Mi Contra Fa

Songs for Service and Arts

Stout Hearts of Storvik: Download MP3

Do You Have Dwarves in Storvik? Download MP3

I'll get these all on the Original Works page eventually...

Conjectural Salad

Tonight is Storvik's Post-Pennsic Revel, and it's a potluck.  I went through Ann Hagen's second book and came up with possible valid ingredients for a salad.  I like fennel, and our grocery story had purple carrots, so I Googled up a modern recipe for a carrot-fennel-mint salad.  I left the pepper and basil seeds out of the dressing.

Obviously not authenticable - no evidence that these plants were eaten together, raw, in a salad, in this combination.  I don't even know if fennel, carrots and mint would all be available at the same time.  But it seems like a reasonable 10' rule attempt.

Fighting Like Gods MP3

Here's an MP3 of "Fighting Like Gods." G'head and download it if you like.

Fighting Like Gods

Persona Penathalon noodling

A Biography of Seidr Staffs.  Has pictures of the wooden staff found in the Oseberg ship, and a good bibliography.

The Saga of Vanadis: Would rather ILL than buy, I think.

Kari Tauring: Modern Midwestern volva.  Her reconstruction seems to have different priorities, but I want to see the sources she's used, because she seems well-versed in the literary evidence.

Galdrtranz: Highly romantic photos, but the text has good sources.

Thinking of making:

• A dress after the Fyrkat woman's.  Maybe try dyeing with woad?
• A wooden staff, after the Oseberg staff.
• Casting a 'high seat' pendant in pewter
• Something involving spinning, weaving, or the tools for those arts
• Possibly a chant or charm? This would depend on what I can get from the literature, possibly augmented with Anglo-Saxon charm information.

 

 

New MP3

You know what makes a bard happy?  Getting a request to record their original work.

How Baroness Merlynia Defeated the Dragon now available for download.

Yes, I Still Do Bardic

Despite the blog apparently having been taken over by other arts...

During Pennsic, our baroness posted to Facebook that she was so proud when a bystander remarked that "Storvik is fighting like gods!"  The phrase had a good cadence, so I wrote a song...

Fighting Like Gods

Like thunder rolls down from the mountains
So roll brave Storvik's squads
Over the foe, onward to triumph
Storvik is fighting like gods!

Chorus:
Odin's sons, lift up your spears
Valkyries, raise up your shield
Make battle like Thor, feed ravens like Tyr
Gods of the battlefield

Swift through the woods, prowling like Fenris
Like Heimdall, they guard well the bridge
Sailing Hringhrori, boasting with Baldur
On the field, they won't give an inch

Chorus

---------------------

Well, the baron was well pleased, and asked for some more songs praising other folk in Storvik.  

Trivia: In setting the tune for this, the chorus was driving me mad.  I felt certain that I'd "borrowed" a tune from something, but could not for the life of me place it.  My husband identified it: "The Horn of the Hunter," (albeit on fast forward) which is something that he sings, but I don't.  Evidently I'd heard it enough from him that the tune seeped into my brain, but nothing else about it.

Stout Hearts of Storvik

The kitchen’s out of ice and the parking lot is mud
The rain’s got in the privies and we think that they may flood
We’re running out of propane and we don’t know what it costs
The site is hard to find and the king has gotten lost

Chorus:
Stand up, you stout hearts of Storvik
Who answer the barony’s call
Stand up, you stout hearts of Storvik
Our heroes of field and of hall

A store-run for the ice, and propane for the grill
You make it a donation if we can’t afford the bill
Putting up the signs, directing all the cars
As wet as if you’d been to sea, a-sailing the drekkar

Chorus

(Interlude to recognize the volunteers)

Chorus

With your time and with your money, but especially with your work
You keep the Known World turning, while the rest of us just shirk
My brothers and my sisters, it’s time to lend a hand
So when next you hear this song, you’ll know that you can stand ----

 ------------------------

There's one for the A&S folks, too, although I'm still polishing it over and developing the tune. The chorus is good, but some of the verses haven't been worked over. This one, I have to fight the urge to steal the verse tune from "Worms of the Earth."

Do You Have Dwarves in Storvik?

Heroes arrive in our lands
Desperate questers all
Setting their foot to our strand
Raising their voices they call --

Chorus A:
Do you have dwarves in Storvik?
Craftsmen fit for the gods?
We’ve heard of goods made with skills
That the rest of the world has forgot

Garments as fine as bright Freyja’s,
That gives to its wearer hawk’s wings
Runes that are scribed with Odin’s skill
A feast-hall and mead fit for kings

Chorus A

Leather turned like Vidar’s shoes
Is the armor from Weyland the Smith?
This weaving is done with Frigg’s distaff
These things come straight out of myth

Chorus A

We laugh and we seat them at table
And ply them with bright foaming mead
And show them the things that we’re able
To do or to make when there’s need

Chorus B

For there are no dwarves in Storvik
Our artists are women and men
Our knowledge is wide, our treasures are fine,
And no craft surpasses our ken

Chorus B Repeat

Weaving Update

Successfully started a "mini warp-weighted loom" set up.  I did forget to secure the weaving to the turnable block of my Beka, so I will have to get creative when time comes to wind up the woven cloth.  (I did sew the band to a dowel, and the dowel to the loom, so I could just undo the "to the loom" part and transfer it to the block.)

