And then (more music)

Posted on February 1, 2013 by

After an intense period of insomniac self-reflection last night, I came to the following realization:

I just really, really like music.

With the exception of a lot of ballady R&B, most rap, and the harder end of metal (my tastes in the metal arena generally tend towards the prog end of the spectrum, although a good power ballad or rockin’ arena anthem are not ever something I’ll turn down, and I enjoy hip hop than straight-up rap), plus most of modern country music, I’m pretty okay with listening to most things. As in, I could have music going in the background of my entire life, and it bums me out that I don’t play a musical instrument better than I do. Or sing more proficiently. I think I probably fall into the analog group to art critics, which is to say that I’m the sort of person who consumes music and has deep thoughts about it, but isn’t really a creator in that way. My medium has always been visual, be it dance or les artes plastiques (to be totally pretentious, there’s not really an equivalent genre term in English that encompasses all the visual-type arts in such a nice way as that French term). 

I’ve been diving into modern Korean music (both indie and pop) and have come to the realization that I’m picking and choosing artists/songs much the same way as I do all the other music I listen to. I’m not into bro rock, but I do like Dave Matthews Band. I don’t really do country, but I like old-timey Western, especially if there’s a steel or slide guitar in the mix somewhere (actually, that rule applies to all music, because the steel and slide guitar are like strange aural magnets for me; I’m looking at you, Chris Isaac). Electronic sound turns my ear in a way that nothing else does. I like classical music, but not Baroque, opera, or a lot of Chinese, Korean, or Japanese traditional vocals. Oddly, South Asian classical vocal pieces are something I love, probably because much of that classical vocal tradition has been incorporated into modern Bollywood/South Asian pop music and, to some extent, South Asian indie music.

See? Those who can’t make talk about things a lot and try to sound smart. I’m talking about what I like here, and am always open to listening to new things, even if I don’t end up listening to them a second time. I also really don’t like easy listening, much of the pop music of the 1990s (ugh) and the psychedelic/fuzz rock genre, which WH listens to all the time and really digs. We do not listen to music together terribly often, with the exception of Queen. Queen is, in our mutual opinion, the greatest musical group of all time ever. Better than the Beatles. Yeah. I said it. Freddie Mercury est mort. Vivre Freddie Mercury.

Perhaps this is all because when I was growing up, music was a constant in our house. My parents have an old, reliable, and very good stereo system, which my dad later augmented with a few professional disc changers (like the sort they used to use in radio stations before everyone started transitioning to digital). They also had a pretty massive record collection, mostly consisting of classical and 1960s/1970s hippie music. My mom had her own private little collection of Native American protest groups, which I still really enjoy listening to (No Exit, anyone? Good stuff.). So there was a lot of encouragement from my parents to be a consumer of music. We went to the symphony once every couple of months, which then eventually became me going to shows pretty regularly in college. I can’t imagine music not being part of my life.

(No, really. And I may also be the last person to have listened to the Shins’ Port of Morrow? Well, anyway, I just did, and if you are also in the group of folks who likes that sort of music but hasn’t listened, you really ought to. It falls under the slide/steel guitar rule. As you might have guessed.)

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Boy Bands, a little late

Posted on January 30, 2013 by

Image

 

O hai Big Bang. But I have to ask, Taeyang – what’s up with that turtleneck? Sneeeeaky.

(Apologies in advance for the folks for whom this post is entirely irrelevant. When I asked my husband if he was into NKOTB when he was a younger person, he went, “NKOT who?” And then I felt silly.)

So when I was a younger-type person, boy bands were a big thing. All my friends were into New Kids on the Block, primarily Donnie, I think? Well, as you do, we all had our favorites. We liked their music (I still have a fondness for “The Right Stuff,” even if it transforms into Weird Al Yankovic’s “The White Stuff” whenever I try to remember how it sounds). We wore their merchandise. We had Trapper Keepers with their faces emblazoned on the covers. One of my friends even went to a concert!

