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.

Pictish Name of the Month: Nectudad or Nahhtvvddadds

Nectudad – This spelling is the National Museum of Scotland's standardization of NAHHTVVDDADDS from an ogham inscription on a stone now in NMS. I understand there is a newish theory that at least some of the "Pictish" ogham inscriptions were in fact using Norse and "daughter" was indeed one of the words this theory turned around. I still need to hunt down the article/book where this theory is laid out, but it may be behind the reasoning for
CRROSCC : NAHHTVVDDADDS : DATTRR : ANN...
being translated by the National Museum as “The cross of Nectudad, daughter of An...”

If they're right, then Nectudad certainly sounds like it could be a feminine version of Nectan. So even if "dattrr" is Norse in origin, it still seems likely we are dealing with a Pictish name here. I think there are other reasonable ways one could standardize the name, such as Nechtudad or Nachtudad, but I would recommend consulting someone more versed in ogham than I.

Of course, the Norse usually put “daughter” as a tag at the end of the father's name, for instance Kolla Sveinsdóttir as “Kolla daughter of Sveinn” which would give us instead Crosc daughter of Nectudad, with “ann-” beginning some other part of the inscription. I believe the combination of the similarity of croscc and cross and the other neighboring languages that use an X daughter of Y format combine toward making “Nectudad” rather than “Crosc” the daughter in question.

On the other hand, “dattrr” need not be of Norse origin at all, but may come into Pictland through Gaelic or even from earlier Celtic languages parallel to its cognate in Gaelic. There are “a series of Gaelic names for women beginning with the element Der-/Dar- which has been shown to be a Gaelic cognate of the English word 'daughter', derived from a reduced form of the Proto-Gaelic *ducht(a)ir. A close cognate of this word, a derivative of the Indo-European word for 'daughter' (the English word is itself a descendant of the Germanic derivative), has now been attested in the continental Celtic language Gaulish as duχtir...In the inscription, χ= /χ/” (Clancy “Philosopher King”). Given these early and widespread cognates, it is not beyond possibility that “dattrr” could be a rendering of a Pictish term for “daughter” or “daughter of,” though we know so little of the Pictish language that this must remain mere speculation.

Selected Bibliography:

Clancy, Thomas Owen. “Philosopher-King: Nechtan mac Der-Ilei” The Scottish Historican Review, Vol. LXXXIII, 2. Oct. 2004. pp125-49.

See also Royal Irish Academy, Dictionary of the Irish Language (compact edn, Dublin. 1983), under der.

M.A. O'Brien, 'Der-, Dar-, Derb-in female names', Celtica, iii (1956), 178-9.

E. Hamp. '*dhugHter in Irish', Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, xxxiii (1975), 39-40.

National Museum of Scotland

Fiber Fun Recap

While my posting has been lamentably slow of late, my adventures with all things stringy have been more frequent and fast paced.

Last month was Great Western War which, this year, held an early period sheep to shawl project. The project was cooperative with all who wished helping to hand spin with drop spindle, set up the warp weighted loom and weave on it. Arriving half way through the project, I was in time to help spin weft and to help weave though I saw something of the end of the set up phase. I spun that weekend till my hands literally ached! I must have at least tripled my total amount of spinning I've done in my life. I also got some practice at spinning while walking and though it slowed me somewhat I was doing so with tolerable ease after a while. I made less successful attempts to use a distaff.

It was fantastic to see the warp weighted loom in action and to try my hand at it. It makes a lot more sense now. For years my only weaving experience was tablet weaving and without seeing other--more common!--forms of weaving in action, it was hard to understand how it actually worked. Between inkle weaving and the warp weighted loom it makes a great deal more sense now.

I also took a class on spinning linen on the drop spindle. I had the vague idea that this was a good deal more advanced than spinning wool, and the teacher was indeed relieved to see her only two students busy at work spinning wool when she showed up (working on weft for the weaving of course!). But it wasn't actually all that hard, just a little alien. Animal fibers, like wool, want to bind together. They have little hooks along their length that grip each other. Wool, being rather kinked as well, does this very easily, but other animal hair can also be used. Plant fibers do not have this property. However, when bast fibers like flax (linen) get wet, they become a bit gummy. This stickiness when wet is what is used to bind the fibers together and once bound (aided by the twist you spin in) they dry stuck together. Voila! Linen thread! The linen fibers are hugely long--perhaps a yard--one one only needs two or so even at the outset, making it quite easy to achieve thread-thin, sturdy handspun without it breaking every couple of minutes. My consistent wool spinning still needs to stay more than twice that thick to keep from breaking all the time.

I definitely recommend learning to spin linen from someone who does it. I'm sure the hands-on approach is infinitely easier than learning from description in this case. But in case you lack access to such a person, here's a quick and dirty summary.

