I have returned! Festival was lots of fun, the new site is nice except that it's so COLD. FREEZING COLD. COLD. SOOOO COOOOOLD. I didn't cope very well with the cold. Did I mention it was COLD?
I managed to get all the assignments that needed doing done, and most of my projects. I finished my garters, they're all twisty so when I tried to take a picture of them I could only get this:
And blogger turned the picture on its side. Well done blogger. Anyway, my garters are all twisty! The general consensus at the Laurel Prize was that the wire is holding the twist, since it's quite stiff. When I first pulled it off my loom, the second garter was 8cm longer than the first. I figured that since parts of the first garter had been off the loom for three weeks, it had had time to compress. Now the second garter is only 3cm longer than the first, so it seems I was at least partly correct. I wore them on one day at festival, and found that the wire makes them quite stiff, and the stiffness combined with the twistyness makes the tails stick out all funny. Oh well.
I entered the Laurel Prize! I had my awesome bag, needle book, my garters and my purple and green silk belt on display. I had a good afternoon parked next to Ceara, and I spoke to lots of people. Here's my loot!
I wasn't actually introduced to a lot of the laurels I spoke to, so I have no idea who most of the tokens came from. The piece of braid is from Amalie, it was nice to finally meet her, the coin is from Mistress Joan, the pottery spindle bit is from Alex the Potter, the green pins are from Mistress Rowan (yay she liked my embroidery!), and the bone lacing needle is from Mistress Acacia. I didn't actually get to see Acacia at the Laurel Prize, but she walked past where I was sitting in front of the tourney field a couple of days later. Ursula von Memmingen took a lovely photo:
But wait... what's that hanging from her belt? Let's take a closer look.
It's a little blurry, but it looks an awful lot like....
Awesome bag! Mistress Acacia has her own little mini awesome pouch! I got very excited and bounced up to her and she got all excited and gave me the lacing needle :)
I also managed to make new sleeves for my wooly man-cote and finish my maroon woolen surcote. I'm really pleased with how the maroon cote turned out, even if the hems are a little long and got all dirty on the first night.
I've been tagged in heaps of big group shots of various courts and parades, and here's the best view of the dress. I pretty much wore my new hood for the entirety of the event. It was warmer during the day, but there was only one day that I wore just my linen layer. I tried on a couple of the other days but ended up being too cold and throwing on a woolen layer. So I was really really glad I had two wooly dresses to alternate.
It was SO FREAKING COLD at night, and I was almost warm enough with my awesome new epic sleeping bag. I ended up sleeping in as many layers as I had with me, which was three layers of pants, my fleecy tunic, hoody and a beanie. If I make it to festival next year I will be making a new epic woolyfleecy tunic of warms, and I will be investing in some thermal underwear. I'm also pondering making up some sort of furry wooly partlet to wear under my hood, and some sort of mittens to keep my hands and forearms warm. Did I mention it was COLD at festival? It didn't rain though, which was awesome. I might have traded some light nighttime drizzle for extra warms though, it was as cold as it was partly because of the clear days and nights.
At the Laurel Prize I spotted a lady with a really nice gown made of the most beautiful fabric. It was green with big gold spots, and I did fall in love with it. I asked her where she got it, and the answer was www.puresilks.us. There's 1772 silk brocades listed on the site, and most of them are US$19 per yard. They're quite light fabrics, but Ursula had the great idea of lining her whole gown with that cheap cotten/linen blend from spotlight. I trawled through all 1772 fabrics trying to find the spotty one, and failed :( But I did find this one!
I figured out pretty early that anything labelled as a "vestment" design looks fairly gothic. I'm also pretty proud of myself for ignoring all the green ones, since I don't need anymore green dresses.
(Except this one, it's green AND purple though, and they're my colours so it doesn't count as green fabric)
Anyway, I think I'm going to buy the purple one. The really great thing about this website is that shipping is calculated per item, and it's only $12 per item! $12 shipping! I also want to look into buying an orange fabric suitable for the Saxon gown I wanna make, but I gotta figure out what sort of pattern they used.
Anyway, that's it from me. I'm going to crawl back into my hole and bury myself in more assignments. May Crown is literally only two weeks away, which is way too close.
