Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a good holiday! I've been having quite a cruisy time just lazing about, eating and going to the beach. I got a pretty good Christmas haul this year too. Things that will appear in this blog at some point in the future include a yarn swift and a big wooden embroidery frame. Actually, it's a 40cm tapestry frame. The fancy embroidery frames that were adjustable were way expensive so I ended up with this one. But that's ok, I'm quite happy to work with it :)

My man-shirt is coming along slowly, I've not worked on it until I picked it up to start the lacing holes last night. This break in the project was brought to you by the New Year's Eve costume party theme!

The theme this year is Circus! I went to Spotlight and bought a proper commercial pattern and made a tail coat! I'm going as a ringmaster, and I still need to make a little black vest and work out what sort of pants I'm gonna wear. I'm thinking tights of some sort and a pair of shorts or a skirt, since it's gonna be fairly warm and I'm already wearing a coat. Commercial patterns are difficult and the instructions are confusing. I'm quite happy to stick with making my own calico patterns from now on :) Also I apologise once again for the awful photo. I think the blur is my dirty mirror, not my camera being crap.

I wrote a list of things I want to get done before Rowany Festival, but I'm running out of time! Once the silly season is over I'll only have a couple of solid weeks before Clinical Placement begins. I'm hoping to get everything at least started, so that I won't have to sit down and do anything big like Cutting Out, I'll just be able to pick up projects and sit in front of the tv for a bit, or bring them along with me wherever I'm going.

Holidays: Week 1

I've been on holidays for a week now. I have commandeered the couch and turned it into my own personal sewing nook, set up my laptop on the coffee table for Start Trek TNG and I am making progress! Also I think I've eaten an entire watermelon over the course of the week :P

Here is the fruit of my labours. I haven't exactly been working hard, just trundling along around my compulsory naptimes and various errands. What you see here is the makings of a supportive shirt for my man-cote. What's that you say? It looks a lot like the top part of one of my cotehardies? Well that's because it is :P. I cut it out on Monday night from my cotehardie pattern and since then I've hand sewn it together. I'm currently up to lacing holes, which has interrupted my momentum because I DUN WANNA. When I eventually get over my reluctance and get them done, all that will be left is to make and attach sleeves, and sew up the hem. I won't do my normal hinge sleeve with buttons because it's mostly going to be worn underneath hinge sleeves with buttons, and two layers of buttons would be a bit awkward. I'll probably make the sleeves as one piece each.

In the meantime while I'm procrastinating making lacing holes, I've been working on a TOP SEEKRITY SEEKRIT Christmas present for Mister Nathan. And by TOP SEEKRITY SEEKRIT I mean I'm making him some lucet cords to hold up his hose, and he knows all about them because I told him that's what I'm making and he's been providing me with preferences and specifications :P I'm still not gonna post pictures of them until after Christmas, because he really should see the finished product first.

In other news, you know how I said I'm not allowed to make any more green garb because everything I have is green? I'M MAKING A GREEN HOOD! My green oopsie wool goes really well with the hideous pink really well, and I have enough leftover for a hood. I still haven't decided which colour will be the lining and which will be the outside, but I can leave that decision until I've cut out the pieces. I'll pin them together and wear it both ways to decide which is best. I went to Joondalup Spotlight the other day and they had a whole bunch of different colours of the same wool for $20 per metre. I refrained from buying it and I hope you're proud of me. There was yellow and blue and bright green and booger green and a greyish colour and I really wanted it but I can't afford it all when I don't have a project for it :( What I did buy was a couple of balls of dark purple wool, for the tablet woven edges of my hood. I've never woven with wool before, so I guess we'll see how that goes.

Also ruminating over a new project, titled Awesome Bag the Sequel: Awesome Box. Stay tuned for more details.

Needle Case

I'm on holidays! Clinical year is finally finished, meaning I am now officially half way through my degree! It's all very exciting. My Nigel car got his annual bath yesterday, and I even got the vacuum out. I was going to polish him today, but I've been procrastinating because it's hot outside. I know because I pre-washed that hideous pink wool, went outside to hang it up, came back inside for a cold glass of water, then went back outside to bring the wool back in because it was dry. Then I parked myself under the airconditioner and made THIS:

I finished it! I decided to try the braiding around the edges rather than tablet weaving, and I don't think I'll every do it again. It was annoying. Even more annoying was the supposedly awesome online tutorial that Duenna Catalina recommended. I think I'm just really bad at understanding tutorials, because I've come across a few lately that I read, think they're really confusing and missing vital bits of information, then I get to the comments at the bottom which are countless people gushing about how well explained the process was and how awesome the person that wrote it is. Clearly either everyone else is wrong or I have some deficit which makes online tutorials confusing. Tutorial dyslexia or something. Anyway, after a few false starts and throwing the whole thing across the room, I managed to figure it out. What I'm not happy with is that even though I finished the seams of the linen so that there was no extra past the embroidery, there ended up being a gap between the braid and the embroidery where you can see the linen. I managed to mostly get the braid to sit on the front as close as I could get it to the embroidery, but it's not very wide so it doesn't cover much. I ended up finding a whole bunch of that green oopsie wool left over, so I lined it in that.

Before I attached it together I threaded a strip of the wool through a couple of holes that I pushed through the fabric with my awl to hold the scissors. The top flops around a bit, but they don't fall out which is awesome. I also messily attached some wool ties as well, not sure if they're going to stay or if I'll make some nice braid to replace them. The lining is smaller than the outside because I wanted it to sit nicely when the whole thing was closed instead of bunching up, so it doesn't open flat.

There we go. One project completed. Tonight I'm going out for drinks with the girls from uni to celebrate the end of our first year, so I think I'll have a nap now :)

Embroidery

I did just finish my embroidery! Yaaay!

It is a massive 12cm by 11.5cm. It took four months, but that's because there were times when I didn't touch it for a few weeks, and when I did I'd just do one length of thread and put it away again. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and now I just need to turn it into a needle case. On the weekend I might have a look through my fabric to find something suitable for lining. I'm thinking wool since it might be more durable while it's being repeatedly stabbed with needles. I might even use my hideous pink stuff :P I also think I'll finish the edges with that braided technique rather than tablet weaving. I like the idea of the herringbone pattern, which I can get with tablet weaving but things I've seen with braiding have been nice and neat. I want tassels though, so I may have to rethink this plan.

Speaking of finishing things, I have exactly three more days until I finish clinical placement. Yay! Then all I have to do is hand in my final assignment and I'm done for the year! I'm very excited.

Surprises

I went to Spotlight on Saturday. I needed to go out to run some errands, and Mum mentioned that she would be going to all the places I needed, plus Spotlight. You may remember the last time I went to Spotlight was before Pennsic and I accidently spent $100 on what I called my oopsie wool, which became my green wool surcote. NO REGRETS. Well, this time I thought I may as well buy some black drill to fix my green brocade surcote when I'm ready. But then I accidently walked past the clearance table.

