Bog 3 Day, the Weaving Set Up.

The Barony of St. Swithin's Bog in our Kingdom hosts a 3 day event in July every year called, very creatively, Bog 3 Day. This year the theme is 1066, and I was asked to make full Viking outfits for their Majesties. As they are good friends (and the King is also my Laurel), I was very excited. We sat down to talk designs and colors and they wanted to lean much closer to the more historically accurate side of 10th century Scandinavian, which I was also excited about. The SCA seems to have created its own "Viking Aesthetic" that involves a lot of fur pelts, mega swaths of beads, giant embroidery, and hanging everything you own from your belt or brooches in a very Ren Faire style. I fell victim to it too, but I've been trying to veer away in recent years towards simpler lines, single strands of beads and documentable fabrics and trims.

They also wanted to use more period appropriate fabrics, but very lightweight wool can be hard to find (because July), especially in the colors they wanted. So I decided to just weave it myself. I had wanted to put a proper, lightweight, wool Norse project on my big loom anyway, so this was as good a time as any.

Step 1: Acquire necessary yarn for weaving. We went with the Klippan Mora because it was 100% wool, thin, and the reviews said strong enough to be warp without breaking. I ordered 10 skeins from the Woolery, thinking that would be great. Backordered. Scrambling, I hit the internet to find other places carrying it in the US. A shop in Massachusetts had 4 skeins. The Eugene Textile Center in Oregon had 7 (and also happens to share a building with the US distributor of these yarns). They both shipped out to me and I got started with the warping board. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference between dye lots with this yarn, so things match. Thankfully, the Woolery also got my backordered yarn shipped pretty quickly too, so as long as that package doesn't get lost in the mail, I should be OK.

To make an apron dress and one tunic, I need about 6.5 yards. With take up and loom waste and just making sure I'm covered, I'm warping 9 yards. The fabric will be 25 ends per inch, and my loom is 36 inches. So that is 900 threads of warp at 9 yards each.

I also decided (at the moment, we'll see if this changes as the time line progresses) that I wanted to do a broken diamond twill. Cause... fancy.

My fiber studio help is laying down on the job which is actually....remarkably helpful. Usually they're playing Bitey Face Battle Royale.

I also had the realization last night, thankfully in time, that I needed to switch the loom from metal to Texsolv heddles. My previous projects have been bigger yarns so fewer epi. Using a floor loom while paralyzed is an interesting endeavor anyway, that involves using my hands to lift my leg and set it on the right pedal, and then I'm able to push down quite a bit. But my legs are by no means strong, and at 25 epi, I would be lifting about 450 heddles every time I changed shed. In metal? No thank you. So the Texsolv got ordered last night and hopefully won't take very long to arrive. In the meantime, it's just me and the warping board.