kareina

While some people might think that sprang is a verb (she sprang out of bed in the morning, fully alert and ready to face her day), today it has been a noun.

I have seen sprang mentioned in various books and articles on archaeological textiles over the years, and it always looked interesting, but I wasn't motivated to try it. In part because the diagrams showing the (often complex) patterns generally showed only enough of the pattern to show the repeat, and there wasn't a photo of an entire item made of sprang. Therefore I didn't really have any idea what it was good for, or why one would want to bother.

Two things recently have given me an idea of why one would want to bother. When I attended the Boar Hunt SCA event in the West Kingdom in December Sir Maythen had a cute little cap that she's had for many, many years. Several of us spent quite a bit of time looking closely at it, analyzing its structure and getting photos of it. While I'd never seen an example of sprang in person, it was very, very clear looking at it that the cap was made by sprang. The yarn was twisted one string to the next in regular patterns (and the pattern changed now and again, in a regular manner) and there was no warp or weft, just the interlocking side-by-side strings.

Then, after I returned home from my travels, I received the latest issue of the Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, wherein I read with interest the article on Tight-Fitting Clothes in Antiquity – Experimental Reconstruction by Dagmar Drinkler. This article focuses upon ancient Greek statues and depictions upon pottery of foreigners wearing tight fitted, patterned, articles of clothing. It points out that while we have no way of knowing how said items of clothing were produced, that the patterns can all be produced via the sprang technique, and that the technique lends itself very, very well to close fitted items (like hose) which one wants to be tight enough to stay on, but adjustable enough not to constrict. Photos were included of a variety of very pretty patterns whcih match the ancient depictions that the author made in sprang. She also included one photo of a person wearing an entire pair of tights in sprang in a two-colour diamond pattern.

Looking at the texture of the fabric thus produced in the photo, I suddenly found myself wanting some tights made of sprang. However, I don't happen to have (nor have I ever seen) a copy of Peter Collingwood's book "The Techniques of Sprang: Plaiting on Stretched Threads" (though I did once check out his Tablet-weaving book from the UTAS library, and thought it wonderful. Based on that one, I'd dearly love to own them both). In the absence of his book I turned to the Internet, and found phialastring's intro to sprang handout (see link in the first paragraph above). Her handout talks about making a bag, but I've never been one to follow directions. Besides, I had only a little bit of a yarn I didn't much care about to play with, so I wound up making a length of narrow band instead. I did, however, play with both forms of interlocking that she described in that handout, and now I truly understand how that hat was made, since it also used both patterns of interlocking.

duchessletitia, was it you who took the photos of the cap at Boar Hunt? Now that I understand how to make those kinds of patterns, I think I'd like to try my hand at such a cap, since I don't have a frame large enough to try tights. Granted, improvisation works wonders. I didn't have a frame available today, either, so instead I took one of the sticks that normally holds up the flag on my trike and set it through the legs of the heavy brass and stone globe that I've got on my desk and put the other stick through straps on my backpack, whcih was hanging over a chair, and then wound the yarn between the sticks. The globe and the chair-backpack were both heavy enough to provide all the tension I needed, and yet were adjustable as I worked my way towards the center of the project (without some form of adjustment the strings would get too tight to continue to plait together).

I *had* planned to do uni work tonight. But instead I spent three hours and 12 minutes working on this project and listening to the Italian Language lessons that blamebrampton gave me ages ago. This is the first time I've made time to listen to them since late November. (No wonder I've not made much progress in learning to speak Italian!) I guess that since I am working at a Uni in Italy that my language lessons do count as "uni work", in some sense of the word.

