Bachelor of...Science?!

There. Now I have my degree. I was a little surprised to learn it's actually a B. Sc., but I suppose it's because of all the technical texile stuff and the handweaving. I'm happy it's finally over, anyway! With the archaeology and everything else, I've studied for a total of 7 years now! And that doesn't include the two years I spent doing textile arts and crafts at Löftadalens folkhögskola... I'm beginning to wonder if I'm fit to do anything other than studying...

My friends told me I should take some time off now to relax and not fiddle around with threads and boring, brown archaeolgical textiles for a while. But...fiddling around with threads is what I always do, even in my spare time, and I love boring, brown archaeological textiles!!! So I ignored them and went to Copenhagen yesterday to look at "Eric of Pomerania's Belt" again... My thesis is finished (and will eventually be available on the web through the University College of Borås's academic database BADA), but now I have a proposal for a conference paper and a couple of articles to write! So I thought it would be nice to see the good old girdle again and to verify a few things before I get started on those...

Here's me with Eric of Pomerania's Belt and one of my samples in the background. I thought the National Museum wouldn't mind me posting this picture here since you can hardly see the actual girdle. It could be any old ribbon, really... ;-)!

The work of days and hands...

I handed in my thesis this week!

It ended up being part archaeolgical report, part something else. There's so much more I would have liked to put into to it. I had to cut 1 page of background, which means there's no historical overview of medieval girdles in it anymore. But at least it's finished and on Monday I'm going to present my work to the graduation people and defend my thesis... Then I'm going to sleep for a week...

So many threads, so little time...

My first full-scale trial piece of the "Eric of Pomerania's Belt"-weave is progressing slowly and I'm reasonably happy with it. The cheap spun silk I'm using as a substitute for the more appropriate reeled silk is a bit fuzzy and the fake gold thread doesn't cover the background very well, but otherwise it's working. I had a hard time pulling the weft tight enough to get the band down to the correct width today (approximately 3 cm). There are over 100 threads/cm and although the edges are nice and tight, the threads in the middle still look a little too spaced-out. But they do that in the original too, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it...

Here's a close-up of today's work. Remember it's only 3 cm wide!

Bachelor's Thesis Angst

I'm analysing the so-called "Eric of Pomerania's Belt" kept at the National Museum of Denmark for my bachelor's degree in handweaing. It's an extremely well-preserved silk girdle dated to the 14th century with a very complex weave. It's wonderful, fascinating work and I should be loving every minute of it. And I am. It's just that it's also incredibly slow work and I only have one month left before everything has to be finished..

The archaeologist in me wants to do a proper report with lots of background research and comparative material, but the powers that be at the University College of Borås where I study are more into textile design and product development so I'm worried that an archaeological/historical type of thesis like mine will meet with puzzled incomprehension. I won't have a designed product or a textile artwork at the end of this like my classmates; I will have a tiny woven sample the size of a bookmark if I'm lucky and spend my nights weaving instead of sleeping! I just hope I'll be able to make them see all the work behind it... Just figuring out the weave took me almost a month and several weaving experiments!