But I? Not I. I mean, I wanted to. I really did! The one album I owned was their Christmas special, given to me as a gift by a sympathetic aunt. But my parents are quintessential hippies/beatniks, and looked down their noses at that whole pop music/boy supergroup thing.

Bummer.

By the time my cousin had gotten into her serious Backstreet Boys phase (and swore up and down that the Backstreet Boys were in every way superior to NSYNC), I had found the one boy group that my parents were ok with me listening to – the Beatles.

Hooray for the Beatles, right? Their contribution to modern pop music is hugely significant, and while I poke fun at myself, the White Album is, in my opinion, one of the best albums of the modern era. The Beatles influence everybody, including Michael Jackson, who in turn influences everybody else.

The one problem? I was 13 at the height of my Beatlemania, and while the music was a thing I was into, the Fab Four themselves were the ones I really swooned over. HOWEVER, as everybody knows, well, they’re not young men any more. In fact, by the time I discovered their existence, John had already been gone for over 10 years.

Also a bummer.

Let’s take a fast-forward to 2012, as a strange and oddly amazing video makes its way around YouTube like Genghis Khan around Asia. I had heard about Psy’s Gangnam Style, and then didn’t watch the video. Finally I gave in, and saw this list of related videos on the sidebar. So I clicked. I like clicking links. You find great (and also awful) stuff clicking links.

And that led to f(x), which led to 2NE1, which led to Big Bang, which led to a deep (and for WH, irritating) obsession with KPop.

I was watching variety programs starring the members of Big Bang on YouTube the other night, and realized with a start that this is what it must have felt like to be a Monkees fan back when the Monkees were in their heyday. Or the Beatles. Or NKOTB. We really don’t have an equivalent in America right now, and I don’t recall our groups ever having been as phenomenally flashy as the K-Pop groups, but it’s still the same sort of thing.

I’m kind of loving this feeling. I feel like I’m getting to live a little bit of my youth over again, a part of it that I missed the first go around. It’s on me if I indulge in some swanning over megagroups.

(The other crucial bit of information that I realized is that this new thing is actually an extension of an old thing, in that I’ve always preferred electronic music to other genres, and there’s been a major adoption of electronic music by megagroups and pop stars. I don’t know what it comes from – Skrillex? Hip hop? It’s probably a far more complex origin than I realize, but whatever it is, I’m very happy that there are more ways to access electropop than there were 10 years ago, when you kind of had to know where to look for it. Like my favorite fringe preferences that become mainstream, I’m going to enjoy them while they’re easy to get, and not beat myself up over the fact that they’re mainstream. I’m not that much of a hipster.)

And I really can’t wait to see what T.O.P. is doing in 5 or 10 years. I don’t know what the longevity of your average Korean idol group is, but that man has some serious potential, and I’m anxious to see what he does with it.

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Thank you thank you thank you.

Posted on November 19, 2012 by

(This post is heavily SCA-based, and because Facebook won’t let me post it due to length, so apologies to those for whom this will be confusing).

I think it’s appropriate that Castle Wars comes before Thanksgiving, because I am full of thanks for all the people who came and had fun, and to the people who did so much work to make the event what it was. In particular:

Master Robin, our intrepid Event Steward;
Master Ximon, his deputy, and the most selfless, positive person on the planet (seriously);
Majda, for sharing her tent and almost six months of her time;
Lady Ayla, for sharing her time and her hookah;
Lady Siobhan, for being the person to keep track of the moneys and pay the site when we were all done;
Their Excellencies Hajji and Jadi, the Baronial motivators, the lovely face of our hospitality, and a damned fine Baron and Baroness;
Their Majesties Thomas and Elisenda, and His Highness Ulrich, for being our inspiration and for spending the weekend with us;
Maire, who did the jobs of six people and is a superwoman (hello, first time as reservationist? whoa!);
Lady Muriel, who made sure that our new people had garb and felt welcome, and that everyone had the land they needed when they needed it;
THL Serafina, who wrangled a bunch of crazy artisans and got us teaching awesome classes;
Lord Logan, who was, as always, meticulous and totally reliable with equestrian;
Lord Sebastianos, my favorite “fake” brother and the mastermind behind our shiny new castle and the great fighting scenarios;
Lord Jareth, who kept us in live weapons;
THL Peryn, the new King’s Lancer and a good half of the coursing;
Lady Jac, the other half of that pair;
Lady Lucia, who made sure we knew all the things we needed to know at the right times;
Mistress Adela, who coordinated the merchants;
and to the rest of you folks who carried things, set things up, schlepped, worked troll, and helped make this what it was. You’re all awesome.

