blue on any natural fiber. True indigo was known in the Roman world, but remained rare in Europe during the middle ages until the 15th century. A chemically identical dye can be extracted at much lower concentrations from woad, which is much harder for the modern reenactor to obtain but was easily obtainable in medieval Europe and a major source of dyestuffs throughout the period.

Indigo vat prior to complete reduction

Regardless of which plant provides the material, the dyestuff is reduced through either a fermentation process or the use of chemicals to make it soluble. The dye solution then changes from deep blue to a milky yellow color. This “white indigo” can then be used in an alkaline dye bath to dye fibers. Once the fibers have been removed from the bath, they change from yellowish-green to deep blue as they react with the oxygen in the air.

Linen just after removal from the vat.  Note the color

In period, the indigo would have been reduced using either urine or fermented bran-water. Both of these processes can take up to a week and produce very offensive smells, so in the in interest of time and my marriage I elected to use modern methods for my first attempts. I began by using a yeast vat to reduce the indigo. In theory, this works the same way as a fermented bran-water vat; the gases produced by the bacteria reduce the yeast and drive suspended oxygen bubbles out of the dye liquid. However, I was unable to keep the vat at a constant temperature to complete the process long enough to reduce the indigo using this method and, after more than 24 hours, opted to use color run remover to reduce the indigo.

Once the vat was reduced, the actual dying process was relatively straightforward and quite satisfying. One must take care not to introduce air into the vat, so the fibers cannot be stirred or agitated much once they have been placed into the dye. This can lead to somewhat uneven absorption of the dye, but washing the fibers thoroughly prior to dying and adding them to the dye pot wet seemed to help mitigate this. A second dip in the dye pot resolved most of the splotchyness which occurred only on the linen skeins. The wool dyed evenly without any stirring at all.

Complete wool and linen skein drying

Sources:

Dean, Jenny. Wild Color. Watson-Guptill Publications, 1999.

Bingham, Gayle. Woad Dying. Medieval Textiles issue 29. Sept. 2001. (http://www.elizabethancostume.net/dyes/medtex.pdf) Last visited Nov. 18, 2010

Kolander, Cheryl. Dying with Indigo – Natural Fermentation Vat. (http://www.aurorasilk.com/info/indigo_tutorial.shtml) Last visited Nov. 18, 2010.

Priest-Dorman, Carolyn. Colors, Dyestuffs, and Mordants of the Viking Age: An Introduction (http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikdyes.html) Last visited Nov. 18, 2010.

A&S 50 - 2: Snartemo II Band

For my second-ever attempt at tablet-weaving, I decided to weave a band supposedly found in the Snartemo II grave. The band is woven from cotton thread in two colors using twelve pattern tables threaded through only two holes, and a total of four border tablets threaded through all four holes. The original band was woven in wool and had an extra border tablet, presumably used to attach it to a cloth. I have been able to find very little information about the original band or the Snartemo finds in general, but hope that I will be able to track down more books on this in the future as the techniques used in these bands are both beautiful and fascinating.

In making this band, I learned two important lessons. First, when working with multiple colors, one should be certain that the weft thread matches the warp threads on the outer-most border. The weft
is visible on the outside of the band where it turns, and these turns are quite obvious if contrasting threads are used. Second, when threading only two holes, supporting the cards in some way makes
weaving much easier. I am not certain if my warp tension was off in some way, but I had fairly consistent problems with unstable cards. The best way for me to deal with this was to tie my band in such a way that it the cards were able to rest on my ironing board while I was weaving. This prevented them from flipping over, which they tended to do when suspended.

This is not a complicated pattern, but in hindsight was not the best pattern to choose for my first real project. It presented a number of challenges I was not prepared for and I had a great deal of
trouble correcting mistakes as my understanding of tablet-weaving was still quite limited. However, I learned a great deal and the band looks quite well on my husbands tunic.

Sources:
Lewis, Shelagh. The tablet Woven Band from the Snartemo II Grave.
(http://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/Snartemo_II/snartemo_II.htm) Last accessed Nov. 18, 2010.

Collingwood, Peter?

