Results of the Coif

So I found that the coif tended to slide back with the weight of my hair (no surprise there as I have a lot of it).  I used bobby pins to hold it on which seems to work well enough.  I meant to bring my hat pins but forgot them in the rush of packing for the day.  I was happy to find I still had a small black velvet cap, as I thought I had sold them all years ago.  It definitely can use the blackwork on the cap to tone down the white-ness.  Other than that I'm quite satisfied with the result.  Maybe I'll add it to the stash of merchant repertoire.

I didn't bring enough bobby pins to pin the coif, hat and my hair so you can see my braids pulling the coif back from the weight of it, but if I pin the braids up first it holds quite well.

Elizabethan Coif

This Saturday is our local event and I'm in charge of running the fencing for the day.  So I may or may not fence myself.  While I'm fencing I wear Elizabethan age clothing to suit the blade and fencing style we use in the SCA, even though my persona is 7th century Irish.  The thing I've been missing is headwear and if I don't feel like changing after fencing for court I didn't want my fuzzy hair to do it's "troll doll" impression.  So I looked up the Attack Laurel's recreation (http://www.extremecostuming.com/reproductions/vacoift281975.html), the Blackwork Guild (http://www.theblackworkguild.com/COSTUMES-MEMBERS%202.html) and this last site which gave me another reference for sizing (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/00401/BBAB9B66128397DA499B1E6AF8A0DDEA5676ABD2.html).
There was no way I was embroidering a coif in time for this weekend, but I did see reference to plain coifs anyway.  That'll do for me to decide if I like them.  I tend to get headaches if my hair is too concentrated in one spot on my head (very thick hair).  It looks pretty good so here's to hoping.

Spinning history

So I taught a "how to spin with a drop spindle" class on the weekend and I kind of got my brain stuck on that path.  I bought a "Spin Off" magazine today and it had an article describing stone carvings clearly showing a spinning wheel in China maybe 2000 yrs old.  Cool, that would rewrite history a bit.  It's a rimless wheel with a treadle no less.  Normally, it's said that the invention of the wheel is from China or India 500 to 1000 yrs ago.

Now I'm collecting info about the history of spinning wheels in the hopes to have a clearer vision of how and where they developed.  I also took a class on "early medieval spinning wheels" at Pennsic.  Although not the best presentation, it did give me the bug to find out more.  I think that would be a fascinating addition to our medieval demos that we do every year.

Again, I stand at the edge of a cliff ready to take another step thinking "what am I getting into now?"
;-P

my first dress pants

So I bought a commercial pant pattern a few months back but didn't have the time to mess with it before the "Pennsic push".  It's a slow time of year for me minus the holiday stuff I'll have to start on, and I figured a good time to play.  I used some green linen I had in my stash to try out the pattern.  I made some adjustments to the pattern pieces based on Nancy Zieman's "Pattern Fitting with Confidence".  Mostly I just shortened some stuff.  Apparently this pattern is made for people over 6 feet tall, lol.  I'm still too long by about 4".  Based on what I wanted (pleated front, curved waistband with pockets) I purchased Simplicity pattern 2342.  It has three designs to choose from as well.  A slim fit, average and curvy.  I figured I had some good odds of finding the right one.  Wow, those are wide legs.  Let me just bring those in by another 4" around.  There, that's a little better.  I'm not quite sure what happened in the process but after following the pattern the pants could slide over my hips while done up.  Hmm.  Okay, this is either a case of people lying to themselves about their measurements and the company is placating them,  it's a crappy pattern, or its me.  Maybe a combo, but I'm not sure.  I don't tend to use as big of a seam allowance as it recommends, but this time I did it as it said so it wouldn't  be that.

I think they made it so huge to make sure that if the person screws up they have room to correct, but man that makes a lot of adjustment time for the rest of us.  I had to remove the top of the pockets to deepen the pleats.  I took in as much as I dared at the side seam until I was afraid of losing my pockets entirely!  Now there's too much fabric in the front but there isn't much I can do about it at this point.  I shortened the rise by a few more inches so I don't look like one of those teenagers with my pants fitting all funky.  It's hard to walk with the crotch length at your knees, lol.

