A crafty lifestyle blog
Catskill Mountain Moccasins suggests that you store their leather boots hanging up, so that the leather can breathe and last longer. I have no idea the validity of this concept (that letting leather have more contact with air will lengthen its lifespan), but it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. The alternative is to let
A more complicated shoe repair! My knee-high Catskill Mountain Moccasins are my babies – they are the fourth most expensive thing I own, after my sewing machine, laptop, and car, and worth every penny. They are incredibly comfortable, being custom-fit to my feet and legs. They are my fencing boots, general SCA shoes, and also just all
I have a fume hood!!! And it works, for the most part! This is so exciting for me. As a leatherworker, I sometimes work with methods or materials I shouldn’t be breathing. A lot of leather glues, like barge cement, are not good to be inhaled and are denser than air, so can hover around
Random nerd squee first: Dominion has a new expansion and it’s coming out in just a few weeks!!! Dominion Strategy has previews of several of the new cards. Woo! Now on to your regularly scheduled blog post! This post is just about a couple gifts I’ve made. Above is a simple leather circlet (an SCA
Neck Coolers make awesome gifts, largesse, and site tokens for people in the SCA – or really, any other group that spends a lot of time outside in the hot summer sun, especially when mixed with exertion (armored combat, rapier combat, archery, equestrian, Habitat for Humanity/volunteering organizations…). What is a neck cooler? It’s a long
I made two custom guitar straps last week! Ever have that most beloved piece of equipment that is falling apart, and you just can’t find the suitable replacement? Having it custom made will solve that problem. Bill’s favorite guitar strap was perfect: the curve fit over his shoulder and around his body at just the
Another shoe repair! This one had some serious damage to one of the heels. As you can see, the right heel was completely worn through. Not only that, but it was worn through where it touched the ground. This required more than a simple patch. I added patches of strong black leather to the back,
I’ve been using these as my rapier gloves for over four years now. In fact, these gloves are the very first piece of rapier gear I made. I didn’t realize that making your own gloves was odd until I showed up with them and everyone started oohing and aahing – it just seemed like a
I have shown many examples of my pick-up weaves on this site, but all of them have been in the baltic (basketweave) style. There are many different kinds of pick-up weaving, though I’ve only tried three of them. This post is on another version of pick-up inkle weaving: alternating pick-up, which I sometimes just refer