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 :)

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 :)

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!

This is just getting ridiculous

On Saturday I took my weaving to Nathan and Catherine's house, and tackled it for a couple of hours. First of all I wound a fresh shuttle from one of my other balls of leftover black cotton. Then I dug out the end of my snapped weft, and went to tie on my new shuttle. Because I'm very clever, I put the new shuttle on the floor right next to the old one and couldn't tell which was which. I clearly picked the wrong one because it snapped straight away. So I threw it far away so it wouldn't get confused, dug out the end again and tied on the new shuttle. I was doing ok for a while, until the weft snapped yet again. That's now two different balls of cotton that I've snapped, so I pouted for a bit. Then Catherine offered me some spools of various black threads that I might want to use instead, and I decided to give the poly top stitch thread a try. This is the same weft I was using for my belt, and the thickness is roughly the same as the #12 cotton. I tied it on and was going pretty well until my knots decided they didn't want to hold anymore, and went all slack again. UGH. That was my cue to give up for the day, before I sent the loom flying from frustration. I'd managed to weave a grand total of 20 picks, about 3.5cm.

Since then my string has been behaving remarkably well. My tension is perfect and I've woven a good 15cm, almost double what I'd done up to on Saturday. BUT THEN I snapped my weft again. I SNAPPED MY WEFT AGAIN. I snapped the poly top stitch thread. Now I'm thinking it's something I'm doing that's snapping the thread, rather than my choice of thread or a flaw. I've been so conscious not to pull too hard, but it's been getting harder to tighten the weft, it's just not sliding through the shed easily. Maybe this particular cotton is just rough or something, and the constant friction is weakening it.

I'm just over half way through this band, so I can't give up now, but I really wanted to finish it soon because THIS:

CHRISTMAS BANDS! I found them over at the Malarky Crafts blog, and I want to make one! They're just so cute! They're simple threaded in patterns with a 4F 4B turning sequence, so it'd be really quite quick and easy to make one. Mum said if I made one we'd hang it up somewhere as decoration, but I'd like to have a specific use for it. I'd have to make metres of it to wrap it around the tree, although if I make a short one and we wrap it around the top of the tree, then the cat won't be able to reach it. I suppose I'll go buy myself some milford satin and just figure out what we'll do with it later.

In other news, look at this:

It's the end of my belt. AND the end of my wefts. Poking out. Visible. WTF? I used this technique to finish the band, and it has never failed me before. This time it seems it has been slowly unravelling and now the end of my belt is a bit of a mess. I wore it to an event on Sunday and that's all it took for it to end up like this. I showed it to some people and I think my options are to unthread the wefts to the neat bit, then stick them on a needle and thread them back through the band. Then I can whipstitch the end to hold everything in place. OR I could divide the threads back into their cards and tie some knots. Either way the whole thing seems way too tedious for me to tackle right now.

It's getting a little bit ridiculous how much trouble I'm encountering with my weaving. At the moment I just have to laugh at my weft snapping all over the place and my belt coming undone, because it's like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, just because it can. I'm past being frustrated at it because of the ridiculousness of the situation. I should rename this blog THE DISASTER ZONE or something :P

Better Things

I went to an archery event yesterday. I was called up in court and given something by the Kingdom A&S Minister:

It's the token for winning first prize in a Kingdom A&S competition. My belt won the competition, and my friends kept it secret for two weeks! I must say I was very surprised, I was not expecting it at all. Catalina also said there were two other entries and it was quite close between us, but she didn't know exactly what the entries were.

The rest of the day was really good too. I chatted to Mistress Rhianwen about weaving. She mostly does inkle weaving but the problems I've been having with tension are a universal weaving problem. She suggested I hold the warp as I beat it to stop pushing loose threads into bubbles. She said she'd bring something to the tourney next weekend and we'll sit down and have a good chat :)

In the afternoon I entered an IKAC and shot 122. I was quite pleased as I've been aiming to score 120. This score brings my average up to 125 for the season, so I'm quite happy with my shooting this year. I also did some more work on my red cote the other day and wore it to the event. You may remember the last thing I did to it was pull the top seams in by an inch on both sides. WELL of course this made the sleeve holes smaller, which I should've realised when I went to reattach the sleeves and had to gather them a little all the way around. Duh. So when I wore it at Championship I spent the day with it cutting into my armpits which was just great. Anyway, I took the sleeves off yet again, cut the sleeve holes bigger and then reattached the sleeves, and it is now a whole lot more comfortable. I tried to shoot in it, and while it was ok, I think it's just a little too restricting for archery. I think the mechanics of holding boobies up makes a dress unsuitable for shooting in, especially since it needs to work so hard to turn what little I have into cleavage. The dress is still not done though, my right sleeve is coming unstitched at the elbow, and at hem at my wrist as well.

Tonight I've been tackling my weaving again. It was really good to chat to Rhianwen and some other people about weaving and sewing and stuff yesterday, and I was feeling a bit more inspired again. I unwove what I'd already done, tightened my tension as much as I could, and started weaving again. I found that I needed two hands on the beater to beat tight enough, there's a significant difference between using one and two hands. But holding the weft with one hand and beating with the other seemed to work even when I then used two hands to tighten the one handed beating. The band started coming out a whole lot smoother. What I'm aiming for with the twist patterning is this:

Just really simple textured squares. This photo was posted in the historical tabletweaving facebook group. I'm not quite getting this level of awesome, but I'm getting the ridges where the turning direction changes and the band is relatively smooth. According to the facebook group, when you release the tension on the band there's more shadows that emphasise the squares more. So I'm hoping my band will look more like the picture once I take it off my loom. I also decided to change my threading yet again, so now I have five blocks of alternating threading instead of the three that I changed to from the original seven :P

