No, I haven’t lost my mastery of English, or of spelling.

Some friends of ours have  a business called Viking U like.  We don’t get all of the guys every year, because they all live in Europe and do a much more robust business there at Viking re-enactment events.  But some assortment of the guys comes to our summer camp every year.  This year, we got Alban and Scott.

This is neither Alban nor Scott.  This is a painted buck skull, hanging from their tent pole.  What can I say?  I like skulls.

Right, this is Scott:

I didn’t get any decent pictures of Alban.  He was moving too fast.  He’s a really talented silver smith.

You wouldn’t know it to talk to him, but Scott is actually American.  He’s been living abroad for so long he sounds German.  Scott travels all over Eastern and Northern Europe tracking down artisans who work in lost arts.  He’s the source of the amazing silver lunik I bought last year.

And the great high holy Finnish elk antler spindle.  And my salt box.  And my birch boxes.

And many other really beautiful items that my friends have walked away with.   Scott knows craft, and is constantly forced to explain to Estonian and Polish and other artisans, in languages he doesn’t speak fluently, that their work is exquisite, that he wants to buy lots of it, and that they need to start paying themselves fairly.  He also really does his homework, so he normally has all sorts of great stories about his wares.

(I made that linen plaid tunic Bodwin is wearing)

Ignore the DHL box–they were still setting up when the masses descended.  I just wanted to admit to my serious, crushing tattoo envy.  Why isn’t that on my leg?

Unlike years past, I didn’t actually buy all that much from Viking u Like this year.  Instead, I came away with a lot of inspiration.  A few friends have been herding me towards studying and making Viking goodies.  And just look at the bar that’s been set.

No, really look at it.  It’s exquisite.  He’s finding some of the best felt I’ve ever seen.

But the thing that really floored me was the horto-bachi-bichkos.  I have no idea how that’s actually supposed to be spelled, but I know I have the phonetics correct.  I know because people would yell “horto-bachi-bichko” every time they walked past the tent.

Horto-bachi-bichkos are little rawhide boxes that are shaped on a last.  The lid slides up and down on the thongs on either side.  When they show up in graves, they’re generally attached to men’s belts, and they often have handy little items like small knives and flint and tinder sets in them.  A few that Scott had were particularly well made:

Tooled rawhide.  Who knew I would want to tool rawhide so badly?  So now I need a last.  I think I should start trying to bribe the wood-workers, so that when the last is made I still have all my fingers.

Since many of us have been involved in one form or another of living history or medievalism for pushing 20 years or so, we’ve got friends and sister-groups all over the place.  Many of them camp within spitting distance of us, there in the bog.  Some of our friends, however, camp so far away they may as well be in Canada.

After a few days of set up and staying home, we decided to walk up to Tir Thalor’s camp to ask them if they wanted to fight with us again.  This trip includes a lot of fighting, an aspect of this particular hobby I’m trying to forget I like.  Anyway, their group is based in New York, and they’re less a living history group than a fantasy sort of group.  And their camp is really really a long walk.  Uphill.  But it’s all good.  They make good mead.  Really good mead.  It means something when I say that–I think most mead is only good for catching flies, since I’m not at all interested in picking up 14 year old girls who like D & D.  And once I catch flies, I feel like a jerk.  So I really dislike most mead.  But Tir Thalor’s mead is worth walking to Canada for. 

Before the walk, there was the primping.  Since we were going up to Canada to hire Tir Thalor, we needed to get out the good stuff, and carry pointy things, and maybe write up a bit of a set list.  Etaine (pronounced EEE-thaw-nyuh, by the way) painted up most of us.  Here she is working on Alerin, who had just gotten a fantastic felt hat from Liadan.
 


She makes the best felt. 

And, you see that black something or other on Etaine’s shoulders?  You know what that is?  It’s a crow-feather cloak.  For bardic bombast, of course.  Fionn made it.  Woot.  I ‘ll have to photograph it properly if I can ever get close enough to it without getting nipped on the finger–the feather tips are curled so prettily.

Ruadhan (notice the Campari-colored hair?) got a lovely, simple little horn and spiral.

Bodwin, well Bodwin stood around looking like he might stab someone.  I don’t know what this expression was about. 

And then we congregated for a while, waiting for the slowbees . . . and apparently Scott needed to do a little dance.   

