Boat Burning

Darrell explains the history of the burning of the Boat.He might get tired of telling the tale every year, but I love hearing it.

The Boat is lit...

Ragnarr watches with double fisted drinks, so I can take a picture.

What do you see in the flames for the new year?

Look Ma, I'm weaving!

I had this apparently optimistic plan to sew the heddles in two days and weave for the next 7 days.

It took 5 days to knit the heddles and do a little more clean-up/prep work, and I was finally weaving on the 6th day. I've got a day and a half left.

But I'm weaving! I'm finally weaving!



Oh and by the by..........I got screeched in tonight. :)

I'm here, I'm really here

Now that I've been here.....



.....for a few days, and have settled in a bit....



I have to say two things -

1) I'm really really enjoying myself. If it weren't for the lack of flush toilets in the longhouse.... I could live here. I could be a Viking woman.

I'd lose the addiction to the internet eventually. It would be good.

2) And, I'm really looking forward to my day off tomorrow.

Yes, I know, a study in contradictions.

DARC does L'Anse aux Meadows - the blog

I've mostly been writing about our trip to L'Anse aux Meadows over on the blog for the Dark Ages Recreation Company - click the link here. The photography on the DARC blog, by the by, is not mine.

Short version - visitors are time consuming. I'm not as close to weaving at this point as I'd hoped. And contact lens are a pain - literally. I could try the fuzzy world of no contacts and no glasses - once I start weaving. I'm convinced a blind person could do it. But for the setup, I still need to see what I'm doing.

Oh my - I've never met so many creative ways to butcher the taste of seafood in my life. Deep frying seems to be a way of life here, unless they're pan-frying it in a squad of butter.

Karen

ancient tech, ancient enemy

This little fellow is eating all of my asiastic lilies. It's called an Asiastic Lily beetle - what an original name. I hope the lilies come back next year when I'll be prepared to kill the beetle, now that I know how.



Let's hear it for ancient technology! This little bit of wood is based on an artefact in Viking Artefacts (James Graham-Campbell, ed.). The original is just 10cm in length, but this recreation is just a little longer to fit my hand better. It's called a pin beater.



I've been weaving for a few years now, and I admit it, I'm slow. I just didn't see the purpose or usefulness of pin beaters. But since I've been using this one, I'm in awe. It's a great tool, both for weaving on the warp weighted loom and as I'm using it here to beat the tablet weaving header of my new project. Both the new pin beater, and new weaving project are part of the preparations for our trip to L'Anse aux Meadows.

DARC does L'Anse aux Meadows

Text below has been cheerfully thefted from the DARC blog, where I'm also an administrator. Darrell actually wrote the text 'though and made the webpage that is linked here.

At the request of a reader, I'll try to make a few posts about our preparations for this adventure, and I'll certainly be blogging from the road as it happens. Darrell tends to be more of a big picture guy and his posts will show up on the DARC blog, so it might be interesting to follow us both.

the Viking Age comes to LIFE
August 15 - 25, L'Anse aux Meadows NHSC

http://www.warehamforge.ca/DARC-LAM/DARC-LAM-2010.html

The Dark Ages Re-creation Company has been asked by Parks Canada to mount a major presentation at L'Anse aux Meadows NHSC. The 10 days of living history is to help mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the archaeological site in Vinland.

Weekend - Shoes, peaceful setting

Bunches of interesting things this weekend. Met up with friends in the Dark Ages Recreation Company to learn how to make turnshoes. We're using modern tools, but the end product should be pretty much the same as Viking Era shoes.

This is our teacher, working on a pair of shoes for his daughter while we're all off on earlier steps in the process.



Our hosts for the weekend have beautiful garden spaces and right now, their tulips are in full bloom. Long time readers will likely realize that I have a special thing for tulips. :)

This picture seems to have turned out pretty darned well. I like the luminous sunlight and slight fuzziness around the edges of the photo.



They also have chickens. I think this is the rooster.



And horses, and cats, and a deeply peaceful farm out in the boondocks of Ontario. Sitting on the porch in the early morning ... it was so peaceful.

Our host was Grondzilla and his partner, who dislikes seeing her name in print. Grondzilla has been engaged in a commitment to blog every day for a year. I'm intrigued by the idea. I briefly considered the idea. Generally speaking, I update my Facebook status once a day anyway.

But I'd have to be crazy to consider it right now. DARC is gearing up pretty heavily for a gig at L'Anse aux Meadows in August, my boss just went on mat leave again leaving me busier at work, and there's that gardening thing. I have way too much to do these days already.

Another smelting thing...

Well, there was another smelting thing..... I like the people, I love the husband.... but I'm getting a little tired of the smelting.

