My lovely husband and I quite enjoy a bar in our region, Dungeons and Drafts. They’re a nerd’s dream bar, or at least they’re mine! If you come in costume you’ll get a discount on your order; they have a library of games you can check out and play there; the walls are decorated straight out of a D&D tavern; the drinks and food are named for every nerdy thing you can think of (the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is pretty tasty). There’s a full set of armor from Skyrim standing in the corner, a long master table with “floating” candles à la Harry Potter, logos on the walls from everything from Game of Thrones to Zelda. In short, it’s probably a good thing I don’t live closer or I might never leave.
While scrolling the facebook page of this excellent establishment, I discovered that they were going to have a chain maille class this most recent Sunday. Maille is something both my husband and I have done before, but we thought it would be nice to get the advice of a real, live teacher. Plus, how often do you get to learn chain maille in a D&D tavern!
After supplying ourselves with food and drink (a health potion shot, Daedra heart drink, and The Thief, a.k.a. cheesy bread), we set to work working on the weave. The pattern of the day was the basic European 4-in-1. If you’ve encountered maille before, this will be one you’ve seen. It’s probably the most popular weave, and about as simple as maille gets.
I had trouble getting the rings to close perfectly; for aluminum rings, these were pretty stiff. I was also much slower at this than my husband, both for less strength and less experience. Additionally, we were drinking while doing this, which made for some very confusing moments figuring out what exactly was wrong when the weave didn’t look quite right.
So now I have a small demo section of maille that I can’t use for much else. The class did spark an excitement for chain maille for both my husband and I, so we’ll likely be making an order from TheRingLord soon and playing with more shiny bits of metal.
A Maker's Miscellany 