As you know,...

I am the queen of the "let's buy some expensive tool and let's leave it untouched for several months". Yes, I am.
But I'm trying to fight this behavior and that's what I assembled and used last week:The Ashford Inkle Weaving Loom I bought in Prague in June. *^v^*
This is the first attempt with a simple wool band, a short one just to get the hang of the weaving on this loom. I like this heddle weaving-without a heddle, because there is no wooden heddle here, just some pieces of string that play its role.
Next I'm going to try to weave a tablet band, I saw people doing this (on photos on the Web), and I hope it would help me a lot (heddle weaving is easy without the loom, tablet weaving is more difficult, at least for me). This loom is very comfortable to use, it's small (but efficient, it says I can weave an over 3 m band on it!), light and easy to warp and use. I wish it was period for my Viking events, but unfortunately it was invented in the XIXth century, so it won't accompany me while I'm at the historic meetings. But at least I have a great tool to use at home! *^v^*

I also gave Shrinky Dinks a try (a present from Myriam, yikes! *^v^*).
I couldn't decide what to choose so I just picked three simple drawings from the Gimp brushes and voila!

They turned out quite small, the biggest being 5 cm, but now I know how much they can shrink and I can plan some new designs according to that. Still, the cat can be turned into a necklace and the other two - into earrings! ^^
I cannot believe you've had such a great toy since the 70's in the US, whereas we haven't!

During the weekend I also finished two paintings (still not varnished, I'm waiting for the art supplies order to arrive) and I knitted Tangled Yoke Cardi - the body's been finished and waiting for the sleeves, the sleeves are half-way done. It takes me really quick to knit this cardigan, but it must be the motivation awaiting me - the cable on the yoke! =^v^=

Keep creating! *^v^*

Annual Medieval Feast

Before I start talking about the feast, let me show you another crafty thing I made last week - on Sunday I sat at the loom and made a stool seat for my friend. ^^ It was a last minute work just before we went to the cottage on Monday, it's red and yellow wool (scratchy, yikes...) from my tangled supplies.

And now the main subject of this post - the feast.
Last Saturday we held our annual medieval feast, the style was in line with our main medieval reenactment project - the Prince's Court of the X-XI th c. with the Slavs, the Rus and the Viking inhabitants.

It all started with our Prince leading the ting, which means the gathering, where he collected the taxes (we made him an embroidered shirt - photos when it's finished, because Robert didn't quite make it on time ^^, a pair of naalbinded socks and some braided straps), raised some slaves to a higher half-slave rank, judged any quarrels, etc.

Robert read out our laws.

Any free Draconian wanting to speak would step up onto the whalebone and shake the staff with bells, so everyone could pay their attention to him. Free noble men would stand close to the Prince with their spears and shields.

Among others, two of our people (mine and Robert's) were raised from the slave status to the half-slave rank - Osk (Anna) and Izbor (Peter).

Then the Prince paid homage to our god Skwarowit thanking him for another good, fruitful year.

Here is Osk (Anna) and Hazine (Kate) with Anna's promotion gift from me - a drop spindle, some roving and a pair of Finnish buckles.

Here is Izbor (Peter) with his present - a drinking horn. can you tell that he's pleased with his gift? *^v^*

And then there was much eating and rejoicing - here I was giving some culinary instructions to my brand new slave Radochna (Marta), she just joined our group two weeks before the feast and managed to make herself a set of basic clothes, so she could be with us, triple arm pump for her! *^v^*

Our Prince at the table.

And here is our youngest draconian - Janna with her 6 month old daughter Zosia. ^^
Unfortunately the weather wasn't that good all day, at one point we had rain and even hail... But we managed to eat a lot, sing a bit (me and my girls! ^^), listen to some great Viking poetry written by Izbor (written by him, mind you! of course in Polish, but it really sounded like a piece from the Poetic Edda, he's gifted!), some of us tried some archery and swam in the river.

