So once again my plans did not go according to plan. I went down south last weekend and had an awesome time fishing, but the rest of the time was spent very unproductively. On Saturday we went into town to run some errands and stopped at just one winery because we couldn't very well go down south and not visit a winery. That all took ages, and by the time we got back to the house it was time to get all the fishing stuff set up, and couldn't be bothered anything so I read some of my book. Then we went FISHING and it was all very exciting and I did catch TWO FISHES and we were out there until midnight. Sunday was a lazy day in which we took the puppy to the beach and watched her frolic in the water and then I got stuck in a hot nap. There was a bit of groggy happening. But I figured I'd dragged my sewing all the way down there, I better do some, so I stitched the front seam of my dress together. That's it. Buttons and buttonholes got done on Tuesday and Wednesday, and yesterday I fixed the sleeves. Then last night I unpicked the sleeves again, because the top of the sleeves have holes that are waaay too small. I don't remember the dress being tight around the armpits, I'd just assumed that the sleeves were fine except they cut in at my elbows. But when I tried the dress on the sleeves were stupidly tight around the armpits, which means I need to add some fabric into the sleeves to make the holes bigger. Stupid sleeves are stupid. Hopefully I'll get them done tonight, because the feast is tomorrow and I hate rushing to finish garb. Also I completely forgot that I was going to enter the A&S competition at the feast, so I haven't even looked at documentation. I suppose if everything else is done then I'll see if I can put some together tomorrow afternoon.

I also took my embroidery down south in case I felt like working on it. I didn't, so it stayed in its bag. When I got home I took it out, and found that it didn't survive the journey very well. It's as if something was catching on the threads and pulling at them. Sadfaaace. There's a good four or five spots that will need to be pulled out and redone, so all of a sudden I'm feeling less motivated to work on it. I foresee that it's gonna be put aside for a bit while I work on other stuff.

Well, what an exciting blog post. Hopefully I won't be invisible at this event, and I'll end up with some nice pictures of me in my fixed up dress that I can post here :)

Usefulness

LOOKIT WHAT I DID DO!

It's my brocade surcote all reshaped with lining and stuff! :D Now  just need to close up the front seam, sew the buttons and buttonholes, and fix up the sleeves. Yaaay I've finally done something useful. I should get it done this weekend, I'm going down south with Mister Nathan to do some fishing, and I intend to spend the rest of the time sewing. That means the dress will be finished in plenty of time for the Midsummer feast next weekend, I might even find the time to write up some documentation for my needle case and enter it in the A&S competition.

The End of Holidays

My holiday is over. I've made some progress! On my embroidery that is.

I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. The only thing is that I'm making a rectangle so that when it's finished I'll fold it in half to make the pouch, with the fold being the bottom of the pouch, which means that the bottom of the embroidery will be one of the top edges, which means that the green motif will be upside down! If I'd been clever and realised this in advance, I would've stitched half of it upside down so that when I folded it both sides of the pouch would have motifs facing the same way. I guess I could still make it so the motifs all face the same way, and it probably doesn't matter that they'll be upside down because it's just me that's decided what the right way and the wrong way is. It might bother me though. These are the type of important things that I need to ponder when I should be doing other things, like prepping for clinical placement tomorrow.

Yep, my holidays are all gone and I've not done anything at all. I can't really bring myself to care all that much either. I'll probably start caring when I'm a fortnight out from Rowany Festival, completely overloaded with uni work and I suddenly decide that I just can't face going without three new cotehardies and hoods. As wardrobes go, I've got a pretty good one for a week at a camping event. I also know that what I have now fits into half a suitcase. Even though I have enough outfits in half a suitcase to wear something different every day, it doesn't fill a suitcase so clearly I am failing at SCA.

I did make a really big effort about a week and a half ago to work on my list. I pulled apart my green brocade surcote. Sleeves came off, buttons came off, the whole front seam was pulled apart and the hems along the front and around the neckline where unpicked. Then it got bundled up into a pile on the couch next to my black drill and my cotehardie pattern, all ready to start actually working on it. And there it remains. I'd actually like to wear it to the Midsummer Feast on the first of February, which is two weeks away, so I really should start working on it. I think about working on it nearly every day. If I'd done as much work as I'd thought about, I'd have three brocade surcotes all ready to wear. Also, it looks like the extra side panels I put in a while ago are staying, seeing as I snipped the top of the gores that I attached them to. I was going to pull them out because they don't really do much, but that would mean shortening the gores and I already learned that short gores are a bad idea. So they're staying. I'm not going to finish any of the seams though, because I'm putting a lining in they should be fine.

In other news, I did buy some linen this morning. I bought another lot of the Autumn Gold colour from fabric-store.com to remake my gold cotehardie. I love the colour and I never wear the one I currently have because I made it from an earlier pattern and it's just so uncomfortable. I spent quite a bit of time adjusting it and making new sleeves for it too, but I think I'm just going to have to write it off. It looks really good, but I never wear it because it's not worth the uncomfortable. I also end up with the points of my shoulders and the fronts of my armpits being really sore after I've worn it despite the fact that I've cut down the armholes multiple times. I have a bunch of cotehardies that have contributed to my learning process and helped me get to my current pattern and comfortable wardrobe, and I guess that's worth the time and effort it took to make them even though I'm never going to wear them again.

In other news, remember a few entries back I told you to stay tuned for Awesome Bag the Sequel: Awesome Box? I also bought a yard of a new linen that fabric-store.com has released. It's the same weight as the ILO19 that I've been using for my cotehardies, but it's a better quality and an even weave fabric. It's quite a bit more expensive per yard, so I thought I'd just buy a yard of it to use for embroidery and see what it's like. Anyway, the point is that it's not a square even weave, which is the kind of linen that the extant example my project will be based on has.

Hopefully the next time I post I will have actually done some stuff rather than just thinking about doing some stuff, which should be far more interesting to read about :)

Holidays Week 3

Happy new year! I had a fun week, beginning with my first taste of Absinthe (which didn't mess me up anywhere close to the amount I expected), funtimes at the dog beach, new years parties and movie days. I'm now over half way through my holidays, and nothing has been ticked off my SCA projects list. Sadface. I've finished the lacing holes on my supportive man-shirt, but now I'm feeling very uninspired to make and attach sleeves and finish the hem. Instead, I decided to begin something NEW because I wanted to play with my new embroidery frame. Note that embroidery was not on my list of things that need to be completed before Rowany Festival.

But I wanted to start a new embroidery! I think I'll make it into a pouch, with tablet woven edges. I really do need to get moving on my other projects though. I've just been feeling so lazy, and I have nothing to procrastinate, except my projects. There's only a week and a half until my stuttering orientation, and I have something like 11 articles to read before that, so maybe I'll get moving on my projects :P

In other news, I have a Google Plus account. I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work, but this blog is connected to it, and there's an option to email people in my circles when I post an entry. Some people have mentioned to me that they would like some sort of email notification when I update this blog, but the Blogger email gadget has some seriously negative comments about how it doesn't work. If you'd like an email notification, then let me know by posting a comment or something like that, and adding me on Google Plus.