PINK! HIDEOUS PINK WOOL! I think it's the same kind of flannel wool blend as my oopsie wool, but it was marked down to half price at $20 per metre. I had one of those spend $100 get $40 off vouchers, and once Mum and I added our purchases together it came to just over $100. I ended up spending $40 on three metres of black drill and two metres of the pink, so not bad in the end :) I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. My two main ideas are to line a hood with it, but I'll need a dark plainish colour like a black or brown to go with it I think. I'll have to go looking through my stash to see what I've got. The other option is to make a ho. I need another wool one, I'll be replacing the salmon pink one that shrunk with this bright pink :P

In other news, on the weekend I went to a tourney and was awarded this:

It's a token for the Order of the Star and Lily, a Kingdom A&S award that their Majesties awarded me at the royal visit weekend a couple of weeks ago, on the day that I stayed home to study. All my friends kept it seekrity seekrit for two weeks. I'm quite chuffed, I didn't expect it at all so it was a really nice surprise to be called up in court on Sunday and awarded this :)

Only 9 more sleeps until my last day of placement, then I'll be free! Then I can start doing lots of fun SCA things :)

ERMAGERD

Lookit what arrived in the post today!

THREE SKEINS OF SILK! I spent ages fiddling with my camera and lights and stuff, but I couldn't get the colours to come out right. The blue and the green are just as bright as the red, they look awesome! I ordered these weeks ago from ebay because they were $10 each plus $10 shipping each, but then because I ordered three the shipping was combined. I ended up paying $45 for three skeins of silk! It was advertised as reeled silk and each skein is about 470 yards. The skeins are smaller than I expected, probably because the yarn is a little finer than 20/2. It doesn't say what thickness it actually is, but I'd say it's about 30/2 or 40/2. It looks quite manageable, not silly like 60/2 :P. More to the point, it was cheap. It's not as tightly spun as the fine cord from Treenway Silks, and it doesn't look as good quality, but it's shiny and super soft. It's a bit fluffy, so I guess I'll see if it does the piling thing that spun silk does. Actually, for that price, if it behaves like the Treenway spun silk but is shiny like the reeled, I'll be ecstatic.

I have no idea what to make with it, but I wanna do some weaving now! I actually have no weaving projects in mind at the moment. I'm going to be booking for Rowany festival today, since tomorrow is the last day before the price rise, and this has been making me think about all the the things I want to have done by then. Mostly it's garb. Firstly, I WILL get around to fixing that green brocade surcote. I wore it at Championship and it was so uncomfortable! I had to squish myself into it because it didn't fit over my new cotehardies properly, and the sleeves were digging into my armpits and my elbows. It's going to be cold at Festival next year because it's late in April and the site is closer to Canberra, so I want to have more than one surcote for warms. I get sick of wearing my wool one all the time. I've also been pondering the fact that most of my garb is green. I am now putting a ban on making anything green. The two cotehardies that fit the best and are most comfortable are my green one and my sphinx one, which is almost green. My wool surcote is green. The brocade one is also green, but there's not much I can do about that and I'm going to be putting black all over it to make it fit better, so it should look quite striking. I think I need to start wearing my ginger cote again. Also, I think I'll remake my gold cote, and start wearing my green and purple linen surcote again. The gold cote I have looks awesome, but it's so uncomfortable. So I'm going to buy some more of the gold fabric and make it again using my new pattern. I think I need to look through my wool collection and make another surcote that isn't green. I think I have some maroon wool that should do nicely.

There's also a high chance that it'll be raining at Festival too, so I think I'll get on with making that linen man-cote and supportive shirt that I wanted to do before Pennsic. The fabric is all pre-washed and ready to go. Then I'll fix my red wool man-cote and hood, so I have a linen and wool option for rainy days when I don't want skirts dragging in the mud. I also need some more wool hose, since the pink one shrank in the wash. Only two more weeks until freedom!

I'm Still Alive!

Yes, I know it's been ages since I last posted anything, but I've been busy with things and have done hardly anything SCA to post about. I last posted just before clinical placement began, and I'd just warped up my loom using my new warping board. The threaded in pattern wasn't working properly and I was troubleshooting. WELL. I checked the threading direction, I swapped the cards so they all faced the other way, I checked the threading again, swapped everything back, changed the start position to every possible position, checked the turning sequence, checked the threading AGAIN and nothing worked. It was sending me absolutely bonkers since I'd already woven the pattern with no trouble at all, and I was using the same printed patterns that I used the first time, so I knew that it MUST work somehow. By this time I was at Nathan and Catherine's house, and I was keeping Catherine updated on my progress, since she's an awesome weaver person with mad skillz. She made a few suggestions, and eventually the stupid thing bothered her enough to fix it by trial and error and what it looked like on the surface of the band. No way do I have the skills to just fix a threaded in pattern by sight like that. Anyway she fixed it! It was something to do with the holes of the cards needing to be labelled differently depending on whether they faced to the right or to the left. I've never come across that before with any of Guntram's patterns. He labels his cards backwards to mine and it hasn't seemed to matter whether they faced right or left. Not this time! Anyway I'm very grateful to Catherine for fixing it for me :)

I took it to the Riverside Ramble demo the next day, since it was an easy turning sequence and weaving always looks quite tricky and striking and attracts people. I had a few old ladies get all excited and want to know exactly how it all worked. It was a good day, our first really warm spring day, and it was fun even if I did get sunburned sitting in the shade of a pavilion all day. Also I entered a $2 raffle for a horse bow and I did win it! :D Now I just need a pony. I shot the bow a couple of weeks later at Sunday training and it was really fun. It's so different to my modern recurve, it's lighter and less stable, so a little more concentration and skill is needed to shoot it well. I need heaps more practice with it before I'll be any good, but unfortunately I haven't had a chance to shoot it again. Most of my Sundays have been spent in the library at uni completing assignments.

The next five or so weeks passed in a blur of assignments and clinical practice. Teaching weeks at uni have finished now, and today was my first exam. I have my last exam on Monday so this weekend will be spent holed up in my room trying to cram all of the stuttering content into my head. Unfortunately all of my study break was spent doing clinical placement stuff, which I'm quite annoyed about. I now understand exactly why people in the second year of my course all go stark raving mad. I thought we were already mad but I got laughed at when I said that to some people that know this year's second years. There's this thing called uni that has semesters and a full time work load of assignments and stuff during the semesters, then exams at the end. There's also this thing called Final Clinical Year which is 40 weeks worth of essentially working full time, but at the same time you need to prove you're working ethically and evidence based-edly by essentially completing the equivalent of two university assignments every week. The catch is that WE GET TO DO UNI AND FINAL CLINICAL YEAR AT THE SAME TIME. Lucky us. And this is why we get to wear a mortar board with a gold tassel, if we survive to the end. Anyway, the point is I'm busy. Somewhere in the last five weeks there was a ball, and I went but I left early because I was tired and grumpy and had too much work to do.

THEN last weekend there was a royal visit! I had booked for the whole weekend but that was before I realised that I was silly to think that study week was for study. So I compromised and went to the event on Saturday, stayed for the feast and then missed out on Sunday because study. I'm so glad I went because I had a great time just hanging out with SCA people, and I left all inspired to do more SCA stuff as soon as I have time. I've been so busy that the thought of making anything or putting any effort in just exhausts me, so I've just been coasting along. There were a huge amount of awards given out, and I think it is incredibly rude to begrudge any of those people their award, because you could see the absolute delight in their eyes at being called up in court and recognised by their Majesties. That moment was the best moment of their lives, and I personally loved watching each and every one of them. As for the rest of us not recognised officially with a dangly for around our necks, the populace make up for that by complimenting each other on our work. I was very pleased to receive compliments from all sorts of people on my garb, my weaving and my embroidery, and I think I managed to give out my share of compliments too. I certainly saw some lovely garb. People spontaneously appreciating my work is just as good as getting an award.

