This is going to be a bit of a brag sheet (isn't the entire blog?) but I need to record what we've been up to for the A&S officer come next report:

The resident Viking has been making a new bed.  Roughly based on a bed found on the Oseberg ship, but with original art by yours truly.  I've been looking at Jelling images, trying to invent a scroll-y sort of ram, which is his badge animal.  My bee will show up on the headboard and footboard, whereas the rams will be the posts.  We aren't going to have the bed fully decorated for Gulf Wars, but it will be functional.  I like to do projects like this, where an object is done to "just usable" for one event, and then improved upon for later events.

He's also been working on camp cooking.  We got a cast iron tripod from a friend, and the Viking altered a commercial firepit to hang on the tripot.  We think the weight will stabilize the tripod, as well as allow the castiron kettle mom gave me from my great-grandparents' farm to hang above the farm and boil water for things like pasta.  I want to rest a grate across one side of the tripod for skillet cooking.

I have been sewing, of course.  In addition to the coats, I made the Viking a new wool dress tunic, out of the wadmal I bought last summer at Sir's, along with the tent fabric and the felt for my embroidered bedcover.  I also made him a new fighting tunic, from a tightly woven thread-dyed tabby plaid he had, and sewed his own polyester trim to it.  Since taking up fighting myself, I've relaxed my expectations considerably on fighting gear – it's a costume, not historic clothing, because it takes a huge beating, that I don't think historic clothes would actually get in warfare…not least because the owner would be dead, or upgrading courtesy of war spoils!

I made the teenager a new early period tunic too, for which a friend kindly carved bone toggles, but because she has mismanaged her grades, she won't be wearing it at Gulf Wars, because she isn't accompanying us.  But it looks nice, and she may get the chance to wear it again this spring.  I made her a pieced hood, but she won't need it.  I'm also bringing another pieced hood to bribe a favorite potter…

I took a class at Convivium Collegialis on the Bronze Age Bog Coat, and made one to wear.  It's a fantastically efficient construction – a rectangle approximately 55" high of a 60" wide fabric makes a boxy coat for me, at 5'7", and it's about shin length.  Apparently it's not a reconstruction of an actual gravefind, as the Borum Eshoj garments are, but a conjecture based on cut skins?  I'm still foggy on this.  But it's a lovely garment to have, and I shall enjoy wearing it with my other Bronze Age stuff.

Speaking of, I have worked a little more on my string skirt, and will take it with me to work on while I chat at the War.  I don't know how much sit-around time I'll have; I mean to attend the Women Fighters Symposium, and do an all-day bookbinding class, and we are likely to leave on Saturday afternoon.  We arrive Wednesday evening, attend the Meridian Social late that night, and Thursday will be a mix of shopping and classes for me.  The Viking wants to take classes with me, but he also has quite the schedule of fighting, and I want to watch a bit of that, too.

Back to the sewing:  I've nearly finished a fourteenth century kirtle for Her Highness – there was a last-minute plea for help, and I couldn't keep my hand out of the air.  So now I know I can crank out a kirtle from someone else's pattern in essentially two full days – I've only been working on it since Monday, and there's still the lacing holes to do tomorrow, but I did the Viking's new fighting tunic yesterday, and worked on my own fighting tunic today.