A New Thing

I got a text yesterday morning from Mum telling me there was a package waiting for me at home. I'm waiting for a few different things, so I asked her the dimensions of the package before I raced over there all excited to pick it up. Lookee!

MY COLLINGWOOD ARRIVED! I raced home to pick it up before work, and even had a short look at the double face chapter in one of my breaks. I'll have a proper read this morning, and start drafting up a pattern for the strap of my awesome bag of awesome. Now all I need is to order some thread and wait for that and my new set of cards to arrive. I think the main motif pattern will be in gold and red, and I'll add a selvedge border of green and purple. I haven't decided what sort of weft to use. I have a feeling that I'm going to have epic problems with the motif stretching along the band way too much, so I'll need something smaller. I want to use size 8 thread for the warp, which means using a sewing thread weft again, or size 12 cotton. That probably means dealing with snapping issues again. I guess we shall see what happens when I warp up my loom.

I've slowed down a bit with my embroidery. I've only done another three motifs since last week, and that's only because I carried it with me all weekend and worked on it while I was doing social things. I haven't been picking it up as much at home in my spare time. It's a good thing I started this project so early!

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?

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!

Good Things

I meant to update about this sooner but things happened and I didn't get a chance. Good news! My shoes are fixed! I talked to some people on Tuesday night through my tears, and the general consensus was that the cobbler is an idiot and should never have put rubber on my shoes. So I plucked up my courage and decided to go back on Wednesday morning. I thought I was very reasonable in saying that I expected leather, and thought he'd at least understand why it never crossed my mind to specify leather. Apparently not. Apparently it's completely unreasonable to expect leather soles on handmade leather shoes. These days everyone gets rubber, and anyway they're all just shoes to him, handmade or not. Well. Clearly he's very good at his job and can appreciate the hard work that went into my shoes. We ended up coming to an agreement, which meant that I ended up with leather soles on my shoes for $80 all together. He quoted me leather soles at $70, so I only paid $10 more. If the quote was correct. I have a feeling I paid a bit more, but it still ended up cheaper than taking my shoes elsewhere to get them fixed. I'm so glad they're fixed, but I feel like I went through an Ordeal to get them there. I will never be going back to that cobbler, and I will be seriously recommending that no one else ever goes there. He was a mean little man. I'm quite happy to take on some of the blame, because I made a wrong assumption. But he also made a wrong assumption, and how is a customer supposed to know what goes on in the industry? Just because most people get rubber on their shoes, doesn't mean that everyone wants rubber. If the default is rubber, fine, but I really think that being given a pair of handmade leather shoes should prompt you to at least clarify that rubber is the default. I never said leather, but he never said rubber.

Moving on. On Friday I came home to find a package! In it were these:

Nancy Spies is selling off all her books, and I got these for $65 including postage :D I am very pleased. She was very sweet and they came wrapped in nice tissue paper, and...

She signed them! I felt all warm and fuzzy when I saw that. I've had a quick flick through them, but I probably won't get a chance for a proper look until after I get back from Festival. OMG eight days until I leave for Festival! I am nowhere near ready. I've finished my man underwear and cut out my man-cote, but I still need to sew it all up, make buttons, cut out and put together a hood, and make a cloak, AND deal with uni things. Stupid uni getting in the way of fun stuff.

There was a feast on Saturday. It was the college's newcomers feast. Remember the brocaded tower belt I made a while ago? That was for the A&S competition at this feast. At about 4pm on Saturday I was racing around printing indemnities and sewing and packing things because I really needed to be leaving very soon, and Mister Nathan happened to mention the A&S on facebook chat. I had totally forgotten all about it, I hadn't put a buckle on the belt or finished my documentation. I had a mini panic attack, then whacked on a D-ring with the sewing machine, and typed up a page of something that passed as documentation all in about 20 minutes. I was a bit angry at myself for forgetting, but I'm so glad I didn't just give up, because my entry was the third entry which meant the actual competition could run, and I won it! Yay! I think I won because I had documentation, even if it wasn't exactly great, because Edmund's pewter towers scored one point less than I did, and he didn't have any documentation at all. So it just goes to show, any documentation is good documentation :P

This morning I skipped my lectures in favour of productive things, like writing up my constable's report from the feast and washing my garb. I just chucked in a few things that needed washing from last week and this week, which included a chemise, my old white cotehardie and my partlet. WELL, those things came out pink. I'd chucked my red cote in too, because I'd prewashed the fabric and I've never had any problem with fabric-store.com linen colours running in the wash. NOT THIS TIME. That stupid red cote not only turned all my white things pink, including my new chemise and the partlet that Mistress Catherine made, but the lining also ripped out from the sleeves, and frayed all over the place. Now I have extra mending to do. Anyway, I saw the pink things and panicked, filled a bucket up with bleach and shoved them in. I left them for about half an hour before rinsing them in the wash, and they're mostly white now. Once I've posted this I will be hanging them out in the sun to bleach some more. I think the crisis has been averted. I really hate that stupid red cote now. Stupid malicious red cote *glares*

I will leave you now with a picture of me in my underwear: