No subject

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Years ago, I ran across a contest that always pleased me.

It was an Arts and Sciences competition in which the contestant was
judged
upon the number of steps in manufacturing the item that the entrant
performed themselves.  For example, if one composed a poem, it would
count
as one step in the manufacturing process.  If, however, one also made
the
parchment it was written upon, that would count as two steps.  Make a
quill
pen and some ink, calligraph the poem and illuminate it, and we are up
to
six self-manufactured steps.

Here's another example: Buying a board, some dowels, glue and screws,
then
turning them into a tablet-weaving loom only counts as one step.
However, if you took trees turned them into boards, that would count as
an
additional step, as would gathering horsetail reeds to use as
"sandpaper".

==============
The Contest
==============

So, to further enhance the already flourishing arts and sciences in this
Fair Kingdom of Atlantia (and for my own amusement), I am sponsoring a
"From
the Ground Up" contest.

==============
Prizes
==============

For the first place winner:
----------------------------------
Fifty dollars and two full sets of "Early Period", an Arts and Sciences
"how-to" journal that my wife, Fuiltigherne and I published over a span
of
eight years in the distant past.

For the runner-up:
----------------------------------
Twenty-five dollars and one full set of "Early Period."

For those who amuse me or whose work otherwise pleases:
----------------------------------
Other prizes, depending upon how much time I get in the shop between now
and
Kingdom Arts and Sciences in the spring.


==============
Rules
==============

I don't particularly like rules, but they are useful for communicating
the
intent of the contest.  Here are the contest rules:

1) This contest is for my personal amusement and the advancement of the
Arts
and Sciences of Atlantia.  Contestants who are grumpy do not amuse me
and
are immediately disqualified and dismissed from my thoughts.

2) Documentation listing the steps performed is required.  If a step in
the
process can not be exhibited, photographs are accepted.

3) Documentation of the techniques themselves is strongly encouraged and
will be considered in the judging process.
Excellent documentation of a manufacturing step produced/written by the
contestant counts as an additional manufacturing step.
Minimal documentation gets much less consideration, but can still be
useful
as a tie-breaker.

4) Judging will take place at the Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival
(March
2nd, 2002), wherever that event may be held.

5) The constructed item must be of a period style and utility, somewhere
in
the time period of 100 BCE thru 1650 CE.

6) The judge acknowledges a bias towards items representing "Early
Period"
items, herein defined as pre-1066 CE.  "Early Period" items receive
bonus
credit of one manufacturing step.  (If you don't like it, sponsor your
own
contest!)

7) The "final" item in the manufacturing process must have been
completed in
the last two years.  Supporting tools and components may have been made
previously.

8) The item can be entered in any other contest and can have won any
other
contest.  Victory "officially" takes place after the Arts and Sciences
Festival ends, so as not to interfere with any other contests there that
disqualify items that have won a prize.

9) All other situations and considerations I deem reasonable and proper,
such as "changing stupid rules" or "acknowledging a better way", are
within
the rules.

10) The one with the most steps in their manufacturing process, as
described
above, wins.

==============
Advice
==============

You could approach this contest several ways.  One would be to start
with an
item that you want to make and work backwards through the individual
steps.
The other would be to choose a manufacturing process and work towards
the
finished item.

Here is an example, from Fuiltigherne, of how she has approached
contests
like this in the past:

"The first year, I had just completed my warp-weighted loom.  Since we
built
it ourselves, we had a good start.  I needed some yarn, which I could
spin
myself on my purchased spindle -- but if I made a spindle ... so I did.
I
used a found brass piece for the weight and carved a bone shaft.  Then I
spun the yarn.  This is rather time consuming, and time was short, so I
decided to make something small -- a pouch.  (It did look a little like
overkill -- that little pouch hanging on that big loom.)  Once the
fabric
was finished, I cut it from the loom and started to sew it up when I
realized -- I could make some needles!  Bone needles are not difficult
to
make and about 30 minutes later, I was on my way again (we keep a supply
of
cleaned bone for experimental purposes so it might take you a little
longer!)"