I managed to get all the assignments that needed doing done, and most of my projects. I finished my garters, they're all twisty so when I tried to take a picture of them I could only get this:
And blogger turned the picture on its side. Well done blogger. Anyway, my garters are all twisty! The general consensus at the Laurel Prize was that the wire is holding the twist, since it's quite stiff. When I first pulled it off my loom, the second garter was 8cm longer than the first. I figured that since parts of the first garter had been off the loom for three weeks, it had had time to compress. Now the second garter is only 3cm longer than the first, so it seems I was at least partly correct. I wore them on one day at festival, and found that the wire makes them quite stiff, and the stiffness combined with the twistyness makes the tails stick out all funny. Oh well.
I entered the Laurel Prize! I had my awesome bag, needle book, my garters and my purple and green silk belt on display. I had a good afternoon parked next to Ceara, and I spoke to lots of people. Here's my loot!
I wasn't actually introduced to a lot of the laurels I spoke to, so I have no idea who most of the tokens came from. The piece of braid is from Amalie, it was nice to finally meet her, the coin is from Mistress Joan, the pottery spindle bit is from Alex the Potter, the green pins are from Mistress Rowan (yay she liked my embroidery!), and the bone lacing needle is from Mistress Acacia. I didn't actually get to see Acacia at the Laurel Prize, but she walked past where I was sitting in front of the tourney field a couple of days later. Ursula von Memmingen took a lovely photo:
But wait... what's that hanging from her belt? Let's take a closer look.
It's a little blurry, but it looks an awful lot like....
Awesome bag! Mistress Acacia has her own little mini awesome pouch! I got very excited and bounced up to her and she got all excited and gave me the lacing needle :)
I also managed to make new sleeves for my wooly man-cote and finish my maroon woolen surcote. I'm really pleased with how the maroon cote turned out, even if the hems are a little long and got all dirty on the first night.
I've been tagged in heaps of big group shots of various courts and parades, and here's the best view of the dress. I pretty much wore my new hood for the entirety of the event. It was warmer during the day, but there was only one day that I wore just my linen layer. I tried on a couple of the other days but ended up being too cold and throwing on a woolen layer. So I was really really glad I had two wooly dresses to alternate.
It was SO FREAKING COLD at night, and I was almost warm enough with my awesome new epic sleeping bag. I ended up sleeping in as many layers as I had with me, which was three layers of pants, my fleecy tunic, hoody and a beanie. If I make it to festival next year I will be making a new epic woolyfleecy tunic of warms, and I will be investing in some thermal underwear. I'm also pondering making up some sort of furry wooly partlet to wear under my hood, and some sort of mittens to keep my hands and forearms warm. Did I mention it was COLD at festival? It didn't rain though, which was awesome. I might have traded some light nighttime drizzle for extra warms though, it was as cold as it was partly because of the clear days and nights.
At the Laurel Prize I spotted a lady with a really nice gown made of the most beautiful fabric. It was green with big gold spots, and I did fall in love with it. I asked her where she got it, and the answer was www.puresilks.us. There's 1772 silk brocades listed on the site, and most of them are US$19 per yard. They're quite light fabrics, but Ursula had the great idea of lining her whole gown with that cheap cotten/linen blend from spotlight. I trawled through all 1772 fabrics trying to find the spotty one, and failed :( But I did find this one!
I figured out pretty early that anything labelled as a "vestment" design looks fairly gothic. I'm also pretty proud of myself for ignoring all the green ones, since I don't need anymore green dresses.
(Except this one, it's green AND purple though, and they're my colours so it doesn't count as green fabric)
Anyway, I think I'm going to buy the purple one. The really great thing about this website is that shipping is calculated per item, and it's only $12 per item! $12 shipping! I also want to look into buying an orange fabric suitable for the Saxon gown I wanna make, but I gotta figure out what sort of pattern they used.
Anyway, that's it from me. I'm going to crawl back into my hole and bury myself in more assignments. May Crown is literally only two weeks away, which is way too close.
It was lovely to meet you too! That purple fabric is the same pattern as my elevation outfit :-)
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