which is the tentative title for the ambitious demo display I seem to be in the middle of working up.

As usual, I’m trying to situate what I do in a larger context, so it has MEANING.  I find I am turned on by notions of independence and accountability.   So the idea of knowing where your stuff comes from is very attractive to me – it seems more responsible than the typical ‘buy it from a store and let the big guys worry about it’ modern mentality.

Of course, it’s a lot more work.  I am interested in so many things that I can follow through the SCA, but the fiber aspect seems to be most elemental for me.  Even more than food; which I intend on picking up to a similar intensity in good time.  For food I have found a modern solution that I’m happy with – I’m learning how to grow my own, and buy the rest locally, and that progresses at the garden’s pace.

But fiber I can hurry along and work on while the garden grows.  Here’s the demo plan:

Useable fiber creation has five steps:

1. Obtain fiber.  I insist on local sources for two reasons: it’s environmentally sustainable, so peasants could have done the same for a long time; and it’s local, so it’s affordable.  Lords can afford to exhaust fields and import exotics – peasants can’t.  The local wool, for south Meridies, comes in two flavors, apparently – Gulf Coast sheep, a variety that evolved from the sheep left here by the Spanish; and alpaca, brought here as part of a herding fad in the ’90s.  Plant fibers are cotton and whatever I can get to grow in my yard.  Hopefully this will also be pina (pineapple) and flax.  Pina is supposed to be very like flax.
2. Process fiber to ready it for spinning.  This means extracting the actual strands and aligning them in parallel.  Usually some form of carding.
3. Adding color.  For me, plant-based dyes – since cochineal is shipped from far away = exotic = expensive = non-peasant.
4. Spinning – Twisting fiber into threads and yarns.
5. Plying and Weaving – Plying fiber into knitting yarn, or rope; or weaving it into straps and cloth.

I would like to have a demo space with each of these steps shown and in progress, with back-up visual material as needed to get across the following precepts:

1. People worked hard to get their clothes, and even the simplest clothes had a lot of value.
2. People used what they had around them in wonderful and useful ways.
3. It’s not just the fine ladies and knights who are worth admiring; peasants and craftsmen knew things that were Useful, and we shouldn’t let ourselves forget Useful Things.
4. Some of these Useful Things might be better than the way Modern Mundanes typically live – and should be reconsidered.

So there’s the Strategy – on to Tactics, tomorrow!