You'll need your fibers, whether long or short (the tow, the shorter whiter softer fibers can also be spun) to be prepared and laying together in one direction. Apply them to a distaff such that you can pull fibers off the bottom. It will be easiest if the distaff can be fixed upright or held by someone else if you aren't accustomed to using a distaff.

Have a bowl of water handy. One hand will be controlling the supply of fibers and preventing the twist from traveling up to the bulk of the fibers. You won't want this hand to get too wet because you don't want your fibers getting wet and gummy till they're at the point of being spun to thread. Once you have your two or three fibers pulled out dampen the length, and attach them to the leader thread (some commercially purchased linen thread might be ideal, but you could simply tie the end to some wool or cotton string. Resting the spindle on a surface give it some spin (you will want one with a point at the bottom rather than a hook) then let the spin travel up to the damp fibers.

Once you are able to wind some of the linen thread onto the spindle, the thread should be strong enough to bear the weight of the spindle and be used normally. Make sure to leave plenty of time to overlap new fibers. You should join new fibers about a foot before the end of fibers in use and never have fewer than two fibers--this requires a little more advanced planning than usual.

When you wind on your thread, move up and down the spindle rather than spinning on at the same spot. Because the gumminess is what is binding the fibers together, you can get the whole clump binding together if you don't spread it out, criss-crossing fibers rather than piling them on in parallel.

Looking back up at that, I don't place any reliance on it being useful enough to try. But if you'd like clarification, don't hesitate to contact me. And if you're in norther California, I can even demonstrate at some SCA event if you'd like! Though I should really practice to keep my hand in, and I will soon be out of flax to spin and have not yet acquired a source for it.

Also at GWW was a "wool to whatever" contest wherein the contestants were invited to take undyed wool roving and produce anything they could think of. Contestants were encouraged to be not only creative, but to try out new things. I was tempted to try some felting, a technique I'd learned a few months ago at West-An Tir War, but I lacked supplies. I probably could have scavenged, for the most important elements beyond wool are soap (I think we even had some in camp, and if we hadn't, someone else would have) and something hard and water proof to serve as mould. But where I would go from there, I didn't know. And I was spending most of my time on the warp weighted loom project and its spinning.

But late at night, after I'd turned my last batch of weft spinning in, inspiration finally struck. I spun yet more, made my first ever attempt at plying, and then used couched embroidery (with a little straight stitch thrown in) to embroider a Pictish goose with mirror and comb onto a piece of felt I had with me (sadly modern fake felt rather than wool felt, but what can you do?). I worked feverishly by torchlight while the nearby group got increasingly drunk. They were very friendly though, and made sure I had enough light throughout! I was up stitching till the wee hours of the morning and then had to get up bright and early to submit my entry. But I was glad I attended great court because I actually came in 3rd! I felt a bit outclassed--one of the other winners had felted a viking hat, complete with decoration. But the sponsor of the contest told me later that they were very glad to see people try new things, and it was in fact my first plying and second ever couched project (or first; I certainly understood the premise and I think I may have used the technique on Elf's drum case years ago.)

Well, after writing all that about just my fiber exploits at GWW, I feel the need to wrap this up. Perhaps I will come back to the rest of my recap, but the brief version is I have also:

- Twined a water bottle holder out of jute around a glass bottle
- Begun picked pattern inkle weaving which is not coming out as I envisioned, but is a good first try I think
- Learned to knit in the round and knitted most of a hand bag which I don't know how to finish!
- Picked out out gorgeous string with my mother who recently visited

Pictish Name of the Week: Drusticc or Drustric

Drusticc or Drustric – A woman in the 6^th century said to be daughter of Drest and mother of Lonan, son of Talmach. She is mentioned in the Book of Leinster, the Book of Ui Maine, and Liber Hymnorum. Liber Hymnorum includes a story about her being sent to study with Mugind, abbot of Whithorn. Drusticc fell in love with Rioc (also studying there) and begged to be married to him but another student, Talmach, was sent to her instead. In the Book of Leinster, (fol. 373A?) “Drustric daughter of Trust” is in a list of mothers of saints as the mother of Lonan, son of Talmach. Lonan seems to be a saint in Galloway. Drest or Trust is a common name in the Pictish king lists and probably common through the rest of the Pictish warrior nobility.

As of yet, I've only read summaries of these accounts in secondary sources from the middle of the 20^th century. I'd love to get see the original texts or, baring that, find more recent scholarly accounts. But the old stuff is what is available in searchable full text and thus easier to find references in. Part of the Book of Leinster is available on the CELT archive, but I haven't been able to find the list of mothers of saints or any mention of Drustric. Nor do the folio numbers as given online approach anywhere near 373. (I tried 37A in case there was a subtle difference in numbering practice, but to no avail.)