I made that tunic he’s wearing, of course, and the pants.  Udutai made the boots.   And I made the skirt Etaine is wearing–very nice purple linen.  I think maybe she wears it to work too sometimes.  And I think I made that red tunic Cellagh is wearing–it’s actually Moragh’s, but he kept swiping it.  It’s a very nice silk noile.  Whenever we’re standing around or lazing, I take a little mental inventory of what items I’ve made that are on my friends.  I shoot for 100%.  It happens once in a while.  I’ve got about 50% of the folks in this gathering.

This is Fionn in the center, the maker of the feather-cloak.  Cellagh is wearing the boar-tusk necklace because he was doing war-chief biznazz.  I don’t know why he’s looking a bit deranged, but it may have something to do with a critical lack of beer in his redonkulous mug there.  And he’s got one of Richard’s repro helmets on for no particular reason.  Again, blame it on his thirst. 

Anyway, we then walked to Canada.  Etaine and I sang some, and Fiona from Tir Thalor sang, and we tried to take some great pictures of the moon but none of us were still enough to capture it correctly with our fake slow-shutter settings on our digicams.  But the moon was gorgeous, framed in their gate. 

So we got there, we camped temporarily on the flat while Scott and Bodwin wandered around making cryptic gestures and grumbling, and we had a metric f-ton of fun with our friends, the pyromaniacs dear, dear freaks Celts. 

And then we drank Marconis.  I was tasked with helping Etaine "get her blotto on."  I did my job.   And we noticed that Ruadhan, despite loathing Campari, is actually the Campari fairy.  You’ll see why soon.

And then we slept a little.

And then Ruadhan and I got up and went grocery shopping.

When we came back, we found this:


Which is actually quite a modest platform.  I’ve been on much higher, larger, downright terrifying structures in the woods.  Well, they would have been downright terrifying to other people, I think.  I just viewed them as great dance floors.  We lucked just the right trees in a very good spot.  The fellahs added a 10 x 10 piece of real estate to the hill, and I got to live on a very level, very safe floor that was highly unlikely to flood, even if my Mom visited us.

Have I mentioned my Mom draws floods?  It’s freaky.  She denies it, but it’s true.  Arizona should beg her to visit.  I hope that that particular trait is not heritable. 

Back to the story.

The downstairs camp was filling in nicely:


Here you can see one of our views from the Crassy Knoll.  That’s Anubh’s tent we’re staring right at in the center, with the edge of Etaine’s tent over on the left and Cellach and Moragh’s fly behind.  We like seeing just white canvas.  We like it a lot. 

So we started getting properly set up, and out came the KF banner:


Which is always a site for sore eyes. 

Richard brought out some duds I made for him a couple of years ago:


He’s developed some system, as have a lot of the guys, that seems to line up with my Grandpap’s concept of "Sunday go to meeting clothes."  Apparently this tunic cannot be work until his tent (in the background there) and his shop are set up.  I guess that means it’s a good tunic.  I think I made the pants too.

I’ll warn you now that I didn’t do so well taking pictures of my friends wearing clothes I made them.  Sorry.  I’ll keep trying.

So, as I mentioned, we got a trailer for the camping trip.  Sounds crazy, I know, but this is the first time in years Scott and I have been able go for the same number of days, so we wanted to take just one vehicle.  Nothing makes us more exhausted than packing up at the end of the trip knowing that we both have to drive a car home.  And we needed to take lots of lumber so we could live in the trees, and we also needed to be ready to transport some communal stuff if the need arose.  Scott picked up a trailer, and, lo and behold, it matched our dog.  (Which I would show you, but Typepad is yanking my chain: The trailer has a picture of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever on it, and Kayo is half-Chessie, so matchy match.  The trailer didn’t make either of us miss Kayo any less.)

Since all the cool kids are doing it, here’s the Saturday sky.

Now that’s the right kind of weather for a vacation.  79 degrees, blue sky, nice breeze.  Ahhhh.

This is one of my favorite sites in Pennsylvania.  I’ve loved this barn since I was a kid, despite the fact that I’ve also hated tobacco since I was a kid.  My Grandpap was never sure how long ago this was painted, but it’s been this way for a long time.

Now for the really important stuff.  Those of you who spent a lot of time on the PA Turnpike as kids may remember the old Davey Crockett Museum, which was in Breezewood right before the ramp to the Westbound turnpike.  We would torture our Mom until she took us there.  It had a giant statue of Davey Crockett on top, of course, and it was full of antique gruesome taxidermied beasties.  We loved it.  Mom hated it.  It closed sometime in the 80s, and I guess I figured all the stuff went away when a gift shop moved in.  How wrong I was.

