The Making of the Dragon Chalkbag, continued:



The fleece lining was finished off on top with a band to give it a proper rim, and to make a twist-closure possible. A magnetic clasp, covered with the last leftover bit from the original carrying strap, holds the closure in place.



To round it all off, the little dragon got a loop beneath one paw to hold a brush...



and a small clip hidden in the other one to hold on to papers, cards, or whatever might be there to hold on.



And now he's happy to take a ride in a bike pannier bag twice a week to hang out with his friend Ratthäus on the mats...



...where he is getting a lot of attention!

(And makes it easy for me to find my husband if we've split up for a bit. Just look for the little dragon.)

You might remember my "accidentally" turning a plushy toy rat into a chalkbag for bouldering? Followed by the lion plushy?

The lion plushy was actually transformed using several bits and pieces I had already bought for another transformation project - because obviously, at some point, the Most Patient Husband of them All also needed a fancy chalkbag. And by pure chance, I had discovered just the perfect base for this: A handbag from a costume/carneval shop. In form of a little dragon.



There was still quite a bit of stuff to do for the transformation, though. First of all, it needed removal of some of the stuffing, and alternative stiffening with strips of bendy plastic (intended to be used for corsets or crinolines). There was also the always-lovely and never fiddly task (hah!) of putting in a zipper so the dragon's tail could serve as a bag for holding a few small items.



The original handle was too short and too stiff, so it would have been in he way. Luckily it was also rather wide, so I could take it apart and re-stitch it in half the width and double the length.



Putting in the stiffening band at the top was the fiddliest part, and required a bent needle at the end. I was lucky in finding a nice gold tape to cover the plastic ring, matching the sparkly print of the original rim (and the tail and neck crests).

Next was the fleece liner...



...and the rest will follow tomorrow.

Sometimes, things don't quite go according to plan... as is the case in this ballet piece, though things are supposed to not go according to plan. Which makes this... not according to plan according to plan?

Ah, never mind. I thought it was hilarious - and it does not hurt my appreciation of actual dance going right at all - quite the opposite!

Things currently going on here: Writing, and researching, and reading.

I found that I've not done proper, longer research on a topic for quite a while, and it actually took me a bit to get back into it - especially back into the mindframe necessary. Also, there's reading and reading and not necessarily real results from what you are reading, as it might not have the information needed, or goes off on a tangent, or...

So just like making textiles takes time, and sometimes more than expected (or, well, usually), with a lot of the work in the preparation, the very same is true for researching things and writing articles. And just like making a textile, the prep work remains rather invisible for most people, even though it is crucial, and can be really, really time-consuming.

That all said, I'll return to my reading and writing and thinking, after sharing with you my bonus insight for the day:

If you are parceling out wool and take out stray bits of vegetable matter and put those bits right next to your coffee cup, one of them might end up inside it, making for a nice little wake-me-up spike of adrenaline when it tickles your tongue. I cannot recommend this as a coffee enhancer, though.

I have discovered, ages ago, that I work better with rules that are hard and firm and sort of blankety than with, hm, softer variations or guidelines. That is one of the reasons I blog every weekday (holidays and so on excepted) - it's much easier for me to remember it's a workday, and I'm supposed to blog, than to remember doing it every week or every  Wednesday or so. (Downside of it is that I have to blog every day, including periods where I have no ideas, not a lot of time, or both, which results in some short and boring posts and the occasional gratuitous cat or garden pic, as you well know.)

Anyway - those general rules do work for me better than squishy ones. So I do yoga in the morning, before I eat something. No yoga, no food. (I have the cat pic equivalent here, too: when there is little time, rolling out the mat and doing a few forward folds and a down dog or two totally counts. Don't you think I torment myself too much.) I do not buy garments made from or containing non-organic cotton. I do not have many of these rules, by the way.

But now I've made a new rule. Which I'm not fully sure about yet, as it can't be as blankety as the others, so I'm still in the fine-tuning phase. The rule is: No coffee without a pull-up or chin-up.

If that sounds weird, here's the reasoning behind it. Part one: I love coffee, and as there's such things as good de-caf coffee, getting too much caffeine is no reason to stop drinking it anymore. However, I love my coffee with milk, and if I go overboard on this... it is not good. I can stomach milk very well, but having five or six or so cups of coffee in a day will, sneakily, add up to quite a few extra calories. I actually managed to put on a little extra weight again, mostly due to milk-in-coffee consumption, which irked me no end and resulted in a short return to calorie reduction earlier this year. (I did not get above normal weight, though - I've been safely below that line since two years and a week ago. Hooray!) So. I want to keep on having coffee, and the option of getting my hydration partly, or mostly, through coffee if I feel like it, but it should also be kept in check somehow. A day of only coffee should be the exception, not the rule. This sort of begs to attach something to having a brew that makes it worth thinking twice, right?

