On the other hand, all of them tend to have tasselly bits on, so I think the Wychwood one should as well.

Oh, and I think we should stick to the classic 3-entwined-round-snakes if possible. Just cos Hwicce stole our design doesn't mean we have to change ;)

alternatively, we could make the banner bright green, with blackish/dark grey/dark blue snakes on it, to lessen the problem of authenticity… might be too controversial though.

dark brown and green also would look OK. in fact, if it were very dark brown, it would look black anyway. maybe some dark grey cloth dyed brown? if we do a brown dye job then i can dye the rest of the gloves at the same time to make them more authenti. likewise for dark grey dyeing. or we could dye the fabric grey then brown (using moden colour fast dyes), and it will look beautiful.
i reckon modern dyes are easiest, cause they look proper, and wont make the fabric prone to staining things when stored, which if it is black/brown will stop things getting black stripes on them. and they are dead easy to use.

how large do we want the banner? 1m square? 2m square? (snakes are round). or a long thin banner with 3 stretched out snakes on it? we don't want to get confused with hwicce…
a triangular banner with the snakes on it?
I reckon a long triangular banner which twirls happily in the air is perfect - sort of artistic…

oh, and i still have woad seeds. if i plant them now, will they grow?

emxx

Some evidence of brown from walnut shells has also been found, as well as one or two pieces that were intentionally dyed very dark brownish-black with walnut shells and iron (Hägg 1984, 289).

I still really don't believe you can dye linen black with Dark Age dyes.

Pagan Mercia reportedly used a banner which had a black field so either a) people did spend that much money on expensive black fabric for banners, or b) for 'black' in sources read 'dark grey.' (IIRC there's been a similar and long-running debate about the meaning of 'red' fabric in contemporary sources…)

Another thought - for making a banner, you don't need to be as careful about the transferability/skin comfort of the colour used as you do for clothing. So *perhaps* something like a mixture of animal fat and charcol/ash could be rubbed into thick linen to blacken it? Not suggesting we do this, mind, just wondering if people did!

BUT black isn't very authentic. You can get black sheep, but material made out of their wool tends to be a dark grey with some white bits. Not black-black.

And getting black linen is very hard. Linen is difficult to dye at the best of times, so making it black is Not Easy.

sooooooooo we can now repaint all the shields. i reckon by adding white emulsion to the vile green shelagh pppp and i found we may be able to match the original wychwood green, or make a new version of it…

also, WW needs a banner. buuuuut to do this i need a sewing machine and some intelligent use of applique (which i can'tdo/have never done). sooooooo anyone out there with knowledge pls let me know!

the result of this is that i feel we need a kit day/evening some time in the new term to sort it all out (new committee hint hint). and large amounts of black and green cloth. will see what i can do to get that before i come up, but if anyone has either WW green or black fabric at home/college, could they let me know please, so i don't buy masses of it unecessarily?

c u all soon!

emxx