On the bright side, Snorri came back for a visit.



And the beating of the hot rock is still amusing.



Wareham also had a few very attentive bluejays hovering about. I haven't seen ours in quite awhile.

Viking Althing

So.... it's been a busy few weeks again. I'm way behind.

Back in September, one of the groups in the SCA held an event loosely based on a Viking Althing. The Althing is basically a gathering in Iceland's history where all the people came together to hear the laws read out, and some legal cases decided. Because they only happened once a year, the Althing was also sort of a party / merchant / craftsman mecca.

The Dark Ages Recreation Company - www.darkcompany.ca - and Regia - www.regia.ca - and Torvik - www.torvik.org - were all asked to participate as well and show off our unique Viking Era skills.

I'm a part of the DARC group. This is what the 'viking' street looked like, with DARC folk front and center and Regia and Torvik at the far end.

It's hard to parse from this picture, but DARC had 'booths' with a money changer and pewter caster, a fellow working on a pole lathe turning wood, a tavern for the group cooking appropriate foodstuffs (and boy, was that ever a discussion in the planning stages!), a textiles co-operative, a wood carver, a blacksmith, and a bead merchant.



I was mostly spinning all day in the textiles co-operative and sometimes helping out in the kitchen.



Kadja is also part of DARC and was experimenting with pit firing clay vessels. She and Foote the Potter (from Regia) are seen here covering the pit fire.



It's a process that takes a full day. Digging a pit, carefully placing fragile pottery and building a smoking fire on top of it, and then burying the whole thing to burn out underground, gradually 'curing' the clay.

The next morning, we all (those who had pots in the fire) helped dig out the pots... it was really neat. Some of my pots actually survived!



Snorri showed up to peruse the pots....

Remember Snorri from our trip to Iceland in July? Well, when we got home, we sent him off to Peterborough to travel back to Iceland and then on to Denmark and England with another couple, who returned and gave him back to Steve, his maker. Who knows where Snorri will show up next?

It's September and....

The students have returned to the campus, en masse. *sigh* To be that young again.

I haven't seen The Tool yet. Usually the engineers have to strut obnoxiously through Arts Quad at least once with the thing. But it is still early in the term.

Still early in the term, and one of my more unflappable co-workers has already been heard to mutter something to the effect of "I think they're trying to kill us."

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The September long weekend, created compliments of Labour Day, brings it's usual trip up north for the annual SCA event at Bonfield.

Vikings everywhere, oh my.



Well, just Viking tents apparently.

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My tomatoes are starting to hit the production level. Sort of. Finally.

It's been a bad year for the tomatoes. Big plants, but relatively few tomatoes - I think I'm seeing the results of a critically reduced bee population. Next year I may take the precaution of pollinating by hand.

But between my own and the farmer's market, I've managed to stock up enough pasta sauce to last for the year, I hope.



Yes, that is an entire shelf in the upright freezer. Maybe a few more batches?


Karen

Trillium War, making beads, garden

So... we're on the eve of taking off for two weeks in Iceland, and I'm trying not freak out about not being packed properly or leaving a clean enough house for the house/dog sitter. I've decided to blog about the past few weeks instead. Just to take my mind off of it for a bit.

By the by, I'll be blogging from Iceland whenever the spirit moves me, and we have internet access.

Back at the beginning of July, we went to an SCA event called the War of the Trilliums. As is becoming usual for this event, Neil made a bead furnace and invited anyone who wandered by to try their hand at making beads.

This is the furnace.....



And these are some of the beads that people made.....



We got 1/3rd breakage rate - 12.5 beads broke, and 25 survived. That's a definite improvement over the years, but it's still pretty high. And those that do survive are often pockmarked with ash in the process. I don't think we have the hang of Norse bead making yet, but it's fun trying. :)

Our friend Steve gave us this fellow to take to Iceland with us - Snorri is the suggested name. I've called him Snorri Steveson in the Icelandic fashion. At Trillium War, he was guarding our camp.



Coming home to the garden, we have some lovely astilbes in bloom - they are shade plants.



The cosmos and the clematis are still in full bloom.



We had so much fun with working beads at Trillium War and managed to take the furnace home intact that we decided to do it again a week later with a smaller crowd so that we could test a few things - reheating an already existing furnace, and videotaping the tesserae method.

This is a still from the tesserae method of making beads. Rob is just lifting one of the tesserae pieces from a piece of flat new charcoal and starting to wind it around the mandrel. There's more information on the bead making process on DARC's bead pages and on DARC's blog.



This is a delightfully composed and poorly shot (it's not in focus!) picture of the beads that I made. One survived whole and one didn't - it's in the background in two pieces.

