A Happy Frob

The brooch and beads, on the white wool for the shift.

I'd meant to spend January making the "foundation" garment for my early Norwegian and völva outfits--a long, white wool tunic.  January started busy, but I figured that I'd have plenty of time to start the project on Martin Luther King Day weekend (i.e., the weekend of the third Monday of January, which this year was January 17-19; MLK Day is a national holiday in the U.S.).

Unfortunately, I got sick on the evening of January 17, with chills and fever, and my improvement was very slow.  Part of the problem for my doctor was figuring out what illness I had.  Was it influenza, or strep throat, or both?   I ended up taking antiviral medication until the strep throat culture test came back, finally, on Friday.  It was positive, so now I'm finally taking antibiotics. The net result is that I've gotten very little done over the past week, and am rapidly running out of January time in which to start (let alone complete) the tunic.

So I'll work on the tunic later (possibly for the Historical Sew Monthly challenge "Re-Do"). Yesterday, I cheered myself up by finishing a small frob that is to be part of the Norwegian costume. As the photograph shows, this consists of a large brooch that is a reproduction of one of the Bornholm grave brooches, with a swag of beads to hang from it.  It was surprisingly hard to figure out how to determine the length of the swag so it would lie flat, and probably I'll have to redo it at some point.  However, I managed to obtain a good combination of generic glass pony beads and pre-Viking age reproduction beads appropriate to the 8th century CE (the period of my planned costume), and just looking at the result makes me happy.

Note:  The reconstruction drawings show the original brooch as carrying five strands of beads, but that struck me as too cumbersome to wear (although, in retrospect, it might have been easier to string).  I still have plenty of pony beads left, so I might reconfigure the set to have five strands when I find an appropriate bead spreader.