Here's another example from her:

"The next year I decided to make a felted-in-one-piece Scythian cap.  I
felted the hat base and while it was drying I felted several thin sheets
for
decoration.  I dyed the sheets with natural dyes (henna, walnut shells I
gathered, and red onion skins from my long-suffering grocer).  I also
dyed
some hand spun yarn for couching around the designs.  I needed to sew
the
cut out felt designs to the cap and so I made another needle (actually,
they
were rather small and I ended up making several as the project
progressed).
I tried my hand-spun yarn for sewing but it wasn't spun tight enough.
We
were working on some sinew for making composite bows at the time, so I
decided to try it for sewing.  It worked great, and all the steps
involved
in processing the sinew for use counted."

==============
Contact Info
==============

If you have questions about the contest, or just want to make friends,
you
can reach me in a variety of ways:

Andras Salamandra
c/o
David Wendelken
818 Azalea Drive
Fayetteville, NC 28301 USA
910 677-0495  (between 10am and 9:30pm)
davidwendelken at earthlink.net

********

Commentary on the Rules
====================

I've had some questions about this contest.

Some folks have mentioned the "Sheep to Shawl" contests that have been
held,
which sound really neat!
I would definitely like to know more about them and any similar
contests.

1) Why are you sponsoring this contest?

I thought it was a neat contest and that someone might enjoy
participating
in it.  It also seemed like a great way to meet the kind of folks whose
company I
enjoy.

2) Won't this get in the way of other activities?  Some of those "Sheep
to
Shawl" exhibits take up a living room-sized amount of space!

One of the joys of meeting new people is discovering all the assumptions
that one has that differ from other people's!

My space requirements assumption was more on the order of "Let's sit
down at
this handy spot and you can show me what you've done."  Anyone
interested to
join us could do so, provided there was enough room.  This is an
informal
contest, not an "official" one.

I expect that many of the items entered in the "From the Ground Up"
contest
would also be in the main A&S contests, so that would also minimize
additional space requirements.

I will studiously avoid causing the autocrat any difficulty, as they
have
enough challenges in their life!

(I've just now found out who the autocrat for the event is.  I'll work
with
them on getting support for the contest.
Until that support is granted, I am planning for a "no special space
requirements" mode for the contest.  It would be rude to do otherwise.
If
enough people are interested, and the autocrat thinks it's a good idea,
it
will get fancier.  Otherwise it won't.

3)  Could you provide a bit more detail about how you are going to count
the
number of manufactured steps?

Sure!

That said, the purpose of the contest is still to have fun, learn stuff,
and
make new friends while doing so.
Compared to the value received from that, the prizes are rather trivial.
After all, given the number of hours invested in projects like this, if
one
is doing it "for the money", one would be better paid cooking french
fries
at the nearest burger joint.

Here's an annotated example on making a pouch.  I'll do my best to
expose my
thought processes in making the counts.
I don't expect everyone to agree with them.  I can only say that polite,
well-reasoned arguments are always welcome.  In fact, they are
encouraged.

> "The first year, I had just completed my warp-weighted loom."

Made from store-bought lumber, cloth (made into bags),  sand (put into
the
bags) and store-bought string.

This counts as 1 item.  In theory, sewing the cloth into bags might have
counted, but I wouldn't do so.
They were pretty trivial to do on the sewing machine.  Had the bags been
hand-sewn, I might have leaned towards counting them as a 1 item
(total).
However, as the final object of this exercise is to "make a cloth
object",
that would mean double-counting the distinctly unique production steps.
So,
the bags did not count.

The loom also used a sword-like object to pack in the threads, called
(if
memory serves...) a weaving sword.  It was carved out of a piece of
wood.  As other parts of the loom required carving also, and the loom is
not
complete without it, I would not have counted it as an extra item.

However, one correspondent gave me a very well reasoned argument,
pointing
out that the weaving sword could be used with any loom, and was thus not
really a part of it.  It had general purpose utility, which is one of
the
criteria I use when determining whether to count something.  So, it
would be
counted after all.
So, 1 item.

If we had started with a tree and made the lumber ourselves, that would
have
counted as an additional step.

> I needed some yarn, which I could spin myself on my
> purchased spindle -- but if I made a spindle ... so I did.  I
> used a found brass piece for the weight and carved a bone shaft.

Made from a found object and part of a bone from the butcher shop.
This counts as 1 item.  If we had killed the animal and extracted the
bone,
the bone would
have counted as another item.  Just as happy we missed that part.

