Last night I attended the shire sewing circle at Astrids place. There was six of us sitting around drinking tea and doing various textile projects or discussing upcoming woodworking plans in the shire. I started another tablet weaving project. Nothing new, I’m doing this patterns again. Their Royal Highnesses were pleased with their gifts so I decided to do some more garters. It’s an easy pattern to weave so I’m already planning my next project. It’s going to be something from the new books I got the other day.

Oh, the Herjolfsnäs gown is progressing as well. The toile fits nicely so now I need to add som sleeves to finalize the pattern.

Last week I order two tablet weaving books from Nancy Spies at Arelate Studio. They arrived today!

Brocades all the way!

I have a sudden urge to do brocaded tablet weaving with silk and (albeit fake) gold thread! Now! I don’t have time to go to work… Must weave now…

Yummy patterns by 16th century german nun Anna Neuper!

In progress.

This weekend I started to work on the toile for the Herjolfsnäs gown. I used cheap cotton and some good old geometry and made the parts of rectangles, triangles and trapezoids. The archeologists has concluded that the north side of the church where most of the gowns were found in Herjolfsnäs was where the poorer people were buried. That is also why they are wrapped in clothes instead of using  wooden coffins. Looking at the pictures of the gowns and knowing this makes me think that the gowns were probably constructed using a method that saves as much fabric as possible. Hence the geometry.

Things are working out excellent so far. Right now I’m sewing the toile together so that I can try it on with out a million pins in it. I’m slightly concerned that it will be to tight, but that can easily be adjusted.

The pattern is starting to look something like this pattern. I’ll be using a lovely brown wool from my stash and I’m planning to decorate it with an old tablet woven band that has been laying around far to long.

I’m slowly starting my Herjolfsnäs-gown project. I’ve been doing lots of reading (in Danish!) in Else Östergårds book Som syet til jorden (Woven into earth) as well as searching the web.

Reading list:

• Cotehardies from Greenland Gowns
• A comparative study of extant garments relevant to East Denmark in the mid-to-late 14th Century
• The Ten-Gore Dress: Cotehardies from Herjolfsnes
• Woven into Earth by Else Östergård

On a side note, David Brown Book Co takes pre-orders for a new book by Östergård (with cowriters Anna Norgard and Lilli Fransen) called Medieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns. Looks interesting as is due to be published in December 2009.

I want to start a new tablet weaving project but inspiration seems to have left me. Do you have any tips for tablet weaving I can do with my dyed wool yarns?

I have totally forgotten to tell you about the dyeing I did in August. When everyone else had a wonderful time at Visby Medieval Week we decided it was time for some more dyeing. This time we went to Sigrid and Egil and the main focus was indigo and madder.

Dyed wool and silk.

Sigrid had prepared the indigo reduction but made a slight miscalculation so instead of dark blues we got the above result. It was still very pretty! The red yarn is dyed with madder, most of them are over dyed with yarns we dyed in July that didn’t turn out with a useable colour. We also hade some yellow wool from the birch leave dyeing that we over dyed with indigo. Yellow + blue = very pretty greens!

Dyeing with indigo is very special since the indigo needs to be combined with oxygen for the yarn to turn blue. You may then put it down in the dye bath again and take it up to get a more intense colour.

Dyeing silk with indigo. See how the yarn becomes more and more blue as the indigo is combined with oxygen.

I’m eager to try more indigo dyeing, especially with the silk. The silk I just during the dyeing was purchased from Solsilke and it will be interesting to see how well it works with tablet weaving. I bought two different types of thickness, one for weaving and one for embroidery.

Pretty blues.

I just got home from our shire meeting were we off loaded the last stuff from the event. It was a great weekend even though I was coughing quite a bit. I tried to focus on doing the dishes in the kitchen instead of cooking and it worked out fine.

Met a lot of friends and had a good time and reflected over the fact that this is the first time in six years that I was neither the head cook or the event steward – freaky but very relaxing!

After a long break from SCA (mainly focusing in my own crafts and the shire) I’m really looking forward to going to events again. Next time will be Luciafesten in Styringheim in December.

Elsa made my day when she gave me her Crafty Challenge. She had written a song which she preformed for me and all the others during the feast. She totally surprised me and I was very flattered of all the nice things she sung about me!

I delivered my gifts to the Prince and Princess of Nordmark. It was four tablet woven silk garters that they can use as tokens for the new members of the Order of the Golden Ribbon. They were very pleased and I was happy to se two of the garters finding new owners during court. I promised the Princess that I’ll weave more and hopefully there will be a few ready in December so that I can bring them with me to Luciafesten.

Silk garters for the Order of the Golden Ribbon

I uploaded the documentation as well as another picture in the weaving section.

I’m almost finished with my striped tablet woven ribbon. Very shiny and pretty!

Almost finished silk ribbon.

Came home from work today (first day after summer vacation) and the mailman had brought me a package! It was a lovely Crafty Challenge gift from Racaire – a very cute needle roll. Thank you Racaire!

Needle roll from Racaire

On another note, a couple of weeks ago I gave Dis her Crafty Challenge gift. It’s was my latest tablet woven band (TWE No 3). She promised me pictures when she has put it to use (probably on her viking garb).

I started a new weaving project. This time it’s inspired of a finding in the Textiles and Clothings book from MoL. It’s a simple striped band with a little twist. The tablets are threaded in groups of three, first S then Z then S again and so on. It gives the band a striped effect along the band as well. I’ve previously woven this pattern for a belt for myself. This time I choose a thinner silk and used more tablets so the width of the band is 14 mm.

Striped band in silk.