Sunday, October 9, 2011

so many rings

I have discovered the fun which is chain mail, and am in a fairly constant state of wanting more rings. 

Persian sampler, from top to bottom: full persian, half persian three-in-one, half persian four in one, a half-persian six in one sheet.  I used 18 gauge 1/4 inch inner diameter rings.  I need more 18 gauge 1/4 inch rings now ...



Here is a close-up of the half-persian four in one.  It looks different depending on the side you're looking at and is a lot of fun to play with.

A byzantine sampler.  A straight byzantine necklace, a hexagonal byzantine web, a byzantine bar sheet-kind of weave that I'm not sure of the name of, and a ball made out of byzantine chunks hooked together and stuffed with wool.


Similar to byzantine is Turkish Roundmaille.


Everybody should make some European four in one.

This is called persian dragon-scale.  It's half persian three in one with european four in one. 


This will one day be a pouch.  I love scales and decided to make this sheet into a pouch with a drawstring, big enough to carry a camera.  But the scale mail doesn't compress horizontally, to allow the pouch to bunch up when the drawstring is tight.  So I made some byzantine hexagonal web in the same colors (I love how the colors worked out in the web, especially the connecting parts), which I'll attach at the top of the pouch.  I'll make the main body of the pouch out of (probably) leather, and put the scale and chain mail on top.





Sunday, August 28, 2011

Pretty Nerf Guns

Though now I can call them ray guns.  That shoot darts.  Darts are worse than rays, aren't they?

So this is what a standard Nerf Maverick looks like, fresh out of the box:

It's not a bad color scheme, when your main goal is to make sure everybody knows that this is a toy.  But if you wanted to carry it around, e.g., the Steampunk World's Fair, it's just not pretty enough.

This is when the Rustoleum Hammered Spray Paints come in.

A few years ago I made this one:



The base coat is Bronze spray paint, with silver, brown, and gold accents.
 
And this summer I found myself agreeing to supply enough Nerf guns to run a small Nerf war.  So I went to Target and bought three Nerf Mavericks (and a giant box of fruit snacks.  Of course responsible adults go to Target and buy Nerf guns and fruit snacks).  I also picked up Silver and Brown paint colors.

I really like the look of the brown, especially after you give a light dusting of either Bronze or Silver and then add some acrylic accents.  This one's brown with a bronze dusting, bronze barrel, and Antique Copper accents.


Brown base, silver dusting, silver barrel.  The dusting gives the body just a hint of silver without being overwhelming.


Brown base, bronze dusting, and a combination of Antique Copper and a metallic green accents on the barrel.


This was originally some camo-green color and marketed as a Space Blaster.  I'm not sure why Space Blasters would come in camo green (I guess for fighting in all those Space Forests and Space Swamps).  But I went over with acrylic craft paints.  I'm having problems with the paint scraping off, so I'll probably end up sanding this down and repainting it. 

Part of the same set.  I haven't finished all the detail work on this one yet (or more accurately I haven't finished re-doing all the detail work, since when it just about done I decided to sand it down, hoping to decrease the paint-scraping problem).



I picked up a vintage Thermos lunchbox from a junk store.  It was black and I'm pretty sure a hippie had gotten to it at one point in its history: it was covered with the remains of flower stickers and orange velvet.  I filed that off and repainted it Bronze:


And this is what I use it for.




Saturday, August 13, 2011

Blognapping: Discworld

In which this blog about crafts is shanghaied in a dark alley and put to dark and nefarious purposes.  Like talking about the Second North American Discworld Convention, held in Madison, WI in the middle of July.

Molly and I drove out.  It took two days and then we went to Noah's Ark Waterpark, in Wisconsin Dells, against which all other waterparks will now seem woefully inadequate.


The convention was fantastic.  It pretty much had to be.  You put a thousand other Discworld fans in one hotel, and then run into friends you haven't seen in five years (we knew we were all going to be there, but I had no idea how we'd find each other, and then we find each other before we'd even registered) and wander around and talk to people and admire costumes and discover you can buy a tin labeled Dried Frog Pills, and that there are people trading stamps for countries that don't exist (the stamps are pretty awesome), and listen to authors talk about books -- Patrick Rothfuss was there -- and listen to bits of the newest Pratchett book being read, and hear Sir Terry tell funny stories, and talk to other fans, and go to panels, and discover what Morris Dancing is, and, well.