It looks nowhere near as good as the picture of the white band, but it's definitely an improvement. Besides, the whole point of this band is to practice my brocading and try new techniques with that, so most of the ground weave will be covered anyway. I never expected that a simple twist patterned ground weave would prove to be so difficult. Anyway, I'm using some gold coloured embroidery floss as a brocade weft, and I'm turning it within the shed so you can't see it on the ede of the band. Basically the weft goes out the bottom of the band two card from the edge, then back up for the next pick. There ends up being a little running stitch along the back of the band, top and bottom. So far it's working. Here's my leaf:

It's looking a little wider than on my belt, I think that's because this band is a good 6-8mm narrower but there's still the same amount of length. Buuut at the moment this leaf is 3cm along the band, and it's under tension. My belt leaves range from 3cm-3.5cm, and that's not under tension, so this leaf will probably shrink a little once I take it off tension. I had lots of problems tying off the end of my gold thread on my belt, because I used the same method I use to start and finish bands, outlined here. It's really good for starting and finishing bands, but the poly gold stuff didn't agree with being threaded back through the band and it frayed and it was pretty awful. This was the main reason why I decided to continue weaving the brocade weft in with the normal shed between pattern bits, instead of stopping and starting like they actually did in period to save expensive thread. Besides, two layers of brocade weft thread plus structural weft bulked up the picks a lot. BUT then later after I'd finished the belt I mentioned this to Catherine and she told me you don't need to worry about threading the brocade weft back through, you just stick it out the bottom of the band and cut it off. Ugh. So I'm trying that this time.

And that's it from me tonight. Goodnight!

Procrastinating

I have an exam tomorrow. This morning I managed to convince myself that I've contracted some sort of horrible disease, so I had to have an afternoon nap to calm myself down. Google tells me scary things. Then I got caught up in my novel and had to read it to the end. I've been attempting study, I just read through my lecture notes but they're full of whining about how much I loathe ergative case and split alignment systems, and linguistics jokes like CLITICS ARE PROMISCUOUS HAR HAR HAR. Very useful.

Another thing I did today was add pages to this blog! With lots of fiddling and mucking around I managed to add a page of links to documentation for various projects that I've entered in competitions. Formatting was difficult because Blogger decides to randomly move things like pictures and we had an argument about captions, but I got there in the end!

I've also included the documentation for my belt. I sent it over to the event with Nathan and Catherine, and got it and my comments back last night! I'm still trying to decipher some of the words. Mistress Rowan was one of the judges and she makes a suggestion for a weft thread, but the only clear words are 'spun silk'. Before that there's a word that I think is 'Gutermann' then one or maybe two words that I have no idea of. Anyway, all three judges liked it, and I got a score of 39/50 which was higher than I expected. I'd like to know what entry won, but the kingdom A&S page is sadly lacking in competition results.

I'm currently thinking up another weaving project. I think I'll get some #12 black cotton from Spotlight and try this continuous warp thing, and weave a short band to practice with a really fine warp just to see how it turns out. I might use the yellow silk embroidery floss I bought to make my purchase up to $10 so I could use EFTPOS at the Stitchers' Corner as a brocade weft and weave my leaf and words again. This time I'll turn the brocade weft in the shed instead of on the edge so you can't see it.

I also have an itch to do some more embroidery. Not my German Brick Stitch but something different. Anyway I should get back to at least attempting to study. Also my jacket smells like stinky fighter and I'm not sure how it got that way.

Finished!

I finished my belt! The last 30cm were the most difficult, and took me an ENTIRE day which I was frustrating, considering most of it was just plain weave with no brocading, but I made it in the end! Yesterday I went out and bought a brass D-ring to use as a buckle, and I just finished sewing it on.

It's really difficult to take a photo of a skinny long thing. My camera doesn't have a panoramic setting, but apparently one of mum's does, so there was a huge kerfuffle while she argued with her technology trying to find the setting. The thing is, she happened across the setting while she was fiddling with the camera trying to take a picture of my sister's art assignment thing about half an hour before I wandered in asking about panoramic things. In the end we couldn't find it, so I just put my belt on the kitchen table and stood on the chairs to try and get the whole thing in. You get a general idea, but here's just the words:

I'm sorry, I'm not very good at picture taking. But yay words! I was pleased in the end with how they turned out.

Whoa my shirt came out all psycodelic, it doesn't look like that in my pictures folder on my computer. Stupid blogger has decided that this particular picture needs to be rotated forwards, so I had to save it rotated backwards so it would end up facing the right way. It also seems to have done weird things to it as well. Anyway, here's me wearing my belt. I was taking pictures of myself in the mirror, and surprise surprise my words are all backwards, so it doesn't matter that it's a bit blurry and weird, because you can't read them anyway! Anyway, here's what the belt looks like when I wear it. As expected, the words are all on my back, but that's ok. In case you didn't notice, I decided to weave extra leaves at intervals at the end of the belt. The whole thing ended up measuring 130cm, which is odd because I'm sure it measured 140 when it was on the loom :P Either it compressed a lot when it was taken off tension, or I just suck at measuring.

