Tuesday 10 September 2013

Decisions to make for the Stick-Purse

So I'm getting frustrated because my progress on the stick-purse lately has been pretty much non-existent. Part of that is because I've had so little time to work on things, but I think a large part of it is that I'm kind of at a standstill until I can figure out the period leather dye recipes I want to use. I have the yellow but need several more, and I'm just not getting much inspiration on figuring out how to get these recipes to work.

So, I think I need to make a decision.

I could keep plucking away and wait until I'm happy with the work before I move forward with my stick-purse for Kingdom A&S. But that could mean another year or two of research before its ready to submit. That being said, it also means I will have what I hope is a really kick-ass project that shows all kinds of really applicable research, along with a fair amount of work in interpreting the historical sources and applying them. Since that's the whole reason I'm doing this, that's a pretty important point.

Or, I could put aside my desire to go whole hog (and admittedly my ego in wanting to wow people), and put my dye research on hold for now. Maybe I could do it as another Kingdom A&S project, or something for the White Wolf Fian later on. If I do that, I could use modern water-based dyes to simulate period colours and could potentially have the stick-purse done in the next few months. It may not make it for Kingdom A&S this year, but it would be a whole lot more likely than otherwise.

The stick-purse itself is pretty solid research-wise and I'm pretty proud of the detective work I've done to try to recreate the pattern, but it just isn't as impressive (at least for me) without the scientific work of figuring out the dyes.

I'm not keen on submitting a partially finished project; if I'm going to enter something I want to be happy with it. The other complicating factor is that I only have enough of the goat skins to make one stick-purse. Tandy doesn't sell it anymore so unless I can find another source of super thin veg tan leather, I may have a hard time making another one later on (at least to Kingdom A&S authenticity standards).

Regular readers are probably as up to date as it gets on my stick-purse project. I'd love any input or thoughts.

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