National Tartan Day!

Happy Tartan Day everyone! You may be asking yourself, what the heck is Tartan Day? And you would be justified in asking such a question! Tartan Day, April 6th, is a day that nationally recognizes folks of Scottish, or Scotch/Irish decent. And we have no shortage of this demographic in America, many of our most famous citizens were either first or second generation Scots. Tartan Day was made official in 2005, when the House of Representatives passes Resolution 41. April 6th was chosen as the date, because, on a April 6th in 1320, Scottish barons gathered together to draft and sign a letter to Pope John XXII declaring their independence from England. Below is a segment from the letter, known as the Decleration of Arbroath:


"...For so long as there shall but one hundred of us remain alive we will never give consent to subject ourselves to the dominion of the English. For it is not glory, it is not riches, neither is it honours, but it is liberty alone that we fight and contend for, which no honest man will lose but with his life."


This Declaration is thought to have influenced the penning of the American Declaration of Independence. Great though this letter may have been, in reality it served only to transfer the average Scot from being ruled tyrannically by a English king down south, to being ruled tyrannically by a Scottish king in Scotland. 

Many folks celebrate Tartan Day by wearing a bit of tartan, be it a tie, sash, hat or obviously a kilt. As my celebration of Tartan Day, I wore my kilt to work at the Haywood County Library!  


I hope everyone had a very pleasant Tartan Day!

Join or Die

Scrimshaw is the art of making small scratches in a piece of ivory, bone or antler, then adding ink to the scratches to make them stand out. Its is a age old craft, practiced by many people in history. For my attempt at scrimshaw, I made a powder horn. Powder horns were the means by which powder was carried before cartridges,with both bullet and powder, were invented. Powder horns were often inscribed with scrimshaw. Having always been interested with history, and more specifically the American Revolution (a time period when powder horns would have been in their glory days). So, it was a treat for me to work on this.

For the actual picture I scrimshawed, I chose a cartoon created by Ben Franklin that was published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. The cartoon has always been a favorite of mine, and it corresponds to the time period of powder horns, so it seemed like a appropriate pick. The cartoon depicts a snake, cut into segments, with each segment labled with initials of the colony it represents. Under the snake, in bold are the words Join, or Die.

This bit was the hardest part, getting the wood ( a lovely tiger maple) flush with the cow horn was  difficult.
I then added eight brass brads to keep the wood plug in place.

'Rob Roy' style sporran numero dos

A sporran is the traditional pouch worn at the front of the Scottish kilt. The word 'sporran' is in fact Scots Gaelic for 'purse'. The purpose of the sporran is rooted in necessity, not decoration.  After all, a kilt has no pockets, meaning if you want to carry the typical necessities such as car keys, a wallet etc. something of the pouch/satchel/manpurse variety is needed, and this was how the sporran came about. Of course, over the years there have been dozens of styles and designs, some flashy, some simple and plain. For my second attempt at sporran crafting I opted for a traditional, simple 'Rob Roy' style. (So named for the famous/infamous cattle thieving Highlander hero.) But, enough rambling, here are pictures!

You can see from this picture the double drawstring,that draws the material together in a pleat like fashion.

A good view of the brass eyelets.

The capacity of the sporran bag is huge, I can fit it over my head!

Garter Ties

Hello!

I finally got around to taking a few pictures of several of the things I've been working on as of late.

 Garter ties, or garters for short are a old time method of keeping knee length socks in place, before the days of elastic. Specifically, I made mine for my kilt hose. Most folks nowadays use short strips of elastic with decorative fabric, called flashes,  to keep there kilt hose up. The problem with these little guys is that they have a tendency to be uncomfortable.

Flashes:

I thought it would be fun, and more satisfying to make my own traditional garter ties. It was easy, I did a simple three strand braid with yarn until I had six lengths of three strand braid, for a grand total of eighteen pieces of yarn. Once I had my six lengths done, I did a six strand flat braid to create the finished product.

This shot shows the flat braid well.

I stitched the ends up with thread that matchs the respective yarn color.

The garter ties are very easy to fasten, I just wrap mine around my calf, tie a overhand knot and then tuck the two ends back over the knot.

The final product, with the hose cuff turned down

Word 'O' the day

I, being interested in words, thought it would be fun to occasionally put up a word of the day. It may be common, obsolete, new or ancient, it could even be in another language. Please feel free to join in if you find a particularly fascinating word. So, here it is!

                          Welkin:
Meaning sky, heaven, the firmament. 


"We don’t use this much nowadays — dictionaries usually tag it as archaic or literary — except in the set phrase make the welkin ring, meaning to make a very loud sound. What supposedly rings in this situation is the vault of heaven, the bowl of the sky. In older cosmology this was thought to be one of a set of real crystal spheres that enclosed the Earth, to which the planets and stars were attached, so it would have been capable of ringing like a bell if you made enough noise. The word comes from the Old English wolcen, a cloud, related to the Dutch wolk and German Wolke. Very early on, for example in the epic poem Beowulf of about the eighth century AD, the phrase under wolcen meant under the sky or under heaven (the bard used the plural,wolcnum, but it’s the same word). Ever since, it has had a strong literary or poetic connection. It appears often in Shakespeare and also in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “This day in mirth and revel to dispend, / Till on the welkin shone the starres bright”. In 1739, a book with the title Hymns and Sacred Poems introduced one for Christmas written by Charles Wesley that began: “Hark! how all the welkin rings, / Glory to the King of kings”. If that seems a little familiar, it is because 15 years later it reappeared as “Hark! the herald-angels sing / Glory to the new born king”."
- World Wide Words

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