I mentioned I had a lot of trouble with the end. I think one reason was because the weaving wasn't in front of me at the front of the loom anymore, I had to reach for it. But what started happening was that the whole band got wider and wider. I noticed because the three middle stripes were getting really wide, but my outside stripes were skinny, but going all wibbly. I measured the width and it was 3.5cm, a whole centimetre wider than I started with. The majority of the weaving actually ended up being about 2.8cm, because it seemed to sit comfortably there once I added the brocade weft. I unwove a whole bunch and struggled to pull it in as I rewove it. I'm not sure why that is, whether it had something to do with being down the other end of the loom or not. The stripes were also quite wibbly, and it was obvious that the very outside cards were the ones being smushed together, while the inside cards seemed to stay the same distance apart. I could only tell this because of the stripes. But there are also bits where it looks like it suddenly gets smaller, but it's only an illusion because the stripes are wibbly. I guess it's just another thing to look into, how the warp behaves. I'm wondering if my other bands have done this and I've just not noticed because the ground weave is all the same colour. It's not just a matter of looking at the twists in each set of four threads, they all look straight, but it's groups of them together, like the ten card on the outside only take up 5mm, but the ten in the middle take up 8mm.

Anyway, I'm going to enter it in the competition, so I better get a move on with my documentation to get it finished in time. I think I might add some extra pages to this blog where I'll put documentation and maybe some photo albums of finished projects, so it's all in one place.

Tangents

I'm having a bit of a crisis. I've finished weaving my words now and I'm quite happy with how they've turned out, and glad I took the time to unweave so much and redo things so it looks right. It was well worth it. Anyway, I was just weaving along last night when I realised that I'm nearly at the end of the brocade, but nowhere near the end of the band. That got me thinking, where is the brocading actually going to be when I wear the belt? The length of the belt should end up being about 1.3 metres, and before I started I was measuring my picks and counting how many picks were in my pattern to try and work out how much ground weave I should make before adding the brocade weft, because duh, the brocade should be in the middle of the band.

But why the middle? Obviously my obsessive compulsiveness took over because THINGS NEED TO BE SYMMETRICAL. Anyway, with all my crises and switching ground weft threads and adjusting the pattern as I went along, there are a lot less picks in the pattern than I originally drafted. The way it is now, I've got 15cm of blank band, then my pattern goes for about 72cm. That adds up to 87cm, which coincidently, is the circumference of my hips, at the top where I will be wearing the belt. So the brocading will start on my left side, and go around my back, and finish where the band goes through the buckle. The whole of the tail will be plain. Hmmmmmm. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing. I could extend my pattern by adding in those other bits that I drafted and decided not to use, but then there won't be symmetry! Anything that extends the pattern will mean sacrificing symmetry, but then again the pattern isn't int he middle so it's not symmetrical anyway. I could add a couple more leaves at intervals down the band, or I could just leave it. Har har, leave, leaves.... I'm hilarious.

Anyway, while I was pondering this I was also wondering what everyone else does with their tablet woven brocaded belts, because I like to conform. I asked the internet, and ended up somewhere completely different. I found this:

Someone wove this as a double-faced pattern and OMG it's amazing. The article I found it in is here, it's about drafting double-faced patterns, which is very interesting, and totally relevent to my search for brocaded weaving :P

I was also reminded once again that I desperately need Peter Collingwood. I need it sooooo baaaaaad *grabby hands* The Book Depository doesn't even have it, I've only been able to find it on Amazon. And it's expensive. There are so many books I want, I have a wish list on the Book Depository but I can't figure out how to share the wish list with people in a vain hope that maybe someone will take pity on me and buy me them for Christmas. I need to be able to email it to my mum, then she can pass it on to my siblings.

Anyway, I want to try weaving a band in 3/1 twill. I also think I want to make a silk hairnet thing, I have a vague idea that I will make one (I have no idea how, some sort of crochet technique? Lacemaking?) with a tablet woven fillet thing around the edges. I think what I need is to go to Pennsic and go to every weaving class available and buy all the materials and things and learn useful things. But Pennsic is so far away and I wants it all now!

But back to the original brocading thing, before I got lost on the internet I looked at Guntram's belts again, and he's got brocading or twist patterning over the whole surface of all of his bands. So I'm still undecided. I'm really bad at decisions because I just don't know what I want. ALSO OMG I nearly forgot, what I should've done to hide the little bits of gold that you can see on the edges of my band, is use a border! So my brocade weft should have not ever gone past the outside couple of cards, it should have turned around inside the band. I will keep this in mind for future reference.

But first, I will clean my room, because I can't see the floor and the cat has made a nest in my floordrobe. Who knows what mischief he's getting up to in my clothes?

Progress... and more unweaving

Last night I finally managed to finish weaving my first word!

Yaaaaay! I ended up moving the o one pick forward, away from the f, to bring them into proportion with the rest of the gaps. Finally I'm happy with the spacing of the whole word.

Today I worked on the second word. Before I went to bed last night I spent some time untwisting my weft and shifting the whole thing down the loom, so I was expecting tensioning issues today. Luckily I didn't have much of a problem, but there are still a few little bubbles where I started up again. Anyway, after a few false starts on some of the letters where I realised I needed to move it forward or back to space it properly, I got this far:

Phone picture! I took this with my phone because there was no one home with me and I needed to see if the fourth letter was recognisable. I sent it to Mister Nathan, and he thought it was an 'n'. It's supposed to be a 't'! It's got a wanky taily bit which is a little confusing. Anyway, I had a look through Guntram's pattern for this alphabet to see if he had a tail-less 't', but instead I found a different one. The 't' in this alphabet for 48 cards only takes up 25 cards, but in the alphabet for 36 cards, the 't' takes up 28 cards and is a little more defined. So I unwove this one and used the other one instead.

Tada! What I've done is take out one pick in the middle hole bits of the 'o', 'u', 'm', 'a' and 'n' letters, and taken the very outside picks off the 'l', 'i', 'u', 'm' and 'n' letters. The only letters that stayed the same as the pattern were 'f'', 's' and 't'.