( photos of my first attempt at sprang )

cross-posted from my other blog

Starting in June of 2007 I set myself the goal of reading 1000 words a day from the geologic literature. The reason for this was the fact that I had a huge pile of papers I needed to read, and hadn’t been making the time to read any of it. Since then there have been numerous days in which I forgot and had to start over. My count has ranged from a low of accomplishing it two days in a row before missing a day to a high of 118 days in a row (my current count is at 42 days, which is the record for the 113 day period since arriving in Europe to commence my first post-doc position). Last night as I was finishing up my evening yoga in preparation for going to sleep I realized that I’d not yet read my 1000. I further realized that my computer and all paper copies of journal articles and textbooks I currently have in my possession were across the street in my office (I love my 2-minute commute to work!). I considered walking back over to do my 1000, but then I thought about the spirit of the rule. The goal was go get me to read a little bit, every day, so that I actually made progress and stayed current with my self-learning.
One of the things I’m doing here, in addition to my experiments, is taking classes in the local language. I’m dutifully doing my homework each day before it is due, but I’ve not been making much additional effort towards actually learning this language. All of my colleagues are so fluent in English that I can speak at my normal high rate of speed, so I don’t *need* to learn the language to do my job. Likewise when at the market it is easy enough to use the phrase I’ve memorized for “half kilo” and point, and then look at the numbers printed on the cash register to work out how much to pay. Again, I don’t *require* the local language to live my life here. Yet, it would be nice.
Therefore, I have expanded my “1000 words a day” to now be either read (at least) 1000 words of geologic literature in my own language, or spend 20 to 30 minutes translating something. One of my favourite books as a child was Anne of Green Gables <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anne_of_green_gables>. I have read, and re-read that book on numerous occasions. I also own copies of it translated into other languages. I purchased the version in the local language soon after I arrived. Prior to last night I’ve only “read” it—by which I mean open the book and look at every word, forming the sounds they make (either in my head or out loud, depending on if another is present), and looking for words which I can understand due to their similarities to the English equivalent. There are just enough of these that I am able to tell where in the story I am based on my memory of the original text. However, while doing this helps me to get a slight feel for the flow of this language, I’m not learning much. Therefore last night I went back to the beginning and actually took the time to write down each word I wasn’t positive I understood, and looked it up in my dictionary. The first two sentences of the story are long and complex and a half an hour elapsed while I looked up the 23 words I didn’t already know. I then read them out loud once straight through, then again phrase by phrase; pausing to state the English equivalent of each before reading the next phrase. It didn’t help me learn new thing in my primary field, but alternating this technique now and again with my normal 1000 a day will help me better fit into this country in which I’ll be living for another year and a bit, and so, I am happy with this change to the “rules” of the game I’m playing with myself.

Today in Italian class the lesson was focused on food-words and menus in Restaurants. They also touched on the cost of eating in a restaurant. The teacher commented that a restaurant which charges 200 Euros for a meal is quite expensive, but one which charges 30 is a fairly typical moderately priced restaurant. This number sounded a bit steep to me, who prefers to eat at home. so I opened up Quicken and subtracted the total amount I've spent on groceries since moving to Milan (651.33) by the number of days which have elapsed since moving here (112), and discovered that I'm spending less than 6 Euros a day on food (keep in mind that my pantry is well stocked, so I could live quite a number of days on what is in the house now). Then I thought about it, realized that I've been feeding Crian, too. So I counted up the total number of days he's been here (83, on three different occasions thus far) and determined that per person we are spending only 3.34 Euors a day on food, or about 1/10 of what my Italian teacher considers a reasonable price in a Restaurant. Granted, that price includes the Antipasto, Primo, Secondo, Contorno, and Desert; in other words, more food in one sitting than I typically eat all day long. Yet another reason to prefer my own cooking! Not only do I get what I want, when I want it, with total control over all ingredients, it costs a fraction of the price of restaurant food. Add to that my quirks like not eating anything containing wine or vinegar, my disinclination to eat meat (given my digestive tract's reaction to it), not caring for standard vegetarian staples like mushrooms, capsicum, or chocolate, preferring real butter to any form of vegetable fat, etc., not liking to eat in the evenings, but being hungry every 1-2 hours during the morning and afternoon, and it is ever so much easier to just feed myself.

