Mi Contra Fa

Adventures in brocading

The gold-colored aluminum foil came.  It was only colored on one side!

First I tried folding it over into a strip colored on both sides.  I managed to do that, getting a strip about 2mm wide.  That did not brocade well.  The turns were awkward and they didn't lay right.

So I cut a 1mm strip and used it for a bit.  That worked pretty well!  But as the strip went back and forth, you could see the silver underside.

I suppose the next step is to see if I am dexterous enough to fold a 2mm strip of foil in half?  I don't think there's good odds of that, but I'll give it a go.

The other options are to lay out the $40 to buy a sheet of 5mil brass, or to use craft wire.  (Some of the Continental pieces from this era used round wire, including the Cologne princess.)  I could afford the brass, but I sort of hate to spend money on top of the money I already spent for material that is only somewhat better than what I have now.  But the clamoring perfectionist in me is rather insistent, too...

I'm gonna be in pictures...

Look! After dragging my feet forever on a lyre book - a lyre video!

It has its flaws, certainly - glint, top of my head cut off, et cetera - but I wanted to just get started instead of re-doing it forever and ever, amen.

New MP3 for Non Sofre (Holy Pork Chop Song)

Only took me two months to pull this together for Mistress Linette:  Link goes to MP3.

Buying stuff

Last night, I experimented with slicing up some of the sheet metal left over from the Roman curse tablets project and weaving it into the brocaded band.  A very different experience from using the metallic thread!  I've ordered a sheet of ArtEmboss lightweight aluminium in a gold color - if I can manage it, I think that would be a better way to do the brocaded band than using modern gold thread.

I've put a bid in on another Anglo-Saxon artifact - this time on eBay.  Metal detectorists sell their finds there, and they're generally way cheaper than the fancy auction I bid on for the strap end.  I've got my eye on a belt buckle to go with the strap end - will only run me $20-30 if I get it.

Also ordered linen and silk thread for the Kentish gown.  Still waiting to hear from White Wolf and Phoenix about the 60/2 silks they carry, for the tablet-woven band.  And I need to decide if the worsted wool yarn I got at Pennsic is what I want to use for the belt, and what pattern I'll use, and whether or not I'll brocade that, too (and if so, with colored wool or with more metal?)

Hurray for Amazon points - only the linen thread is costing me money out of pocket!

New idea for accompaniment

Ages ago, I had this idea that, to sing/chant alliterative poetry, one should assign fixed tones to the stressed syllables, and then fill in the other syllables as needed.

I was thrilled to find that 'The Rhythm of Beowulf' suggested a similar scheme, a year or three ago.  (Where does the time go?)

Yesterday in the car, I was trying it out.  At a first go, it's really really hard to let go of years and years of singing one way and suddenly sing another.

Then I thought: What if... I played the 'stress notes' on the lyre or harp, and sang the others?  Dividing the work between hands and voice might help maintain the separation between the fixed pattern and the changing ornamentation - sort of like the principle behind playing guitar chords, I guess.

Wow, okay, it sounds a lot less novel when I put it like that. Heh.

Still, that's similar enough to some of the kinds of improvisation that I have done that I think I might be able to get it to work.  Will have to try soon!

'Guthrun never wept' - the meaning of tears

In 'The Second Lay of Guthrun,' the poet makes sure to remark that Guthrun does not cry over Sigurth's body.  In... was it the First Lay?... she does not cry, until another woman suggests that she kiss Sigurth's dead lips. She does, and then she weeps.

In my telling, I've been sticking with her 'not crying,' and extending that motif - she doesn't cry when she prophesizes her brothers' death, doesn't cry when she sees them die, and doesn't cry as all the Huns mourn the death of her sons.  And the meaning of that seems to change over the course of the piece, and I'm not sure if it's in a good or a bad way.

It seems to me that, the first time we hear that Guthrun does not weep or tear her garments as other women do, it's meant... positively.  She is strong, like a man is strong.  It's the old dichotomy of women/weak, men/strong; women/cry, men/stoic; ergo cry/weak, stoic/strong.

