New tablet weaving!

These ones are all for sale in my shop:


"Kivrim" 1.5m long 17mm wide


"Ramshorn" 3.6m long, 31mm wide


"S&Z" 1.5m long 20mm wide

And here's a few more samples of other patterns I've done:


"Eternity" 20mm wide


"Zigzags" 20mm wide


"Checks" 12mm wide

Finally! I made something!

My lounge room has been taken over by boxes of bead trays and I'm not feeling much inclined to put them away again any time soon so I might even make more stuff in the next few days. I'm rather excited by this, it's been months since I made any jewellery!

I only have one finished necklace from today to show you, plus a couple of pieces of tablet weaving I did ages ago that have been waiting to have their pictures taken. They'll all go in to the shop shortly.

Moss agate, brown zebra stone and sterling silver necklace.

Kivrim tablet weave.

The zig-zaggy pattern I don't have a name for.

Now, make more jewellery or feed the children?

Blacktown Medieval Fayre

I have a new apron dress! This is very exciting! No, really!

It started with a beautiful length of handwoven woollen cloth made by the very talented Pat which I bought at the Armidale Easter camp. I made a piece of tablet weaving with the intention of using it for the straps on the dress. The cloth and the braid sat looking at me expectantly while I dithered for weeks on account of really having no idea what to do next. Then this morning, I was talking to Deb, and the subject of how much I hate sewing came up, one thing led to another, a little bit of barter came in to play, and the next thing I know she's hand sewing my dress for me, with an antler needle and hand-spun woollen thread and using hand-made brass pins no less! And the best bit? Not one scrap of either the cloth or the braid was wasted.

Me in my new apron dress with Deb, seamstress extraordinaire.

We were at the Blacktown Medieval Fayre with the Ancient Arts Fellowship as part of a living history display this weekend.

The Ancient Arts Fellowship encampment

Adam had his pole lathe set up and we had the tent with our replica Viking bed on display.

The kids hanging out in our tent

The group's camp kitchen attracted much interest as various meals were cooked, lunch on Saturday was coq au vin, Saturday dinner was beef stew with dumplings while Sunday lunch was pumpkin soup with bacon and sour cream followed by a lamb stew.

Adam in the kitchen

Beef stew with dumplings

The Craft Geteld

The Craft Geteld housed a display of textiles crafts, we had drop spindle spinning of both wool and flax, tablet weaving, sewing, naalbinding, embroidery, viking wire weaving and finger loop braiding happening at various times during the day.

That empty seat next to Deb is where I spent most of today.

There was jousting, fighting, executions, pike and musket drills, theatrical swordplay, plenty of market stalls and even free pony and camel rides. Tom had three camel rides and neither Adam or I were there to take a photo of any of them. Independent kids are such a trial!

I was going to throw a whole bunch of other photos in here too but my Flickr upload is taking for freakin' EVER and I am very, very tired. So I'm going to bed. But I may add more photos in the morning. Or I might not. Who knows!

Don't forget to head on over to Unknown Mami's to see what's being shared by all the other fabulous Sundays in My City bloggers!

New loom

Adam made me a new loom for my tablet weaving from plans I drew up. It's not an unqualified success, the design needs tweaking and the execution is a little...unrefined, shall we say, but it's a step up from a plank of wood with two bits of dowel stuck in that keep falling out!

The tensioning isn't quite right and every time someone speaks to me I lose my place in the turning sequence, but nevertheless, slowly but surely, I'm managing to produce a Birka strapwork pattern. Emphasis on slowly.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned plank and dowel combo has a Greek key patterned piece on the go for when my brain goes on strike and I can't count any more. I'm using my beautiful new timber tablets which I got in exchange for a couple of lengths of weaving when we were at Armidale over Easter. They're very nice to use, must get some more of them - I only have 12.

Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

Time for a Friday Fragments brain dump. Lots of little bits of dubious value thrown together to masquerade as a post. When you've read mine you might like to head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time and see what other all the other fabulous Friday Fragmenters have on offer.

