Freedom!

I LIIIIIIIIIIVE! It's been five months since my last post. Not a lot of SCA related things have happened in that time, but that will change because now I have TIME.

Here's a list of Things That Have Happened:
1. A new Baron and Baroness of Aneala, Damian and Leonie, were invested at the end of September. There was a tourney and a feast and I made it to both of these things :D. It was a beautiful warm summery day and I had a really good time catching up with people I hadn't seen in ages. The next day was a horrible wet wintry day but that didn't stop the heavies holding training with the King and Queen. I had another social day. TWO IN A ROW. What a great weekend.

2. The weekend after the new B&B were invested was the September long weekend, which means Championship! I'd just finished my paediatric placement so I was free for ANOTHER WHOLE WEEKEND. We went down south and I experienced camping in dorms for the first time. I must say it was a good experience, but the dorm was only a third full and no one snored. It worked really well for the drizzly weather. I had another great weekend.

3. I emerged from two months spent in the library at uni to attend a tourney run down in Abertridwr. Loki asked to fight for me since Kester was away in the US, and I musta done something right because he won!

And so begins my chaplet collection! There were two because there were two tourneys, and I got to keep both of them. Loki was having some fun with his tassels, thanks goes to Mister Nathan for the photo.

4. I also went to the annual Toys for Tots tourney last weekend. It was proper summer hot.

Thanks to Ragnarr for the photo. Also I wear glasses now. I've had them for two whole weeks, and I can see good now! I'm not sure about wearing them to events, they're very modern and don't really fit with the picture I have in my head of my persona and how my garb fits together. I'm either gonna need to reconcile having a new look, see if I can get some more period looking glasses for events, or talk to my optometrist about getting contacts. I have astigmatism in one eye which can make contacts problematic, so I guess we'll see.

5. My garb is all falling apart. Sadfaaaace. I only have about 3 hoes left and they're all linen, my chemises are all looking a bit ratty and not at all white since I just wash them with my other garb and they pick up coloured linen fluff that I can't get rid of without giving them a good bleach. All three of my cotehardies have frayed bits at the hem. My gold one has frayed at the neckline as well, and the lining has come apart from the sleeve of my teal one. They seriously need some love and attention. I think I'm gonna make new chemises and rethink the pattern I'm gonna use. Also I think I might make a whole new wardrobe. I like the idea of 15th century Burgundian.

6. I picked up my embroidery again and started chipping away at it. I've not made much progress but I'm permanently set up on the couch again so I can pick it up whenever I feel like it. I can't quite remember how many motifs I decided to do. I'd calculated it all and everything, but didn't write it down because I'm usually very good at remembering what I'm doing. I also haven't ever been so totally focused on other things that I don't even think about SCA projects for months at a time. I had heaps of ideas for projects floating around in my head, but I think they were assassinated by my uni research project. I can't even remember what I was planning for my epic Cranach gown of awesome. I wrote a bunch of stuff down in my dress diary but I'd also spent a lot of time pondering bits and pieces. I guess I'll just have to start pondering from the beginning again.

7. This is the most important point of all. Results have been released and.... I'M A SPEECH PATHOLOGIST! No longer a student, I'm a qualified unemployed person! The job market is veeeery competitive at the moment (as in there are no jobs to apply for), so I have some time on my hands to get back into the swing of SCA things. Also I need a holiday after the last five months of epic stressful craziness :)

Study Week (Again)

I'm not sure what happened to the time, but last time I posted it was study week and I hadn't done any study. Now it's study week again and I haven't done any study. Actually, this second study week is a cruisy week, since I handed in all my mid-semester assignments last week and nothing else is due for another four weeks. This is the calm before the storm, the storm being my first proper COMPASS assessed clinical practice that begins in two weeks. I'm being sent into a school to spend nine weeks with small children. Lucky me.

Anyway, a lot has happened in the last month, and not just hectic uni stuff. First of all my Gran passed away just after I got back from Pennsic, which was all very sad and stressful times. BUT then we had to go clean out her house, which was full of treasure! Actually, it was mostly junk since she was a bid of a hoarder, but my reward for spending a day sorting through the junk was a basket of treasure!

I got all sorts of useful things like threads, needles and pins. There's also a whole bunch of things like elastic and hooks and eyes which I'm not sure I'll use. I also got a box full of DMC stranded cotton, AND

SILK! Packets and packets of silk! The only downside is that except for the dark blue, there's only one packet of each colour, and a lot of them have been opened so the ends are trailing out. But it's still a whole stash of silk that I'm sure I'll find a use for. I also inherited Gran's sewing machine. It's almost as old as me, but it's been barely used. Gran used to make us dresses when we were little, but most of them were made before Pop died and with the sewing machine she had before this one. Since she moved to Perth 22 years ago she's very rarely used the machine. Every time she got it out she had to call mum for instructions on how to thread the bobbin case because it had been so long since she last got it out. Anyway, now I have my own sewing machine! It's been serviced and cleaned, it's pretty simple and cheap but I'll only need it occasionally and never for anything fancy.

