Making metal loops in a coal forge

As I mentioned, I've been making these fabric painted heraldic panels, to mark the entry way to our Estrella camp this year. (estrellawar.org) Now, while I do great on the fiber side of things, I turned to my husband to figure out a way to display these panels. We decided that he'd make some rebar stakes with metal rings on them, one for either side of a panel, and I'd sew ties to the sides of the panels to attach to the rings.

Hmmm. We had some old rebar, but we didn't have any metal rings. We did however have a bunch of metal rod.

And, we have a small coal forge in the side yard. He cut the metal rod to the appropriate size, and fired up the forge. I thought it might be fun to take pictures of how he transformed the rod into rings, so you could see what he was doing too. It is a neat process!:

He took the piece of metal rod, and stuck it down into the hot coals.

Then he cranked the blower to force air into the forge, to heat things up.

When the metal was hot, he fished it back out again...

...and used a handy hole in the legs of the forge to help him bend the metal rod.

The metal cools relatively quickly, so it went back into the forge to heat back up.

He fished it back out again...

...and this time used another set of pliers to help him bend the metal the rest of the way around into an approximate loop.

One more time into the fire. (I just like these fire pictures, actually.)

He found where the loop was hiding under the coals, and brought it out one more time.

Then he used a hammer and anvil to do the last bit of shaping.

A few more taps, and it is done.

Time to let it cool with the others. He ended up making 42 rings total. That ought to do us!

Once the rings are cool, he can take them into the garage to the welding station, and weld them onto the pieces of rebar.

Yup. That ought to do the trick!

Playing with Heraldry

Every year about this time I go into a frenzy of preparation, getting ready for a chance to step out of time. I'm talking about a historical recreation event put on by the Society for Creative Anachronism, called Estrella War. http://estrellawar.org/ This is week long trip into a Medieval past that never quite was, with 4000-5000 of my closest friends. Silly? Yes. Marvelous fun? Absolutely!!

This year as in most, I'm in charge of my own little camp, The Hearth. Only, this year I'm looking after over 40 people. Folks have been having such fun around my fire that they're bringing more of their friends along with them each year. The more the merrier, I say. Anyway, after last year I decided that it would be easier for folks to find us if we had a heraldic symbol to identify us. So I drew up a badge, and submitted it to the SCA powers that be. I just received word that my badge passed, which means that it follows all of the rules of heraldry, and doesn't look like anyone else's heraldry either. I registered it in my name so nobody else could snag it, and I've been working on ways to display it. The obvious first project was to make a sign for the entrance of camp, so folks knew where we are supposed to be

So, I pulled out some white fabric from my stash, and grabbed some Tulip fabric paints. This might not be the most historically accurate way of making a display, but it should get the job done.

I used some high tech tools to lay out the initial circle that I needed: a pin, some string, and a pencil. Hey, it works well!

Once I had my design sketched out, I drew my outlines with metallic black fabric paint straight out of the applicator.

When the outlines were dry, I used a brush to paint in the areas. This is basically a big paint by number. Easy! It just took patience.

And here is one finished fabric panel.










My husband Eric is making some rebar with rings welded to it. We'll stake the rebar into the ground on either side of the panel, and tie the fabric to the rebar. In theory, that should hold it up. We'll put this one at one side of the entrance to camp.

Our camp is part of a larger group, the Barony of SunDragon. That is the local group for the west side of Phoenix, AZ. One of the other baronies has challenged ours to a 'spiffy heraldic display' competition at Estrella. So, I'm also working on making another matching fabric panel for the other side of the entrance to camp. It will display the heraldry for the barony. The outline is drying, even as I type. Between the two, it should be obvious which camp this is, no?

Oh, and the King decided that he wants his warriors on the field to all be in Kingdom colors. In this case, he wants a Sea of Blue. For one thing, it is easier to see what is going on in battle if you can identify your troops at a glance. Also, it makes for good esprit de corps, adding to the magic of the event. So, I made my two warriors blue fighting outfits. They are in Kingdom colors, with the Baronial heraldic War Dragon badge on their chests to denote which unit they're fighting with, and the Kingdom populace badge on their shoulders. (You can't see their other shoulders, which has their own personal devices on them.)

Don't they look wonderful? And as you see them across the battle field, there is no question as to their affiliation. Kind of like modern sports team jerseys, only more Medieval.

Practical heraldry. There is a reason that we still use this stuff in our modern world. Product logos, school mascots, team uniforms...it still serves the purpose of letting you identify a place, person, or thing at a quick and distant glance.

Blending colors on the hand cards for variegated yarn

I've been experimenting at the spinning wheel the past few days. Last week I picked up three colors of wool roving from my local fiber supply store. Then, inspired by a post by Cecelia Yarnell that I had seen a few months ago on the FaceBook spinning group, I decided to break out the hand carders and try blending the colors together.

So, first I broke off lengths of roving about the same length as the hand carders. That gave me a more or less consistent amount of wool to work with.

Then to blend, I'd break off a bit of each, and swap them.

By trading bits in different proportions and blending them together, it should give me a gradual transition from one color to the next in the finished yarn, right?

So, I spread one color onto the cards...

...then evenly layered the other color over the top.

