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.  

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Progress Report

Things on my big summer project are proceeding apace.  In April I posted about a pleated serk I made; in May I built a wooden display stand for part of the project.  

This whole thing is about the woman's outfit found in grave G12 at Bryndum in Denmark in 2016 (which I posted about in December).   I'm...not "recreating" the outfit, but I'm adapting a version suited for rough SCA use - linen instead of wool, cotton weaving thread instead of wool and flax - all to make this thing able to stand up to harsh use and machine washing.  

Yes, I started out the project in wool, but the fabric I bought was too heavy, so I ordered some new linen fabric and started over a few weeks ago, and altered the direction my documentation was going to reflect the changes.  I'm MUCH happier with the way it's going now, and I think it's going to look fantastic when it's all done. 

At the moment I'm working on the "jacket" for the outfit, and when I'm not sewing, I'm weaving the bands which will become the straps for the apron dress (see the December blog post for details).  

Here's a pile of pattern pieces all basted together with the lining pieces, ready to be sewn together.  I'm sewing with waxed linen thread, although I did the basting with regular cotton machine thread since I was going to pull it out anyway and discard it as I sewed the seams.  

And here's a bit of the tablet weaving I'm working on for the straps. The pattern is "Mammen Mia" by L. Elewys von Finchingfield, who adapted the pattern off one of the motifs from a woven band found at Mammen from the 9-10th century.  Since I'm working in 8/4 cotton thread instead of thicker wool threads, the bands are a bit narrower than the extant examples, but since they'll be doubled and sewn together, they should be plenty strong (I'll get into that a bit more later when I do a post on just the tablet weaving).  I will say, though, that this is my first pattern with only two threads per card instead of four, and it is kicking my BUTT.  It's so slooowwww and tedious.  I'm really not enjoying it, LOL.  

Busy busy!  I should finish the jacket by the end of this week, and then I'll have pictures of the whole thing for you. After that I have to finish the weaving, and then sew a matching apron dress to complete the set.  

KAS is in two months, so I've got plenty of time to finish this outfit (and my documentation) - I'm looking forward to being so I can take a break, although I've already got the next three projects planned out and one started, hehe.  SO much to do, always!  

SCA: Small Stuff To Do

 I'm going to be starting on my Kingdom A&S project at the end of March, but in the meantime I'm working on a few small things:  

1.  A New Skjoldehamn Hood

These things have become like the Hedeby bag for me -  I love making them, and now I have three of them.  I threw this one together at Bjornsborg's spring event last weekend. It's cut from the last scraps from Ivar's coat which I made a few months ago.  I sat at the event and sewed it by hand from start to finish, and now it just needs embellishment - I'm not sure whether to do tablet weaving or some sort of decorative stich (I hate the "blanket stitch" that the original extant hood has on it and I refuse to do that because ew, LOL).  So here it is right now, finished but undecorated: 

2.  New key hanger strap

I used to wear my Viking key on a tablet woven cord that I made aeons ago, but I had put it onto a linen tool strap for my Kostrup dress display at Bjornsborg.  In the meantime, I wove a new "cord" for it - it's a tablet woven band of only 4 cards, two borders and a central V.  It's very thin, but it's stronger than a linen strap for sure.  So I put the key on the new one just the other day: 

3. A New Tunic Dress/Gown

I typically only wear a serk (underdress) and smokkr (apron dress) as the base of my Norse kit, but there's a third layer that goes between the two: a tunic dress or gown, same shape and design as the serk but usually in a heavier fabric which can be worn with or without the apron dress.  Since I don't always want to wear the apron dress and brooches, I decided I needed a new tunic dress to wear by itself for "casual days" at events.  It can be worn over a serk, and dressed up with a woven belt, necklaces, and a brooch at the front neckline.  Simple, attractive, and accurate (except for the material choice, since this one is linen instead of wool).  

The pic here is of a similar tunic dress I made long ago and re-dyed last year; the new one will be light blue with a darker blue band on the neckline and sleeve cuffs: 

4. New Winingas Ties

I really, really like the look of a long tie/band wrapped around the bottom of Norse pants on a guy.  Since I dress as a guy periodically, I wanted to adopt that look, and so I'm weaving some looooong (120") ties to wrap around my legs, either over just my pants, or on top of my winingas.  I'm not sure about the colors, but I think it'll go well with my blue and red-trimmed Norse tunic and gray pants.  I'm also not sure when I'll ever finish these - I'm only halfway through the first one and I started it like three weeks ago.  I just haven't had a lot of time to weave lately.  