It's the perfect recipe for fantastic, is what it is.

A dozen or so Discworld gods and goddess paraded in for the Opening Ceremonies, and welcomed Sir Terry the Creator.  He sat down and told a story about waking up one morning, and going downstairs and noticing that the straps on the slab are torn, and then realizing the significance of the monster-shaped hole in the door.  Then going down to the village -- or at least where the village was -- and the villagers -- at least the surviving villagers -- come out and point and say "See what you've done!"

And then Sir Terry got up and peered round at all the assembled gods and goddesses.

This is Anonia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers.


There was a man who was very good with balloons.


One of several Feegles.  This one really liked my Feegle.


Death of Rats, and Moist von Lipwig for some reason.


Sally, Cheri, and Angua kept order, especially during the Pratchett stampings.


Here, Dr Hix, Vetinari, and an Igor judge ideas in the Evil Genius, Good-ish Samaritan panel.  I laughed.  A lot.

Someone proposed cursing students you don't like.  Dr Hix responded: "That can be shorted to 'students.'  And students pay for dinners."

I learned that the plural of Nac Mac Feegle is "invasion."

Igor: If you can't be a good example, you can at least be a horrible example.




Morris Dancing!  It is something you should run away from.  Earlier there was a man dressed in a cow suit, and you can still see the man in a pink dress.  Both of these features are authentic (well, normally it's a man dressed as a horse, but this is Wisconsin).  Nobody really knows why Morris Dancing is the way it is, except that it was an ancient pagan fertility ritual.


Twoflower with his camera and luggage.  The camera takes pictures.  There is an imp inside.  The Luggage moves around and opens and closes its mouth.  Some people have skills, and enough craziness to use them.


Gaiman! And Pratchett!  They rambled on about Good Omens for nearly two hours.
"This book what we wrote ... accidentally.  By post." 
Terry would call Neil in the early afternoon, before Neil was awake, and leave messages on his voicemail: "Wake up! Wake up, you bastard, I've written a good bit!"
They extensively footnoted each other's bits, and there's one joke that neither one of them can remember writing, so at some point the book wrote itself.  Terry is the nice one; he made it a kinder book with fewer dead babies.  Neil's responsible for the maggots.

There was a radio interview, back when it came out, and the interviewer didn't know it was fiction.  Terry eventually explained; Neil Gaiman, being evil, would have let it go on for the whole interview.

Another interviewer started off by saying "I haven't the foggiest clue who Terry Pratchett is."  Then her phone board went red.  After a few calls, she said "Now I know."

Mort is apparently Gaiman's fault, because Terry outlined an idea for his next book, and Neil said "that's a good idea, but you should write one about Death."  And then Neil got a phone call: "You bastard, it's called Mort."

For quite a bit of it I was laughing too much to take notes or otherwise commit anything specific to memory. 


Granny Weatherwax.


The Hogfather.  I just love that something like this exists, and makes perfect sense.  Of course there's a little girl sitting on the knee of a man in a red and white suit with a big white beard who's a bit bony around the face.


Sir Terry Pratchett and Granny Weatherwax.


So the day after the convention we started driving home.  Well first we went to the zoo, because it had a baby lion.


We wandered around most of the zoo.  This was probably not the best way to begin a 450-mile drive.  But there was this White Cockatoo doing a Godzilla impression ... he'd stalk up and down a branch, feathers up, making this angry squawk bird-roar sound.



Then we got lost, and found the Toilet Graveyard.  This may have been Ohio?



We had lunch with Glen and Krissy, who are soon going to move to Madison.  And then we got home.


* * * 

I have also now enjoyed my fifteen seconds of anonymous internet fame. 

The Good Omens panel was very full.  But there was a table up against a wall with a perfect view of the stage.  Tables are like chairs, so we sat there.

And then there was a Neil Gaiman.  And somebody took a picture of him walking in with Terry Pratchett, and Neil Gaiman posted it on his blog (in the second half of the entry), and the happy fan clapping her hands in the air in the background is me.

It seems like I can repost the picture here without upsetting the photographer, so.  My fifteen seconds of anonymous internet fame, or at least of showing up somewhere on the internet that's associated with fame.









