Am I alive?

...yes, I think so...

My work has taken much of my energy and to be honest, I have not been crafting that much lately. Whitch is bit sad really.

Here's proof I have been doing (slowly but surely) embroidery for the SCA wallhanging 'We have Dragons' I was planning to make two patches at least, but time is ending and my 1st one is not even finished... so sad...so sad...


That's really only thing I can share with you this time. I am painting a mongol/islamic scroll for Insulae Dragonis, but that's a bit 'in progress' at the moment, so I wish not to share pics yet.

Guess what? As I have bit more money these days, I have been online shopping like mad, haha xD You HAVE to check out The Silk Mill. I adore them!

Yule-holidays are coming soon, so I have at least bit more time to craft, yay! Maybe next time I can even tell you what I have been up at my work. I am so excited already!

naalbinging-hell

Yeah, lately I have done so much naalbinding that I am nearly sick of it. I had to change to embroidering for a moment. I made naalbinded hat and pair of mittens within 2 weeks. Thankfully my work is bit slow at wintermonths, so I managed to finish everything in time. But I naalbinded so much, that I am sick of it. I managed to have 3 days free of naalbinding before I made present for my friend.

About that present. I don't have pics, but I made handwarmers for my friend using Dalarna-stitch. 1st one was silver gray "Seitsemän Veljestä' with dark green stripe from "Seitsemän Veljestä' and the 2nd one was dark green (don't remember the yarn's name/maker) with silver grey 'Seitsemän Veljestä' stripe. So, basically they were Slytherin handwarmers ;-)

Last weekend I was slav...erm, cooking at 'Camp of Historical Dances' with my friends and it was fun! I even managed to dance a bit. Chaotic Petit Riens, Turkish Brandle in Unikankare's way etc. Brandle Dificile looked so great, that I want to learn it and maybe create my own version of it, hehe

My next scroll-project will be Far Eastern and I am trying to find inspiration for it. I have seen few arabic scrolls, but I am trying to find perfect one to copy... let's see how it goes...

Quick post: one Scroll

I made this scroll while ago for SCA Petronilla of London. I hope she likes it :) I tried new style of calligraphy and I am more pleased of it than the picture. I can do much better, but somehow this is not my best works. At least I tried my best...

New crafting stuff etc

Last weekend I attended SCA Drachenwald's Crown Tournament. Most of the time I was beating pie-crust ;-) but I did had time to do some crafts too. There were also merchants at the event. Look what I bought!



Loose skeins are from Dracon's Den (?) and smaller ones are from lovely Lady Sahra. Too bad I had so little money left. I'd loved to buy more yarns from Sahra. All those yarns are hand-dyed with plants.
I also bought one book, Celtic Illuminated LEtters. I am so excited to start my new scrolls!

I also started my effort for the Drachenwald's Coat of Arms Wallhanging. To be honest, Iam not satisfied with the embroidery I did :( I tried Laid and couched work 1st time and I did it a biiiit wrong :D Plus I should have used 3 threads, not 2, as it seems it does not cover the area well. Oh well, I'll finish that Nea Nikosia's badge as I started it and try something else on the next ones.

New Scrolls

Inpired by Racaire's recent scrolls, I made these:








The 2 last ones are blank. I still need some practise with calligraphy, as you can see. And of course I had lost my smallest pen-nib, so some of the text is not poor quality because of that. I used my 'drawing' nib for the scroll on the middle.

ps. Sorry poor scan-quality. I really need to fix it soon.

~Amal binti Hamid Al-Chania

Tale of misfortune

Once upon a long,long,long time a ago (last week) Fair and modest virgin (Aka lazy and not-so-virgin me) was sewing her new and fancy dress ( very basic undergarment).



She was master in her dressmaking (yeah right!) and she did everything by the book. All 12 gores she sew with love and perfection. ( there was only 4 gores and frontal one 'accidentally' was sewn wrong way) she finished her fine dancingdress with expensive trim (I covered the mis-sewn frontal gore's seam with cheap braid, because she was too lazy to undo and sew it again perfectly)

There. I'll post pictures when I have fnished the dress. It becase a bit more fancier than I planned, just because I had to cover that bloody gore :D I think I won't use it as kitchen Dress after all.

- I started another project. I decided to do my lil sister's wedding present early. Esp. because I am using a new stitches. I won't give any futher details before end of the May. Just in case. I know sister's bridemaid is checking out this journal.

- I have nearly done my scrolls. I just need to write one blanck and then I can send them to SCA Scribe. I may do some srolls for the Finnish SCA Scribe too... maybe...

New start

Hello all!

I decided to start this blog finally. I'll try to report my art and craft projects here and maybe someone of your dear readers have inspiration or suggestions. I also have somewhat limited vocabulary about these subjects, some words I know only in Finnish. Aaanyhow, here we go...

and oh, I forgot to mention that I son't have camera at the moment :/ I'll try to get one soon, but...

Here are some projects I have going on at the moment.

- Handsewn viking age undergarment. It's thin, greenish grey linen. So far I have sewn only one seam. I am using York/Oslo seam to sew different parts together. You can find useful information about the seams here (I'm using the lower left seamtype from the big pic)

- Celtic embroidery, 2 dogs entwined together. I am using cotton fabric and silkfloss (cheap brand from India). I'll try to scan (yup, scan :D ) pic here asap. So far I have made ½ of the 1st dog, using beige and darker 'mustard'yellow

- Naalbinging mittens. I am making naalbinding mittens for myself. I am using mostly dark green 'Huopanen' woolyarn with one light gray stripe (from the same yarn brand) at the middle of the mittens. So far 1st mitten is nearly done.

- Naalbinding socks. I am using dark green woolyarn. I can not remember the brandname, it's not very common anyways.

- Croched handbag. I have one yeally 'restless' woolyarn with so many dofferent colors in it in short interwals, so I could not use it for anything medieval. So I decided to crochet a handbag. Halfdone at the moment.

- 2 Scrolls for SCA. These will be my 1st ones I also write. I am not that good in calligraphy, but I really hope I won't mess up badly.

- Several 'medieval' ATC-cards... more info to follow.

There :) Satisfied? ;) I'll try to blog again with some kind of photos.