(Apologies if I left anyone off this list; I have tired brain. You are appreciated, I promise!)

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New Book, Part 2

Posted on August 29, 2012 by

So with the block completed, the block is ready for covering. Which is infinitely more difficult than I had anticipated. European-style binders, I respect you in new ways now.

Anyway, first came lacing the covers onto the block, via the leather sewing supports:

You can also see the placement of the pegs, which help keep the supports in place. Also you can see where one of the endband cords has been threaded into the block and (presumably) glued to the inside face of the cover board.

And then you do that for all the supports, trimming the leather flush when done:

 

I used a very small, fine file to smooth out the surface when I was done. Another step that one is supposed to complete is to plaster the inside with gesso, but I cannot figure out how to get it to be the correct consistency, so that’s a step that will have to wait until the next book, when I have a little more time to experiment.

Anyway, so then you cut a little spine lining piece, and if you have time to go to the specialty hardware store that is only open during the times when you cannot go, you buy hide glue and glue the piece of parchment to your spine, forming a support. Instead, I used wheat paste, which I found some reference to in my sources, but which does not work as nicely as the other glue might (or so I am led to believe. Anyway, here’s what the spine piece looks like:

 

And glued in place over the boards:

You can see two extra things in this picture: one, that the fake parchment isn’t ideal (but will work in a pinch) and two, that I carved out channels for the straps to go into, so they wouldn’t show too badly under the covering leather.

Here are the straps, affixed to the book:

 

These were a major PITA to get to stay in place. I even scored both the leather and wood beforehand! Aargh. I had to re-glue them at least four times before they took.

ANYWAY.

I did some more jugaad with a utility knife and a scrap of marble from a surplus store, and skived leather strips to use to cover the flap end of the book. Like so:

 

Further note to save you trouble: using a long, breakaway-style utility knife blade without the handle because you bought the wrong sized blades? Not the easiest thing. Using said blade with the handle? MUCH BETTER. I have yet to figure out a good tool to use for hand-skiving, but when I do, I will let you know. I like to share knowledge.

Here are the strips, glued in place:

 

So then came the gluing of the actual cover, which involved a tricky bit of cutting little slits for the straps (and then gluing them in place YET AGAIN). 

Not too shabby, in the end.

And the turn-ins:

Yeah, I probably could have made those more even, but I ended up covering them anyway, so whatever.

The headband tuck (I’m particularly proud of this):

And then I stuck the whole shebang into a press with linen thread tied around the spine to get nice, crisp cord definition:

 

And that’s the end of that day, as I left it overnight and into the next evening so it could dry.

Whew!

Learned also: skiving leather makes your arms tired.

Tomorrow is the final bits – the brass fittings, flap, endleaves and knot.

 

 

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New book

Posted on August 28, 2012 by

More different than before. As in, this time it’s European! Gothic, to be precise. And I’m kind of loving the process.

Anyway, short story is that Baroness Marie, my one-time apprentice sister, is being elevated to the Order of the Pelican very soon (like, next weekend), and asked me to make a book for her. And since I had NOTHING to do (translation: I do not have a healthy sense of self-preservation) I agreed.

Did I mention I’ve never bound one of these before? I’ve never bound one of these before.

The biggest lesson I learned was that all the extra equipment you think you won’t need is actually stuff you really, really need. Like that sewing frame. And a finishing press. Yeah. However, I, the intrepid and ever-resourceful bookbinder, have made this all work ok.

