Nicole Alderman

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:

Nicole Alderman wrote:This "Marshmallow Baby" doll was mine when I little, so it's something like 35 years old at this point. I passed it down to my daughter, who loves it a lot. But, it's nose fabric was getting worn away, and my daughter was really distressed.

I guess that means it's time to finally learn how to mend knit things!

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I hope my daughter approves (she's sleeping right now). But, I feel okay with the mending of my favorite childhood doll, so hopefully she will, too. Either way, I finally learned how to embroider and mend knit things, so that's a huge plus!

Hi Nicole,
you forgot to hit the button to submit this as a BB. I would like to approve it!

Thank you! I guess posting BBs after midnight can result in some errors... like not pushing the right button. My daughter is happy with the repairs, though!

This "Marshmallow Baby" doll was mine when I little, so it's something like 35 years old at this point. I passed it down to my daughter, who loves it a lot. But, it's nose fabric was getting worn away, and my daughter was really distressed.

I guess that means it's time to finally learn how to mend knit things!

I first tried using this video:



I found the video quite confusing, and realized that there is still thin stitches to follow, so maybe duplicate embroidery would be a lot easier.

I tried following the video, but didn't get much farther than securing the stitches.

I switched to following this video:



That made a lot more sense. I made a row, and my daughter came over to see it, and was rather concerned at the contrast between the new stitches and the old fabric. So I tried to round it out, so it'd look like she had a little white nose. It's not perfect, but I think it'll do (especially once we either (A) wash the doll's face, or (B) stain the nose a little)

First row of stitches. I used a thick cotton thread that was a little stained.

Trying to round-out the mending stitches so it looks more natural. I removed the strings at the top and bottom, since they weren't necessary and my daughter was disturbed by them.

Nose is fixed! It's not beautiful, but I think it'll blend in after time, and it could be a lot worse.

I hope my daughter approves (she's sleeping right now). But, I feel okay with the mending of my favorite childhood doll, so hopefully she will, too. Either way, I finally learned how to embroider and mend knit things, so that's a huge plus!

I re-uploaded the Viking edition worksheets (both Word and PDF) because a few of the runs were weird (I used the "Elder Futhark" font, and if you capitalize a letter, you get a different rune. So, "Longship" and "Vineland" ended up weird because I'd accidently capitalized the letter!). I think I caught and fixed all of the errors.

Yay!!! I'm glad it's helpful for you, and I hope the kids have so much fun writing in runes!

I always like to tell the kids how runes are shaped the way they are because they were carved--carving curvy lines is hard! It's really fascinating seeing how different writing systems look different because of what they were written with and written on. Another example of this is cuneiform. Cuneiform was used in Mesopotamia and was written on clay with reeds (both of which are abundant there). Since it's hard to write "normally" in clay, they impressed their reeds into the clay to form symbols and letters--cuneiform literally means "wedge shaped," because it's made by a bunch of wedges!  

I'll be teaching Medieval History again at my kids' homeschool co-op, and it reminded me of these worksheets I'd made the last time I taught it.

Three years ago, we carvedrunes into soapstone sticks.

The kids carved designs, too

You can also carve these soapstone welding sticks as plant ID lables

I knew some kids would finish before others, so I made a little worksheet that has (A) coloring pages and (B) questions about medieval history with the answers written in runes. Since my students are K-8 of various abilities and interests, I figured some might color, and others might attempt some/all of the questions.

When we learned about wattle and daub, I made another worksheet with runes to decode...because, why not?

First page of the rune decoding worksheet. The resolution is a lot less in this format. You probably want to download either the Word or PDF formats below.

We have cast iron pans, but I basically only use them when I'm cooking on my woodstove. I just don't like cleaning them.

The rest of my pots and pans are all random stainless steel (and maybe one carbon steel) things we picked up from thrift stores. I like stainless steal because I can throw it in the dishwasher if I need to. And, now that I know to heat up and butter the pan before putting food in it, I rarely have anything stick to it.