The kids have been on holidays this week so I've been sleeping in and spending way too much time lazing around at home pretending I'm on holidays too. Despite that there are a few things I have achieved this week:

*****

I cooked a birthday dinner for my now 13 year old. Tacos and chicken fajitas, it was good. But I didn't cook the cake.

Happy birthday David!

*****

I watched lots of Buffy with Caitlin, we've finished season 6 now. What? That's an achievement isn't it?

*****

I finished another length of tablet weaving, it was by far the slowest to weave of all the ones I've done up till now.

*****

I finally got around to putting my tablet weaving, necklaces, earrings and bracelets up for sale on-line - right here on my blog. I have intentions of working out how to add paypal purchasing buttons for each item, but that may take some time.

*****

I threw caution to the wind and added grated carrot and zucchini to my bolognese sauce. No one noticed and it was eaten quite happily. But I didn't like it. However, I strongly suspect I'd not have noticed either had I not known I put the veggies in there.

****

I watched the first two episodes of the new season of Dr Who. And it was good. And I don't hate the new Doctor at all. Looking forward to more!

****

Ummmm. Yep, that's about it!

Stuff I'm selling

I've given up on me ever using my Etsy shop and have decided to go with selling stuff straight from my blog. I've put the tablet weaving up and there'll be jewellery coming soon.

Details and pricing can be found on my shop page, Made by Mim.

Currently woven and ready to go - can also be woven to order


Chevrons 3m long 13mm wide $75


Ovals 3.4m long 16mm wide $85


Kivrim 3.3m long 18mm wide $99


Square snake 2.6m long 18mm wide $65


Arrows 3m long 13mm wide $75

Pattern samples - can be woven to order


Forgot to measure this one before I sold it - I think it was a tad over 20mm wide. Needs a name too...let's call it Z&S for now. ($30/m)

New stuff, some made, some bought

Every Monday night this term Adam has been taking himself off to pottery classes. Tonight, on the way home from the Discover Mahler concert we stopped off at his teacher's home to pick up his finished pieces.

1. Decorated tiles, 2. Frog on a leaf, 3. Wol, 4. Dragon lidded pot, 5. Pot and lid with sleeping baby dragon, 6. First attempt using the wheel

He has also made us a chesky so that we don't have to hide our esky in the tent when we're at reenactment events.

It's a chest that's large enough for our rather large esky to fit inside. Which means it's kind of huge. So it's probably a Good Thing that we also got finally got this:

My new VW Multivan

I had been planning on calling it The Blimp, Adam was putting in a vote for using The Zepplin instead, but as it turns out I'm leaning more towards calling it The Loungeroom (on wheels).

It even has a table - it's between the two seats there and can slide out and open up to a fairly decent sized top.

Let's take a closer look at that back seat shall we? Not even a week old and look at all those paw prints! Clara is completely confused by my sudden insistence that she sit on the floor of the van, not to mention being very put out that she can't see out the windows from down there. I feel mean, but then I think of those great big black claws on the leather upholstery and cringe.

Those paw prints happened on the way to the dog park where Clara has been playing while I weave. I decided to try something a bit more interesting and threaded up a kivrim pattern and gave it a go. I think I ended up with the threading slightly wrong but decided it didn't really matter for the purposes of a test piece, I'll get it right next time hopefully.

First attempt at a kivrim pattern

I finished that piece and am now working on a simpler (and really rather boring) pattern which I'll probably use to trim one of the kids' tunics. Then I'm going to focus on getting some lengths done to sell at reenactment events, I need to choose patterns that look interesting but are relatively quick to weave. Hopefully the wool I've ordered from Bendigo Woollen Mills comes in time for me to use - I'm getting pretty fed up with the colours I have at the moment.

