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 :)