These books date from the late 13th-15th centuries, and are the successor to the Carolingian-style binding. One of the biggest differences in the two bindings is that these books were bound in the era when paper became something people used to write or print on, and so you get a lot of variety in materials. This is the era of the girdle book. This book is going to be a girdle book.

Because most books before this style were created using parchment text leaves, the covers were made primarily of wood, which was sanded and rounded and carved with channels for the sewing supports, which in turn attached the book block to the cover boards. This is one of the main differences between the books I usually bind and this new one, since the ones I usually bind are pretty exclusively paper-based, and everything is just sort of glued in place.

So the first thing I did was to find a friend with a woodshop, and have him cut and shape the boards for me. Technically, I think this step is supposed to happen after you sew the book, so that you can make sure the holes for the supports are in the right places and deep enough, etc, but we were on a time crunch, so he did these first. He is a genius. Covers!

(Front, showing placement of the sewing supports.)

Back, so you can see the channels for the supports. The holes are much larger than the actual supports, because you drive a peg into them to hold the leather in place.)

And so then I got to the bookblock-making! I read up on this for a good week and a half beforehand, because I knew this was going to be complicated. And I was right. There are at least three ways to do the actual sewing, and more than three times as many different ways to include a parchment endsheet. I used the most simple way, which was a single parchment folio sewn as its own quire into the bookblock. The parchment (pergamentata, actually):

I didn’t have a sewing frame, so i sort of rigged up one with the also rigged-up book press I am borrowing from Master Lorenzo. It kind of worked. Which is to say, not really at all, but I made do.

Also worth mentioning is that those leather bits? Not the alum-tawed sort I needed, but I did not have time to source alum-tawed hides in anything smaller than something costing me at least $100. Not ideal, since you can see exactly how much I used. I laminated a couple of pieces of lining leather together using PVA adhesive, which worked well enough for a first time run.

The paper is not rag laid, but instead is calligrapher’s parchment, which while the wrong texture is pre-sized for use in calligraphy and should hold up to lots of well-wishing writing. Apparently lots of historical binders use this? Who knew? Anyway, it works very well for its intended purpose.

And so then, we have book block! It is lovely.

With finished book block in hand, I set about rounding the spine and trimming the edges. This was the point where I realized the utility of a finishing press, because “making do” with a couple of boards and some c-clamps isn’t the most fun thing ever. However, the work was done:

It terrified me to pound on the spine, but somehow it worked out. I was so scared that I was going to break the sewing thread. I should have remembered that due to my lack of sewing frame, the threads were fairly loose, and not prone to breaking. Duh.

You’ll also see that I had to trim it after I rounded the spine, and then had to round it again. Lesson learned.

So with a nicely trimmed spine (using my “plough” of a very sharp, long utility knife), I set about doing the endbands.

YOU GUYS. These are so much easier than the Islamic chevron endbands IT IS SO NOT EVEN FUNNY. Chevrons: weave a tiny strip of fabric using only a needle and some determination! This: wrap some silk like you do, and even if you screw up it’ll still look good! Seriously. I am not joking.

In progress:

And then the endbands, in their completed state:

 

And so there you have a book block! Hooray!

Tomorrow’s installment: attachment of the covers and leather. Very exciting!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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DragonCon

Posted on August 27, 2012 by

It comes around every year, and every year I somehow manage to wait until the very last minute to do things. This year, “things” are a hat, dress, and assorted accessories for a 1940′s-style take on a superhero supervillain costume. In this case, Loki as seen by a dress designer in 1947.

What makes this dress particularly challenging is that I didn’t start with a pattern. Nope, I started with a photo of a dress from a vintage site, and a lot of ambition (which can get you pretty far, as I’ve come to learn).

First, you go to Goodwill and buy the cheapest set of horrid cotton sheets you can find. This way you do not care if you cut them up and waste fabric as you drape.