Also, I don't know that it's very noticeable in the picture, but my second word is slanting to the right. I'm not sure how this happened as I'm quite careful to beat evenly. The only other times I've seen this happen is when I've retensioned the warp and one side of it has pulled the pattern askew, but I haven't needed to retension since the start of the word when I untwisted my warp. The only thing I can think of is that I accidently beat one pick unevenly, then matched every following pick to that one. This is yet another unexpected thing that has happened, but hopefully once I take it off the loom and the whole thing relaxes it won't be so noticeable. At least it's slanting in the correct direction for writing, which probably isn't a period thing but won't look so odd to the modern eye :P I think my width is getting slightly better too. I've given up on measuring it all the time and I'm just going on what looks good to my eye.

More Unweaving

I thought once I'd gotten everything sorted and my leaf looked good, I'd just zoom through the rest of the brocading. I was wrong. Last night I wove most of my first word:

I had already spent some time working out the spacing and stuff, and the f and o came out pretty much perfect. Then I got to the straight up and down letters and I found that their taily bits were really spreading them out. Here I've already given up on having a blank pick in between each letter and just woven them right next to each other, but I want the spacing to be closer like the first two letters. So I put it away for the night.

Tonight I decided that I would unweave back to the o and get rid of the very edge of the taily bits on all the letters. I tried putting the blank pick back in between, but it was too much space so I left it out again.

I think this is worse. You can see f-o-l, then a whole lot of straight up and down bits that all look the same and run together. It should be i-u-m, and you may be able to tell once I've pointed it out, but I don't like it. I think tomorrow I'll unweave it all again back to the f, then take out one pick in the middle of each letter. The pattern is that every stem of each letter is three covered picks, and each space between stems is three picks. So the o has three long picks, three picks in the middle hole bit, then another three long picks. I think I'll change it to three long picks, two middle picks and then three long picks. This will shorten every letter except the l and the i, which are already pretty short anyway. The m really bothers me because of how much it's sprawled out across the band. It's a third of the word all by itself, but taking three picks out of it altogether will squish it together more.

I'm also a little frustrated with how difficult it is to keep the band the same width. I've never had this problem before, and even though I'm paying attention to it it's still going all wibbly. I'm getting better now, it's only going out by one or two millimetres, but it's still quite noticeable, especially in the above picture.

I'm in two minds about whether this is going to end up getting entered in the competition. I think I could get it done in time, but it would be a bit of a rush. I don't want to rush it, but even redoing as much as I have been to get it to look closer to what I want doesn't fix things like the width. The brocade weft is also really obvious on the edges of the band, I can't get it to tuck in like I have in the past with cotton. Anyway, the whole thing is becoming a lot like my pouch. Something not exactly wonderful but something close enough and I'm happy for it to be functional, just not a showcase piece I guess. The only practical thing that would come from entering it would be possibly useful feedback from the judges, although I get the feeling they'd just confirm what conclusions I've already come to, like they did when I entered my pouch.

Anyway, we'll see how I feel the more I get done. Once I get past this first damn word!

Compromises

After have done so much weaving over the weekend, but I have also done just as much unweaving. On Friday after I realised what I was doing was not going to work, I did some serious pondering. I decided to try a thinner thread for the structural weft to see if that would help my picks get smaller, but what could I use? I was thinking something along the lines of #10 or #12 perle cotton, but I'd planned this project to be made with period materials, and cotton just isn't period. I ended up going to Spotlight and buying a reel of Gutermann linen thread, and another reel of polyester top stitch thread. I tried the linen first, since this would keep my materials period, and it seemed to work. I got to six picks per centimetre, but when I added the gold the linen really didn't agree with it. I couldn't pull the linen tight enough so the band started getting wider, and I had to really force the gold thread past the linen. Then after four picks the linen snapped.

I gave up at that point, but I brought my loom over to show to Mistress Catherine on Sunday afternoon to see if she had any ideas. I ended up trying a super tough polyester thread as a weft, which I found quite rough and hard to pull through the shed, then I tried my poly top stitch thread, which was a lot softer and easier on my hands as well as being more cooperative with the silk. I also used one of Catherine's fancy jarrah beaters instead of my ruler, which is a lot harder with a finer edge. It seemed to work much better and I could beat the picks closer together.

This is what I ended up with. You can see all the random wefts poking out the top edge, because I was trialing I didn't weave them back through neatly. I was always going to unweave it anyway. The first four gold picks are with the linen and my ruler, then the rest are with the two poly threads and Catherine's beater. It's not very neat but there is definitely a significant improvement.

Yesterday I decided to unweave the entire thing and start again with my top stitch thread, Catherine's beater, and adding an extra 5mm to the width of the band to see if that helped. That's when my stripes started going all crooked. The extra width made the whole thing look a little weird, and the middle stripe was really wide while the outside ones were narrower. The very outside ones were going all wibbly as well. So I unwove all of that and started again, this time with my usual one inch width. I almost wove my whole leaf last night before I started making tired mistakes, but I wasn't happy with it. The gold thread really hasn't been surviving the constant weaving and unweaving, and the gold was flaking off in places, which didn't look good at all. Even though the gaps between floats were narrower, it still didn't look how I wanted it to.

Today I came to the conclusion that I need to pack the gold thread away and not use it until I've had a bit more practice with silk. I have woven excusively with cotton until now, and this is the first time I've ever had any major issues. Cotton just worked for me, both threaded in patterns and brocading, and I've always been able to produce decent bands. Having had no problems ever, I just assumed silk and gold would work for me and I'd be able to make gorgeous bands like Guntram does, but I guess this plan was a little ambitious. I think I'll keep playing with silk for a while and different wefts until I can weave something fine enough to add the gold thread to and have good coverage.

