Three More Sleeps!

Only three sleeps to go! I have now finished all my VIPT, but I'm not going to have time to make a man-cote. I have two whole days, then Wednesday is packing day, which would be a bit of a stretch to get a man-cote and supportive undergarment completely finished. It would involve forty buttonholes, and that's because I only have twenty buttons to go down the front, which really isn't enough. So I'll get some awesome buttons at Pennsic and make it when I get back. I also have another VIPT to get finished. I made a deal with Mister Nathan. I'm gonna make him a pair of chausses and he is going to make me an awesome belt buckle and tip for my plain belt. I am armed with his pattern, some drill, some wadding and some blankety stuff, and I'm gonna try my hand at quilting for the first time!

On Saturday I finished my oopsie surcote. I took an awful picture and did some things to it to try and make it less awful, but it's still awful and the colour is not right. But I'll post it anyway for illustrative purposes.

It looks less awful when it's small, so here's a small picture of me wearing the surcote. Yay! I'm quite pleased with how it came out, it is so much better than my last wool one. I lined the sleeves and tippets with some royal purple silky satiny stuff, and I think they look pretty awesome :)

I had planned to knock out the sleeves on Saturday morning, then spend the rest of the day Cutting Out Nathan's chausses and my man-cote, but my Gran went to hospital on Friday night so I spent most of the day fretting talking to various family members. Saturday night was when I decided I need to take the pressure off myself for these last few days. I'd also like to go to the Stitcher's Corner and get some materials for embroidery. I'm itching to do some more. I reallyreally wanna make this pattern:

It looks so pretty! I was thinking about making a needle case, but there are four different motifs in this pattern and they're quite large, so I probably won't end up finishing more than one whole motif. I really like the pattern so I'd prefer to be able to use the whole thing, so I was thinking of making another pouch, this one can be normal sized. I might even look at doing another tablet woven edge, AND weave a little narrow hanging strap. But I'd still really like a cool needle case, so I might use this pattern:

The colours are pretty awful, so I'll definitely be changing them to something brighter and less brown. I really like how there are motifs that are the same colour as the background, it's just the longer stitches that make them stand out. Wymarc recommends 72 count evenweave for this pattern, and 44 count for the other, but I think I'll use 44 count for both of them. Both of these pattern are a little different to what I've done before. The first is a bunch of little squares making up the motifs, the second doesn't have tesselating motifs. There's motifs but there's a whole bunch of plain background around them, which could be a little boring to stitch.

I'm starting to get REALLY REALLY EXCITED. I went shopping the other day for things like undies and socks and little bottles of shampoo. I bought myself a new reasonably sized toiletries bag, and I've decided that if it doesn't fit in the bag, it's not coming with me. I'm sick of carting around a massive toiletries bag. I always pack my suitcase, then have to squeeze in this giant weirdly shaped bag. No more! Anyway, apart from the actual packing part, I'm pretty much ready for this trip!

One week!

One week until we leave for the US! Seven more sleeps! I'm getting really excited now :). I had my relaxing day on Monday, getting only about 20cm of weaving done. I made up for it yesterday though.

Here it is! I'm weaving with the black on top, but underneath is blue! I started with all my tablets threaded in the same direction, but I didn't really like the look of it, so I flipped every second card and I liked that way more betterer. The eight selvedge cards are still threaded in the same direction, so it gived it quite a nice border. The band is 2cm wide, and after weaving the bag strap which was 4cm it seems so tiny! It's coming up really nicely, but I'm not sure that I'll want to work with this silk again. It's spun silk so it's made up of shorter fibres, which means that I've got quite a problem with piling. The string is really fluffy, and mostly it gets stuck on the weft wrapped around my shuttlebeater. I get to a point where the weft won't unwind anymore and I have to pull all the fluff off. Every now and then it gets stuck in the band and I have to pull it out, but mostly the finished band is fine. I also get it all over my hands every time I untwist and shift the warp along the loom. The reeled silk from Treenway that I used for my fail belt was plied really tightly, and I'm wondering if that's what made it not compress at all. The reeled silk was a better quality and made from longer fibres, and it was shiny, which is nice in a silk. I may have to go hunting for a supplier that sells reeled silk that isn't so tightly plied, since Treenway only has four or five different varieties. Three of them are the tightly plied cord, and the other two aren't very fine. Although this spun silk may do really well as a weft for the reeled silk, since it compresses more.