Yet by the end, as she watches the hall burn with all its dead within and still does not cry, she really seems more like a sociopath.  Women/cry, not-cry/not-woman - what was laudable earlier suddenly gets twisted into unnatural woman.  It's good to have manly qualities, until it's not.  Motherhood, ur-womanhood (or so it is assumed), should trump whatever manly virtues she possesses.  When it doesn't, she's not-a-woman, or wrong-woman, or broken-woman.

I am trying to address this by specifically calling out her love for her children, even as she killed them.  She loves them, but she hates Atli more.  It hurts her, but her desire to hurt Atli is greater.  I am trying to show that she is not a soulless monster - no more than her jealous brothers who killed Sigurth.  She is human and frail and does a horrible thing, but not without regret or remorse or pain.

Just not sure it comes through.  What if... what if she did cry? 

Oh oh! When she jumps into the sea, I can say something about the ocean being her tears!  Suggesting her deep and boundless grief while maintaining her eerie tearlessness!  Ooo, I think I like that!

 

Silk Thread Adventures

My spool of silk thread was from Belding Brothers, which stopped selling it under that name in 1925.  So the thread is close to 100 years old!  I didn't know that until after I'd chopped it up for card weaving.

I gave up pretty quickly because of tension problems - the thread seemed to be snapping under even modest tension.  That seems weird, because silk is usually very strong.  Maybe because it's old?  Maybe it didn't snap, but it slipped out of the knot?

I'll give it another go, but #100 thread seems really fine.  I should go and check Spies' book to see if she has any recommendations on materials - I've found silk embroidery floss on the Web that might be better to use.

Gold Brocaded Fillet

I've also been working on a Kentish gold-brocaded fillet, following along the technique laid out in Nancy Spies's book and the patterns described in 'Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids' by Crowfoot and Hawkes.

• The proper balance between thickness of the ground threads and thickness of the brocading thread is not immediately apparent.  I got lousy results until I doubled my brocading thread.
• Try the recommended brocading thread first.  (I started with something I picked up at a remnants shop that looks a lot like historical 'spun-gold' but it didn't work well. The thread Spies recommends works so much better!)
• Still having some problems with the ground thread crowding the gold thread.  Maybe I need a thinner ground? Or triple the brocading thread?

None of the Kentish bands had surviving textile fragments.  The Taplow band (a belt or harness, in a man's grave) was of wool; I do not really want to try and card weave with wool fine enough for a fillet.  I could go with undyed linen thread - that may tally with the Wisigarde fillet.  And I can check that since my copy of the exhibit catalogue came, oh joy!  I also have some really old silk thread at home (I picked it up at a flea market 20 years ago, and it's on wooden spools) - that's much finer than I'm used to doing card weaving with, but it could be a neat experiment.  And if it works, I can get silk thread in an appropriate color - woad blue or imperial wine-purple, maybe.

Performer's Revel: Tale of Guthrun

Saturday was Storvik Performer's Revel, and on a lark I debuted 'The Tale of Guthrun' - a prose recitation of her story that I hashed out in the car on the way over.  I was able to incorporate a good number of call backs to the poetry ('as greater than other men as the leek is greater than the grass,' etc) and it got a really good reception!  I had opened by saying that I don't normally do storytelling, and when I finished, someone said, "You should do it more often."

Yesterday, I also tried telling the tale with my harp in my hands.  Mostly open fifths, home and away, with pauses in the tale for longer melodic riffs.  I think it worked pretty well!  I'll try lyre next.

Guthrun: Maybe a mash-up?

There's so much I like in parts of the Second Lay of Guthrun and the Atlikvitha that I'm looking at smooshing them together.  The Second Lay is told in the first person (in Guthrun's voice - and that's so perfect for me), so I'll need to tinker with the Atlikvitha passages.  All the bits that take place in Burgundy can get cut, but I need to put something in about her and the ring with the wolf's hair. 

I need to reaaaaaally think about the climax.  As it is currently, the listener is, like Atli, kept in the dark about the "young game" being served until it is too late.  That's very effective, but does it explore the themes I said I wanted to explore?