SCA: Yet Another Hedeby/Birka Bag

You know how much I love these things. This one is all made from scraps - gray linen from a pair of pants I recently made, wooden slats from an old furniture project for the handles, a bit of red silk ribbon and cotton weaving thread from my stash. 

This one is a rectangle like my others, though I gave this one a box bottom so I’d have more space inside. The bag is lined in the same gray linen, and the whole thing is hand sewn. I used the Leens hat herringbone stitch on the seams and the box bottom for a bit of extra decoration. 

 

I made the blue woven band on the front of the bag, and the red and navy strap. The strap is a new pattern for me, and I love it. I used the same pattern for a belt recently, too. 

One of my favorite parts about this bag, though, is the handles - or, rather, how I made them. A friend recently picked up a scroll saw for me on her neighborhood online swap group - I was SO thrilled! A pair of these handles (this is the “sawtooth” Birka-style handle) would normally take me several days to make with hand tools, but with the scroll saw I got these done in AN HOUR. I can’t wait to make more of these things! 

SCA: Oseberg Loom: An Experiment

What Is It?

Photo from the Oseberg Textile book (Nockert 2006, p. 144).

The Oseberg loom is a wooden loom found in the Oseberg ship burial (Tonsberg, Norway, excavated in 1905, dating from the 9th century).  It was partially destroyed by the weight of the ground above it, but a  woven band and weaving tablets were still attached to it.  The loom consisted of a base, two upright sides, and a crossbeam in the center for support; the whole thing measured about 2 meters wide by about a meter high and is made of beech wood.  

I've found LOTS of information online about the woven bands that were found at Oseberg; but very little information about the loom itself - mostly what I've found are people's recreations of the loom in various sizes (which I found very helpful for construction ideas, but not documentable research). 

 

How I Built It

I decided in late January that I wanted to build myself a smallish version of the Oseberg loom as an experiment -  just to see if I could do it, and to see how weaving on an actual period loom would be (I normally use an inkle loom, which was invented in I believe the 1700s). 

 I used only scrap wood I had laying around in my shop for this, because I wanted to get this done on the cheap.  The original Oseberg ship burial loom is made of birch; mine is made of pine 1x2" furring strips. Each piece that I had on hand was about 3.5' long, which was the perfect size for this project. 

(ignore the table legs, that's a different project)

My loom is approximately 3' wide and about 18" high.  It's a little big for a "tabletop"loom - but I planned to use this on my low coffee table in my living room at home, and it's exactly the right size and height to work with there while sitting on the couch.  

The uprights are pegged into the holes in the base with dowels that are glued into the uprights, but can be removed from the base. The crossbar in the middle of the loom is also pegged in place in the same way - glued in the crossbar but not into the sides.  The whole thing breaks down into 3 sticks and the base/foot piece for travel and storage. 

The base is also made of a 1x2" furring strip, with crossbars attached to the ends to stabilize the loom and stand it up.  The crossbars are pegged in place permanently.  

How the Heck Do You Warp This Thing??

Honestly, I went into this with zero idea how to warp this loom.  I'd seen pictures of recreations of this loom with weaving already on them, but never found any description of how it was accomplished, so I just decided to wing it and see how it worked.  After all, this IS an experiment, right?  

welcome to my dining room

I'd seen two ways of warping this loom online: one, where the length of the thread is wrapped around the post and the finished part of the woven band was wrapped around the other post, with the weaving happening in between;  or two, where the length of the thread was wrapped around the whole loom from one post to the other, and tied together like you would do on an inkle loom.  I decided to try the second method: 

Weaving on this loom is…interesting. I had intended to use this loom on my coffee table, sitting next to it, but I have to twist my back so much to weave that it hurts me (I have a bad back).  The next thing I tried was putting it on my dining table and standing next to it, which worked great - except that the loom is so lightweight that it walks around while I’m trying to weave, so I had to clamp it to the table top to get it to stay still. Once I did that, though, weaving was super easy, and fast.  

Advancing the warp is easy enough: I achieved proper tension by tying the lower warp to the crossbar, so to move the weaving I just untied it, shifted the warp around, and then re-tied it. 

