Return to Research

Back to the research I've been doing on Civil War-era cartridge pouches, specifically on thread color and waxes.

The two books I'd been waiting for (one on Indian War-era cartridge boxes and other accoutrements, another on US Military belts in general) arrived Friday. I've flipped through them, but not started reading. Last night I made space on one of the bookshelves, and put them away, with other military-ish leather-ish books I have (German WWII Cavalry, US military saddles, etc.). 

Circling back to the thread color issue, I'd previously said I wasn't going to try making my own black sticky wax. However, the idea wouldn't quite get out of my mind. The recipes for black  wax are:

"9 [parts] rosin, 6 pitch, 6 beeswax, 1 tallow. To be mixed together and poured into water; then worked with the hands until it becomes soft and pliable." page 175, Ordnance Manual, pub. By J.B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia, PA, 1861

"Pitch, 2 lb. ; resin, 2-1/2 lb. seal oil, one pennyworth. In winter add 2 lb. of resin instead of 2-1/2 lb., and never more than of the oil until the stiffness of the wax has been tested

"(b) Pitch, 1 lb. ; resin, 1 lb. ; and linseed oil, one pennyworth.

"The exact amount of oil to be used in both of the above recipes depends on the season and the weather. A little lampblack may be well mixed in when the wax is required very black. Always melt the pitch and resin together, and then add the oil. Afterwards pour the mixture into cold water, and knead and pull it until it floats. Try a small piece first,- to ascertain whether there is sufficient oil, and likewise after pulling to see whether it floats." Saddlery and Harness-Making Paul N. Hasluck, ed.
J.A. Allen and Company, Ltd., London, 1904, available as a modern reprint.

If you point yourself to Wikipedia and do a little vocabulary-checking, pitch and resin can be synonyms, or not. In this case, I'm going with the interpretation that "pitch" refers to a the petroleum-derived sticky stuff, and "resin" to the plant-derived sticky stuff. Exercising my Google-Fu, the common source for petroleum pitch for hobbyists is to beg some tar from roofers. For plant resin/pitch, Stockholm Tar, which is used by boatbuilders and some horse-owners (on hooves). 

Seal oil is oil from seals. Not going there. Linseed oil is, I think, common enough I'm not going to natter any more about it.

I also looked up lampblack. Oh, look, its the same thing as carbon black pigment. Hmm. I wonder if I could buy a reasonably small amount of lamblack/carbon black at Dick Blick and see how adding just that to beeswax works...

...I can't tell you that. Because I found R&F brand pigment sticks, in "Lamp Black" and "Intense Carbon Black", basically oil paint in a stick. Ingredients: " natural wax, linseed oil, and pigment" I followed a link to the material spec. sheet on drying times, etc., and saw that it also had information on their encaustic paint. Think think, think think think. Wait, isn't encaustic done with wax? Yes, it is. 

Dick Blick also carries the encaustic media, ingredients: "pigment, pure beeswax, and damar resin" in "Intense Carbon Black".  Damar gum/resin is plant-derived.

Yesterday we went to Dick Blick, and I got one of the oil sticks and one of the blocks of encaustic media. As I noted above, the oil sticks have a very long dry time, and I suspect are pretty soft/sticky, they come wrapped in plastic inside a tube. The encaustic media feels like a chunk of plastic, in a plastic wrapper. Hopefully one (or both) will work for waxing thread. The oil stick could be too soft/sticky/messy, and the encaustic media too brittle.

At the very least, I'll do a sample seam with each, to see the color effect on white thread, gauge messiness and/or brittleness, and to have as a sample for reenactors who are serious about Getting Things Right.

Um, I think I may be slipping into that mind-set. And Ron says I've infected him, he's probably going to sew the stuff I've got cut out at a finer count of stitches per inch than the last ones. 

I didn't get as far as the sample seams yesterday, got derailed by other things. But I think I've nattered and deluged you with links quite enough today.

 

Bag Finished!

I finished my new bag last night. Got the dye touched up on the handle, sewed the tabs on, trimmed to length, and holes punched, and Ron trimmed the extra binding from the inside of the flap.

I can see all the things that aren't perfect about it, but I suspect most people wouldn't.

Here's a picture of it packed for the trip today:

And here's a closer view of where the handle attaches to the bag:

The end o the handle on the right was just tilted toward the camera, its the same as the other one. 

That's about it for today, Harper College is closing early, and Robin doesn't want to slog home in the snow, so I'm off to get him in a few minutes.

Productive Weekend

The customer liked his pliers, sounds like he may be asking me to do more. 

Tax paperwork did get copied and mailed out last week.

I think I may lay claim to a little bit of our federal return and get a maker's stamp, which we've been thinking about doing for several years. Provided the possible resolution of house water pressure issues unpleasant noises the truck was making don't hoover it all up.

Still still waiting for the two reference books. Still within estimated delivery time frame, though.

Remember months ago when I was working on a bag for myself, kind of based on a cavalry Quartermaster's bag?  Well, it's only this (small amount) far from being done!  I was motivated to finish it by the annual floodplain managers' conference this week, which will be held in Bloomington-Normal. 

When last I left the bag, the main parts were sewn together, the flap needed to be cut to final length, and I'd decided that the flap needed a binding, as the outer and lining pieces had some alignment problems. It also needed a way to carry it, and tabs to buckle it shut.

I started by stuffing it full, as part of determining flap length. Turns out I made a bag of holding:

This picture shows all I had stuffed in there: A fleece blanket and a roomy sweatshirt of mine in the large pocket, and two iPads (mine and Robin's) in the front pocket. This picture also shows how flat it collapses to, thanks to my cleverly molded gussets. 

Saturday afternoon/evening I sewed the binding on. First pass right sides together, then I rolled it over and sewed it down again. Because of the mis-alignment of the two layers, the second, visible stitching is farther away from the binding than I usually do it on pouches, etc. This picture was taken with the bag empty, you can see the flap now only goes to the bottom  edge of the bag. Or, it would if you nudge it a little - it sat for a while folded over loosely and lopsided, it'll take a little time to forget that fold.

Here's the bag with the binding done. I also put a coat of tan dye on the tabs holding the buckles to the front, which I'd inexplicably made from leather that doesn't match either the dark brown on the flap and front pocket, or the london tan I used for the gussets.