> Then I
> spun the yarn.

Transformed raw materials into yarn. 1 item.

> This is rather time consuming, and time was short, so I
> decided to make something small -- a pouch.  (It did look a little
like
> overkill -- that little pouch hanging on that big loom.)  Once the
fabric
> was finished,

Transformed yarn into cloth.  1 item.

> I cut it from the loom and started to sew it up when I
> realized -- I could make some needles!  Bone needles are not difficult
to
> make and about 30 minutes later, I was on my way again (we keep a
> supply of
> cleaned bone for experimental purposes so it might take you a little
> longer!)"

Transformed bone into needles.  1 item.  Transformed cloth into pouch.
1
item.

Total: 7 steps.

Here's another example:

> "The next year I decided to make a felted-in-one-piece Scythian cap.

1 item.

> I felted the hat base and while it was drying I felted several
> thin sheets for decoration.

Transformed wool into felt.  1 item.

> I dyed the sheets with natural dyes (henna, walnut shells I
> gathered, and red onion skins from my long-suffering grocer).  I also
dyed
> some hand spun yarn for couching around the designs.

Making the dyes, 1 item.   One could argue whether actually dying the
item
was a step.
Is it any different from painting wood, in that the item "looks
different"
but has not been "transformed"?
I would not count the dying, but I can anticipate how a well-reasoned
argument might change my mind on this one.
(I expect those who specialize in dying things will jump right in and
educate me.)

If some of the dyes required radically different production methods, I
could
see counting them as more than one item.

> I needed to sew the cut out felt designs to the cap and
> so I made another needle (actually, they were rather
> small and I ended up making several as the project progressed).

Cutting out the pieces is included in making the cap itself, so it
doesn't
count as an extra step.
Making the needle: 1 item.

> I tried my hand-spun yarn for sewing but it wasn't spun tight enough.

Hand-spun yarn: 1 item.  If spun on the constructed spindle in the prior
example, 1 item.
Then again, it wasn't included in the final item because it wasn't spun
tight enough (good enough for the task at hand).
That's a toughie!  I would count the spindle (it worked), but not the
yarn
(it didn't).
Wouldn't want to "pad" the count with unnecessary steps, but don't want
to
discourage experimentation on reasonable steps either.

> We
> were working on some sinew for making composite bows at the time, so I
> decided to try it for sewing.  It worked great, and all the steps
involved
> in processing the sinew for use counted."

And that was ten years ago, and I don't remember all the steps in making
the
sinew.
So, I can't give more detail other than to say that "making the sinew"
would
definitely count as (at least) 1 item.

Here are some of the basic principles that I use to count are, as best I
can
express them at the moment.

a) Did we transform a material into a new material?
b) Did I make a tool for the job?
c) Is it "just part of" the item or a separate, manufactured component?
d) How different is the means of manufacture from other components in
the
piece?

Here's another example:

> I bought some boards and glue.

That's nice. Count = 0.

> I measured and marked the pieces on the boards.

Still 0.

> I cut out the  first piece with a saw

Still 0.

> and sanded it with store-bought sand-paper.

Still 0.

> Then I did the next pieces the same way.

Repetition doesn't count extra.

> I took a piece of the lumber
> and fastened it on a store-bought lathe,
> then turned it into dowels.

Ummm.   I *really* like woodturning, and it is a radically different
mode of
work, but...  it's still 0.
But there is room for discussion, here.

> I assembled them into a tablet-weaving loom

1 item.

> and carved Norse interlace designs on it with store-bought tools.

Hmmm.  One could argue that one is transforming a household implement
into
art.
Decorative carving is a very different mode of production.
One could argue either way.
This is much like the woodturning example a few steps above.
Alone, each was a bit iffy.  Considered together, I would go with it. 1
item.

> I bought some horn, softened it up
> and turned it into some flat, square panels.
> I sanded them and drilled holes in them to make tablet-weaving cards.

1 item.

Hope this helps to clarify my intent.

Those of you who are familiar with the Socratic method of reasoning will
recognize its use in determining whether a manufacturing step "counts".
The contest has a built-in bias towards those who can articulate their
position (that a step should count) clearly and calmly.