Next, you take your trusty dressform, which is not actually people sized since it’s a shop window form and not a dressmaker’s dummy, and stick foam to it with pins and masking tape until you get something roughly your shape and size. I say “roughly” because I discovered after I’d patterned and cut everything that Bessie (Dressie) is not actually my size. She is still more petite than I. She gets a cow name so that I don’t feel like one in comparison.

Then you drape, drape, drape. I ended up with something that looks like this:

This looks exactly right! Only in horrible floral cotton sheet fabric.

So then I went to the store, and bought twice as much taffeta as I needed, since I knew that I would actually need that much in the end. I brought the whole shebang, Bessie and all, over to Otterling’s house and spend most of an afternoon and evening making pattern pieces.

And then I took it all home and sewed the real fabric together and discovered that the outfit was approximately an inch too small in all dimensions. Also that I had cut the armscye into the wrong shape. Hooray.

BUT NEVER FEAR. Your intrepid seamstress is resourceful and determined. I drafted new pattern pieces, cut them out, and then sewed a new bodice, which fits nicely. Here it is on Bessie before recutting:

And a closeup of the drape:

The drape is the only part of the top half that I was able to salvage. And I’m not sure it’s salvageable yet. We’ll do some sewing later and see.

I also did some crazy applique on the sleeves that you can’t see, but trust me, it’s awesome.

So I cut new sleeves, did some applique (a lot, actually) and re-pleated the skirt front. It’s all coming together rather nicely.

In process, with the borrowed fox stole and my own shiny necklace:

And that hat? Well, my lovely friend Tori came over on Saturday and shared all her amazing millinery knowledge (and some sewing skill) with me, and we came up with this:

It is the fanciest hat I own.

Although much of the project was frustrating, I feel very accomplished now, because I not only draped my own pattern and made it into a workable garment (thanks in part to fittings from Blogless Lea), but I did many things that I didn’t think I’d be able to do. It seems as though my hours of practice draping saris paid off in an unexpected way with this project, but I’ve also learned many things about patterning and sewing over the years, and hadn’t realized it. That is cool.

I’ve still got the Cigarette Holder of Power left, and a papier-mache log to paint, but have made a significant amount of progress so far. Hooray for that.

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Random kindnesses

Posted on June 11, 2012 by

If you plan them in advance, are they really random? Does that even matter?

A friend of mine clued me in on a terrific nonprofit (full disclosure: she told me about it last DragonCon, and then I was my usual weird, uninterested self until I was suddenly VERY INTERESTED, for reasons I won’t elaborate on right now) that spends its time, effort, and funds in the pursuit of helping people, or just plain being nice to people. A day where you go out and give flowers/candy/balloons to total strangers. Giving a car to a family that could really use it (and I mean really). Buying a little boy a pair of shoes. Kind words, gestures, and expressions of support.

So this weekend I made sure to think of all the things I could do that were kind. I gave an extra two dollars with my tip at the restaurant where we ate lunch. I shared my celebratory spice cupcakes with the aforementioned friend (much to the chagrin of WH, who has quite the sweet tooth). I went to the grocery store and bought veggie burgers because the lone vegetarian at the cookout we were attending only had hummus and chips as her lunch options. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t even be talking about these things, because it doesn’t really matter to anybody else but the people on the receiving end if I do something nice or not.

But maybe somebody else will be inspired. Who knows? It’s worth a shot.

Anyway, that’s not really the big thing.

A coworker and I had been talking about books, and he recommended The India Cookbook as something I might like (anybody who spends more than a half an hour around me will know that I have a deep, abiding love for all things India). And I replied that I had been coveting the book, but that it wasn’t something I was comfortable splurging on. He said he’d lend it to me, and I was happy to be part of that exchange.

Well, this morning, he came into the office, handed it to me, and said, “It’s yours.” I was somewhat flabbergasted, and I think I might have replied with a, “Wait… what?” And he nodded, and said that he’d cooked all the things he wanted to cook, and that he thought I could make good use of it (which is totally true).

