I'm Still Alive!

Yes, I know it's been ages since I last posted anything, but I've been busy with things and have done hardly anything SCA to post about. I last posted just before clinical placement began, and I'd just warped up my loom using my new warping board. The threaded in pattern wasn't working properly and I was troubleshooting. WELL. I checked the threading direction, I swapped the cards so they all faced the other way, I checked the threading again, swapped everything back, changed the start position to every possible position, checked the turning sequence, checked the threading AGAIN and nothing worked. It was sending me absolutely bonkers since I'd already woven the pattern with no trouble at all, and I was using the same printed patterns that I used the first time, so I knew that it MUST work somehow. By this time I was at Nathan and Catherine's house, and I was keeping Catherine updated on my progress, since she's an awesome weaver person with mad skillz. She made a few suggestions, and eventually the stupid thing bothered her enough to fix it by trial and error and what it looked like on the surface of the band. No way do I have the skills to just fix a threaded in pattern by sight like that. Anyway she fixed it! It was something to do with the holes of the cards needing to be labelled differently depending on whether they faced to the right or to the left. I've never come across that before with any of Guntram's patterns. He labels his cards backwards to mine and it hasn't seemed to matter whether they faced right or left. Not this time! Anyway I'm very grateful to Catherine for fixing it for me :)

I took it to the Riverside Ramble demo the next day, since it was an easy turning sequence and weaving always looks quite tricky and striking and attracts people. I had a few old ladies get all excited and want to know exactly how it all worked. It was a good day, our first really warm spring day, and it was fun even if I did get sunburned sitting in the shade of a pavilion all day. Also I entered a $2 raffle for a horse bow and I did win it! :D Now I just need a pony. I shot the bow a couple of weeks later at Sunday training and it was really fun. It's so different to my modern recurve, it's lighter and less stable, so a little more concentration and skill is needed to shoot it well. I need heaps more practice with it before I'll be any good, but unfortunately I haven't had a chance to shoot it again. Most of my Sundays have been spent in the library at uni completing assignments.

The next five or so weeks passed in a blur of assignments and clinical practice. Teaching weeks at uni have finished now, and today was my first exam. I have my last exam on Monday so this weekend will be spent holed up in my room trying to cram all of the stuttering content into my head. Unfortunately all of my study break was spent doing clinical placement stuff, which I'm quite annoyed about. I now understand exactly why people in the second year of my course all go stark raving mad. I thought we were already mad but I got laughed at when I said that to some people that know this year's second years. There's this thing called uni that has semesters and a full time work load of assignments and stuff during the semesters, then exams at the end. There's also this thing called Final Clinical Year which is 40 weeks worth of essentially working full time, but at the same time you need to prove you're working ethically and evidence based-edly by essentially completing the equivalent of two university assignments every week. The catch is that WE GET TO DO UNI AND FINAL CLINICAL YEAR AT THE SAME TIME. Lucky us. And this is why we get to wear a mortar board with a gold tassel, if we survive to the end. Anyway, the point is I'm busy. Somewhere in the last five weeks there was a ball, and I went but I left early because I was tired and grumpy and had too much work to do.

THEN last weekend there was a royal visit! I had booked for the whole weekend but that was before I realised that I was silly to think that study week was for study. So I compromised and went to the event on Saturday, stayed for the feast and then missed out on Sunday because study. I'm so glad I went because I had a great time just hanging out with SCA people, and I left all inspired to do more SCA stuff as soon as I have time. I've been so busy that the thought of making anything or putting any effort in just exhausts me, so I've just been coasting along. There were a huge amount of awards given out, and I think it is incredibly rude to begrudge any of those people their award, because you could see the absolute delight in their eyes at being called up in court and recognised by their Majesties. That moment was the best moment of their lives, and I personally loved watching each and every one of them. As for the rest of us not recognised officially with a dangly for around our necks, the populace make up for that by complimenting each other on our work. I was very pleased to receive compliments from all sorts of people on my garb, my weaving and my embroidery, and I think I managed to give out my share of compliments too. I certainly saw some lovely garb. People spontaneously appreciating my work is just as good as getting an award.

