I live!

I don't really have any excuse for not posting for the last six months, except that not much has been happening. I'm still down in Albany and my contract has been extended until at least September, so I'll be here a little bit longer. I've been finding it difficult to keep inspired to do SCA stuff down here all on my lonesome. I'm connected by social media of course, but as everyone knows there's an awful lot of whining on the internet and it's difficult to keep enthused without the balance of seeing people regularly at training and A&S days and things like that.

Since I last posted I did connect with a couple of people interested in SCA down here, and discovered it's not a matter of supporting stuff that's already happening since there isn't actually anything happening. There's also a bit of a toxic vibe so to start a group down here would involve starting completely from scratch on my own and would be a long term investment. I'm not sure how long I'm going to be down here so I'm just laying low for the moment. I've been keeping busy with the choir I joined and my dance classes at the one and only local dance studio. Also Royalties for Regions is an awesome thing and the WA ballet came to visit for a day of FREE CLASSES which was all very exciting, except it was the week after festival and guess who got the festival lurgy! It was me, I got the festival lurgy.

Festival was pretty great again. I had the ultimate festival last year, what with awesome bunk mates (did not realise how awesome they were until this year) and learning to weave on a table loom for the first time and all the other great A&S classes. This year wasn't as good, but I guess you can't have two amazing years in a row :P. I didn't sleep very well because I was sharing with snorers and there was an extra person crammed into every room so it wasn't as comfortable space wise, but I acquired some ear plugs for the last few nights which were both weird yet awesome. There didn't seem to be as many A&S classes as last year either, or at least not ones that really interested me, like weaving :P.

But I still had a great time catching up with people and getting all enthusiastic again. At the WCoB meeting I picked up instructions and some red wool for a mouse pouch, and my very first patch for the Pelican Cloak.

Then I discovered that there is no embroidery shop down here in Albany. I'm not sure where all the crafty little old ladies who retired down here get there embroidery supplies from, but surely it can't be Spotlight. They only have the basics. Anyway, I already had black and white silk so I could get started, but the cost of postage costs more than the cost of a few packets of silk from all those online embroidery shops, so my lovely awesomest friend Spoh is picking some up for me from the Stitchers Corner, and I'll get it when I go up for Autumn Gathering next weekend. I'd like to actually enter some WCoB competitions this year, and the one for Midwinter is beadwork so hopefully I'll finally start working on that beaded goldhaube for my saxony gown (which WILL happen... eventually).

I found some spools of natural linen in the markets! It felt so fine and nice that I had to buy four of them, and I will use them for attempt #2 of the Double Weave Apron project.

I need to do some more research, Mistress Caristiona mentioned sometimes aprons had patterns woven into them which I would like to try. I need a mangler too, for mangling. Also I think it's time that I pulled apart my loom and gave it some much needed maintenance. Google tells me soaking my heddles in vinegar for a few days will be good for them, and I should get some pumice to scrub my reed but I need to be careful because reeds are precious, and maybe lemon oil is good for the wood bits. I'll do some more digging before I try anything, and I was thinking of even contacting the Spinners & Weavers guild down here for advice. I've not contacted them before because they meet on a weekday morning when I'm at work, so there wasn't much point. Also I now have a car in which I can transport my loom! That's right, I traded in poor old Nigel who I still love very much for a hatchback with cruise control for the long country drives I occasionally do. Then I discovered that the cruise control was broken, and I was Very Annoyed. After a millionty phone calls, John Hughes has organised for it to be fixed under warranty down here, but the place I took it needs to order in parts from over east, so it doesn't look like I'll have it fixed in time for my next drive up to Perth :(

I had great plans to make two new cotehardies for festival this year. I decided I need a purple cotehardie and a rusty orange brown cotehardie. When I visited fabric-store.com they had a colour called Purple Wine on sale, and it looked like it was just a bit lighter than the purple purple colour they have, so I thought I'd take advantage of the savings. Well. It arrived and it wasn't any sort of purple, it was PINK. I would've called it fuschia pink, and it was the exact colour of the PINK thread I used to sew the lining of my hood with, You know that obnoxious PINK lining? Anyway, now I have a pink cotehardie, and although it wasn't the purple that I wanted, it is a pretty garishly amazing colour and I got lots of compliments at festival.

