The dress makes the girl - aka poor photos on demand

Part of the reason I posted the wrap apron dress instructions yesterday was in response to some rather flattering requests from a Viking Clothing group I belong to. I've now been asked to add a few photos but rather than edit the previous post, these can stand alone.

As I mentioned earlier post, I really don't have any particularly good photos of this dress in action. Still, here are a few photos to considering.

Please ignore the plaid shawl. It was dang cold in our cabin and I had just taken off my coat. It feels a bit self conscious but it shows how the line hangs.

Here's a very pleasing but detail-useless blown-out action shot. This particular apron was already too large for me in this picture (I'd lost quite a bit of weight) but it continues to hang really nicely and for hot days I don't care that it's not close fitting.

One more, with an alternative underdress that I've since altered.

I hope these are of vague use even if they are not the sorts of photos I would prefer to be showing.

Norse Apron Dress Wrap-interpretation

Norse female dress is a contentious issue. Fragmentary evidence leads to a wide variety of conjectural interpretations - all of which may or may not be correct in equal measure. Tricky.

Somewhere around 2005 I decided to try a different style of wrapped apron dress that incorporated as many of the 'knowns' as possible. What was there? There were a variety of loop configurations preserved inside tortoise brooches. There was a fragment conjectured to be the waist/body section of a female dress that had an angled side, implying fullness over the hips. There were legal texts hinting at what was considered feminine dress - low under dress necks, low enough to expose a breast/nipple.

Taken together I inferred a bit and thought about style and practicality. There are really no examples of profoundly impractical dress in the Viking Age (no poulaines or henins) so whatever I concluded had to live within that context. What does a low shirt neck imply in a woman? In our age, sex appeal. In the Viking Age it is more likely to be a practical reason like breast feeding. What does a flare over the hip mean? A skirted garment with a more fitted upper body. What do those two things together mean? A dress that has some fitting but that enables breast feeding. Certainly, alternative designs of this garment can permit that activity but those all require partial undressing to get the job done. I do not have children but I have many friends who do. Feeding a child isn't an occasional thing, it is a constant. Would I want to partially undress that many times a day? Nope.

A wrapped garment can meet all of these fragments (including multiple loops which is often excluded in closed dresses) and remain a practical garment. It took some experimenting but I found a system that worked. I've cooked over hearth fires for days at a time and have never set myself on fire. I've made this dress for pregnant friends and it has seen them through much of their pregnancy and then on to breast feeding. The concept of an entirely different wardrobe for pregnancy is a fairly modern concept - another reason to view this as a likely interpretation of the evidence.

Sorry for the complete lack of pictures - almost none of the pictures of me show the full dress. Oops.

Please keep in mind that until we find a complete garment, ALL interpretations of this garment are conjectural. This is one that has worked for me and satisfies my academic side.

Here is a handout I created to go along with the class I teach on making this garment. If you would like to use this handout to teach, please contact me for permission and use the document un-altered including credit and authorial copyright information. Credit where it is due please!

Norse Apron Dress Alternative Construction by Knaughtress

Protect Yourself!

Got your attention?

I really am talking about protecting yourself, but not from anything more sinister than splashes, spills and (my favourite word) schmegglies. What am I on about? Aprons. Yessiree, step right up and check these out.

Those are two of my favourites but I've been a busy little bee and there are plenty more where that came from. Detail shots (money shots?) below. I've been working on some matching potholders and oven mitts as well but those are not as well established a pile as the aprons are.

I don't know about you, but I need an apron. Well, perhaps need is a relative term here - if I wore one all the time, how would I know what to purge from my closet if it weren't for the sploodges and stains adorning all those clothes that didn't get protected by an apron? Making new clothes is one way to keep the fabric stash under control but it's not a favourite one.

Here's the story. A local shop (I won't name names but the owner is related by marriage) opened last year and I went to support it and do some shopping. Strolling around the shop, cute and kitschy abounding, I saw a rack of aprons. Thinking perhaps I'd bring one home, I riffled through. Horrors! First, they were badly made. Really badly made. Cute at 10 ft but wouldn't manage the washing machine more than twice. Second, sticker shock!! $50. Holy frog legs! Hrm, thought I, I wish she'd asked me to supply her. We'd both make healthy margins and both be excited to share with others. More importantly, they would be quality goods. That is something so important to me it sort of makes me irrational at times. Your goods represent you, the maker/owner/seller. Crappy goods says crappy maker/owner/seller. Your reputation is hanging on that poopy thing! Does that not make you squirelly just thinking about it?

It's one thing to say 'customers are our most important people' but without quality goods you are half way to proving that false. I'm from Winnipeg - I love a bargain just as much as the next 'Pegger, but at the same time quality and value are a part of that hunt. Your stitching should at least match up, be secure, look good even!