Also, remember that weaving I was doing? I finished about half of it at the demo weeks and weeks ago, then spent a couple of evenings working on it, then stopped. It sat in the lounge room for weeks with only about 20cm to go. Then I decided I HAD to wear it to the Royal Visit event, so I finished it the night before. I'd meant to go out on the Friday to the lighting store down the road to get a chain for the leaf dangly, but I forgot. The ONE THING I had to do that day (other than uni stuff) and I forgot. So I raced over to Bunnings and found one of those chains that you hang up plants with, and used that instead. It did the job and it can stay until I feel like fixing it :P Unfortunately I had another invisible event and no photos of me at all have surfaced on Facebook, which means there are no photos of me wearing the belt. I'm not sure how or why I'm so good at avoiding cameras at events, because it's not like I don't like to have my photo taken :P Anyway, I took a photo of the belt sitting on my bed to give you an idea of the finished product.

One day I'll take a course in how to use photoshop or something, because I'm really bad at taking photos and I have no idea how to fix them. But you get the idea. Have another one:

Here's the detail. You can see the twist of the green silk so clearly. The two types of silk worked together much better than I expected, which I'm pleased about. I seemed to have all my issues at once at the start of weaving this band, which was good because the band itself came together with no issues whatsoever.

Speaking of photoshop, my embroidery has been featured on the cover photo of my Barony's Facebook page! Sir Nathan is our web minister, and he's been using his mad photoshop skillz to make awesome cover photos. I was there when he was working on this one, and it took a lot of work! He was doing things to the pictures that I didn't even know they needed. He's going to do a series of pictures and rotate through them, but I don't mind if he takes a while to make up the next one :)

My embroidery has come to a grinding halt, much like my weaving did. I finish it eventually. There's only three weeks left of clinical placement, including my four day adult placement which gets tacked onto the end of my paediatric placement somehow, then a week later my last assignment is due (the day after semester two results are released, so I'm not sure how that works), then it's Christmas and I have holidays and it will be SO GOOD. Maybe I'll get some SCA stuff done then :)

Warp

I does have a warping board! My dad is pretty awesome, making me all these weaving things, and making them NICE. I've seen a lot of functional wooden bits and pieces that people have made for weaving, and they're not always nice, just functional. It's fine to have functional things, but it's nice of my dad to put in a little more effort to finish things off nicely. Anyway, here it is!

Tada! Complete with warp. It's 40cm x 50cm, which is a nice small size for storing places, and has heaps of pegs. I can measure out 8 metres of warp on this thing, which is probably more than I'll ever need. SO, how to use a warping board? I finally realised what it was and how to use it from this tutorial. I wanna make that hood by the way. The only thing that wasn't clear to me was the stuff about threading the cards. I get that you need to cross the threads on every pass, like this:

Because crossing them keeps them in the order you warped them, so when you transfer the warp to the loom it's all nice and flat and not all tangled. What I ended up doing was using some things as spacers.

A spare tablet and a pen. These are essential tablet weaving accessories that everyone should invest in, the proper tools for keeping your threads neat. When you awkwardly remove the warp from the board, trying to hold these spacers in place, and put them flat on the couch, you can pull each thread off in the order it went on, and it's all very neat and the string behaves and stuff. It's AMAZING. I had an epic argument with my skein of green silk, so what I ended up doing was warping up the correct number of black threads and laying them out with the spacers between the crossy over bit. Then I used the warping board to measure off two or three lengths of the green silk. I kept having to pull the end of the skein back through knots that had spontaneously occurred, so I wasn't able to just keep wrapping the thread around the board. Anyway, I'd have however many green threads I needed for the next tablet, and I'd pull off the correct amount of black ones from my nice neat row. It worked in the end. That whole process was a little tedious, but when I had finished warping the threaded-in part of the pattern, I had 18 tablets of alternate S and Z threaded to warp. This bit was super easy and quick. I measured off the correct amount of black threads, laid them down with the spacers, and just sat there threading the cards one by one.

I threw a few tantrums during the process, but that's not my fault, my skeins threw their tantrums first. I had epic knots in the green one, then right near the end the black skein decided that it had been behaving waaaay too well, and it spontaneously tangled up. So the process happened over a few days. I was able to literally just get up and walk away from it, because the cat is a very strange cat, and he hasn't yet been interesting in stationary string. He was dead to the world asleep on my bed when I quietly pulled my basket of silk down off the shelf to start warping. I turned around to find him alert and awake and watching me very closely. If I'm making the string move, he wants to play with it, but if it's just sitting there it doesn't interest him at all. What does interest him is little bits of round wood. I've caught him chewing on the pegs of my warping board, and he's almost totally destroyed a pencil I used to hold the end of my warp on my little loom, it's all splintered and covered in little teeth marks. Anyway, I finished warping last night, tensioned my loom and started weaving.

Remember it's supposed to be a black belt edged with leaves? Guess who got her Z and S threading backwards? Yeah. *hangs head*. I bloody hate stupid S and Z threading, it makes no sense to me. I spent ages figuring out which way to thread the cards and I got it backwards. So the first bit is all munted. Then I started troubleshooting, and flipped the cards over. Then the left side started looking closer to leaves, but the right side was different. Different? How can this be? So I compared the two sets and somehow I'd managed to thread two tablets wrong. Luckily they both just needed a half turn, so I did that and kept going. The last two blobby bits it what I got after all that. I dunno. Something is still wrong. The cards are all threaded the correct way, I double checked how Guntram labels his holes and I got it right, and the pattern is not on the bottom. The cards now face the right instead of the left, so maybe the home position needs to change. I'll try that next. Right now I have some study to do before I can go play at Nathan and Catherine's house. I'll bring my loom and work on it there.

Study Week (Again)

I'm not sure what happened to the time, but last time I posted it was study week and I hadn't done any study. Now it's study week again and I haven't done any study. Actually, this second study week is a cruisy week, since I handed in all my mid-semester assignments last week and nothing else is due for another four weeks. This is the calm before the storm, the storm being my first proper COMPASS assessed clinical practice that begins in two weeks. I'm being sent into a school to spend nine weeks with small children. Lucky me.

Anyway, a lot has happened in the last month, and not just hectic uni stuff. First of all my Gran passed away just after I got back from Pennsic, which was all very sad and stressful times. BUT then we had to go clean out her house, which was full of treasure! Actually, it was mostly junk since she was a bid of a hoarder, but my reward for spending a day sorting through the junk was a basket of treasure!

I got all sorts of useful things like threads, needles and pins. There's also a whole bunch of things like elastic and hooks and eyes which I'm not sure I'll use. I also got a box full of DMC stranded cotton, AND

SILK! Packets and packets of silk! The only downside is that except for the dark blue, there's only one packet of each colour, and a lot of them have been opened so the ends are trailing out. But it's still a whole stash of silk that I'm sure I'll find a use for. I also inherited Gran's sewing machine. It's almost as old as me, but it's been barely used. Gran used to make us dresses when we were little, but most of them were made before Pop died and with the sewing machine she had before this one. Since she moved to Perth 22 years ago she's very rarely used the machine. Every time she got it out she had to call mum for instructions on how to thread the bobbin case because it had been so long since she last got it out. Anyway, now I have my own sewing machine! It's been serviced and cleaned, it's pretty simple and cheap but I'll only need it occasionally and never for anything fancy.