Yesterday I made a handle. I'd planned from the start to make it easy to change handles/straps. I thought about making just short handle for this week, but decided for travelling to/from the conference I'd want to be able to put it over my shoulder, but I didn't want a full shoulder strap flopping around. The compromise is a handle that's long enough to go over my shoulder, but not too long. I got fancy and rolled and stitched the leather around a piece of rope to make a round.

After sewing, I trimmed the handle, then soaked and shaped it - so that it would be in about the right size/shape U, with the seam on top, and to put the twist in at the tabs where it hooks to the bag. The back of the bag extends up past the flap (which you can't actually see in any of the pictures), and has two slots in it. I stitched around the slots, too.

The only thing left to do is to do a little touch-up dyeing to the edges of the handle, and to sew two tabs on the inside of the flap so that I can buckle the bag shut. If I don't get the tabs on tonight its no big deal, but I think I'll probably have time (I also need to get some things done to get ready to leave tomorrow for the conference).

But wait, that's not all I did this weekend!  Yesterday I also cut out cartridge pouches! I did two different styles for rifle cartridges, which get shoulder straps (haven't cut the straps yet), and a smaller one that rides on the belt, for pistol cartridges. There's a lot of similar small fiddly bits, especially between the two bigger pouches, so with the exception of the two larger main body pieces, they're sorted into labeled zippy bags. 

Not sure if Ron will get as far as doing any further work on any of those, but he knows where the parts, patterns, and directions are.

 

Catching Up

I  got home Monday to find Ron sorting the non-2012-tax-paperwork. That job done we put things more-or-less away, and the 6' table was taken down. Yay!

Then Ron trimmed the last bits on the last pair of pliers, I dyed the edges of the leather, and sat down at the computer to print an invoice, shipping label, etc. Until Ron demanded I move, he needed to do something right NOW.

There were red and orange blinkie lights on the Drobo (multi-drive storage device). The Drobo holds 4 or 5 drives, and one of the original drives we put into it is/was failing. Not a problem, given the way the Drobo operates and immediately running successful backups, but Ron's a little twitchy since the time two drives failed simultaneously. 

After dinner I reminded Ron that I hadn't finished what I was doing on the computer, evicted him from the computer, finished up what I needed to for the pliers, and did the last couple bits of tax paper-pushing. 

The pliers went out in yesterday's mail. Here's a picture:

Snuck out of work a little early yesterday because of the weather, but still haven't gotten any cartridge pouches cut out. OTOH, I'm almost caught up on dishes, and even though I was hoping for a snow day today, I planned for having to go to work, boo, and put together tonight's dinner.

2011 tax paperwork and my laptop power cord are still missing.

On the up-side, the reproduction Colonial-era buckles and Civil War-era studs and buckles I ordered came in Monday, and yesterday I got a book I'd ordered, about uniforms, equipment, etc. of the US Army on the plains post Civil War. 

I'm about halfway through the Civil War cartridge pouch book, and have found a reference to thread color, at last, stating that black wax only is to be used on the thread. Trying to re-find a web site with a recipe for black wax, I tripped over information on dyeing leather black in that era, which was also interesting, but I'll natter more about later.

Yesterday I found the black wax reference. I had briefly considered making up some, but upon more sober reflection, I think not. The stuff is messy to make, and somewhat sticky to use. Besides making thread black, and probably helping waterproof seams, it was used to stick boar bristles to your thread, the bristles being used as needles. 

Still waiting for two more books I ordered for references. We have a biggish mail box, but given the weather this time of year I played it safe and had them shipped to work. 

Still need to photocopy and mail off the business taxes.

Don't know if I'll get leather cut out tonight. Have to stop and pick up dog food and also a PeaPod order. Depends if I go with Ron to the weekly Wednesday night kibbutzing at a local restaurant, or not.

Too Much To Do, Not Enough Weekend

Friday night I got 5 of the six pieces of leather sewn onto the pliers. Had a problem with one, had to cut a new piece of leather and mold it onto the handle. I meant to sew it Saturday or Sunday, but didn't get that far. Will finish them today, dammit, so I can send the pliers back to their owner in tomorrow's mail.

The plan for Saturday morning was to go out to breakfast, then return home and start working on taxes. It didn't quite work out. Instead we checked on how much vegetable-tanned leather we had in the right weight for cartridge pouches, then went to the Tandy/Leather Factory store and bought leather. I thought it was on sale for a pretty good price, but discovered upon arriving and re-reading the flyer that the sale didn't include leather that heavy.

They did have other leather on sale, in the right weight, and a price that wasn't quite as good as the other sale. I got Robin to check a catalog at home to confirm that it was still a good price. Some of it followed us home. So did some more studs, (still on sale), and dees that were on the clearance table. They're a style that work for satchels, and I had dees (and buckles) for satchels on my Otter shopping list. 

In the afternoon I started taxes, which actually meant making sure I'd rooted out all of the 2012 receipts and other paperwork, checking to make sure it was in the books, and metaphorically closing the books for the year. Closing the books consists mainly of making sure the summary tables are referencing/computing correctly, and declaring the job done.

We lost money. Whopping amounts of money, if you look at the amount of money that went out vs. the amount that came in. That's what happens when you buy a trailer, all the fittings for the trailer, Thing One and Thing Two, put wheels on the Things and buy bins to put in the Things, The Grinch and the bins to sort hardware in The Grinch, and a new handtruck. Plus yarn, displays for yarn and other things, and a bunch of new tooling tools for Ron, not to mention leather and hardware and other supplies.

Saturday I spent significant amounts of time pounding my head trying to figure out depreciation. With some help from Google, I think I got it. It made more sense after eating dinner, too. At first I was going to only depreciate the trailer, but I realized I can also include tax, title fees, etc., and added most of the fittings, all three road cases, the handtruck, and some other somewhat-related odds and ends. Doing all that meant that our loss for the year, as the IRS figures it, wasn't very big.

For 2011 we wrote off 10% of the things being depreciated. 2013-2016 we write off 20% each year, and the final 10% in 2017. Which means that we have to keep sales up, so that we don't lose money IRS-wise too often (if you don't make money 3 years out of 5, the activity is considered a hobby, not a business, which changes, and IIRC limits, what you can deduct). We had a whacking big lot of expenses in 2011 that I didn't roll into the pile being depreciated (in for a sheep, in for a lamb, with making capital investments last year) so I don't think it should be a problem.

