Voyage of the Stick Purse (AKA Crazy European Adventure)

I know, it's been a while since I've posted, real life and work have meant I've done very little A&S activity this past 6+ months. But I have a doozy of a post for you this time.

This fall Avelyn and I spent almost a month travelling through Europe. We stopped in Paris for almost a week, and then did a tour through Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. On the trip, I was on the lookout for representations of the stick-purse. I also planned a visit to the Fries Museum to actually see the original artefact and see if I could see for myself some of the construction questions I still had. So, without further ado, here are examples of the stick-purse that I found.

France:

We saw lots of really cool things in France, but only one stick purse to be found. It's a post period painting from the Louvre called A man weighing gold by Gerard Dou. I've posted the pictures on my smugmug account at: https://dgotlieb.smugmug.com/Travel/Europe-2017/France/Louvre/i-7PdhPqp/A

Belgium:

More luck in Belgium. We stopped in both Brussels and Bruge and I found an example at the Old Masters museum in Brussels. This one is  also post-period and is called The Money Counter by Willem van der Vliet. Here's the link: https://dgotlieb.smugmug.com/Travel/Europe-2017/France/Louvre/i-7PdhPqp/A

Netherlands:

We found a few good examples here but not as many as I expected. I'll go in order. First up is the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. They had a couple of post-period etchings that I hadn't seen before.

The first one is "Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple" by Rembrant.

https://dgotlieb.smugmug.com/Travel/Europe-2017/Netherlands/Bojimans-van-Buningen-Museum/i-hRLBd8v/A
https://dgotlieb.smugmug.com/Travel/Europe-2017/Netherlands/Bojimans-van-Buningen-Museum/i-Tx54XkT/A

The second is an engraving done by Salomon Savery based on Rembrant's work, also post period.

https://dgotlieb.smugmug.com/Travel/Europe-2017/Netherlands/Bojimans-van-Buningen-Museum/i-7L6PS3b/A
https://dgotlieb.smugmug.com/Travel/Europe-2017/Netherlands/Bojimans-van-Buningen-Museum/i-DdFxrmp/A

There were no stick-purses in Amsterdam that we found, but then we went to the Fries Museum to see THE stick-purse. :)

I took dozens of close ups from multiple angles. Main discoveries were that it looks like I did in fact engineer the bottom and the back seem correctly, which is what I really was hoping to be able to check (yay). However, in discussion with Avelyn and looking closely, the pouch probably had flaps originally. There are what look like leather buttons still attached to the pouches. Here are a few pictures, but all of them are posted in the Fries Museum album.

Germany:

Our next stick-purse sighting was in Cologne Germany at the Wallraf Museum. Here we found two new paintings I'd never seen before (they have no mention of money changers or anything related in their titles).

The first is a painting called The Quill Pen Cutter (I know, right????) from 1627 by Jan Lievens.

The second one is Sampson and Delilah by Jan Steen from about 1660. Again it had nothing really to do with the topic but there's a money lender in the corner of the painting.

None of these paintings were part of my original research of the stick-purse, so I feel like I've added to my knowledge, even if they were all post period. Plus I was able to confirm that my informed guesses about the construction of the Fries purses were bang on, which makes me pretty happy (even if I do need to make a new one now to add the flaps.) :)

Trillium War notes

*****Oops, wrote this last week but forgot to post it. Bad blogger. :) *****

It's been a busy week so I'm a bit behind in my updates. Trillies was pretty busy but here are some thoughts.

Thursday:

Didn't really get all that much done on Thursday since that's the day we arrived. We setup our presence with Fettered Fleur, who let us crash our day-visit setup with them, and got our banners all setup. There was a bit of a scramble because I left our portable hole in the garage at home when I was packing the car. Fortunately there were some available at a couple of blacksmith merchants on site so we now have several. After that and a quick dinner snack, I was off to the rapier list for inspection and the torch tourney.

Friday:

Friday morning was the start of my main class I was signed up for, Mistress Lucrece's leather bottle-making class. We spent most of the morning learning about the historical context of the bottles, design types and then trying our hand at making our own. I got to do my first wet forming of leather, and picked up a few neat tricks to improve my overall leatherworking techniques. It was an ambitious schedule, so I wasn't able to get done my bottle during the class, but I have everything I need to finish it up at home when I have time.

Right afterwards, I taught my first of two classes at Trillies. We had a full class of six people (Yay). We scheduled my Intro to Leatherwork class on Friday so that people would have some time to finish their pouches in camp if they didn't finish during the class, but I think almost everyone got pretty much done during the two hours, which is really great.

