Viking Spoon

I've made a few spoons from wood, but they all were really simple and not well done.

This is my first try for a decorated spoon. The morning I decided to make it, I went out to the forest and found out it has been raining :-D So I spent a lot of time and chose a stick that would look neither rotten nor soaking with water. Unfortunately some part inside was rotten anyway and it went off during carving.

 I usually keep the spoon on the stick as long as possible and cut it off as the last step so that I could hold it better. I traced the design with a roller pen and after carving removed the marks with a chisel. I'm looking forward to make the next one from proper dried wood :)

My Quiver with Runes

A year ago I made a viking quiver for my husband. I tried to make it historically accurate, according to reconstructions based on excavations. My quiver is more creative than that.

I chose a serpent from this Sweden rune stone as the main theme. I traced it with a pencil on beige dyed piece, painted the body with a darker dye with use of a cotton swab and carved the edges with a scalpel (two cuts - V shaped line). It is necessary to paint first and then cut so that the light color of natural leather would show as a contrast.

The body of the quiver is sewn with a front stitch with a leather band. I made the upper part separately and joined it with this front stitch at the back. I also repeated the lower four side stitches through all layers.

It requires some physical strength to tighten the leather when finishing. I went around a few stitches back.

Viking were decorating a lot of things, so I used a cross stitch to make the handles instead of back stitch, it also looks more female if you like :-)

The bottom was made from piece of leather that was soaked in hot water and pushed into a mug or something in that shape. When it went dry I pulled it out, cut out and sewed on. This design prevents the arrows from cutting the stitches, which happens to straight bottoms even when the stitches are led diagonally...

The design is too wide and the quiver too narrow to make sense from the front, the serpents peek at the sides.

 Ready for shooting!

Card Weaving Loom Version 2.0

I'll be making a new viking apron dress and I wanted to try out a new model of loom.

I can't take it anywhere with me, but I don't have to move the warp every now and then and it should't be such a problem that the threads are twisting at the end.

I cut two rectangles of wood and attached little triangular pieces to the bottom (it's a piece from fruit box :-) ). The front rectangle is attached with screws to the base. It has also fixed hooks. The rear is attached only with a clamp (I hate this type anyway, so I don't miss it in the workshop). I made hooks from wire and set them on washers so they could twist.

I drew a simple pattern. I wanted a simple one. Only turning all together forward and backward. It doesn't really work like on the picture, but kind of :-) The slashes mean the direction of threading the cards. 

Every second time I change the direction one turn later and it creates this green dot inside.

I love the new loom. It took me a lot of nerves to assemble it. Then it took quite a long time to thread it. But the weaving... It was so fast and comfortable, I can't believe I had it done in one afternoon! (and enjoyed it)

Beware. Card weaving is addictive.

Viking Quiver

A quiver, possibly a Viking one. That was the assignment.
So I found this lovely quiver made according to excavations from Hedeby. Although in my opinion this wasn't the actual correct interpretation of the excavation pictures, I liked it a lot and the pattern looked quite easy.

So I cut the quiver body (I tried to make it so that it wouldn't reach the feathers) and sewed along the edges. When I was reaching the top, I cut four more pieces for the "ears", sewed each two together and inserted them into the quiver body.

I cut two panels which would serve as decoration as well as cover when the arrows are not used. I sewed on the little cross to one of them, with front stitch.

I didn't sew the sides at the bottom of the decoration panels so that the little ears could be used for hanging the quiver. I cut slits in the cover for the fastening.

The arrows I'd bought had a tape at the tail. I covered it with wool - I made this loop, wound the wool leftwards around the arrow, tucked the end to the loop and pulled the little tail on the right so that the loop ended up hidden somewhere in the middle.

When the quiver is used, the cover is rolled down and serves as reinforcement. Unfortunately I had only one big piece of leather. And it was far more tough than I would need so the rolled cover is way too bulky, canvas-like leather would be a lot better.

I think the original version looks much better. You know, I'm still learning...

Viking Runestone Birthday Card

A birthday card made for our viking friend.

I found some photos of viking rocks and picked this one.

I took paints and made the colored base. This sais something about how much I like him because I worked with brush which usually is quite a torture for me :-)

For the futhark I used a permanent marker (I love their absolute black).

Finally I tore the "rock" around the dragon and colored it with a pencil (the paper has its structure visible). Water paints would probably be better, but at one in the morning, you just go the easy way.