Canterbury Faire

Canterbury Faire was absolutely wonderful. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it turned out to be the most enjoyable event I’ve been to in ages. It was just what I needed. A good boost of “this is what the SCA is really all about”.

I have photos from our trip up on Flickr here, but we forgot to take photos for the most part so the collection is somewhat biased towards hedgehogs and yurts.

So what was cool about Canterbury Faire? On the A&S front, SHOES! I know I have a thing about period shoes, but there were a) lots of period shoes at CF and b) people who like making period shoes. I got to meet two fellow shoe aficionados in William de Wyke and Master Llewelyn ap Daffyd and happily set my brain to “sponge” to absorb as much info about shoe construction as possible. I’ve come to shoe construction from the costuming angle so I hadn’t really grasped the intricacies of how leather behaves and some of the stitching techniques and materials I’d seen in diagrams made not much sense to me.

I now have all kinds of info about how the tanning method affects the stretchiness of leather, what sort of the thread to use, how to make that thread using linen and a ball of gunk, why beeswax is your friend for watertight seams, how the whole boars bristle/fishing line thing works for tunnel stitching, how to awl holes for tunnel stitching, why mirror polished awls are your friend.

I had my new calcei pieces with me, with the intent of stitching them up at CF. I got one done, but the toe area just wouldn’t turn out, despite wetting the leather. William and I spent some time pondering what we could do. Turns out the leather I’d used was chrome tanned, hence the lack of stretchiness when wet. We looked at the stitching. William suggested that the seam might work better with a different stitching method, which I thought sounded interesting so next thing you know the scissors are out and the seam is being cut open. Master Llewelyn walked past at that point and advised that while there is the myth of “Mistress Laurel Seam-Checker” that one did not in fact have to open up other people’s seams and re-sew them in order to be considered as a future candidate. All in good fun. I think the new seam possibly works better. I need to find some more information about how the roman calcei were done up. I’ve always done a criss-cross lacing out of habit rather than any evidence that this was how it was done.

I’m going to the UK in July to visit Dr Krys in York and will also take the opportunity to go up to Vindolanda and look at their shoe finds. The photos are nice, but I really want to get up close and look at how the seams are done.

A number of us “shoe-folk” ended up talking about forming a Guild of Cordwainers and Cobblers to promote period footwear. Until Canterbury Faire I didn’t know the difference between a Cordwainer and a Cobbler. Now I do. Cordwainers made shoes from new leather. Cobblers were only allowed to repair shoes using leather from old shoes (hence the phrasing “cobbling” something together). I'm looking forward to the new Guild.

So on the "to-do" list of shoemaking for me is:
- figuring out how to make lasts (wooden models which allow you to stretch and fit a shoe around), which is something I’ll be enlisting the aid of Mr B for in the future. Once you've got a last, making shoes becomes a whole lot easier and you can swap lasts with other people and make shoes for each other.
- Making my own waxed linen thread using dry spun linen and a ball of gunk (which I'm hoping Miss D managed to smuggle back into Australia). I need to get the recipe to make my own ball of gunk.
- Learning to attached the thread to a bit of fishing line so I can do tunnel stitching.
- Do some non-Roman shoes, like the 16th Century Hollandish ones I did the pattern for but haven't put together yet.