And so I suppose that’s why I’m sharing, because it feels really awesome to be on the receiving end of kindness, because it reminds you of why it’s so great to be on the giving end.

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The softest of owls

Posted on June 8, 2012 by

I didn’t finish my  book before Kingdom A&S. I had very noble intentions! And I worked very hard! But the book became a book display, and while I got some flack for entering it in the open (hello, personal standards and unfinished documentation), I didn’t do too badly. I won the populace vote and also the children’s vote (which, honestly, is one of the coolest awards I’ve ever gotten). I also got a couple of “This is so cool! I want to bind books!” That makes it all worth it. I didn’t get my own photos of the display, but I did get these photos from a friend on Facebook:

It’s the most extensive A&S entry I’ve ever done, and will definitely be an actual judged entry next time. I really enjoyed sharing all the parts of the process with other people, and the extra time I’m taking will allow me to experiment with shell gold, thus making this even more authentic than the last book (the black and gold one in the display).

And what’s more, I’m doing one-on-one classes with Myra, who is an excellent student. I can’t wait to teach her the tooling part. That’s my favorite.

Then there was talking and shadow judging and some Royal attending (which I think I managed to botch in a pretty spectacular manner, but lessons learned, boy howdy), and then I got called up for winning the A&S Open, and then His Majesty called up the Order of the Velvet Owl, and I was quite totally shocked (both His Majesty and Her Highness commented on the state of my face due to said shock), and then there was a lot of hugging, and I wished that I hadn’t worn my jingly anklets in court, for lo, they are loud.

I was in shock for another couple of days, which wore off and was replaced by bubbly joy.

I have an OVO.

Heck, yes.

I received this little beaded pouch, which contained a surprise medallion on a kumihimo cord (I suspect Mistress Margala in the medallion department):

A close-up of the pendant:

And Master Lorenzo and Mistress Adela, who are spectacular human beings, made this scroll for me:

So cool! They included a little special detail:

That’s me, holding a book press, on the back of the Meridian horse, riding away from a sleeping Middle Kingdom dragon. So incredibly cool.

And this also means I can judge A&S entries now, which is equally cool.

Thanks, Meridies. I’ve lived in a few kingdoms now, and I can confidently say that you feel the most like home.

(And since I was curious, I looked up “velvet owl” to see if there was such a bird, and there is not, although searching brings up Birds of Afghanistan and the awards listing on the Meridian website. Appropriate.)

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Bad at estimating

Posted on May 29, 2012 by

I am terrible at estimating the time it takes to do things.

Last time I bound a complex book, it took me a full day to do the tooling. And then another to do the gilding. So when I set out to make a book for Kingdom A&S this year, I spent two weeks on the binding (which is the usual time I take), and budgeted a single weekend for the cover.

Oh, yeah, and it’s important to mention that there were two parties in that same weekend, as well as a trip to the garden store for some discount pepper plants.

The book’s binding is really nice, actually. Once I fixed this, that is:

That’s a failed attempt at the chevron endband, before I remembered that I need to space my warp threads out more. Which I did (sadly, those photos are on my other hard drive).

Saturday I sat down to do the binding part, but then realized that I had forgotten to make pasteboard, which is what I had planned to do for this one, rather than using the thick, clunky commercial chipboard. I also made my own wheat paste. This means two days for the binding.

Sunday I read through my sources again, and discovered that all the extant examples I’m looking at are at least 1/3 again as large as the bookblock I was working with. Undeterred, I found one example that was the right size, minus the complex outer fillet that I didn’t want to mess with anyhow. My method for transferring these designs involves bringing a scan into illustrator, tracing it in vector, and then taping a piece of tracing paper over my monitor and tracing the design again in pen. I know this sounds really insane and convoluted and like more work than it’s worth, but regular paper is too thick to use as a transfer medium, since when you press down on it with a stylus it tends to press outward more than you’d like, and the lines are terribly difficult to find. So you see? The tracing paper method, while bizarre, is actually not too bad, especially considering that you can get the image exactly the right size, and you don’t have to use extra paper.