Enter part two - I need more muscle. Or better intramuscular coordination. No matter what it might be (both, probably), there are regularly moves in bouldering where I just lack the sheer physical strength... and this sucks. It sucks even more because I'm rather small and often can't reach things, so it happens again and again that I'd be able to do a move if I could just pull myself up better with the arms. I've been complaining about this for long enough now, and yes, I do have a pullup bar installed (right here in my study door)... so I could, theoretically, do some training every day.

[caption id="attachment_3904" align="alignnone" width="640"] The bar. Looks harmless, right?


Sadly, I can be a very lazy person, and progress is sloooow in this, and not very visible. So, as a result, I am lacking a good incentive, and haven't been doing much.

Which will change now. Because coffee! I can have as much coffee as I want, provided I do a pull-up or chin-up before each cup. They do not need to be complete, but it's either a full one or to exhaustion. Which means that I do think some more before I go and fix myself a cup, and that I'm especially wary on Wednesdays as we go bouldering in the evening, and I don't want to be all worn out before we start. I'm not sure yet on how to handle weekends and coffee away from home... but for now, when I'm here, the new rule is active. And in a few weeks, I'll see where this brings me!

I've received a CfP for a conference part that sounds a lot like the European Textile Forum, only on the other side of the Pond - and if it were not so far away and only for three day, I'd be very, very tempted.

You might be closer to the action, though, so here's the CfP for you - and as always with these things, do spread the word to anyone you think might be interested. Conference news, as a rule, reaches way too few people, and everyone passing on infoto others helps make the conference a better one!

Call for Participants for the sessions
"From Fiber to Decorated Textiles in the Early North Atlantic: Making, Methods, and Meanings,”
part of IONA: Early Medieval Studies on the Islands of the North Atlantic transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada. April 11-13, 2019
CFP: Textiles are a ubiquitous part of life, essentially so in eras when they had to be produced by hand. In early medieval Europe the making and use of textiles also had symbolic, metaphorical, and even allegorical meanings, in additional to the functional. We wish to spend time exploring the connections between the act of making and understanding how something is being made as well as connections among disciplines, approaches, and interpretations.
We are envisioning a series of linked sessions in which participants first learn generally about the textile-making process in the Early North Atlantic, before choosing one skill to learn more deeply, which they will then proceed to practice for the remainder of the sessions. During this final part, scholars will also present their research findings and interpretations, most likely in a modified roundtable format, culminating in a final large discussion that brings together the insights of making through practice and how this might influence interpretation.
We invite proposals of two kinds. First we seek those versed in the making of early medieval textiles and the teaching of those skills. We are specifically interested in scholars accomplished in one of the following: nalbinding, lucet braiding, tablet weaving, inkle weaving, sprang, upright loom weaving, and other fabric and fiber arts. The organizers will be instructing in the use of the hand spindle and loop stitch embroidery. We also welcome other textile skills that were employed in the early North Atlantic world. The session organizers hope to be able to provide basic materials such as yarn, needles, fabric, and thread, and may be able to help provide larger specialty equipment.
The second kind of proposal we invite is from interpreters of early medieval textiles in the North Atlantic and the methods of making them. We hope to gather an interdisciplinary group of researchers, teachers, curators, and artists working in this area to spark a dialogue about how one can practically and metaphorically come to understand any of the following:
● textile and textile tool remains
● literary and artistic depictions of textile-making processes
● how gender, region, religion, or economics were part of meaning making in textiles and the how the making process was experienced by medieval people or how these categories of analysis impact our contemporary understanding
● the role of trade and/or migration in disseminating or adapting textile making processes, decoration, and raw and finished materials
● how access to resources impacted the making of textiles
● methods of decorating textiles (embroidery, braid, trim, and so forth)
If one is both a maker and an interpreter, one may submit a joint proposal.
Questions may be addressed to Karen Agee (karen.agee(at)uni.edu), Erika Lindgren (lindgrenedu(at)gmail.com), or Alexandra Makin (alexandrammakin(at)gmail.com). Please submit a 250 words proposal/abstract to Karen Agee (karen.agee(at)uni.edu) by July 15, 2018. Please use Textiles IONA in the subject line.
The full website with all the CFPs and conference information can be found here: https://www.sfu.ca/english/iona.html.

Some interesting things I stumbled across:

There's a "Jumpers and Jazz" festival in Warwick that includes a men's knitting circle. How cool is that?

More cool knitting - there's a guy offering scarf knitting via a stationary cycle matched up with a knitting machine in a train station (German article with picture and video link). That seems to be somewhere in Belgium... but maybe there will be more Cyclo-Knitters in the future, who knows?

Not interested in knitting? Here is an article about factories - to be more precise, it's a book review, but it makes for an interesting read on its own.