Also, remember that weaving I was doing? I finished about half of it at the demo weeks and weeks ago, then spent a couple of evenings working on it, then stopped. It sat in the lounge room for weeks with only about 20cm to go. Then I decided I HAD to wear it to the Royal Visit event, so I finished it the night before. I'd meant to go out on the Friday to the lighting store down the road to get a chain for the leaf dangly, but I forgot. The ONE THING I had to do that day (other than uni stuff) and I forgot. So I raced over to Bunnings and found one of those chains that you hang up plants with, and used that instead. It did the job and it can stay until I feel like fixing it :P Unfortunately I had another invisible event and no photos of me at all have surfaced on Facebook, which means there are no photos of me wearing the belt. I'm not sure how or why I'm so good at avoiding cameras at events, because it's not like I don't like to have my photo taken :P Anyway, I took a photo of the belt sitting on my bed to give you an idea of the finished product.

One day I'll take a course in how to use photoshop or something, because I'm really bad at taking photos and I have no idea how to fix them. But you get the idea. Have another one:

Here's the detail. You can see the twist of the green silk so clearly. The two types of silk worked together much better than I expected, which I'm pleased about. I seemed to have all my issues at once at the start of weaving this band, which was good because the band itself came together with no issues whatsoever.

Speaking of photoshop, my embroidery has been featured on the cover photo of my Barony's Facebook page! Sir Nathan is our web minister, and he's been using his mad photoshop skillz to make awesome cover photos. I was there when he was working on this one, and it took a lot of work! He was doing things to the pictures that I didn't even know they needed. He's going to do a series of pictures and rotate through them, but I don't mind if he takes a while to make up the next one :)

My embroidery has come to a grinding halt, much like my weaving did. I finish it eventually. There's only three weeks left of clinical placement, including my four day adult placement which gets tacked onto the end of my paediatric placement somehow, then a week later my last assignment is due (the day after semester two results are released, so I'm not sure how that works), then it's Christmas and I have holidays and it will be SO GOOD. Maybe I'll get some SCA stuff done then :)

Holidays!

I'm on holidays! I've written a list of THINGS and hopefully most of them will get done or at least started in the next five weeks before uni goes back.

NUMBER ONE
I need to make new sleeves for my man-cote. I finished the rest of it in time for Pencampwr, but my essay got in the way of making new sleeves. I ended up getting to site on the second day of the event with the sleeves from my first attempt and a sleeveless and hemless cote. I parked myself in the BBT with the Baroness and some ladies and finished the hem and attached the sleeves. The next day I wore it! Here's a picture:

I was really tired in the afternoon so I had a nap with a dinosaur in front of the thrones. This is the only picture if me wearing my man-cote :(. It is so much more comfortable than the first one, even though the sleeves were still a bit tight. It's really good for shooting in, I didn't get all tangled up in my skirts traipsing up and down the range to fetch my arrows. The brais take a bit of getting used to though. Last time I wore them I established that my hose were tugging on my belt as I walked because I had the brais up too high at the back, but this time I wore them a bit lower and tried not to worry about the feeling that they were falling off, because they weren't. I also wore normal undies underneath, which poked out the top by a lot because I'm just not comfortable wearing only baggy white linen brais that sit really low on the hips. They didn't ever come close to slipping or falling down, so maybe with some more wear I'll start to trust them more :P My new belt works good! Anyway, I need new sleeves, and I want them by next weekend because I think I might wear this cote to shoot in the Vallon d'Or IKAC before their feast. Although I think I want to wear a dress to the feast, so this probably means bringing another outfit and changing for the feast.

NUMBER TWO
I posted last time about my plans for the green brocade surcote. I think this is the dress I'd like to wear to the Vallon d'Or feast, which means getting it fixed before then :P I need to see if I can match the buttons to replace the ones I lost, or look at buying a whole new set of buttons, which is annoying. There's 20 on that dress, which makes it a bit expensive.

