SCA: What's Next?

Now that my big A&S summer project is done, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off before I do anything else.  And then I need to turn my attention back to: 

• a wool coat that I'd like to have done by November just in case it ever gets cold again
• a regalia weaving project I started in January and have been pecking away at in my spare time
• my next A&S project, due in mid-November
• The blue Italian renaissance dress I started this Spring that I'd like to have done for an event in February

There may or may not also be a few new Hedeby bags.  I have a sack of wooden handles that a friend cut out for me on his CNC router which just need a coat of stain. I've made one already as a gift for a friend's birthday, and I think I'd like to make some Sprezzatura (my household)-themed bags as well, if people are interested.  

Events this fall include:

• Kingdom Arts & Sciences in September
• Bjornsborg's September/fall event in Seguin, Texas
• Bryn Gwlad's October/fall event at the Sherwood Forest Fair grounds
• War of the Rams in November
• Various small Yule celebrations in December  

That's only four actual events and then maybe some little Yule gatherings, if I feel like going.  15 years ago I would hit an event every weekend in the fall, but I just don't have that kind of energy anymore. That said, I DO plan to try to travel more in 2027 and hit some A&S competitions around the kingdom in more areas than just the two I normally play in.  

Anyway, that's what's going on with me the next couple of months.  First we have to get Kingdom A&S out of the way - that's the big stressful event - and then the rest of the season I can just have fun and not worry about competitions for a while.  

SCA: 2026 Summer Project Complete!

 At last, my project is complete!  

This is my impression/adaptation of the outfit from the woman in grave G12 at Bryndum, Denmark.  The grave was discovered in 2016, and the first article on the find was published in the Archeological Textile Review journal in December of 2025 (link).  

The outfit had several components: 

1. a"duvet" which covered the body
2. a short, striped wool jacket lined with linen
3. an unlined wool apron dress with tablet woven straps
4. a pleated linen serk worn under the apron dress

For my project, I'm not concerned with the duvet.  My project was comprised of: 

1. the jacket,  linen lined with a lighter weight linen 
2. the apron dress (not blogged)
3. the tablet woven straps 
4. the pleated linen serk 
5. the wooden stand used to display the jacket 

I started this project in late March.  I originally used wool fabric for the jacket, but the wool I purchased turned out to be too thick and stiff for the project and would have looked awful, and because purchasing new wool fabric was far, far out of my budget, I decided to switch to using all linen instead, making this  an adaptation of the outfit, instead attempting of a copy of it.  (A complete copy would not have been possible anyway, given the lack of detailed information in the original ATR paper).  The finished look approximates the original outfit, and the fabric choice will also help with climate issues (105º today in Ansteorra, anyone?) and it'll be machine-washable, which is a plus.  

A note about the apron dress:  I don't have a separate blog entry about that because I didn't feel it was necessary.  The focus of this project is the three unique components of the outfit: the tablet woven straps, the jacket, and the serk.  The apron dress...is just a normal apron dress, which you've seen me make a hundred times before.  It's made of the same blue heavy linen as the jacket, is unlined, and is undecorated except for the woven straps.  I suspect I'll get questions about why there's no decoration on it, so I made it clear as day in my documentation that there was none on the original dress.  

My plan is to display the serk and apron dress on my dress dummy, and the jacket on the wooden stand on the table.  I need to build out the rest of the table display - props, paperwork, photos, all that.  

Overall I'm super happy with the way this project came out. I fretted over the fabric substitution a LOT, but in the end I'm satisfied with my choice.  KAS is the second week of September, so I'm done a bit early, thankfully.  I have plenty of time to get my display together and fine-tune my documentation, and, most importantly, REST before I start the next thing.  

I also put together a set of beads for the Bryndum outfit. The find contained turquoise-colored glass beads and some amber beads, as well as a carved amber ring that was likely used as a pendant.  I don't have a carved amber ring, but I had some turquoise-colored glass beads in my stash, and some faux amber beads as well, so I strung some of those up on a thread which I can loop around the neck of my dress dummy for KAS, just for a little something extra.  

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It interests me, the way other kingdoms do A&S.  I've heard that in the East, at their version of Kingdom A&S, you actually get to sit at your table and speak to your judges about your entry.  Wouldn't that be nice!  We have a more "drop your stuff and run away to hide until it's over" kind of approach, and the Peer Fear is LARGE at this event.  I wish it wasn't like that. I liked hiding a few years ago when I was new at this, but now I would LOVE an opportunity to talk about my projects with my judges - answer questions, clear things up that might be a little muddy in my documentation, that kind of thing.  That's one of the reasons I love Laurel's Prize (January) so much - it's a whole day of sitting with your work and geeking out about it with visitors who're interested in your and your stuff.  It's exhausting, at the end of the day, but it's SO much fun.  