Yesterday I also went on an adventure to buy a D-ring and some sheet brass for the buckle, AND while I was out I even went and bought a travel card for my US monies. Then I went to Nathan and Catherine's house to look at hotels for our one night in Pittsburgh, and I did some work on my oopsie surcote. I threw it on over a cotehardie yesterday and it was too small. I would have been able to button it closed, but it was a little tight over my boobs which I didn't like. Luckily I had stopped to check this before making the buttonholes, because I was able to take the front seams out half an inch each, and I also lowered the neckline a little bit. So last night was spent fixing that up, and then I closed up the skirt down the front. So now I has a dress shaped thing. All that's left to do is the buttons and buttonholes, the bottom hem and the sleeves.

Today I'm hoping to finish the last 50cm or so of my weaving, and get the buttonholes done on the dress. I should have both completely finished by the weekend, which gives me time to do the little fixes on a couple of things, and even maybe make a man-cote :)

Update

Good morning! Only nine more sleeps to go until we leave for the US! I found my sense of urgency last week and my productivity exploded over the weekend. On Friday after finishing my hose and awesome bag, I cut out my oopsie wool. Then I remembered that it will need lining, so I cut that out of some leftover white linen, AND I even sewed most of it up. I was handsewing in front of the tv, and I was all set to get it completely finished except that I started doing silly things like sewing panels on backwards and stuff, and it was after midnight so I decided to go to bed. After five hours sleep it was time to get up and go to the collegia! There was classes in one room all day, and the other room was for general arts and sciences. I spent my day in the other room, and completely warped my loom. Then I finished off my lining. I even got to see one class, because one session had two classes running concurrently, so my room was invaded by a class about veils, which was pretty interesting.

I spent my Saturday evening at Nathan and Catherine's house sewing up my oopsie wool. I got all the panels sewn up and finished. I used a sewing machine to sew the seams, then hand finished them, which is so much faster than handsewing everything. Once again I fell into bed after midnight and got up stupid early to go back to the collegia. I didn't get as much done on Sunday because I had to take time out to teach my tablet weaving class. It went well, there were quite a lot of people there and most of them seemed really interested. I was quite pleased with how it went anyway.

By about 3pm my sense of urgency had evaporated and turned into tired. I'd managed to get the lining hand sewn into the dress (had to do it twice, because I put it together inside out the first time, epic faaail) and I've finished the hems on the front two panels, ready to be joined. I'm housesitting again, I (hopefully) packed up all the things I need for my projects and moved in last night. Today I'm not aiming for anything ambitious, I have some errands to run and then I'll probably just sit on the couch and do some weaving. At some point this week I need to put on a cotehardie, because this time I intend to make sure the surcote fits before I go any further, because I don't have time to fix it after it's finished. It looks quite small to me, which could be a good thing since my last one ended up being gigantic. I added three inches to the pattern, which should hopefully be enough that it's still fitted but loose enough to hang smoothly over the supportive cotehardie.

ALSO I think I might be a little crazy, but I'm itching to start another embroidery. I've been idly looking at more German Brick Stitch patterns, and I've picked a couple I like from the Wymarc web page, but I've also found that there are MOAR patterns and I like them all. I've been pondering it for a couple of days, and my problem was that I don't have anything to make out of them. I don't want to just start an embroidery project without an idea of how I'm going to use it, but I had some ideas last night. I've got this vague idea of making a needle case with a little pocket in it for things like thread and a small pair of scissors. In my head it's a stiff case, but right now I'm not sure how to achieve that. I suppose I could line it in buckram or something like the girls do with their tudor bodices. Another vague idea I had was to make my basket a little cover. At the moment I've been using a piece of leftover white linen and tucking it around whatever's in the basket. This has two purposes, to hide mundane looking things like my water bottle, and to hide things that might be stolen like my phone and purse. That's another really big project though, and I want to move to 44 count evenweave. Another thing I saw on the internet was an extant box that was made out of wood and covered in embroidery. I immediately thought I'd like to reconstruct it, but the person who'd redacted it wrote that the embroidery was done on some weird fabric that had a thick weft and a really thin warp, so it was 44 count one way and 27 count the other way. I'd use normal evenweave, but that would mean the pattern will end up a different size, so I'd have to really think about how I would go about it. Another idea is to make a cushion. That would be cool but I'm not sure I'd actually use it :P.