So, after I left the shop with my sackful of reasonable kitsch, I went home and looked at my stash. (If you are a sewer/yarn worker you'll know the deep satisfaction that this can bring!) Looking at the colours and fabrics it hit me: make some anyway. If you feel this way about it, someone else does too. Of course being a total newbie this rather looked a lot like jumping in at the deep end and waving/drowning but it went. I teamed up with a fellow craftswoman and we coordinated efforts and took our wares to a small, seasonal boutique. Just as I thought, we were selling stuff! It felt good to have that vindication. Then I looked to Etsy. I put a few things up on my storefront (not the aprons) and made a sale and had some contacts. The aprons languished. There were new shiny things and they were set aside temporarily. Now they are back - full frontal! I'm working on the photography as we speak but I'm going to put them up anyway. They really are so very cute.

One of my classmates at the pottery studio was complaining about getting dirty while she was working and that she needed an apron. Suddenly my ears perked. An apron you say? Well, have I got a deal for you! (Ok ok, I wasn't that cheesy - I just said I still had a few on hand if she'd like to see them) She did. She bought one. She loves it.

If you think a getting a glurg of olive oil out of your t-shirt is hard, try red clay. Damn near impossible. 'Near' impossible is just code for the shirt disintegrating in the wash before the clay stain comes out. She bought the only other apron like this one. Protected AND pretty. How can it get better?

Scyths and Romans and Normans, Oh My!

As some of you may know (or not!) I have a costuming business that keeps me occupied full-time (but on a part-time basis). Crown and Castle Clothing is my baby. The business focuses on meeting the needs of historical recreationists in a variety of time periods. I have undertaken custom work in later period stuff - think Elizabethan - but my real passion lies in bringing out the very best in the Anglo Saxon and Viking ages with a healthy side of Roman and perhaps a dash of Norman. These are not the clothes that most people consider flashy, there is a general lack of bead-encrustation, purpose-built undergarments and so on, but to me they are the most elegant and certainly under-appreciated to a great degree. (If you agree with any of this, please consider joining the C&C fan page on facebook!)

The great thing about this period is the variability and diversity of the fun things: accessories.

Indeed, in considering this week's post, the hat came to mind. And then there were too many hats...so this will be a multi-part series over time. Today, the Phrygian cap.


This classic little number has had the longest run of any hat style that I can think of. It first comes out in western art in the early Roman period, associated with the Scyths. They were a tribal race 'from the east' as the Romans say - which usually meant something like 'we have no clue about these dudes, man can they fight, damn troublemakers'. There are examples of this hat on Trajan's column, in some dashing marbles and the odd fresco. Let me show you.

A bust of Attis, sporting a Phrygian cap likely from the 2nd century CE:
This fresco from San Apollinare in Ravenna (early 6th century) shows the three wise men trekking out with their goods...AND wearing some snazzy phrygian caps.


This same series of frescos aslo shows some splendid details of the Byzantine emperor, empress and their gangs. They are notable for a few reasons. The details are excellent, the clothing is shown in contemporary styles that are born out in other sources and context couldn't possible be better. Amazing resource.
















A slightly different permutation of the cap is shown in the Ostia mosaics, 2nd-3rd century CE.

There are other examples of course, but the short version is: later romans were into this accessory. The hat continued northwards and appears intermittently in germanic tribal contexts. Some discussions consider the phrygian cap to have informed the shape of northern helms, particularly the crested types common in England and Scandinavia in the early viking age. A plate from a Vendel era helm shows a warrior riding into battle wearing such a helm. The formation of the crest is striking when viewed along side a Phrygian cap. ok ok. I'll show you.


See the curved top and almost floppy tip of that crest? I'm not an armouring scholar but I can certainly see how the theory got its start.

Anyway, the point is, this hat persists. In fact, the Normans thought it was the shizzle as well because they also adopted it as a fashion statement.

The nouveau in-charge Plantagenets sent Geoffrey out (literally, this is from his tomb in Le Mans Cathedral - 12th century if you were curious) with his phrygian hatted-best. Indeed, from the Roman period, the hat began to evolve from simply a solid colour to more decorative and varied. Geoff's has some heraldry on it.

In Chartres Cathedral, there is another example from the same period.

I could go on and on showing off this little beauty of a cap. Suffice it to say that if you were a guy (sorry gals, in the Roman-Norman time period this seems to be only a guy thing) and liked being a sharp-dressed man, you had one of these hats on hand to dress up your melon.


In red or white, these hats bring me back to my childhood and my affection for The Smurfs. Of course that also says that classics never go out of style. Indeed, yesterday while tuning in to a little bit of the FIFA cup, I spotted a French supporter in the stands wearing a bright red Phrygian cap...yup, this hat just won't go away.

