Silks and Needles recap
I had a really lovely weekend. Based on an offhand comment to David and Sophia on Monday, I got swooped into their plans, which meant that the whole expedition was turned from me driving to Fargo solo and staying in a hotel alone to getting a ride Sophia and David and Griffin, all of whom were excellent company, and staying at Sophia's parents' fabulous Victorian house by the river where I even got a room to myself.
We rolled out Friday after work, with Sophia driving, which led to some interesting conversation, but much frustration on David's part because he mostly couldn't hear from the back seat. Unfortunately, the hour of departure meant getting into Fargo at about 10:30, at which point the last week or more of sleep deprivation caught up with me and I promptly collapsed into the extremely inviting bed without much chance to socialize.
Sophia and I got moving about 8, and made it to site not long after 9. The event staff got me a table and I started setting up. Getting started turned out to take pretty much all morning, and was not helped by the fact that only one of the crockpots was working, but at least it was the important one, the reeling pot. I suspect that the second wasn't getting power from its outlet, but didn't want to take the time to really investigate. So it ended up taking most of the morning before the cocoons were all soaked and things were ready to go. Things I learned - when your soak water is cold, the cocoons won't take up water or shed sericin, so it really does need to be hot. Not that I doubted the necessity of hot water, but I was hoping that cold might be inefficient but effective and it was mostly just not effective. I've come to the conclusion that it would be pretty feasible to do a good deal of reeling in an evening, but that I would just need to have the cocoons simmering in a crockpot most of the day. I suspect I'm going to try that later this week.
By lunch things were up and running, but people were mostly in classes so people only intermittently came by and I spent a certain amount of time where it was just me and the ball winder. This wasn't bad because of course that's an excellent time to do some purely productive reeling. Still, over the course of the day I think pretty much everybody on site came by the A&S room, and lots of them were really interested in what I was doing, and of course I was happy to answer questions. One woman was a silk reeler herself, from Aethelmark, so we compared notes and I told her about the vigil that Nikolena is planning to demo silk reeling at at Pennsic.
I'd decided slightly belatedly to enter my reeled silk in the A&S even though I didn't have any documentation, so I put out an example of the 10-15 filament strand I was demonstrating reeling, and the three strands I'd throwsted together.
At the end of the event, Their Majesties had a short court, where they gave out tokens for people who had entered the A&S (I accepted one) and those who had taught (I decided not to since I hadn't technically taught), and then announced the prizes for the populace bean count and the Queen's selection, which both they awarded to me. Apparently other people think reeling is cool too. The prizes were a gift certificate to Nordic Needle and a lovely tablet weaving loom respectively. The loom was made by Neil who I think is Bayard, but who says he's deciding to go back to being Neil or perhaps Nels. We had some extensive conversations over the course of the day, and it sounds like he may be interested enough to try it himself at some point. And for my part, I think I finally have sufficient incentive to get over my reluctance to get into tablet weaving. *g*
Afterwards, Sophia and I headed to Nordic Needle with one slight detour to retrieve her coat, and arrived with about 20 minutes to spare before they closed. I decided on a small lightbox, because I've wanted one for ages, and a blackwork peacock kit that was on sale, because, well, it's pretty. I strongly suspect that the sparkly blue and green metallic threads aren't period, but I wouldn't entirely put it past somebody somewhere to have developed that, so that may take some more research to see if any of it's defensible. But mostly it's pretty and it's okay if it's just for me.
Then we went back to Sophia's parents house where they fed us chili and we all played with Griffin and watched movies while David got together with some local friends. The Blind Side was very nice, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was lots and lots of fun, sort of Mrs. Henderson Presents with more sex farce elements.
Sunday, after a leisurely morning where Griffin was the source of much entertainment, David drove the four of us back to the Cities by way of Detroit Lakes, where we had a very nice lunch with his parents. Once back on the road, Sophia ended up napping in the back in an effort to bore Griffin into napping, but it didn't quite take. However, since he was almost always cheerful and fairly quiet, it wasn't a problem. (Hopefully the lack of nap isn't an issue later...) David and I had a wide-ranging conversation which covered a lot of books and music and philosphy and religion and politics. It was actually sufficiently wide-ranging that I ended up emailing him a reference guide once I got home, with a list of the books and I stuff that I'd been telling him about.
They returned me to my office at about 5:30 where I picked up my car and drove home to find that Ilya had had a very quiet weekend indeed, and I talked to my brother who had called to report that he'd mistakenly broken into one of my bank accounts and I should reset my password. Then we had dinner and Ilya and I chatted for the rest of the evening since we have seen relatively little of one another lately. We managed to entirely miss the news about Osama bin Laden until after the President's address, which I'm mostly okay with. I'm having sort of a complicated reaction to the news and don't want a whole lot to do with the poltics of it all.
Saraidh's Silk Reeling FAQ:
Q: How long is the thread on each cocoon?
A: I've been told as much as a mile, but I'm not sure what the average is. Whatever it is, it's long and very, very fine, because each cocoon only weighs about an ounce.
Q: So about that ton of silkworm cocoons...
A: I only actually bought a thousand, not a million, and that much is clearly going to keep me occupied for a while.
Q: How much does 1000 silk cocoons produce?
A: Well, according to a Canadian guy who's doing traditional Japanese textiles in Japan, 5,000 cocoons produces enough for one kimono.
Q: What are you going to do with it?
A: Right now I want to produce stuff suitable for some tablet weaving, and I have ambitions to reel and then dye enough to make a good range of embroidery floss, which I will am likely to then hand off to caoilfhionn. Her embroidery, especially silk painting, is much, much better than mine.
Q: How much do silk cocoons cost?
A: Depends on how many you buy. They're more expensive in smaller quantities. I ended up buying 1000 for about $125 from Treenway Silks.