Anyway, onwards to the next project!  It never stops...but I think I'll take a break for a couple of weeks before I jump into the next thing.  It'll give me time to work on some little background side projects that I haven't touched for a few months.  Bye for now! 

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Phase IV (Tablet Weaving)

The fourth component in my summer project is the tablet weaving.  At Bryndum in grave G12, a wool apron dress was discovered which had straps and loops made of tablet woven bands - the first time tablet weaving has ever been discovered to have been used in this way.  That BLEW MY MIND and I've been super excited about this project just because of that ever since I read the original ATR article in December.  

The thing is, the tablet-woven straps from G12 were so mineralized and degraded that no chemical analysis could be done on them.  Which means that while we know a lot about how the straps were woven - number of threads, number of threads per card, direction of the cards turning - we don't know what colors were used, and we can't tell what the pattern was because the colors aren't there. 

Here's what we do know: 

• There were at least 13 cards:  10 central pattern cards, and 3 border cards (2 on one side and 1 on the other, and there may have been a 4th border card which has disintegrated but there's no way of knowing) 
• The 10 pattern cards moved both forwards and backwards; the  border cards only moved forwards
• The border cards were threaded with 4 threads each; the central pattern cards only 2 threads each - it's a skip-hole pattern!  

Here's something else I know:  I've only tried a skip-hole pattern once before and it went so miserably that I basically rage-quit and threw the whole thing in the trash.  

The problem with skip-hole patterns is the balance of the warp threads.  On a card threaded with 4 threads, one in each hole, the warp tension holds the card sort of upright and square, and it stays where you put it.  On a card threaded with 2 threads, one in every other hole, the tension wants to hold the card on the diagonal between the two threads, meaning the 2-hole cards skew out of place and won't stay square with the 4-card threads.  This means you basically have to have your hands on the cards at all times to keep them aligned.  The first time I tried this I found it to be impossible to wrangle. 

This time is going better, however, and I have to thank L. Elewys von Finchingfield of An Tir for that - her video weaving tutorials are solid gold and I love watching them.  More specifically, however, the pattern that I'm using for my project is one that she designed, and her video on it solved my problem with turning the cards - she uses a pencil or skewer stuck through the holes in the cards to keep them aligned so she can let go of them when she needs to, which is genius and works unbelievably well.   I've also found that I can use the pencil to turn the forwards-moving cards with one hand while holding the backwards-moving cards with my other hand, so that things don't get all fouled up.  Aha!  

The pattern I'm using for this project is Lady Elewys' design, called "Mammen Mia", which is based on motifs from one of the tablet woven bands found at Mammen, Denmark, from the 10th century.  I used this design because, since we don't know what pattern was used at Bryndum, it was important to me to use something from the region that someone from Bryndum might have actually seen or used.  Mammen is close by, and its designs are beautiful, so I chose this one. 

This pattern contains more threads than the original - 12 pattern cards and 4 borders - but since I'm using #10 cotton weaving thread, which is only 8/4 and far lighter weight than wool threads/yarn, the band is coming out very narrow. The original band is 1.4cm (about half an inch); my band is about .6cm - much smaller.  But, because of the way these straps are constructed, I think they should be plenty strong enough.  

You see, the original straps are not just lengths of tablet weaving sewn onto the dress.  Each strap is made of TWO lengths of tablet weaving, sewn together on the vertical to create a sort of thin tube, and then that tube is sewn to the dress to be used as a strap.  The ATR paper didn't specify exactly how the bands were sewn together or how they were pinned by the bronze brooches found in the grave; I opted to fold a single long band in half and sew it along the long sides, leaving a bit of unsewn loop at one end through which to pass the needle of a brooch.  The smaller front loops are made the same way. 

Binding off the cut end of a tablet woven band can be tricky.  Sewing through a band is not always easy to do securely, and folding the end of a band in order to conceal the cut ends creates a very bulky rolled end.  To avoid this, I  wrapped each cut end in a little square of fabric and sewed it to the strap, and then sewed THAT to the dress, rather than trying to sew the band itself to the fabric, leaving the cut end raw or folded and bulky.  Is it period? Who the heck knows.  I like the solution and plan to use it again in the future.   

And with that, this project is finally finished!  I'm so excited to be DONE with this thing and see it all put together.  I'll show you the whole thing in my next post.