Linen!

My linen arrived this morning! I opened up the box, dug through it a bit, grabbed out the sphinx and chucked it straight into the washing machine. Then I came back to my room to find this:

Cat in the box! He clearly decided that the package was for him, and made himself at home. I evicted him, then when the washing machine finished I hung the linen out to dry and left to do the errands that I was supposed to do yesterday. I've not been feeling well for the last couple of days, so Tuesday was spent doing some embroidery and feeling sorry for myself. Yesterday I felt better except that I was exhausted, so I slept all day and didn't get anything done. So it didn't matter in the end that my linen only arrived today, because I'd probably only be where I'm up to now anyway.

Speaking of which, I have cut out my lining and sewed it up with my zip to refit my pattern. I was secretly hoping that my pattern was ok after all and I'd just ballsed something up with my ginger cote, but nope. Here's my pattern, the only changes I made was to add more around the sleeve seam, because that bit was never right and it's easier to cut down than add more.

Yay blurry picture! Still need to clean my mirror. Also need to practice holding the camera steady with one hand. Anyway, you get the idea. The shape is right, but it zipped up waaay too easily for cold linen, and the whole thing is loose. I'm estimating it needs to be taken in by at least two inches. Anyway, that's all for today. Tonight I'm going to visit Nathan and Catherine to talk about flights for PENNSIC. Tomorrow I'll fix up the pattern completely, and hopefully get the rest of the dress Cut Out. I hate Cutting Out. But if I get to that point by the end of tomorrow, then on Saturday I can spend all day at the Taylors' open house sewing it together.

I've just conveniently remembered that I don't have any buttons for the sleeve of this cote OR the green one I want to make for Pennsic. Ugh. I wish I had more of those little gold buttons that I put on my red cote, because they look so nice, but they came from All Buttons Great and Small in Sydney. I suppose I could email them with a picture and ask if they could post me some more, but that could take ages and end up being very expensive, and I would like to be able to wear this cote to WAMA fair in two weeks. I guess I'll just go to Spotlight or Lincraft and see what I can find. I could always find some cheap buttons and then when I'm buying ALL THE THINGS at Pennsic, I could buy awesome buttons to replace them :P

Nearly There

I've counted and recounted and checked the number of motifs multiple times, and I'm pretty confident that I just made it to the three quarter mark :)

I am so close! I've done a huge amount of work, but I can see the end now. I started this project eight weeks ago, and it should only take me a couple more weeks to finish.

My yarn arrived! I've decided to weave the motifs in red and gold, and have a border with a stripe of green and a stripe of purple. I managed to get the same gold, red and purple as the embroidery floss I used, but DMC doesn't make the same green in size 8 cotton. There wasn't much choice, so I just got the closest green that I could. It will still look fine, and I'm pretty happy I could get the rest of the colours. I'll try and warp up my loom at some point next week, but I don't want to start weaving until I have my new shuttlebeater. Mister Nathan offered to make me one for Christmas, and it was just up to me to decide what I wanted. I know I definitely want a beater that is a shuttle as well, and I want it to be made from a dark, hard wood. I really like the functionality of Catherine's, but I want it to be pretty as well as functional. Anyway, I've given him my specifications, and I guess I'll have to wait until he's got a bit of spare time. Hopefully that will be soon :). I don't want to swap beaters part way through the weaving because that could change the band. I definitely had a significant difference between weaving with my old school ruler and Catherine's beater when I was working on my belt.

My linen hasn't arrived yet. I suppose the days of six day shipping from fabric-store.com are long past, which is a shame. Hopefully this order doesn't go missing like the last one. My last day of work was today, and next week is orientation week at uni. I only have to go in on Monday, so I have the rest of the week off. I was hoping to start working on a new cotehardie, so hopefully the linen will arrive early next week. I've decided not to make one in white, because that will mean sewing three cotehardies in four months, and I don't think I want to do that to myself. If my linen doesn't arrive next week then I'll string up my loom and keep working on my embroidery. I might even start constructing the bag, as much as I can do without the front panel anyway. I can't imagine getting much done quickly once uni starts, but I'll try to allocate time every week for sewing. I will also have about four weeks between semester finishing and leaving for Pennsic, so I will have that time to work on last minute things. I don't want an epic rush to get things done though, but it is nice to have that buffer.