This is surprisingly unlike card weaving, especially in the packing down of the weft.  I used my wooden shuttle with its knife edge for a while.  The fabric didn't look like I expected, so I took a fork and used it to comb the weft together tighter.  I was surprised at how much extra "pack" I got that way.

It looks... nice, but not what I was expecting.  I'll update this with some pictures later.  I don't know if this is a function of the differences between 2/1 chevron twill and 2/2 chevron twill, or the sett, or what.

I actually started doing a diamond weave by accident - I may go back to that.  It looked a little closer to how it was supposed to look...

Weaving

So here's a thing that happens.

I have a bit of an interest in fiber arts.  Last year at Pennsic, I bought one of those toy heddle looms from Beka, that weaves a 4" wide piece.  I got some yarn and a how-to book.  I used the loom and the yard - for card-weaving.  No heddle weaving. 

But I've been reading the book.  I've been browsing the Internet, looking for resources on leg wraps. Turns out they were frequently purpose-woven to 3.5", give or take, which will work just fine on my Beka.  I did some more idle browsing on using a heddle loom to make chevron twill.

I have dim memories from various costuming books about using a card-woven band to set up a warp, but didn't go hunt down the book it's in (but I think it's this one).  Because I'm just browsing and thinking, right?  I bought Medieval Garments Reconstructed, which I'd almost bought a year ago, but didn't.  Reading it, and all the other information on weaving, and heddles, and twills, and I think I finally understand how a warp-weighted loom works, and why 2/2 twills and patterns based on them were so common. (My plan is to do a 2/1 twill on the ridid heddle loom, using two heddles, because I've never actually done this sort of weaving before and I wanted to cut myself some slack.)

And after hemming and hawing (and still not having decided on the best way to actually loom this), I just said, "Heck with it," and did a card-weaving warpy thing tonight.

Red wool band, 6 cards /\/\/\, band weft forming warp for twill

I think this is really more of a test piece than a research effort.  Already learning things:

4", 8 dpi heddle, and 32 warp threads.  Note that they don't match in width.

My bit of card-woven band with its 32 weft threads that will become warp threads, is rather narrower than the 4" heddle that holds 32 warp threads.  Will this be an issue? Probably! 

Also, front the didn't-think-it-through department:

A poor choice of warping post

This is something I had thought about before, but it flew out of my head when I set up for this.  There is no way for me to get the warp threads off of the treadmill without either a) cutting them or b) disassembling the treadmill.  Guess which it's gonna be?

On a warp-weighted loom, the card-woven band would go at the top of the work, and the warps would hang down.  You weave from top to bottom.  On the Beka, you're meant to wrap all the warp ends around a block and weave from the bottom up.  My options as I see them are:

1. Thread on the heddles, shove them down to the band, then try to tension all the warps as I wind them onto the block. HAHAHA yeah I don't think so.  I'm not experienced in this, but working from both ends into the middle sounds like a great way to get all kinds of tension problems.
2. Use the band as the bottom.  Unless I use a needle to sew in the last inch or so of weaving, it may get cut off of the work, though.  Seems sort of a shame. Although if there's a mismatch between the band width and the heddle width, maybe this is inevitable?
3. Sew the band to a dowel, secure the dowel to the block with twine, put the warps through the clamp on the Beka (meant to hold finished cloth), and weave from the top down, using the Beka's clamp to provide the tension that the weights would on a warp-weighted loom.  I'll need to be careful of the warps.

Since this isn't a very long or wide piece, I'm... sort of thinking of trying #3.

KASF 2015

So I'm thinking "Viking Völva" for Persona Pentathalon...

"This is an ointment of white lead. No, don't touch, it's poisonous."

"This is a mixture of lard and henbane seeds that should give the sensation of flying. No, don't touch, it's poisonous."

Reminds me of an A&S entry I read about - somebody (pretended) to perform the fully documented, authentic method of turning quartz into diamond via soaking in goat's blood, or something.

Linen Coif

Linen Coif, Side View

 

Linen Coif, Front View

 

Linen Coif, Close-Up of 4-Strand Braided Cords and Seams

Overview

This is a coif made from linen twill fabric left over from my Kentish overgown.  I don't recall that there's direct evidence for a coif like this in 6th/7th cen. Kent, but there are finds of similar garments from Viking settlements of a later period. Also, the coif really helps my veil stay put (and is largely invisible under it).  Additional bonus: If the veil gets too heavy or too hot, I can take it off and not be scandalously bare-headed.

Lessons Learned

This was a little more practice hand-sewing.  I think I  might like to try 4-strand whipcording rather than braiding, to get a rounder cord.  This is very short on my face, and looks a little silly tied under the chin.  Tied at the nape of my neck, it's mostly invisible under a veil, helps to secure it, and changes the drape a bit.  The Jorvik cap was longer, with the cords along the front edge, not at the corners - if I hadn't been constrained by the size of my fabric, I would have done that.  I felt pretty virtuous making good use of my scrap, though.  A useful, simple item, although not exactly a stunning A&S project.

Documentation

This was not really a research project. But here's my notes on materials, construction, and at least one source.

Blog Posts

See the notes linked under Documentation.