Boat Burning

Friends gathered, camera settings were played with, tripods were needed. Wishes were made, memories guarded, and family remembered.



And a boat was burned, keeper of our thoughts. What was once, and will be.

Blog Fun

RSS feeds - come and see me! It's a pretty site, really. At least I like to think so, anyway. Nonetheless, let me put a bug in your eyes - my blog content is suffering from boredom and inertia. Ask me questions, or offer quotes for the Quote box, or make suggestions for content. I'm listening!

Renovations are in the blog wind - I've just finished finally adding a label to each and every one of my 3 years worth of posts (yes, I know I'm a little slow).

The Dark Ages Recreation Company (to which I belong) has just finished a huge huge overhaul of it's website. And now we have a blog on site as well!

Check out the 2008 Bloggies! The blog that got me started 3 and a bit years ago is the Iceland Weather Report, and it's one of the finalists for "Best European Blog".

New stuff, by request

I've gotten poked by two friends. Vandy sent me email reminding me that I'd promised to put up some commments on Neil's recent bead explorations, and Nina left a comment kicking me to post up about my experience with spinning lessons.

So let's do this chronologically then and I'll throw in a visit to Peterborough as well.

First there was Neil's bead furnace experiment. He's finishing up his degree in archaeology at Wilfrid Laurier University and one of his courses asked for students to actually _do_ something in an historical manner. Neil made a bead furnace and made beads.



Neil made the furnace by himself, but needed an extra set of hands for the bead making so I pitched in.



Very ugly beads, eh? :)

His paper is replicated on the Dark Ages Recreation Company webpage, here.

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Later that same month we visited Peterborough to take in the Vikings exhibit at the Peterborough Centennial Museum. A friend of ours was the lead curator for this exhibit.




Our friend called upon DARC to donate some of our re-creations to supplement the exhibition, to make a simple panel presentation more 3 dimensional. That's Neil's shield in the picture.

But more importantly to me, is the loom that Dave made for his wife Anne, and then borrowed back for the exhibition.



I greatly admire Anne's disciplined approach to study and recreation in the Viking Era textiles. Look at the fabric she's getting here...




Now, she's all modest and doesn't think much of it, but I think it's great! I have trouble just getting started with the weaving.

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The most recent development has been that I've started taking lessons from Wellington Fibres. Specifically, in how to spin on a spinning wheel. My friend Vandy loaned me her Ashford Traditional more then a year ago, and I've been trying to teach myself off and on. I finally came to the conclusion that it just wasn't working.

Ability with a drop spindle doesn't seem to translate that easily.

Now, I realize that I still need to make some progress in consistency but I was pleased as punch when I made my first plyed yarn on the wheel.



Three skeins later, I'm a little more annoyed by the slow progress and a tad worried about how badly overspun my singles are. It makes plying very difficult. Let's just say that plying from a center pull ball is an exercise in frustration that I'd prefer not to repeat very often.



This past saturday was Dye day! Look at the pretty colours we got!



Now, these are all acid dyes and I doubt I'll repeat the experience very often unless I can visit the shop another day to hand paint some more skeins. I just don't have the equipment or space at home to handle acid dyes safely or comfortably. But that's okay, I'm good with natural dyes over the fire, like the Vikings did.

Now, this skein I'm pretty happy with. Very thin as a single, I could almost use it as sewing thread. Plyed, I don't really know what to do with it, but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.



It's very pretty - 75% wool, and 25% acid dyed green mohair. Vikings didn't know what mohair was, but I certainly enjoyed spinning it.

Of course, they hadn't yet been introduced to the spinning wheel either (even though some version of it had existed in China at the time), but I'm sure they would have enjoyed it's production value if they had had it. :)

A Mixed Bag o'Fun

This is Neil's arrowhead. I didn't have a picture of it in the last post. He's also done some research summarizing Norse arrowhead finds from various sources. If you're interested, it's here.



New rovings from Wellington Fibres! Great service, good prices, and nice people!

Some of these rovings are naturally dyed raw fleece that had become too difficult to work after dyeing. Sending them through the commercial mill to be turned into rovings really made all the difference to their spin-ability. It's not a historical process, but at least it means I'll get around to actually spinning them.



On sunday, we went to the Royal Winter Agricultural Fair in Toronto. We met this sheep, among many others.

I didn't see any Icelandic or Shetland sheep, surprisingly enough. There's certainly enough people raising them in Ontario.

I waved at CraftyGrrl (aka Mel) briefly during the fleece and shawl auction, but we didn't chat. I didn't want to distract her from the hunting. :)



This is one of the shawls produced in the Sheep to Shawl contest - my favourite. But I haven't the foggiest which team made it.

