Mi Contra Fa

Winter 2015 University

I love Atlantia University!

In the morning, I taught two classes (and I'll edit this post with links to the notes once I get them up).  "Motivation" had six people who seemed to find it somewhat useful.  "Breaking into Bardic" was a big class, probably a dozen or more students, and they were all very lively!  I thought the classes went well, although I'm not sure how good of an idea "Motivation" was.

The event was at the simply lovely St. Mary's College.  Tatsume attended college there, so she and Johanna knew where the good dining hall was.  Johanna got a group of people together, and we all trundled over, explaining who we were and what we were doing there to a few interested parties along the way.  At the dining hall, a very nice student offered to slash a bunch of us in on her meal card - she had lots of guess passes she wasn't using, she said.  Bonus!  And the brunch was solid.

I did an afternoon of scribal, sketching out a page frame after the Vespasian David, learning how to transfer and paint an illuminated letter, and then learning how to gild!  Gilding is actually very easy, once someone shows you what the tools are and what you do with them.  That is exactly the sort of thing I think University is best for - although I don't want to discount the other classes.  I was a little surprised at how well my frame came out, considering I didn't have a compass and wasn't being especially careful.  At home, I'd have probably never tried such a thing, assuming that I'd just be terrible at graphic arts.

And then, leaving - oh my goodness, the most beautiful sunset reflected in perfectly still water.  Fabulous ending to a wonderful event.

(Okay, this is clearly up in DC at the Reflecting Pool, but it's the same 2/7/15 sunset!  Photo by Kevin Wolf on Flickr, but I found it at the WaPo.)

Runic cloak

Since I finished my pouch and SENEA is still doing embroidery, I dug out my Order of the Owl cloak that I wanted to embroider with runes.  I used one of those hemming measuring gizmos and some thread to lay down parallel lines to fit the letters in, so they'd be a consistent height.

I also realized what the first motto to be embroidered had to be:  Be Prepared!  (It's the motto of the Girl Scouts as well as the Boy Scouts, you know... And no surprise, I was a Girl Scout all the way into my early college days.  Yes, there's such a thing as Campus Girl Scouts.)

Trying to figure out the runic equivalents of some modern vowels was non-trivial; I'll link in the pages I used to help later.  I don't actually speak Old English, so a lot of it is best-guess.

Pages: Anglo-Saxon runes and their phonetic sounds; Phonetic sounds of current English vowels

So far, so good - although I think I need to leave more space between words.

Naalbinding attempt

So the good news is... the needle is smooth enough. Too thick, maybe, but the yarn didn't catch.

The other news is... naalbinding is not so simple!  I thought this tutorial looked very clear, and the Oslo stitch fairly simple - but my two initial attempts resulted in a big mess of yarn.  My "Naalbinding Made Easy" booklet demonstrates the Mammen stitch, which looks about three times as complicated as the Oslo.  Not so easy at all!

 

Naalbinding needle

So SENEA might be doing naalbinding next month.  Last time I decided to buy a naalbinding needle, White Wolf and the Phoenix were out.  Now, a tapestry needle or a bodkin would probably work just fine, but we had some strong winds this week.  On a walk to the grocery store, I found a bit of slender old-dead branch from one of those stinky pear trees on the ground, and I thought, "Hm."  So I picked up the stick, broke it into four pieces and stuck it in my coat pocket.

One epic quest later, and I finally found my whittling knife, the one I got from "Memories of Finland" back when it was on Rt 1 in College Park, with the teeny 1" blade and the big round handle and the decorated sheath that all looked so terribly Viking to me.  And in about 20 minutes, I'd cut one of the sticks down, rounded both ends, made one pretty pointy, flattened out a bit toward the top and used the knife point to make an eye.

Naalbinding needle!

It feels pretty smooth, even without sanding, but I suspect "pretty smooth" may not cut it with the yarn. We'll see.

In Loot news: Got single-ply yarn for naalbinding.  The natural colored stuff at fiber space was huge and chunky, so I went with a different brand that was mostly Really! Bright! Colors!, but I scored a pale purple I'll pretend is lichen purple, and a pale blue that could maybe be the end of a woad bath.  It was a little spendy (merino wool) and I should have probably bought online. 

 

Ring bag v2.0, flag

So the Storvik Early Northern European Adhocracy has been working on embroidery, and I have been working on upgrading my ring bag.  v1.0, at the bottom of that post, was a hand-sewn linen sack sewn into a plastic ring with cotton cords.  Since then, I've learned that there's evidence that at least one of those ivory ring-bags did not have the ivory showing - the ring was encased in leather and textile.  I purchased a 5" brass ring with the vague idea of turning it into a bag in the future.

The future is now!  I embroidered a six-armed spirally figure (based on some Anglo-Saxon metalwork; got it out of a British Museum clipart book, can't bring the name to mind) in red and white wool, on a scrap of my thick navy boiled wool.  It was originally going to be all red and white, but then it started looking like the Target logo, so I left a ring of the navy fabric visible, too.  Lots of stem stitch and did use some laid and couched technique.

Used the same linen bag, tearing out all the stitches.  It was a little longer, so I trimmed it shorter.  Sewed the tops of the linen lining and wool outside together, making sure to include a leather loop (a craft project blank from Tandy; it's oak-tanned and should hold tooling, if I ever get around to it) in the seam.  I checked and double-checked that I had the loop inserted the right way! 

I debated about whether I should sew up the long edge of the tube first, or sew it to the ring first.  The wool is very thick, so in the end I sewed it to the ring.  If I'd sewn up the side, the lining and the wool together would have made a great wad of a seam, and I wouldn't have been able to slide the ring up, now that I think on it.

I only used about enough fabric to cover the ring.  I've seen at least one how-to that recommended scrunching on several inches more, I think so that the bottom will be wider than the top, giving you the trapezoidal look that you see especially on the later medieval versions of the ring bag.  Well, this wool was not having any of scrunching.  Seriously, it's coat-weight stuff.  I positioned the ring at the top seam, between the wool and the linen, and used a running stitch all around to hold it in place.  I also made sure that the loose ends of the leather belt loop lay on either side of the ring.

I stitched up the linen liner next and finished the seams (sort of a bulky rolled hem stitch, by the time I was done).  Then... well, the fly appeared in the ointment.  The leather hanging loop is not exactly 180 degrees from the decorative embroidery.  I was able to minimize the off-centeredness of it by sort of hoisting up a corner of the wool and tacking it to itself a little beyond where the edges met naturally.  It's still not centered, but it's on the front face of the bag.  Turned the wool inside out, sewed the long edge (did not finish, as this stuff is practically felt), turned right side in and did the bottom.  I sort of rolled either edge in to the center and overcast along the seam.  All/most of the weight should be held by the linen liner anyhow.

It looks pretty sharp!  My concern is with that thick wool, though.  It looks like the ring may not lie flat against my body - the wool wants to try and push it back up.  I'll wear it to University tomorrow and see how it does.

Also, I wrecked my laid-and-couched flag in the endgame.  The embroidery is fine, it's the flag part that's a little, uh... yeah.  Maybe I can turn it into an applique or something.