We (me and Robert) didn't prepare any new clothes for this feast, and I decided that my Russian outfit, although spectacular, will go to the bottom of the clothes chest for a while, because this year I'll be working on a proper Norwegian and Finish sets of clothes.
What's next on our reenactment events list? There are two XIII c. meetings in September and Robert will probably go to one of them, but I don't have a finished outfit so I'll pass on these ones. Then when the Spring/Summer season is over, we'll have one-day battle events in Autumn and Winter until the first warm Spring days and first market events of the next year.
(I've been thinking veeeeeeery briefly about the possibility of going to Foteviken, Sweden, for a Winter market, but we'll see about that later).

EDIT: Helene asked me about my Norwegian outfit plans.
Well, I should've written "Viking outfit", but I chose a Norwegian persona for my reenactment (married to a Rus persona, a Varangian, hence my Russian clothes as a gift from my husband! *^v^*).
I have some old Viking clothes, but I decided I desperately need a new set, so I started in May, when I made a new linen dress and started to embroider it (in progress). Then I'm going to make a woolen apron dress and another long-sleeved dress out of wool for Winter events, all of which will be embellished with tablet woven bands and embroidery (hopefully! *^v^*). And also, I need to change the lining in my long-sleeved coat, because it's cotton and should be linen, and add the tablet woven bands to it.
Seems like a lot of work, but hand sewing is not a problem. I hope to put together the inkle loom soon, which should help me in making all those planned tablet woven bands (when I figure out how to warp this thing...). I'm lucky I've got lots of Viking jewelery, in the Finish project I'm going to start from the very beginning... *^v^*

Third weaving project

My third weaving project is finished!

I so underestimated the time and the amount of work that had to be put into making this!... I started last Wednesday evening with warping the loom (not to count measuring and cutting all the threads, but I really cannot remember now how much time it took...), then on Friday me, Robert and Anna prepared the right tension of the warp (it took us about 4 hours...), then I kept weaving several hours a day (the threads were so fuzzy that they kept catching on one another with every move of the heddle, so I had to separate them with my fingers all the time).

Overall I'm happy with the result, this piece of fabric is for Robert - he's going to make a Viking jacket out of it, and I'm eager to start another weaving project soon. ^^

Details:
loom: Ashford Rigid Heddle loom, 80 cm wide
heddle: 40 threads per 10 cm
yarn: 100% wool, the tangle, three colours for the warp, fourth colour for the weft
fabric: 77 cm wide x 322 cm long (warp was about 400 cm long)
weaving time: about 24 hours

There is a tree in my bedroom!...

This is the fully warped loom (80 cm wide, 320 threads). I really cannot wait to see the pattern I'm going to get, because I'll be weaving this fabric using a totally different colour of yarn - a dark emerald shade of green. Tonight Anna is coming, we are going to make pizzas, drink red wine and start weaving, yikes! ^^

There is a tree in my bedroom!...

Robert brought me a tree last night, when he was coming home from the tube station around midnight. *^v^*
It's freshly cut, extremely heavy (although it's not very big), has a beautiful green smell (yes, I often name scents with colour names), pretty greyish-greenish bark, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it!
But it's here and it feels like it's been here forever. I know that the last thing I need in my cluttered flat is the tree (in fact, this may be the last thing anybody in a 5-bedroom house would need!...), but I feel reluctant to get rid of it, even put it on my balcony... We'll see about that, for now it stays next to my growing tomato plants, peeking outside. ^^

More botanical news - my pink hoya (Hoya carnosa) is in bloom again (well, it is in bloom several times a year, irrespective of the season ^^), and again there is a weird problem with it - its flowers apparently have a special scent, which I cannot smell at all (and I am very sensitive to different smells), but Robert can smell it and he cannot stand it!... And the same was at my parents' house - my mother couldn't smell this scent but my father was walking around the house saying that hoya stinks again... It's very mysterious to me, did you have any similar experience with this plant?

Sprang

I've tried a new craft yesterday! *^v^*

Together with my friends Anna and Kate from the medieval reenactment group we tried sprang, which is a kind of weaving, in which you twist the warp (no weft needed) and the result is a very elastic, lacy fabric.
It can be used to make stockings, hairnets or bags - anything that needs to be elastic.
Here is my loom with linen thread - on this thread you place the warp - up and down, up and down, ect.
And some examples of the work in progress and the finished piece of fabric (it's surprisingly elastic in every direction! ^^).