Today after Italian class Crian and I met up with some new friends of ours. He's a couchsurfer who saw my ad for Medieval/Renaissance dance practice and thought it would be fun. He attended last week, and enjoyed it. Since it couldn't happen this week due to the hosts being scheduled to receive the rest of their boxes from the US today, we decided to meet for a meal instead. We met up in a park near my class, thinking we'd do a picnic. But it was kind of cold out (especially to his girlfriend, who is from the south of Italy), and getting darkish, so instead we walked to a supermarket and back to our house, where I cooked up a quick spinach/ricotta/garlic sauce and made homemade eggs noodles and Crian baked a Shepard's pie using the last of the left over cheesy mashed potatoes. They were both impressed that I know how to make my own noodles, and were floored at how quickly they cook compared to the kind one buys in boxes or bags in the supermarket. After eating I mixed up a quick batch of cookies, combining some butter, sugar, egg, and yoghurt with coconut flakes, flour, oat flour, and chocolate chips (I nibbled my share before adding the chips) and they all pronounced the cookies a success. It was a delightfully fun evening. They plan on attending dance again next week, adn we are going to so a small Alpine adventure on the weekend.

One additional clue that they are our kind of people: Crian has picked up a couple of books since arriving in Europe. One of them was on the shelf and our guest asked "is that the second book in the Eragon series?" It is--Crian had borrowed the first from a friend in Tassie before leaving, but didn't get a chance to read the next before he left, so he bought this one. Our friend was delighted to see it, since he'd read the first and was wanting to read the next, but until he finds a local job is hesitant to be book-shopping. So, of course, he's taken it home with him for the next couple of days. I guess we will have to check out the American Bookstore I saw by the Castle to see if they've got the first, since I haven't read those yet, having been way too busy finishing up my thesis when Crian borrowed it in Tassie.

As I've mentioned recently, my second experiment is running. Ideally I should have the next one ready to run before stopping this one. Tomorrow marks one full week of that one running, which is the minimum amount of time we should leave it "cooking" (the first ran for about a week and a half). Logic says that I should have another two capsules filled and ready to go by now. Do I? Nope. Since the weekend was lost to obtaining shelves, assembling them, and hanging out with a couple of visiting couchsurfers from Hungary last night, my plan for today was to attend Italian class and then come back here, grab a quick bite to eat and then get to work setting up the next two capsules. Instead I got back from Italian class (starving--I'm usually hungry by the time class is out, since it is a three-hour session, but today's topic was centered around food-words, so I was even hungrier than usual) on time for my boss to say that he was finally ready to show me how to polish the first experiment, since the epoxy in which it was set last week has had time to cure. That took nearly two hours (I did grab a bit of cheese and a handful of cherry tomatoes on my way to the lab, or I'd not have survived) and then I just went "splat" for much longer than I should have, catching up on reading e-mail, LJ, facebook and even blogs, long past when I finished eating my cous cous, veg and nuts. Eventually I wended my way back to the lab and welded the first end shut on another couple of capsules. And you know, I rather enjoyed the process. I've now done enough of these that the process of pinching the ends shut into nice, symmetrical* triple junctions is second nature, and the welding is easier. I do suspect that the voltage was a tiny bit higher than necessary today, since so much of the gold melted, but since it didn't open up a hole, I didn't mess with it.

I did briefly consider going on to the filling process straight away. However, once started the process can't stop till the task is done and it is sealed shut, and it was already 22:00, so I sensibly quit for the night. With luck I can get them filled tomorrow, and have them ready to go before I need them. However, I think if I hadn't spent a couple of hours goofing off on line, I might have managed to get them done tonight. Sigh. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and, perhaps, it will involve only my accomplishing each task I think I should do without putting it off...

*ok, so there is only one plane of mirror-symmetry in these, but it still counts as "symmetrical"

Looking back on it, other than the one friends-locked post, I have been quiet here for nearly a week. My that slipped by quickly. During that time I have:

* Attended the local A&S night and determined that if I'm showing up the other folks don't (ok, it is just a coincidence, helped along by the fact that I've only made it twice thus far, and this was the first time it has happened since being switched to Tuesdays)

* Attended dance practice. Fun!