I like the format of this class because its kind of free-form. Over the course of the two hours I do a bit of an intro and then everyone spends about an hour and a half sewing their leather while I basically do a show and tell about leather tools and leather. Because I pre-cut and pre-punch the holes, we can chat and discuss all kinds of things while they work, so they end up hopefully picking up a lot more basics than they would otherwise.

I got some great comments during the class, and I'm told some of the students were really excited about it when they got back to their camps, which is cool to hear.

Saturday:

I had a couple of classes I was going to take on Saturday morning but I ended up not going for a couple of reasons. Aethelbert was doing a neat class on how he makes shoes, covering last making, stitching with boar bristles etc. It would have been neat but it was first thing in the morning and being off site, we just couldn't make it.

I was also originally signed up for a knife sheath class that Henry was teaching right afterwards, but I released my spot because there were a lot of newer people on the waiting list, and I figured they would get more out of it than I would. I was able to pop in and see his home-made bone leather stamps in action though, which was cool.

Right afterwards I taught my second class of the event, my discussion about period leather dyes. Its a bit more of a specialized class, so we only ended up with two people. Otherwise I think it went fairly well. I haven't taught it lately so I felt a bit disorganized in my thoughts, but I got all of the information out. The main goal is really to give people the basic tools to be able to select leather colours that look right, even if they don't want to experiment with making their own dyes. We also talked a fair bit about how the leather dyes compare to period fabric dyes, since at least one of the ladies had some experience with natural fabric dyes.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon at Mistress Lucrece's camp, where she was showing us how she finishes the bottles to make them water-tight using pitch and bees wax. This was her first time trying this on a camp stove setup, so there was some experimenting involved. There was much less swearing and crying than was advertised since it actually worked pretty well.


Other general stuff:

Since I was essentially in the A&S tents for most of the event, I didn't do any thrown weapons or rapier (other than the torch tourney on Thursday). I also didn't even break my camera out until court on Saturday.

During court, we got to hear the scroll text Avelyn and I wrote for Mistress Kersteken get read out when she was presented with her Hare Valiant, seemed to go over well.

I was kindly requested by Her Excellency Catherine to stick around to take pictures of the Skrael fighters at the Rose Tourney, which followed after court. I'm pretty sure this was a RUSE though (sneaky Baroness is sneaky), because the plotting had begun to make sure certain people were there to witness my Laurel, Mistress AElfwyn, being put on vigil for the Order of the Chivalry. Woot Woot!!!!!! There was a lot of cheering. :)

So I got lots of great pictures of this fine event and some pictures of the subsequent fighting before we had to go pack up our presence (we wanted ot get it packed before dark). We hung around the rest of the night visiting, going to the awesome bardic circle and otherwise doing the SCA camping thing, and then went back to our hotel for a good night sleep before driving home on Sunday.

The classes have really become a much bigger part of Trillies in recent years, which is great to see but also puts a lot more time demands on me since I spread myself pretty thin across different SCA activities. But we are an educational organization after all, so lets edumacate people when we can. ;)

The Big Reveal - Kingdom A&S Girdle Purse (with pictures)

This past weekend was Kingdom A&S so I can now post the pictures of my project - which I've been talking about for some time.

Quick summary for those who may have missed it. I decided that since this year is five years since I first entered Kingdom A&S, and that the event was back in our Barony the same as it was that year, that I would recreate my original project. I thought it would show the progress I've made in the past five years and might help people who may not be so confident with their first attempts (because looking back on my first entry all I can think is "What was I thinking?". :)

That year I made a new type of purse I'd never tried before, a basic kidney purse. The first 5-6 posts in the Kingdom A&S tag will give you the story on that original purse.

But of course, I couldn't just do the same pouch. I upgraded the complexity of the pouch, add better finishing and decorative techniques and used historically accurate materials (with a couple of exceptions I'll talk about later).

So, without any further ado, here's a picture side by side of the two finished pouches:

As you can see from this top view, there's a few major differences that you can see. For one, the stitches along the top forming the flab and connecting the various layers of leather is significantly cleaner. The white trim I think really makes a huge difference and makes it pop nicely (the trim was a suggestion from one of my judges for the original pouch). In Purses in Pieces, Goubitz also shows that many of the purses had buckles and straps, which I like since it will help keep things from falling out.

What you can't necessarily see as well from this angle is that there's actually a double pouch on the new purses.Underneath the black pouch you can see, there's a second pouch with two small pouchlets on it. This is a totally documentable design and added a lot of complexity (and storage space) to the purse. Here's a picture of the second level of pouch .You can also see the draw-strings on the pouchlet on the right, I hadn't yet done the one on the left.