A&S 50 - 1: Learn to Tablet Weave

My first attempt at tabletweaving.  Note the curls where the cards changed direction.

Tablet or card weaving in a method of weaving narrow bands which dates back at least to the second century A.D. It was used extensively in Scandinavia and spread throughout Medieval Europe. Uses ranged from the utilitarian – straps and woven borders on fabrics – to elaborate brocaded bands used on church vestments.

The basic procedure in tablet weaving is quite simple. Cards, usually square, are threaded through a series of holes placed in the corners. The cards are held under tension and turned while a weft thread is passed back and forth. The manner of threading and sequence of turning create the pattern. Incredibly complex and intricate patterns can be achieved with this basic technique.

While the basic procedure is quite simple, learning to table weave can present some challenges and frustrations. Foremost among these is tensioning. My first band was woven using the warping peg from my rigid heddle loom attached to a small portable ironing board, which I was able to hold in my lap, which one end propped on a TV tray table. It is possible to table weave using a back-strap loom, however I found it far easier to put my work down and maintain even tension when returning to it using a more fixed system. I have since built a portable loom of my own design which meets my needs quite well, and will build a period-correct loom in the future as part of this challenge.

Warping cards can also present challenges to a beginning weaver attempting to learn on their own. A number of books and websites discuss the continuous warping method, which is infinitely easier than warping each card individually (though not always appropriate), but regardless of your chosen warping technique two fixed points are absolutely required to keep the warp threads from tangling and to keep them even. Currently, I use a warping peg and a doorknob to warp my cards, which works well only so long as I do not need to open the door. As some point I will need to get or build a proper warping board.

The weaving itself is fairly straightforward. Again, tension seemed to be the main challenge, both in keeping the warps even and tights, and in keeping the weft even. Maintaining a consistent band width and a smooth surface took some practice, but by the time I had completed my first practice band I was able to do both fairly consistently and more on to more complicated patterns. It does help to use some kind of measuring device to check your band width now and again, particularly when using softer fibers like silk or cotton.



Sources:
Crocket, Candace. Card Weaving. Interweave Press, 1991.

Lewins, Shelagh. The Ancient Craft of Tablet Weaving: Getting Started (http://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/TW01/TW01.htm) Last accessed Nov. 18, 2010.

Gaslee, Sarah. Basic Tabletweaving. (http://www.stringpage.com/tw/basictw.html) Last accessed Nov. 18, 2010.

New challenge and current projects

Having gotten back into the SCA this year after a 12 hiatus, I found myself as Baronial A&S Champion before I new what I was happening.  It's been a great honor, and a great personal challenge to actually finish projects, try new things, and push myself to enter competitions (something I usually avoid like the plague).  Since my term in that roll will be over in another few months, I've decided that joining in the A&S 50 Challenge will give me some of the structure I seem to need to both try new things and actually finish projects in something approaching a timely manner.

So, for A&S 50 I've committed to learning 50 new things about textile production in the middle ages.  I've been sewing costumes and embroidering for years so doing something in that area would not be much of a challenge, and I already know how to spin and the very basics of weaving, so I think this will be a good expansion of my current skills.  I've wanted to learn a lot of these things for a long time, I just haven't had anything pushing me to actually do it, so the structure of the challenge should be  perfect!  As I finish projects, I'll be posting pictures, notes and documentation on this blog.

My tenure as Baronial Champion should be up in May, and I currently have two competitions I'm working on.  One is our local Interbaronial Twelfthnight  celebration, and the second is Kingdom Arts and Sciences.  I'm less worried about IB12, which is at the end of January, and far more worried about KAS which is the first weekend in February.  KAS will be my second Kingdom level A&S competition, and aside from stepping it up on the documentation, I really don't know what's expected.  I'm not entering the pentathlon (thank god, I did that at WOW in October and placed 2nd, which was great, but I don't feel a need to do that again this year), there's a special competition just for Baronial Champions that I'll be doing, but the guidelines are pretty vague and I don't know if I need a whole huge display or just my project.  Right now I'm planning on a display, I've just got to work out how to lay everything out.