Sunday, October 17, 2010

Nalbing workshop in Tartu



On October 28th, Thursday at 18 o'clock the first public workshop in our new rooms will take place. The adress is Kastani 38, second floor. And the topic will be nalbinding.

Duration: max 3 hours
Participation fee: 60 EEK/3.83 EUR
Tutors: women from re-enactment group Tarbatu

Those who'd like to participate please write us at tarbatut88toad@gmail.com. Info and more detailed instructions how to find the rooms etc will be given to you after registration. If you have any quick questions you can call Elo Kuuste at (+372) 551 8048.

The participant will be introduced to basics of an arhaic pre-knitting and pre-crochet techinque called nalbinding. A single large wooden or bone needle is used -- hence the name of the technique. You can make socks, mittens, caps, mobile bags and other interesting things using nalbinding technique. Some especially heroic women have even been known to nalbind a whole jersey! Nalbinding was practiced in Scandinavia, but also in other nooks and corners of Earth. In some places it is used to this day. Textile made using nalbinding technique is usually more durable and does not unravel.

The participant will learn how to begin one of the simplest nalbinding stiches. S/he will also be shown other variations. And be introduced to basic ideas of nalbinding technique (how to continue a yarn, how to "turn" etc). Also, we will give ideas what and how can be made using nalbinding. If there is a demand, then a workshop for advanced will be held in the future. Also, all participants can keep in contact with tutors and individually ask advice in the future.

Those, who will take a liking in nalbinding, can purchase a nalbinding needle for themselves. We will certainly take with us very good bone needles -- 50 EEk/3.20 EUR a needle. Wooden needle costs about 25 to 35 EEK (1.60 to 2.24 EUR) -- if possible, we will take those to the workshop too.

For eyecandy I will add a picture of a nalbinded jersey -- made by Mari, whose other nalbinding wonders you can glimpse at here.


Sunday, October 3, 2010

Alai Oli, holy moly :)


I feel like I'm dancing on clouds today, peaceful and happy feeling that encompassed me yesterday still hasn't left. Cleaned the apartment a bit, washed the floor and managed to get rid of some of my old clothes. Now listening to the MySpace channel of Alai Oli and remembering how...

I was at a party yesterday. In a bit underground-bohemian club called Genialistide klubi. And since it was such a good experience I decided to write about it here -- despite the fact that it has nothing to do with Viking/Iron Age.

It all started with sunshine and a splendid walk with my mom -- picking autumn flowers and sitting on some rocks, letting our face bathe in the sun.

This weekend I was invited to several events. Oh the wonders of Facebook! Suddenly no-one calls anymore, no-one sends you a personal e-mail. Be it birthday celebration or something else -- you get an event notification. I usually ignore them or rather I don't notice them until it's too late. But last week I spent a respectable amount time in FB. Created a Facebook page for our re-enactment group Tarbatu and hence had to wrestle with this abomination called Facebook quite a lot. So I kind of accidentally stumbled upon all those event notifications I had't noticed. Birthday of a friend in Tallinn and exprompt decision to attend that event.

This weekend was a total event-avalanche though. All seemed interesting, so I marked them all "Maybe attending". On Friday an aquaintance who is moving to Island threw a farewell party and another had grand birthday party in Genialistide klubi. And a third one was opening an animation festival at Kastani street, in the same house where Tarbatu's rooms are. But the week had worn me out. Utterly. So after a day-long battle with myself I decided that I'm of no use to myself and anyone else in this condition. And I went home. And slept...

Saturday was no better. Choiced again. Animation festival continuing and all -- a party in the evening and all. But at the same time there was another party in Genialistide klubi -- a party where one of my best friends was DJ. Choices sometimes make you feel that everything is toooooo complicated and maybe it's better to lay back and do nothing. Just be lazy. So I almost decided to be lazy. Ate some stew and lots of watermelon and started to tidy my room a bit. Managed to gather together all my "viking gear" and put it in one place and all. Until my phone rang. And Vahur, another very old friend, was happily telling me that he and his girlfriend Mare are in the town. "What are you doing tonight," he asked. Well, what else, what else, of course I went out with them...

And now the choice was suddenly not only my bane, but a shared burden. And we thought long and hard, to be honest. However, my friend Martin, the DJ, managed to be so convincing whenI called him. He was sooo sure that his party is the best that night. And he was right, oh so right! I have been at reggae-parties where the music doesn't speak to me. Where it doesn't speakt to my body. Where I just sway from one side to another, apathetically. But no soul is not into it. But yesterday was different, very much so. Thanks to DJ Don Erikson, Martin aka DJ Daysleeper and... the greatest, most wholehearted thanks goes to a group from the Urals called Alai Oli.