Materials-wise, there's a big difference as well. The original pouch was commercially bought chrome-tan leather in a black-ish colour (turns out I was pretty close to what was produce-able in period, so that's kind of nice). The new pouch is dyed black using my vinegar black recipe from the Plictho, same as I used for previous projects.All of the stitching was done using waxed linen thread on the new pouch, as compared to artificial sinew on the original.

For the white leather, I had to make a substitution for cost/availability reasons. Goubitz indicates that pouchlets on these purses would usually have been made using either chamois leather or fabric.Given that I can't find chamois that isn't the super-stretchy auto detailing stuff, I made a substitution to use alum tawed leather, which is period appropriate. But (and there's always a but), it would have cost me $400 to ship a skin of alum tawed leather from the one place I've found it in the US - thanks to the crappy Canadian dollar right now. So I used some chrome-tanned white pigskin that I had on hand, which is almost identical to the colour, texture and thickness of the alum tawed leather.

Here are some in-progress pics (pics with red leather are the prototype that I made of the design, which Avelyn will be using).

Next post will be more about the day at the event.

Quiet day at Practicum

Oops, noticed I wrote this but never posted it. Guess its been busy. :)

It was a fairly quiet day for me at Practicum. I didn't have time to pull together any classes to teach this year because of my surgery recovery. Since there weren't really any classes that interested me (it was a Norse theme this year and I tend to do later period stuff) I decided to setup an all day leatherworking workshop.

Of course, this meant basically packing up all of my books, tools and gear and moving it from my basement to the site, which filled several bins. I needed a dolly to haul it all in.

I essentially spent the day working on my Kingdom A&S project and people could pop by, try out tools, flip through my leatherwork library and ask any questions they might have.

I was able to introduce a newcomer to leather tooling and stamping (and they got to take a scrap of leather they stamped back home with them) but other than a few good chats with a few people who had some specific questions it was mostly me doing my thing and people popping by to visit between their classes.

I was able to line up a few judges for the Baronial Championship at Break the Back (thanks all who've volunteered so far) and talked to some people about their entries.

I would say I'm about half done the work on my Kingdom A&S project.  I have to sew on all of the trim pieces and then do the final assembly. It's going to be tight since I also have to do up the documentation for whichever project I end up entering. (Note since this was written I've almost finished, just a few last pieces to do and then the documentation).

There were two highlights for me, both at court.

First, I was able to witness His Excellency Giovanni being elevated as Ealdormere's first member of the new Order of Defence peerage. Giovanni and Lucia were Baron and Baroness when I started fencing (or maybe Xristina was Vicaress at the time but they were certainly my first Baron and Baroness). One of my first really positive memories of fencing at events was my first Pennsic (and I think their first as Baron and Baroness) when they asked me to represent them as Baronial Rapier Champion until they could hold a tourney ( I wound up being their champion for more than a year). I was severely outclassed at the Champion's tourney from a skill perspective, but I think I held my own in the Q&A and swimsuit portions of the competition. ;) I didn't win one bout in any of the three tournaments I entered but I wore the Hare proudly. Of course, the next year was the famous "I want that bunny dead" incident during the town battle. You can ask Lucia about it, she tells it better than anyone else (and the myth keeps growing with every telling, as all good stories do).

The second highlight, and with all respect to our new Master of Defence, perhaps the biggest highlight, was seeing my Lady Avelyn totally gobsmacked as she was called into court and inducted into the Order of the Wain. She was only there because she'd written the text for an award scroll (of course) and wanted to see it presented (she was aiming for a record puns per inch of text). But I guess the surprise was on our new Ladyship. :) It's so well deserved, even if she has trimmed down the number of officer positions she currently holds from the previous high of 7 simultaneous positions.

Plotting my next Kingdom A&S Project

Today is Queen's Prize Tourney, which over the past few years has become one of my favourite SCA events. Sadly this year, for the first time, I won't be there for variety of reasons. I'm hoping people are getting really good feedback and will be able to take those discussions and really up their skills as a result.

Since I'm not there, and since its going to be nicer out tomorrow for my outdoor chores, I thought I'd spend some time today plotting out my next Kingdom A&S project.

My very first Kingdom A&S was in November 2011, before A&S got bumped to the spring. It was hosted in Greyfells and Avelyn and I both went and entered for the first time since it was local. I'd only started doing leatherwork maybe a year prior and didn't really do much A&S wise. How times have changed. :)

Anyway, as has been my normal, the research into the project was pretty good but the execution was very much a beginner project. If you go to the very first few posts under my Kingdom A&S tag you'll see the progress reports on my original project. Here's the link to the photo post with the end result.