I don't have a rusty orange brown cotehardie, because I had some small disasters in making the pink one. First of all, not sure if I've mentioned on here before, but I've put on some weight. It must've started during my last semester of uni in 2014, because at festival last year my cotehardies were a little tight, enough for me to be a little uncomfortable for the whole event, but not enough for me to abandon my cotehardies and wear my viking jammies instead. Anyway, then I went and lived for three months in Katanning where it was freezing and the only thing to do was cook delicious food and eat big servings because it's difficult cooking for one and there wasn't enough room for me to store leftovers in the fridge shared by five girls. Anyway, by the time I got down here to Albany I was about 10kg heavier than in 2013 when I made all my cotehardies. I'm not saying I'm an unhealthy weight, but my favourite jeans are a struggle to get on and uncomfortable to sit down in, and I can't actually get my arms into most of my cotehardies. I've had some comments about how I always wear the same thing to events, my gold cotehardie and red overdress, and it's mostly because it's the only outfit that still fits and is mostly comfy, if a little bit tight. Anyway, I thought I would make two new cotehardies for festival, and obviously I needed a new pattern to fit my new size.

I don't really wanna talk about what happened, but by the time I got to a week and a half out from festival, I had a pink cotehardie (minus sleeves) that was COMPLETELY WRONG. There was much swearing and throwing stuff. After stewing over it for a day or so, I abandoned the idea of making a second cotehardie (the original plan was to wiz up a second one in a week once I'd confirmed the pattern worked and remembered how to sew) and started making stupid fiddly adjustments to the stupid pink stupid cotehardie. I ended up with something that looked fine and although the neckline was not at all what I wanted and it wasn't nearly fitted enough to support my boobies, it was actually really comfortable. Comfortable ended up being a REALLY GOOD thing because along with the pink one, I'd packed my gold cotehardie, which is mostly comfortable, digs into my shoulders a bit and is a bit tight, and the only other cotehardie that I could actually get up over my arms, the teal green one. I wore that one for one day, and even though I didn't tighten the lacing all the way, by the end of the day my ribs felt all bruisy and tender, like when you have a crease in your sock, except all around your ribs. I was able to wear the nice loose pink cotehardie the next day to let my ribs recover.

ANYWAY I've started making some more adjustments to the pink one to make it just a bit more fitted, because I prefer the support, and to change the neckline a bit. I nearly cried last night when I unpicked the sleeves, because I sewed them on SO GOOD and I loathe sewing on sleeves and now I have to do it again :(

Autumn Gathering is next weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. Spoh is back in town and we sweet talked my dad into making us a new rope bed, since we broke the last one at Championship last year. And by sweet talked, I mean bribed with mango sorbet and cider.

So I've got a few different things up my sleeve to work on, we shall see if I keep up the motivation.

Half way!

It's been almost exactly a year since I started, and I'm now half way through my embroidery!

Hopefully it won't take another whole year to get it finished. It's fairly tedious and I'm not enjoying it as much as I enjoyed embroidering my awesome bag. I think I'll be avoiding working on 40 count linen for a while. I'd like to start learning different styles of embroidery, and I'm planing on using the WCoB competitions as inspiration, whether or not I end up entering each competition.

In other news, I made a jewellery!

I got the idea from Ceara's star and lily necklace. I like the idea of wearing my awards, and the star and lily pendant is so pretty, but having it on a long braid is just annoying. I bought a string of amethyst beads at Festival for this project, because for some reason I thought the pendant was black and the purple beads caught my eye on market day. When I got them home I put them against the pendant and they really didn't go together, so I ended up buying the blue Swarovski beads when I went to the bead shop to buy findings. I already had the pearls in my bits and pieces box, not sure where they came from though. Also, I've learned just how much is involved in this bead jewellery making business, and I don't think I want to open that can of worms. I used tigertail wire and crimping bead dealies, and kinda failed to pull the loop through on the jump ring end, so there's a loop of tigertail almost the size of the jump ring. I think I managed to put this necklace together with the bare minimum of materials and skill whilst making sure it wasn't likely to break catastrophically. Anyway, I wore it at the Autumn Gathering camping event last weekend. I think it might be a little bit long, but I'm not sure it bothers me enough to do anything about it.

Speaking of Autumn Gathering, it was a totally awesome event! I was in charge of my first ever meal at an event. Luckily it was an easy one, just the soup kitchen on Friday night. I was so scared I was gonna burn the stews, and that I wouldn't have enough, or that I would have waaaay too much, but it turned out pretty much perfect. Sophie and I also put up our big period tent for the weekend. We worked out it hasn't been put up for about two and a half years. I'd forgotten how awesome it is to camp in a giant tent with furniture and stuff. It's well worth the huge amount of stuff to be carried and set up and packed down. We've got plans for improving it, so we've set aside time during May before the ski season starts up again to work on it. It needs to be waterproofed, which is pretty important. Saturday is going to be spent blacksmithing some metal bits to hang from the spokes that we can then hang things from, like garb and lanterns. Curtains are going to happen to divide the tent into sleeping area and really cool party gathering area. We'd like to do things like host parties and A&S classes in the tent. We also need to adjust the socks that the spokes slide into so that they actually sit in the right spot, at the moment they're too high.