When Scott and I started hanging out a lot, he mentioned that he and several of the other KF always stopped at the old Museum on the way North, and that the new owners had made it even creepier.  Visiting the museum was a vital tradition, never to be broken, and if I wanted to spend time with Scott, I had to get on board.  So visit we do, every time we need to get on the Turnpike.  And, strangely, it is even creepier now.  No seriously, it is.

They still call it a Museum, though I don’t know who Crawford is or why he/she doesn’t deserve an apostrophe.  Much more sparkly than when we were kids, right?  Lots more crap?  This is the side view.

All the best museums sell shot glasses and t-shirts from all 50 states, lemme tell ya.

This is when you should change the channel if the thought of hanging a taxidermied beastie on the wall makes you very sad.  I promise you, these beasties would have all died very long ago of natural causes, the hunters who killed them are all long dead, and if these beasties weren’t in the museum, they’d be in a landfill.  My grandpap’s family had to hunt to eat.  I am friends with a lot of hunters.  I eat meat, I use leather, and I don’t think either of those things are wrong, but trophy hunting ticks me off to no end, I promise you.  But this, somehow, is forgivable because the beasties are relics of another time.

The taxidermied beasts are all still there, but now they’re used as display pieces.  I kid you not.  And the displays get more and more strange the deeper into the museum/ tacky gift shop you go.  It starts like this:

Strange, right?  Ram’s head, surrounded by sports memorabilia and fake Native American “art.”  But a regular old Pennsylvania sportsman could hunt down and stuff a ram, so, you know, not too terribly weird.

But then there’s a rhino, who also apparently likes sports:

I should point out again that all of these beasties are antiques, slaughtered years ago before, well, Pennsylvanians stopped slaughtering endangered species on their foreign travel.  The current owners didn’t hurt any of these animals, but they just can’t bear to throw them away.  Which I actually understand.  It would literally add insult to injury to throw that majestic rhino’s head in the trash.  Poor fellah.  Maybe he likes to watch the tourists buy silly things.

What I don’t understand?  How can you have a family made just of roosters, and why you would charge your leopard with baby-sitting them.

That’s a recipe for disaster.  But I’m rooting for the Cat.  She looks like he could use a nice chicken dinner.

And what would make that little scene stranger, you might wonder?  Well, how about the fact that it is directly under this hefelump display stand!

See–her Kittyness is there in the lower center.  Seriously, how messed up is that?  Did David Lynch dress this set, or was it John Waters?  Wait, no, it had to be John Waters.  How do I know?  Because John Waters likes hats a lot.  And so do Water Buffalo:

And Bison:

In the wild, all the Bison go for the Shady Braidies, I promise you.   This shell of a bison taught me, as a child, how small dairy cattle are, in the scheme of things.  I thought Bossy was huge until I met this guy.  He’s huge.  Bossy was just zaftig.

But the pièce de résistance, without a doubt, is the Samurai Grizzly:

Dangerous to the nth degree, now that he’s mastered swordplay.  I think he’s about 11 feet tall.

So, yeah, Pennsylvania is weird.  This little detour sets the tone for our adventures every time.   After seeing this, having strangers obsessively try to kiss your hand and then be offended when you refuse to let them is a bit easier to handle.

That ticker is actually a bit low.  I have a bunch more stitching to measure, but it sure got late last night. 

My finger is almost entirely healed.  The nail is still a bit too short to be comfortable, so I’m keeping it covered, but I’m really happy to be heading out to the wilderness without that particular injury to deal with.

I finished machine sewing early Wednesday night.  Can I get an amen?  I said can I get an amen?!

Scott has a new linen del, which he’ll wear on the field.  It’s looking pretty snazzy.  It needs just a tiny bit more hand-sewing along the hem and then some closures.  I’ll probably make some luceted cord for the inner closure, bitching the whole time, and then use a good button and a luceted loop for the outer closure.  Mongols didn’t cut button holes.  That’s some respect for weavers, right there. 

I decided not to bother to make anything for myself after packing up my clothes for the trip.  I have an embarrassment of riches already.  Instead of stressing myself out with last-minute cutting, I’ll make myself a gorgeous present or two in time for my birthday.

Still lots of weaving to do on the inkle.  It’ll hold. 

We’ve gotten a lot of packing done, and Scott is home today picking up the trailer.  "How insane are these people, renting a trailer to carry camping gear?" you ask.  You’ll see how insane.  This year, we’ll live in the trees.   In the trees, I say!  We haven’t done it in years, but it’s time to raise the floor.