Beorgwic was...wet

We left home rather later than we had intended for our trip to Beorgwic, the annual event hosted by the Ancient Arts Fellowship at the Danelaw property in the Southern Highlands. As we drove south I tweeted my fear that we would be putting the tent up in the rain, what I didn't quite anticipate was that it would also be be dark. Pitch black dark. We put the tent up in the rain and freezing cold by torchlight. I am so very glad that putting up a geteld is incredibly quick. (Many thanks to Talisien of Blue Draco for making us such a beautiful tent - it was perfect!)

Our tent

You'd think that with a start like that I'd have been feeling utterly miserable but the truth is I was having fun. I scare myself sometimes. Unfortunately going to bed very cold with wet hair and wearing my furry hat left me with an ear infection that got slowly worse over the course of the weekend, the agony peaked on the drive home so it didn't really spoil my weekend but it did leave me feeling not my best. (Turned out in the end to be a combination of external and middle ear infection, I've had that once before and I suspected it was heading that way. That part not so much fun.)

The kids were great dealing with the wet and cold and went to bed without any complaints being very careful not to let their sleeping bags soak up the puddles on the ground under their airbeds (does this sound like fun yet?). I was so very glad we'd decided to grab dinner of sorts when we'd stopped for petrol about 90 minutes before arriving at the camp.

We woke to drizzle and mist 1000 years in the past. It took Adam a very long time to get the fire going so we had cold breakfast - bread, cheese and fruit - before heading off to do crafting workshops. Adam did blacksmithing and made a cloak broach and I learned how to do Viking wire-weaving (more on that in a later post). Then we had porridge for lunch.

Our fireplace became a favoured gathering place during the day for many of the camp's kids who had a great time alternately poking at the fire with sticks and at each other with rubber weapons. It was...noisy, but at least our fire didn't go out!

Tom and Odin

Caitlin, Emily and David

Dinner for the kids was served early in the tavern, a huge improvement on last year when the kids ate at the same time as everyone else, whinged about the food and generally made dinner time rather stressful.

The kids at dinner

Dinner for the rest of us on Saturday and Sunday nights consisted of a four course feast of deliciousness provided by our hosts. Saturday was meatballs in a creamy sauce, then red wine beef and honey roasted vegetables followed by lamb cider stew and topped off with saffron custard and ginger biscuits. Sunday was lombard chicken pasties, then pork and honey roasted veg, lamb stew again and pears poached in red wine with cream for dessert. Top that off with a drinking horn or two full of beer and mead and all is well with the world!

I got a little bit of tablet weaving done, loosed a few arrows at some targets and generally hung around talking to people and not caring what the kids were up to. That particular approach came a little unstuck when Caitlin almost managed to get herself lost in the bush en route back from the Danelaw fort 700m up the road - she was set on the right path by others who were heading to the fort through the bush and came hurtling down the path to the village with tears streaming down her cheeks having given herself a huge fright and a useful lesson in the do not separate from your companions rule. The kids had all gone up to the fort together via the road and then some had headed off into the bush while the others had gone back via the road and then somehow Caitlin had ended up ahead of the bush bashing contingent who had then retraced their steps leaving her on her own. Or something, I never did quite work it out.

Me tablet weaving



The archery range



The village green



The tavern, complete with beer garden out the back



View from our tent looking towards the village

When it came to pack up time on Monday the kids did not want to leave, I on the other hand was well and truly ready for a shower and clean dry clothes, it seems a long weekend is about my limit for living in the dark ages! We capped the weekend off by packing the tent away in the rain and crossing our fingers that we wouldn't get bogged on the way out of the forest and then drove home through a hail storm. The tent is currently up in our backyard slowly drying out and I'm already looking forward to next year.

Here, have some crafty type stuff

Adam made me an arm guard for archery, since he made it I've only hit myself with the string once, no more huge dramatic bruises for me!

I've been doing some more tablet weaving, I'm still experimenting with patterns and I'm kind of wishing that the 5.8m batch was a bit more interesting.

This took 2 weeks of picking it up when I was watching TV in the evenings.

Two different patterns, the bottom one I've finished, the top one I've just started.

And I finally got around to making some more jewellery on Friday:

Botswana agate necklace

Sodalite bracelet