Anyway, I had a really cruisy weekend. The event was really relaxed which was nice. I shot two archery shoots which was fun, had a couple of naps in our awesome tent, and generally had fun hanging out with people. I'm looking forward to next year's event!

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 :)

Slow Progress

My holidays have come to an end. I feel like I haven't done much at all. I flailed about Saxony gowns a lot and started a dress diary, and I did some of my embroidery.

Actually, I've pretty much doubled the amount of embroidery I did during last semester. I went out and bought some smaller needles. I ended up just going to Spotlight because I had other errands to run in the same area, and I would've had to have made a separate trip all the way out to the Stitcher's Corner. I'll be going to uni on Monday so I'll stop there on my way back because Spotlight only had Birch needles so I got some size 28 tapestry needles.

They all died horrible horrible deaths. Three of them bent and two of them broke. It was definitely easier to use the thinner needles, but the thinness also made them not very strong. The whole packet only cost me $2, so hopefully I'll be able to get some better quality needles of the same size at the Stitcher's Corner on Monday.

I'm not sure how this semester is going to go. I'm working on keeping my evenings free for relaxing so hopefully I'll be able to keep on truckin' along with my embroidery and hopefully start working on bits and pieces for my Saxony gown.

Saxony Gown Musings

I had my last exam yesterday! It should be the very last exam I ever do EVER, because next semester is about research projects and clinical placement, but I'm pretty sure I failed it and you have to pass the exam to pass the unit so I'll probably get an email about a supplementary exam at some point in the next couple of weeks. Whatever, at the moment I'm not thinking about that. Instead I'm thinking about my Saxony project! The one that I've been thinking about for years and even have fabric for but I just haven't gotten around to actually working on it. WELL I was just casually looking through the Cranach Digital Archive because I started de-cluttering my room last night. I'm at the point where I've just made a bigger mess and now I'm procrastinating cleaning it up. It's like something exploded, there's so much crap everywhere. Anyway, I was thinking recently that maybe I don't want to have one of those ridiculously wide neckline Saxony gowns, maybe I want one that has a cool high collar dealie. So I was paying particular attention to them when I found THIS:

The only picture I could find when I did a quick Google image search was the teeny one from the Cranach archive, so here it is, watermark and all. BUT LOOK at the design along the edge of the red fabric and around the collar. It looks an awful lot like the kind of designs that you see in Anna Neuper's Modelbuch. They're both from around the same time so that makes sense. But is there any way of knowing whether it was beaded onto the fabric of the dress, or woven as a band that was sewn to the dress? The corner of the collar is really smooth that would suggest beading, but the Cranach paintings are all very stylised, so we can't really say that there was no folded braid seam. Likewise, the bands on the sleeves could be tablet woven bands stitched to the fabric. I don't know very much about these gowns at all really, so I'll have to investigate further. I'd love to weave some trim though, I really enjoyed weaving my last Anna Neuper pattern, and I'd like to experiment with the Japan wire that people keep talking about on the Historical Tablet Weaving Facebook group.

ALSO THIS:

I WANNA MAKE A STUPIDLY EMBROIDERED CAUL. This one definitely looks like beads but I could probably make one using tablet woven bands that match the ones on the dress, like a fillet. Fillets are totally documentable, right? This one looks like there's words of some sort on the front band.

OH OH I could weave some bands and then put BEADS on the BANDS! Then it'll be all sorts of super awesome blingyness! This project is gonna take forever to put together.

In other news, my last day of clinical placement is on Thursday, and then I have three weeks off! Three WHOLE weeks! Except for the three PD events I'm going to, helping a guy with aphasia put together his presentation for a conference, and the meetings at uni about my research project. TOTALLY FREE! I've been chipping away at my embroidery too:

I've done SO MUCH. A whole half motif and a little bit more. There's almost a whole corner! I still need to get some smaller needles, which I might go do on Friday. I just haven't had the time to go to any shop that sells embroidery needles. There's so much to catch up on in the next three weeks!