5. Got Wood? 

I also have two woodworking projects going on right now:  the first is an upright loom that my teacher Haraldr is guiding me on.  It's kind of like the Oseberg loom, but a little later-period in style and look, but it'll function the same way.  I'm working on chiseling out the mortises for the cross beam right now. 

I also want to build myself a very simple T-shaped garment stand that I can use to display shorter things on a table top, like tunics, jackets, hoods, etc.  For an event next year I'm going to be displaying both a complete female outfit on my dress dummy, as well as a male tunic/jacket that I'll need to put on a table, so I'll need a stand.  

This is a terrible drawing, but you get the idea

So that's what's going on right now.  More pics as I finish stuff; and of course I'll start boring you with all the hairy details of  my KAS project as soon as I get it started.  

SCA: Side Quest: A New Hedeby Bag

This one’s just for fun, as I needed something to do over the weekend and had some fabric scraps lying around. 

The herringbone wool outer fabric was leftover from a larger project (Ivar’s klappenrock).  It’s a trapezoidal shape because I just wanted to try it out; it’s got a box bottom and sides; and it’s got a herringbone stitch over the seams in cotton weaving thread (same stitch pattern as you see on the “Leens Hat”).  

The lining is pale green linen from stash. The whole bag is hand sewn. My friend Waylan made the handles on his CNC router, and I finished and stained them. I love the handles - I’ve had them laser-cut before and I didn’t like the scorching thst happens on the edges. The CNC router leaves a nice clean-cut edge that just needs a little bit of sanding. 

The strap is tablet woven, an Oseberg-inspired design in black/brown/green (cotton thread). 

I really like how this one turned out. I wish it opened more at the top; but it’s a great size and will definitely hold all my stuff.  

I think I’m going to use the rest of that klappenrock fabric for a small hood. Back soon! 

SCA: Plans Of Many Things

 I’ve spent the last couple of months weaving my ass off for a tablet weaving display at LPT…and it turns out I’m not going. I’m severely disappointed, but something has come up which will keep me from going this weekend, and it can’t be helped. Oh, well - Life Happens, right? 

Meanwhile, I’ve finished the sewing on my Kostrup dress (see previous post), and I’m going to be working on the glass beads for it next. 

I also just ordered fabric for my next big A&S project, which is a secret for now. :) 

Bjornsborg’s spring event is in two weeks, and I wouldn’t miss that one for the world. I can’t wait! 

At the moment I have “nothing” to do (except those beads, which will have to happen over the weekend when I have time), and so I’m going to start working on some little stuff around the sewing room - organizing the books, putting some decorative stitching into a hood I made last year, maybe making some new Hedeby bags, that kind of thing. 

I did just finish weaving a bunch of Stars of Merit. The Star of Merit is Ansteorra’s grant-level service award.

More soon! 

SCA: The Køstrup Dress (Part I: Tablet Weaving)

For my next A&S piece, I've decided to create my own version of a dress I've admired for a long time: the "Køstrup  dress" - the one that's pleated in the front.  I've done one before, but I wasn't terribly happy with the way it turned out - the fabric was the wrong type, and I didn't like the way I did the trim at the top of the dress.  So I'm starting from scratch and making a new one this time around. 

Charlotte Rimstad, 1988

The original band from grave ACQ was originally assumed to be a brocaded weave, but that might not be true.  There's some experimental/anectotal evidence that it might actually a soumak design, which is a bit different.  In brocade tablet weaving, the thread for the brocaded design is passed through the warp above the band from side to side, which creates a flat design on top of the woven band.  In soumak, the decorative thread is passed on a needle up from underneath the warp, around the warp threads, and back down to the bottom, which creates a little “bump” on top of the warp, and then the design on top of the band is created by the arrangement of these little bumps.  It was tricky to learn, and while it ended up being easy to do, it was a very, very slow process. 

Beginning the process

A note about the fiber content:  the warp and the soumak design on the original band was made of wool.  Since I was substituting my fabric – using linen instead of wool – I also decided to substitute my weaving threads and used cotton weaving thread instead of wool.  I did this for two reasons: I did not have any wool thread thin enough for this project on hand, and also because I wanted to be able to run this dress through the washing machine if it needed it, and cotton weaving holds up fairly well in the machine if you’re careful with it. 

