creative reflections

Our barony voted us in as baron and baroness.   The barony jokingly calls people in that position (that is, voted in, but not yet invested) Nextcellencies.   We had the benefit of time to follow around the baron and baroness (Their Excellencies) to understand better how things are done, a really nice opportunity (big thanks to our predecessors!).   Meanwhile we had to start thinking about some things, like tokens to give out at our investiture.    A variety of media came to mind and ultimately we decided pewter coins would be nice.   We’d not worked in pewter before so my other half did what he does so well--dove in, research mode activated, and a snowstorm of ideas started coming together.   We decided on images, got help from a friend who’s worked with metals, starting talking through this with her, had several meetings, and made multiple attempts at crafting coins in different ways.   Finally, we settled on pouring molten pewter (it has a fairl...

 Took soooo long, but it's done .

Embroidered this rose for a special coat that was being made for a friend, one of ~100 roses that many different people made.   They were all about the same size/shape, but each rose was just a bit different, nice!   Delighted to be able to participate.   Wasn’t sure how it would go, but impressed myself.   And the coat itself is AMAZING!  Kudos to all who made this come together!  So very grateful for friends’ guidance and encouragement.

Tried using up thick yarns I was running out of to make a hat...waste not, right?  Started with grey, not much, so the idea was a border/bit of decoration.  Then rust, a nice color, could add a circle of grey at the top to bookend it.  Then ran out of rust.  Wait, didn't I have more?  Scramble, dig, make a mess, ugh!  OK, fine, no more rust, stick with the plan--finish with grey.  Ack!  No grey at all? Scramble, dig, make a mess....  Oh!  :D Some of the rust.  Nope, not the same rust.  Sigh.  Plan C.  Another color, same thickness--gold?  No, too bright.  Forest green?  No, too dark.  Dig, dig, dig.  Ah, a more subtle orange.  Finish with....ran out?  What?!  Dig, dig, dig.  Was sure I....  Crap.  Where was that...  Fume.  Ah,  a scrap.  Not much, but gets me closer...  Dig, dig, dig.  What's this?  Part of a failed started proje...

  Art-a-fact This small, whimsical light green/beige/gold pouch was a first attempt at weaving in the SCA.   And, yes, a fun, energizing moment of “Ooh—I made a thing!”   Very little idea of what I was doing.   Boldly made an attempt at making a small thing, fighting the innate desire for instant perfection and the built in avoidance of failure.   Thanks Web, for providing access to people who post to teach what they learn!   Had no loom so made a single-use cardboard one (cut up to release the object d’art).   The colors were what was available at hand in modern, inexpensive fibers (all I’d used at that point in attempts at knitting).   Read I needed strong fibers for the warp that wouldn’t break so had some strong black thread I figured made sense to use.   Didn’t consider these would be visible later…live and learn.   Threw in some loose dangly bits to give it some playfulness and joy, not considering medieval samples.   Weavi...

In storage our group had an unfinished loaner garb skirt that needed the roughly cut bottom finished.  Having success with the pants and buttonholes I thought I'd give it a try.  Trimmed it to make the curve the same all around, pinned it up (multiple times because it wasn't quite right at times and the curves led to weird sewing), and then to the work of sewing it.  It's a wide skirt that just seemed to keep going and going.  My sewing machine and I don't always agree, and we had some frustrating moments, but I kept at it.  Doing a thing, making mistakes, undoing them when needed and trying again seems natural to some, but it's a bit of an uphill slog for me.  Every little victory helps me learn to do it better next time.    

Was trying to finish sewing some loaner garb someone else had started that needed to flexible enough to fit a variety of people.  Not a lot of experience so figured a string though them should work to hold them up.  Sewed the waist so it had an area for a long shoelace, then with a nalbinding needle pushed threads aside to create 2 circular openings in the fabric and sewed these into a couple buttonholes.  Pleasanstly surprised myself.  :)

Public Service Announcement: Multitasking is NOT A THING.  Evidence below.  That is all. Trying to fingerloop braid + spin + watch TV + talk to someone = oh NO!