Sunday morning, after finishing up the depreciation form, I went looking for the bundle of 2011 taxes and paperwork. Or the power cord for my laptop, which I think is the machine I did the 2011 taxes on. And looking, and looking, and looking. I found some 2011 receipts, and half of the power cord. Apple power cords are two-parters, a power cord and then a lighter-weight cable with the not-wall wart on one end and the cool magnetic connecter on the other. You can connect an iPad power wart to the laptop cord section, which I sometimes do to get some extra length for my iPad power.

The laptop battery is dead enough that it won't power up. I can't find the paper copies of the tax returns. Ron found the proper cables to connect the laptop hard drive to a USB port, but getting the drive out was going to require fairly heroic efforts, which I vetoed at that point. I'd hoped the power cord was at work, but no joy this morning.  

Fortunately, you don't actually need the previous year's return to do a 1040 (now that I've gone through the process again for the first time in mumble years, I realize that the amount of typing that importing the previous year's data into Turbo Tax saves you isn't that much), and the data I did need from the 2011 returns for the business taxes was on a form I'd filled out as a PDF and had saved a copy of on the desktop machine.

Anyway, the plan for Sunday originally was to spend the morning on taxes, and then the afternoon on other things.

Failed. At about lunchtime I was a good way through doing our personal taxes, which is usually the easy downhill slope of the slog. I did encounter a slowdown, in getting together data on how much we spent on textbooks for Robin and some donations, but the additions to our refund were worth the time. 

Lesson learned from the missing 2011 tax paperwork. All the supporting paperwork such as W2s and mortgage interest statements were scanned and saved. After printing a hard copy of the our personal tax returns, I saved printed them to a PDF, so we can look at them without TurboTax. I need to burn a copy of the pertinent directories to a CD or DVD and store it at one of our offices or send it to Ron's dad or mine as an off-site backup. 

Went for late lunch/early dinner at Toreo, then to Eurofresh for some groceries. I think we got home 4:30-5-ish. Still could have worked on cutting out cartridge pouches, but I decided I wasn't up to it, which was probably wise. I beat Ron in two games of cribbage, instead. Which is pretty surprising. Clearly luck was with me. 

Realized this morning that there's a couple more small things I need to do before I can copy and mail off the business tax forms, but nothing major/difficult, just dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. Not sure if I'll get them done tonight or not. Right now there's a 6-ft table in the living room covered with paperwork, which I've sworn will be cleared and taken down tonight. 

Current Project

The current project came from Military History Fest.

Covering the handles of pliers with leather for another vendor, Sheldon Pewter (lots of neat stuff!). 

It wasn't an issue at MHF, but at more serious re-enactment events the plastic grips on the handles of the needle-nose pliers he uses for, um, something to do with his business, are a problem. But if they're covered in leather, they don't stick out as modern things, and don't have to be kept hidden.

I've got three pairs. Covering them should be a straightforward process, which I started last night.  So lets step through it, shall we?

• Find pliers, which came home from MHF with us. I cleverly managed to not confuse them with any of our pairs.
• Find a nice piece of leather, in the scrap bin as it happens.
• Cut off a small chunk for testing.
• Proceed to splitter. 
• Discover that somebody didn't open the splitter back up after use. 
• Try to set the splitter to thinner setting. Encounter resistance.
• Discover leather scrap in splitter.
• Use own pair of pliers that live with sewing machine to extract leather from splitter.
• Split scrap to appropriate thickness, get wet, check mold-ability.
• Estimate length of leather needed.
• Cut off estimated length, split down, then cut into handle-sized pieces.
• Put leather in water to soak.
• Decide that rusting customer's pliers with wet leather would be A Bad Idea.
• Can't find precision drip bottle of light machine oil. Decide spray can (Ballistol) will work.
• Exercise forethought and find paper towel.
• Spray pliers. 
• Go wash a few dishes while leather soaks.
• Start trying to mold leather around first handle.
• Discover you used too much oil, which has spread itself to the grips (which were wiped off after spraying) and your hands.
• Wipe off excess oil.
• Hope the customer didn't want that dirt/minor rust that the oil removed.
• Come up with a Cunning Plan to deal with the ends of the handles.
• Use Stupid Amounts (tm) of binder clips to hold the leather in place.
• Proceed to pair #2. Grumble that these don't open up as wide.
• Decide there's no way you can bend space to get two binder clips in, find pinchy-clamp to hold leather from both sides at once.
• Look at third pair and ponder that you're probably not charging enough for this job.
• Third pair has handles made from flat stock, with chunky plastic grips.
• Form and stretch and apply binder clips.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.
• Decide that's the best you're going to get.
• Decide you'll figure out exactly how you're going to handle the top of the grips when it comes time to do the actual sewing.
• Do the second handle on pair #3.
• Take pictures.
• Realize that the camera phone can't handle the contrast between dark-ish leather and white paper towel background.
• Say to hell with it and go finish the dishes.
• Come back in the morning and try the picture thing again without the paper towel.
• Take a couple binder clips off one pair. Leather dry, but still a little bit of moisture on handle. 
• Replace binder clips.
• Feel very smug that this seems to be working out so far.
• Still debating how to handle the tops on pair #3.

So, here they are, all three pairs, with umpty binder clips holding the leather on (click to embiggen).

The first pair attacked are in the middle - open nice and wide, handles not too chunky. Pair #2, on the right, has chunkier handles, and that's about as wide as they open. Pair #2 is on the left. The top binder clips are actually above the ends of the plastic grips.

I'll probably trim above the grips before sewing, and then trim the excess leather close to the line of stitching after sewing. 

Historical Accuracy, and Schedule Note

Schedule:

We're confirmed for CodCon, the annual gaming convention at the College of DuPage, which has a significant attendance from LARP and Cosplay groups. Looking at the records for last year we sold . . . a little bit of everything.  Ok then.

Historically Accurate Stuff:

Our pouch designs are not historically accurate, they're creations of our (deranged) imaginations, and very few of them even have latches that appear accurate, with the possible exception of antler pegs and brass studs. This proved to be somewhat problematic at Military History Fest - I think we'd have sold more pouches, at least hard ones, if we'd had at least different latches.