Anyway, now I'm thinking that the problem with long flights is that I get bored. There's sleeping to do, but I can't sleep for 30 hours straight. I'll watch some movies on the entertainment system, but I still get bored doing that. Then I realised that it's not very often that I just sit still and watch tv or movies at home, I'm usually doing something like sewing or weaving at the same time. So maybe what I need to keep me entertained is some embroidery to do while I watch movies on the plane! This is a brilliant plan except that it requires me taking the time to plan a project, then go out to the Stitcher's Corner to buy the things and spend ages talking to the lady there because she's really nice and remembers me and my projects. The point is that I might not have the time. I think I'll keep pondering and see what happens. Only nine more sleeps!

Progress

I've been very busy these last couple of days, and I am pleased to announce that I have finished some Very Important Things!

Tada! That pile includes two new chemises and three new hose. I now have four chemises and eight hose. That's enough underwear for four outfits, so I should be ok at Pennsic with just one trip to the laundry :) I also decided that today was the day to finally finish the project that's probably taken more work that any other project I've ever done.

It's my awesome bag of awesome! I started the embroidery just after Christmas last year, so it's taken just over six months to get to this point. Not that I've been working on it especially hard, just plodding away for six months. Yay! I ended up using my last little bit of gold linen for the back panel, and I lined it in white linen. I might still do some decorative stitching around the top and also the back where you can see the machine stitching where I sewed the strap on. But that might all depend on whether I have time :)

Tonight I'm hoping to cut out my oopsie wool and start sewing together a new surcote. I think I'll machine stitch and hand finish it to speed things up a bit. This weekend is collegia weekend, and I'm intending to spend most of my time in the other room working on my own projects. Not sure if I'll work on the surcote or start warping up my loom for my plain belt. I can't use a continuous warp because I only have two giant skeins, and it's fine yarn so it'll probably take somewhere between 40-50 cards, which is an awful lot of tedious to thread individually. I remember my other belt taking the best part of three days to warp, just because it was so tedious and I kept taking long breaks. I don't exactly have a spare three days, so maybe spending a couple of days with company with productive breaks involving A&S classes is the way to go. I might even be able to recruit some help :P On Sunday night I'll be moving to the girls' house to look after their cat while they're in New Zealand, and I'll be there right up until I leave for Pennsic. Hopefully I'll get everything I wanted done :). The pressure is off once the new surcote is finished, because everything else is just extra things.

I'm Still Alive!

Oh hi there! It's been ages *sheepish* But guess what! I'm officially on holidays! My exam for uni was on Friday, Hairspray closed on Saturday, then PAAARTAAAY, then I woke up on someone else's couch on Sunday morning with a cold. Gah. Once I found my way home I spent Sunday mostly sleeping, with some interruptions to blow my nose and generally feel miserable. Yesterday I had to go to uni (I know! On my holidays!) for a scary 5 hour lecture about clinical placement next semester and achieving competency for accreditation. All very scary stuff. But now I have exactly three weeks and one day to get ready for PENNSIC!

I've woven about half of the strap for my bag. I was gonna work on it on Sunday night but after two picks I'd had enough and put it away in favour of some lemony panadol drink and feeling miserable. Then I spilled the last of the lemony panadol drink on the couch which I quickly vacated and haven't gone back to look at the damage. Today I hope to get the strap mostly finished. I can only shift it down my loom another 5 inches or so, so I at least hope to do that and get it all tensioned for the last time, then power through the last of it :)

I need to dig through my fabric stash and find all the spare bits of linen I can use to make hose. I think I'll spend tomorrow washing my white chemise linen and Cutting Out hose. I use the sewing machine to sew up my hose, because it's quick and strong, so that shouldn't take too long. Then I'll bring them all to A&S to work on finishing off the seams. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have a whole bunch of new hose, and that'll be one Very Important Pennsic Thing (VIPT) done. Another VIPT is chemises. I needs MOAR! I think I'll try sleeveless ones, because I've noticed my one that has sleeves to my elbow is a) kinda annoying to tuck into my cote sleeves, because the sleeves roll up and I end up with a lump and it's all uncomfortable, and b) the restriction I'm feeling at the back of my sleeve hole isn't actually from my cote sleeves, it was from my chemise all along! Ruuude. VIPT number three is to fix one of my surcotes so I can wear it on cold nights. I bought some black drill for the green brocade one because I liked that one better, but then Mum stole her basket back, the basket that's been my fix-it basket. So all the fix-it things from the fix-it basket are now in a pile on the floor, and somehow the blue wool surcote ended up on the top, and it looks really nice and warm. I think I've turned it into an ugly thing in my mind because of how much trouble I had making it, but I think I actually like it. It has potential. So I dunno. The wool one will definitely weigh more and take up more room in the suitcase, so that very well may decide things. The last VIPT is my awesome bag of awesome! Once the strap is finished and I dig out my linen, I can start putting it all together :)