NUMBER THREE
I still need to re-sew the buttonholes on my parti-coloured surcote. Stupid buttonholes.

NUMBER FOUR
I need to fix my red twelve-panel-cote. I figured out last time I wore it that it flares out too suddenly, so it's just a matter of pulling in the side seams a little bit to make the flare more gradual.

NUMBER FIVE
I made the red twelve-panel-cote as part of an outfit, even though it's also designed to be worn by itself as lighter day wear, I originally wanted it to wear underneath a blue wool surcote. I have wool. I have blue dye. Those things need to be combined to create blue wool. HOWEVER whilst the original idea was for blue wool, I LOVE LOVE this teal blue colour wool. So I have two packets of brilliant blue iDye, which dyes 2.3kg of fabric. I have no idea what my fabric weighs, but I've got six metres. I dyed four metres of the same wool with one packet of green, and the colour came out quite nicely. But I'm thinking that maybe I could throw in one packet of green with the two packets of blue to attempt a teal colour. I dunno, it could come out more of an aqua than a teal. I'm not sure whether to risk it or just go with blue and buy some of the teal stuff at a later date and make something else.

NUMBER SIX
I've sort of already started this one. I want to weave a new belt properly with silk and make a fancy buckle and document it to enter it into the November Crown A&S competition. I've finally started reading Ecclesiastical Pomp, my first chance since I bought it in March, and so far I think I would like the ground weave to be purple and green stripes along the belt. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to tackle some sort of twill weave, or just go for the much simpler alternate S and Z threaded option. I am pondering the idea of metallic thread for the brocading, and if I do that I really should do it properly and use the real stuff. I haven't come up with a design yet, I could make it heraldic, since I'm going for my heraldic colours as the ground weave, or I could recreate some extant design. We shall see what ideas Ecclesiastical Pomp gives me. I think I'll probably end up doing the actual weaving once semester starts, since I'm looking at buying the silk from Treenway Silks, and they take 3-4 weeks to dye it. But I should be able to at least design it and start my documentation over the holidays.

NUMBER SEVEN

This was supposed to be my big project for these holidays, but I forgot about it :( I still want to make it though! I have the fabric and everything! It's something that I definitely want to take my time over and get it right, so I don't have a specific occasion in mind for it. These holidays I want to start patterning the bodice. I have some ideas of how to make it look right, but there's going to be a lot of trial and error going on with calico before I start making it in the proper fabric.

OPTIONAL NUMBER EIGHT
And finally, I also have some white fabric-store.com linen sitting in it's postal box under my bed. I've had it since last year and haven't touched it, but I intend to eventually make a white cotehardie to wear under the green brocade dress. This should be a relatively simple project since I already have the pattern (the one for 8 panels, not 12 :P) and I just need to cut it out and sew it up. If I have the time and inspiration these holidays, I'll make a start on it.

This may seem like a lot of stuff, but a lot of it is just adjusting and fixing up garb that I already have. I think this list is definitely achievable for the next five weeks :)

Welcome!

Welcome to my brand spanking new SCA blog! I've been pondering the idea of a blog for a while now, but I've only recently begun to really plan my projects with research and making them all period and stuff. The blogs I've come across on my travels through the interwebs have been useful, but mainly seem to be written by super awesome people that can just look at a piece of fabric and turn it into some amazing gown that looks EXACTLY like a period picture with no apparent effort at all. I was getting a little disheartened, because I spend a lot of time staring at my fabric all laid out, turning my head this way and that trying to visualise how to tetris all the shapes. I eventually succeed, only to find that the shapes were wrong in the first place, or the shapes were all perfect, but magically the fitted cotehardie ended up too big and spent the weekend sliding off my shoulders, meaning I had to pull the lining out and take the back seam in two inches. Moving on. I am going to walk you step by step through my processes so we can all see exactly where I go wrong, and learn from these experiences together, and by the end we will all be one of those awesome people that just does stuff all awesome and stuff :D

I have a couple of projects on the go at the moment. Firstly, I was given an awesome wooden cantilever sewing box for Christmas, the only one we could find in a local store because they've stopped stocking them, and although there were some awesome ones online they all cost about $100 plus $100 shipping from the UK, with no guarantee that they would arrive in one piece. So we went with the local one for $65. The only problem is that it is HIDEOUS.