Their singer Olga reminds me indeed of Amelie frome the movie "Amelie". She has a very happy smile and dreamy face and in is contagious. Their music, their happy-dreamy music spoke to my soul, heart and body and made me move, made me dance. Thank you!

To end this post I'll paste you a Youtube link with one of their best songs -- about Manu Chao. Look at that face!

Friday, September 24, 2010

Tarbatu has a "nest" now!:)


















It's a very happy week for us. Just a couple of days ago I finished negotiations with a non-profit organisation Noor-Eesti Loomekeskuse aka NELK and its financial "front" (a ltd). They are managing the house you can see on the picture. Basically they provide rooms and oppurtunity for multiple interesting organisations and the like. A print museum, shop, a little hostel, a practice room for a band and so on and so on. On Wednesday, 23rd of October the Elders' Council of Tarbatu , consisting of 7 members of our club, including me, looked through the contract and our great chieftain put signed it with his paw.

We will not rent the rooms permanently, no monthly fee, except for a trivial fee for a locked closet. We want to leave our things there and have access to them all the time. But otherwise we will organize open workshops there. In return we can organize internal workshop, fighting practices and whatever we like there. A barter deal basically. I will not go into the boring details here :).

From October 2010 to May 2011 re-enactment group Tarbatu plans to hold following open workshops:
1) nalbinding (the first one, in the second half of October),
2) bronze brooch (either bronze casting or forging),
3) Skjoldehamn hood (in November or December, so people can look cute during holidays ;)),
4) tablet weaving,
6) the basics of viking age sewing (shirt, pants etc),
7) spiral ring,
8) bracelet,
9) knife -- blade, sheath, handle,
10) leather pouch,
11) one piece shoes (leather),
12) wooden spoon,
13) wooden bowl.

I'm too lazy to post links for all these things at the moment. I will give more detailed links in the future.


Wednesday, September 1, 2010

How band for my plaid became my belt -- "making of" and weaving logic

In this posting I'll give a little overview of how I started weaving this pattern and give the details of how I tablet weave (how I set the warp up, how I interpret the pattern etc).

The end-result of this belt you can see on the picture beside the text. The rolled one is the last and best result. The length of this belt is around 2,2o m -- in other words, if I had indeed used it as a band for my plaid/rectangular cloak, it would have been only for one side. In Kiruvere I used this one as a belt instead...

Namely, as you can see from the picture below, I made three belts with this pattern. At first I had this vision -- to hem 2 sides of the plaid with "green" band and 2 with "orange" one. In the next photo you can see my progress within a week of weaving:

The one in the right is the first one I made. The middle one with green is my second attempt. And the one in the left is my last and best attempt.

It has tinier dots at the edges because I turned the "edge-tablets" always in the same direction (no 4 back, 4 forth). I didn't use this trick during previous attempts here. But as you can see, it gave me indeed a better result. The weave is a bit thicker, holds together better, I think. And the edges are straighter. So I sacrificed dashes for dots.

Talking about colors... Can't decide which combo I like the best -- with green or with orange. Both are beautiful. For Kiruvere I stiched the last orange belt and the green one together, because I had too little time to make myself a belt. So instead of adorning my plaid, I used the "bands" as a loooong belt. I rather liked this jokerish belt -- this way I could admire both combos :).

Making of... and different tablet weaving systems (NB!)

As every tabletweaver knows, the most frustrating part of tabletweaving is setting the weave up. Once the weave is set up, it's pure joy -- at least with patterns like this.

The pattern I chose is one-sided and is regular. Meaning, the principle of this pattern is easy -- turn the tablets 4 times in one direction and then 4 times in the opposite direction (http://www.flinkhand.de/index.php?aid=90):






My first result looks like this (the end-result I'll show in another post):








The pattern system at Flickhand site is such, that I must always interpret the pattern for my "hand and body". Let me explain it so you can understand better what I mean by this.

Lets take the pattern for this belt I'm talking about in this posting:

HO = hinten oben = the upper back hole, HU = hinten unten = the lower back hole, VU = vorne unten = the lower front hole, VO = vorne oben = theupper front hole.