So, one of the plans is to make more pouches that close with buckles or tabs over studs. That won't hurt for selling at SCA events, either.

Another consideration is making more documentable things, like cartridge pouches. Like these linked below that we made that are Civil War era: 
The black one has some hardware issues, and the brown one is pretty much a color fail, while sharing the hardware issues. OTOH, we made those because we could, not really thinking about authenticity at the time.

Civil War cartridge pouches were usually black, made out of leather that was in some cases only dyed on one side. The studs we used are passable, if not perfect, but the buckles should be black iron or japanned (a type of finish that I think is enamel) black.

I've found a source for buckles, and ordered some Monday, along with better studs in two styles. Unfortunately the guy only had one pair of buckles available, and was also out of out of the larger studs like you'd put on a cartridge box. Grumble, grumble, I want instant gratification, dammit!

I also ordered one each of three styles of Colonial-era buckles. Why only one of each? Because there were only pictures available of one style, so I'm going to see which I like best before ordering more.

So, back to cartridge pouches. I've been charging $90, including the shoulder strap (which I've also learned has a funky non-obvious but much nicer way of buckling onto the pouch). Some vendors at MHF had them in the $30 range, but Ron said they were pretty obviously cheap imports. Sewn with white thread. Now, to me, white thread on black leather is Just Wrong. 

So I started doing research. 

First up, to a Dover reprint of a pair of books on saddlery and harness making by a gentleman that worked in Britain pre-WWI, to find a discussion I remembered that wax with black goo in it was used to make thread black for sewing black saddlery (and shoes). 

Somewhere on-line, which I did not save and haven't gone hunting for again, I found a mention that you often see black in the recesses of the stitching, which to me and Ron supports the idea that the black wax has worn off of the white linen thread over the years. 

I've found, in one of the U.S. Army Ordnance Manuals and supplements I previously found while looking for cavalry equipment information, a list of supplies to be carried by a (mumble size unit) saddler, which includes a bunch of black wax. 

I also ordered a book, "Civil War Cartridge Boxes of the Union Infantryman" (why yes, I am both a nerd and a bibliophile, why do you ask?), ISBN: 0-91712-79-5. Unfortunately, all but the cover photos are black and white, so it's not exactly helpful on the color of the backside of the leather (is that dark because it was dyed black, or because the leather is old and dark brown?), and not definitive on thread color. Some pale, some dark. I'm skimming the text currently, but I'm afraid its quiet on the issue of thread color. 

If I can't find any mention there, I'll probably see if I can (e-) mail the author and ask.

What I have learned from the book so far, is that there were three main patterns of cartridge pouches, but there was a lot of variation even so, as they were produced by the Army itself by staff at least two different arsenals, and umpty contractors. Which led me to the statement that, if anybody ever tries to tell me that all cartridge boxes were thus-and-thus, I'm going to bludgeon them to death with my copy of the book. 

I've also poked on-line and looked at various photos, mostly of replicas by people said to be trustworthy by reenactment groups with more or less strict standards. Lots of white thread, also a fair number with black. (And my price isn't far too bad, it turns out)

None of the groups, however, mention thread color.

I'm leaning toward using black thread, since I can't find definitive evidence either way, and I trust my gut. All the leather I can buy already dyed black is dyed both front and back, so I'm waffling, but leaning toward dyeing vegetable-tanned leather on the grain side only.

Cleaning and Making Things

As I mentioned last time, the dining room was a complete disaster, with the icing on the cake being the stuff I evicted from the kitchen counters for the pre-Capricon baking binge (that would be the white box and other junk on the bench in front of the window).  The morbidly curious can click to embiggen.

Saturday morning I attacked the mess, with a lot of help from Robin.

Fortunately, cleanup ended up being mostly putting things away. Fabric and soft leather was packed into a couple-three empty bins. Small bits of leather were stowed in another bin. Larger rolls were put away. Empty boxes and other junk were thrown away. 

I even . . . threw away leather.  Craptatstic leather! A few years ago I ordered a lot (as in "assortment of stuff") of leather from a warehouse cleanout sale at a very cheap price, which turned out to be rather a lot (as in "large amounts") of junk. Shiny faux alligator in scary colors that looked more like plastic than leather, for instance. No, it was not worth trying to sell to somebody else. I finally realized it was time for it to GO. and it WENT. 

Unwrapping all the craptastic monstrosities did provide some hilarity to me and Robin at the time, but I can't honestly say I thought the money well spent. But that's water long under the bridge, and by now I'm pleased to have gotten it out of my work room. Its the first time I can think of that I've thrown out leather that wasn't down to scrap.

Here's a couple shots of the cleanup mostly-finished:

Look! Floor! Yeah, still needs to be vacuumned, but I can live with that. You can see the floor! Yes, the pile on the big sewing machine has actually grown. Some of that is things that need to be sewn, like leather for two satchels, a belt satchel that needs the binding on the flap, and hardware and new nylon strapping to make tie-downs for the various things in the trailer. 

A little later we went through the kitchen refugees on the bench and in the box. Which then led going through all the spices and seasonings (which live in the dining room, so it did make some sense). 

All in all, a fair bit of cleaning.

Sunday I cut out two new pouches, Civil War-era replicas of, IIRC, British accoutrements. I got them ready to sew together, have finished the sewing on one, and am about 3/4 of the way through sewing up the other - Ron and I had yesterday off for Presidents' Day. 

Yesterday I also, um, bought more leather. I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I've been trying not to buy leather I don't really need for the last few months, because we've got an awful lot of cows worth as it is. 

We went to the local Tandy/Leather Factory store mostly to get out of the house, with the secondary plan to get some more studs, which are on sale. Unfortunately, leather that was also part of the sale leaped, LEAPED I say, out and insisted I take it home. A nice shrunken-grain brown, and pretty london tan (gold) in softish leather. I'm a sucker for london tan. 

I did get the new leather put away neatly last night. That's worth something, right?

  

Back Again

Sorry, never did do any Military History Fest reporting. I'll see what I can do about that this week. 