I spent the time on Saturday before the evening’s festivities (you will be missed, Arnora!) watching all the episodes of Supernatural ever (Dean, I think I love you) and tracing the design three times. THREE TIMES. For those keeping count, this leaves one day plus evenings to crank out the leather tooling. I thought, “I’ll just go home and work on this after the party. If I stay up really late, surely I’ll get this done, right?” I am such an idiot.

At 4a.m., I called it quits. I had transferred the design and gotten what is now the outer border roughly tooled in. For some bizarre reason I had decided that transferring the design via little pinpricks through the paper and into the leather was the best idea ever, until I realize it took forever, and that my previous stylus-pressing method was actually quite serviceable.

Still undeterred, I woke up the next morning and dove back in, tooling the deep outlines on the inner design, and the beginning on the crosshatching and dot pattern in the border. I ate lunch, I watched more Supernatural (no, I take that back, Dean. I definitely love you). I got halfway through the detailing on the border.

I called it quits.

At this point, I had spent over 16 hours on the tooling, and had finished approximately 1/4 of the work needed to make a complete book. And there is still the gilding to be done. And the affixing to the block.

Most of the time I’m bad at knowing my limits. I push myself too far and quit far too late. This time, though, while dozing in the car on the way to B’s Memorial Day barbecue, smelling the pie WH cooked using the peaches we bought during the half hour I ventured from the house on Sunday while it was still light out, I made the wise decision to call it quits on pushing myself to get finished by Friday afternoon. 

(Not to be one to give up completely, I will be using the unfinished cover as part of a non-competitive display entry on the process of Islamic bookbinding, so that it may be at the very least quite educational.)

It’s looking good. I know that with this extra time and patience, it will be lovely:

I’ll be sure to share more photos as it progresses.

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Dye all the things!

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

Last weekend was a total blur. Actually, the whole week was kind of like that. A big project popped up at work, and a friend decided that it was high time to tie the knot, and then there was the matter of the dye workshop I’d been planning to do with Mistress Dominica and other SCA folks.

So, yeah. Kinda busy.

The dye workshop was for all kinds of dyes – indigo, osage orange, turmeric, madder, cochineal, and a failed attempt at dandelion root purple (keep trying, B, you’ll get it!). I dabbled with indigo, turmeric and a little of the cochineal.

My focus, though, was the madder. As with all the things I research in the SCA, my interest in dyes centers on India and more specifically block-printed textiles. Many of them are red and blue, the red applied as a madder stamp and the blue an indigo dyed with the use of a wax resist. I will eventually do the second thing, but it’s not a process I’m familiar with.

So I thought, hey, madder, that’s like things I know how to do already. I know printing! I know fabric dye! This should be simple, right?

Oh, yeah. Did I realize that madder is one of the most difficult reds? You can get a great pink, or a lovely beige, or a peachy orange, but red? Red is something that medieval europeans paid a lot of money to import before they learned the process. Which, I’d like to point out, is a multi-day, multi-step process involving a lot of very delicate temperature regulation and many different fabric treatments before you even get to the dye portion.

Actually, on the other hand, I knew this and it made it not so frustrating when I tried to stamp the fabric with a mordant (actually, Dominica did this) and the fabric did not change colors at all. This continues to be a puzzle to solve (according to multiple sources, this is something that was done in period). We stamped with a little bit of madder paste mixed into some water, and that seemed to work better, but it was very pale. Clearly there’s something else I need to do with this, but I don’t know what yet.

