SCA: An Exercise In Repeated Failure

And now for a fun post! Warning:  I'm going to cuss in this one.  You'll see why.  

Sometimes things just don't go your way.  I love dyeing fabrics and clothing, but man, when dye goes wrong, it goes WRONG.  I had this "natural" colored (oatmeal colored) linen serk that I wanted to dye blue, and it took way more work than it really should have...mostly because I screwed up in the beginning. 

Here's where we started.  This "oatmeal" color is lovely, and correct for the period, but this tone looks AWFUL on my skin.  Every time I wore it, I looked ill.  No bueno.  

I selected a teal Rit dye, and a charcoal gray one.  Just a bit of each, and the gray was supposed to tone down the tealness of the teal and make it more of a plain blue.  According to the Rit recipe from the website, it should have happened that way. 

Except that I forgot to take into account the native color of the fabric, which was basically BROWN.  Brown + blue = more brown.  So effectively, the two colors cancelled each other out and all I added was gray.  So the dress came out...gray.  

So I bleached the fabric.  Twice.  The first time didn't accomplish anything at all; the second time returned the dress to more or less its original color.  

But I thought...I could go lighter.  

Bleach spots on the third time through.  Oops again.  And also, fuck.  

I tried again, with double the bleach the fourth time.  I was leery of doing it, because too much time in the bleach can start eroding the fabric.  Thankfully, throughout this process, THAT never happened, at least. 

After the third round with the bleach, I had achieved something that looked kind of like zombie flesh:  mostly chalky white, with some brown streaking and spotting.  Gross.  

But once the dress was dried, the spotting/streaking barely showed, so I thought maaaybe it might be ready to take dye now.  

Wary of using too much teal dye (and no gray this time!), I only put a couple of capfuls into the washing machine with my dress. 

Shit, it's green!  Like, candy mint Peeps green.  UGH.  

But the color came out even.  Hm. 

I decided to give up.  I threw the rest of my teal dye in to the washer, and a couple of capfuls of the gray, and let 'er rip, let the chips fall where they may.  I was sick of messing with this dress. 

To my surprise, the dress came out a light greenish blue - exactly the color I'd wanted to dye the dress in the first place!  

Finally! Yay!  The color is nice and even, maybe a touch dark around the side seams, but that's okay - that'll be hidden by an apron dress anyway.  

SO DONE WITH THIS DRESS.  Glad it turned out ok. 

The End.  

SCA: Possible CRF (Critical Research Failure)?

 I recently discovered the wonderful YouTube channel, The Welsh Viking.  Jimmy presents dozens of videos on early Medieval Viking society, in all it's facets, backed up by research and web sources, and his own research as a reenactor and grad student. He reminded me recently of something I've heard before:  make the outfit fit the research, don't do the research to fit the outfit.  It made me wonder:  which have I been doing? 

My research process has been something like this: read the research, establish that the [Thing] I want to make IS historically accurate for what I want, and then make it.  Once I'm in the creation phase, I tend to forget most of the research - I can tell you that a [Thing] IS Viking, but not when it was found, who found it, who published the research, when the original article is dated from, or which aspect of "Viking culture" it comes from.  Most of my research has been only to establish "Yes, this is good."  I mean, I read all I can get my hands on, but I often just forget once I'm actually making things.  

So I wondered, is my reenactment Viking kit simply a mishmash of random "Viking" stuff I've read about, or does it even all go together?  I couldn't answer that question at all.  Think of cosplaying 20th Century American with an Edwardian corset, a flapper dress from the 1920s, with spectator shoes from the 40s and a bullet bra from the 50s, and a curly shag hairstyle from the 1980s and smoky black 90s eyeshadow.  Sure, it's all 20th century, but none of it goes together at all.  Had I done that unintentionally?  The idea horrified me.  