I think I've come up with a really neat idea, and when I've mentioned it to folks they seem to like it.

Here's the plan, would love to hear people's thoughts in the comments.

Since Skrael is hosting the event once again this spring, and it's basically going to be almost 5 years since my first Kingdom A&S, I've decided I'm going to redo my original project. But Dafydd, you say, that seems silly since you already made that pouch.

The difference here is that the pouch I made five years ago was super basic, with no ornamentation or detail at all. It was a true beginner project.

This time I'll still work off of examples in Purses in Pieces but otherwise only the general style of the pouch will be the same. I'm going to design a much more complex pattern, possibly with pouchlets, multiple leather colours (probably using my period dyes), better finishing details and some decoration. It'll basically be to show what I've learned in the past five years.

The Final Stick-Purse - From Kingdom A&S

It was May 2012 that I first posted on this blog about starting to do some research into the stick-purse. Almost three years later it's finally done.

The pictures below are the final project as entered at Kingdom Arts & Sciences on April 11. The dimensions are exactly the same as the original pouch at the Fries Museum (handle length, bag hight and bag diameter are all the same). The bags are made from 3-4 oz milled veg tan, which is a bit too thick for the design but I couldn't find the right kind of garment-weight chamois leather, so this was the closest I could get. The handle cover and draw strings are made from 2-3 oz veg tan goat and the base of the pouches are made from 4-5 oz veg tan cow.

The colours on the handle and the draw strings are my period leather dyes that I worked out based on period dye manuals (red, green, yellow and black).

The conversation at A&S was really good. I got a few suggestions for some tweaks to make my purse even closer to the original (changing the way I did the top of the handle, some ideas on getting the thinner chamois to work, restringing the draw strings on the pouchlets reversed to how I have them) but overall it was a really great conversation. The big thing I would change is the leather itself, as a thinner leather would allow the draw strings to close better on the pouchlets.

Next step is that I hope to test out the purse at an actual SCA event to see if it would replace the cash box at gate. I bet it would work.

There's not much more I can do on the research front unless I can get more pictures from the museum on how the bottom and backs of the pouches are constructed. I may have to see if someone can stop in at the museum and see what it looks like. Otherwise, I think the design is pretty darn close to the original.

Original artefact at the Fries Museum

My Kingdom A&S Project

Slow but steady wins the race - AKA the latest stick-purse update

Now that I've finished my surprise for Kersteken, it's time to really crack down on the stick-purse if I want to have something done in time for QPT.

Last night I resumed stitching up the parts for the stick-purse. What I can conclude is this is going to take a while. I was joking with AElfwyn about QPT and I said that it was going to take me about 50 hours of work just to do the full mock-up that I'm planning to enter (the proper purse with the good materials will be for spring A&S). I was joking at the time but now I'm starting to wonder if I may have been more accurate than I thought.

I've got all of the body pieces cut (call that about an hour of work already). Right now I'm working on sewing the pouchlets to the main pouch bodies. I'm about half done the first one and I've easily spent over an hour doing it. It's getting a bit easier as a get better at the technique but it's an odd stitch and hard to get things lined up correctly so the stitches are relatively even.

So, at the current rate it's going to take me between 5-8 hours of work (with four bags on the purse) just to attach the pouchlets. I suspect that's actually the largest chunk of time for any individual step, as the rest of the stitches are fairly straightforward.

The good news is it isn't something I have to do in the basement like the rapier sheaths, so I can take it with me to A&S days and such to work on it. I'll be heading out to fight practice tonight to be social but I'll be trying to finish the half-done pouchlet tonight at least.

For those wanting to see what I mean by the stitching on the pouchlet, here's my original test design post with pictures. Because you're coming up blindly through two layers of leather, and because the rectangular pouchlet piece needs to be sewn in a circle, it's a bit of a challenge to get everything cleanly done.

Time to make some hay (well not literally) - QPT planning

Seems like not long ago I was at Kingdom A&S presenting my research into period leather dyes, but here we are only a few months out from the next Queen's Prize Tourney. So, time to great cracking if I'm finally going to have something to show for all of my research into the stick-purse.

Incidentally, I actually finally found some leather that should work for the final project. It isn't chamois like the original, but it's pretty darn close and completely period appropriate. It's 3/4 oz milled veg tan which means its much softer and more flexible than the 3/4 oz stuff I've found to date. Should work just fine, and its tool-able and dye-able if I want.