I did two things with the madder I had:

1. Used ~2 lbs of loose root pieces, steeped in two gallons of water for three steepings. Steep 1 yielded a brownish sort of tan. Nothing terribly exciting, but not plain fabric. Steep 2 yielded a peachy pink, which was one of the shades Dominica and Ophelia had gotten in their previous experiments. I tried a third cold steep, which is still sitting in its bucket. It didn’t make any deeper red than the second steep, but that was only after two hours in the vat. I ran the wet pieces through a blender to break them up a bit, and then put half back in the bucket with fresh water (that’s the vat that’s still soaking) and half into a big pot to heat slowly. I used the directions in the Gryphon Dyeworks booklet, which said to head the alkanet pot to 150-175 degrees for 60-90 minutes, which involved turning on the stove, and then turning it off again, on and off for the whole 90 minutes. After it was done cooking, I poured the contents into a bucket to cool, and immersed sample fibers in the bucket.

2. Water and pre-prepared madder powder, which is basically the same as what I did, except that the cooking and straining and grinding steps have all been done in advance. I put the water and madder into a quart-sized baletop jar, and put several samples into the liquid.

While the madder was doing its soupy cooking, I triple-mordanted a piece of cotton, and single-alum-mordanted another piece of cotton and a piece of silk. For the fancy multiple mordant process, I did one bath in alum and soda ash, then one in tannin (in the form of very, very stiffly brewed tea), and another in the soda ash. After it dried, I cut strips off to put into my vats to test.

The Grypon book also said to let the fibers soak in the dye bath for 2-3 days to achieve the best red, so I left the buckets/jars sitting in my house until this evening, and then pulled them out. I don’t know how to get a deep red with a stamp, since I’m not sure how you’d let the dye get a good soak with a single application of the dyestuffs. Maybe you let it sit on the fabric and then wash it a few days later? I’ll have to experiment.

I do know this – what I did with the madder root pieces did not give me the desired result, except partially with wool.

The big dye pot:

Yep. That’s a Home Depot bucket. They come with sealing lids! Kinda perfect, as long as you don’t put something too terribly corrosive inside.

Here’s the cotton I heavily mordanted:

You can see a tiny spot in the middle where the madder bits got stuck to the fabric while it was cooking, and left a very deep red. The rest is a sort of brownish orange. Not bad, but not what I was hoping for.

This piece of cotton, although only mordanted in alum, strangely took a deeper red color than the very mordanted sample:

I don’t know if it was because the wool held more of the mordant bath than the single piece of cotton, but the cotton wrap is actually pretty darned red. The wool was a brown that B had brought along, and took the dye nicely, resulting in a rich brick red.

The white wool also took dye well, but came out more orange than red:

As did these uncarded locks:

You can see the single-mordanted cotton sample in the bottom right corner. It’s a nice pale shade of red-orange, sort of a pale coral. Not bad, but still, not what I was hoping for.

The linen was a little better:

A deeper red, but not a terribly even color. Still, not totally disappointing.

The silk came out beautifully:

As with the others, much browner than I’d hoped, but that could be because I wasn’t getting a good temperature reading, and the dye bath might have gotten too hot; overheating saddens the color (makes it more brown).

Here’s the little jar with the paste:

The jar with the paste was much more successful. I didn’t try the wool, but I did try silk and cotton. As with the bath I made myself, the silk was a smashing success:

I mean, look at that red! Holy crap! It is ridiculous! I am flabbergasted. Clearly I’m on the right track.

The only-alum mordanted cotton didn’t do too badly, either:

It’s a little pinker than red, but it’s still pretty brilliant.

The win was the triple-mordanted cotton. The color was uneven because the jar was so small, but the richness of the color is pretty amazing:

(Sorry for the toilet shot; it was the most convenient place to shoot photos.)

All of these were taken after I rinsed out the excess dye and soaked the fibers in a vinegar and salt bath.

Now the big challenge is to figure out how I can get the same richness of color with a stamp. The trick to a deep, rich color seems to be the extended soaking period, although I’m tempted to take the dye liquid from the successful jar test and print with it, to see if maybe that gives me similar results.

At the very least, I learned a lot, and got a bunch of fancy dyed fabrics to dry in my guest shower:

Plus this crazy bit of indigo-dyed cotton:

(and I have about two pounds of alkanet, plus enough kamala to dye everything in the world yellow, so there will be more of these experiment sessions in my future.)

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