I know, you want pictures.  You’ll get pictures when I come back.   Anything else you really want to see?  Lemme know.  I can’t promise to try, but I’ll try to try.

My younger brother is moving into the Mean-Skuta Manse in our absence, so if you were planning to break in and steal the yarn or the fabric, well, you’ll have to get past a sarcastic red-headed hair farmer.  Who may be susceptible to bribes.  So, you will face essentially the same challenge you would if I were home, except I’m a brunette hair farmer, and I’m crap at soccer. 

If you do break into the manse to steal my stuff, just watch out for the Pint Lion.  In addition to stalking and eating toes, he has a new hobby.  He has fallen desperately in love with stick pins.  I really, really don’t want my kitten eating pins, so while you’re rifling through my studio, please keep him out of the room and away from the pin-cushion, and securely close up the studio as you escape with the loot.   I can deal with having less stuff, but I can’t deal with a wounded kitten.

<p>So, the last two important bog poems: </p>

<p><strong>The Grauballe Man</strong></p>

<p>As if he had been poured<br />in tar, he lies<br />on a pillow of turf<br />and seems to weep<br /><br />the black river of himself.<br />The grain of his wrists<br />is like bog oak,<br />the ball of his heel<br /><br />like a basalt egg.<br />His instep has shrunk<br />cold as a swan’s foot<br />or a wet swamp root.<br /><br />His hips are the ridge<br />and purse of a mussel,<br />his spine an eel arrested<br />under a glisten of mud.<br /><br />The head lifts,<br />the chin is a visor<br />raised above the vent<br />of his slashed throat<br /><br />that has tanned and toughened.<br />The cured wound<br />opens inwards to a dark<br />elderberry place.<br /><br />Who will say ‘corpse’<br />to his vivid cast?<br />Who will say ‘body’<br />to his opaque repose?<br /><br />And his rusted hair,<br />a mat unlikely<br />as a foetus’s.<br />I first saw his twisted face<br /><br />in a photograph,<br />a head and shoulder<br />out of the peat,<br />bruised like a forceps baby,<br /><br />but now he lies<br />perfected in my memory,<br />down to the red horn<br />of his nails,<br /><br />hung in the scales<br />with beauty and atrocity:<br />with the Dying Gaul<br />too strictly compassed<br /><br />on his shield,<br />with the actual weight<br />of each hooded victim,<br />slashed and dumped. </p>

<p><strong>Punishment</strong></p>

<p>I can feel the tug<br />of the halter at the nape<br />of her neck, the wind<br />on her naked front.</p>

<p>It blows her nipples<br />to amber beads, <br />it shakes the frail rigging<br />of her ribs.<br /><br />I can see her drowned<br />body in the bog, <br />the weighing stone, <br />the floating rods and boughs.<br /><br />Under which at first<br />she was a barked sapling<br />that is dug up<br />oak-bone, brain-firkin: <br /><br />her shaved head<br />like a stubble of black corn, <br />her blindfold a soiled bandage, <br />her noose a ring<br /><br />to store<br />the memories of love.<br />Little adultress, <br />before they punished you<br /><br />you were flaxen-haired, <br />undernourished, and your<br />tar-black face was beautiful.<br />My poor scapegoat, <br /><br />I almost love you<br />but would have cast, I know, <br />the stones of silence.<br />I am the artful voyeur</p>

<p>of your brain’s exposed<br />and darkened combs, <br />your muscles’ webbing<br />and all your numbered bones: <br /><br />I who have stood dumb<br />when your betraying sisters, <br />cauled in tar, <br />wept by the railings, <br /><br />who would connive<br />in civilized outrage<br />yet understand the exact<br />and tribal, intimate revenge. </p>

<p><strong></strong></p>

<p><strong></strong></p>

<p>These two poems are more violent than the first two we discussed.&nbsp; The Bog Queen’s disinterment can be seen as an act of violence against her, but, within the context of the poem, her death itself isn’t violent.&nbsp; Here we have a shift.</p>

<p><a href=”http://moesgaard.hum.au.dk/images/1/grauballe/graubman_head_jk.jpg”>Grauballe</a> <a href=”http://www.moesmus.dk/images/1/grauballe/graubmanjk153.jpg”>Man</a>, the actual body, is clearly more tortured in appearance than Tollund Man.&nbsp; Part of that is just a result of shifts within the peat that occurred after his was interred.&nbsp; The body is twisted in a way that Heaney compares to the <a href=”http://www.utexas.edu/courses/introtogreece/lect35/ab%20Dying%20Gaul.jpg”>Dying Gaul</a>.&nbsp; But Grauballe Man’s face is not the picture of restfulness that Tollund Man’s is.&nbsp; </p>