But before I go there I'm going to do up a full-size, complete mock up for QPT to get input on the design and construction. I'm going to use my garment weight pig skin (green since that's what I had the most of). I'll use veg tan on the handle and draw strings, and test out my period dyes to make sure they don't bleed on each other when I weave the handle braid, and I'll use my linen thread to make sure its strong enough for the project.

If you haven't been following the saga of the stick purse, I've been blogging about it for a couple of years now, ever since I pegged to the idea of making one after reading Purses in Pieces. Here's a link to the keyword so you can read back about the various starts and stops of the project. (warning, there's almost 40 posts over the years, so budget some time). :)

Ideally I'll be able to get some tips on the construction from some experts at QPT and then apply it to the finished bag, using the good materials, for A&S in the spring.

Where I am on the work:

This weekend I did a bit of prep work. I cut out the main body pieces for the four pouches and started attaching one of them to a bottom round made of veg tan. Then I remembered that I should probably attach the pouchlet first, so I put that on hold and will try to cut out the pouchlet pieces this week in a different colour (probably brown).

I have the wooden handle piece measured and cut out so can probably start working on that any time, although I'll have to decide what colours to use and make up some small batches of those dyes. Maybe yellow and black, or green and yellow?

Practicum Wrap-up

Yesterday was Practicum in Caldrithig (Ottawa). This is a bit of a unique event up in or end of the Kingdom because its entirely focused on classes and learning (mostly related to A&S). Most of the day isn't even in garb, although a lot of people wear it anyway so they don't have to change before court.

Lots happened during the day.

First, I was able to present the item I had promised Her Majesty to be included in Their gift basket for Gulf Wars next month. She was coming up for Practicum so I wanted to get it done as it would probably be the last event I'll be at before They head down south. The recipient of our gift basket this year is Trimaris. I won't be posting any details or pictures until after the event as I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I hope they'll like it. Stay tuned in a few weeks as I took lots of pictures over the past couple of weeks as I worked on it.

I also officially came full circle at Practicum this year. It was about 5ish years ago at Practicum that I took my very first leatherworking class taught by Baron Tiberius. Yesterday, I taught my first A&S class at an event, which was of course an intro to leatherworking class. I had four people, and we spent about two hours going over leather basics and working on a leather pouch. Hopefully they enjoyed the class and with any luck I'll have gotten some of them interested in leatherworking at least as well as Tiberius did with me.

I was able to take a few classes about armouring and SCA fighting being taught by Mistress AElfwyn to help me get a bit more of a background in that area now that I'm starting to go to practices and such.

The other "big" news from Practicum is that I was chosen by Baronial Council as our new Baronial A&S Minister. I have some ideas for some things I'd like to do, so I'll probably do a bit of a post about my plans in the next few days. I'll give you a hint though and say that social media will be involved. :)

All in all a pretty full day.

The Latest Stick-Purse Fail

It's certainly not a fatal kind of fail but it is a setback.

For those that have been following the project, I did a mock-up using my garment weight, chrome tan pigskins as a way to test the pouch design and it seemed to work out just fine. Here's the pic from before, (although you can see the full post with pictures from various angles here).

Since all of the mock-ups worked out and my design was set, the past few weeks I've been slowly working on the actual stick-purse. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a feeling the leather was going to be too heavy so I started out by just doing one of the pouches as a test. That way I wouldn't waste all of my nice veg tan goat by cutting it all until I know it works.

I cut out the main pouch body, the pouchlet and the pouch base from my veg tan (using slightly heavier leather for the base). I used my vinegar black dye to dye the pouchlet piece as I have a theory about the use of colours to distinguish what coins are in which pouch. I then started to sew the parts together using my newly acquired linen thread (I'm using 18/3 thread for the body and 30/3 thread for the attachment of the pouchlet).

Once I started to assemble, I ran into some issues.

• I didn't factor the thicker leather into my assembly and pattern, so the pouchlet piece doesn't quite reach all the way around the circle like it did on the mock-up. That's an easy enough fix, I either make the circle smaller or the pouchlet piece bigger. Or use different leather.

Which takes me to the other problem, which is:

• As I feared, the leather is just too thick and not flexible enough for the pouch design. Especially with the pouchlet, it won't pleat properly to bunch using a drawstring.

Here are pictures of where I got to this week.

So what's the plan you might ask? Well, fear not as I've already come up with something thanks to a chat I had with Master Dafydd while he was sitting his vigil for his Pelican (of course we talked about leatherworking, what else?) ;)

The original pouch at the Fries Museum is actually made from chamois leather, which is an oil an leather made from sheepskin. Most people would be familiar with this type of leather as it is also used to polish and dry your car. It's super soft and extremely absorbent. You can still find natural oil tanned chamois in various places, although I have no idea if its produced the same way as would have been done in period.