Also, about the colors:  the original band was made of dark blue wool, but we don’t know what colors the designs on top were, because a detailed color analysis has not been done on every part of the band.  So, I just chose colors that I thought looked nice with the blue background (red, light blue, green, and yellow).   

I wove this band on an inkle loom, because that’s easiest for me to manage.  I also made a slight change to the band when I warped it up. According to the instructions I used (this, from Etsy seller Alija Mega), and other sources (Shelagh Lewins, Peter Collingwood), the original band from ACQ was done with a 2-hole warp, where two threads are passed through the tablets instead of the usual four. 

I opted instead to make the background weave a 4-hole warp instead of a 2-hole warp.  I did this for two reasons:  (1) Mega says in her instruction booklet that you can do it either way, but that the 2-hole warp makes for a lighter, more flexible band in the end. Since this band is attached to the dress only at its ends (as opposed to sewing the band to the fabric of the dress along its long edge), I actually wanted a sturdier, less flexible band, so that it would stay in place.  Also, (2), I find 2-hole warp to be ridiculously difficult to manage, and since I was trying a new technique to begin with, I didn't want to compound the potential for error and frustration by ALSO using a warping technique I know I already hate doing.  So, for sanity's sake, and also ease of wear, I chose to use a 4-hole warp on this project.  

So, I needed a band about 9” long to go across the front of my dress.  I wove about 2" of plain unadorned blue at the beginning and end of  7" of pattern, so that I would have a plain end to wrap around the loops on the dress.  I did this twice, in fact - I made a band of about 23", including the blue end sections, and cut it in half:  one end to use on the dress, and the other end to place on my display table so that people could pick it up and examine it more closely than they could examine it on the completed dress.  

Finished band(s)

 

This band is going to be attached to the dress by wrapping the excess at either end of the band around the loops on the front of the dress and sewing them in place.  The band is NOT sewn to the top of the dress along its length, it’s only attached at the ends (see Charlotte Rimstad’s drawing, first picture above). 

Weaving in the ends

The back of the band appears quite messy, with the threads passing back and forth all over the place, and loose ends hanging out. In the end I took a small tapestry needle and wove the loose ends into the back of the band to secure them and cut the excess off flush with the band so that they wouldn't show on the dress. 

I’m really pleased with the way the finished product came out.  It was tricky at first, and tedious, but the soumak method was pretty simple once I got the hang of it, and I’m glad I decided to try to learn how to do this. It was ridiculously slow compared to regular tablet weaving - this 23” long piece took me just under five and a half hours to make. 

 * 

I'm busy sewing the dress itself right now, so the next post will be about that.  More soon! 

SCA: Just Loom Stuff

 I read somewhere that "she who dies with the most looms wins," LOL.  I don't know if I'll ever have the MOST, but now I have FOUR and I'm working on building two more:  

Homemade Inkle loom

This was my first inkle loom, which I built out of 1x3" pine with oak dowels, back in 2019.  It's a bit unwieldy to use because it's so big (3’ long!), and the sliding tension bar with the butterfly nut lock is not all that great - it hurts my fingers to use, and I can never get the tension exactly where I want it.  It makes about 4y of trim when fully warped. This loom worked for me for a few years, but I like my new inkle loom better: 

Hand-me-down Inkle loom

This inkle loom I got from a friend who was moving out of the country, earlier this year.  It’s much smaller, but when fully warped it makes about 4y of band. The tensioning bar on it is sooo much easier to use than my big inkle loom, and it's much more reliable as far as getting the warp to the right tension.  The only problem with it is that some of the pegs are so close together that I can't get my fingers around them to untwist the warp threads, and I don't know what to do about that.  I tried removing one of them with a small saw...but none of my saws are small enough to fit into the space between the pegs, either! Argh.  There's also a spot on the frame where someone repaired [something?] with HUGE lag bolts and nuts, and the bolts stick out and poke me in the leg while I'm trying to weave with this thing in my lap.  

Oseberg loom, A&S April 2024

This is the miniature version of the Oseberg upright loom that I built in YEAR.  The warp is tied to the frame uprights with a leather thong, and it's incredibly easy to move the warp around and untwist the threads - you just remove the thong, untwist, and tie it back up again.  The whole thing breaks down into three pieces, so it's easy to transport and travel with.  There are a couple of problems with this one: firstly, this loom is so lightweight that I have to clamp it to a table in order to use it, and the only table I have that I can use is my dining room table. That's the second problem - at my dining room table I have to stand next to the loom and weave from the side next to the loom, which hurts my shoulder and my hip.  I think a full-sized version of this might take care of both of these issues.  