Yay pink and white. Anyway, I may paint it a brown colour of some sort, or I may just leave it white if that's too difficult, but I am definitely going to take that pink fabric off. I recently made THIS...

... for the 12th Night embroidery A&S. It's a reconstruction of a 14th century pouch, done in German Brick Stitch in silk. More about this style and patterns and stuff can be found at A Stitch Out of Time. Anyway, the point is it was my first A&S comp and I won! I also got to talk to Mistress Acacia who is an awesome embroidery laurel from over east. She talked to me about this double stitch thing. My pouch is basically just done in satin stitch, but apparently in period they used to use half the number of plies and go over every stitch again, which made the stitches stronger and more betterer. SO to go back to my hideous sewing box, I had so much fun making my little pouch that I wanted to do more embroidery and try out this double stitch thing, so I'm embroidering a couple of panels to replace the pink fabric.

Tada! It's another pattern from A Stitch Out of Time, but this time I chose my own colours. Another thing that Mistress Acacia talked about was that the white thread was almost always linen thread, and that gave the piece texture. Silk was used for the colours because silk holds colours really well. These days, no one likes linen thread because it's difficult and expensive and why use linen when we have cotton? The only linen embroidery floss I could find is a few colours that DMC makes, but they don't make white. The nearest they have is ecru, and oh man how I hate ecru. It's even an ugly word, who came up with ecru? Anyway, I decided to use white cotton DMC thread, and silk for the colours. The green and gold silk is Anchor silk which I found on sale at the one and only embroidery shop in Perth, and now I know why it's on sale. It's annoying. It's lovely and shiny, but it's SO ANNOYING to stitch with. The plies all come loose from each other so you have to almost pull each one through individually. Madeira silk is so much better. This panel is obviously not finished, and I think it might be a while before it is, a) because I've run out of purple and I need to go all the way to Vic Park to get some more, and b) I have a way more exciting project that I just started on Friday!

Wasn't that an excellent segue to introduce the whole point of this post, my tablet woven brocaded belt! I bought a cute little loom from Rowany Festival last year. The lady that sold it to me was really lovely, she'd marked the price as $50, but as I couldn't really take it on the plane home with me and needed it to be posted, she asked me to pay $55. Turns out the postage cost about $20, so I got a bit of a bargain. I feel a bit bad, but yay loom! Anyway, I made an easy 8 card practice piece, then some 14 card garters, then I moved up to a 24 card pattern. That's when I decided I needed a new loom. The last pattern was trim for a tunic, and I made something stupid like 4 metres of it. The loom is only 60cm long, so every time I'd completed 10cm of weaving, I had to untwist it and tension it all over again. I also had a lot of trouble tensioning it because both ends of the loom are clamps, and the clamp was made of MDF which isn't very strong. With 24 cards worth of string, the clamps just didn't hold it, so I kept getting random bumps in my pattern from loose strings. It was Very Frustrating. So that loom is for small projects.

I recently decided that I NEED a tablet woven belt, and I'd like to try this brocade thing, so I looked around online for some different ideas of loom construction. Here in Aneala, the most popular loom seems to be one that has a clamp at the working end, and teeth at the other end for tying the strings around. I decided that I would borrow one and see how it goes, then flutter my eyelashes at my daddy and hopefully he'll make me a nice new loom :P Anyway, I like the teeth thing, it works very well, and keeps the cards in lots of about three or four, so it's not a whole bunch of threads all tangling together. Having never done brocading before, I asked google how. I came across this page, which was very helpful with videos and stuff as well as explaining the process. I also found some graph paper that someone has made with rectangles instead of squares, which is perfect for drafting the pattern as it tends to stretch along the warp.