One of the great disappointments of the Fair was that very little was well labeled. Not all of the shawls were easy to match with the team. Not all of the sheep could be identified. Not all of the fleeces for auction could be identified. It was somewhat frustrating.

The other disappointment was that there didn't appear to be a merchant selling rovings, spindles, spinning wheels, or looms. I had been hoping to poke at a few of the more expensive toys, and perhaps to pick up some exotic fiber to spin.

But the Fair was still a lot of fun. I loved wandering around the sheep, talking to the Sheep to Shawl teams - other women who actually understand the fiber hobby!

Karen

I've been busy

I made these...



... and yes, I am absurdly proud of myself.

Well, okay, I didn't actually _make_ the metal, but I did shape it. Hot metal, hammers, brute force. :)

Our friend Darrell, who is a blacksmith, opened his shop to some of his friends this past weekend, taught us the basics and set us free.

Neil made a Viking Era arrowhead replica. It's still unfinished.

Marcus made a knife. Sarah made a knife and a twisty Viking Era fry pan. Richard made two tools for gouging wood. Nancy also made S-hooks. Other stuff was made as well, but I only caught bits and pieces. The shop was very busy.

Darrell also teaches Blacksmithing courses. Go check out his website for more info.

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We finally got the front lawn leveled sufficiently and seeded. I think at this point, we're leaving the back yard damage until the spring and throwing money at it then.

Must get the spring bulbs in this week, and clean up the driveway so the snowblower guy can do his thing without impediment this winter.

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Some catch-up, upon rereading old posts:

I got busy, and neglected the green tomatoes. They turned red and I used them in the usual manner - pasta sauces. I feel most humbly lazy in the face of Anti-V's energetic posting of Green Tomato recipes on her blog for me.

The Verilux "Rise and Shine" light alarm clock. It's now been several weeks since we bought it and I promised a review.

It's OK.

The light bulb that came with it died relatively quickly, and replacements are quite expensive. I hope that isn't a normal thing for the life of the bulb. There's a strange 'whiney' noise that occurs when the lamp is first coming on....it can be quite annoying. And the time/setting display is quite bright, even on it's dimmest setting, and that can be kind of annoying.

But....

It's way better to wake up to then the jarring radio alarm. It's so much gentler. I don't wake up suddenly and swear at the lack of light outside anymore. It seems to gently and gradually push me toward wakefulness and when I open my eyes, I'm ready for it.

I'm not feeling particularly well rested... but I'm not feeling like my alarm has violently assaulted my senses anymore. And that's a good thing.


Karen

scuba diving and a septic tank

But first, one more picture from the museum demo. This is why we do these things.



Anyway, da boys in the group went scuba-diving after the demo was over. Here they are getting ready....



While they were in the water, da girls wandered around the shoreline, taking in the sights.....



.....collecting seaweed to dye wool with...



And then laughing at Darrell when he flopped up on the shore.



Now, on the other hand, this past week hasn't been quite so fun. A year ago, our septic tank overflowed. We dutifully called in a septic service - it had been raining a lot, and it's an old house. These things happen.

They drained the tank and then two weeks later..... it overflowed again. This can't be good.

So some exploration was done, and the verdict? It's dying. It's old, no longer up to code, and the clay outflow pipes are full of tree roots. Surprise surprise. The yard is full of trees.

The nice septic people bored out some of the pipes, buying us a year or two to decide what to do with it. That's where we pick up the story again... in these past few days, we had the whole system replaced.

That sounds simple, doesn't it?

Holes are dug, and foundations drilled...


This is the crawl space under the addition through which the new septic lines had to be routed. The new hole through the foundation can be seen in the back wall. Our plumber, brave soul that he apparently is, had to get in there to do the job. I don't think I could do it.


While those insignificant tasks were going on, there was this big machine digging out an even bigger hole in the yard...


The bathroom wall (yes, my freshly painted pink walls) had to be cannibalized to fix some pipes that had to brought up to "code" as well.


The tank gets lifted in....quite a feat around trees, sheds, and a Bell telephone wire inconveniently placed.


And connected.... five metres away from the house, as per "code". I'm thinking that this whole "code" thing is a real nuisance. I haven't died for living in a house with an out-of-code septic tank for the past five years. Let's not even get into "permits" and "inspections", shall we?


All the time, that big machine keeps digging out the big hole.....


.....in order that the weeping bed and pipes can be laid down.


This is as far as the refilling process got before the rain stopped them yesterday.


The yard is now a collection of mountains of topsoil waiting to be spread out neatly....whenever the rain stops for a sufficient amount of time.

*sigh*

Karen