Ragnailt Derg

They/Xem | SCA Lochac side blog | Constantly picking up new crafts, slowly learning fencing, and tentatively practising the art of Being Very Loud

[wine-red-shore]

Greetings good gentles,

I am Noble Ragnailt Derg, I joined the SCA in January 2025 as a member of the Kingdom of Lochac. My persona is 11th Century Hiberno-Norse but that is just an attempt to focus myself even a little - I happily dip out if anything is interesting enough.

I mostly do arts & science but I'm slowly learning rapier, spear is very seductive. I also adore court and have dipped my toes into court heraldry. As I also do scribal I fear one day I may find myself doing other heraldry as well.

I'm currently also the comms for Politarchopolis Greenhorns so feel free to send messages about it my way. I'm well enured to the horror of email.

Finally my current organisationally tags are:

#arts & swearing , for any of my original craft posts. Mostly short updates on various projects.

[professorerudite]

[professorerudite]

[hurremsphoenix]

John Romer explains how ancient olive presses worked. I hope this is useful and informative to someone. Olive oil was extremely important in the Roman world. 

[she-is-amused]

In case anyone needed a rough idea of how cold pressed olive oil was made thousands of years ago.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

current state of the internet is a FUCKING EMBARASSMENT. was chatting with my grandma bout the history of crochet and knitting (and the comparative ages of those respective technologies) and i was like "oh YEAH and also that ancient greek fiber art we partly figured out from chemically testing the scoured bleached pigments of stolen statuary (tumblr knows what im talking about)—gimme 30 seconds to look up the name."

5 minutes and 3 search-engines later i am crying tears of blood screaming spitting blubbering in despair as my grandma attempts to digitally pat me consolingly on the back. the library of alexandria didn't burn it was "restructured" to "increase shareholder profits"

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

and i STILL CANNOT FIND THE TERM.

i am scouring the internet like the victorians scoured and destroyed all trace of joy and color from stolen relics for the LOST NAME OF THE ANCIENT PROCESS of textile-creation akin to knitting/crocheting/nålebinding that at least one academic/crafter used to recreate the leggings on this Glorious Motherfucker:

the google execs erased it. they bleached my bestie AGAIN from history...

[lachrymose-lyricist]

is this of any use

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

SO IT IS!!!

Archer statue from the Temple of Aphaia (ca. 480 BC) next to a reconstruction of its original paint job:

The leggings and sleeves would have created using a method called SPRANG which predates knitting and is over 3,000 years old. What's even sexier is modern artisans managed to recreate the entire outfit using the original method!

Mmm-HMM, love me a shapely thigh in harlequin hosiery. Put👏men👏in👏clingy-ass👏clothing👏again👏👏👏

Unfortunately english sources are hard to find, partly because Google's a shithole, but also because this textile project comes from a German museum, in Germany, where people tend to speak (and publish) in German. That said, the original link is to a short-but-sweet article I would have had no problem finding in 30 seconds a mere few years ago. fortunately i have clever beautiful insane people following me, but alas not everyone has such luxury. thanks to everyone in the notes who shoved themselves down this rabbithole with me!

in conclusion let us take a moment to sincerely wish Google a very burn in hell🙏

[wordswithkittywitch]

I am aware that my "sincere" tone often comes out as "passive-aggressive" and I'm working on that. So, with the knowledge I'm going for "sincere" here, I want as many people as possible to know about a key difference between renfaires and SCA events.

Renfaires have audiences. SCA events have participants.

This means that SCA events are often a lot cheaper to get into, because there are no actors practising skits, just nerds like you who have been doing it a bit longer. You still can watch people sing and swordfight, but there's no plot to follow. Because we are doing this for ourselves.

And you can join in! We want you to join in! We want to teach you how to spin flax and swordfight and forge armor and build kilns!

Because you aren't an audience. You're playing the same game as the rest of us and you have to play by the rules. We will loan you garb. It's free, we're happy to do it. But if you refuse to wear it, we are permitted to ask you to leave, because you aren't following the rules of the event.

I know you don't have to wear garb at a renfaire, but the SCA isn't a renfaire.

Anyone can reblog this. Even if you don't intend on attending an SCA event or a renfaire you should know the difference.

[dinosaur-ears]

"Do it scared"

-me cutting into my seam allowance

[sceptixfakemon]

beginning a fun new craft project this better not alter the numbers in my bank account

[sceptixfakemon]

by talos this can't be happening

[baddywronglegs]

Are lace-makers ever struck by the realisation that all the holes were already there before they started?

[batbetbitbotbut]

Fanciest lace I've ever made, just need to fill in the edges.

[logo-comics]

Due to the craftsmanship shown in this picture, the emperor has requested that you make all of his clothes out of that exact lace.

[bookhobbit]

The first rule of sewing is you can fix anything if you have patience, creativity, and a little bit of extra fabric! The second rule of sewing is AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’m kinda surprised that nalbinding isn’t as popular as crochet and knitting tbh because it has an even lower barrier of entry tools wise and unlike crochet and knitting it makes fabric that you can cut.

