Or: Why Aethelflied is terrible at documenting her stuff.
I’m going to be perfectly honest with you all, writing documentation is not the fun part of a project for me. Make something? Heck yes. Research? Drown me in books, websites, research papers, and extant artifacts. Write up why I did what I did or how I did it? I’d rather pull my teeth out with rusty pliers. I’ll happily explain it, and answer questions if asked, and geek at you about string or words until you start looking for exits and wondering if I’ll notice if you just flee. But actually writing it out? No thank you.
I also suffer from chronic scope creep. Which makes succinct documentation difficult. A typical project for me goes as such:
-I want to make myself a wool hood. (Reasonable)
-I should sew half with bone needles and half with a modern needle. That way I can show there’s really no difference in the finished seams. (This slope is slippery, someone should salt it so no one falls)
– I should weave the fabric for it (Wait… self what’s happening?)
-What’s a period weave pattern for me? (Where are we going? Why am I in a hand basket?)
-What’s a period sett? I should email this museum and ask (Insert flashing danger lights)
-Well I’m already going through this much trouble. May as well spin it too. (Annnnd we’ve arrived at critical scope creep)
This is how we end up with me needing to write a multi-page college dissertation level paper about a rectangle and a pair of squares. Do I document my original project? The weave? The yarn? The needles? The stitch length? What about the breed of sheep? The corners I cut?
This is why I normally end up with a project, that I can talk about for days, that has no written documentation. I hit a point where my reaction to having to write out what I did is “I wove this out of handspun and sewed it with period tools! What more do you want from me?” The answer of course is “How do you know you used period tools?”
Right now I’m looking at documentation like warping a loom. It’s the not fun or sexy part of the project. But it’s gotta happen.
aethelfliedbrewbane 