This past weekend was Capricon, which started Thursday, and which I spent Wednesday baking for. (Xap and Ron ran the Capricon Cafe, I was Cafe staff). So last week consisted, effectively, of Monday and Tuesday.  MHF and Cap back-to-back with Maidens two weeks before MHF was not one of my more rational plans.

When last I posted I said I was going to do bookkeeping. I did that: I did may sales tax returns for 2012.  I also researched military cartridge/ammunition pouches. I might even get to the library today, to get a new library card, so I can Inter-Library Loan a book from another local library, that's a bit more pricey than I want to pay, even used.

Circling back to Capricon, yesterday I took a vacation day and was a vegetable. Today is a holiday for me and Robin. I'm slightly less vegetative today. I've posted 16 pouches to Etsy and ArtFire, and finally gotten wide and narrow ring belts up on ArtFire. Still need to add more belts both places, but this is significant progress.

I considered adding hanging pouches to the main Otter Necessities web site, then chickened out. 

The dining room has reached complete disaster status. It was bad enough, then I evicted a bunch of stuff from the kitchen counters to make room for the baking binge (18+ dozen scones, and a metric boatload of candied nuts), which ended up in the dining room. My plan is to attack it on Saturday. Don't I sound excited?

The living room is also a mess. If Ron and Robin don't attack it on Saturday, I'll probably declare Sunday time to clean the living room (although if we all work on it, it shoudn't take very long).

Military History Fest Report

The dark brown leather arrived Wednesday night. And then we didn't do anything with it Wednesday night.

Thursday night we made belts and packed up the bits and pieces than weren't still packed from Maidens. Ron had the trailer hooked up and out in the driveway by the time I got home, and Robin packed stuff into the truck and trailer. In the bitter cold. 

Friday morning was more bitter cold. Xap had some not-horribly-serious car trouble, but made it down to our place, and off we went. IIRC we got to Pheasant Run about 9:30...

...to discover that we did not have 2 pairs of tables back-to-back, because of the way the islands were laid out. Slight juggling of people within our island later, we had a hook around one end (1 table on one long side, 2 on the other, and the end table) of the island. And then we sent three of the four tables away. 

I put a wall-of-gridwall across the end, thinking we could make a walk-in section, so we could use the back of the gridwall for display. It ended up we didn't need to, which was good, as it would have gotten cramped for us otherwise. Interestingly, the Pheasant Run tables are only 24" wide - we're used to 6' and 8' tables being 30" wide. 

Friday was slow. Slow slow slow slow. Friday was free entry for veterans, so there were people wandering around, mostly older gentlemen. I don't think anybody was selling much, but at least there were people to say hello to. Only 1-2 sales from noon-7 pm did not make for an exciting day. There weren't even as many vehicles in the display area as we'd expected to go admire.

We were able to leave the truck and trailer parked at Pheasant Run, so we all packed into the Kia for the trip home, with a stop at Red Robin for dinner. 

Saturday hours were 9-6. Business was better, although not enough to convince us to do it again next year. I dropped a stitch in some lace knitting and had to pull back a bunch of rows to rescue it, but didn't have to completely frog my project, so I was happy. Unfortunately, I was also a zombie by the time we closed, having been awake since 3:30 am. Ordered pizza on the way home, and arrived just as the delivery guy was leaving the house. Perfect!

Sunday (10-2) was good enough that we discussed what to do differently next year.

One one side of us was a guy selling books, movies, and CDs. We got to listen to one movie over and over and over, the second DVD player got changed to different videos, and the CD player was pointing right at the center of our island and was TOO LOUD. After all Saturday of one set of military band music pieces that all sounded similar I had to listen to earworms to get the damn military band out of my head.

Sunday morning when I bought a book on German (mounted) cavalry in WWII I asked him to please keep it down. Good thing he agreed, or Betsey, the Gypsy Piper Girl (other women in our block), Xap, and I would probably have mobbed him. 

Other purchases: Pattern for a Victorian-era military coat, shoulder patches, and collar pins for Ron (Girl Genius Jaeger costume). Looked at a Russian navy hat for Robin, but called home and had him try on one of Ron's hats, fit of which meant the Russian hat wasn't going to fit. Bone knotting shuttle for Xap, which she proved could be used for tatting, rather confusing the lady at William Booth, Draper. Snicker. Other things admired, no Jaeger hat found for Ron, but got ideas. Lots of junk ignored. 

Probably more tomorrow, time to go do Otter bookkeeping, since I decided I had insufficient motivation to go to work between being tired and the crappy not-snow-plowing job on the roads.
 

Still Need Minions

Careening closer and closer to Military History Fest. Still many things to do. Still no minions. Where are my minions?!?  Having finally read "Girl Genius", I'd also be interested in Jaegers. 

Speaking of strong backs and weak minds, its a good thing Robin is coming to Military History Fest, as Ron slipped on ice at the bottom of the front steps Monday morning, fell, and is stiff and sore. 

I went through inventory last week, and determined that I really only need to make one (1) pouch (medium vertical soft, in black). I decided I could live without making any. I could also use to finish a few things that are partly or mostly done, but I don't think that's happening either. Yay for Stoopid Amounts of stock.

Do need to make belts, and even made a list of what we need to make. Hardware ordered on Friday, I have hopes that it will be in today. I could cut strips for 3 of the 4 colors we need, but have I? No.

4th color of leather, havana (dark brown) is on order. Second time ordering from a tannery. The first time, on January 2nd or 3rd, the leather didn't go out for several days, but all my suppliers had been hard to get hold of to order, so I thought it could be post-holiday rush.

But, being paranoid, I asked when the leather would ship when I ordered a week-ish ago (I forget if it was Tuesday or Wednesday). Well, the leather would need to dry (which implies they're shipping pretty much straight off the production line, not from a warehouse), hopefully it would go out last week. Checked the bank account today, charge is pending. Which may mean it didn't go out until today. Eep. 

It's only coming from Pennsylvania, so it could still arrive this week. Even if it arrives Friday night, because UPS doesn't come until late afternoon, I could still have belts for Saturday and Sunday. But arrival today or tomorrow would be less nerve-wracking, thankyouverymuch.

On the design front, I got the handout of Publications deadlines, etc. put together for the Windycon kickoff meeting, and started a similar one for MuseCon. 

