General update on this and that.....

I haven't had a huge amount of time lately for any leatherworking projects but a busy period is coming up.

Coming up, we have:

Nov 2: Feast of the Hare, which is our Barony's big event normally, but will be even bigger this year since our new Baron and Baroness will probably be stepping up.

Nov 10: Teaching my leatherworking class at Harrowgate Heath. It had to be rescheduled due to work overtime, so hopefully it will be good to go this time.

Nov 16: Fall A&S, where I'll be entering my leather dye project in the Queen's Prize Tourney. I'm done my first draft of the documentation, and most of my actual work is done (unless I decided to try to pull off more colours between now and then).

Dec 8: Canton A&S competition. Not sure I'll be entering anything since its supposed to be for first attempts and I don't really have anything new I've been working on.

Feb 22: Practicum, may offer to teach my leather class and Avelyn and I have been tossing around the idea of doing a couple of classes on media relations.

Mar 29: Spring Kingdom A&S, where I plan to submit my stick-purse. Depending on how things go at the Fall A&S I may also update my leather dye project and resubmit it.

I did do some minor armour repairs for Avelyn so she could fight at Border Spat this past weekend. Just fixing a broken strap and such, nothing super exciting.

I think one of the bigger items of interest came from a conversation I had over the weekend with Mistress Ælfwyn about my leather dye project. I was telling her about my frustration with the way the red dye faded as it dried, and she suggested I try finishing it with oil anyway, as it might bring the colour back out.

I pulled out some olive oil, which seemed period appropriate given the recipe was from Italy. I know olive oil is often used instead of neatsfoot oil, and is what Karl Robinson uses to finish his period dyed leather (according to his web site).

It definitely brought the red back out, although its more brownish-red than the original colour before it dried. I let it dry overnight and it still kept some good colour, so I'll see what it's like when I get home from work today.

I suspect most of my work over the next few weeks will be on trying to get my leather dye project ready for Fall A&S. Once that's done I'll need to start the construction of my stick-purse so that it will be ready for March.

Once those two big projects are done, I think I'm going to switch back to doing some leather carving. I owe a few people some award badges, and I have to work on the Herald's binder of Harrowgate.