<p>In Punishment, the subject is a girl who was apparently shamed before she was killed and interred.&nbsp; Heaney admits that, had he been there, he would have aided and abetted those who harmed her.&nbsp; Many critics connect the subject here to the women who were tortured and terrorized for dating outside of their religion and community in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.&nbsp; </p>

<p>Again, I am most taken by Heaney’s language.&nbsp; His words are beautiful.&nbsp; His interest in Glob’s work is obvious.&nbsp; I just want to read this quartet of poems aloud again and again.&nbsp; &nbsp; </p>

<p>And I really need to dig up that paper and my slides . . .</p>

The pain.

i.e., sewing through your finger with a monster sewing machine.  I don’t recommend it.  I don’t recommend it at all.  Thankfully, it actually sounds worse than it is.  I didn’t hit the bone or the nerve pad.  It doesn’t hurt as long as I keep the broken nail stabilized.  And yes, I am keeping it very clean and covered, and yes, my tetanus shots are up to date.  I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.  It will be a pain trying to pack and make camp with a bum finger, but it should be healed up within the week.

All of which is balanced by the adolescent joy of showing people my injured middle finger.  Wanna see?  Do ya?

Sorry, no, just teasing.  No photos of yuck, and no photos of me flicking anyone off.  We’ll leave the yuck to web md, because they have so so much, and the flicking off to Johnny Cash, because he was so amazingly cool.   Sniff sniff.  I miss Johnny Cash so much.  Let me go put  Folsom on.  That’s better.  Where was I?

Cassie sent me an awesome book on Bolivian weaving.  Woot!  I can hear it calling me, right now.  It wants me to leave the sweatshop.  It is a temptress of a book.  But I am fully entrenched.  At this point, I can count the remaining seams I need to sew on my un-injured fingers.  That makes me very happy.  I still have a lot of handsewing to do, but I can do that while we’re camping.  And if I play my cards right, I may even have time to make myself a truly decadent dress out of some teal silk dupioni.  And maybe another one out of the two-faced linen I showed you.  Maybe even some apple green linen pants for me me me.  But I certainly don’t need clothes, so I’m feeling much more relaxed about the next few days.

Cassie also asked if I could post some pictures of all of these wacky things I’m making here in the sweatshop.  And the answer is yes, but not yet.  So far, I’ve made things that don’t have people to wear them yet.  They are owner-less clothes.  I posted some photos of un-modeled finished garments last year around this time, and they just seemed so, well, empty.   I promise to take as many photos as I can of my friends wearing these items I’m making once we get to camp.  I hope to also catch some of them wearing things I’ve made for them in the past.  Lots of the garments I make are relatively basic, since I’m normally making iron age clothing, and the folks we study didn’t make intensely complicated garments.  But I have a few gems out there, floating around on my friends’ backs.  I hope to make another gallery, specifically for things I make for our community.

And because it’s that time of year when I try to parse out the dividing lines between one vacation and another, having spent two weeks every year in the same campground with the same weirdos since I was 16, with time running together and sleep deprivation and too much hilarity for words . . . I’ll show you something from the way-back machine.   I made this a few years ago for our friend Roderick and the rest of the staff at Mandrake armory.   Lots of us play a relatively violent stick-fighting game, and Roderick and Richard and their handiwork keeps our bones whole.  Roderick made me a sweeeet helmet back in the day before my shoulder went kablooey and I had to quit fighting, and I’ve since given that helmet to John the Farrier, so his head will not crack open like a melon.  Richard then made me a repro sweeeet helmet just cuz, and he made Scott a gorgeous Mongol helm that is the talk of the field.  More importantly, some of the best times we’ve had over the years have been in Roderick’s shop at our fun summer outing.  Many of our favorite people have worked with him over the years, and our cabal of friends has, well, we’ve made a habit of making grand gestures just to entertain each other.   So, in the spirit of kindness and, um, smart-ass-ness, this is a banner that I made, using an illustration from the Krotchpunt, a send-up of a fectbuch.

In detail:

So, yes, it’s a funny ha ha.  And it’s hand-stitched embroidery on silk leftover from a tunic I made for Scott and another I made for Richard.  And you can’t see the detail too well, but those are little hand-tooled Green Boots as weights.