Managed to squoosh the MuseCon grid to one page, thanks to the magic of a compressed font, and rather against expectations. Minor fiddling about with what is where may occur, but at this point the hard parts are done.

I think I've got all the fonts and paragraph styles figured out for this year's MuseCon book. This is not an insignificant achievement.

Adobe is pushing their new software licensing model, the "Creative Cloud"/monthly subscription fee, pretty hard. You can still buy a lump-sum license, but for some software (Lightroom being the one I noticed), there are features that you don't get. The "Creative Cloud" licensing also gets you rolling incremental updates. I'll natter more about that in another post, though, this one is long enough. 

Moving Right Along

I've removed the Ayreton Carnivale SCA event from the list of tentative events, as it seems to have morphed into a dance event in the last couple/few years, and there is no mention of merchants on the (minimal) web page for the event. February will be busy enough without it.

Last night we pried graphics out of the overall artwork the WindyCon flyer is based on, for use on the WindyCon website. 

Monday I worked a not-quite-Seekrit project related to a farther-future WindyCon. I'll probably consult with commission-er of project tonight. 

The MuseCon schedule grid goes live at Capricon, which starts two weeks from tomorrow. Now, considering that we also have Military History Fest between now and Capricon, that leaves me this weekend to create a print version of the grid and hopefully even a booklet or something with class descriptions. 


And only this weekend to maybe make more belt satchels and little tabbed pouches and stuff for Military History Fest. Erm. 

Yeah, good times.

Ron and I helped lay out (literally, I drew lines!) and populate the MuseCon grid on Saturday night. Considering that this was post-event, and would therefore most unequivocally require checking, I did not make any attempt whatsoever to remember anything, not even the bits I'm doing. 

Which reminds me, it would be cool if we could make Mama Snake up by Capricon. No, that's all I'm going to tell you about it. All will become clear eventually.

Last year's MuseCon program book pushed the limits of saddle stitch (fold and staple-ish) binding, and I don't think we're going to get any smaller this year, so the plan is to go to a spiral-wire binding. This means no nice continuous center spread for the Saturday grid. Saturday will have to go on two (facing) pages.

I have been doing the grid with rooms on the X-axis, and times on the Y-axis. Since splitting up Saturday at time breaks makes more sense than splitting the rooms across two pages, my plan is to reverse things, putting rooms on the X-axis and times on the Y.

Hmm. Thinking about it, I suspect I may end up putting Saturday on not two, but three pages. Which is Ok, because in addition to a page for Friday and a page for Sunday, we'll also have a page for drop-in things, which we'll have more of than just blinkies this year. But a page of the MuseCon book is only half a sheet of letter-size paper, so six pages is 3 sides of paper. So I'd have a side of paper free, and we could still do a schedule flyer, with two sheets. Or make a jumbo flyer folded cleverly up on 11 x 17. 

I probably should start figuring out my layout tonight, even if I don't have the full data to populate it - I already know how many rooms and what what our time slots are (same as last year), so if I can get that layout figured out, filling in the words should be the easy part.

Wheee!

I think I better get some Minions.

Catching Up

Now that I have a few functional brain cells again, let's try catching up.

Wednesday I cut strips for belts. Lots of them. Pippin kept trying to help, in the sense of "helping" being "sitting on the leather behind me" and then "making his disapproving dog face when I made him move". 

By the time I got home Thursday Ron and Robin had put hardware on the belts. Yay! We then went to Red Robin for dinner, stopped at the grocery store so Robin had food for the weekend, then came home and tempted fate by doing some laundry and going to bed.

Friday morning started out with panic when I realized that I'd made our hotel reservation at the site (the Illini Union) for Saturday and Sunday nights, not Friday and Saturday, and they were full up for Friday. Fortunately, there was space at another motel nearby. That excitement over, we packed personal stuff, I got all the new pouches tagged and into the inventory listing (without figuring out costs), packed Otter stuff, and packed the truck and trailer.

We left home sometime around noon, plus or minus a half hour or so. The trip down was windy, the Cracker Barrel in Tinley Park was slow and the food almost cold, and the trip otherwise uneventful.

Arrived at the site at 7:30, when the room opened, and found no merchant coordinator. Another pair of merchants were there, and from the sketch we'd been e-mailed we managed to find our spots. For a while, because I had the sketch handy, I got to play merchant coordinator. Which is how I found out there were more problems with the room layout than the traffic flow issues we'd already seen on the room layout. Then the real coordinator arrived and things didn't get any better. 

First up, 4' and 5' aisles are not wide enough.  Second, there was no provision for rational traffic flow. Unless drunken lab mice are the new standard for "rational".  Spaces were not as expected. Most of it boiled down, IMO, to trying to cram as many merchants as possible in, instead of laying out the space then saying "done" when it was full.

Our particular issues started with having to move a foot to the west. Fortunately, I didn't have any tablecloths going across two tables, and belts weren't up yet, so it was annoying but not difficult. We thought we were going to have access to three sides of our spot. We did, but not the three sides we planned, which didn't become obvious until we were halfway set up. To deal with that we had to move a table from one end of our space to the other. Fortunately, that table was mostly empty at that point. Ideally we'd have flipped the whole layout 180 degrees, but when we discovered that issue Xap already had most of the belts out, so we called it too much work. 

The layout worked in the end. Business was good, up a bit from last year. Ron got good parking spots for both the truck and trailer (last year he was able to park the trailer at the building, but had to park the truck a few blocks away).  Tasty lunch was obtained from the food court in the building, although the crepe place was out of bananas, so I only had Nutella in my crepe (simply tragic). Xap was recognized by someone who appreciates good sushi by the sushi chef, and fed accordingly. A customer paid us for sewing a button on with yummy yummy meat snacks. The fighting was predictably NOISY. 

We didn't escape from our fellow merchants unscathed. We were next to people selling fabric. Some very nice scarlet red wool followed us home to become a Girl-Genius Jaeger-esqe steampunkish outfit. I'll natter more about that on my personal blog. Soonish.

Feast was at 7 pm, at a different site, so that's when the room closed. We retired to our room, ate pizza, and worked on the MuseCon grid.

