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.

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.

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!

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