* Got my second experiment running. Yay!

* Learned where to take the gold capsules from the first experiment to get them mounted in epoxy in preparation for analysing them next week.

* Made three cylinders out of salt for future experiments and typed up my notes as to what is done to accomplish this, and why (we won't mention the part about how my boss, observing me do the first of them, nearly two weeks after he demonstrated the technique, suggested that rather than consult my notes I should simply think about what I'm doing and why and work it out for myself, causing me to feel, briefly, as though he was implying that I don't think--I got over it, and do see the sense in what he actually meant to say there).

* Attended two more Italian classes (which are mostly fun, but I found the one exercise very frustrating. She had us close our books and simply listen to the CD and then attempt to discuss in Italian what we heard. What *I* heard was the large amount of traffic noise recorded into the background of the conversation totally masking the words, but probably intended to add "colour" to the setting. Having grown up with the hearing problem, I can be a bit over-sensitive to times I don't hear things properly, and when the teacher suggested to me that I don't get frustrated, that we all go through difficult moments where we don't understand what we are hearing the first few times we listen to the recording in another language I actually crossed over the line into tears knowing that my problem in this case had more to do with my ability (or lack thereof) to hear/understand sounds that I don't *see* (I never listen to a radio that is talking, or books on tape--there is no point, words without being able to see the speaker aren't clear enough to understand without turning the volume up too loud for everyone else, even with my hearing aids in). It was a rather embarrassing moment. Fortunately for me, that was only one tiny portion of the day's lesson, and, once she gave me a transcript of the conversation to look at as I listened, I was able to make out every word over the noise of the traffic.

* Indulged in a rare spate of retail-therapy, stopping on my way home from the above mentioned lesson to purchase an immersion blender (I've been wanting something in the way of a food processor or blender, and this one turned out to be much more affordable than either of the above). To celebrate the new acquisition I made a blended bowl of soup out of some left over roasted pumpkin, potatoes, and garlic, to which I added red lentils, zucchini, and green onion. It was quite yummy! clovis_t wouldn't try it. Not only is it full of vegetables, whcih he won't eat if he can avoid it, he doesn't care much for soups, and on the rare occasion he does eat soup he picks out the solid bits that he likes and leaves the broth. He didn't understand why I'd want to use the blender on a soup, rendering it even further from his definition of "food" than it had been.

* probably a bunch of other stuff, but it is way late and I've still got my yoga to do before I sleep, so I think I'll quit typing here...

This weekend was, in some ways, a return to my roots in the SCA. When I was young I was able to attend a weekend event by putting on a costume, putting a few things in a backpack, and heading out the door. It has been many, many years since I've approached an event like that! Even when I don't bring the pavilion, tourney chests, armour, many changes of costume, Ice Chest, and other food basket, bedding, ground cloths, song books, musical instruments, dance music, etc. I still tend to want to bring at least a decent sized sub-set of the above, even for an evening revel or afternoon picnic in a park. However, just now nearly all of the above list is still somewhere between Tasmania and here, and I have no car with which to transport it. Therefore I flew to Germany this weekend for Crown Tourney. Ryan Air. Carry-on luggage only. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this European Budget airline, know that they make their money by charging for each thing possible, separately. They like to advertise flights for only 3 Euros, and then add one tiny fee at a time on top of that till you've actually paid them a reasonable price for the flight. One of the ways they accomplish that goal is to permit their passengers a single carry-on item and charge huge fees for checked luggage. Since I brought only one costume with me when I left Tassie, it seemed like a reasonable time to save the money and not check luggage. To manage this I wore my costume (and clovis_t's single tunic he'd brought with him) over my modern clothing on the plane--that way my food, water bottle, sewing project, and geologic literature (so I could still read my 1000 a day), toiletries, and change of under ware would all fit into one small bag.