We were told last week that we could tear down Sunday morning between 10 and noon. Saturday afternoon we double-checked that this was still true. Sunday morning we arrived at the room about 9 am (because it's not being paranoid when event organization is, um, lacking), and waited around for the room to open, which happened just about 10:00 for a regional fighter practice.

The person in charge of the fighter practice didn't know merchants had been told they could tear down Sunday morning. See paranthetical note above. Most of the other merchants had torn down Saturday night, so it was only us and Calontir Trim, and there weren't so many fighters that it became an issue by the time we were out of the room, about an hour after we started packing up.

The trip home was uneventful. Pippin very noisily told us how mean we were for leaving him, then proceeded to punish Ron and I by ignoring us and being Robin's buddy for a little while. We were wondering how he'd react, as he's my dog, and I haven't disappeared for more than a long-ish day before. 

New Hardware Displays

Wow, that's a fairly crummy picture of Robin with the new hardware displays. Click to embiggen . . . although it looks better small. 

The little light-colored tabs sticking out have the prices written on them. There is some organization, they pretty much go from the largest (width-wise) hardware on the bottom of the strap on the left, get bigger going up and moving over to the right-hand strap. For any given width the buckles are below the dees, mostly - there was one dee that got out of order, and there's a one-inch buckle to add to the top of the narrower strap.

As expected, got nothing to speak of done last night. Did finish the last hanging pouch today at lunchtime. 

Mondays, Bleah

What fool said they were going to try to get something done last night? Oh yeah, me.  I should know better than to try to make plans to accomplish things on Mondays. Even when I should, because I have a meeting tonight.

Sorry, didn't get pictures of the new hardware displays, or even get hanging sorted on them. 

Nor did I make belts. This morning Ron fetched the belts for the order we get yesterday from the trailer, so they did get packed and mailed out. Note to self, add those belts to list of what I need to make.

Also discovered that you can't do media mail (for something else) postage on-line, you have to take it to the Post Office. Grumble. Maybe tomorrow on the way home I'll take care of that. 

On the good side, the lace I ordered arrived yesterday, before I ran out of black. 

Waffling between taking a half-day or full day off Friday for prep and travel for Maidens. Leaning toward a full day, for sanity's sake. See above about last night and tonight. Related to that is waiting to find out what's up at work with training tentatively scheduled for the week between Military History Fest and Capricon.

Things Accomplished, Mostly

Big pile of sporrans, belt satchels, and little tabbed pouches done. A couple still left in the dining room, which probably won't be done for Maidens, nor will the leather satchels.

6 out of 7 "hanging" hard pouches are done, the last one is down to lacing about halfway around (an hour's work or less).

Swivels sewn onto 3 of the 6 tails yesterday, quit when my hands got tired.

Saturday evening and Sunday morning we made new hardware displays, for all the buckles and dees, which includes (changeable) tabs with prices for each. It was a slow, tedious process, but needed to be done. I'll try to get pictures tonight. Still need to finish them off, by figuring out how we're going to hang them up.

Got leather from new supplier. I got a side of a golden brown, which is a little darker than what I've been getting, but I think will be fine. I also got two bellies in black and two in brown, and a set of samples of all their leather.

The hardware display used up one of the brown bellies, and a strip out of the other. This is not a problem, making the displays let us find out how it cuts and splits in thickness (nicely), and it was also very inexpensive leather (but good quality).

Went to the local Leather Factory store Saturday morning. The intention was to make a commando shopping run just for some chicago screws to make the hardware displays. Fail on that front, but we've had worse fails.

Need to make belts for Maidens, and I got an Etsy order this morning for colors I'm going to be making anyway. I suppose I could go out to The Grinch, dig out the belts for the order, then make replacements. There are arguments for going that route, or for just making and sending out new belts, we'll see what we end up doing.

Need to get the new pouches tagged, and all the new stuff into inventory.  Before Friday. Whee!

Getting Better, Still Productive

Getting over whatever Ron and I had. Not sure if Robin has/had it, but suspect so.

Wednesday and Thursday I ordered leather; some more leather, thread, and other odds and ends; lace; and rotary latches. Friday I stayed home again, and spent a good half the day doing work-work, succeeded in not dropping my book in the tub when I repeatedly dozed off, and got nothing Otter-ish done. I didn't even open the package from the fur supplier to pet the new tails.

I did open the tails on Saturday, after having Robin fetch a Rubbermaid bin to stow them (and finished pouches) in. Pippin demonstrated the wisdom of that precaution by wanting to be very helpful.

Saturday afternoon and yesterday I worked on all the sporrans, little tabbed pouches, and belt satchels. I've got, IIRC, 14 of them almost-almost done, needing just the half of the latches or stud that go on the flap. Two more bright blue ones I think I'm going to do the final top-stitching on in bright blue; that and latches/studs are all that's left on those. That leaves two leather satchels from the cutting-out binge, and one weekend between now and Maidens.

OTOH, I also need to make a new hardware display (or two), hand-sew swivels on tails, get all the new stuff tagged and into inventory, and I keep meaning to update the price list from a spreadsheet to a nice e-book document.  And bracers. We need more bracers. So, not sure if I'll do the satchels or not. Leaning toward doing them, though.

I was going to get Ron's help on the hardware display yesterday, but he scampered off to do not-Otter things, and when he got home I was ready to be done for the day. Both Saturday and Sunday I was also distracted a bit by a MuseCon thing.

Although I'm feeling better in general, I'm still tired today. Woke up for a call of nature in the wee hours, and was awake for an hour or more. Once kinda nice thing about being sick was that when I went to bed I'd fall asleep almost instantly, and sleep soundly, so I suppose not-sleeping is a sign of getting better. Or sleeping in too late yesterday morning. Or maybe just too many covers.

Sick, Tired, and Productive

If I'm not too sick, I can be fairly productive. This weekend, for example. 

Last week Ron was suffering from being very tired, sore throat, and spiking fevers, with some bonus digestive upset. I think it's flu. And it's still hanging on for him. 

Sunday I think I was starting to live in Denial (not just a river in Egypt!). But I wasn't feeling too bad, and got the seven hanging hard pouches ready to lace the fronts on (final step, see last week's blog entry), and finished two of them.
Monday I got up and got ready and tried to go to work. And my digestive system said no, I was not getting out of range of the bathroom. After changing to scroungy clothes I moped out to the dining room.


