On Sunday 21 May 2006 11:48 pm, Sue Clemenger wrote: > I think I'm right about where you are, garb-wise, Cathy. My "laundry list" > wasn't really an indication of my Extreme Expertise and Skills, but more > like the results of being consitutionally incapable of project monogamy.
Same here, which was part of my point. However, you have attempted a wider variety of projects than I have (see below). > Deity help me, a couple of weeks ago, I was encountering my first power > tool (a drill press) in a friend's garage, learning to register soapstone > molds so I can carve the molds and make my own pewter buttons for fitted > gowns. Now anything that requires power tools is a bit farther than I've cared to go! I'm still waffling about using that sheet copper I bought to try to make a Viking style needlecase-and I can do that with only a dowel and a pair of pliers (and maybe crazy glue). > I'd love to hear more about you Lithuanian shawl! One of the things the lands along the Baltic seem to have in common (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, parts of Finland, even Novogorod) is that the rich tended to ornament their clothes by working bronze coils and rings into them. (Most of the 1st-10th c textile finds in those areas have survived because the bronze ornaments preserve a fair amount of the cloth. Since most of the ornamentation was at the edges, you get a good idea of the size of the ornamented items.) Based on where the metal ornaments were found, it appears that there was a standard shawl size (roughly 30 inches by 40 inches). The proper way to do the ornamentation would be to weave the shawl to order, and wrap strips of sheet bronze or bits of bronze wire around certain warp threads as I worked, but I'm not likely to learn how to weave anything bigger than a tablet-woven belt anytime soon. So what I'll probably do is kind of corkscrew pieces of copper wire into already woven wool (I have some nice wool melton cut and fringed for the purpose). Then, I will make smaller coils of copper wire, string them onto a cord, and couch them onto each short end. Raymond's Quiet Press started making the kind of stick pins that (it has been theorized) were used to fasten these shawls. There's a picture of the design here: http://www.quietpress.com/New2004.html (look under "new in October 2004"; it's the left-hand picture, the item on the far right). They were used in pairs, fastened together with bronze chains. The pins attached to them are huge--as big as knitting needles (the same is true of the actual survivals Raymond's model is based upon). Having finally bought myself a pair from Raymond as a birthday present, my theory is that the pins were never meant to go through anything other than the shawl. Once you fasten them to the shawl (I've already tried this) you can take the shawl off and on over your head (really, really carefully, to make sure you don't gouge out your eyes) as a unit, without risking damage to the rest of your body or clothes. I have already finished most of the rest of the costume the shawl is to be worn with. When I finally finish the shawl, I'll put a picture in the MedCos gallery and post the URL to it here. -- Cathy Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "I'm starting to like the cut of this man's gibberish." --General Fillmore (from "The Tick," episode 2) _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