My views on sprang - I definitely must practice more of this technique, because I've only tried it once (and I had to start five times when I finally grasped the idea of how to do it properly!... Okay, I was learning from a description, so at first it wasn't that easy to get the idea, what to do with which thread.)
I'm fascinated with the degree of elasticity this technique gives and I'm already thinking about making a pair of Viking stockings - the anklet in naalbinding and the rest above the ankle in sprang.
As always, I'm happy I have tried a new craft and I'm going to practice it more.

Helene, have you got any experience with sprang? What's your opinion? Or anybody else, please? ^^

Anyway, my blue and green tangled wool supply arrived couple of days ago and (apart from the fact that I have a box full of 4 kilos of yarn in the middle of our bedroom...) I've almost finished warping the loom to make the fabric for Robert, so expect the first pictured soon (maybe even on Saturday, yikes! ^^). On Friday evening we are going to meet my friend Anna and the three of us are going to finish warping (at least three people are necessary to set a proper tension on the loom), and I cannot wait to start weaving! ^^

One more thing, Lana, I sent you your goodies two days ago, please let me know when you get it so I know it's not lost somewhere on the way... ^^

Look at its smiling face!

It's all mine, mine, mine! *^v^*
(Okay, it's ours, mine and Robert's.^^)

As of Friday evening we own this beauty! And it wouldn't be anything unusual, because people sell and buy cars every day, but this one is special - because it's a Volvo.
As long as I remember (since I was a teenager, I think) I always wanted to have a Volvo. I wasn't impressed with any other cars (till the moment I found out about the Dodge Ram, yummy!...), I didn't like sport models, I didn't like big luxurious cars, I didn't care for small eco town cars, I knew that my destiny was to drive a Volvo one day. And that day arrived! ^^
I always portrayed myself in a 700 something or 900 something model, but we finally bought the 850 (which was also acceptable, anything below or above those three models could not exist for me). I wanted this beautiful rectangular lines, I wanted the spaciousness of the interior, I wanted the safety of travelling it could give me. We found it via the on-line auction of a car dealer and went to have a look at it on Friday evening.
When we were approaching the dealer's gate and he was coming towards us from the back garden in this car I just knew it was our car. Then we checked the car in and out, went to the garage to make different tests (which turned out very good), and all the time I was asking it "tell me, show me, what you feel about our relationship, let me know that you are a good choice for us", and all the time I had a really positive response, it's hard to explain but it felt okay. ^^
So, this and the fact that the car was in a very good condition both mechanically and visually decided on the final purchase. Of course it's not a new car so some flaws can surface sooner or later, but I'm really happy with the value we got for the money asked for it. For now I've been enjoying the comfort of driving similar to the one we experienced some years ago when we had a Ford Scorpio (but this time it's even better - it has an automatic gear box and heated seats!). All we need now are the new Swedish and Norwegian moose stickers on the rear window ^^ (the ones we had from the previous visits to Scandinavia went down with Mazda).
And, it's a Volvo! *^v^*

From the crafts front: Helene, I finished your "Burgundian Dance" tapestry, I'm waiting for your address! I've been also doing some knitting and embroidery, but not much as we were visiting our families and eating like crazy (Easter in Poland is mostly about eating, you know...), so I was too lazy to do any serious crafting this weekend.
I'm also a bit stuck with weaving - I didn't have enough yarn to start the blue-green fabric (I'm waiting for the new supply which should arrive later this week), so I started to prepare the warp for the brown-reddish fabric and it turned out that I didn't have enough yarn either (grrrr....) . So, unfortunately weaving is on hold till I get the new tangle supply.

Other news: I got a Summer Collection catalogue of Gudrun Sjoden's fashion (I know, about two weeks after I got her Spring catalogue, strange...) and - surprise, surprise - I don't like the clothes like... at all... Maybe one or two models did catch my attention, but it's not like the Spring clothes - "give me every piece you've got!". I don't know, maybe she prepared those two collections together and burnt out with the Spring one? Some models are really very similar in cut to the ones from last year, well... I'm very disappointed, but since I wasn't going to buy anything, just to draw some inspiration, I'll just keep looking through the previous catalogues. ^^

I'm famous and that's final!