The A&S Display

This project was intended from the beginning to be an A&S entry at the Bjornsborg "Battle of the Beasts" event this past weekend.  Here's what my display ended up looking like: 

The entry consists of the loom with weaving in progress already on it that I could demo for people who wanted to see it in action (of which there were actually quite a few!), my documentation, a page of photos showing the process of building the loom and some related things (patterns, examples of woven goods), a couple of woven pieces to show what you can do with a loom like this, some threads I've used to weave with, and some tools like shuttles, cards, and period-replica scissors.  

I warped up my inkle loom with a new project before I went to the event, and sat nearby and sewed for most of the day so that I would (a) have something to occupy me at the event since I wasn't doing anything else (I didn't have any "jobs" this time around and I don't fight or compete in any of the other activities that were going on) and (b) so that I would be available to answer questions and demo the Oseberg loom for people, which was a lot of fun. 

I got a lot of really great feedback on my project and my documentation.  I didn't win, but I'm told I was one of the finalists, which pleases me.  The best part, though, was that I got to sit down and chat with a couple of my favorite Laurels about the project and about weaving in general, and I have lots of great ideas for warping up the Oseberg loom and some adjustments to my documentation which will make it even better for the next time I enter this project (which might be in March, not sure yet).  I'm excited about trying out a new method of warping this loom - I need to finish the weave that's on it now and figure out what pattern and colors to use for the next round.  

More about this project in the next couple of weeks, I hope!  

SCA: Table For Sprezzatura

I refinished a table! 

Earlier this year, I had grand ideas about building some sort of Medieval-ish wooden table for my household's camp.  Until now, we have used a plastic folding table in the center of our pavilion for people to gather around and eat and hang out; but I wanted to make something nicer and somewhat period-ish. Unfortunately, budget and lumber prices kept me from starting the project I had in mind. 

But then, at the beginning of August, I found this little wooden table for free on the curb in my neighborhood: 

It's in great shape construction-wise, a perfect size for our camp (48" x 32", a little shorter than our plastic table, but wider), and the design, though a bit generically Pottery Barn-farmhouse-y, is sort of vaguely Medieval in style and resembles many trestle tables I've seen in artwork from the 1300-1400s, so I think it works.  Ten-foot rule, right? Or as my friend Kate says, it'll look just fine when seen from a galloping horse.    

The only problem with it was that the previous owner (?) stained it with black stain...and they did a horrible job of it. The stain was applied unevenly and not wiped off in between coats, so there are visible brush marks and places where the brush marks overlap, and even areas where it's obvious the stain pooled on the wood and just congealed there.  Also, they sanded off the original finish before staining it, and the sanding was done with a sandpaper that was so heavy and coarse that it marred the wood in places, and half the sanding marks are against the grain.  Ugh! 

Left: uneven and blotchy stain; 
right: sanding and brush marks against the grain

Enter: two cans of Easy Off oven cleaner.  

That's right, oven cleaner.  I saw this trick on Instagram, and then read some blogs about the process and watched some videos, and then tried it out on this table.  You basically spray the entire piece down with oven cleaner, let it sit for about half an hour, scrub it down thoroughly with soap and water, and then hose it off with water.  (The soap and water neutralize the cleaner chemicals so that you're not washing anything harmful into your yard, just dirty water).  Et voila: most of the stain came right off!  

this was after the first treatment; after the 
second pass it came almost completely clean! 

 

The rest of it came off pretty easily with the sander, and I was able to smooth out the rough sanding marks the previous DIYer left behind.  After it was all sanded, I cleaned off the entire piece and coated it with wood conditioner to prep the wood for staining.  

While the black stain that was originally on the table was nice, I wanted something lighter and warmer.  I have an "espresso" stain that is way too dark, and a "Jacobean" that is a nice dark brown but it's got weird green undertones.  I love my walnut stain, but I wanted darker, so I ended up putting two coats of the walnut on the wood, and it came out really nicely, I think: 

After the staining was complete, I coated the whole table in polyurethane to protect the finish.  

Tada!  New table.  The whole project took me about a month and a half, working on weekend mornings before it got too hot outside, and a little bit here and there during the week in my spare time. 

always wear your PPEs, people. 

Regency-Adjacent: New Jewelry Box Just For Fun

Here's a little wooden jewelry box I just finished making, to house my Regency jewelry: 

It started life as a little $9 blank box from Michael's.  I stained it (Minxwax's "Special Walnut" and "Dark Walnut"), and then painted the insides, and painted the little vine/leaf design on the top and drawer front with gold leafing paint. 

