Post-Pennsic Dreaming - String, Stringers & Enamel, oh my

I was lucky enough to get to make the grand journey to Pennsic a second year in a row. For those who may not know, Pennsic is the largest SCA event in the world with I believe somewhere upwards of 10,000 people descending on a farm in Pennsylvania from around the world. And I really mean around the world. There are people from Japan, from all over Europe. I hung out with the Australian encampment one night--they're a lot of fun. Anyway, this temporary small city, complete with post office, springs into being for about two weeks. I got to go for 8 1/2 days. Bwahaha.

It is, technically, an SCA war. But the battles don't interest me. I still haven't seen one. What I go for is Pennsic University which offers hundreds of classes on all medieval topics imaginable. I even taught one this year on Pictish Women. My personal highlights for the year:

Enamel! Wow. The beautiful art of glass on metal. I've wanted to learn for ages but it always sounded cripplingly expensive and very very hard. I got to make two pieces on site! One was applied to an etched piece and used a kiln. The other was cloisonne - using flattened metal wire shaped into the areas to enamel different colors. And that one I got to heat on a map gas torch! I had thought only much thinnner layered enamel projects could be done on a torch, not cloisonne, but I have an enamelled goose to prove otherwise now! I've come home itching to enamel everything in sight, but I've got to obtain some supplies first.

Needle binding - ok, yes, I learned how last year. But I found my favorite teacher again and learned two new stitches from her. One of them didn't make it into muscle memory, so I'll have to hope I can re-learn Coptic stitch from her handout. Asle stitch wasn't on the handout so I made sure that was the one I practiced. Now I'm about 3/4 inch towards having a pair of wool socks. Ok, yes, it's slow. But hey, it's fun, it's pretty, it's period, and it can be darn close to waterproof!

Glass beads - more fun with molten glass. I've done these before, but not in a couple years so this was a crash course straight into making twisties and stringers and using them for more complicated beads. I learned more about segmented beads as well which is fun since I know of some Pictish finds of segmented beads as well as the swirly ones that necessitate twisties and stringers.

Brass needles - gotta love a class that requires BYOA. Bring Your Own Anvil. Luckily I knew about this before leaving and secured permission to bring & borrow my husbands small five pound anvil which is plenty big enough for making a brass needle. I blew out three eyes before I successfully created a working needle, but it's very cool. I can't wait to do mad things like embroider something using wool I spun myself and the needle I made myself. :)

Harp - didn't expect to take the harp technique track, but I did. Very cool. Sadly, my desire to pick the teacher's brain at great length was curtailed by a violent thunder storm. But I have learned more about proper harp technique that should hopefully help me move forward without injuring myself in pursuit of actually playing this lovely instrument.

I must be forgetting things. I took lots of awesome classes. I sat in on the beginning of bookbinding, but I'd re-sprained my wrist so I couldn't play hands-on that day. There were cool classes like Anglo-Saxon Archaeology with an archaeologist and Viking Civil Engineering, again with an actual academic.

Now I feel all fired up to go make cool things!

Spinning and Weaving and Whatnot Again

String is addictive. It is just lucky for me that it is a positive rather than a destructive force in my life. I do go weeks, sometimes months without string, but it always dangles before my eyes again and tempts me back. I've been doing a number of smaller projects lately. A third attempt at a knitted hat. Continued slow work naalbinding a pouch. Tablet weaving a pattern I made based on the Anglo-Saxon diamonds pattern--I altered the inner diamond to be more leaf-shaped. Some quick inkle projects--a chain pattern in linen-cotton blend and a widened version in cotton. I'm hustling through the inkle because I'm donating them at an event next week.

Dreams of complex tablet weaving, going back to double face weave, wrapping my head around twill, actually weaving with silk, trying out brocading all dance through my head as do thoughts of trying out a warp-weighted loom of my own. Of course, I'd have to get the loom first.

I don't have access to a camera right now, which makes this blog a little harder. I tablet wove another of the wave patterns in purples and blues and sent it to its new home without a picture. It was funny wrapping my head back around it--it had been quite a while since I'd done any tablet-weaving. But I got it worked out and even fixed a color issue I'd had with my first try at that pattern. If you get a dot of the wrong color in that pattern (well, two mirror image dots), try doing one set of three forward, three back before returning to four forward, four back (that's only for one of the two packs of course). It shifted where the colors were perfectly and off I went. I cut off the portion with the mistakes and the fix, so if I ever do get access to a camera again, I can show you what I'm talking about.

I also messed up my modified Anglo-Saxon diamonds at one point when I fell into the turning pattern from the wave pattern! Oops. Took a little doing to undo that one and get it on track again. Plus, I had warped up one of the cards wrong, with three white and one purple instead of three purple and one white. I tried simply suppressing the white when it shouldn't be showing, which helped some. Then I added an extra purple to the weft for a few picks to get it anchored, then brought it out in it's new place in the warp, threaded it through the hole it would be replacing in the mis-threaded card, and warped it all up. Then I cut the old thread. Viola, purple instead of white.

I need to do the last one now. I just cut that one to get the white out of the mix. The pattern appears fine with one thread missing, but the card has a tendency to pull out of place, and I have to be very careful to ensure it doesn't turn itself when I don't want it to. I've had to go back and correct for that too a couple times. Just when I'd fixed that the last time, the pattern did something else odd. Frustrated with all the backtracking on what should have been a simple fast pattern, I took up inkle for the moment so I could power through before next week's deadline. But after that I'll have to get back on the horse. If I don't have the patience for this pattern, after all, then I'm not going to do well with more complex things.

I've also been doing a lot of spinning again of late. And I tried out pre-dyed roving for the first time. I got some beautiful green roving over the holidays and have now spun it all up. I tried not to go quite as thread-thin as I'd been doing with the oatmeal colored yarn, but still kept it fairly thin. I think I'm going to try two-ply with it. I wonder if I have the courage to try to weave with it and I wonder if it's strong enough to hold up under tension. If not, I might be better off making it a higher ply and knitting something with it. It took a little getting used to--I think I've been weaving with the same big batch of roving so long that it was a little strange transitioning to any other wool--but once I got going it was good. The green is gorgeous all spun up, so it hasn't stopped it's temptation to do more with it. On the other hand, I'm tempted to go choose a new color. If I'm going to weave or knit with it, it will need friends.

Also, I've been helping teach the toddler (my niece, of sorts) how to weave. I'm actually kind of jealous of her loom. It spreads the threads more than I'd like with no way to adjust that, but the transition of the shed is effortless as was stringing it up. She's weaving a fuzzy blanket for her doll! It's precious.