Honnora brought these pics she’d taken of me back in um, January. I think I’m learning a dance called Korobushka – which has lots of turning and clapping. This is a good shot of my crocheted cap. Thanks so much, Honnora – these are great. Continue reading Greet Dancing
Lately, whipup has been having a Swedish-fest. I’m not sorry. I have a real thing for Swedish style. Including IKEA. And apparently, the Swedes know how to do life enrichment. They have traditional craft schools. Look at this list of short courses offered at Saterglanten, with pictures of all the lovely skills (and I like that bodice that girl is wearing!). And I really want to try making woven fences and plant trellises like that for my garden! If it wasn’t for the cost, the language, the airtravel offsets…I’d be there. It’s summer camp for Greet’s. And it’s not the … Continue reading Swedish Craft Schools
Re: my query about what was historically grown where, I got this answer. Britton-Brown. It’s not helpful for me, because I garden in the Florida Panhandle (latitude: Cairo), and I’m not sure how helpful it’ll continue to be for the northern US due to climate changes and ecosystem shifts, but there it is. Continue reading Britton-Brown listings for Northern US and Canada
Fabrics.net Ebay Ditzy Prints Blue Sky Filters I learned the other day that sometimes linen is "cottonized." This means that the long linen fibers, too long to be processed with industrial cotton spinning machines, are chopped up into little bits so they’ll behave in the machinery like cotton, and then woven. I’m going to look more carefully at my linenwhatsit rust handkerchiefweight and try to tell if it’s 100% – or a blend. Continue reading Fiber ID Links from Honnora
A discussion about strewing herbs has been bouncing around the SCA-Herbalism Yahoo!Group. This nice summary went up today. Here in Ansteorra, I have found lavender to be particularly efficacious in repelling mosquitoes and no-see-ums. Pennyroyal* is a bit sharp on the nose, but is an excellent repellant (mostly fleas, but chiggers seem to dislike it as well). Blended with lavender, it’s not so bad, and the two work well together, fragrance-wise. Tansy is as sharp-scented as pennyroyal, and also helps repel insects like mosquitoes. I haven’t found an herb yet that repels flies, though. Mints will repel most creepy-crawly bugs, … Continue reading Strewing Herbs
I found a few books on Hungary at my local library – which frankly, isn’t that great. I’m amazed they were there, actually. Take a Trip to Hungary – This is part of a huge series, which clearly advocates saving your carbon offsets and reading cold-war versions of the world (c. 1986) from your top bunk. It’s a rather boring book that is meant for elementary school children, oh, maybe 2nd grade. Here’s a page view showing flax harvesting. (I know from other sources that part of those 2/3 used for cereals now used to be pastureland for herds, just … Continue reading Children’s books – 1
I helped Daan out with costumes for his drama students’ play. They put on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which was the kids’ choice. It’s about the Salem Witch Trials, but was actually written to spotlight the witch hunts for Communists, occurring in Congress, during the 1950’s. Every local 11th grader reads The Crucible in their English class. I did too, many moons ago. My part of the production was the making of the female caps – girl caps and woman caps, and the loan of my spinning wheel, and one each of my feast gear mugs and bowls. Here’s some … Continue reading Crucible caps
(Eek! I let the fun weekend slip by without checking my post lineup…sorry about that.) Honnora, Lavena’s sweet and wonderful laurel potter friend from Up North is visiting this week, and she and I had a little mutual Christmas. We’d worked out when she was here last to trade a red and blue chaperon for a flax wheel’s water reservoir. We did that – pics and gushing about pots later. (Honnora! I forgot to take your picture!) We had too much to talk about! We also traded books – I introduced her to BookMooch about ten days ago, knowing it … Continue reading Honnora’s visit
The local spinning guild (no website, sorry) had a meeting at a member’s house who has sheep. This is Cherry Baby, who is a Jacob’s Ewe. She costs about $300. I was told to expect stinky sheep, but honestly, they didn’t smell any worse than any other livestock. Gee whiz – moderns are wimpy. You start under the chin, and run the clippers in little strokes down the belly, and then up the sides to the back. It looks like unzippering a jacket. And here she is getting cleaned up. The fleece on the skirting table. It probably weighs 2 … Continue reading Sheep Shearing
I turned up to a "Buttons and Eyelets" class, only to discover it was at the end of a series all about garb construction. So I’ll share the handouts here with you, and show you what I did with buttons and eyelets. That’s the button – it’s completely fabric! Isn’t that neat? So I can embroider whatever I want on my buttons, and make them small if I like, etc. The eyelets are done by poking a sharpened stick (an awl) between the threads and redistributing them to make the hole, then fixing the hole’s size by doing blanket stitch … Continue reading GW: Garb Construction Class