I made some drawings about the position of weaver, tablets and where the belt/pattern will form. Please don't rate my drawing skill!:)
At first I will give a mini-glossary of some words used in these drawings:
EDASI - forth
TAGASI - back
EHK - in other words
TOOLI SELJATUGI - backboard of a chair
VÖÖ - belt
VÖÖMÕÕGAKS MUUNDUNUD PUUST PANNILABIDAS - a wooden kitchen spatula which has miraculously transformed into sword beater.

First drawing tries to illustrate version 1 of how weaver and warp and belt are positioned:

As you can see (click on the picture to enlarge it!), the pattern/belt forms at that end of the warp where the tablet-weaver sits. If it's said that the cards must be turned forth (edasi), then you must turn them in the direction where you look, away from yourself. And if the cards must be turned back, then you turn them in the direction of yourself, towards you. In the so-called starting position the tablet/card holes are positioned as follows: HO and HU are the ones nearest to the weaver, VU and VO the ones farthest frome the weaver. This positioning system is one of the most common ones, where A is usually the upper hole nearest to the weaver, B the lower hole nearest to the weaver, C the lower hole farthest from the weaver and D the upper hole fartherst from the weaver.

I use a different positioning system however:

As you can see from the drawing, in this case the belt/pattern forms at the other end of warp, not near the weaver. Meaning, in MY METHOLOGY everything is REVERSED or opposite.

A is not the hole nearest to you (the weaver), but the upper furthest instead and so on. And if it's said you must turn forward, then you turn away from yourself. And backwards means turning in your direction.

So, basically my warp is set up like this:

I hope my clumsy drawing is undestandable -- it lacks perspective, I know :). Anyway, as you can see, that end of the warp, where the pattern/belt appears while weaving is tied to a heater. I sit on the chair and the other end of the loom is tied to that chair:

































To finish this post, here is an image that first my first try in the beginning stage. Here you can also see some mistakes that happen when your skills are rusty and -- in addition! -- someone comes to draw your attention away:










Second pre-Kiruvere fast-trial

This is a pattern I considered for my hood. But maybe it's too wide. Then again, maybe not for hood... Anyway, it's another really simple pattern to make.

Setting the weave up and trying to figure out what colors to use took most of the time:






As you can see, I chose red, brown and beige. All were of shade that can be dyed with plants, but the result was rather irritating for the eye nontheless. This shade of red doesn't work so well here, it seems. Anyway, I wove a little and then stopped making this belt/band.

But I figured the pattern out correctly, so I'll surely use this pattern someday.

First pre-Kiruvere trial-attempt

Before an Estonian re-enactment event called Kiruvere Muinaslaager I wasted lots of time and tried to tablet-weave some patterns which I didn't finish.

First of these attemtps is this one. I thought the result of such a pattern would be a rather widse belt which is easy to make. That the most "difficult" part would be setting the weave up:





But as is happens, the result was not exactly what I'd pictued in my mind. Or mayhaps I hadn't pictured anything at all.

Anyway, the sample-piece looks like this (with all the mistakes I made, of course):


I can't really put my finger on what bothers me most by this attempt. Maybe the colors, the shades of colors are not a very good match. But maybe the pattern itself doesn't seem so alluring anymore either. Maybe too wide? Or tooo... or tooo....? Whatever it is, this attempt helped me to reach the conclusion that this pattern is not my cup of tea.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Hello world!:)

Beginnings are always hard, so I thought I should introduce myself and the purpose of this blog at first. Especially since we haven't gotten to translating Tarbatu's homepage yet...

My name is Elo Kuuste and I am a member of re-enactment group Tarbatu. At the moment I am also a member of Tarbatu's Council of Elders, which was created in the autumn 2009. Tarbatu is researching and re-enacting Estonian "viking age" or Iron Age -- 7th to late 12th Century is the time span we have agreed to concentrate at the moment.

In real life I am an editor and translator, but in Tarbatu I practice the art of moving mountains -- sometimes I succeed, believe it or not. In other words, if you want to know what workshops or other interesting things Tarbatu is doing at the moment -- ask Elo.

This blog will somewhat mirror my Estonian blog -- not an exact one. I'll try to record here my achievements in handicraft -- tablet weaving, nalbinding, probably leather pouches and other such stuff. I'm not a master in those crafts, so you will also have the chance to witness my development. My aim is not to boast, but to note down the process of making an item or at least what I've learned and experienced while doing it. It will be a good "diary" for myself and perhaps be of help to some others too. And yes, I am not forgetting my English speaking friends -- this is for you too.

In addition to handicraft I will also try to write here about other re-enactment related stuff. We'll see, how it turns out...