Anyway, I ended up going over to the Stitcher's Corner and buying myself some DMC metallic floss, and some yellow silk embroidery floss. I only bought both because they had an EFTPOS minimum of $10 and I had no cash. Once again I unwove the gold I'd woven last night, and tried with the metallic thread. It seemed to have really very good coverage, so I redrew my leaf since I was still having the problem of it stretching too much, and wove this:

It's a leaf! It actually looks like a leaf! I think we have a winner. I'm going to continue the band, and I may even finish it in time to enter it in the A&S competition. It will be nowhere near the standard that I had in my head when I dreamed up this project, but it will be at least a decent looking band. Maybe in another ten years or so I'll revisit this project, dig out my gold thread and weave it again, this time with appropriate materials and skills.

Things Going Wrong

I have had a crazy stressful week. I had two assignments due, one of which was epic and impossible, I had to move out of the house I was housesitting (and clean it all up to hide the fact that I'm a slob and didn't sweep or vacuum for the whole three months I was there), and I wanted to get my loom warped. I had a very tight schedule to get all these things done, which was completely blown out because I suddenly had no access to vital learning materials because my university's IT department sucks and keeps breaking things. So there was a bit of tears and hysterics this week. But I managed to get it all done!

I started warping my loom last Saturday. This is the first time I've had to deal with proper big skeins that aren't just DMC thread, so that was interesting. I'd been warned about skeins, so I was very careful.

I ended up putting it around my basket, which worked qute well for me. I just plopped the purple one on top of the green when I got up to it, and they didn't argue at all, which was nice. I'd arbitrarily decided before I started warping that I wanted my stripes to go green-purple-green-purple-green down the band. Then after I'd started with the green I started pondering whether purple-green-purple-green-purple would look better. It took me all week and lots of staring at the half-warped loom to finally decide on purple-green-purple-green-purple. So that meant shuffling the cards a little bit, but that was fine.

Yesterday after I'd handed my assignments in I started thinking about weaving. First I needed to decide what patterns I was going to brocade, so I went back to looking at my leaf. I ended up printing off an outline of it and tracing it onto the graph paper.

I've been home since Tuesday night, but I didn't remember to charge my camera battery until I wanted to take this photo. So we've still got phone pictures. Anyway, this leaf looks a whole lot better than my last attempt! I even put in the little veiny bits with the idea that they could work as tie-downs for the brocade weft. I also did my little arrow thingy, I had a vague idea that I'd have a small arrow thingy in the middle of the band, then a big leaf, then another small arrow thingy, then my words, then an arrow thingy, then the leaf, then the arrow thingy. I decided to give up on the cool looking swirly motif thing, since I didn't know what to put inside it.

Then I started weaving!

I'm quite pleased that I chose purple-green-purple-green-purple. I think it needed the darker colour on the edges. Anyway, here's where I realised that my little arrow thingy was only gonna cover the purple stripe in the middle and only a tiny bit of the green on either side. The band is only an inch wide, so it would've just gotten lost. I decided I'd just do a leaf on either side of my words.

Here's where my problems started. I added in the brocade weft and started my leaf pattern, but each thread was miles away from the next one. I decided almost straight away that it was gonna look crap, so I unpicked it and rewound my gold thread to double it over in an effort to make it cover more of the surface. It took me ages to figure out if I had enough gold thread. I decided to put everything closer together, and only do one leaf at the start instead of on either side of the words. Then I had to go to work, so I didn't get to see if it worked.

It didn't work. This morning I wove half of my leaf and it just looked awful.

This picture was actually taken with my camera, since my battery is all charged now. The purpose of my graph paper is to see what the pattern will look like when it's stretched a bit. The actual weaving stretched it double again. Also, if I put the weft over only one card, it gets swallowed up, but if I put it under one card, the warp looks really thick. Anyway, this is half of my leaf. Does is look like a leaf to you? Nope. The brocade threads are way too far apart. I think the problem is that my picks are too big. I get about four picks per centimetre of weaving, but Guntram with a 30/2 warp (just a little bit finer than my cord) and the same gold thread gets at least ten picks per centimetre. That's more than double what I'm doing. If I could half the size of my picks I'd be happy, because it would be like there was a thread in every one of those gaps in the picture above. The problem is I have no idea how to do it. I've been beating as had as I can, the whole loom creaks under the pressure.

Anyway, I'm a little upset because I was intending to get a lot of this done today, and unless I fix it right now I won't be sending it to November Crown to enter in the Kingdom A&S competition in two weeks. I've also spent a lot of money on good silk and gold thread, and I would hate to have to chuck it all. There's no way I'm going to keep going with how it looks now. I thought the tower brocading I did at the start of the year was gappy, but looking at it now it's really not. You can't fit a whole thread between the brocade threads that are there, and you can with space to spare on the one I'm doing now. It's odd because I used thicker threads for the whole tower belt, and the whole thing is done in the same size thread, and I still get four picks per centimetre. I would've thought that finer thread would mean finer weaving, but instead each pick is the same distance apart, but it looks further because the threads are finer.

If anyone has any ideas on how to make smaller picks, I'd be grateful for the advice. I don't know if maybe the tension on the warp makes any difference, or if I need to find something with a smaller edge than my old school ruler to beat each pick. Or if I just need completely different materials.

Continuous Warp

I have two assignments to do today, so instead I've been looking into the possibility of continuous warp to thread my cards for my belt. Amalie, who writes this blog, suggested it after my last post, and though I've heard of this mysterious continuous warping thing, and even had it explained to me, I never understood it until I watched this video:

OHMYGOODNESS ISN'T IT AMAZING!!!! It just looks so easy and simple and I can't believe I've been threading my cards one by one all this time. However, with further consideration, there are some problems with this technique.

