Adelheid in the SCA

Just back from a wonderful weekend of SCAdian adventures, this time a record breaking Tir Righ February Investiture. Yesterday morning I had some time to talk garb with someone I hold in high esteem. Now I have plans, and a road map to get to the next section. She reached out with an incredible short video of a gentleman making a couple of folds, a couple cuts, and boom! There's a cape/gollar. Really cute. We had a short chat about the garment, and she said that in Marion McNealy and Katherine Barich's's book "Drei Schnitterbücher", there is a pattern for a short shaube/ long müzl/gollar type garment. It is really a "schaublein", or little schaube. I pulled out the book and wanted to take my day off to give it a try. First, let's make the muslin pretty with some ironing: Then I did some math. I'm hoping to use this as a learning experience for when I want to make historical patterns work in a future project: First piece wa

I have a proto sister! This is an SCA thing. In order to welcome her into the fold, I decided to make her a gift. We had just traveled to a class based event, where I had the chance to talk as many things språng in about 55 minutes with my teacher. During this time, she showed me a pouch that she made. What a nice gift for proto-sis. I am seeing some progress. Warping is coming easier, manipulating threads more naturally, and I successfully chained across the middle. I feel like an advanced beginner! Here's the piece on the loom. I love how things look on the loom. This is again 1 under 3, a simple interlink. But with the colour warp, the white row looks spectacular. It was good to finally succeed with the chaining. It's not that it's difficult to do, but after just tying warps in the middle of stich patterns, it's nice to work on some finishing. Of course I forgot to take a photo of the final product, which I call a Halima pouch, but it looked pretty good.

The newest technique I have learned is the interlink 1 under 3 technique, and I'm a believer. It's all the simplicity of interlinking with a little more snug in the fabric. I did up some test warps, and am slightly improving with regard to using sticks/needles for when the finger space gets too small. The instructor said it was time to make a hat! I made a terrible hat, and although I could save it with a nalbound brim, I thought no. No! The big mistake I made was in doing too many warps and then, because they were all bunched up, I couldn't see the stands and of course there was an error in the foundation row. There's just no saving that, especially when the upside of this technique is not requiring any fussing for finishing the loops. From the top down - beret style - I'm happy with that. It's not bad, but I can do better. Here's a good photo of 1 under 3.

I recently got a språng frame, which has made it easier to throw on simple test warps. This has meant it's easier to practice new techniques, such as the 2-2 interlace. So it's time to make my second project. This time, a very achievable pouch. I also practiced, successfully, weaving very close to the middle by using needles. You can see where I missed one, but that was fixed when I used a thread to gather it. My thumb is at the bottom of the center row, so I'm pretty pleased with the result. It also marks the misplaced thread. I gathered the bottom, and then put another thread through the loops like a drawstring.  Final step was to sew up the sides with the string I used to gather the middle with. And voila! My first respectable pouch.

I practiced a new-to-me technique yesterday called 2-2 interlace. The resulting fabric resembles woven twill. I used a couple contrasting colours to help me visualize the technique and what is happening to the threads. Here's the result: Off the frame, no backlight: Off the frame, with backlight: Zooming in, you can see that each thread is crossing two, creating that twill-like structure. I'm also practicing using needles for the last couple of difficult rows, and tonight will make a shorter, wider warp and make my first little bag.

I recently came across the Murerplan, a very beautiful map of the city of Zurich in 1576. Although Adelheid is just slightly before this time, it still gives an amazing resource to see into her world. You can view the wikipedia article and see the map by clicking this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murerplan One of the interesting things Neil and I saw were the series of mills on the Limmat river. Not all were annotated, but the papermills on the far left hand side were. This led into one of the wonderful rabbitholes the SCA is known for. By the end of the evening, we had learned that papermaking was established in Europe from the late 1400s, absolutely on the heels of the Gutenberg bible. We found a Swiss museum in Basel that has preserved the art of papermaking, which was from linen fabric. There was a 4 part series in book making in Switzerland we read, and enjoyed many videos.  Today, I found this article which describes the process, which is now on the "to-do"