I'm making a few of these caps for Crown and Castle. If you know a guy who does historical stuff somewhere between 100 - 1200 CE he could sure use one of these hats!

Next week...umm we'll see!

Lifting the lid

As promised, this week is all about pottery. My other love after yarn and knitting. (This is a rather poor combination since working with clay is hard on your hands and working with yarn doesn't go well when your hands are scaly!)

No sponsorship deals are behind this: If you don't have a parafin bath for your hands, you should. It is the secret to my success.

My latest adventures have been in creating hand-thrown buttons. Big, lovely, unique buttons.

These came out of the kiln last week. High fire glazes are a constant surprise. You can know the glaze, know the chemistry behind it, have used it hundreds of times and never get what you expect. The red button in the bottom right corner is a green glaze. A lovely, soft jade colour. Yup. When I try to get a red glaze, well let's not discuss that...

Those button-y beauties are even now winging their way to Castle Fibers for her nefarious purposes. More are in the works, keep and eye out - I might even sell some!

Something else I've been working on are some fancy yarn bowls. Not the standard bowl that you see floating around pottery studios but something prettier. Something that would look more like a candy bowl to the non-knitter, something worthy of your side table.

Here are two views:

See the clever, worm-like cleft to allow your precious yarn escape it's housing?

Then see it from the other side and (to me at least) it looks like it holds treats. Of course it does hold treats but not the kind to satisfy a sweet tooth.

Note the red. Yup, that should be that lovely jade green. The knob on the top turned out to look so very much like the top of an apple, I couldn't resist finishing the look. The red is just as lovely, and surprising.

Another variety of yarn-holder in trials looks more like a cake stand - for a cupcake! Sadly, this one developed a crack and some warping in the final firing. Another eternal risk for the potter. The instructors and artists at the studio have these failures as well so if someone who's been doing this for 35 years still has it happen, it's an acceptable risk to run.

This kiln had a lot of my work in it and there is so much more. Some the pieces are already packed up for safety so will have to wait til next month for a public airing. My biggest piece to date emerged, glorious and huge. It's a footed bowl, like a big petaled flower on a sturdy stalk, and is just over a foot tall and at least that wide, probably more. You'll just have to come back to see it!

Here's one last piece for you to see. There is no sense of scale (bad photography - I'm still learning) but the bowl is about 8" tall. Perfect for a big fruit salad to share with friends.

The projects waiting to be fired at the end of June are so exciting. I'm looking forward to doing another pottery post in July after I'm settled in and the last kiln of the summer is unloaded. I've been working on some replicas of Viking-age cooking pots. So far, they are stunning and will be so much fun to cook in at the Hjemkomst Viking Village weekend exposition.

Next week, costuming!

Lifting the scale

I've been a very busy bee of late. Quite unintentionally these activities fall into three categories - let me tell you all about them one at a time!

First the knitting. (it's my favourite so why not start with the sauce?)

There's a line from the film Persuasion that comes to mind about my knitting habit. Mrs. Musgrove says about Anne: 'Oh, Lord bless me, how those fingers of hers can fly about!' Really, with all humility it feels like that right now.

First off the sticks were the Herringbone Socks. Check out these colourful beauties! I started off trying to make the eponymous socks from an Interweave download. Frankly, it was a horrible pattern. No matter what I did, they wouldn't fit nicely or look fetching. I tried 3 times...that is some serious frogging let me tell you. So...using the stitch alone, I made up an entirely new pattern. I'm testing it out now and I'll post it here for one and all. Free of course, just like the pattern I tried to use but couldn't make work. It features a garter stitch sole and columns to break up the herringbone. The heel is also unique to me so far as I know. For you history types, I know it dates to pre-WWII France for sure and I'm adding it to my stack of knitting research so there may be an addendum.

The yarn is pretty and plush and was a gift from Rita. (Thanks Rita!) No tags so I can't share who made it but it appealed to me with it's bright, happy colours.

I worked on these on my breaks at work so it took a while, but still under 2 months. Fantastic!

All the while, I've been working on the Dragon Scale Socks for the Pern Yarn club from Castle Fibers. The pattern has gone through beta-testing and I'm so happy with them!

So as not to spoil the treat for the club members, I'll just give you a snap of in-progress socks.

Here is a shot of the heel and the scales in their wild and untamed state. It doesn't look like it here but there are 99 scales in each sock. Yes. 198 scales total for us bi-pedal types. When they have been tamed, it really does look spectacular. You'll just have to be patient and see them when the pattern has been released. The idea is to gather the series into a book so if you know of a publisher, send them my way. I'd love to talk with them.

