As this very cold winter begins to show signs of thawing, I have been working on a number of projects.  I lost my computer last fall and so the pictures of my husband’s display board for his Cthulhu themed Chaos army have been lost.

Most of my current projects revolve around the SCA. I have been working on compiling a collection of vegetarian medieval recipes.  With 11 manuscripts sifted through, I am about half way through that project.  I have been testing recipes for the Scottish feast I will be cooking for the Baronial Birthday of our local SCA branch.  So far the Pork Flory, the cheese pie, and the Cock a Leekie soup have all been well received.  The spinach fritters were good, but not outstanding.  I’ve made a first run at a almond “cheese” pie, and I make kale with garlic and vinegar on a regular basis.  I tried making baked herring and it was judged to be good, but I am thinking smoked salmon will be better received by the majority of people attending the feast.  I still need to fill in a few dishes and I need a desert, but it is well on its way to being figured out.

I have also spend a good deal of time helping my daughter with her Kingdom A&S Triathlon entry.  She built a simple puppet stage using medieval tools, painted a woodland scene on the divider, crafted two hand puppets and put on a short scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  She worked really hard and did a wonderful job.  She won the competition for the second year in a row.  Though it was really very close between her and the only other contestant.

But I digress…

Also on my radar this winter has been the exceptional archeological find at Lengberg Castle in Tyrol, Austria.  Graduate student Beatrix Nutz has been working on this amazing find and pictures of the undergarments found there have been appearing on Pinterest.  Several people have attempted recreations of the long-line looking bra found at the site, but my attention was caught by another piece decorated with needle lace and sprang.  (Click here to view the piece)  (Click here for a previous post on what sprang is)  Kristen Hughes over at The Sojourning Spinner has created a chart for the piece.  (I was fortunate enough to meet her at the Carol James lecture I attended last year.)  She is a much more accomplished spranger than I, and we read patterns rather differently, so I had to start from scratch.  I eventually hope to recreate the entire bra but for now I am happy to start with the sprang.  My chart is below.

I am not going to include my pattern because while I work sprang from right to left, I write the pattern from left to right and it would confuse the dickens out of anyone else.  This is worked over 54 loops, that’s 54 front strands and 54 rear strands.  I have since learned from Pat Poppy at Costume Historian that the original was worked over 120 warp threads.  (She attended a conference talk that Beatrix Nutz gave).  I am not sure if this is 60 front and 60 rear or 120 loops.  60 front and rear would make my pattern pretty close.  120… not so much.

Here is my test piece, still on the frame.  I am working in #10 crochet cotton, because it’s cheap and close to the right weight.  I have unfortunately lost the label to this ball.  It has a slight sheen to it and is lovely for sprang because it does not bind.

You can see that I am still having difficulty with the differences between the top and the bottom fabric.  They are created in mirror image, and this causes the twisting of the warp to untwist the yarn in the top portion and increase the twist in the bottom.  This makes packing them more difficult and you end up with a slightly looser fabric.  I have also clearly not created a long enough warp for this pattern, which does argue for the two pieces being cut apart and used in different garments.

There are several things I would like to know about the original piece.  You can see the mirror image created by this technique.  When I am finished there will be a join line down the center where I will chain the warp threads together to prevent them from untwisting.  Historically, sometimes both halves of the piece were included in the same finished piece, but sometimes they were cut apart and placed in separate pieces.  I can’t see any join line, but in none of the photos available online can you get a good close view of the top of the piece.  The close up of the bottom where the sprang is attached to a fingerloop band via needle lace is pretty clearly an end loop, but I just can’t tell about the top.  I can’t wait for more of Ms. Nutz’s articles to come out!