Beka rigid heddle loom

A friend recently gave me this Beka 4” rigid heddle loom, and I spent some time this past weekend figuring out how to warp it up and weave on it. This is NOT a loom for tablet weaving - it’s meant to be used with a rigid heddle, not cards. I thought I’d try it out for card weaving, but I very quickly realized that dealing with twist in the warp would be such a huge pain in the ass (removing the warp from the backboard, untwisting, putting the board back on) that it’s basically just no good for card weaving. Lesson learned! I do plan to get a rigid heddle and try this thing the way it’s meant to be used at some point in the future. 

Pieces for full-sized upright loom

This is the first loom I'm in the process of building.  It's an upright loom like the Oseberg, but more in the early Medieval style which you see in paintings. The white upright posts are stair banisters (newel posts? I'm not sure of the terminology), and the feet and stretcher bar(s) are made out of 1x2" sticks of maple.  I started working on this in my teacher’s workshop at War of the Rams, and brought it home with me to finish building.  When finished it will warp and weave the same way as my mini Oseberg loom, and I'm hoping it'll be a bit easier to sit at since it's bigger.  

I'm also hoping to build myself a new inkle loom this spring to replace my existing two inkle looms, both of which have problems, but I'm nowhere near there yet.  I have lots of sewing and weaving to get done, and stuff around the house, before I'll have time to build a new loom.  

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I'm planning to bring my tablet weaving and some of my looms to Laurel's Prize Tourney*  this year as a "body of work" type display.  I have TONS of weaving I want to get done before then, and not enough time to do everything I want, so we'll see how it ends up looking.  

*Laurel's Prize Tourney is NOT a tournament or a competition, and there's no "prize".  Apparently it used to  be a competition many years ago and the name was just never changed, or something.  What it IS, though, is basically a show-and-tell event where you just bring whatever you're working on - a project, or a body of work, or something you're in the middle of that you might want help with or advice about - and you get to speak with various Laurels who stop by to visit with you and see your stuff, and you get to geek out with other artists all day and see everyone's amazing work, and it's a totally AWESOME event.  It can be very stressful - after all, LPT is all about putting yourself out there where everyone can see you, and it can be intimidating trying to make a good impression on people - but it's also VERY fun.  

 

SCA: A Klappenrock for Ivar Hersir

My good friend Ivar was given a piece of gorgeous wool several years ago that he’d always wanted to have made into a coat, so I volunteered my services. He and I sat down at the last event and took some measurements and discussed styles, and he basically gave me free rein to “do what I do,” hehe. 

It’s lovely fabric, a medium-weight wool of about 4y.  It looks dark gray from a distance, but up close it’s made up of black, light gray, and dark blue threads in a herringbone twill striped pattern, with a thin stripe of brown every few inches. 

I made it into a klappenrock - the tunic-length coat with an angled front that wraps over in the front, for male Vikings. I don't know a whole lot about the archeology behind this style; it’s described by Inga Hagg from her studies on the finds at Hedeby (10-11th century).  I've seen the klappenrock in the SCA, although not often, and usually made out of linen. 

The pattern I drew up was pretty simple - it basically looks like the drawing above. Nothing fancy, no gores or gussets, just angled front and back pieces. I didn't have an Ivar available for fittings, as he lives two hours away from me, but I had him bring me the fabric as well as a tunic of his that he liked and which fit him well, and used that as a jumping-off point for sizing and shaping the coat.  I did take measurements of him as well, when he delivered the fabric to me at the Bjornsborg fall event a couple of weeks ago.  

Sewing this coat was also very simple.  I did the seams on the machine to save myself some time, and then hand-finished all the seam allowances for a period look.  I couched a length of brown wool yarn along the seam allowances edges with a herringbone stitch to help protect them from fraying: 

I used a herringbone stitch in black thread for all the seam allowances and for all the hemming on the open edges. 

Very often you see these coats with a contrast guarding around the edges, and I didn't do that (I had no extra fabric with which to make one), but I did finish the front edges and sleeve cuffs with a band of tablet-woven trim which I made.  

