In quest of a purse!

For my next project, I'm digging into the rabbit hole of the Haithabu bag handles. I've seen a lot of conflicting discussion on the bag itself lately. And in my typical spirit, I'm leaning hard on that "creative" aspect of the SCA. 

My goal here is to make something functional: a bag that would be handy for gathering seeds and plants and herbs. I'll likely make more than one. I currently have plans for a bag made of woven fabric and one netted using sprang. A leather option is on my radar, but not in my immediate designs. 

For this bag, the only extants we have are the handles. So the pouch portion is completely speculative and very subjective. Here are a few of the sources that I've considered in my survey of inspirations.

Construction from sourced materials - I like this one for the photos of the handles. The aesthetic also makes me happy. 

Make Your Own Haithabu Bag - a tutorial with a template for the handle. 

Reconstruction of the “Viking bag” - this one gets into more options for the possible shapes for the pouch section of the bag. One of the possible designs makes a lot of sense to me if one is using leather, but I am not going to attempt it with fabric I weave myself. 

I'm envisioning 4 components to my first bag: the handles, the fabric pouch, decorative trim, and a strap. I will be constructing all of these components, beginning with the decorative trim. If I were to be extra, I toyed with the idea of spinning the yarn for the bag first. But for this first run I am content to purchase yarn and go from there. I did dye the yarn for the pouch at 2 SCAdian events though, because why not?

I am weaving the trim using Bockens 8/2 unmercerized cotton/linen blend in gray and black. I chose the Oseberg Narrow band weaving draft. It's pretty straight forward and only 10 cards, so it's a good place for me to continue practicing my tension and edges. 40 threads yield trim that is about 1/2 inch wide and I am very pleased with it so far. I'm noticing that the twining nature of tablet weaving requires very different strategies for keeping the edges even. I'll be curious how it will be different for the strap since I'll be using thicker yarn and a different pattern. 

Next up will be weaving the fabric pouch section, then tackling the strap and handles.