There was a brief time on Thursday evening when I wondered if I should consider cancelling the trip. For the second time in a year I was showing some symptoms of having caught a cold (the last one prior to this year was on my way home from Estrella war back in 2005). Both times this year that I had a brush with something resembling an illness I'd been pushing myself too hard--one was soon after submitting my thesis and boarding the plane to leave Tassie, and this time was after too many days last week staying up till 04:00 and still trying to be at work during business hours. No wonder my body had to actually deal with a couple of symptoms. I'm not certain if I picked up whatever it was from Wednesday's dance practice (our host had been feeling a bit under the weather earlier in the week), or on public transit on the way there or back, but either way, late Thursday evening my nose was a bit drippy, so I made some Echinacea tea, took a long, hot shower, and went to sleep with my head on a handkerchief in case of drips. Woke up in the middle of the night (ok, 04:00), repeated the hot shower treatment, and went back to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later I felt much better, so decided to continue with plan A and packed my bag (such as it was).

I brewed up more Echinacea Tea and filled my water bottle with it, took one more hot shower (to help cook out any remaining nastiness) and set out for the 30-minute walk to the train station around 13:00. From there I caught the bus out to Bergamo, where the airport used by Ryan Air is located (1 hour trip) and then waited at the airport till time for my flight (did my 1000 at the airport). I arrived in Lubeck at 19:00 and was met by one of the local SCA folk, who drove me out to site (1.5 hr trip). Friday evening was spent in pleasant conversation with people I'd not met before (this being my first event since moving to this Kingdom). One of the first people I met was a kind countess, with whom I was sharing a cabin (the site is a scout camp), who had sent me an e-mail earlier in the week offering me the use of some feast gear when I'd posted to the Kingdom list saying that I'd need to borrow some for the weekend). I like it when it is that easy to find someone you need to track down but haven't met yet.

Saturday was a bit cold and rainy, so most of the people (~90 some odd total on site during the day, I think, with ~70 staying in the bunk houses) spent the morning in the breakfast hall, making it easy for me to work on embroidery and visit with people, or listen to old friends catch up with one another while I struggled to learn names and faces, and admired the pretty embroidery, lovely fabric, and cool garb that so many people were wearing. In the afternoon the company moved outside, where the gallery took refuge under a "sun shade" and the 8 combatants in the list conducted a round-robin tournament (fought to the best 2 out of 3 for each bout). At the end of the day two emerged from the fray to meet in a final round. As is tradition throughout the Known World, the members of the Order of the Chivalry were summoned to the field to bear witness. Then his Majesty announced that since so few of his Knights were at liberty to travel just now (there was one Knight in the finals, one marshalling, and another on the field to watch) he invited any Royal Peers present who were willing to brave the rain to watch to also join them on the field. I felt that there was only one possible response to that invitation, and promptly put my stitching in the bag and went onto the field, joined by a number of other ladies who have inspired their champions to victory, where we were privileged to witness the final bouts of the tournament and see the victor declared. (As it turns out, the above mentioned countess and her champion are the new Crown Prince and Princess).

After the list the Peerage meetings happened, during which I got to meet the other Laurels on site and obtain an introduction to some of the differences in standard operating procedures between this Kingdom and the others in which I have lived. After the meetings and a bit of a break everyone gathered in the Feast Hall for court, followed by a feast. Since I don't eat in the evenings I volunteered to serve the feast, and enjoyed my evening spent in the kitchen helping with dish washing/drying and feast serving, with breaks between courses spent in the hall visiting with people. As often happens at a feast, I found the amount of food thrown out at the end of the feast heart-wrenching. At least this site has a separate can for food scraps, which is later fed to hogs, so something gets to enjoy the food. But so much of it would have been good for people to take home and eat later (or for lunch the next day) if only they'd had a way to keep it over night (the hall has a commercial kitchen, to which we did not have access, so the only refrigerator facilities available to us was the small fridge in the breakfast hall--I think the cooking itself was done by catering staff as per our contract with the site).