In other news, I finally figured out how to use a warping board! I've asked my dad to make me one, and as soon as he does I'll use it to warp my leaf belt. Although I may need to put some pressure on him. I might go out to his shed tonight when he's pottering around out there, and I'll try to make it myself. If things go to plan then he'll get annoyed by my pitiful attempts at woodworking and he'll take over. Then I shall warp my loom!

Also, I've still been plodding along with my embroidery.

Now I has three corners! I'm really very close. I guess I'll have to start thinking about what I'm going to line it with and what I'm going to use to bind the edges. I want to tablet weave the edges, and I have this idea in my head of a spiral pattern in two colours, but every time I start planning it in my head I get stuck on colours. I don't want to use any of the colours of the embroidery, except white. I think I want white. I just don't know what other colour will complement the colours that are already there. Ideally I'd also like to use threads that I already have, seeing as I'll only need a small amount. I'll have to go digging through my stash.

That's about it from me. I went down south for Championship weekend, and it was COLD, and now I have a cold :(. I really need to fix my green brocade surcote. I wore it anyway because I needed more clothes than just my woolen cote, but I was really quite uncomfortable. The sleeves dig into my arms above my elbows now, which was so uncomfortable. I also started mentally planning a super amazing brocade surcote that may or may not be parti-coloured and will be my fancy one. I need a fancy outfit. Also it seems my wardrobe is green. I need to start making stuff in different colours.

Study week

It's study week. Guess how much study I've gotten done.

THIS MUCH! Nearly half way through my embroidery now. Clearly I've been procrastinating and have done minimal study, which is a bit sad. I've also watched season 2 of Smash and I'm half way through season 1 of Star Trek TNG. But back to my embroidery, I came across something a bit puzzling. I've been following the pattern on Mitchell Wymarc's page

The pattern has two different motifs. The blue strip and the dark brown strip have one, and the light brown strip has another one. So I alternated my motifs too, my purple strip has the different one (which is actually really annoying to stitch). A while ago I noticed that the stitching example only has one type of motif. THEN when I went to add a fourth strip up the top because I needed my needle case to be a bit taller, I realised that the pattern has dark brown, light brown, blue... LIGHT BROWN. That would mean my fourth strip should be purple, and every second strip should be purple. The stitching example has the three colours alternating, which I like better, so I decided to alternate the colours, but also alternate the motifs. So that's why the top blue strip has the annoying motif instead of the same one as the first blue strip.

Also I had an idea for some fittings I bought at Pennsic

I had an idea before I left for a belt using my leftover black spun silk and green reeled silk. I'll use the 14 tablet threaded in pattern of leaves that I used for my garters on either side of a black stripe. When I move back home I'll have a look at the fittings and decide how wide the belt bit needs to be, which will help me decide whether to do some twist patterning in the black middle section. I think the leaf pattern will look good with the flower leafy brass fittings, even if it completely not period :)

And that has been my very exciting study week as a crazy cat lady, looking after Miss Wendy's cats and spending most of my time in my onesie doing embroidery.

ALL the colours

Since Monday my embroidery suddenly got more fun. This may have something to do with all the study I need to do, but it doesn't matter because I've done heaps now. I only realised how much I'd done when I looked at the photo I posted on Monday.

Tada! Now it has ALL the colours. Yay! It's only about 3 inches tall at the moment, this is probably only about a sixth of the work, if that. But I like it a lot more now and if I keep going the way I am then it shouldn't be too long until I'm finished :)

Embroidery

I haven't been working on any particular SCA project lately, but I thought I'd post a picture of the embroidery I started on the plane.

It's really tiny and I'm not finding it as fun as the other German Brick Stitch I've done. The linen is 40 count, and I'm finding that it's sometimes really hard to push the needle through the tiny holes, especially when I'm filling in areas that have been outlined already. Sometimes it's really difficult to see where the holes are too, they all get squished together by the stitches I've already done. But I do like how it looks, and it's only small so it's something to pick up when I feel like doing something. I did most of the work on it on the plane, but I have picked it up a couple of times since I got back. I've been busy with uni and family stuff so I probably won't be starting another project any time soon. Although I think when I start working on that other pattern I want to do, I'll use something between 28 and 40 count.

Pennsic

I'm back! I've been home for a week, but I haven't had the time or the energy to post about Pennsic yet :P SO the flights were stupid long. We left Perth at 12:05am on Thursday, and arrived in New York something like 30 hours later at 5pm Thursday. THEN FIVE DAYS IN NEW YORK HAPPENED AND IT WAS AMAZEBALLS :D :D :D I saw a squorl in Central Park

Lookit it's so cute! Anyway, after two hours sleep we got up stupid early on Wednesday morning to catch our plane to Pittsburgh. We arrived at Pennsic at about lunchtime and it was all very exciting. We dumped our stuff in the communal pavillion thing, then I got to go to Walmart to pick up all our camping gear. The day worked out pretty damn awesomely, our tents and everything were all set up by about 4pm, and then we got into garb and wandered around some of the merchant stalls as they were shutting up for the day. Then we had dinner and went back to camp to sit under the magic tree and listen to stories until the sun went down and I went to bed because I was SO TIRED.

Our campsite was awesome. It's close to all the important things like the markets and the war field. Also there's this awesome shady tree with amazing recliner chairs underneath it for nap time in the afternoon. I had a pretty cruisy Pennsic. I spent all my monies filling up my awesome bag of awesome with THINGS from the markets. I went to a few A&S classes. The only tablet weaving thing I made it to was a class on doubleface letters, which ended up just being a class on basic doubleface technique. But I got the name of an awesome book which I then went and bought at the markets. I also went to a class for people who were at their first Pennsic, one about bead weaving with a simple heddle loom, and a really awesome class about a lady's Cranach gown and what she did and why. I was quite disappointed that the Tablet Weaver's Tea was moved from Thursday to Tuesday, and somehow everyone seemed to just know even though there was no advertising at all. So I rocked up on Thursday only to be told I'd missed it. It was the one A&S thing I had really really wanted to go to because I'd wanted to talk to people about tablet weaving and make some contacts and stuff, and I didn't get to do that.

On Sunday I went to the big A&S display and got to see Lady Oda's awesome german brick stitch book cushion that she's been blogging about here. AND AND AND she was sitting next to Mitchell Wymarc and I got to talk to him and stuff! MITCHELL WYMARC!!! I was very excited :D. I also got to talk to the lady who was presenting the Cranach gown class the next day, and see her gown and take pictures and stuff.