In other news, I finally figured out how to use a warping board! I've asked my dad to make me one, and as soon as he does I'll use it to warp my leaf belt. Although I may need to put some pressure on him. I might go out to his shed tonight when he's pottering around out there, and I'll try to make it myself. If things go to plan then he'll get annoyed by my pitiful attempts at woodworking and he'll take over. Then I shall warp my loom!

Also, I've still been plodding along with my embroidery.

Now I has three corners! I'm really very close. I guess I'll have to start thinking about what I'm going to line it with and what I'm going to use to bind the edges. I want to tablet weave the edges, and I have this idea in my head of a spiral pattern in two colours, but every time I start planning it in my head I get stuck on colours. I don't want to use any of the colours of the embroidery, except white. I think I want white. I just don't know what other colour will complement the colours that are already there. Ideally I'd also like to use threads that I already have, seeing as I'll only need a small amount. I'll have to go digging through my stash.

That's about it from me. I went down south for Championship weekend, and it was COLD, and now I have a cold :(. I really need to fix my green brocade surcote. I wore it anyway because I needed more clothes than just my woolen cote, but I was really quite uncomfortable. The sleeves dig into my arms above my elbows now, which was so uncomfortable. I also started mentally planning a super amazing brocade surcote that may or may not be parti-coloured and will be my fancy one. I need a fancy outfit. Also it seems my wardrobe is green. I need to start making stuff in different colours.

This is going to be another post with no pictures because I've been slowly working on stuff but there's nothing yet to show for it :( This week's been pretty hectic, since it's the first week of uni so I've had to sort all that stuff out, but we also had a stocktake at work which was epic.

I shot an IKAC on Sunday and scored 101. My personal best is 105, so that's not too shabby for the first IKAC of the season. I managed to hit my elbow with my string though, which is bad, but this time the bruise actually showed up, which is good :P On Sunday afternoon Mister Nathan and I went to Hoddywell Archery Park to check it out as a potential site for Championship. I like it, it will mean roughing it a bit since there's no kitchen as such, but there are showers. Mordenvale manages to cook a pretty awesome spread at Festival with no kitchen, so why can't we do that too? The owners are semi-retired, and they're pondering whether they want us there or not, and how much to charge us.

On Monday I washed my wool. I have decided on the purple for my new cloak, so I treated it how I'm gonna treat it when it's a cloak (since Mistress Rowan told us to and she's awesome and knows Things) and I washed it on the regular cycle. I ended up with purple fluff EVERYWHERE. I almost chucked the purple and red in together, but didn't because it weighs a bit and the machine might not be able to cope, and I'm so glad I didn't. As it was I had to scrape purple fluff off the inside of the washing machine before I put the red in on gentle cycle. That seemed to work a bit better, there wasn't nearly so much red fluff as purple fluff. You should see our verandah, I tried to do most of the shaking out there and there is so much fluff everywhere. It was also really dusty when I bought it, so there was dust and fluff flying around everywhere. Now it is folded up and sitting on my desk chair, because I don't have anywhere else to put it :(

Tuesday and Wednesday was craft/party stocktake at work. We started at 7am each day, and we didn't finish so I was there until 7pm last night. So much tired in my faaaaaace. Anyway, I did some sewing on Tuesday night, but I was so exhausted last night that I came home, ate my dinner and then fell into bed at 8pm. Anyway, my cotehardie is in six pieces at the moment. I'm hoping to get it all finished and sewn together with the lining by tomorrow night.

Tomorrow is my very last Friday off work, since I've been moved to part time at work and the new roster starts next week, which includes Fridays. I am going to run errands! I shall go to uni and pick up some textbooks and hopefully find Dress Accessories in the library, then go past Stitcher's Corner for more floss for my embroidery on my way to the annual 50% off sale at Homecraft Textiles! It's moved to March, people! This means enough time to buy cheap fabric and make things for Festival! I'm intending to buy something green to line my cloak with. If I can't find any suitable wool, then I think I'll go for some flannel since it's only $1.99 per metre during the sale and it should be nice and soft and warm :D

Hopefully on Saturday I'll be able to post pictures of my cotehardie all in one piece! Next week I'll have to actually go to uni, but my schedule should start working itself out and we'll see how much time I actually have to do SCA stuff.