I've been recognized on the bus! *^v^*
Yesterday we were coming home from the Sunday dinner at Robert's farther's (by bus and then by subway, because we have no car right now), and on the bus I was approached by a girl who said that she knew my blog and came to say 'hi'! *^v^*
It was a total surprise, but a very nice one! Paula is also a crafty person, although she doesn't write about her crafts (yet, I hope! ^^), she has a cute dog and she lives in my residential district. Paula, if I seemed a bit nervous it's because I am in fact a very shy person, but I'm really glad that we met and maybe it is a chance to have a Stitch'n'Bitch meetings in Warsaw from time to time. Keep in touch with me, please! *^v^*

Thank you for your kind comments on my woven shawl, Paula asked me yesterday about my favourite craft (but it was already my subway stop and I had to leave the train and didn't answer properly), and I would say right now, that it's knitting and weaving interchangeably. I am really very fascinated by weaving at the moment (well, I managed to actually make a piece of proper even cloth, so anybody would be happy in this situation! ^^), so I keep occupying myself with weaving activities nowadays. ^^

And I even learnt something while making the red shawl that I had no idea about before - you need a lot of thread for the warp but you need surprisingly small mount of a thread for the weft! There are probably very sophisticated ways to measure it before you even start weaving but I discovered this fact in the process. ^^ It's good to know because I can plan the weft yarn now.

I wrote on Saturday that I was warping the loom again (and before you ask - yes, I am a big fan of all the Star Trek series! ^^ Warping, warping all the way!...) - and it was partly true. I started to warp the thinner heddle I bought (40 threads per 4 inches) but it turned out that first I should prepare all the 320 warping threads (8 m long each, because I want to make a 4 m piece of cloth, 80 cms wide), count them and see if I have enough.

Remember, I work with the tangle, which means that I have different colours of wool in different lengths, from 10 cm to 30 m, all tangled up of course. So, if you ask about the photos - these are the warping threads, each one in a separate ball, waiting to be warped when I have enough of them. The fabric will be in blue and green shades.

Some replies to your comments:
Rho, I have just started to use the fish sauce in my cooking and I don't know yet if I find it useful or I'll just stick to good old salt ^^ I agree that the smell of it from the bottle is very strong... ^^
Lobstah, I cannot fit my loom anywhere either... My flat has 42 square metres and is packed with stuff!... And I'm planning to buy an inkle loom and a spinning wheel one day. (I know, I'm crazy, don't pay attention. *^w^*)
Heather, I'm not Jungian. I have very, very colourful and busy dreams, every night I dream a different story and you could make some really weird movies out of every one of them, so I'm just interested in the meaning of our dreams and I started to read this book (together with another one - "Dream as a Roadsign. Jungian dream analysis" - the original title is "Träume als Wegweiser" and it is a collection of analysis of several reoccurring motives from our dreams, done by the Jungian analysts).

Okay, now I'm off to more warp measuring and cutting, and counting.
Have a nice Monday! *^v^*

Weaving - second attempt

Let me remind you about my Bloggiversary Giveaway! If you're interested in some goodies, please leave a comment to the post on my giveaway and I'll draw a winner on 12th April! The cross-stitched sheep got some company of the yarn balls and it's not the end of the surprises. ^^

On Friday morning I decided to try weaving again. So I put on the Cast on podcast by Brenda Dayne (btw, in one episode she talked about weaving using the Ashford Knitter's Loom! *^v^*) and started warping the beast. This time I used wool - the tangle I bought on line. This yarn is thick and coarse, and in some incredible colours. i decided to use different shades of red. After three hours I finished warping the loom and Robert came home from work, just in time to help me to even the tension on the rolls. I had to adjust some threads but it was nothing compared to the previous warping with linen thread!
In the evening I started to weave and very quickly got it how to keep the weft tension correct and end up with the even piece of fabric from the beginning to the end.