Other things that are not so important is my plan to make a new man-cote. I'd like to have a man-cote to wear because I like wearing brais and hose, but it's quite an elaborate plan so if I don't end up with time, then meh. I'd really like to finish the double-sided black and blue belt that I started pondering ages ago and then ordered silk for it and then promptly forgot about. Btw, I ordered some silk! Once again I guessed with the colours, but I also ordered a colour card so there'll be no more guessing! I didn't end up with the blue that I wanted. I wanted a royal blue but I got more of a purpley blue, which was a bit disappointing, but totally my fault for trying to guess colours without a colour card. Never again! Anyway, I'll still use that blue for my belt. Because it's gonna be so plain I've decided I want to make a really nice buckle and point, which will take a bit of time I think. I'll just use a D-ring and fold some sheet brass over it and shape it all nice, and maybe do some etching. Anyway, once I've done the VIPT I have a feeling that the rest of my time will be taken up with this belt.

I ALSO HAVE ANOTHER BELT IDEA! My second ever tablet woven band was a 14 card leaf pattern which I used to make garters. Anyway, I was thinking I would use the leftover black silk and the leftover green silk cord from my brocaded belt to make a black belt edged with the leaf pattern! It will be nice as well as an experiment to see how I go with weaving with two different kinds of yarn. I've always used exactly the same size yarn for different colours in a band, so it'll be interesting to see how important it is to have yarn that behaves in exactly the same way. But I probably won't have time to make that one before Pennsic. But it's ok, because when I'm at Pennsic I'll buy a buckle for it!

Things I Have Learned This Week

1. Assignments take at least three times as long as I think they will.
Therefore, easing into study week with a day of setting up my study space (I have my desk chair back!) and a day spent organising things and shopping with Mum was not a good idea. It means my Thursday social day of going to watch Iron Man 3 with friends gets postponed in favour of completing assignment number one :(

2. An entire day spent working on an assignment leads to brain deadedness.
Therefore, evening time is spent either A) slouched on the couch mindlessly watching Family Guy and holding a pile of linen in the hope that it will magically sew itself together into a cotehardie, or B) at rehearsal desperately hoping my limbs are able to remember the tap dancing they learned six years ago, and somehow can transfer the choreography to the memory parts of my brain for me to access next week so the director doesn't cut me from the number.

3. Study week is not for getting SCA projects done.
I was silly to even think I'd get my green cotehardie nearly finished and my loom warped.

In other news, Twitter told me this morning that the Pennsic A&S timetable is available! Twitter is a bad bad man for telling me such distracting information, because then I had to go read the 85 page pdf file that lists ALL OF THE CLASSES. I'm a little disappointed in the small number of tablet weaving classes. There's two people teaching two seperate beginner's classes multiple times, but I am tempted to pop into one of them because she's selling small looms and I wants a small loom! But then again I'll probably find a million small looms at the markets. There's a class about weaving letters that is right up my alley, and also a tablet weavers tea which I am SO EXCITED about. Other than that, I might go to a ball or two, and some classes about hoods and veils. I'm also pondering the beginner's inkle class, because I'd like to know how it works. And maybe stick weaving, because I'm intrigued. I'm sure I'll be able to keep myself busy :P

Anyway, back to my assignment. Stupid assignment of stupid being all stupid and stuff *huff*