Bought a small snowflake fabric remnant a while ago.  Figured I'd make some largesse bags with it for our local barony (Concordia of the Snows) last year.  Made some finger loop braided matching cords.  Had another remnant and figured I could do the same, so voila!  Look ma, just thought it and did it, no pattern!  It's like magic....                       

Started some nalbinding things, a few hats.  Finished these.  

Last year I found an interesting ball of yarn with lots of pretty color changes I had to buy.  Wasn't sure what for.  At Christmas I figured I'd nalbind a hat in Dalarna stitch, a new stitch for me.  It had a more open weave, not too hot and good for a dad who's been cold in the house.  Started working on it riding in the car one day, but had a skein that needed to become a ball.  No good place in a car to do that and only my hands to use so I had to use the gear shift lever (fortunately, an automatic car so not overly intrusive to the awesome husband driver).  Worked pretty well.  Use what you have!  The result was a nice fade from one color to another.                   

There was a call for largess & needle books last fall.  Time to try something new.  Not much prior experience with embroidery (& unsatisfying experience at that), but friends say to do it well requires practice.  I'm fairly happy with what happened.            

Decided to try nalbinding a sock.  Found a pattern I liked where the sock is a long tube with a space left for a heel to be added in (which I did in brown so it was easy to see), which actually makes sense to me.  I always wear the heel out & if you try to repair it the bumps from the repair are irritating.  This way when it wears out, you simply remove the section and nalbind a new heel in.  Brilliant!  This makes so much more sense to me than knitting sock patterns. I started, keeping in mind people say to work the second sock of a pair, concurrently, that it’s too easy to forget what you did with the first sock and you may never get around to finishing the second.  So toe first, then second toe, the stretch along the length of the foot 1 and 2, heel hole and up 1 and 2, heel 1 and 2.  Done.  That was great!  But following instructions from online, these came out somewhat larger than I’d expected.  Well, there’s always washing and ...

This is what happens when your laurel and pelican gang up on you.  “Oh, so you wanna do that?  Then do this.”  And that’s kind of where this story picks up.  “Picks up” because some time ago I’d won a Peter the Red handmade inkel loom which he then put my arms on (so it was clearly mine, for all to see).  Stunned, proud owner of a beautiful handmade wood thing (I love wood & he’s a skilled wood worker!), I knew nothing about inkel-ing.  Fast forward to being told instead of wearing two belts, a green and a yellow, I needed to make a belt incorporating both—any way I wanted.  Of course that left a whole universe of possibilities and me suspended in limbo betwixt them all. Finally my sensibilities were drawn to the beautiful wood and I hit the internet for what to do next.  I searched, considered, reconsidered, came up with a pattern, got supplies, and took a deep breath.  My loom isn’t exactly like other looms I saw so had to make some gue...

(Actually finished sometime early 2022-just getting to adding here)  Have wanted to make a towel for my SCA medieval husband to have when he's out doing and teaching archery in the hot sun to wipe his brow, something to compliment his outfit.  Bought yarn for this in the long-ago before-time.  Visions.  Life is about having a vision and moving forward to make it happen, right?  With everything else going on, though, I was at a point where I was thinking buying one would be faster and better.     One thing that's struck me repeatedly is how a woven fabric is a metaphor for people or groups--bringing different strands of different colors and textures together to make something else entirely from the constituent parts, an interesting, beautiful whole piece the individual parts didn't even imagine.  C ombining these multiple different lengths and colors of individual strings to make something useful of them, something completely different from th...

Adventures in weaving 102.  "I have all this extra random yarn from a friend," she said, "and you wanna learn to weave ,so make a throw blanket." "So make a throw...." "You can do this," I kept reassuring myself.  It took forever because I warped with the reed upside down and when I realized it couldn't bring myself to redo all that warping again to set it right, so it took WAY longer than I'd hoped, being more difficult to handle.  Note to self: write on the reed which side is up.  Warped with 2 different colors to see how that would look.  I started weaving with 2 colors and realized I might need another color for visual interest.  So Ms Practical chose a mid-tone between the white and darker blue.  Whiel you're weaving you roll up the part you've completed so didn't see the effect until the end.  I'd choose a different color next time to add more depth.  Weaving white and blue visually just  became a lighter blue, so ad...