The lid is clear (plexiglass), and shows all the little square compartments inside, so you can show off your nice pieces and the inside of the box, so I wanted a color that would pop against the golds and blues and corals of my jewelry.  

This, by the way, has no basis whatsoever in actual history - I've seen exactly *one* Regency-era jewelry box to date (it was green on the inside), but other than that, I have no idea how a real Regency-era jewelry box would have looked.  From what I know about furniture and accessories in the Regency, natural wood tones were a thing, as well as hand-painted details, so I went with that...but I have no research to point to for this project, I just wanted to make something pretty.   

SCA: A Woven Hedeby Bag

 Had enough Hedeby bags yet?  Me, either.  Here's one that's a bit different: 

This one is woven of yarn.  I saw one made of naalbinding a couple of months ago, and decided I needed one.  I do not naalbind - I've tried multiple times, but I just CANNOT get the trick of it.  It's infuriating.  

I do, however, crochet.  After looking into the various naalbinding stitches that have been identified from extant finds, I found that a herringbone/chevron crochet stitch (a modified half-double stitch) approximates the Mammen stitch from Finland fairly well - you can find more info about that stitch, and lots of other info about naalbinding here: https://www.en.neulakintaat.fi/30

Mammen stitch example pic from  https://www.en.neulakintaat.fi/30

The crochet herringbone stitch was a bit tricky to learn; I learned from watching this YouTube video.  Here's a closeup of what my herringbone stitch looks like, for comparison to the above picture of naalbinding.  It's very similar, I think enough to pass: 

crochet herringbone stitch

I made a rectangle of about 20", and folded it in half and sewed the sides closed to make a square-ish bag about 9.5-10".  (I used a single chain stitch on the inside/wrong side to sew up the sides from the inside, then turned it right-side out).

The bag was made from bright green acrylic yarn (Caron Simply Soft in "Pistachio"), because that's what I had on hand at the time I decided to try this project.  After the basic rectangle was made, I over-dyed the whole thing with a dark blue Rit dye made for synthetic materials, because the original green was a bit too loud and bright for me.  The resulting color is a darker, more muted green, and I really like it.  

I did not line the bag with fabric or anything, because the weave of the herringbone stitch was so thick and close that I didn't feel it needed a lining.  

I made the handles out of a very thin scrap oak plank.  This time, rather than a curvy Hedeby design, I used the pointy Birka handle design - because I wanted something a bit different, but also because I thought the zigzag shape of the handles would look neat with the zigzag-looking herringbone stitch.   After cutting, shaping, and sanding, I finished the handles by applying a thin dark brown Minwax stain ("Special Walnut") and a coat of Polycrylic to seal the handles.  

I am NOT happy with the handles at all.  I have so far cut out my handles with my jigsaw, but this oak plank was too thin to support the stress of being worked with such a heavy tool, so I used only hand tools - namely, an old, rusted, dull coping saw and hacksaw, neither of which did a good job.  I messed up cutting one end of one handle so badly that I had to cut the other handle to match it so the error wouldn't be quite as obvious, but this meant I didn't have room on the handles to drill holes for a carrying strap.  So we'll call this my Hedeby Clutch, LOL.  

Why a woven yarn bag?  Why not? No actual bags like this have survived; all we have are the wooden handles, and contemporary/earlier Sami bags of a similar design to guide our guesses as to what the bags  may have looked like.  They could have been fabric, yarn, leather, who knows?  This was just a fun little experiment for me.  

Mistakes in the handles aside, I like the way this project came out overall, and I'll definitely do it again.  Coronation is this weekend; now I have a new thing to show my friends when I go.  :) 

SCA: A Bag and A Hood, and the Last of the Herringbone Linen

 After the blue herringbone Hedeby bag, I still had some of that herringbone linen left over, and I had a set of walnut bag handles already made, so I decided to make one last Hedeby bag, and another Jorvik hood to go with it: 

This time I dyed the fabric a rich dark green. I dyed the pieces separately; the bag came out UNBELIEVABLY  DARK, but the color is gorgeous. The hood is a bit more believable.   