The pattern for the woven trim is  Ladoga 2b, which is a Rus design from Staraya Ladoga barrow in Russia; in blue and white with a red and black border.  I made about 3.3 yards to go around the neckline and front opening, and another yard or so for the sleeve cuffs. 

And that's it.  This was a great "quick" project (the coat itself took about five hours to make, and the woven trim took me about a week or so weaving in my spare time).   His excellency absolutely loves it.  Success! 

*

It's going to be a while before I post again.  We just finished up Bordermarch's event War of the Rams, and so events are over until February, for me - but I have a LOT to do over the winter, both for the SCA and with projects around the house. 

I'm working on a new outfit for A&S in the spring, a new hood, and a LOT of tablet weaving - including building two new looms.  I'll try to post about the stuff I'm making as I go along.  

SCA: Just Weaving Some Stuff

I’ve just recently obtained my very own copy of Applesies & Fox Noses, a book of historical Finnish tablet weaving patterns by Maikki Karisto and Mervi Pasanen. I’m super excited about it - it’s been out of print for EVER and they finally released a new printing. Yay! 

So far I’ve only done the first pattern, a band from the Carelian Iron Age from the Kaukola Kekomäki graveyard that the authors are calling “Colorful small Applesies.”  The first time through I did it in red, yellow, and blue like the pattern: 

I had an enormous amount of trouble with the tension on this one for some unknown reason, but it came out pretty well anyway.  

The second version I did was in greens, black, and white:

I LOVE the color scheme on this one.  

I recently re-fitted my ancient black linen smokkr - it was in good shape, but it was too tight across the chest, so I took a strip off the lower hem and used it to make a thin panel that I inserted into one of the seams to widen the whole dress. It fits great now, and now it also has a lovely green band on it: 

I can’t wait to wear this at my next event - which will be Bjornsborg’s fall baronial event on Halloween weekend  that weekend is also my fiftieth birthday, hooray! This will be fun. 

SCA: Kingdom A&S Event

 

Well, I'm back from Kingdom A&S, which is THE big A&S competition event in Ansteorra every year.   

My project for Kingdom A&S (KAS) was one you've seen bits and pieces of here on the blog in the past few months - I've been working on it since January, I started as soon as Candlemas was over.  

I made a complete Norse woman's outfit in three layers: a linen serk, a wool overdress, and a wool smokkr.  All of it is hand-sewn, and I did the tablet weaving and the braiding on the smokkr as well. 

The serk is all linen, sewn with linen thread.  It's a light gray in color, similar to what an unbleached linen would look like, but not as warm in color (more gray, less beige/tan).  The thread is white, because that's what I had on hand.  Nothing fancy here, just a plain "T-tunic" style pattern, some flat-felled seams, no trim or anything like that. The sleeves are a bit longer than they need to be - I did that so I could bunch them up around my wrists.  So they hang down pretty far in the picture above.  The stitching on the serk isn't as nice as on the other two pieces, and I got dinged for that by the judges, but it's not a humongous deal or anything.  

armpit gussets.  I hate them so much. 

The green wool dress (previewed here) that goes over the serk is done on the same basic T-tunic pattern (similar to tunics/dresses found at Birka and Hedeby).  It's sewn in a beige colored silk thread which blends into the green fabric pretty well.  The trim around the neckline and sleeve cuffs is blue silk fabric, hand-stitched in place on top of the edge.  

the green wool dress, with blue silk trim and
a blue tablet woven belt

armpit gussets in the green dress

blue silk trim on green dress

The blue wool smokkr is one that I showed at Bjornsborg this past Spring, when the project was about half-finished.  It's a full-length dress, with fabric straps/loops, tablet-woven trim, and a "Hedeby braid" trim on the vertical seams, very similar to the red linen dress I made in 2024.  

The fabric is a broken diamond twill wool in a medium blue color; the pattern is the same three-panel/three-gore pattern I always use for these things, which is based off of Carolyn Priest-Dorman's pattern which is widely used in the SCA LINK.    