And so I made a list of all of my Viking kit components, and re-did all my original research, and then kept going until I had answers to all those questions from earlier in this post answered for each item.  The results pacified my earlier horror: it turns out that by dumb luck, most of my Viking kit is solidly 10th century Swedish/Danish, with a few exceptions.  Here's a short list: 

• My serk and apron dresses are solidly in the area of finds from Birka and Hedeby from around 9-10th centuries
• The blue colors in which I do all of my clothing are backed up by blue serks and apron dresses also found at Birka and Hedeby
• The small round silver-colored brooch I use to hold my serk neckline together is not period, but is made to resemble finds of similar small round silver brooches found at Birka and Hedeby from the 10th century
• My beloved "Hedeby bags" are made based on extrapolated designs proposed based on wooden bag handles found, again, at Birka and Hedeby from the 10th century
• My two rectangular shawls/cloaks (one wool and one linen) are reminiscent of similar items of clothing worn by figures shown on the Oseberg tapestry, and which were also commonly worn in early Saxon and other neighboring cultures in the 10-11th centuries
• Two coats/caftans, modeled after a find from Birka from the 10th century, probably only worn by high nobles - not many of these were found, but they are known (the fur trim on the gray coat was actually a thing.  Not the white fur that I used, but probably brown fur or sheep's wool which was either added to the garment post-construction or woven into the cloth used to make the coat).  
• My wool winingas are known from graves from around Scandinavia, for my purposes most notably Hedeby from the 10th century (but winingas/leg wraps are known from the ancient Romans onward through WWII).  
• The beads that I wear both suspended from my brooches and as necklaces are modern glass, amber and metal beads, made/chosen to resemble beads actually found in Viking graves from the 8-11th centuries.  (The metal, I've learned is not correct, but the glass and amber are okay). 

This stuff is all around 10th century Swedish or Danish.  Here's some stuff that differs a bit: 

• My leather turnshoes are based on a find from Vlaardingen, Holland, from the 11th century, and similar finds from York, England.  
• The Jorvik hoods that I wear are modeled after a silk hood found in Jorvik (York, England) from the 10th century
• While tortoise brooches are known from the 8th-10th centuries throughout Scandinavia, mine are a replica of a pair of Vendel Period brooches, which predate the Viking Age by a little bit, probably from 650-700CE. 
• The Skjoldehamn hood is known from a single find in Skjoldehamn, Norway, which dates to the 11-12th centuries, and is from a man's grave.  No hood like this has ever been found in a woman's grave that I'm aware of.  (The crocheted version of this hood that i made several years ago is basically just ridiculous, I made it just for fun and mostly to wear mundanely anyway). 
• My earrings, which I made to coordinate with my necklaces and bead strings, are basically not a thing.  No jewelry which can be called "earrings" has ever been found in a Viking Age grave as far as I know.  

So what now?  I'm pleased that most of my kit turns out to be correct for 10th century Sweden/Denmark, which is what I was vaguely aiming for to begin with. There are some things i'd like to fix, and some things I'd like to change going forward to make my kit more authentic: 

• I've known for a while that I'd like to try hand-sewing an entire outfit from the ground up.  Usually I machine-sew the construction seams and serge the seam edges, and then finish all the other work by hand.  I'd like to try actually sewing the whole dress by hand, including finishing the seams, which terrifies me. 
• As much as I love my Rit dye, I really would like to learn to dye with natural dyestuffs. I don't know if this will happen though, because dyeing supplies and materials are expensive, and I'd have to start basically on the ground floor. 
• I'd like to make a few Jorvik hoods out of actual silk fabric, like the original find was.  
• Now that I know I'm not allergic to actual wool and can treat wool so that I don't react to the chemicals in it, I'd like to try making a wool apron dress.  It's too hot here for wool most of the year, but I could wear one at BAM in November...maybe next year. 
• I'm working on getting better at inkle loom weaving, but inkle weaving is not period for Viking Age recreations.  As much as I loooove tablet woven trims, I'd really like to try learning to do tablet weaving and make my own. 
• Two years ago, before the pandemic hit, I was learning to make glass beads, and had amassed some supplies of my own.  The classes I was taking are no longer available; I'd like to acquire the rest of the supplies I need and begin practicing in my own garage, and replace all my storebought glass beads with homemade ones that resemble or replicate actual Viking glass beads.  
• I'd also like to learn naalbinding.  I've tried before and it was miserable and practically impossible, but I've learned recently that I was using the wrong kind of needle.  I'm going to make my own wooden needle soon, and I'll try again.  

Whew! That was a long post.  But wait, let's list some of the sources I've been reading/reading about: 

Carolyn Priest-Dorman (SCA): https://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/viktunic.html 

Hilda Thunem: http://urd.priv.no/viking/ 

Thor Ewing, Viking Clothing, 2006

Agnes Geiger, Textile Finds From Birka, 1983

Inga Haag, Die Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu, 1983

Inga Haag, 1974

Else Ostergard, Woven Into the Earth, 2003

Onward, to better reenacting!