The bag is lined with linen I dyed the same color, and includes a phone pocket on the inside. Fabric straps attach the bag to the handles, which are the walnut handles I took off another bag which I didn’t like. The carrying strap is a three-strand braid (doubled) of some charcoal gray acrylic yarn I had in my stash. 

The hood is French seamed up the back and top, like the other ones I made recently; the front is cut on the selvage edge this time, the way the extant Jorvik hood was done.  The ties are just tubes of the same fabric.  I didn’t put a sit in the back of this one, honestly I just forgot because I was going too fast. 

So that’s all for the herringbone linen (or is it?) I got a lot of mileage out of that stuff.  I forget what the original yardage was, but from the piece I bought in January, I got: 

• a blue apron dress
• a gray (now dyed teal) shawl
• a blue Hedeby bag
• a green Hedeby bag 
• a Jorvik hood 

I'm already wishing I had more.  I'd love to find some diamond-twill linen to work with next; maybe I'll keep my eyes open for it the next time I can go to Gulf Wars.  

SCA: The 2,000th Hedeby Bag

 Just kidding, I only have four of them at this point.  I just feels like a lot, you know?  I have more Hedeby bags than I have days in a standard weekend event.  And I'm about to make a new one: 

Remember the herringbone linen? I still had some scraps left over, and so I decided to make a new Hedeby bag with it.  I actually have enough for two bags, but I'm focusing on this one for the moment, while I decide what to do with the second.  

I dyed the fabric this deep blue color (Rit's "evening blue" with a touch of "teal" to warm up the color a bit).  The lining fabric is linen, the last of the "agave" color from Fabric-Store.com, left over from a previous project.  

This time I made the handles from pine. I recently acquired a large bundle of small pieces of thin oak planks from a friend, which included ONE pine plank that just happened to be thick enough for these handles, and long enough to cut both from the same piece. As always, I cut the basic shape out with my jigsaw, and fine-tuned the shape with my drill, sandpaper and chisels.  I originally stained them with a dark walnut color, but it didn't take well on the soft pine, so I sanded it off and stained them instead with an ebony stain, and it came out much better.  

Instead of attaching ribbon or decorative fabric, this time I decided to sew on a strip of wool tablet-woven trim in the Oseberg design (same stuff I used on my blue herringbone apron dress, purchased from Etsy).  I used the remainder of the trim as a carrying strap. I also couched a length of teal acrylic yarn around the edges of the bag, using navy blue embroidery floss as thread - the yarn and floss coordinate with the colors of the trim pretty well, I think.  

I opted for fabric straps to attach the bag to the handles this time, instead of sewing the bag onto the handles with embroidery floss as I've done in the past.  I've always liked the look of fabric straps, and it was certainly faster and easier than the embroidery floss method.  At first I attached the straps to the outsides of the bag, but given the color of the linen, that looked too much like a blue jeans patch pocket, and so I took the top of the bag apart, put the straps inside, and closed it up again.     

So that's five bags, if you count the one with no handles which I hate and might have actually thrown away.  There's a green one coming up next.  :)

SCA: Heraldic Chest: Refit

 I built this little chest in 2014, I think, and it’s undergone a lot of different finishes.  It was stained, then painted about six times - the last time I painted it with my heraldry (2019), as you can see in this pic: 

Sadly, the polyurethane I used to seal it turned really yellow really quickly, and it looked just awful. I could have just painted it black again, but some of the paint edges and detail would have shown through the paint, so I decided to strip it back to the wood and start over. 

I stripped all the paint off and then sanded it clean, then re-stained the whole thing and clear-coated it, this time using Polycrylic, which doesn’t yellow like Polyurethane does. I also gave the inside a fresh coat of black paint, and painted the handles with gilding paint to cover up the crappy gold spray paint job they had before.  

I have no idea what kind of wood that is, by the way. It’s plywood from a wooden shipping crate I picked up for free a million years ago - the whole thing looked like that. 

I may still throw some heraldry onto it, but I haven’t yet decided what exactly to do.  For now, this little chest will return to duty holding my camping supplies - mallets, stakes, flashlights, etc.  I’m trying to weed out all the plastics from my camping gear: wood boxes instead of Rubbermaid tubs, baskets and canvas bags instead of plastic sacks and Ikea bags.