Anyway, in anticipation of my veg tan not working, I had thought to look for some natural chamois. You can get lots of synthetic stuff but the natural oil tan ones are  a bit harder to find. Of course, where would you go to buy stuff like this in Canada but Canadian Tire. :)

So I now have four pieces of chamois leather, about 5 square feet each. That should be enough for what I need. The one thing with this leather is I'm not sure how well it will take dye. I have no doubt it will absorb the liquid but whether it will stay in the chamois as it dries is another question. I did apply some vinegar black to a scrap and it didn't react at all, so there are no natural tannins present. I'll have to try pre-soaking it in gallnut (as per the actual period dye recipe) to see if it will work.

If it doesn't dye properly I'll have to modify my plan. I can skip dying the pouchlets (since the original artifact didn't have them dyed) and just stick with dying the handle leather. I plan to use the veg tan for the handle as the chamois wouldn't braid very well. Since the original artifact does have a dyed handle weave, it would actually be a closer replica of the period item.

I am starting to think that this may not be ready for A&S in March, so I may only have the leather dye project at A&S and then enter this at the next one (or maybe the QPT?).

Stick-Purse Update

I'm behind schedule on the stick-purse if I'm going to get it ready for Spring A&S. The dye project is in good shape but I haven't really done much lately on the stick-purse.

Last week I did put in an order for my linen thread (for those who wanted to piggy-back, I didn't have enough room on my credit card for anything more once we put together our own order - maybe next time). It should hopefully arrive sometime this week so I can get started on assembly.

This weekend I spent a bit of time down in the basement cutting out some of the pieces for the stick-purse though. I have to say, I'm concerned the leather isn't going to work. I bought the thinnest stuff I could find, 2 oz goat, but handling it as I was cutting it, I have a feeling it will still be too stiff for the pouch body and the pouchlet.

The original purse at the Fries Museum was actually made of chamois leather, which is an oil tanning method different from veg tan. Here's some information on the different tanning methods: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/leather/pl.html

I think I'm going to put a hold on cutting all of the parts out and just cut out one piece of each pouch piece. Once the thread comes in, I'll assemble a single pouch to see how it looks. If it doesn't work I'll need to figure out an alternative.

So what are my alternatives:

1. According to the link above, buckskin and brain/deer tanned leather are also period and are essentially an oil tannage (similar to chamois), so that could be an alternative. I know Zeli's carries it, but whether it is true brain tanned leather or just chrome tanned made to look like it is another question.
2. I could use my chrome tan pig skin that I have been using for pouches. It's light and flexible and would work really well (its actually what I used for my mock-up). If I can demonstrate that the actual period materials are not reasonably available and I knowingly made the substitution for the closest modern equivalent I could find, it should be OK. 

The one concern I have is that I don't think my period dyes will work on either of these leathers. It certainly won't work on the chrome tan. In theory though, the leather on the handle would have needed to be a bit stiffer to weave it properly, so I could use my veg tan for that component and dye it as I originally planned.

More to come I'm sure in the next few weeks.

Workplan for Spring A&S - Stick-purse

Part two of my work planning posts, this one is for my stick-purse project which has been somewhat on hold while I figure out the leather dyes. That hold needs to get lifted because this is the project I'm really wanting to get ready for Spring A&S since I've been researching and engineering it for over two years.

Fortunately my research and documentation is mostly done (at least as far as I can get it until I'm done with my assembly), so I just have to get my act together and get the darn thing made.

November
Get linen thread (done) and experiment with it
Buy slightly longer nails (done)
Re-do test run of the braided handle with thinner strips and using period dyes (done)

December
Figure out the leather braided knot that needs to go on the end of the handle
Start cutting out the leather pieces (very carefully):

• Strap for top knot
• Handle cover and weaving strap for handle
• Four pouch bodies
• Four pouch bases
• Four pouchlets
• Four large drawstrings
• Four pouchlet drawstrings
• Possibly trim for tops of main pouches (to clean up the edges)

Dye the draw strings, handle and pouchlet pieces and potentially the trim pieces

January
Assembly of the four pouches (big chunk of work here)

February
Assemble braided handle cover
Attach completed pouches to handle
Attach braided knot to top of handle

March
Finalize documentation

Leatherworking Class - Achievement Unlocked

After months of planning and a delay last month for when I got called in to work the weekend, I finally delivered my leatherworking class at the Harrowgate canton meeting today.

To be honest I was kind of nervous going in, having never taught a class before but I think it went pretty well.

For details on the class, see this post where I planned out the contents (with links to the pics of the pouch we made).