I look for steal pans and pots that have thick bottoms for heat retention. Though, my wrists appreciate the ones with thinner bottoms.

For baking, I use pyrex 9x9 and 9x18 inch dishes. I bake my paleo bread in it, as well as custards and brownies and corn bread. Sometimes I use pyrex pie pans. I look at thrift stores for these things!

This year, I'm teaching Hands-On Medieval History at my kids' homeschool co-op. I would like the kids to make their own fancy medieval letters/documents, complete with seals. (See thread on making the sealing wax).

I like for my history students to learn as many historical skills as possible, and to do them as historically accurately as possible. Since my classes are only 50 minutes long, and I have students ranging from 5 to 15, I sometimes have to lower my bar. But, I want it as high as I can get it!

I really want my kids to do some metal working. Years back, I bought some metal stamps and pewter disks for the kids to design their own coin. This was a lot of fun for them!  I thought, "I wonder if we could make seal stamps the same way?"

My very limited metal working supplies, some coins the kids made, and a stamp I made the same way.

Close up of the pewter stamp and the wax imprint from it

My issues are these:

(A) Using only metal stamps is really limited! There's only so many designs you can make. I used a nail to make a heart design, but it's pretty jonky and annoying. Is there another way to carve/work the pewter disks so the kids can make whatever design they want?

(B) The disk by itself is pretty cool, but it'd be a lot neater if it had a handle, or even a little button loop. Is there a way the kids could add something to the back of these to make them more like stamps? Maybe there's a way they could sculpt their own backs?

Medieval seal matrixes (stamps) don't look like the modern, long-handled stamps that we usually envision, or even rings. They were usually worn on a cord around the neck

Sometimes they had short little handles.

Sometimes

I'm thinking the kids would rather have ones with cool handles, rather than just a loop.

Now, maybe there isn't a way to carve the metal. Maybe I should try to get soapstone instead? (There were some soapstone seal stamps, but most were metal). I definetly want to do soapstone carving this year (but, I'm hoping to do it with pewter casting, but that might not be feasible).

Ideas for the seal back/handle:

• Maybe for the back of the seal, the kids make it out of some non-historical material, like sculpy clay, and we just glue it to the pewter disk? What glue to use?
• My husband said maybe making it out of something like JB weld? Is that okay for kids to handle?
• Maybe I just get fat dowels and they glue it to the dowel? What glue to use?
• None of these seem good. Do you have any ideas?

I haven't noticed any smell from the sealing wax sold by Townsends. I bought two stamps and some sealing wax sticks from them 5 years ago when I first taught "early modern history." (I enjoy how teaching history gives me justification to buy all sorts of cool stuff I wouldn't otherwise). The Townsends wax is a nice hard wax and doesn't smell plasticky at all.

It is super fun mixing my own colors of wax, though! The damar resin + beeswax wax does pop off of paper with a little effort, but it doesn't fall off accidently like the Stockmar modeling wax that my daughter tried to make seal out of years ago.

I need to start a thread about making the seal stamp matrixes themselves! I have ideas, but I'm not sure how to give the stamps handles... (Edit: Thread made)

It made all the difference in the world! I used some super old olive oil I had lying around (we cook with butter, so haven't used olive oil in a long time.) I gave it a light coating of oil with my finger.

I tried it first on cold wax. Nice imprint, came off the stamp easily. I pushed really hard, and none of it stuck to the stamp.

Then I warmed up some other wax and gave it a go. This time, the stamp was less oily (I smeared what remained from the previous stamping, to make sure there was some all over it). Then I stamped with warm (but not super soft, because I didn't want to work it that long) wax. It came off nicely, too!

Below are pictures. The teal wax was cold, and the purple was warm. I struggled to get decent picture with my camera, so there's two pictures of each stamping. The warm wax gave a much better imprint, which is good, because the students will likely be mixing their own colors of wax, so it'll be warm when they stamp it.

I'll give it a try! I through about dusting the seal, but the dust would probably just work right into the wax, just like the dry pigment did.