Man things

Today I got a present from the postie!

Buttons! These are 2cm across, and were labelled as a Tibetan design on Aliexpress.com. I have no idea if the design is authentic or not, I think they're pretty and I got 40 of them for $10. They're a little darker than I expected, but they're the same zinc alloy as the little gold ones I got, so they're sturdy, cheap AND pretty. I think they'll do nicely for my linen man-cote.

Speaking of man-cotes, I finished my supportive shirt! I didn't think about how I don't have much arm movement in my cotehardies, and because that's due to the tightness around my torso rather than the actual sleeves themselves, I'll most likely have the same problem with this shirt. I haven't put it on yet because it's already 10:30pm and I still need to print of some stuff for clinic tomorrow. I'll most likely put it on later in the week to see how it fits and also to re-fit the red woolen man-cote over it, so I'll take photos and stuff then.

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.

Packages!

I got some packages in the mail this week :D The first was the rest of the yarn that I need to weave the strap for my awesome bag of awesome

Here are all of the colours. I bought two more balls each of the gold and red, which will be my main pattern. The purple and green will be my selvedge. This week is study week, and I'm hoping to get my loom warped up so I can plod away at the actual weaving when uni goes back and I get my new shuttlebeater. I also think that I should read the Collingwood chapter on doubleface again properly, and get my pattern drafted up properly.

The other package is the next instalment of the buttons saga. First I ordered some nice buttons that arrived way bigger than the advertised size, then I found some awesome buttons on ebay but got outbid and was very sad. But then I found aliexpress.com, which sells wholesale buttons for ridiculously cheap. I spent about $15 and got these:

LOOKIT! I got 104 because the bulk lot comes in 100, and the other four were in their own seperate baggy labelled "small gift", which gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy. I was expecting some crappy plastic buttons that will peel and break really easily, but they't not, they're heavy and feel like some sort of metal, and are actually really very nice. I don't think I'll be replacing them after Pennsic after all. Instead I'll stock up on a stash of awesome Pennsic buttons and I'll never have to buy buttons ever again! I'm pretty happy with my purchase, they were so cheap, I've got enough for five sets of sleeves and they're quality and the right size :)

I've also been plodding along with the green cotehardie. I've got all the panels sewn up and the lining sewn in, I just need to iron the seams where the lining joins the outside, sew up the front seam, make lacing holes, hem the bottom and make sleeves. I've given up on the idea of a sleeveless cotehardie for now. That might be a project for the future.

Success!

It's finished! :D :D

 

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

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

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

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

Buttons

I forgot to mention that last week I bought some buttons. I bought these buttons, which are plastic but they were super cheap and look good. They arrived on Monday and I'm pretty happy with them, even if I have no idea what I will use them for :P. The other buttons I bought were these ones, and I bought them specifically to replace the ones I took off my red cote and transfered to the new sphinx ones. You might notice that the listing says that the size is half an inch. Well I assumed that meant diameter, but it turns out they are actually three quarters of an inch in diameter. I have no idea what the seller was measuring, but I was expecting much smaller buttons. These will do for surcote buttons, but they are way too big for sleeve buttons, especially since I already have button holes on the red cote that fit buttons half an inch across. I gave the seller neutral feedback and ticked the box that said item was not as described, but I won't do anything else about it because they cost me a grand total of $10. I will put them away in my stash and possibly use them in the future, or give them away or something. It's more trouble than it's worth to send them back.

So it looks like I'll need to go looking for more buttons to buy so I can replace the ones on my red cote :P