Classes

I've had some ladies from Abertridwr nagging me for a while about sharing the secrets of tablet weaving with them. So I've been pondering volunteering to teach a class at Pencampwr. I've been hesitating because it's the weekend before the last week of uni so I'll have assignments due around that time, and it's the weekend before Hairspray opens so  have a lot of epic rehearsals scheduled. I'm day tripping on the Saturday of Pencampwr because I have rehearsal on Sunday and uni on Monday, but I definitely want to go because I want to see Abertwridwr elevated to a Barony. Anyway, last night I decided I needed to get going on one of the three assignments I have due in a couple of weeks, so I started putting together a class handout. I had intended to spend today also working on my assignment, so I finished the handout. It's a grand total of eight pages, but two of them are just links to useful websites and yarn suppliers and awesome books and stuff. I also have one page entirely dedicated to pictures, and small pictures dotted through the text. It's an awful lot of content, but I intend it to be used as a reference tool for people to refer back to. I'll cover most of the content in an interactive way with things to touch, and I want to have my small loom warped up with a simple pattern so everyone can have a go. I think the most important things I want people to take away from my class is not only the practical how-to of weaving (throw the weft, turn the cards, beat, etc), but an understanding of warp twining and what is actually happening to the threads as you weave, and how this can affect what shows up on the band. I also want to provide the tools so that these ladies can bounce off what I've taught them and seek out further knowledge in whatever specific area they're interested in. I put together my handout from a few different ones I've found on the internet, so I don't want to post it as my work, because it's not. I just didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I've just picked out the bits I thought were the most important, edited them and put them together. Anyway, since my handout was done and that's basically the most work for the class, I emailed the A&S coordinator for Pencampwr and I'm scheduled in on Saturday morning.

In other news, last week I cut out another cotehardie. This one is green. I did the same thing I did last month and sewed up the lining at the Taylors' blacksmithing/open house day last Saturday. Since then I've just sewn one panel at a time on my evenings free, and right now I have two and a half panels to go. I'll just slowly chug away at it until I'm finished. The only event I can attend between now and Pennsic is my day at Pencampwr, so there's no rush to finish.

I pre-registered for Pennsic! It's all getting very exciting, I have so many plans but it's still over three months away! I intend to buy a massive stash of findings and buckles and buttons and things, as well as things like silk yarn. I'm also going to keep an eye out for a small inkle loom, but it will have to depend on whether I can get it back to Australia or not.

I decided to buy some silk for my plain doublefaced belt. I ordered it from Treenway Silks last weekend, so I'm expecting it to arrive in about four weeks. I also bought a colour card, because I'm sick of trying to guess from the online pictures. I've been itching to warp up my loom and do some weaving, but Mister Nathan hasn't finished my shuttlebeater yet. Also, I worked out exactly how much yarn I'll need for the strap of my awesome bag of awesome, and I didn't buy enough. I ordered some more today, so it should arrive sometime in the next few weeks, before the silk. When it arrives I'll start warping. I should be able to do a continuous warp, I just need to figure out how to make it three metres long :P

Success!

It's finished! :D :D

 

Tada! I finished it tonight about two minutes before the girls arrived home from Festival. This is what happened when I was left at their house for six nights on my own with my textbooks and grand plans of completing assignments and studying and stuff. I completely finished my embroidery and watched all of season three of Downton Abbey, including the Christmas special. I also napped a lot. But tomorrow will be different! I'm home now and I have all the best intentions of actually getting uni work done. I also want to Cut Out another cotehardie, but only after study. Or Thursday, whichever comes first :P

I found some really great buttons on ebay, but I got outbid :( It finished at sometime before 8am this morning, and some arsehole outbid me right on the time that it ended, while I was still in bed sleeping peacefully. It was a packet of 65 small plain gold buttons with some texture on them. They looked so perfect for temporary sleeve buttons. If they were metal they would have been perfect for permanent sleeve buttons, but they were plastic. But that's exactly what I want! Decent looking cheap plastic buttons that I can throw onto my garb until I can get to Pennsic and buy all the thing! They ended up going for less than $10, and I'm kicking myself for not bidding higher in the first place. Now I can't find anything as good as them for as cheap as they were and it's making me pouty.