We just learned that Roderick and his wife Gretchen have decided to sell the business.  We wish them all the luck in the world (when we aren’t cursing their blasted free will).  And we’d also like to point out that if we see you any less frequently just because your job no longer has to do with protecting us from big sticks, we will hunt you down and give you such noogies.  You cannot hide, Hoghead.  You cannot hide anywhere.

Accomplishments.

• lots of good sewing on fabric
• one very bad stitch through a finger
• some excellent bandaging and general first aid
• some shopping with the lovely Ruadhan, whom we all love
• some list making
• a good deal of fretting
• some excellent procrastination
• plans for more and stranger hats

Off to sew.

5:45 am: feed Kayo

6:00 am: report to sweatshop

8:00 am: released from sweatshop to eat breakfast, clean kitchen, and listen to Car Talk.  Discover entire dog’s worth of fur under Hoosier-esque cabinet.  Decline to spin said fur.

9:00 am: return to sweat shop

10:17 am: blow circuit by attempting to iron while air conditioner is running.  Unplug AC unit, reset circuit breaker, and gain renewed insight in the term “sweatshop”

12:00 pm: lunch break

12:30 pm: furloughed from sweatshop to mail package to Cassie.  Curse self repeatedly for neglecting to bring knitting.

12:40 pm: attempt to use Carnivale-esque Avatar skills to force two very slow, clearly incompetent patrons out of the way.

12:48 pm: failing that, attempt to kill a yak at 40 paces with only my mind-bullets.  Lacking mind-bullets, yak, and, apparently, avatar-ness, recite Irish in head, trying very hard not to recite Irish out loud.

1:20 pm: discover Carnivale DVD in mailbox.  Rearrange all plans to watch final two episodes of Carnivale Season Two.  Weave and lazily hand-sew two necklines during episodes

1:45 pm: start laundry

2:45 pm: curse HBO for canceling the Best. Show. Ever.

3:00 pm: introduce Scott to my new invention, a Marconi, which is what I’m calling a Negroni made with vodka

3:05 pm: listen to Scott declare that a Marconi is the most terrible drink he’s ever imagined, and attempt to explain enjoying the taste of Campari, just this one way.  Contemplate the dangers of drinking two Marconis in a row.

3:06 pm: put Scott’s Marconi in the freezer.  Open bottle of Sprudel instead.  Start watching Carnivale bonus material.  Continue with non-machine sewing tasks.

5:30 pm: attempt to account for disappearance of day, and also for blazing inferno outside.  get back to sweatshop

6:30 pm: venture out to Todai, strangely terrifying new sushi bar.  Decide that hours of sweatshop labor do not prepare one to arm wrestle determined patrons over grilled jumbo shrimp.

8:30 pm: return to sweatshop.  Use Alton Brown as an excuse to avoid sewing machine and stick to hand work.

9:30 pm: panic that not enough machine work has been done.  Blog as avoidance technique.

9:54 pm: return to sweatshop before evil boss finds me slacking

Accomplishments:

• One clean kitchen
• 38″ of 4″ wide weaving
• 6 garments completely constructed and ready for hand-finishing
• 20 garments partially constructed
• 2 garments mended
• 1 gift mailed
• All 2006 fabric purchases recorded in ledger
• Two very curious new cats  successfully kept free of iron burns, pin sticks, or other sweatshop related injuries.  Stitcher denies all responsibility for any injuries said cats impart to each other.

I have a dozen partially completed garments.

I have another dozen cut garments ready for sewing.

I have entered a very dangerous place though, my friends, and we are all in peril. 

I should preface this by saying that gin makes me mean.  That’s a problem.  As some of you know, I acquired the nickname "Meangrrl" when I was around 16 and was still a straight-edge.  I keep it mostly under control, even when I do decide to have some drinks.   I haven’t purposely made anyone cry in years, and I thought that risk was mostly erased from my oeuvre.  Mostly, I’m Nice Lady,  and many people don’t understand how I could ever have such a nickname.  But sometimes the Queen of Mean still makes an appearance.  So if you take a Meangrrl, and you add gin, which makes a Lanea mean . . . imagine the consequences. 