Is it a table rug I made?


No. *^v^* A shawl I'm going to wear at the medieval events with my Viking outfits. ^^ (please disregard my blah pale face)
It's 120 cm long, 50 cm wide, 100% scratchy wool and it took me six hours altogether to make (3 hours of warping and three hours of weaving and finishing).

At least that's my first attempt at a Viking shawl. I think I'd like the shawl to be more variegated, so I'm warping the loom again today and I'll be weaving another piece of cloth with stripes.

Look at the texture, I love it and I keep touching it whenever I go near it. ^^


Other crafty news - I tried to unravel the sweater I bought second hand for its yarn, but after some struggle I gave up and got rid of it. The yarn turned out not what I thought it would be. It looked like a nice thick soft light cream/orangy thread (while still in a sweater form), but then it unravelled into a split two thin threads with a brown polyester thin core and some cream and orange pieces of roving attached to it, and it was really difficult to take it apart. So, I decided it wasn't worth an effort.

Straight from the Cauldron
For today's lunch I made chicken again, but according to Anthony Worrall Thompson's recipe, it's very easy and delicious! ^^ He used the whole chicken and I used chicken thighs.

How to
- remove the bones from 8 chicken thighs, fry them in a pan on some butter skin side down, add some salt, remove the chicken on a spare plate,
- to the same pan add: 1 big onion chopped, 3 cloves of garlic crushed, 1 cellery (sticks) sliced, some fresh thyme sticks, 1 can of tomatoes, 1 table spoon of sweet paprika, 1 table spoon of fish sauce, 400 ml of chicken stock; cook it for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally,
- cook the potatoes (about 12 - 14 medium size ones) and place them onto the baking tray, spray them with olive oil and salt,
- put the vegetable mixture in the middle of the baking tray,
- place the chicken thighs on top of the vegetables,
- add some more thyme leaves,
- put it in the oven and leave it there for 35 - 40 minutes (180 C).

Smacznego! *^v^*

Weaving?...

Oh, my!... Oh, my!...

Is warping an 80 cm wide Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom so difficult or is it just me who cannot do it properly?
Or maybe it is the linnen thread that I was desperately trying to warp and got bad results?

First, we did it according to the Ashford instructions. Experiment failed.
(it was fun at the beginning, very easy to perform, especially with the second person helping, but we ended up with totally different tensions throughout the whole width...).

Then I unwound everything, tied one end stick to the headboard of our bed, pushed the loom as far as I could and stretched the warp, and pulled and tied EACH pair of threads SEPARATELY (a 30 threads per 10 cm heddle, 240 threads...).
Experiment partly failed too, because when I stretched the tenth pair of threads, the first pair started to hang down miserably, so I had to adjust them again.
I also had two types of a warp linnen threads: the white ones were very smooth hence slippery and stiff, the grey ones were very coarse and they tended to stretch a bit but they stayed stretched and were not coming back to their previous position. Which didn't help at all...

At 22:19 I wound up the warp onto the back roller and blocked the whole construction - there were still threads that needed pulling up, but I decided to leave it for Sunday, phew...

Early afternoon, after a good nutricious breakfast (pancakes with Nutella and bananas, and strawberry jam, and sugar - my favourite option, respectively ^^) I started with pulling up all the hanging threads and then I sat at the living room table to start weaving. (BTW, this is the place where I do all my crafts plus this is our dining table, too ^^). Robert attached the loom to the table with two blue plastic belts, because it didn't want to stay in one place when I moved the heddle.

I took some wool in two colours and kept on weaving, struggling with the warp threads as they didn't want to cooperate smoothly and some of them still kept hanging down whereas, for a change, some of them (the ones on the edges) were suddenly very tight. I must admit I definitely made a mistake here because when I was winding the warp up I put under them a piece of paper to prevent threads from catching up on each other, and I cut the paper a bit too small, so the outside threads on both sides were wound without a paper - this resulted in a tighter tension on the edges of the loom. So, after I woven about 20 cm, I had to cut off the edge threads to be able to tighten the middle threads. Well, it was the first trial weaving anyway.