Q: How many do you go through?
A: I'm still figuring that out, but I seem to be able to do about one jar's worth per session. Next time I'll try to remember to count how many cocoons I put in a jar.
We rolled out Friday after work, with Sophia driving, which led to some interesting conversation, but much frustration on David's part because he mostly couldn't hear from the back seat. Unfortunately, the hour of departure meant getting into Fargo at about 10:30, at which point the last week or more of sleep deprivation caught up with me and I promptly collapsed into the extremely inviting bed without much chance to socialize.
Sophia and I got moving about 8, and made it to site not long after 9. The event staff got me a table and I started setting up. Getting started turned out to take pretty much all morning, and was not helped by the fact that only one of the crockpots was working, but at least it was the important one, the reeling pot. I suspect that the second wasn't getting power from its outlet, but didn't want to take the time to really investigate. So it ended up taking most of the morning before the cocoons were all soaked and things were ready to go. Things I learned - when your soak water is cold, the cocoons won't take up water or shed sericin, so it really does need to be hot. Not that I doubted the necessity of hot water, but I was hoping that cold might be inefficient but effective and it was mostly just not effective. I've come to the conclusion that it would be pretty feasible to do a good deal of reeling in an evening, but that I would just need to have the cocoons simmering in a crockpot most of the day. I suspect I'm going to try that later this week.
By lunch things were up and running, but people were mostly in classes so people only intermittently came by and I spent a certain amount of time where it was just me and the ball winder. This wasn't bad because of course that's an excellent time to do some purely productive reeling. Still, over the course of the day I think pretty much everybody on site came by the A&S room, and lots of them were really interested in what I was doing, and of course I was happy to answer questions. One woman was a silk reeler herself, from Aethelmark, so we compared notes and I told her about the vigil that Nikolena is planning to demo silk reeling at at Pennsic.
I'd decided slightly belatedly to enter my reeled silk in the A&S even though I didn't have any documentation, so I put out an example of the 10-15 filament strand I was demonstrating reeling, and the three strands I'd throwsted together.
At the end of the event, Their Majesties had a short court, where they gave out tokens for people who had entered the A&S (I accepted one) and those who had taught (I decided not to since I hadn't technically taught), and then announced the prizes for the populace bean count and the Queen's selection, which both they awarded to me. Apparently other people think reeling is cool too. The prizes were a gift certificate to Nordic Needle and a lovely tablet weaving loom respectively. The loom was made by Neil who I think is Bayard, but who says he's deciding to go back to being Neil or perhaps Nels. We had some extensive conversations over the course of the day, and it sounds like he may be interested enough to try it himself at some point. And for my part, I think I finally have sufficient incentive to get over my reluctance to get into tablet weaving. *g*
Afterwards, Sophia and I headed to Nordic Needle with one slight detour to retrieve her coat, and arrived with about 20 minutes to spare before they closed. I decided on a small lightbox, because I've wanted one for ages, and a blackwork peacock kit that was on sale, because, well, it's pretty. I strongly suspect that the sparkly blue and green metallic threads aren't period, but I wouldn't entirely put it past somebody somewhere to have developed that, so that may take some more research to see if any of it's defensible. But mostly it's pretty and it's okay if it's just for me.
Then we went back to Sophia's parents house where they fed us chili and we all played with Griffin and watched movies while David got together with some local friends. The Blind Side was very nice, and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was lots and lots of fun, sort of Mrs. Henderson Presents with more sex farce elements.
Sunday, after a leisurely morning where Griffin was the source of much entertainment, David drove the four of us back to the Cities by way of Detroit Lakes, where we had a very nice lunch with his parents. Once back on the road, Sophia ended up napping in the back in an effort to bore Griffin into napping, but it didn't quite take. However, since he was almost always cheerful and fairly quiet, it wasn't a problem. (Hopefully the lack of nap isn't an issue later...) David and I had a wide-ranging conversation which covered a lot of books and music and philosphy and religion and politics. It was actually sufficiently wide-ranging that I ended up emailing him a reference guide once I got home, with a list of the books and I stuff that I'd been telling him about.
They returned me to my office at about 5:30 where I picked up my car and drove home to find that Ilya had had a very quiet weekend indeed, and I talked to my brother who had called to report that he'd mistakenly broken into one of my bank accounts and I should reset my password. Then we had dinner and Ilya and I chatted for the rest of the evening since we have seen relatively little of one another lately. We managed to entirely miss the news about Osama bin Laden until after the President's address, which I'm mostly okay with. I'm having sort of a complicated reaction to the news and don't want a whole lot to do with the poltics of it all.
Saraidh's Silk Reeling FAQ:
Q: How long is the thread on each cocoon?
A: I've been told as much as a mile, but I'm not sure what the average is. Whatever it is, it's long and very, very fine, because each cocoon only weighs about an ounce.
Q: So about that ton of silkworm cocoons...
A: I only actually bought a thousand, not a million, and that much is clearly going to keep me occupied for a while.
Q: How much does 1000 silk cocoons produce?
A: Well, according to a Canadian guy who's doing traditional Japanese textiles in Japan, 5,000 cocoons produces enough for one kimono.
Q: What are you going to do with it?
A: Right now I want to produce stuff suitable for some tablet weaving, and I have ambitions to reel and then dye enough to make a good range of embroidery floss, which I will am likely to then hand off to caoilfhionn. Her embroidery, especially silk painting, is much, much better than mine.
Q: How much do silk cocoons cost?
A: Depends on how many you buy. They're more expensive in smaller quantities. I ended up buying 1000 for about $125 from Treenway Silks.
Q: How many do you go through?
A: I'm still figuring that out, but I seem to be able to do about one jar's worth per session. Next time I'll try to remember to count how many cocoons I put in a jar.