Number One:
My band is not going to be one colour, it's going to have five strips alternating purple and green. This means that I will have to warp up only ten cards at a time, a total of five times. I can see it getting a little bit annoying when I'm dropping one card on the outside, then trying to slot one between the purple and the green.

Number Two:
My thread currently consists of two rather large skeins, one purple and one green. I would need to measure out four balls of the correct length of each colour before I even started. I can see that going very badly for me.

Number Three:
My cards are going to be alternating S and Z threaded. Continuous warp means threading cards all in the same direction, then flipping every second one. What's the problem you ask? The problem is my obsessive compulsiveness. My cards have labelled holes, and I couldn't possibly weave an entire belt if they're not all facing the same way with the same holes in the same positions. I would need to spend time working out what is going to happen to each card, and stack them so that when I flip them they all end up the same. Not sure that it's worth the effort :P

Number Four:
I don't have clamps. I need to find two sturdy objects of some sort that are the correct distance apart, or something I can move to make them the correct distance apart. At the moment I have no ideas. I want to have my loom warped up by the end of today, so I'll have to find something in this house. The other thing is that I want to weave on my loom. It's transportable. It's not suitable to use for continuous warping. This means moving the warp from whatever objects I find to my loom, and I can see that being incredibly tedious, and the string getting all tangled like evil string does, and cards falling out all over the place.

In conclusion, I think that continuous warping won't work for me on this occasion. The thought process alone is going to take me all day (in amongst the two assignments I'm going to do :P) and in the end I don't have anything to warp around. I think that today is going to consist of me doing my assignments, then taking a break to individually thread up a few cards, then taking a break from that to do my assignments, and so on. Hopefully by the end of the day I'll have at least one assignment finished, and my loom will be warped. Continuous warping still looks amazing though, I think I'll have to invest in some clamps and definitely try it for a later project. Thanks for the suggestion Amalie!

Moving Forward

Last weekend I spent some time working on my red cotehardie. I pulled about an inch or so in on various seams, and in a fit of madness decided that I needed to pull the front panels up by an inch at the shoulder seam. That involved pulling the sleeve off, pulling the neckline seam apart at the shoulder, then pulling apart the shoulder seams in the outer dress and the lining, then somehow putting it back together from the outside. I don't recommend it. I ended up just whacking it all back together in the most messy fashion, because I didn't know if it would work. I didn't want to cut any fabric, I just wanted to see if it would work. It did. So now I have to undo my messy work and spend some time putting it back together neatly. The shape of the dress looks a whole lot better as well, it doesn't do the bagging thing so much anymore. It still does a little bit, but I don't think I will ever be able to fix that properly.

Sunday trade starts next week, so we had an overhaul of the rosters at work. I ended up with an awesome roster, even though I reluctantly volunteered to work Saturday mornings. One week I work Thursday night and Saturday morning, and the next I work Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. This means that once a fortnight I get to go to St Basil A&S on Thursday nights at uni! I was thinking recently about how unmotivated I am to pick up any projects and work on them, and I realised that when I started in the SCA I was going to St Basil training every week, and always made sure I had some transportable work to do there. Lately I haven't been going to any A&S meetings, so haven't needed to work on a project to the point where I have handwork to do. So I'm going to make an effort to go to St Basil's every second Thursday and have something to work on. I've got plenty of projects in my fix-it basket now, which should keep me going for a while. Next week I'll bring my red cote and finish it completely. Then I can bring the wool one and fix that around my red one :)

I'm in the process of ordering some gold thread to use as a brocade weft for my awesome belt of awesome. I'm using this site, which sells gold foil wrapped around a silk core, which is very period and should be perfect for my belt. This project is getting a bit expensive, but I intend to do it properly and document it and in the end I should have an awesome belt of awesome :)  My silk is still in transit, it's taking forever, but that's ok because the girl I'm ordering the gold thread from is ordering me a continuous 20m skein of thread, instead of me buying four little ones, and that will take a bit longer. Besides, I haven't even figured out a pattern to brocade. I think I want to make it heraldic and put my little ivy leaf in a little shield shape thing, but I think to make that work I'll need some Latin writings, and I don't have a motto or anything I can use. So I need to think up a phrase or something. I really should continue reading Eccesiastical Pomp for some inspiration.

Dyeing Adventures #2 (Epic Fail)

There is only two weeks left of holidays. There is no way I'm going to get my list of THINGS done in the next two weeks. Work keeps wanting me to work. I've been working between 30 and 36 hours every week, which is awesome because I get to save up a whole bunch of monies for the proposed Pennsic 2013 trip, but not so awesome in that I have barely any free time and when I do I just feel like sitting and not doing anything.

ANYWAY I have done some things. Sort of. I made a set of arrows :) I wanted them for the Vallon d'Or IKAC since I only had 7 arrows left and you need 6, but my carefully planned plans were thrown off when I went to Achenfeld A&S to borrow the fletching jig and get working on them, but there was no taper tool except an old pencil sharpener that was way too small for my sticks. No taper tool, no nocks, and nocks are kind of essential for using the fletching jig. I really should've been more organised and checked that everything I needed was with the jig instead of just assuming, but there you go. I ended up just going to Vallon d'Or with my seven arrows, and promptly broke one in the first end. Luckily no more broke, not that it would've made any difference at all to my absolutely woeful score of 81. I made my new set of arrows the day after the IKAC :P. I shot in my man-cote with the slightly too-small sleeves because I didn't find time to make new ones.