Mario Batali apparently introduced Anthony Bourdain to a cocktail called a Negroni.  I learned about this drink and Batali and Bourdain’s relationship to it in a webchat with Mr. Bourdain, who knows more about food and adventure than most.  He listed the Negroni as his current favorite cocktail, and then railed against Batali for getting him hooked on a drink made from three things he hates.  Three things I also hate.  It would have been easier for me to ignore the sharp, rusty, toothy trap if
a. I didn’t think Mario Batali was a genius
2. I didn’t know Anthony Bourdain was a genius, and a freaking rockstar.
iii.  Bourdain didn’t hook me first by talking about Guinness in Dublin, where it’s still a live beer.    Nectar of the freaking Gods.  Nectar of the Gods, I say!

Here’s the exchange:

Alexandria, Va.: In all your travels around the globe, please name your favorite beer and spirit?

Anthony Bourdain: Guinness. A pint of Guinness in Dublin. Must be consumed in Dublin. Favorite spirit? I’m into Negronis lately. Three liquors I hate: gin, sweet vermouth and Compari, yet together they’re wonderful. I blame the evil Mario Batali for introducing me to this lethal habit-forming concoction. He will surely burn in hell. His red plastic clogs melting over his cloven hooves for what he’s done to me.

People, cower in fear.  I’m drinking gin.  And I’m afraid I’m a like me some Negroni.  Bitter orange and bitter herbs and horrid vermouth poured into the throat of a bitter, deranged woman. 

Now the sewing can really get underway.  Onward to mayhem.  Mu har har. 

That’s right–I’m betting I’ll stitch a mile sometime in the next while.  Not a short while, mind you, but it will happen.  I wish I had started measuring way back in the way back.

I am in the sweatshop as much as I can stand to be in the sweatshop.  I do need to go to work five days a week, and I’m not going to go as crazy as I normally do with the sewing, but I may extend the crazy sewing season so that the fabric I’ve bought doesn’t eat my studio.

The sweatshop, at this point, includes both my studio and the living room.  Back before Scott and I traded rooms, setting up a cutting table in my studio was not an option.  Now it’s an option, but it’s one that makes me batty.

So, this weekend’s tasks included some more fabric shopping (another 30 yards or so, though much will be saved for later), putting some finishing touches on the log cabin blanket, warping up my inkle loom to make a gift for a friend, washing and pressing about 60 yards of fabric, and cutting out a few garments.  I have much more cutting to do.  Cutting is the worst part, by far, and it occasionally pushes me to the edge.

I’ll assume you know what it looks like to do laundry.  I did really a lot of it over the weekend.  If you don’t know what it looks like to do laundry, don’t be silly enough to point that out.  We will raise a mob, and we will make you wash many many skivvies, Mr. Shirky-Pants.

First: the blanket received a new baby’s name:

Saxon was born to our friends Anna and Sean last week, after a period of reluctance.  Scott, who does not read Stephanie’s blog, wondered allowed at one point whether Saxon was waiting for his blanket to be finished before he’d come out.  I assured him that I neither want nor have that power over anyone’s labor, and that I would have added the name sooner, but Anna and Sean were exercising their parental rights to secrecy.  All is well now, Anna is recovering from a c-section, and Saxon is sure to take over the world with his blinding cuteness.
(I have to add a disclaimer–I really am excellent at embroidery.  This looks bad.  Embroidering on knits is a whole new chore for me.  I will improve.  I will self-flagellate.  I will write sentences if I must.  But I know Saxon and his folks will be happy with this as-is, so I will not dwell.)Update: The blanket has made it to NYC, safe from wool thieves.  They love it.  They, being normal, loving, sane people, had nothing negative to say about the embroidery, and instead said lovely things about generosity and beauty and snuggliness.  I did discourage their inclinations to turn the AC up really high so they could wrap Saxon up in his new blankie.  I don’t want the kid to be cooked (hear that Aes–I am arguing against cooking a baby–the treatment is working), particularly because, if he is cooked, I will be incapable of convincing him that the blanket I made is the best thing ever.

Right.  So.  Warping up an inkle loom.  First, grab the loom.  Mine is from the folks at Brush Creek Woolworks.  It’s rock maple.  This is one of the oldest types of loom in the world, and it basically allows the weaver to put the weaving down and go do other stuff from time to time without losing tension or otherwise causing problems with the weaving.  You can achieve the same results with a backstrap loom, no problem, buy your cats will see your weaving as prey, and you’ll feel pressured to weave the whole thing in one sitting.  I mean, I did.

Next, select the inkle-food.  It’s needs to be relatively strong stuff.  If you have weak or underspun fibers, consider card-weaving instead.