I watched some of the fighting too. The field battle was the first big fighty thing, and it was pretty impressive. Nearly 2,000 fighters on the field at once is a real sight to see. I took a lot of pictures but none of them really capture the scope of what was actually there. I also got to go to ba ba, which is the negotiations between a group of merceneries and their potential employers. It was the most amazing piece of theatre I have ever seen in the SCA. Everyone was dressed up and only said "ba ba" and there were people that 'translated' into english for us. There was a witch doctor and a ritual with breaking an egg on some standing stones, and then there was a lot of shots of bourbon :P

I had a pretty quiet night life too. The second night we were there Sir Brusi took a bunch of us Lochacians to a party at Gabriel's Landing and set us free. I had an awesome time, meeting lots of people and starting great conversations on the merit that we were Australian. Mister Nathan and I stumbled home at around 4am, and that was my latest night. One night Mister Nathan and I were attempting to explore the Bog and find the Galatians campsite, but then Sir Gregory appeared in a golf cart and took us up to the other end of the site. Then I did my laundry at 1am. There was a night of Kingdom parties in which shenanigans involving pinning mini Lochac devices all over other Kingdoms' stuff occurred. One night I came home to find a whole bunch of pointy hats in our campsite. Our Queen had spent her day inviting other Crowns over, which was a bit of a surprise :P

All in all I'm pretty happy with my Pennsic experience. I didn't go crazy with the parties and the drinking, but I was pretty social. I did something awesome every day, but I also managed to have a lot of relaxing time under the magic tree. Also, spending our last night at the Hyatt at Pittsburgh Airport was the best decision ever. After spending the day packing up and saying goodbyes, having a very civilised dinner in a restaurant and then spending an hour sitting in a hot tub was amazing. The flights home were long and awful and tedious, but we finally made it. I spent last week fighting the jet lag and cleaning out my bedroom. It was a mess before I left, so it took me ages. Plus I had to organise myself for uni because it went back while I was still in transit.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the way of SCA projects now. I have a pretty good wardrobe now that I'm quite happy with, so there's no urgent garb project on the cards. I have the fabric ready to make my man-cote, so I might start working on that. I'd also like to start looking at the Cranach gown that I've been planning for ages, now that I have some fresh ideas. I started the embroidery for a needle case while I was on the plane, so I think I'll just toil away at that until I settle into this semester at uni and feel the urge to sew again. I bought a whole bunch of buckles and things at Pennsic, and I'd eventually like to weave some new garters and a belt or two as well.

Here's a picture that Ceara took of me all ready to venture out to the markets :)

Just Quickly...

I know I blogged last night, but then afterwards I got out my embroidery stuff and made little samples of both of the patterns I wanna try.

All I had was leftover DMC embroidery floss from my awesome bag, and 28 thread count evenweave. The top one is most of the top left edge of the motif, and the bottom one is one whole motif of the other pattern. Clearly the bottom one is tiny and will go better on the smaller needle case. The top pattern is quite large, even when it'll be on 44 count. I still don't know which one I want to do first. My other problem is smuggling a needle and scissors onto the plane. I'm pretty sure the Stitcher's Corner sells those tiny plastic scissors with the rounded point that are supposedly allowed on planes, but Tex has said that she's had them taken off her before. Maybe I'll also get one of those round cutter pendant dealies that you can hang around your neck. I've got three embroidery needles and I think I'll stick them in three different places in my bag. I've heard that you can stick one in your clothing and the scanner thingy won't pick it up.

Anyway, enough about embroidery. Today I need to Cut Out Mister Nathan's chausses and go visit my Gran in the hospital. And maybe while I'm out I'll go to the Stitcher's Corner too :P

Three More Sleeps!

Only three sleeps to go! I have now finished all my VIPT, but I'm not going to have time to make a man-cote. I have two whole days, then Wednesday is packing day, which would be a bit of a stretch to get a man-cote and supportive undergarment completely finished. It would involve forty buttonholes, and that's because I only have twenty buttons to go down the front, which really isn't enough. So I'll get some awesome buttons at Pennsic and make it when I get back. I also have another VIPT to get finished. I made a deal with Mister Nathan. I'm gonna make him a pair of chausses and he is going to make me an awesome belt buckle and tip for my plain belt. I am armed with his pattern, some drill, some wadding and some blankety stuff, and I'm gonna try my hand at quilting for the first time!

On Saturday I finished my oopsie surcote. I took an awful picture and did some things to it to try and make it less awful, but it's still awful and the colour is not right. But I'll post it anyway for illustrative purposes.

It looks less awful when it's small, so here's a small picture of me wearing the surcote. Yay! I'm quite pleased with how it came out, it is so much better than my last wool one. I lined the sleeves and tippets with some royal purple silky satiny stuff, and I think they look pretty awesome :)

I had planned to knock out the sleeves on Saturday morning, then spend the rest of the day Cutting Out Nathan's chausses and my man-cote, but my Gran went to hospital on Friday night so I spent most of the day fretting talking to various family members. Saturday night was when I decided I need to take the pressure off myself for these last few days. I'd also like to go to the Stitcher's Corner and get some materials for embroidery. I'm itching to do some more. I reallyreally wanna make this pattern:

It looks so pretty! I was thinking about making a needle case, but there are four different motifs in this pattern and they're quite large, so I probably won't end up finishing more than one whole motif. I really like the pattern so I'd prefer to be able to use the whole thing, so I was thinking of making another pouch, this one can be normal sized. I might even look at doing another tablet woven edge, AND weave a little narrow hanging strap. But I'd still really like a cool needle case, so I might use this pattern:

The colours are pretty awful, so I'll definitely be changing them to something brighter and less brown. I really like how there are motifs that are the same colour as the background, it's just the longer stitches that make them stand out. Wymarc recommends 72 count evenweave for this pattern, and 44 count for the other, but I think I'll use 44 count for both of them. Both of these pattern are a little different to what I've done before. The first is a bunch of little squares making up the motifs, the second doesn't have tesselating motifs. There's motifs but there's a whole bunch of plain background around them, which could be a little boring to stitch.

I'm starting to get REALLY REALLY EXCITED. I went shopping the other day for things like undies and socks and little bottles of shampoo. I bought myself a new reasonably sized toiletries bag, and I've decided that if it doesn't fit in the bag, it's not coming with me. I'm sick of carting around a massive toiletries bag. I always pack my suitcase, then have to squeeze in this giant weirdly shaped bag. No more! Anyway, apart from the actual packing part, I'm pretty much ready for this trip!

One week!

One week until we leave for the US! Seven more sleeps! I'm getting really excited now :). I had my relaxing day on Monday, getting only about 20cm of weaving done. I made up for it yesterday though.

Here it is! I'm weaving with the black on top, but underneath is blue! I started with all my tablets threaded in the same direction, but I didn't really like the look of it, so I flipped every second card and I liked that way more betterer. The eight selvedge cards are still threaded in the same direction, so it gived it quite a nice border. The band is 2cm wide, and after weaving the bag strap which was 4cm it seems so tiny! It's coming up really nicely, but I'm not sure that I'll want to work with this silk again. It's spun silk so it's made up of shorter fibres, which means that I've got quite a problem with piling. The string is really fluffy, and mostly it gets stuck on the weft wrapped around my shuttlebeater. I get to a point where the weft won't unwind anymore and I have to pull all the fluff off. Every now and then it gets stuck in the band and I have to pull it out, but mostly the finished band is fine. I also get it all over my hands every time I untwist and shift the warp along the loom. The reeled silk from Treenway that I used for my fail belt was plied really tightly, and I'm wondering if that's what made it not compress at all. The reeled silk was a better quality and made from longer fibres, and it was shiny, which is nice in a silk. I may have to go hunting for a supplier that sells reeled silk that isn't so tightly plied, since Treenway only has four or five different varieties. Three of them are the tightly plied cord, and the other two aren't very fine. Although this spun silk may do really well as a weft for the reeled silk, since it compresses more.