I guess it’s because it’s slower or something.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Nalbinding aka needle binding is when you use yarn and a big sewing needle to make fabric btw

It also has a lot of different kinds of stitches you can do that make different densities of fabric.

Some people even make rugs.

[thewolfwaitsbelow]

I feel like part of it might be casual people are generally aware of the existence of crochet and knitting, even if they don’t know very much about either, but have never heard of nalbinding

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yeah I hadn’t heard of it until recently and I ordered a big bone needle for myself to try it out and that should be arriving soon.

I was surprised that I’d never heard of it though. It’s older than knitting and crocheting and even though it’s been done all over the world it’s super relevant to Nordic culture and my grandmother and I are both into keeping in touch with our roots a bit so I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it.

It seems like the sort of thing that would be popular even if not as popular as crocheting and knitting, considering the low barrier of entry.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You also don’t need a bunch of different sized needles for nalbinding or whatever. The size of the stitch is controlled either completely freehand or by pulling it against one of your fingers. Most people who have a lot of nalbinding needles seem to either have tried out wood, bone, and metal ones to see which kind they liked or they enjoy carving wood or bone and like making their own needles as an extra hobby.

It’s also a lot easier to freehand and adjust as you go than crochet or knitting and you mostly go by inches instead of rows and number of stitches so a large number of accessories like stitch markers or whatever isn’t really necessary.

Maybe the lack of accessories also makes it unpopular idk. People do like collecting things in their nests.

[the-color-of-sound-is-space]

I've been wanting to do so, I cannot find anyone who can teach me, and any books I can find on it are Ass in the Visual Learning department. Otherwise I'd be making the hell outta some nalbinded fabric

[what-even-is-thiss]

I found this channel by a nice man who makes up close tutorials

Happy Needlebinding

I create videos on YouTube to learn people how to needlebind using two fingers and your thumb. Needlebinding helps people to relax, relieve

[what-even-is-thiss]

I thought this would be kind of a niche post to make but I was quickly reminded that I’m on tumblr, the website full of gay people with one billion hobbies.

[weekendviking]

Nalebinding Represent!

We have nalebound early medieval socks for our reenactment kit. You can make the needle out of any old bit of wood with a knife. Popsicle sticks work! (when running classes, I make up a whole lot of quick and easy needles out of popsicle sticks. If I'm been arty-reenactory, I make them from antler, bone, boxwood or hard fruit tree wood). You can do hats, scarves, mittens, or just any old stuff that you can make by going round and round and round, and build up elements by then sewing the different pieces together. The most basic stitch is just an overhand knot.

Hats by my partner in stuff, J.

Or, given J. is somewhat prone to mathematical things, nalebind yourself some hyperbolic plane brain corals and then a sea slug to go on them, just because:

The brain coral just starts as a circle, but each time you go round, you increase the number of stitches by putting 2 into every one from the previous iteration, so it's a hyperbolic plane, basically.

[wine-red-shore]

TFW you realise MANY pins ago you missed one 🙃

...I'm sure it will be fine right?

[wine-red-shore]

Dear past self,

NO IT WILL NOT

I'm not sure how clear it is in the picture but during the twists the line slowly got more and more off pattern.

So now I'm un-weaving twenty-seven rows.

[the-merry-otter]

A MERRY A.S. 61 TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE!!

[aroedmundpevensie]

there's actually a secret eighth deadly sin and it's exactly like gluttony except for textile projects

[stitchposts]

[wine-red-shore]

Do I have more urgent projects? Yes. Am I working on my 2nd snake instead? Also yes lmao

Also the guild teaches us a fun little alt to the snake pattern where you add in the outer passive later so the nose is sharper. It felt very trust the process the first time.

[wine-red-shore]

As far as I'm aware the pattern is from Christine Springett's "Lace for Children of All Ages". She also has another book called "Snakes Galore" with alts which I'd love to check out.

There's a good youtube series that goes through making it once you get your hands on the pattern. It doesn't have what I've done above in it however.

[wine-red-shore]

Tablet weaving update is, its uh. going Baffling. This is what I get for going YOLO and trying to make my own design whilst still so new.

The design was coming out of the BACKSIDE and also had skipped weirdly. Trying to look up help wasn't great because most just said you read the pattern wrong whilst threading and Im like...I wrote the pattern.

My teacher said to try going backwards but that just got me the V. I then tried flipping the tablets which also didn't get me the weaving on the right side but at least the centre of the pattern now works. However those red stripes in the blue and green aren't meant to be there!!

Not sure what to try next as I REALLY don't want to unweave this shit to try re-threading it.

[wine-red-shore]

TFW you realise MANY pins ago you missed one 🙃

...I'm sure it will be fine right?

[wine-red-shore]

Do I have more urgent projects? Yes. Am I working on my 2nd snake instead? Also yes lmao

Also the guild teaches us a fun little alt to the snake pattern where you add in the outer passive later so the nose is sharper. It felt very trust the process the first time.