I only need to add the inside layer to the waist band, hem the bottom (I'll get someone to measure that for me), and re finish the inside seams.  Voila!  Maybe I'll just reverse engineer these pants to make the next pair?  I do want to become better at using commercial patterns.  I think I'll play around some more with Nancy's methods.  I was afraid to make too many adjustments for fear of making them too small, but obviously I wasn't bold enough.

Knitting

So I'm reading through Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Workshop book (http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0942018001) and it's kind of a knit-a-long.  It asks you to knit a very large swatch for preparation for a sweater in the round.  I figured I'm knitting 5" in the round with 80 sts (stitches) so why not have some fun.  I need to wash the swatch so it's not like I can pull it out and reuse it for the sweater.  I thought, I need a new purse.  I love doing colour work and want to add it to the sweater.  A while back I found a chart for the Norwegian star pattern and added it to the 5" swatch.  Voila, a new purse after I line it and add a handle.

more research

I was listening to my audio book of Richard Rutt's History of Hand Knitting while spinning and found an interesting line.  So I looked it up in my book version on the shelf (I know such a nerd) and saw references to wire knitting.  I assumed they were referring to the "viking wire weaving" I'd seen in the SCA so I thought, finally some historical references to back the claims up.  I'd been skeptical about the origins of it so I looked up the items I could in reference to this craft.  No luck.  The references are not the "viking wire weaving" that seems so prevalent in the SCA and I'm still waiting to see the evidence.

The items in question that you may be curious about referred to the Birka digs.  In Inga Hagg's book she has beautiful pictures of the finds and none of them are the jewellry cording that is the SCAdianism item.  There's a pdf available if you search Inga Hagg called "Fornvannen 1971".  I'd found the snippet of the book a while back when searching for Rus costuming info and I'm still translating the text.  The appliqued metal designs that is believed to be on a caftan-like coat are beautiful and I saw some replicas at "Viking U Like" at Pennsic.  I had a discussion with him about them and I think he was happy to have an intelligent conversation with another person who knew their stuff :-)

Next was some viking relics at Croy and Ballinaby in Scotland.  The Trewiddle hoard in Cornwall and some irish finds at Tara and Clonmacnoise.  It makes reference to Byzantine examples but I can't find anything with such a wide search word.  Finally, the Ardagh chalice in Dublin where the underside has some metal braidwork designs applied to it.

If anyone finds anything,  Please, let me know.  I'd hate to think that the SCA is promoting (unintentionally, but wrongly) another SCAdianism that is not historical.

Addendum:  the word trichinopoly is applied to the "wire knitting" and I tried this search as well.  Apparently that's the name of a city and when combined with weaving that brings up the wire weaving but still no historical images.  There are claims of examples but nothing concrete or specific.  There are plenty of twisted metal jewellry examples.

On a more positive note, I've added to my collection of bling.  I'm working towards some accurate Irish costuming and came across a ring pin at Pennsic.  Happy, happy, joy, joy...

The penannular brooches are much better known and I have some of those but I thought the earlier ring pin would be a nice alternative and I can show people different options in early period costuming.

Pennsic projects

I'm just about through washing all the laundry from two weeks at Pennsic.  I taught naalbinding twice this year and had some nice class sizes of 12 and 8, as opposed to the 40 that showed up last year.  That was nerve wracking.  The fibery-goodness day went quite well.  I was in the natural dyeing tent and had my first successful indigo dyebath.  I wanted to make some more green with my weld and that turned out just fine too.  I've discovered that logwood with alum makes a very pretty purple.  Here's the indigo in the dyebath and out of it:

People found the "magical colour change" of indigo fascinating.  It actually made a really good demo and I think I should do it for local demos too.  I think it would make a really good educational and memorable day for some people.  The colour change is cool and reminds me of a Hello Kitty toy I had as a kid that changed colours in hot/cold water ;-)