Yesterday I also went on an adventure to buy a D-ring and some sheet brass for the buckle, AND while I was out I even went and bought a travel card for my US monies. Then I went to Nathan and Catherine's house to look at hotels for our one night in Pittsburgh, and I did some work on my oopsie surcote. I threw it on over a cotehardie yesterday and it was too small. I would have been able to button it closed, but it was a little tight over my boobs which I didn't like. Luckily I had stopped to check this before making the buttonholes, because I was able to take the front seams out half an inch each, and I also lowered the neckline a little bit. So last night was spent fixing that up, and then I closed up the skirt down the front. So now I has a dress shaped thing. All that's left to do is the buttons and buttonholes, the bottom hem and the sleeves.

Today I'm hoping to finish the last 50cm or so of my weaving, and get the buttonholes done on the dress. I should have both completely finished by the weekend, which gives me time to do the little fixes on a couple of things, and even maybe make a man-cote :)

Update

Good morning! Only nine more sleeps to go until we leave for the US! I found my sense of urgency last week and my productivity exploded over the weekend. On Friday after finishing my hose and awesome bag, I cut out my oopsie wool. Then I remembered that it will need lining, so I cut that out of some leftover white linen, AND I even sewed most of it up. I was handsewing in front of the tv, and I was all set to get it completely finished except that I started doing silly things like sewing panels on backwards and stuff, and it was after midnight so I decided to go to bed. After five hours sleep it was time to get up and go to the collegia! There was classes in one room all day, and the other room was for general arts and sciences. I spent my day in the other room, and completely warped my loom. Then I finished off my lining. I even got to see one class, because one session had two classes running concurrently, so my room was invaded by a class about veils, which was pretty interesting.

I spent my Saturday evening at Nathan and Catherine's house sewing up my oopsie wool. I got all the panels sewn up and finished. I used a sewing machine to sew the seams, then hand finished them, which is so much faster than handsewing everything. Once again I fell into bed after midnight and got up stupid early to go back to the collegia. I didn't get as much done on Sunday because I had to take time out to teach my tablet weaving class. It went well, there were quite a lot of people there and most of them seemed really interested. I was quite pleased with how it went anyway.

By about 3pm my sense of urgency had evaporated and turned into tired. I'd managed to get the lining hand sewn into the dress (had to do it twice, because I put it together inside out the first time, epic faaail) and I've finished the hems on the front two panels, ready to be joined. I'm housesitting again, I (hopefully) packed up all the things I need for my projects and moved in last night. Today I'm not aiming for anything ambitious, I have some errands to run and then I'll probably just sit on the couch and do some weaving. At some point this week I need to put on a cotehardie, because this time I intend to make sure the surcote fits before I go any further, because I don't have time to fix it after it's finished. It looks quite small to me, which could be a good thing since my last one ended up being gigantic. I added three inches to the pattern, which should hopefully be enough that it's still fitted but loose enough to hang smoothly over the supportive cotehardie.

ALSO I think I might be a little crazy, but I'm itching to start another embroidery. I've been idly looking at more German Brick Stitch patterns, and I've picked a couple I like from the Wymarc web page, but I've also found that there are MOAR patterns and I like them all. I've been pondering it for a couple of days, and my problem was that I don't have anything to make out of them. I don't want to just start an embroidery project without an idea of how I'm going to use it, but I had some ideas last night. I've got this vague idea of making a needle case with a little pocket in it for things like thread and a small pair of scissors. In my head it's a stiff case, but right now I'm not sure how to achieve that. I suppose I could line it in buckram or something like the girls do with their tudor bodices. Another vague idea I had was to make my basket a little cover. At the moment I've been using a piece of leftover white linen and tucking it around whatever's in the basket. This has two purposes, to hide mundane looking things like my water bottle, and to hide things that might be stolen like my phone and purse. That's another really big project though, and I want to move to 44 count evenweave. Another thing I saw on the internet was an extant box that was made out of wood and covered in embroidery. I immediately thought I'd like to reconstruct it, but the person who'd redacted it wrote that the embroidery was done on some weird fabric that had a thick weft and a really thin warp, so it was 44 count one way and 27 count the other way. I'd use normal evenweave, but that would mean the pattern will end up a different size, so I'd have to really think about how I would go about it. Another idea is to make a cushion. That would be cool but I'm not sure I'd actually use it :P.

Anyway, now I'm thinking that the problem with long flights is that I get bored. There's sleeping to do, but I can't sleep for 30 hours straight. I'll watch some movies on the entertainment system, but I still get bored doing that. Then I realised that it's not very often that I just sit still and watch tv or movies at home, I'm usually doing something like sewing or weaving at the same time. So maybe what I need to keep me entertained is some embroidery to do while I watch movies on the plane! This is a brilliant plan except that it requires me taking the time to plan a project, then go out to the Stitcher's Corner to buy the things and spend ages talking to the lady there because she's really nice and remembers me and my projects. The point is that I might not have the time. I think I'll keep pondering and see what happens. Only nine more sleeps!

Progress

I've been very busy these last couple of days, and I am pleased to announce that I have finished some Very Important Things!

Tada! That pile includes two new chemises and three new hose. I now have four chemises and eight hose. That's enough underwear for four outfits, so I should be ok at Pennsic with just one trip to the laundry :) I also decided that today was the day to finally finish the project that's probably taken more work that any other project I've ever done.

It's my awesome bag of awesome! I started the embroidery just after Christmas last year, so it's taken just over six months to get to this point. Not that I've been working on it especially hard, just plodding away for six months. Yay! I ended up using my last little bit of gold linen for the back panel, and I lined it in white linen. I might still do some decorative stitching around the top and also the back where you can see the machine stitching where I sewed the strap on. But that might all depend on whether I have time :)

Tonight I'm hoping to cut out my oopsie wool and start sewing together a new surcote. I think I'll machine stitch and hand finish it to speed things up a bit. This weekend is collegia weekend, and I'm intending to spend most of my time in the other room working on my own projects. Not sure if I'll work on the surcote or start warping up my loom for my plain belt. I can't use a continuous warp because I only have two giant skeins, and it's fine yarn so it'll probably take somewhere between 40-50 cards, which is an awful lot of tedious to thread individually. I remember my other belt taking the best part of three days to warp, just because it was so tedious and I kept taking long breaks. I don't exactly have a spare three days, so maybe spending a couple of days with company with productive breaks involving A&S classes is the way to go. I might even be able to recruit some help :P On Sunday night I'll be moving to the girls' house to look after their cat while they're in New Zealand, and I'll be there right up until I leave for Pennsic. Hopefully I'll get everything I wanted done :). The pressure is off once the new surcote is finished, because everything else is just extra things.

Funny Story

So, a funny thing happened yesterday. On Sunday I ran out of weft for my weaving about 40cm before the end of the bag, so I decided I would see if Spotlight had anything. They do sell size 8 DMC cotton after all, and if they didn't have the right purple then maybe they'd have one close enough. Yesterday morning I woke up to find an email about a 30% off sale they were having, which was funny since I was going there already. When I got there I found they had the exact right thread! Yay! Then I made an oops.