Another potential problem with Drustric is that her father is apparently mentioned in at least one location as the king of the Britons or king of the northern Britons. Nora Chadwick notes that this might refer to the king of Strathclyde. Hector Chadwick, however, makes an argument for Trust, Drustic's father, as a Pictish king. Key to his argument is the fact that Trust or Drust or Drest is unattested as a British name, but well attested as a Pictish name and, in fact, the name of a Pictish king at the appropriate time in the 6^th century.

Chadwick, Hector Munro. Early Scotland: the Picts, the Scots & the Welsh of southern Scotland. 1949. Pg 12.

Chadwich, Nora K., Kathleen Hughes, Christopher Brooke, Kenneth Jackson, Studies in the Early British Church, 1958, pp. 61-2.

Pictish Sourcebook.

Finishing Some, Shelving Others

Between noise and chemicals from the construction going on in my house (across from my bedroom door no less), I've gone a little crazy this week. It's been hard to settle to anything and concentrate on it, even out of the house though that is worlds easier than in the house. I'd been trying to make progress on the Birka piece anyway. But I finally accepted yesterday that that was doomed. I went to a fighter practice to weave. I must have worked at least two hours, probably closer to three. I wove about five inches in total--that was net gain. I wove far more than that, but I was making mistakes so frequently that I did nearly half my weaving in unweaving mistakes. This isn't a pattern I understand fundamentally enough to reset the cards and go on, even if I were inclined to accept the mistakes.

I took it off the loom carefully and clipped it with a skirt hanger to either side of the pack of cards with enough tension to keep them falling all over the place. That way I can put it back on the loom and have another go at it once the construction is done. I'd woven up nearly half of it, about 4 feet or so.

I had far more success this week with wire work. The picture is of a bracelet I finished for a friend using the behind-two-rows technique. I'm getting better at the starting and ending part of the projects, the hardest part for me. I took in my stuff to a couple local beading and jewelry making stores, looking for clasps. The first place was less helpful but did have the clasp you see here. I was hoping to find something to fit over the often-less-pretty ends of the chain work, but alas, anything of that sort was far too tiny. Except two, one of which I also bought, but both came only in silver so I'll try it out on another project. For the copper I just had to make it as pretty as possible myself.

I think I may try either unworking the beginning which is behind-single-row and tends to stretch out more, or adding a few rows of single row at the end on future projects so that, either way, the piece's ends would be more symmetrical.

That aside, I'm very pleased with this latest piece. I was impressed at the second place that she recognized it as Viking wire knitting at once. She showed it around the other staff too. Fun stuff. They gave me some good ideas of other ways to end pieces and showed me some simple wire linking pieces that should be more sturdy than jump rings.

Pictish Name of the Day

For a number of years, since I decided on a Pictish persona in the SCA, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for Pictish women's names. These are generally assumed to be vanishingly hard to find. Most of the web sites I came across either claimed there were none known or one or, at most, two.

Over the years I have found quite a few names that are worthy of, at the very least, consideration in this topic. Many of them have some dubious or debatable aspect to them: whether the name is really Pictish, whether it is really a woman's name, whether it was the name of a real person and not created for a legendary context alone. Nevertheless, given the scarcity of evidence for female Pictish names, it seemed worthwhile to bring these names together with a consideration of both their evidence and their problems.

But although I've done quite a bit of research and compiled quite a few names with shorthand notes to myself, I've been dragging my heels actually writing it all out and putting it up for people to use.

So, I've decided to use this space to try to edit my notes on one name a day (I won't be faithful to this, but it's a good goal). If anyone wants to offer feedback on any of the names, or offer additional names or documentation, etc., please feel free!

So, to start us off, one of the most famous ones:

Eithne – the death of “Eithne ingen Cinadhon” is recorded in the Annals of Ulster in 778: “Eithni ingen Cinadhon moritur” (U778.11 in the Annals of Ulster, Electronic Texts Edition, University College Cork, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/G100001A/). Incidentally, this stands alone as the last entry for 778. Cinadhon is most likely Ciniod son of Uuredech, an 8^th century Pictish king. His death is noted, among other places, in the same annal at the beginning of 775: “Mors Cinadhon regis Pictorum” (U775.1) three years before Eithne's death.

Eithne is also a Gaelic name, one relatively popular in Ireland at the time and still in use today, the origin of the Anglicized name “Enya.” While this might make the name less distinctively Pictish, this is one of the best documented names for a Pictish woman we have.

Whether the name would have been recognizably an Irish borrowing or was in common use in Pictland as well is impossible to say. It's also entirely possible that the name would have been slightly different in Pictish and the Irish annalist altered it slightly to bring it in line with the familiar Eithne. See the alternate spelled versions of the Pictish king list for examples of such spelling shifts.