My piece of fabric got narrower at this point, but I kept going and it soon turned out that my weft tension on the edges of the fabric was too big. The final result was a rather lacy, loose structure fabric, irregular in shape and colour scheme, but it was my first attempt at weaving on this loom. ^^ I don't know whether I can do anything with this piece, it's too loose to cut it and turn it into a bag or something, maybe it will stay as a memory of my first weaving. *^v^*

Tomorrow I'm going to try the woollen warp, I presume it will be more elastic and in this way easier to warp evenly. At least I hope so! ^^

Creative thoughts

Yesterday, while continuing my embroidery project, I listened to the audiobook by Wayne Dyer "Creating Your Life With Your Thoughts" and something gave me a food for thought.

(apart from the fact that Mr. Dyer shouts at his listeners... I mean, not in an aggressive way, but his tone of voice is somehow disturbing, not a silky smooth voice like Sonia Choquette's voice I got to know from her audiobooks, btw, Sonia has also been a personal psychic advisor to Dr. Wayne Dyer ^^)

The general idea of Mr. Dyer's book is that our thoughts create the reality around us, and when we focus on good things - good things happen to us, and when we concentrate on bad things - we invite them into our lives. What we think about - expands. All the certainties and doubts equally.

Which I translated onto my life and my thoughts and all that has been happening to me up till now. How many times have I thought "Yes, I want to do it!", but then, in the next sentence I thought "Yeah, but... I'm maybe too old, it's inconvenient, I'm not skillful enough, it'll never be I wanted it to turn out, ect, ect...".

My biggest obstacle was the artificial idea put in my head throughout my childhood that it's not good to be openly happy and thankful for all the good things that were happening in my life, because it may cause the immediate turn of luck. If I'm too cheerful about my good relationship, my boyfriend will leave me. If I'm openly happy about the lottery winnings I'll loose the money in the near future. Don't tempt the Universe with your happiness because the Universe just waits for such silly people and changes their luck for worse.

From this idea comes the following behaviour: I say to my friend "Good luck at your exam!", and she immediately says "I'm not going to say thank you, because I don't want to jinx it!..." and runs away with a fear of being touched by the good wish which can bring ill-luck on her. Many people behave like that, and I used to do it a long time ago but then I started to fight this prejudice.

Why would the Universe (or God, or the High Spirit, however you want to call it) find the pleasure in making our lives miserable?...

I tend to favour the other concept, namely the one which says that the Universe answers our thoughts and intentions, and if we trully want to be happy, healthy and wealthy, it will come to us one day. But we have to clean our subconsciousness, getting rid of all the thoughts about the possibility of being jinxed, of not being good enough, not being able to achieve something, of being prejudiced, ect.
I'm not saying this is an easy process, it's like teaching an old dog new tricks and all, but it's definitely worth a try!

Embroidery

My TAST journey continues and I find more and more pleasure in making my pictures. ^^ They were just three blank pages last week (only with the black words on them), but as I look at them, each moment I have new ideas and add some elements here and there. I match the stitches, the colours and the whole pictures comes together. This weekend I'll be probably finishing the first panel and will be developing the second panel, of which I have a more or less clear picture in my head. The third one is still a mystery, although I started some elements on it.

I am trully amazed how easy it is for me to compose those pictures - up till now I've only embroidered drawn patterns or cross-stitch patterns, and now I let my imagination do the job! *^v^* I'll stick to pure embroidery in this first project but next time I'll try to be a bit more adventurous and add some patchwork, yikes!

As far as my sampler book, I thought about it and decided that I won't need a book binding skills for now, because I'll be doing the individual pages with stitches on them and I'll keep them in the plastic envelopes in an office binder. I want to have them in an alphabetical order so I may bind them into a book form later, when I have most of the pages with stitches ready.


Weaving

Today I spent my day painting my Ashford loom with a wood stain, and then I got carried away and sanded and painted the wooden table form IKEA and two wooden stools... *^v^*

Now I'm waiting for my loom-in-many-parts to get dry and we'll be assembling it tonight, so first weaving trials tomorrow!

Happy weekend, everyone!