There was, alas, no dancing at this event. I did ask Her Majesty about it, since she is a dancing Laurel. She explained that she has been so spoiled recently with live music at every event she has been attending that she couldn't bring herself to organize dancing to recorded music at this event, where the only person with an instrument was a singer with a guitar who didn't know any dance music. I understood where she was coming from, but it did mean that my only exercise for the day was my yoga.

Sunday at Drachenwald events are just about packing up, cleaning up, and heading home. Breakfast was provided, but no activities were scheduled at all, since people had to drive home to Finland, Sweden, the UK, France, and distant parts of Germany. Despite the lack of official activities, it still turned out to be a fun time visiting with people, saying good bye, and making myself useful with some of the clean-up tasks. Site was scheduled to close at 14:00, and the clean-up was sufficiently well enough along that my driver was able to leave at 13:30.

She drove me into old-town Lubeck, which was once an important Hanseatic League City and dropped me there, armed with maps and bus scheduled provided me by the event reservation steward, and I enjoyed the afternoon exploring the island and admiring the old buildings--some of which date back to the 1200's, and most of which are from the 1500's or older. People put some effort into making pretty buildings in those days! Eventually I was too tired to explore further, so I hoped a city bus out to the airport, where I was early enough to take a nice long nap before proceeding through security (which wasn't yet open when I arrived) to wait at my gate reading my 1000 and doing yet more embroidery. My flight finally landed in Bergamo about midnight, which meant that I was back in Milano at 01:00, so completed my walk home by 1:30. clovis_t was hosting a couple of CouchSurfers from Poland while I was gone (they'd first contacted me, but I explained that I would be out of town, but he would be in (since he decided to return to Milan after I'd purchased the tickets to Crown) if they wanted to stay with him), who were asleep when I got in (they had to get up early this morning to catch their flight home), so I did my yoga as quietly as possible and left unpacking till this morning.

Today I had my first Italian lesson. The class started with the teacher introducing the class in Italian, which I rather expected. However, she then asked us to form in pairs (or one set of three, we being an odd number of students) and ask one another our names and something about our selves (in Italian), so that we could then report to the rest of the class what we learned. I found this part of class *very* frustrating--I can go anywhere to display my lack of Italian Vocabulary, I don't need to do it in the class I took in hopes of rectifying that problem! After that she gave a brief lecture on the difference between the formal and informal second person singular pronouns (with which I was already familiar due to the Italian Phrase book that blamebrampton gave me when I passed through Sydney a few months back). However, she didn't use grammatical terms (like I just did), but rather gave examples of the use, and then listed off a variety of different sort of people (doctor, police, friend, etc.) and asked the class to state if we should use "tu" or "Lei" when addressing them. Alas, most of the words she used to describe people I was unable to guess at a meaning, and she had no photos to accompany that lesson, so I found my frustration levels increasing as she said something unintelligible to me, and the class said either "tu" or "Lei" and she'd say something else I couldn't understand, and the others would respond. Fortunately, before the frustration actually crossed the line into tears we moved on to our first exercises, photo copied from a text book. Finally, vocabulary given us to use! We had to work out the meanings of the words ourselves from the photos and the context, but the words were there, so when it was time to fill in blanks in a sentence, we could look at the example sentences and work out whcih word fit. I was ever so much happier with that part of class! When we moved on to listening to the correct pronunciation of a variety of words, and then had to use those words to determine the pattern to when to use which of the possible sounds made by the letters C and G based upon what vowel(s) follow it in a word I actually enjoyed myself. Pattern recognition is something I'm good at, and working it out for myself before she wrote the pattern on the board in full increases the odds of my remembering when to say the sound that in English would be spelled "ch" an when to use the one that I would have thought should be spelled with a "k".

[edited to add: by the time I reached the event site the cold (or whatever it was) was largely past troubling me--I no longer needed to blow my nose regularly--just a few times a day over the weekend, and was not troubled by any other symptoms. I may not like the fact that I actually had to fight off a cold twice in one year, but I suppose that when the battles are so quickly won, I can't really complain.)