Monday, June 27, 2011

Nac Mac Feegle

I wanted something fun and crafty to take to the North American Discworld Convention next week.  It's odd to write next week and realize that the convention (which I have wanted to go to for about a year) is actually going to happen REALLY SOON, and whatever I wanted to get done before the convention needs to be right now.

Back to crafts.  I made me a Nac Mac Feegle.



He's blue fabric, mostly machine-stitched together and then turned right-side out, with his shoulders and head handstitched.  He's stuffed with a few plastic pellets and the rest with regular polyfill.  The hair and eyebrows are embroidery floss; it took a while but I really like how it looks.  I practiced the face for a long time before I drew it on him.  If I make another one, I'm going to draw the face first, then finish cutting him out.

More scale maille

I am aware scale maille is a not an entirely accurate term for scale armor.  I sometimes call it that anyway.

After a few failed experiments, I figured out how to wear my scale maille.



(once again I have no idea why Blogger decided that picture should be portrait, and can see no way to adjust it).




The way the scales slide and fold at the wrist is quite fascinating.

Right now the scales are just sewn onto the glove, all along the edges, using Button & Craft thread.  I suspect the scales are sharp enough to slice through the thread, so when that happens I'll have to look for some strong thread (hopefully with wires which can't be sliced through).



My new scales arrived: more green, more blue, gold, and purple.  I started this design, then decided it had too much gold for my taste and took it apart.


This design has just the right amount of gold, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  I was originally thinking of making a wide bracelet, but the scales are just too thick for that.  I might extend it into a bracer, or make a pouch.


And I still have my purple scales to play with.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Viking Chain Knitting

This was my addiction before I got my scales.

Viking chain knitting produces a flexible woven wire cord that looks something like this:


That's the end result, in any case.  It starts looking like this:



That's a starter bundle of wires on a mandel (dowel rod).  The wire is knotted through each loop on the starter bundle, and then knotted on the previous knot.


Etc.  The process is rather like handsewing, in that it's repetitive and your fingers can usually do it on their own, without any directions, only there's an increased chance of stabbing yourself in the eye with a sharp bit of metal.

Eventually you get a stiff tube of knotted wire.


This stiff tube is then drawn: it's pulled through successively smaller holes drilled into a piece of oak (or horn, or other strong material) until it becomes stretched and compressed into a flexible wire cord.

Once I learned how to do this, I immediately started wondering if it were possible to incorporate different colors of wire into a single weave.

Answer: yes, yes it is possible.  There are at least two different ways of doing so.


The first way I tried produced vertical stripes.


It's hard to explain how to do this.  Once you have your starter bundle, you start two different colors of wire (although I usually start with one wire for the first three rows, just to get it started).  Alternate which loop the different colors go on: copper, green, copper, green, copper, green.  Keep stitching the same color to itself, so that the tube looks like this:





Which results in designs like this: (click the image to enlarge)


The second way produces horizontal stripes, and at first wasn't particularly impressive.  Once the weave is started, add a second color and go all the way around, knotting the wire to each loop.  When the row is complete, you'll be back at the first wire.  Pick it up and go around again, knotting the wire to each loop, so that you have a row of silver, then a row of black (which is knotted to the silver), then another row of silver (knotted to the black), etc.






There's another stitch, called a double stitch.  Instead of knotting each wire to the loop directly above it, knot the wire to the loop that's two rows above it (so you are skipping over a loop and knotting on the next loop).  This produces a much stiffer cord.  When I tried my horizontal stripe stitch with a double stitch, it produces very striking results:






 *            *            *

It is very difficult to predict how long the finished weave is going to be after it is drawn.  It depends on how many loops you made it your starter bundle (I like working with six, but four is also common, and you could probably go up to ten or twelve), how tight your stitches are, what kind of wire you're using, etc.  Fortunately, it is possible to trim the piece after it's been drawn.  Just cut the wire (a bit past where you want it to end) and unweave it back down to the desired length.  Stuff the ends back into the center of the weave.

The ends can be finished off with a cone, or just with jump rings (depends how pretty the ends are, or whether you need to add a bit of length).  I have tiny wrists, so I like making bracelets which wrap around my wrist two or three times.