After several passes back and forth on the cards, the colors were blended nicely together. The more passes back and forth, the more blended the fibers got. Then I rolled the fiber off of the cards into a rolag, ready to pre-draft and spin into yarn.

I laid out the rolags of wool in the order I wanted to spin them, pulled out my spinning wheel, and had at it. I started with the green, worked my way through the turquoise, and ended up at the dark blue.

After spinning that much up, I found my bobbin was only about half full. So I carded up another batch, and went back the other way. Once my yarn was spun, I Navajo plied it to make a balanced and strong 3-ply yarn. Navajo plying kept the color variegation pure, so the final skein would be solid colors blending gradually from one color to the next.

I wet the finished yarn in hot water, and hung it to dry over night. That set the twist and fluffed up the fibers a little bit. You can see here how nice the Navajo plying turned out. I'm really pleased with that, since this was my first time really to try that technique. (I learned from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgNkkt5xLZI )

And here is the finished yarn, wound into a center pull ball. I'm really tickled with the way this turned out. This skein is about 160 yards of worsted weight 3-ply wool yarn. It has been promised in a trade to a lady who does crochet work. I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes of it! And, I'm also planning out my next spinning project using this blending technique. I can foresee a few skeins of a nice soft, bulky yarn using a similar variegation. Don't you think that would be beautiful woven up on the triloom? I've got several projects ahead of that one on my to-do list, but I'm looking forward to when I have the time to try it out!

Camp Verde, AZ

A few days ago, my family stopped by Camp Verde, AZ to visit my in-laws. On our way out, the kids asked if we could pause for a moment or so by the river near the house. Running water and trees? I'm so there. So I snapped a few shots along the way.

  

And, since this is sort of a crafting blog, here are a few of the items that I made for Christmas presents. The first is a pair of socks that I cranked out on my antique sock knitting machine. I was really proud of the way I got the stripes to match up on these!

And this is a necklace I put together for my daughter. The pendant is one that I bought from an artist last summer at Fibers Through Time. I made the chain from copper wire, using the Viking Wire Weaving technique. (Look over to the left there in my 'popular posts' for the link to the tutorial on how to do that.) I was really pleased with the way this turned out.

Photography, roses, cattail fluff, and serendipity

This is the picture I was going for today, for my 'picture a day' project. I have roses growing around an itty bitty pond in my front courtyard. The pond has a few cattails that have decided to grow in it, and my kids love playing with the cattail fluff. They'll grab a handful and just blow, making all sorts of dancing bits of fluff fill the air. So, my daughter thought it would be pretty to have the fluff fill the air around the rose. Both she and my son had a great time blowing fluff for me, and we eventually got the shot.

But...I looked over, and spotted something else just as cool. So I kept shooting, but changed where I was aiming without my son being aware of it. Is this not an awesome shot? I so want to title it, "I DO believe in fairies!!" It looks like he has a glowing creature cradled in his hands. I love it.

So, what did I learn today? Remember to look all around you! Sometimes the coolest capture is not what you're focused on originally.

Juggling balls and restocking the shop

Now that most of the Christmas crafting is done, I'm starting to pay attention to my poor neglected Etsy shop again. My stock there has been dwindling down, and it is time to do something about that. So today I started taking photographs of some of the juggling balls sets that I had lying around. They had been in a little craft store, but unfortunately it was a victim of the struggling economy and closed its doors earlier this year. So I had some back stock.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118381201/juggling-balls-in-green-blue-and-yellow

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118383303/juggling-balls-in-green-purple-yellow

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118383887/juggling-balls-in-red-green-and-white

https://www.etsy.com/listing/118384637/juggling-balls-in-blue-and-yellow-wool While I was updating, I got a request for a custom set of juggling balls, in blues and greens. I figured while I was at it, I'd make up a whole batch of a half dozen sets in some of the more popular color patterns. So, before dinner I spent awhile wrapping golf balls in wool roving.

After dinner, I rolled up my sleeves and got into the physical part of the process. I coat my hands with a drop of the dish soap, pick up one of the proto-balls, and soak the bundle under some hot running tap water. Then I toss the ball back and forth between my hands, rolling it around and around, until the wool shrinks down and velcros itself together. Once I had them all well felted, I threw the whole lot into the dryer to tumble around for a final hardened finish. Man, that many golf balls in the dryer are loud!

I'll be taking more pictures and getting these up in the shop over the next few days. Time to re-stock!

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The Christmas cards are mailed, the packages to distant family are shipped, and today the family took the afternoon off and we put up the tree together. Yes, it really is as tall as it looks! I have to stand on a step stool to decorate the top branches, and I still can't reach the star. My son can, though. How did I get to be the tiny one in the family? I can remember the days when I used to be big... Anyway, there is still some shopping to do for the in house folks, and maybe some more cookie baking to do. We've already gone through a batch of my great-great-grandmother's cookies. They were fun to make with the kids (kids = young adults at this point, but they are still my kids!), and made a lovely late night indulgence the other evening with a bowl of peppermint stick ice cream and a hot mug of licorice spice tea.

I have a few more projects that I want to finish up (pictures after Christmas), but now that the tree is up I can pretty much relax and enjoy. I do so love this season!