The trimming across the top edge of the dress is in two parts: a green silk fabric band folded over the top edge, and below it a tablet woven band in silk, in green, blue, and white. This decision was inspired by finds at Birka as noted by Inga Hagg.  The pattern for the band is Oseberg 12L1 (the Oseberg "narrow band" found on the loom in the Oseberg ship burial), which I got from Elewys von Finchingfield's blog and YouTube channel LINK.  

blue smokkr

setting in the side gores

tablet weaving and Hedeby braid on the smokkr

eleven examples of top trim on apron dresses, 
illustration by Inga Hagg

weaving the Hedeby braid

the Hedeby braid on an extant fragment found
at Birka (illustration by Inga Hagg)

Overall, the day was frustrating as heck (because of all the stress of just waiting and waiting and waiting), but it ended well.  I'm very happy with the scores I got, and the judges' commentary.  I was in the top 10 high scorers, and so I got a commemorative coin/badge as a prize, which was pretty cool.  I only spoke to one of my judges, but she was very cool and had a lot of good things to say, and good ideas for going forward with this project IF I decide to take it to Gulf Wars to compete there - IF I get chosen to go, which I probably won't.  

A few friends and I traveled to KAS together (five hour drive!) and stayed in an Air BNB together for the weekend, which was fun.  We had a great time together, and KAS was a good experience, and I'm happy with the weekend overall.  

Good lord, what's next?  I have no idea.  I think I need to spend some time recovering from the emotional strain, LOL.  No, I totally have things planned.  More soon!  

my prize coin from the competition

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SCA: Weaving Stuff - Birka 6

I've been doing a bit of tablet-weaving lately, mostly for practice, and to fill up my time since I don't have any big projects to work on at the moment. 

Birka 6, wool

I'm trying out a new wool yarn for weaving - Hobbii's "easy care merino", which is absolutely lovely to weave with:  it's smooth and even, and doesn't stick to itself the way some wool yarns do.  The pattern above is Birka 6, which I love to do, even though it's kind of slow.  I'll get faster at it the more I do it, though.  

I've also begun teaching tablet weaving, a little bit.  I spent a few hours last weekend semi-teaching weaving to a couple of friends of mine (not total newbies, but wanted some guidance) at the local library's "crafternoon", and it went really well.  I'm not really cut out for teaching in front of a class, but I really enjoy these little one-on-one sessions.  I have a couple more planned for the coming month, too.  

I've also been replacing the trim on an old smokkr.  I donated a bunch of my old Viking clothing to the local Gold Key a few weeks ago, and only kept  my five favorite pieces.  This is one of them, a favorite because of the color of the fabric ("blue bonnet" from Fabric-Store.com): 

The problem was, the trim on it was manufactured jacquard trim in a semi-Persian design that I purchased online a million years ago.  It was pretty, and I loved the blue and gold, but it wasn't accurate for the dress at all.  I took it off and replaced it with another blue-and-gold Birka 6, this time in cotton (cotton, because I wanted to be able to throw this thing in the washing machine).  

Somehow I managed to warp this one up backwards, and the pattern came out on the underside of the weave instead of the top, and the design is blue-on-gold instead of gold-on-blue. After much conversation with a weaving buddy, and a fantastic explanation by a kind soul on Reddit, it was determined that I wove too many picks at the beginning of the band which threw off my pick count which threw off the gold/blue rows by 2, and reversed the colors. Does that make sense? It barely makes sense to me, but I mostly get it. I need to spend some time playing with turning sequences to get a better feel for how this all works - I can follow a pattern, but I don’t know as much of the theory as I would like to. 

  

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Anyway, just a couple of little things to work on to fill my time, nothing big going on. "Event season" is just around the corner, starting with Kingdom A&S in September, about which I'm very excited and very nervous.  In the meantime I'll be weaving some more, doing more teaching, and playing around with Spring projects, which I'll show you as I go along.  

SCA: New Winter Cloak

I spent the past few days weaving my butt off. Needed something to do while I wait for fabric to come in the mail. 

I had a bunch of that diamond weave blue wool left over from my smokkr project; it wasn’t enough to make into a coat, so I decided to make it into a large rectangular cloak instead: 

The woven trim is pretty simple - in fact, it’s the first pattern I ever learned to weave, one of the Ladoga designs. I made ten yards of it in three sections, most of it on a “new” loom that someone gave to me recently. (More on that in another post).  

I’m pretty happy with this. It was a fast, fun project which will look great and keep me warm at BAM this year. 

My next post will probably be about more hand sewing, as I’m about to start adding to the blue wool smokkr project to bring the whole outfit up a level. I’m also going to be doing LOTS of weaving the next few months, and I’m planning on building at least one new loom for sure, maybe a pair of them. We’ll see.