In other news, I've been contemplating a new belt. I think I would like to weave a plain black belt. It will go with anything, and if I do a plain doubleface weave and consider my buckle carefully, I could make it double sided! I was thinking some nice royal blue on the other side. That way I have two belts in one that are plain and will go with everything. There's times when a decorative belt just won't go with your outfit. I can't wear my silk belt with my particoloured cotehardie, because the greens and purples clash. My only problem is deciding what materials to use. I would love to try using spun silk, and this would be a good project because it's not so complicated. The only problem is silk is so expensive. It would cost me just over $100 to get two skeins of silk. On the other hand I wouldn't even use half of the skein, so I have leftovers for other projects. On the other hand cotton is cheap and it's at Spotlight. I could get some tomorrow and start working on it. On the other hand it's a plain belt, so it might be better to use rich materials like silk. The problem with Pennsic is I know that there will be so much opportunity to buy stuff like skeins of silk and not have to worry about the guesswork of colour or weight or feel or working out shipping or anything like that. BUT I want to have a plain belt to wear at Pennsic, which means making it beforehand. Hmmmm.

Anyway, it's way past my bedtime. Tomorrow, studytimes!

Happening Things

This past week has been absolutely massive, I feel like it's been at least a month since I last posted. Ok. So. On Friday I fixed up my pattern, then spent ages unpicking the whole thing, ironing it all flat again then making sure all the rights and lefts matched. I tried to take a picture of me wearing the finished pattern, but I didn't try very hard. I ended up with pictures that didn't look much different to the ones of me wearing it before I fixed it. And they were all blurry and taken in a particularly dirty part of my mirror. ANYWAY no pictures. Once I had all the bits of my pattern flattened and matchened I cut two lengths of my linen that were as tall as my shoulder, found some calico and ironed it all. Then it took me an entire episode of Star Trek Voyager to trace the pattern onto calico and cut that out. It took another entire episode to trace the pattern onto my linen. I laid the two lengths of linen out flat, one on top of the other. That way I only have to trace and cut four panels instead of eight, since the right side is the same as the left. Still took me an entire episode of Star Trek just to trace it, and another episode to actually cut it out. It took this long mainly because I hate Cutting Out and I kept procrastinating with solitaire.

On Saturday I went to the Taylors' open house. Soon after arriving I went with Suzie to Lincraft and Spotlight to get matching thread and see if I could find any buttons. Lincraft had some awesome buttons, but didn't have twenty of the same designs. It didn't really matter because the ones I wanted were $2.86 each. EACH. Times twenty that makes $57.20. I can't afford to spend that much on buttons. I think what I'll do is take the awesome gold buttons off my twelve-panel red cote and put them on the sphinx one, because I don't like the red cote and it doesn't deserve such awesome buttons. Later I'll go looking for more buttons for the red cote and also the other cotes I wanna make. Anyway, by the time we got back from our expedition it was lunchtime. I spent the afternoon sewing, and left that evening with my lining completely sewn up and hemmed, and one long seam of the outer dress finished. Sunday after archery practice I spent the afternoon sewing some more at Nathan and Catherine's.

Monday was my first day of uni, even though everyone else got a public holiday. Uni is pretty epic and majorly contributed to the feeling of this week taking up a whole month. I seriously slowed down with the sewing, but I think I got the major stuff done on the weekend. Right now the lining is attached and the front seam is all neatly sewn up, and I've made three lacing holes. Only 31 ore lacing holes to go, then I need to hem the dress and cut out and sew up the sleeves. There's still a week to WAMA fair so I think I should have it finished in time without too much rushing. Although yesterday I started coming down with a cold, so right now I'm feeling groggy and miserable and I dun wanna anything *huff*

Another thing that happened this week is I graduated with a Bachelor from UWA! This is totally relevant to this blog because the robes are just like a houppelande and the whole ceremony is very traditional. Also there were academics wearing Tudor flat caps. Here's me:

Yay robes. UWA is very traditional so only Masters and PhDs get to wear mortar boards, but the people that did got to doff their hats at the cancellor which was awesome. I'm a little disappointed that Curtin lets everyone wear the mortar boards, so when I graduate with my Master degree I'll be one of many and won't get to do awesome things like doff my hat at other Masters and proper academics. It was really quite interesting watching the ceremony, the formality and awareness of rank was a lot like an SCA court. I enjoyed myself a lot more than I expected to at a boring graduation ceremony :P

In other news, I haven't looked at my embroidery since before my linen arrived, and I haven't warped my loom yet. I have a feeling that my SCA activities are going to be slowing down dramatically from now. I think I'll have to work out some sort of vague list of deadlines for my Pennsic projects, or I'll end up caught in that trap where I don't make any progress because I have ages, then all of a sudden there'll be two weeks left that I'll have a million things to cram into.

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.