I decided I would make a belt in the theme of St Basil the Great, which is technically my college, even if I don't go to training sessions anymore because I have to work. There's a newcomers feast in March with a Basil themed A&S competition which I am intending to enter. My belt is black and white with black towers brocaded along it. I bought myself some #5 perle cotton when I was at work on Thursday night, then (luckily) started warping the loom at 11pm because I just couldn't wait. That's when I discovered that I hadn't bought enough cotton. No matter, I was going to work again on Friday, so I picked up some more after my shift, then spent my Friday night sitting on the floor in front of the tv finishing the warp. What a thrilling social life I have :P I threaded my cards alternating between S and Z, because that's what all the cool brocaders do, and turn them all forwards every pick to tangle them up really quickly. Here's a picture of the loom all strung up ready to go

With that done, I started my weaving! I did a bit of white space before starting the tower to get my tension and stuff. I was a little disappointed with the first tower, because I'd imagined this Amazingly Amazing Tower of Awesome and it wasn't quite as awesome as I'd envisioned.

To me it looks a bit gappy. I used the same size thread for the warp and both wefts, and I think that using a bigger thread for the brocade weft will allow it to cover more sideways. Next time! It's actually grown on me as I've continued weaving, so I'm quite happy with it now, although I will probably experiment with different size threads in future. So I'd woven my first little castle, then I kept going with the white space, then I ran out of room because my threads got twisted. I'm so glad I borrowed this loom that's twice the length of my loom, because I wouldn't have gotten very far at all with mine before I needed to untwist. Now I have a lesson for everyone:

This, my friends, is what happens when you untwist your threads and retension without tying your cards together! Bubbly bits where the cards have done something bizarre, I don't know exactly what. Also, it seems I pulled too hard on one end, because my first little tower is all twisted now. After this, I made sure to tie all my cards together every time I needed to untwist, and I also made sure to look at the pattern to make sure it was still straight. When I pulled this part of the weaving through to make room for more weaving, you could see that the weaving has bent around to the left instead of making a straight strip. Luckily, I allowed for mistakes at the beginning when I measured out my warp, and I should be able to cut this bit off and still have a decent length belt :P

I forgot to take pictures of my pattern draft at the beginning, so here's a picture of it now next to where I'm up to now. I've nearly finished, I'm at the point where I can't pull the weaving along anymore without pulling the warp all the way through the teeth of the loom, so I'm just untwisting and tensioning until I can't go any further.

I forgot to mention earlier that I wanted to make little faulty towers at intervals as well as the normal towers. It's a little college joke, and we tried to register faulty towers on our device, but the heralds wouldn't let us *grumble* I thought it would be cute to put them on the belt. The first tower drawn on the graph paper is the pattern I've been using, the second one was my first attempt at a faulty tower. It came out looking munted like I'd made a mistake, it didn't look intentional, so I tried the third tower, where I've just chopped his leg off. You can see the faulty one woven into the band at the far left. I've woven two of them, and I think that's enough for me.

Once the weaving is finished, I need to figure out what I'm doing for buckles. I like the idea of a buckle that doesn't have a pin, because I don't think I wanna stick a pin through all my hard work. My garters have buckles with pins, and they're a bit munted where the pin goes, but that's ok since you don't really see them, and I'd rather have a reliable way of fastening them since they kinda have to be tight to hold my hose up. The belt is more decorative, so I think I need to ponder my options a bit. I have about five weeks until Newcomers to decide, and get my documentation done.

Congratulations for making it through my very first epicly long blog post! I am in fact procrastinating at the moment, which probably explains the length of this post :P. Somewhere underneath the loom and the graph paper in the last picture is my desk. I need to clean it. I don't wanna. Part of the process of cleaning it involves doing my quarterly constable's report, so I can put a pile of indemnities away. I don't wanna. I also promised myself that today is the day that I pick up my twelve panel cotehardie pattern again, after putting it down in the second week of January because it was just too hard. Stay tuned for a whiny post all about my twelve panel cotehardie, which may or may not involve me actually working on it :P