Necklace

Back in November 2010, I posted about plans to make some necklaces. I then posted pictures of all I made except the nicest one. This is made using reproduction Roman and Merovingian glass beads, made by a lady from the East Kingdom of the SCA. I would give her credit if I knew who she was, but I bought the beads from someone in Montreal who was selling for her.

 

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Spinning

I spent several hours yesterday and today doing some spinning with drop spindles. The orangey wool is some of my hand-dyed from a few years ago. The lovely blue silk was dyed by Mistress Enid Aurelia of the Tin Isles, using woad, if I remember correctly. Spinning silk is a new challenge for me; it is much slipperier, without the curls of wool that help it stick together in a thread.

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Elderberry Mead

Back in August 2012, I started some elderberry mead. Tonight, I finally got around to bottling it. It seems okay, though I only tested the partial bottle that ended up with some of the yeasty crud in it. The others are a lovely clear colour; I would take a picture, but the old labels didn’t come off my wine bottles, so they look a little nasty. The big adventure was deciding that the wine corker was messed up, and disassembling it. Bad plan! Eventually, with the help of some clamps, I was able to get all the screws back into place. As a bonus, I figured out how the spring-loaded bottle holder works, so I no longer freak out that a bottle is permanently stuck in the corker.

I think I’ll celebrate by starting another batch.

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Pouch of scrap linen

I am fascinated by Merovingian period pouches, partly because there are so few remnants, and little information about how they might have worked. The most famous example is likely from Sutton Hoo: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/p/sutton_hoo_purse_lid.aspx. I have seen a few in German books on the Merovingians (no links, sorry), and Wulfhoedenas has a few examples on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/108333802621780/photos/pb.108333802621780.-2207520000.1394158593./489243757864114/?type=3&theater and https://www.facebook.com/108333802621780/photos/pb.108333802621780.-2207520000.1394159014./483556501766173/?type=3&theater. The red leather one with the firesteel has quite a different design from one I saw at the Archaeological museum in Paris; that one looked more like a very simple version of the Sutton Hoo example, with a firesteel.

Today’s project used up a scrap of coarse linen and yesterday’s vegetable ivory button. The button is stitched on with some yarn I spun, and the loop is a bit of lucet cord I happened to have in my mending box. I have not bothered to put belt loops on it for now. I may simply suspend it from my belt using the flap, or cut a pair of slits to run my belt through. I can’t find any more of that linen, and it seems silly to use finer cloth for belt loops.

 

 

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Finally! A thing!

It is a very small thing, and it isn’t quite finished, but it is a thing. It is a vegetable ivory button, patterned after the walrus ivory button found in Greenland from the later Viking period. I had been making them for a cotehardie, but got bogged down several years ago. I have promised myself to do at least one SCA thing a month, and at the end of February I was desperate, so I pulled out one of the rough-cut blanks and started working it. The button will go on a little pouch I made from a scrap of linen, with a loop made either from leather or a luceted cord.

Now that I have broken that crafter’s block, I have finally started to sew up a hood that has been sitting in my mending box since last summer, and I agreed today to help plan a small feast this fall.

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