Checking in

I've been trucking along with my embroidery since I last posted, but I realised something. I wasn't half way through when I said, because I miscounted the number of motifs in the final product. There's 35, not 30 *facepalm*. I have made it past the actual half way point now, but then I spent some time staring at it last night. I'd finished three of the corners, so I could see the size of it, and it looked to me like it was too skinny. The height was about two inches taller than an A4 piece of paper, but the width was only about an inch wider, and I didn't like the way it looked too long. So after a long time spent deliberating, I decided to make it wider by half a motif. I am glad I did, because it looks in proportion now. There's just more work for me to do :P.

In other news, I have ordered the cotton for the strap, but it still hasn't arrived. I'm expecting it sometime this week. Hopefully I'll get my loom strung up before uni starts in two weeks. I got an annoying email from fabric-store.com about the 5.3 ounce linen being on sale, with free shipping on orders over $50. I sent them an email asking why I was still being charged shipping, and of course the free deal was for US postal addresses only. The original email said absolutely nothing about that, so I replied and complained about false advertising and how if they had been a local store I would be entitled to claim the offer. They didn't reply. I placed my order anyway because even with shipping the linen is way cheaper than anywhere else, and I noticed that the reminder email about the sale had a little disclaimer added to the bottom about it being for US postal addresses only.

I've started watching Downton Abbey while I work on my embroidery, and I think I would like to be Maggie Smith when I grow up. Tomorrow I'm going to see the doctor at Curtin with a whole bunch of papers and I'm going to have some sort of Tuberculosis test. I'm a little confused about the list of immunisations I need except some of them aren't immunisations and some can't be taken with others but I might already have had some but then there may be boosters or something. I figure I'll bring all my papers and tell them to make sure my course requirements are filled. They do this sort of thing every year, they know what they're doing. Anyway, I have a feeling the rest of tomorrow might be a write-off, but hopefully not and I'll get through some more Downton Abbey and embroidery :). Also, I managed to get my silly girly elbow in the way of my bow string yesterday, and I think this is the worst silly girly elbow bruise I've ever had. It broke the skin in TWO places this time. I'm just hoping it'll get left alone tomorrow when the doctor is sticking me with needles and stuff.

I forgot to buy coffee beans today. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with this tomorrow morning when I need my morning coffee, but at the moment I'm in denial.

Half Way!

I began my embroidery project on December 28. One and a half weeks later I'd completed one quarter of it. It's been four weeks since then, and I've finally completed another quarter!

I'm half way there! Bonus points for anyone that finds the two motifs with a mistake. Clue: It's the same mistake twice. I noticed them both too late, and decided not to go through the ordeal of trying to unpick. This project isn't for a competition, it's a useful fun thing, and I think the mistakes add character :P Hopefully I won't keep slowing down at the same rate, because I'll never get it finished. I don't mind plodding along slowly at it, but I think I need to start another project so I can swap between them when I can't handle one anymore. Tomorrow I think I'll order some crochet cotton, and when it arrives I'll warp up my loom to start working on the strap of the bag.

At the moment I have no orientation activities scheduled at uni, so it looks like I'll have a week off between finishing work and starting uni. I might make a cotehardie. I have some white linen, but I'd like to get started on my Pennsic wardrobe. I need some coloured linen to make some cotes like my ginger one. I said I'd never order from fabric-store.com again because of their awful customer service, but I'm pretty sure someone else is running the business now. I've been put back on their mailing list, and I keep getting annoying emails with epic stories about how awesome their linen is. I especially enjoyed the one all about the perfect linen for medieval garb that they sell, except they were talking about their super heavy weight linen that I would never use for garb, and never mentioned the two weights that are actually perfect. Anyway, the point is it's under new management, and their linen is good quality for a very good price, so I might give them another go. I'll wait for the next time I get an annoying email about the 5.3 ounce being on sale. If that doesn't happen before my week off, then I'll get out my white linen. I need to make another pattern as well, so at least I won't need to do that when the coloured linen arrives.