You can tell it's an expensive oops because the cat likes it even more than my linen. I may have accidently bought 5 metres of wool flannel suiting. It was originally $39.99 per metre, but after the 30% off and the $40 voucher I got given as my going away gift, it only cost me $100! I couldn't resist, it's so pretty! It's quite a bit greener than in the picture, and maybe I might be pondering giving up on the idea of fixing one of my already existing surcotes for Pennsic, and just make a whole new one out of this fabric! It goes with my underdresses, and it's significantly lighter than the wool I made the blue one out of. Hmmm. I also have some really nice deep purple miscellaneous satiny silky stuff that  could use to line the tippets and bind the edges.

In other news, Mister Nathan fixed my shuttlebeater! Yaaay! I still feel a bit guilty, but I've been very careful using it and it hasn't broken again. My weaving is not as tight as it was, so the motif has stretched out an extra centimetre in length. I'm not very happy with that but I can't seem to beat it as tight when I'm making sure not to pull on the edges of the beater. Oh well. I'm a little sick of the motif but I've only got about 25cm left to do before I'm finished! I'll finish that today. I've also been procrastinating Cutting Out my hose and chemises. I washed my chemise linen on Friday and then it stayed on the line for the whole weekend because I was busy doing other things, like looking at visa stuff for the US and researching money things for storing my US monies. Hopefully today will be productive and I'll get the hose and chemises mostly out of the way so I can start working on more ambitious projects like my plain belt and this new surcote :)

Sadfaaace :(

My plans for getting the strap for my awesome bag of awesome mostly finished came to a grinding halt yesterday when:

I broke my shuttlebeater! :'( I AM SO SAD. And this is why I can't have nice things. I took it over to Mister Nathan's house last night and he glued it back together. It's now sitting on his kitchen bench in a clamp and I am still very sad. :'( :'(

I'm Still Alive!

Oh hi there! It's been ages *sheepish* But guess what! I'm officially on holidays! My exam for uni was on Friday, Hairspray closed on Saturday, then PAAARTAAAY, then I woke up on someone else's couch on Sunday morning with a cold. Gah. Once I found my way home I spent Sunday mostly sleeping, with some interruptions to blow my nose and generally feel miserable. Yesterday I had to go to uni (I know! On my holidays!) for a scary 5 hour lecture about clinical placement next semester and achieving competency for accreditation. All very scary stuff. But now I have exactly three weeks and one day to get ready for PENNSIC!

I've woven about half of the strap for my bag. I was gonna work on it on Sunday night but after two picks I'd had enough and put it away in favour of some lemony panadol drink and feeling miserable. Then I spilled the last of the lemony panadol drink on the couch which I quickly vacated and haven't gone back to look at the damage. Today I hope to get the strap mostly finished. I can only shift it down my loom another 5 inches or so, so I at least hope to do that and get it all tensioned for the last time, then power through the last of it :)

I need to dig through my fabric stash and find all the spare bits of linen I can use to make hose. I think I'll spend tomorrow washing my white chemise linen and Cutting Out hose. I use the sewing machine to sew up my hose, because it's quick and strong, so that shouldn't take too long. Then I'll bring them all to A&S to work on finishing off the seams. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have a whole bunch of new hose, and that'll be one Very Important Pennsic Thing (VIPT) done. Another VIPT is chemises. I needs MOAR! I think I'll try sleeveless ones, because I've noticed my one that has sleeves to my elbow is a) kinda annoying to tuck into my cote sleeves, because the sleeves roll up and I end up with a lump and it's all uncomfortable, and b) the restriction I'm feeling at the back of my sleeve hole isn't actually from my cote sleeves, it was from my chemise all along! Ruuude. VIPT number three is to fix one of my surcotes so I can wear it on cold nights. I bought some black drill for the green brocade one because I liked that one better, but then Mum stole her basket back, the basket that's been my fix-it basket. So all the fix-it things from the fix-it basket are now in a pile on the floor, and somehow the blue wool surcote ended up on the top, and it looks really nice and warm. I think I've turned it into an ugly thing in my mind because of how much trouble I had making it, but I think I actually like it. It has potential. So I dunno. The wool one will definitely weigh more and take up more room in the suitcase, so that very well may decide things. The last VIPT is my awesome bag of awesome! Once the strap is finished and I dig out my linen, I can start putting it all together :)

Other things that are not so important is my plan to make a new man-cote. I'd like to have a man-cote to wear because I like wearing brais and hose, but it's quite an elaborate plan so if I don't end up with time, then meh. I'd really like to finish the double-sided black and blue belt that I started pondering ages ago and then ordered silk for it and then promptly forgot about. Btw, I ordered some silk! Once again I guessed with the colours, but I also ordered a colour card so there'll be no more guessing! I didn't end up with the blue that I wanted. I wanted a royal blue but I got more of a purpley blue, which was a bit disappointing, but totally my fault for trying to guess colours without a colour card. Never again! Anyway, I'll still use that blue for my belt. Because it's gonna be so plain I've decided I want to make a really nice buckle and point, which will take a bit of time I think. I'll just use a D-ring and fold some sheet brass over it and shape it all nice, and maybe do some etching. Anyway, once I've done the VIPT I have a feeling that the rest of my time will be taken up with this belt.

I ALSO HAVE ANOTHER BELT IDEA! My second ever tablet woven band was a 14 card leaf pattern which I used to make garters. Anyway, I was thinking I would use the leftover black silk and the leftover green silk cord from my brocaded belt to make a black belt edged with the leaf pattern! It will be nice as well as an experiment to see how I go with weaving with two different kinds of yarn. I've always used exactly the same size yarn for different colours in a band, so it'll be interesting to see how important it is to have yarn that behaves in exactly the same way. But I probably won't have time to make that one before Pennsic. But it's ok, because when I'm at Pennsic I'll buy a buckle for it!

Doubleface

Here I am posting from my new tablet, Timothy. We've had some dramaz talking to the sd card on the dock, but I think we have it all sorted now, so hopefully I'll get to post my pictures! Anyway, on Sunday I warped up my loom to make the strap for my awesome bag of awesome! I did a continuous warp, but I had to do it in two lots because I needed to use eight balls of cotton. It also took way longer than I thought it would, as usual. I also ended up just manually threading the eight selvedge cards because it was easier.

On Sunday night I went to Nathan and Catherine's house to watch Eurovision and have snuggles with the puppy, and Mister Nathan finished my shuttlebeater!

I forgot to take a picture before winding my weft on, but you get the idea. YAY SHUTTLEBEATER! I love it very much, and it smells like oranges because Mister Nathan used his special orange flavoured wax stuff :) Thanks Mister Nathan! I took my loom up to visit Spoh on Tuesday night because she's home for two weeks! I realised I couldn't use my embroidery pattern as a weaving pattern, because the embroidery pattern has zigzaggy stitches, and plain doubleface has all the stitches next to each other. Anyway, I fiddled a bit to see how doubleface actually works. Even though I didn't get much done, I understand more about doubleface and I got to do a lot of unweaving too.

Yesterday I used Guntram's Tabletweaving Thingy to draft a pattern. I haven't used the program much except to print off Guntram's threading diagrams and turning sequences, but actually it's really useful. I drew this:

GTT even changes the colours and stuff, and you can set the threading direction and look at how it will look as an actual band. Anyway, I couldn't fit the motifs on the embroidery pattern in the middle, so I decided to just do the diamonds. It still looks nice. I started weaving this yesterday, but I only got a few picks in before I realised that once again my weaving stretches patterns way longer than they should be, so I unwove it and drafted a new pattern.