However, I did make some adjustments to my green surcote. I detached the sleeves, opened up both side seems down to the gores, added in an extra inch-wide panel on both sides, then attached the sleeves again. I didn't get time to finish any of the seams, but that's ok because when I wore it to the feast I realised I would need some more adjustments. It's still too tight around the hips below where the gores start, so I'm going to take out the seams of the gores as much as I can to give myself a bit more room. It's also still too tight at the top above the armpit, where the new panel ends. After consulting with Catherine she suggested that I just cut the neckline down by one button, and since I have room to do so I think I will try it. That also means I can replace one of my lost buttons :P

Today I am dyeing my wool. Last time my selvedge didn't shrink, while the rest of the fabric did, so this time I cut the selvedge off

I'm also going to hang it on the hill's hoist in the sun, because the lines are straight. Last time I didn't want to hang it in the sun because I've had bad experiences with natural fabrics shrinking, fading and turning all stiff because our sun is a bit violent. Instead, I hung it under the verandah on some ropes that have been strung up, which sagged and stretched the fabric in places so it didn't lie flat. Anyway, it's winter now so the sun isn't so harsh, and I'd rather have fabric that wasn't stretched funny. It makes it a bit difficult to cut out and make into things if it's all stretched :P

The next step was to experiment with colours. You may remember I was pondering adding green to my blue dye to get a teal colour? Well, I decided to boil a little saucepan of water on the stove and add a tiny bit of dye to test the colours.

First try kind of failed. I meant to test the blue, then add green and test that, but I forgot my intentions almost instanlty and just added both blue and green. A little bit too much blue and green. This is a piece of selvedge that came out blotchy because of the weird selvedge weave thing it has going on. So I tipped that lot down the sink and tried again

I cut some bits of actual fabric instead of using the selvedge. The blue came out quite a nice blue, but as soon as I added the teeniest bit of green, the whole thing turned aqua. I decided I liked the blue, so I went with just using two packets of blue, and stuck it all in the washing machine. This is what I ended up with:

The strip on top is the colour I wanted. Underneath is the colour I got. I got the same colour as some wool I already have. Guh! I've hung it out to dry, and I think I might buy another packet of blue and run it through again with that to make it darker. I wanted that teal blue, but the next best thing would be dark blue rather than light blue. So frustrating! It means I need to get some more dye, then find a time to come home to use mum's machine because I'm housesitting from Monday and don't want to use their machine in case it all goes horribly wrong. It's a front loader as well, which is a different technique to the top loader, and besides, mum's machine is an industrial one which is a lot more efficient than these dumb water saver machines :P

The other thing I've done is order some silk! I've bought a skein if green and a skein of purple from Treenway Silks, and they should be finished dyeing in three weeks, then posted to me. I've been slowly pottering through Ecclesistical Pomp, and I've been developing an idea in my mind for my belt. I'd like it to have a ground weave of purple and green stripes, then I think I'd like to get hold of some metallic thread to brocade some sort of heraldic bits along it. I've been looking at getting actual gold wrapped thread from here, but so far I can't figure out how to order, or how much I'll need. I figure since I'm using proper good expensive silk for the ground weave, I should really use something of equal quality for the brocade. That reel is $14 for five metres, but I'm not sure if I'll need more than that. Any weavers out there know how much weft they use for a belt about a metre and a half long?

Tonight I'm intending to work on my geen surcote. I'll at least do the neckline and move that button. I want to wear it to the tournament that's on tomorrow because it's my warmest garb and it's generally pretty cold down at Wandi :P

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 :)

May Fail

I've had a very uninspired May. I've basically done absolutely nothing except the bare minimum of uni work and I've shown up to work and SCA training things. I did manage to get a bit of my embroidery done at the Anealan 25th Anniversary event. It's nearly two-thirds finished now. I went to a novelty archery shoot and wore my man-undies and hose with one of Nathan's old cotes. It was big and comfy, although I probably looked ridiculous :P

Last weekend I went to the Baroness' Fighter Auction tourney and added a couple of projects to my list. First of all there was a book floating around called Sweet Bags, which I WANTS. I've decided I need to make a pincushion or a sweet bag as an A&S entry. Secondly, I wore this dress:

 

This dress was my first surcote to go with my first four-panel gothic fitted dress. It's made from cheap Spotlight brocade, the same brocade that nearly everyone has a garment made out of in various colours :P. I originally made it in four panels and it had itty bitty little tippets because I was trying to be fabric thrifty even though I had a whole bolt of the fabric. It came from Sophie's stash. Anyway, the first time I wore it was to a feast, and when it was time for dancing I tried to pick up my skirt to swish it around, because it's fun. WELL there was almost no skirt, so there was no swishy and I was a bit disappointed. Then I put some gores in the sides. I made them so they started below my hips. It looked hilarious.When you put gores in a dress, the need to start above your hips, where your body starts flaring out. Anyway, before Festival 2011 I decided to fix it once and for all, and I made new gores for the sides, and also in the middle of the back. I also made completely new sleeves, and put the black guard aroud the bottom. I'm so glad I did, because it now looks awesome and the fabric has a great weight and drape to it, and it's warm.

I brought it with me to festival this year, and put it on a couple of times over my day cotes. It was really tight, possibly because I'm bigger, but most likely because I was wearing an extra layer, a chemise. I ended up popping the top button off, and losing it :(. I decided to try wearing it again last weekend over my gold cote which doesn't have a chemise, and it fit a bit better, though still quite tight. I popped and lost another button, which has made me decide that it needs some more adjusting. I think what I will do is add an inch wide panel on each side that goes from under the arm to the gores. This should mean the whole dress loosens up but still remains shaped. I do also need to have a look at the sleeves, they're cutting in a bit where they end at the elbow. I might see if I can let the seams out a little bit to give me some more room.

