Hood Update and Other Things

Thanks for helping me decide where to put what colours on my hood! I ended up going with green with pink lining. I stitched it all together on Thursday and Friday last week, and brought it along to the Dragon's Bay A&S workshop on Saturday. Nearly everyone there mentioned that the colours were completely different in real life than on their computers, which I thought was interesting. Of all the photos I have put up on this blog, that lot were the ones I did the least to because I thought the colours were pretty accurate, just a little washed out. Maybe I'll have to look at the colour settings on my computer.

Saturday's workshop was lots of fun! I taught some tablet weaving to a small group of enthusiastic students, and they seemed to enjoy it which is great. Most of them even warped up their looms and started their very own first piece of weaving. In the afternoon I threaded up some cards and began the edging for my hood. All up the length around the edges of the hood is nearly three metres, which sucks balls. After about an inch of weaving I'd already decided it was way too tedious, but I want the look to it must be finished! It might take me a while though. Nearly a week later I've only done half of the bottom edge. So far to go! Tomorrow is the St Basil O-day at UWA, so I'll bring it along to that and tie myself to a leg of the pavillion. What makes it super tedious is that it's quite simple and boring, which also makes it good for a demo, since I don't need to worry about counting anything or being interrupted. I can literally drop it and leave it at any point.

In other news, you may remember that my Gran passed away last year. I managed to inherit her sewing machine and a bunch of embroidery floss and odd and ends. By inherit I mean I went to her house and claimed a bunch of stuff. In actual fact, I received my actual inheritance the other day, in the form of $275 cash transferred straight to my bank account. It may not seem like much, but it's enough to by myself a present or two. First of all, I need a new pair of pointe shoes, since last night my current pair managed to munch their way through the adhesive gel pads I wear on my heels. One of them succeeded in sticking itself and my tights to the top layer of my skin. IT WAS NOT FUN. Anyway, since my Gran taught me ballet I thought it would be very fitting to spend some of my inheritance on pointe shoes. New ~fancy~ pointe shoes that require a fitting appointment at a dance physio. After that, I should have about $100 left FOR FABRIC :D.

Now I have choices. Lately there's been some enthusiasm for Cranach gowns around the place, which makes me wanna hurry up and make mine. I already have some dark green woolly velveteen stuff for the main part, and I did buy 3m of red shot gold silk dupion for the bands and the contrasting bits on the bodice. BUUUT I've only got 3m and maybe I think I sort of might want Fancy Orange Brocade.

This is called Brocade Ornaments, from Sartor. It's US$20 per metre, but only 75cm wide and made from a polyester rayon. Also there's big warnings about shrinkage.

Other brocades that have caught my eye from Sartor include:

GREEN AND GOLD 14TH CENTURY RABBITS!

Wine red and white pretty

Miscellaneous "Historical Brocade" in gold and blue.

So the green on has a few downsides. Number 1: It's green. I already have too much green things! Number 2: It's US$64.95 per metre. That's because it's 100% silk and it's slightly wider than the other brocades, a whole 110cm. IT'S SO PRETTY. I think I need a larger inheritance for that one though. Sadface. I actually quite like the gold and blue one, I think it'll make a great cotehardie. The only things that worry me are that it's polyester, it's only 75cm wide and there's warnings of high shrinkage. That means that actually at the width I normally buy fabric, these brocades are actually $40 per metre. Maybe I should keep shopping.

HALP!

I'm really bad at making decisions, and tonight I have a really tough one to make, so I'm asking for some help! I've cut out all the bits I need to make a new hood with a silly hook, but I can't decide how to put them together!

Should I make it green with pink lining?

OR pink with green lining?

OR Parti-coloured?

You'll have to visualize it without the pins, and with the little shoulder gussets actually facing the right way. Silly me pinned it together so the seams were facing out. I should also mention that the edges will be finished with tablet weaving in some dark purple wool. Also I'll be wearing it with my green cotehardies, if that makes any difference. So far I have one vote from my Dad, he thinks I should make it pink with green lining. Please help by commenting or sending me an email!

Man things

Today I got a present from the postie!

Buttons! These are 2cm across, and were labelled as a Tibetan design on Aliexpress.com. I have no idea if the design is authentic or not, I think they're pretty and I got 40 of them for $10. They're a little darker than I expected, but they're the same zinc alloy as the little gold ones I got, so they're sturdy, cheap AND pretty. I think they'll do nicely for my linen man-cote.

Speaking of man-cotes, I finished my supportive shirt! I didn't think about how I don't have much arm movement in my cotehardies, and because that's due to the tightness around my torso rather than the actual sleeves themselves, I'll most likely have the same problem with this shirt. I haven't put it on yet because it's already 10:30pm and I still need to print of some stuff for clinic tomorrow. I'll most likely put it on later in the week to see how it fits and also to re-fit the red woolen man-cote over it, so I'll take photos and stuff then.

Midsummer Feast and Other Things

I finished the dress! I did wear it to the feast on the weekend and it fitted nicely and I got lots of comments from people asking if it was new because they weren't sure. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was comfortable all night. I wasn't invisible at this event this time! There are photos up on the Aneala facebook group, but none of them show the whole dress. The hall was also really dark, so by the time I'd thought about getting someone to take a photo of me it was too dark for it to work.

In other news from the weekend, I managed to put together some documentation for my needle case! It turns out that even though lots of other SCA people around the world think this sort of needle case is a good idea, it seems it's a TySCA thing and not actually period. Although I didn't spend much time hunting for sources, I did find a whole lot of information about medieval sewing kits and how they were transported, and could not find anything at all about this sort of needle book/case thingity. If anyone has come across anything that references these in period, I'd be happy to hear about it! Anyway, I lost marks for authenticity and ended up losing to Lady Ydeneye, who entered a hand sewn Italian partlet.

BUT I did get this:

It's the Baronial level award for service. I feel kinda bad because I haven't been doing much lately since I've been busy with uni. I used to arrive early to events and help set up and stuff, but now I'm more of a consumer and just turn up to have fun. Anyway, it's a really pretty scroll. I seem to be collecting scrolls with my name misspelled, and even though it'd be easy to get them fixed, I kinda wanna keep them just to see how many different ways they can misspell my name, because so far they're all completely different. It's not like spelling is a period thing, anyway :P

So I've crossed off one thing on my list. Actually, I've crossed off one big thing, and a couple of smaller sub-things. My linen arrived from fabric-store.com on Monday, so I just gotta wash it and then it'll be ready to turn into a not-green cotehardie! I also bought a yard of the new even-weave linen, and it's niiiiice. I don't think I'll use it for embroidery because there are still slubs and the weave is pretty tiny, but it feels lovely and soft so I might make a couple more little chemises out of it. I also bought some buttons! I went back to aliexpress.com because I was so pleased with the little gold buttons I bought last year, and found some nice cheap buttons I can use for the linen man-cote I wanna make. They haven't arrived yet, but hopefully when they do they'll be just as nice as the little gold ones.

This week I'm hoping to get my supportive shirt finished so I can re-fit my red wool man-cote to go over it, and start making the linen one. Also, I've been invited to teach some tablet weaving stuff down in the Canton of Dragon's Bay in a couple of weeks, so I should probably start thinking about what I'm going to do for that. I have a whole morning, so I might use the handout from my one hour class, and then set everyone up with a few cards and some yarn so they can have a go playing with some doubleface diamonds and stuff.