100 Things to do With a DeadAnimal

Tonight, I got to do one of my favourite things – I spent an hour with a bunch of youngsters, sharing my love of medieval things. It was at an overnight church camp on a medieval theme. My audience was to be mostly girls between the ages of 7 and 14, many from low-income families. I was doing the demo on my own.

My solution was to pack up my Viking age kit (a sea chest, a basket, a stool) with a variety of items to show everyday life of a Viking woman. Over the years, my demonstration kit has evolved to highlight my interest in cooking, carving, fishing, and textile arts. Coincidentally, this means that I have a variety of tools and items made from bone, antler, wood, horn, hair, leather, wool, linen, hemp, and a bit of silk. I have lots of plain things and a few colourful bits. Since I also have a big interest in reducing waste, and reminding kids of where our food comes from, this has become known as 100 things to do with a dead animal.

Back row – wooden cup, spindle with a soapstone whorl, onion-skin dyed wool on a wooden stool; hemp fishing net with a wooden shuttle; woven basket with spindles with pottery, soapstone, antler and (medieval) metal whorls, undyed white and black wool, wool dyed with madder, purple loosestrife, Queen Anne’s lace, woad-dyed silk, undyed linen, and a pair of wool combs; bone line winder with a hemp fishing line and metal hook.

Front row: hemp netted bag, soapstone oil lamp, bone pin, bone lucet with some madder-dyed wool luceted cord, two bone buckles (one on a leather belt, one on cloth), a raw bone so kids can see what I started with, horse and cows tails, goose feathers – some made into quill pens, naalbinding strainer made from horse and cow hair sitting in the wooden cup; wooden plate holding two horn sausage stuffers and a horn spoon, wooden bowl and wooden spoon.

To complete the demonstration, I had a linen dress and underdress, naalbinding socks and leather shoes, a necklace with glass beads and a bone cross, linen cap with linen braid ties and trim, a whetstone, metal snips, my wooden-handled eating knife, my bone case for holding metal needles, my antler carving knife, my bone comb and case, a bone ear spoon, and my metal toiletry kit (tweezers, earspoon, toothpick and mysterious object).

To finish off the evening, the kids were each allowed to try writing with the quill pens – a messy but fun experiment. I really enjoyed all the questions and interest in touching the different items, and demonstrating spinning and how long it would take to make a single shirt. Kids are always fascinated by bone and horn especially, and how many different materials could be used for items that are made of plastic today.

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New(ish) White Wolf Fian Project – a T Shaped Antler Salt Container

A little over a year ago, I spotted this object and I fell in love.

 You can read more about it here. T Shaped Antler Container.

I had to make one right away! So I challenged back into the Order of the White Wolf Fian, even though I didn’t need to challenge for almost two years. So here we are, a year later, and I am finally starting to work on it.

The first challenge was to find a piece of antler that would be a reasonable approximation of the original, which is 15 cm long. Eventually I found one that is a fair bit smaller to give the right proportions, but it will have to do. Today I sawed it to shape and now I am trying to clear the material from the core. This will be a challenge because the piece is too large for my little drill bits and I’m afraid to use a huge one in case I pierce the hard outer shell, or make it so thin that it cracks/punctures when I try to carve it. In addition, the smaller piece is not filed with the spongy core that is easy to remove, but rather hard antler that gums up the dril bit. So far, I have cleared some from each end, and I’ll keep twiddling away at it until I get brave enough to try a larger drill bit.

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