In other news, I finally got myself motivated enough to finish weaving that red belt for my brais. It doesn't have a buckle yet, but I did pick one up from Andre at 25th year. I just need to attach it :P. I also cut out and started sewing up man-cote take 2! I decided that since I have tons of that red wool and I'm unlikely to use it for anything else, I would just start again. I've made it longer and looser. Pencampwr is next weekend, and it's going to be cold so I'd like to wear it then. Hopefully I'll have time to finish it, but if I don't I suppose I can always wear the first one :P

And that's all. I have an exam on Monday, my last class at uni on Wednesday, an essay due next Monday and then I have two and a half weeks until my final exam. Then I'm on holidays! Holidays that will be filled with all sorts of SCAdventures!

Things!

UPDATES ON THINGS:

1. I looked at work for a D ring for my belt. I had a choice of hot pink, blue or green, all made of plastic. Great. Next to those ones was a big empty space where the metal ones go. There were lots of empty spaces on the shelf because it was a shelf of BIRCH things. Birch is evil. If anyone ever mentions to a manager that they need something but the shelf is empty, the first thing they ask is "is it Birch?" even though they know it MUST be Birch, because they immediately follow the question with mutterings that you can't quite hear but there are most definitely obscenities involved. If there's more than one manager there, then they also exchange Knowing Looks. From what I can understand, Birch is bad. Anyway, no D ring for me. After a chat with Mister Nathan in which he gave me far too many options and lots of inconveniently located shops, I have decided I am too undecided to make a commitment about the stupid belt buckle. Also, I am cranky at it. This has become way too difficult so I'm going to ignore it and think about it later.

2. I started sewing up my cotehardie! Now I have twelve pieces of dress, but only eight pieces of lining! Yay! Soon I will have only one piece of lining, then I can start working on making my twelve big pieces pieces into one big piece :D

3. I didn't do any sewing today. Instead, I strung up the loom again. I have decided that there needs to be a piece of tablet weaving in progress for the St Basil O-Day tomorrow. So I found a nice simple threaded in pattern that I wanted to do (the Anglo Saxon one), and strung up my loom. I think I'll donate the finished product to the Baroness' Fighter Auction table. After watching me intently as I measured out string, Tory decided he'd like to help

Look at him sitting there looking all innocent, like he wasn't just pouncetackling my string. I growled at him, and he went and lurked just behind the door. He obviously thought I couldn't see him, but I was totally onto him :P So when I ran out of yarn and decided to go out and get some more, I locked him out!  Mwahaha, he was so not happy.

4. I went to Joondalup Spotlight, cos duh, I couldn't go to Innaloo during my morning off, then go back again for my shift. So I went to Joondalup. I found some more yarn, then I accidently walked past the clearance table, and accidently rummaged through it, and accidently found WOOL FOR $5 A METRE!!! :D :D So I got just over four metres of red, and just under four metres of purple, because that's all that was left on the rolls. There's still a roll of charcoal, because I didn't want that colour :P. It's the Melton wool which is only 60% wool, but nice and heavy and good for cloaks. Maybe I willl have a new cloak for Rowany Festival after all. I think I wanna line it though, I need more warms than just one layer, but I haven't decided what I wanna line it in. Maybe I'll get myself some nice soft wool suiting, or just some cheap fleecy stuff. I was pondering what to do with the red stuff, when I had a brilliant ambitious plan to make it into a man-cote complete with man-hood with wanky dagging and giant liripipe, but that also involves brais and man-hose so I dunno. I'm only ever really tempted to wear short tunics and stuff at festival, where it gets very wet and skirts get very annoying, but that means adding a quite ambitious project to the pile of things to do in the next six weeks. And I don't think I have enough stag buttons left. An awesome man-cote needs stag buttons :P

5. Anyway, I went home and finished stringing up the loom. Then I started weaving. Then I realised that something was wrong. First of all, the pattern was totally not even recognisable as a pattern. I looked at my threading diagram and eventually realised I'd threaded the whole thing backwards. This one was alternating S and Z threaded, and I thought I'd started with an S threaded card, but clearly I mixed myself up and accidently Z threaded it. Why is the S and Z thing so difficult? Anyway, this problem was easily fixed, I just needed to flip every card over. Yay! The next problem was that one of my edge cards wasn't being woven in with the rest of the band. It was just hanging out there all my itself, slowly twisting up with no weft going through it. After studying my turning sequence, I realised that even though the threading diagram was for 25 cards, the turning sequence was for 26. I have two packs, so I needed to have one edge card in one pack, and the other one in the other pack. I pondered threading up another card, then realised the pattern would become UNSYMMETRICAL and we can't have that, no no no no, so I just shifted the rogue card to the other pack, and the problem seems to have fixed itself. Huzzah! here's a picture:

Ah epic fail. You can see where I fail at beginning braids, then the weird backwards threaded pattern, then a big lump where I flipped the cards and turned them all back to the top, then finally the real pattern starts! Why am I so bad at these things? I thought maybe this time would be different, that finally I'd be able to just start weaving like everyone else seems to be able to do, but clearly I was wrong :P At least I fixed it, and it was relatively easy to fix, because it would've been a whole lot of wasted time and yarn. Although I guess it also goes to show that one teeny weeny little mistake can just turn the whole project to shit.

6. I've almost got my dad enthused for making me my own tablet loom. I'll work on him a bit more on Saturday, then hopefully I can transfer this project onto my very own brand new loom made just for me, and give Tex's back to her so she can lend it to Rachel :P

And that's about it from me today. Tomorrow I'm going to hang with the college kids, hopefully it's not too hot, like every other O-Day that has come before. I've decided to wear my German, since it's flashy and comes with a nice giant pizza-hat for keeping the sun off :P The freshers won't have any idea that it's all cheated sleeves and made out of the wrong fabric with crappy plastic beads.