Since the scale socks weren't really travel-friendly (2 sets of dpns, ends, ends and more ends) I started in on the companion socks to the Frosts of Assabu wrisites for my on-the-go project, mostly at lunch since the H-bones were being blocked. The wristies pattern could easily be converted into a mitten, particularly using the toe (variation 1) from the socks as a guide. I'll be packaging those two into one pattern download later this week and posting it to Ravelry.

Here's a peek:

For those of you who aren't Rav-folk and haven't read up on the story of the wristies, I'll sum up.

A dear friend has de-camped to Japan. Last year was her first winter on the island and while she's a good mid-western gal and fully acquainted with the concept of winter, she had been somewhat misinformed of the true nature of the climate on the island she now calls home.

The autumn was quite crisp and our correspondences brought up cold fingers on a few occasions. I use my own fingerless mitts pretty frequently during those transitional seasons so I set about constructing some especially for her. Since they were to combat the frosts in Assabu, it seemed a very appropriate name to give the pattern. After I shipped those off, I had fully intended to construct the socks as companions (but for me) but somehow other exciting knitting adventures got in the way. (Like the Dragon Wing Shawl, the Mansfield Park Shawl and other odds and ends...) Since I was on a roll of making socks pour moi, these seemed like the best idea ever. Of course they were!

In between times in the last 2 weeks I've also begun knitting the Voyageur tuque for La Compagnie de La Verendrye. Re-creationists after my own heart (purists!). The initial hat has been fulled and is being adored by the 16-man company. The plan is to knit 16 hats in the end, but research is ongoing and I'm working hard to get an audience with the find that is the only known extant tuque of the period. More on that in future.

So...not bad for a month or so of knitting! Looking at it all, makes me wonder when I had time to do all the other stuff I want to tell you about.

Next week: Pottery.

Wagon's are bumpy, sometimes you fall off...

Ok ok ok. I fell off the wagon. Fell off and rolled. Down the hill. Into the ditch. You with me on that image? Good.

Well, it's a new year, lots of projects have come and gone, winter is passed, buds are bursting etc. etc. Time to start again. On the wagon. Properly on the wagon and for good this time. Ok readers, you will have to keep me to this. I will too but help is always welcome.

Today's post is about blogs. I know. Revolutionary, talking about blogs in a blog! I've been following a few lately and they have been broadening and enlightening. True, I follow plenty more besides, but the ones I'd like you to consider are special and each one deserves it's own little spot.

I have been an avid fan/follower/Sister Goddess to Mama Gena and her School of the Womanly Arts for some time now. Years in fact, thanks in part to some adventure and 'right thinking' that Helen and I embarked on in the darkest hours of PG research. Her books brought fresh ways of thinking that opened us up to the pursuit of pleasure. Hedonism it the purest and rarest form that gives pleasure, which is something we as women (and indeed humans in general) have been divorced from in the saddest and bitterest ways possible. I have so much more to learn, to share and internalise thanks to this woman. In all due sincerity, I am a better woman from this contact. Now she has a blog! The books are wonderful, I dream of attending Mastery Class one day, her emails are inspiring but the blog. Well. The pictures of these woman - in touch with their honed, toned pleasure - are truly captivating. They aren't bawdy shots, or even body shots but a full flight of maidens is pretty wicked stuff. Contagious stuff. Check it out, she has lots to say and it always always produces a smile.

Deb Dawson Dunn is an extraordinary woman in her own right. She was/is my coach and again, her lectures, blog and playshops are so full of contagious joy that her name needs spreading. Her company, Get It Dunn, has so much to offer I am not just linking to her blog but her whole site. Like Mama Gena, she has enriched my life through her wisdom and guidance. If you live in Winnipeg, come check out her last free lecture of the season on May 26 at the Reh-fit centre. Really, I had planned to say so much more but it seems redundant. If you check her out, you will see it for yourself.

Lastly, this is a blog I only recently (as in this year) started following. I don't necessarily agree with everything he writes but Dragos Roua has stuff to say. Often, it's good stuff. Sometimes I really really want to email him and offer to proof read his posts...but as a self taught English speaker, I think he is doing very well indeed. His posting rate is far higher than my favourite gals but his range of topics is different. I find that even if I disagree with a post, he has perspectives and analogies that make me think. Since personal evaluation and thought are what growth is all about (at least to me) something that gives me pause or that provides me with the chance to check in with the ol' psyche to see how I really feel about something is an invaluable interaction.

So, I hope you'll take some time and check out these great bloggers. Somewhere between them is my blogging lodestar. Regular, informed, informative and full of joy is my goal. Actually, move the joy higher on the list. I will also be posting updates on my business growth. I'm still working on mastering my craft(s) and sorting out the fine print but I'll be sharing all of those adventures.

Wagon's Ho!