I had capped the class at 15 to keep it manageable, but I'm glad we weren't full. We ended up with 8 people doing the class, and that was about the right number to make sure I could devote some time to each person and help them as needed.

The class took about an hour and half, which is on the upper end of what I was aiming for, but didn't feel too rushed or too drawn out. People seemed pretty happy with their pouches.

Some notes:

• Folks seemed to like the handout and a number of people with lots of hand sewing experience were able to work ahead using just the handout, so I'm hoping that means the steps were explained well.
  
• I got lots of compliments on the format, with me popping around helping people, answering questions and explaining some of the documentation and embellishments as people were working.
  
• Need to buy different needles. I had bought a bunch of #3 harness needles but the eyes weren't big enough for the artificial sinew (we ended up having to split the sinew to help people thread it through the needle).
  
• I think for Practicum I'll cap it at 10 people to make sure I can devote enough time to people. 15 would probably have been too much.
  
• One suggestion I had was to do up a couple of more demo pouches showing some of the embellishment options. If I have time I think that would be nice.

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.

Making the kits for my hand's-on leatherworking class

I've been making some good progress on getting my kits together for my leatherworking class.

As a refresher, I'm teaching a hand's-on leatherworking class for the Canton in October. We'll be making small belt pouches as a way to learn the basics. Down the road I'll probably look at doing similar classes on leather tooling and leather dying, but for now the focus is an intro to stitching etc.

I'm capping the class at 15, but that still means I need to make 15 kits.

Each kit will have a harness needle, pieces of artificial sinew for the stitching, plus all of the leather pieces pre-cut and pre-punched so that all folks need to do is sew them together.

So far I have the bag pieces for all 15 kits cut out of garment weight pig skins of various colours (I have some brown, blue, red and green). I'm now punching all of the holes around those pieces and have about half done. I expect I should have that done by Wednesday if I can spend some time on it.

Next I need to cut out the belt loop pieces, which are from a heavier leather, and make the draw strings using  my strapping tool.

I'd like to try to have all of the kits done and bagged by the end of next week so I can move on to more projects. Mass producing leather pieces like this is not exactly the most exciting thing in the world. Of course, if I teach it at Practicum I'll just have to do this all over again.

Pre-Pennsic update on various and sundry

With just over a week until the first wave of people leave for the wilds of Pennsic, we've been busy working on all fronts.

Leatherworking class:
For my October leatherworking class for the Canton, I've completely finished my hand out and its ready to be printed. I've also started to cut out the leather for the class, but I have a long way to go. I have the pouch pieces for five pouches cut but still need to do the draw strings and belt flaps. Plus, I'm going to need a lot more than 5 kits.

I did a quick show of hands for who is interested on the Canton e-mail and Facebook page and so far have about 12 people saying they are tentatively interested in taking the class. I'll probably cap the class at 15, just to keep it manageable, and so that people get some one-on-one help if they need it. Right now, I'm thinking I'll probably need to charge a materials fee of a few dollars, just to recoup some of the leather costs, but I'm trying to use scraps and leather I already have on hand (as much as possible) to reduce costs.

I'll probably do 15 kits and if I don't get that many people, I can always use them if I decide to offer the course at Practicum next year.

Stick-Purse project:
Design-wise, I think I'm about done. I may fiddle a little bit with the waxed linen to see if I can get some thinner threads pulled out (so that I can in-turn use a smaller needle and get the stitches tighter), but otherwise I think its good to go.

This week I started working on my documentation and I'm now about 80 per cent done. Really, the only information I need to add in is stuff from Purses in Pieces that I need to pull out. The content is about six pages, with another 4-ish pages of annexes with pictures of artwork and extant examples, links and bibliography.

Once we're past Pennsic, I'll need to spend a bit of time going back to my period leather dye project so I can figure out at least a few more colours. I've got the yellow for sure. I'd like to try to get a red since I have the brazilwood. Black or dark brown would also work if I can't get the blue or green recipes to work.

Once that's done, I'll actually be ready to work on the final project, which means there's a small chance I'll have it ready for this year's Kingdom A&S.

Armouring:

I did a full inspection of Avelyn's body armour pre-Pennsic and did some minor repairs (some of the stitching had blown). Also did some work on her leg armour to hopefully make it less of a pain to wear.

Added straps to her demi's she bought at Pennsic last year although there's some question if they are usable (may be too short, leaving her wrist not adequately protected).

I tried to rivet the straps onto Avelyn's full gauntlets last week and it was a bit of a failure. Because of the curve of the gauntlets and the size of my anvil (plus the fact I have to work on the floor) I couldn't get the right angle to cleanly rivet the straps on.