I started with my prototype for a small satchel. Which looks shockingly like . . . a soft leather purse! What a surprise. And then there's the fact that I put the back and back pocket on inside-out, so when you turn the bag so the seams are on the inside, the suedy side of the back and flap are out, and the pocket is on the outside. Ron says its a fashionable feature, not a bug, and I should put the binding on the flap and say I meant to do that.  :)

I was a little discouraged, so I started doing fiddly bits (belt loops, hems, etc.) on the belt satchels and sporrans to be sewn in black, because I was pretty sure I wouldn't mess those up. And when I finished all those fiddly bits, I started in on the fiddly bits on the ones to be done in brown, and little tabbed pouches.

By the time I finished, all the sporrans, belt satchels, and little tabbed pouches had all the fiddly bits done, including little ticky-marks at centers to make lining pieces up easier. Not an insignificant amount of work. That's something like 17 pouches ready to be assembled. There's two weekends between now and Maidens, I think we can probably get most of them done, maybe all of them, and maybe the two satchels, too.

Then Ron took me out for a very boring but yummy broiled burger (no cheese, no mayo, just grilled meat on a bun, as demanded by my tummy). On the way to GFS I had a massive sneezing fit, and when I finished I had a sore throat and had no energy. Apparently I sneezed myself sick, and spent the rest of the day pretty much as a lump.

Yesterday morning I reconciled belt inventory with the count Xap did at the last event, decided what leather to order from where, and ordered some more tails.

About mid-day I wandered out to the dining room, wandered back to the living room with some forgotten black soft-ish leather in hand, and got Robin's help cutting strips the right width for the small square soft-ish pouches we need more of. I ended up cutting out seven of them. And getting them all ready to lace up.

Ron pointed out that the reason I could do all these things is that they don't require lots of energy - mostly I sit in one chair or the other, at the sewing machine or one of the two workbenches. Most of the work is with my hands, and its pretty much autopilot for me. And it keeps me awake - any time the last couple-three days I stopped working on stuff I crashed. 

And I think that's enough rambling natter for now.

Christmas Weekend Accomplishments

I got things done this weekend! Yay! 

Friday I declared myself insufficiently motivated to leave the house, so I stayed home and plugged away on the books. I got all the purchases/receipts I had in the main stack-o-paperwork sorted and into the books, including scanning several that are on the thermal paper that fades. Realized I'm missing the receipt for Thing2, and probably a couple/few other things, but I have ideas on where to look. 

Friday afternoon/evening I cut out black leather belt satchels and sporrans. I now have just shy of 20 soft leather satchels/pouches cut out.

Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday were spent on things like watching the first three episodes of "Wallender", grocery shopping, other shopping that one might or might not define as Christmas shopping, playing music, and lazy slug-liness. 

Monday and Tuesday - yes, I worked on Otter stuff on Christmas day - Ron waxed a half-dozen pouch fronts, I cut out 7 backs and flaps to make those hard pouch fronts and another one hanging pouches. Then we got the flaps marked and punched for lacing up. 

The steps in putting together a hanging pouch with a hard front are, roughly:

• Cut out all the bits and pieces
• Do all the fiddly bits on the flap and lace around the flap
• Sew flap and belt loops onto back
• Glue fronts onto backs and do fiddly bits
• Peel front off of back and do other fiddly bits
• Lace front onto back

Hmm. It must have been Monday that I cut a couple/few bellies and other odd bits of leather down into piles of:

• Belt loops
• Straps for sporran-hanging dees
• Rolled-edge bindings

Meanwhile, Ron and Robin made Chex Mix and Muddy Buddies. Yum. 

The nice thing is making all those pieces reduced the surplus population of leather in the dining room. I actually found a chunk of FLOOR!

In addition to all that, yesterday we went to say Les Miserables and with much assistance from Robin I made a turkey dinner with all the stereotypically Thanksgiving-ish trimmings, with the substitution of steamed pudding for pumpkin pies. 

Not surprisingly, in 20-20 hindsight, I was a zombie by bedtime last night. 

Pouches Pouches Pouches!

Yesterday morning we went to The Leather Factory for . . . wait for it . . . leather. Whodathunkit? I'd gotten a flyer that listed, among others, vegetable tanned leather, about the right weight for hard pouch fronts, which we need.

They didn't have any, but the manager said he'd sell me some other leather, a bit heavier than what was on sale but the weight I prefer, for the same price. I took two sides (half-cows).

Then the people unpacking a new shipment dumped two boxes of new stuff into the "scrap" bin. A bunch of it followed me home. All heavy garment/upholstery weight.

I cut out pouches today. A whole bunch of pouches.

I started out with fronts for hard pouches, 14 of them. Three of them were thoroughly wet down and are now casing, prior to molding. We'll probably do that after dinner. That pretty much used up one of the two sides we got yesterday.

Then I started in on the soft leather.

Out of a nice dark burgundy with what looks like shiny water spots I got a satchel, a belt satchel, a sporran, and a small tabbed pouch. I was a bit surprised to get that much out of that leather, and still have some left. I think they'll look best trimmed in black.

I cut one belt satchel out of an off-white/pale flesh color, but I have a bunch of that left. I think I'll trim those in chestnut (red brown), which looked nice on some other light-colored leather I made small tabbed pouches out of.

A sporran, belt satchel, and small tabbed pouch out of a pretty dark teal. Not sure what color to trim that in, probably black.

And out of a bit thicker medium brown, a sporran and a small tabbed soft pouch. I think I'll trim them in havana (dark brown).

Then I moved on to some bright blue I got about a year ago. Out of that I got a satchel, a belt satchel, a sporran, and parts for two small tabbed pouches. The bigger pouches are all blue, and I'll probably trim them with black. The small tabbed pouches will be blue and black. One is blue except for the gusset, the other just has a blue front. That one is done now and goes out in the mail tomorrow, it was ordered at Boar's Head.

I still need to cut out some black belt satchels and another sporran or few, but I decided that I'd done enough already. Or maybe I'll do some more after dinner.

Ron's been honing the big blade for the splitter. I've been having some trouble splitting things (thickness-wise) lately, and assumed it was because the blade was dull. Ron says it wasn't too bad, so it may also have needed adjustment, which will essentially happen when he puts it back in.