I went to an archery event yesterday. I was called up in court and given something by the Kingdom A&S Minister:
It's the token for winning first prize in a Kingdom A&S competition. My belt won the competition, and my friends kept it secret for two weeks! I must say I was very surprised, I was not expecting it at all. Catalina also said there were two other entries and it was quite close between us, but she didn't know exactly what the entries were.
The rest of the day was really good too. I chatted to Mistress Rhianwen about weaving. She mostly does inkle weaving but the problems I've been having with tension are a universal weaving problem. She suggested I hold the warp as I beat it to stop pushing loose threads into bubbles. She said she'd bring something to the tourney next weekend and we'll sit down and have a good chat :)
In the afternoon I entered an IKAC and shot 122. I was quite pleased as I've been aiming to score 120. This score brings my average up to 125 for the season, so I'm quite happy with my shooting this year. I also did some more work on my red cote the other day and wore it to the event. You may remember the last thing I did to it was pull the top seams in by an inch on both sides. WELL of course this made the sleeve holes smaller, which I should've realised when I went to reattach the sleeves and had to gather them a little all the way around. Duh. So when I wore it at Championship I spent the day with it cutting into my armpits which was just great. Anyway, I took the sleeves off yet again, cut the sleeve holes bigger and then reattached the sleeves, and it is now a whole lot more comfortable. I tried to shoot in it, and while it was ok, I think it's just a little too restricting for archery. I think the mechanics of holding boobies up makes a dress unsuitable for shooting in, especially since it needs to work so hard to turn what little I have into cleavage. The dress is still not done though, my right sleeve is coming unstitched at the elbow, and at hem at my wrist as well.
Tonight I've been tackling my weaving again. It was really good to chat to Rhianwen and some other people about weaving and sewing and stuff yesterday, and I was feeling a bit more inspired again. I unwove what I'd already done, tightened my tension as much as I could, and started weaving again. I found that I needed two hands on the beater to beat tight enough, there's a significant difference between using one and two hands. But holding the weft with one hand and beating with the other seemed to work even when I then used two hands to tighten the one handed beating. The band started coming out a whole lot smoother. What I'm aiming for with the twist patterning is this:
Just really simple textured squares. This photo was posted in the historical tabletweaving facebook group. I'm not quite getting this level of awesome, but I'm getting the ridges where the turning direction changes and the band is relatively smooth. According to the facebook group, when you release the tension on the band there's more shadows that emphasise the squares more. So I'm hoping my band will look more like the picture once I take it off my loom. I also decided to change my threading yet again, so now I have five blocks of alternating threading instead of the three that I changed to from the original seven :P
It looks nowhere near as good as the picture of the white band, but it's definitely an improvement. Besides, the whole point of this band is to practice my brocading and try new techniques with that, so most of the ground weave will be covered anyway. I never expected that a simple twist patterned ground weave would prove to be so difficult. Anyway, I'm using some gold coloured embroidery floss as a brocade weft, and I'm turning it within the shed so you can't see it on the ede of the band. Basically the weft goes out the bottom of the band two card from the edge, then back up for the next pick. There ends up being a little running stitch along the back of the band, top and bottom. So far it's working. Here's my leaf:
It's looking a little wider than on my belt, I think that's because this band is a good 6-8mm narrower but there's still the same amount of length. Buuut at the moment this leaf is 3cm along the band, and it's under tension. My belt leaves range from 3cm-3.5cm, and that's not under tension, so this leaf will probably shrink a little once I take it off tension. I had lots of problems tying off the end of my gold thread on my belt, because I used the same method I use to start and finish bands, outlined here. It's really good for starting and finishing bands, but the poly gold stuff didn't agree with being threaded back through the band and it frayed and it was pretty awful. This was the main reason why I decided to continue weaving the brocade weft in with the normal shed between pattern bits, instead of stopping and starting like they actually did in period to save expensive thread. Besides, two layers of brocade weft thread plus structural weft bulked up the picks a lot. BUT then later after I'd finished the belt I mentioned this to Catherine and she told me you don't need to worry about threading the brocade weft back through, you just stick it out the bottom of the band and cut it off. Ugh. So I'm trying that this time.
And that's it from me tonight. Goodnight!
The rest of the day was really good too. I chatted to Mistress Rhianwen about weaving. She mostly does inkle weaving but the problems I've been having with tension are a universal weaving problem. She suggested I hold the warp as I beat it to stop pushing loose threads into bubbles. She said she'd bring something to the tourney next weekend and we'll sit down and have a good chat :)
In the afternoon I entered an IKAC and shot 122. I was quite pleased as I've been aiming to score 120. This score brings my average up to 125 for the season, so I'm quite happy with my shooting this year. I also did some more work on my red cote the other day and wore it to the event. You may remember the last thing I did to it was pull the top seams in by an inch on both sides. WELL of course this made the sleeve holes smaller, which I should've realised when I went to reattach the sleeves and had to gather them a little all the way around. Duh. So when I wore it at Championship I spent the day with it cutting into my armpits which was just great. Anyway, I took the sleeves off yet again, cut the sleeve holes bigger and then reattached the sleeves, and it is now a whole lot more comfortable. I tried to shoot in it, and while it was ok, I think it's just a little too restricting for archery. I think the mechanics of holding boobies up makes a dress unsuitable for shooting in, especially since it needs to work so hard to turn what little I have into cleavage. The dress is still not done though, my right sleeve is coming unstitched at the elbow, and at hem at my wrist as well.
Tonight I've been tackling my weaving again. It was really good to chat to Rhianwen and some other people about weaving and sewing and stuff yesterday, and I was feeling a bit more inspired again. I unwove what I'd already done, tightened my tension as much as I could, and started weaving again. I found that I needed two hands on the beater to beat tight enough, there's a significant difference between using one and two hands. But holding the weft with one hand and beating with the other seemed to work even when I then used two hands to tighten the one handed beating. The band started coming out a whole lot smoother. What I'm aiming for with the twist patterning is this:
And that's it from me tonight. Goodnight!
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