We went to the Canton A&S and armouring day this past Monday. I was there for a meeting and Avelyn going to get some help with the gauntlets. Unfortunately she had a bit of an incident and discovered how sharp my leather scissors are, and didn't get much done the rest of the night.

Morag was able to help with some structural ideas and did help her cut out the leather pieces, so I may see how far I can get with assembling it all. We can always go to A&S this coming Monday to get help with the riveting. This may end up having to wait until after Pennsic though since we're running out of time to get projects finished and get everything packed.

Another stick-purse mock-up (with pictures)

Today I did a run to Zeli's to pick up some waxed linen thread, some glover's needles and other miscelaneous equipment so I could do my next version of the stick-purse.

Improvements I wanted to make this time were a more accurate pattern for the pouchlet, plus trying the linen thread that I'll be using for the final pouch so that I can figure out any of the particularities of the material.

As a reminder, here is the stick-purse from the Fries Museum that I am trying to reproduce.



And here are pictures of today's mock-up. I don't think I can get much closer as far as the actual pattern goes. It's pretty bang on.

Today I learned a new skill (with pictures)

As part of my stick-purse project I learned a new skill today.

The stick purse has a leather braided handle over top of a wooden core. Since I've made some good progress on the pouch design itself, I thought I should start working on the handle. On my birthday I had bought a leather braiding book from Zeli's so I bought some one-inch wide dowels and started playing with it.

I have two types of dowel, oak and poplar. I'd like to use the oak but I'll have to see what works best since I'll need to be able to nail the pouches to the handle without splitting it (yes, the extant example at the Fries actually had the pouches nailed to the wooden handle).

As a start I made what the book calls a slit leather handle covering of one thong. Basically you wrap the handle with a single piece of lether that has slits cut into it. You then weave a single strip of leather over and under the slits until you have covered the handle.

I picked this handle design because the extant examples and the artwork normally show that the handle is covered by a chequed pattern of leather. This is the simplest type of pattern I found in the book that produces that look to the woven leather.

I cut the handle cover piece last night, with 1/2 inch wide strips cut into it. I then dyed it a dark brown and then glued it to the handle. After leaving it to dry all day, I wove the tan strip of leather (also 1/2 inch wide) through the slits in the handle.

I think it looks pretty darn good for a first try. Second picture is with the mock-up of the pouch so you can get an idea of what it will look like.

Latest stick-purse mock-up (with pictures)

It's the Canada Day long weekend here. Usually we spend this weekend at Trillium War but due to some unforseen circumstances we ended up not going this year. Instead, we stayed home for a stay-cation and I was able to do some leatherworking.

I took my previous design that I'd developed based on the Fries museum purse and took it the next step, adding the pouchlet and draw strings.

As a starting point I used the pouchlet pattern that Mistress Elizabeth provided in her hand out from the Pennsic course she taught last year. The shape doesn't exactly match the picture from the Fries (I think it's more like the other example in Purses in Pieces), but it gave me a good idea of what's involved, since I've never tried doing a pouchlet before.

I think it turned out not bad. I'll need to tweek the shape of the pouchlet a bit. I have an idea of how I can replicate the shape of the pouchlet from the Fries. If that doesn't work, I'll use the pattern from Mistress Elizabeth but may want to make it a bit bigger as right now it wouldn't fit much in it.

Here are the pictures:

Birthday Leatherworking

I booked the day off work yesterday for my birthday. It's a tradition in my family to book the day off and do stuff you enjoy doing (or at least get stuff done that you don't otherwise have time for).

I used the time to pop over to Zeli's and pick up some leatherworking stuff I've been meaning to get, plus look around for materials I need for my fall leatherworking class.

I found some nice brown pigskin that will work well for the class, and picked up some needles that I can give to folks as part of their class package. I also bought  the leather braiding book that Mistress Elizabeth recommended in her stick-purse course, so I can start looking at what to do with the handle. And of course, I bought myself a few "birthday presents" as well.

They had a really neat book of Celtic and Norse patterns that has partial documentation of where the designs were found. (for example, it may say that the pattern was from a bedpost in Gotland, or something like that). Not enough that I could track it down, but better than most where it could be entirely made up by the artist.

I have to admit, I also bought myself some leather. They had some really nice sueded goat skin in a nice brown colour on clearance. It will be really awesome for something. And I bought a few new tools, and a new smaller blade for my swivel knife (for when I'm doing finicky detail work).

I did do a bit more work on my stick-purse as well, cutting out the pieces for another of the mock-up pouches. I figure if I do three, plus the handle it will give me  enough to see how things go together.