It looks ugly and squashed, but then I started weaving it

I think it looks pretty awesome. The bottom looks a bit chunky, so I modified the pattern a little when I got to the top and it looks heaps better. I can't be bothered unweaving it and it doesn't bother me too much so I'll just leave it how it is. You might also notice that my picks get smaller as I go along, which is good. It took me ages to tension it but so far I'm not having any trouble.

I'm pretty happy with how it's going, I think it looks great. I haven't decided which side I'll use for the top yet, I guess we'll see how it looks when I'm done :)

Sleeves

I thought I'd do a step by step picture diary thing of The Making of the Hinge Sleeves. I finished hemming the green cote last week, so on Thursday I finally had no choice but to face Cutting Out my sleeves.

STEP 1:

Open a bottle of wine. Om nom nom. Tempranillo is my favourite at the moment.

STEP 2:

Lay out fabric and pattern pieces. The wonderful thing about linen is that you can fold it, so you can cut out both sleeves at once!

NOTE: Cats love linen, and I'm pretty sure they can smell it a mile away. At least Tory can. I was laying out my pattern pieces when I heard a loud roaring noise, and it was Tory gleefully making himself comfortable on my linen, purring loudly. Five minutes earlier my sister had gone looking for him, and do you think he could be found? Nope.

STEP 3:

The actual Cutting Out part. I did it. I survived. Sleeves aren't as bad as a whole dress. The only thing about sleeves and linen being double sided is that it's really easy to accidently make two left sleeves, which I have been known to do on occasion. The bits are laid out above as they will be sewn together. Once you join the two pieces, fold it into a tube and make sure it's different to the other one :P

STEP 4:
Completely lose interest in the documentation process. I'm pretty sure on Thursday night I had stitched the two parts of both sleeves together, and finished the seam. I also finished a couple of glasses of wine. For a more comprehensive look at the medieval hinge sleeve, have a look at the La Cotte Simple page, there's also heaps of stuff there about fourteenth century things. The only thing I don't do is put buttons over my elbow. I made my first cote like that, and used rabbit poo buttons. They were uncomfortable enough to lean on, I wouldn't want to try it with hard metal or plastic buttons. I also ended up with gappy bits when I straightened my elbow, because there's extra fabric there to accomodate a bent elbow, it just bags when your arms are straight. Besides, I have long arms and usually put nine or ten buttons along seven inches of sleeve, which is only just over half way up my forearm. If I went all the way up that would be more than twenty buttons on each sleeve, which means more than twenty buttonholes. No thanks. Maybe one day I'll put some fake buttons on one of my cotes, because you don't need to undo them to get your arm in. As it is I only undo the four or five bottom ones, except when I'm in the kitchen or something and need to roll up my sleeves.

Anyway, I finished the green dress tonight. I made minimal effort on it during the week, so tonight I had to sew the buttons and buttonholes on the last sleeve, then attach them both to the dress. Done! Two weeks until Pencampwr, where I wanted to wear it with my green brocade surcote, but I wanted to fix that up first. I still need to warp up both my looms and get started on the band for my awesome bag of awesome, and that's for the class I'm teaching so it's number one priority. If I have time when that's done then I'll make a start on the surcote, but I can't see myself having enough time. Only three more weeks of uni left, and I have assignments due for all the units again. Plus Hairspray opens in two and a half weeks, so I'm busy with rehearsals and stuff for that.

Right now it's my bedtime. Goodnight.

Boobies!

I have an assignment due tomorrow. It's the last of three that I had due this week on top of a mid-sem exam. Tomorrow's assignment is not finished yet. What is finished is THIRTY-FOUR PROCRASTINATION LACING HOLES!

This means my cotehardie can be laced up, which means BOOBIES! All is right with the world.

The end.

Things I Have Learned This Week

1. Assignments take at least three times as long as I think they will.
Therefore, easing into study week with a day of setting up my study space (I have my desk chair back!) and a day spent organising things and shopping with Mum was not a good idea. It means my Thursday social day of going to watch Iron Man 3 with friends gets postponed in favour of completing assignment number one :(

2. An entire day spent working on an assignment leads to brain deadedness.
Therefore, evening time is spent either A) slouched on the couch mindlessly watching Family Guy and holding a pile of linen in the hope that it will magically sew itself together into a cotehardie, or B) at rehearsal desperately hoping my limbs are able to remember the tap dancing they learned six years ago, and somehow can transfer the choreography to the memory parts of my brain for me to access next week so the director doesn't cut me from the number.

3. Study week is not for getting SCA projects done.
I was silly to even think I'd get my green cotehardie nearly finished and my loom warped.

In other news, Twitter told me this morning that the Pennsic A&S timetable is available! Twitter is a bad bad man for telling me such distracting information, because then I had to go read the 85 page pdf file that lists ALL OF THE CLASSES. I'm a little disappointed in the small number of tablet weaving classes. There's two people teaching two seperate beginner's classes multiple times, but I am tempted to pop into one of them because she's selling small looms and I wants a small loom! But then again I'll probably find a million small looms at the markets. There's a class about weaving letters that is right up my alley, and also a tablet weavers tea which I am SO EXCITED about. Other than that, I might go to a ball or two, and some classes about hoods and veils. I'm also pondering the beginner's inkle class, because I'd like to know how it works. And maybe stick weaving, because I'm intrigued. I'm sure I'll be able to keep myself busy :P

Anyway, back to my assignment. Stupid assignment of stupid being all stupid and stuff *huff*

Packages!

I got some packages in the mail this week :D The first was the rest of the yarn that I need to weave the strap for my awesome bag of awesome

Here are all of the colours. I bought two more balls each of the gold and red, which will be my main pattern. The purple and green will be my selvedge. This week is study week, and I'm hoping to get my loom warped up so I can plod away at the actual weaving when uni goes back and I get my new shuttlebeater. I also think that I should read the Collingwood chapter on doubleface again properly, and get my pattern drafted up properly.

The other package is the next instalment of the buttons saga. First I ordered some nice buttons that arrived way bigger than the advertised size, then I found some awesome buttons on ebay but got outbid and was very sad. But then I found aliexpress.com, which sells wholesale buttons for ridiculously cheap. I spent about $15 and got these:

LOOKIT! I got 104 because the bulk lot comes in 100, and the other four were in their own seperate baggy labelled "small gift", which gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy. I was expecting some crappy plastic buttons that will peel and break really easily, but they't not, they're heavy and feel like some sort of metal, and are actually really very nice. I don't think I'll be replacing them after Pennsic after all. Instead I'll stock up on a stash of awesome Pennsic buttons and I'll never have to buy buttons ever again! I'm pretty happy with my purchase, they were so cheap, I've got enough for five sets of sleeves and they're quality and the right size :)

I've also been plodding along with the green cotehardie. I've got all the panels sewn up and the lining sewn in, I just need to iron the seams where the lining joins the outside, sew up the front seam, make lacing holes, hem the bottom and make sleeves. I've given up on the idea of a sleeveless cotehardie for now. That might be a project for the future.