I’m making another all white inkle.  This is where an adult beverage is required.  I made the first for Richard a few years ago.  He asked me for one without ever intending for me to turn it into a terribly difficult task.  I made it very wide and with bratty yarn.  And he loves it, and repaid me by giving me a handmade repro helmet.  And he bragged on it so much that Drac asked for one.  Drac gets one because he asked me right after he gave me a delicious beverage and told me his wonderful wife was pregnant with their first child.  And also, he gave me one of my favorite strands of amber like seven years ago because he liked one of my songs.  That’s forethought.  That’s plotting.  Triksy, that guy.  Here, you see some really fat two-ply homespun from Williamsburg (the bitch of the bunch), some silk lace-weight I double-stranded, some Knit Picks white Wool of the Andes, and some Irish mule-spun that’s inaccessible from the US.

Inkles are warp-faced weaves.  So the way you warp up the loom sets the pattern, and if something isn’t right, you have to re-warp.  No two ways about it.  You’ll see what I mean  . . .

I normally start the design with a band of whatever I plan to use as weft.  That way, the little weft bumps blend in nicely.  In this instance, it’s the WotA.  Cheap, strong, basic.  This will just make a plain stripe.  Since I prefer symmetry, and most of the weavers in the ancient world preferred symmetry, I’ll warp up a pattern, put in one center strand, and then warp the mirror image of the pattern on the other side.

After the plain stripe, I start making checks.  You’ll notice some of the strands above are going over that bar, and some below.  That separates out the sheds.  If the top and bottom sheds are the same, you get long stripes.  If you alternate one yarn above and one below, you can make horizontal bars.  If you switch the top and the bottom yarns every few passes, you get checks.  Sensible stuff, really.

I add the heddles as I go, but lots of weavers don’t.  Heddles keep the sheds sliding past each other as you weave.  These are plastic heddles.  Plastic as in flexible, not plastic as in the stuff-that-makes-Lanea-foam-at-the-mouth.  Many looms use rigid heddles.  These heddles are just tied bits of crochet cotton that I loop over the upper shed strands

And then under the heddle bar

And hey presto, sheds are established.  This is a tabby weave: one upper, one lower, all the way across.

My original plan was to have one band of the fat homespun in the center of the pattern.  My original plan sucked.

See that–there’s no fixing that warble in the center with a shuttle, no matter how sharp.  And the thing is, I made the exact same mistake the last time I made a white inkle.  So I had to re-warp from the center out.  There was some inspired cursing at this point.  Bardic cursing.  If the inkle had intestines, they would have coiled up and blistered.  But rewarp I did, because I made a promise, dammit, and I keep my promises.  Onward!

Also, a lot of the yarn became mysteriously tangled when I went to get more coffee.  The cats made no comment.

The fix caused some loom-wide tension problems.  Luckily, I am a tool user.  And I buy burly skewers.

Once that was done, all I had to do was the rest of the hard work.  Weaving wool is more of a challenge than weaving, say, nice smooth mercerized cotton.  I’m also weaving something really wide for this loom.  And the loom hasn’t been tightened in a while.  It’s like I’m playing Civilization on Emperor level, but with inkles.

Normally you can open a shed by just using your shuttle to lift or lower the right set of strands.  Here, I have to separate the strands with my fingers each time I want to pass the shuttle through the warp.

And then I have to beat the hell out of the wool with the shuttle to make the weft line as clean as possible.

In the long run, though, I think it will be worth it.

Dude, I can see inkle for miiiiiiiles.

The pattern is set now, and working.  Band of plain, followed by sets of checks, followed by bands of thick and thin, and then the same in reverse.

Right.  So that little task took many hours, and it was interspersed with periods of washing, drying, and pressing.  Lots of pressing.
Lots and lots of pressing.

When I hefted that pile, I think it weighed about 25 pounds.  Hubba hubba.

I can stand to iron that much because, well, the crazy.  But also because I made myself a mammoth cutting and pressing table a few years back.  It’s a standard folding table, around 6′ by 3′ or 4′ I think.  I covered it in lots of batting and a few layers of tightly-attached fabric.  It saves my back and it keeps most of the pet hair off of the things I’m working on. 

Here: the first marks of the season.  This is some cranberry Onasberg.  You can’t tell from the photo, but it has a great texture and will be a nice, cool thing for someone to wear in the August heat.  Even better–this color is one that we know was produced way back in the way back.  Ahhhhhh.  Some red and brown linen have also gone under the knife, and some silk-wool check is saying some very provocative things.

Tonight: more cutting, more weaving, and some sewing.  Maybe I’ll even eat something.