Embroidery

Hi there. Has it really only been four weeks since I last posted? It feels like YEARS AND YEARS since Rowany Festival. In the last four weeks I had two weeks without any internet because something broke and our provider had to find the problem and then they discovered it was actually Telstra's problem so they had to ask Telstra to fix it. Then they fixed it and I left the day after to go to the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Melbourne which was TOTALLY AWESOME :D I got to watch lots of gross videos of cancer larynxes and people who couldn't swallow properly trying to swallow noodles and rice and totally failing. And TONGUE ULTRASOUND. But that's a whole other story and not related to medieval stuff at all.

May Crown happened somewhere in the last few weeks as well. I day tripped and had a really fun day catching up with lots of interstate visitors and getting waaay too excited about each and every bout in the tournament. There were way to many re-fights and a whole bunch of my favourite people were trying to eliminate each other which was all a little too much for me emotionally. Also Mistress Catherine was admitted to the Order of the Laurel! Yay! Elevations to the Order of the Laurel only happen once every ten years over on this side of the kingdom, so it was all very exciting.

At Festival Mistress Acacia inspired me to try double stitching my German Brick Stitch projects, so I've decided that I'm going to make a pouch all proper with the double stitch, and then get it graded for the Worshipful Company of Broiderers. This is how much I've done:

But wait, that looks an awful lot like the last embroidery project I started. That's because I abandoned the other one and I've started again with the double stitch technique, and with silk instead of cotton. I'm having a little trouble with it because I'm using the 40 count linen which really needs three strands for good coverage, but because I'm double stitching I only get a choice of two or four strands. I've picked four which looks fine, but when I'm filling in the centre of the motif it gets really difficult to push the needle through the holes with all the silk bulking them up already. I've found that sometimes when I push the needle through, the stitches that are already there get pushed forward as well and it looks a bit messy in places. I think I might need a different needle but I don't know anything at all about them. I just went to the shop to buy everything for my first project and picked out a random packet of Anchor cross stitch needles. The packet says they're size 24, but I have no idea what that means. If anyone has any tips I'd be very happy to hear them :)

That's about all that's happening in my SCA world at the moment. There's a few events coming up but I won't be going to them because of assignments and exams. I'll also just be sticking to my one embroidery project for the foreseeable future for the same reason. I'll just plod along with the embroidery during my down time, which is a little rare at the moment.

Rowany Festival Project Update

I finished my hood! It only took two weeks to complete the tablet woven edging. Next time I think tablet woven edging is a good idea someone needs to remind me that it is seriously tedious. I am really happy with the finished result though.

Yay hood with silly hook! Here's a closeup of the top seam when it's turned back:

Yay for dodgy colours. The edging is dark purple, but the pink has managed to invade it in this photo. This is the first time I've woven with wool, and I found it really easy to work with. It's stretchy so every time I untied the warp for untwisting it was really easy to just re-tension again and I didn't end up with any lumpy bits. The braid just sorted itself out all nice and stuff. It'll be interesting to see what happens with a flat band with multiple colours. I'll have to give it a go one day.

In other news, I have Cut Out and stitched together the lining of a new cotehardie from the gold linen I bought. I haven't had time to Cut Out the outer layer yet, but I'm hoping to be able to do that sometime in the next few days. I've made pretty good progress on my list for Rowany Festival, but now there's only six weeks left and I went back to uni classes today, so time is becoming more and more expensive. AND it's now March, which means half price sale at Homecraft Textiles! I need to go out and buy another spool of gold sewing thread because I've completely run out, so I might just go there and see what sort of brocade selection they have.

Things I have left on my Rowany Festival list:
1. Man-cotes: I need to re-fit my red wool man-cote over my new supportive shirt. This involves taking in some seams. I also need to make a new one out of blue linen.
2. Finish the gold cotehardie: Involves Cutting Out and sewing together the outer layer, sewing it to my lining, then making and attaching sleeves. And a new lacing cord.
3. Audit hose: I need to have a look at the state of my current collection, possibly say goodbye to some, possible repairs on others, and most likely making some new ones. I definitely need a new wool one to replace the one that shrank.
4. Not-green woolen surcote: I have some maroon wool that would do nicely for a warm surcote that is not green. This project has been classes as non-essential, but would be really nice to have for Festival.
5. New garters to wear with man-outfit: Also non essential but I'd really like fancy new garters to show off :P
6. Embroidered pouch: Remember my embroidery? The embroidery that had a run-in with the cat and I completely lost all enthusiasm for because it needs fixing now? Yeah. It would be nice to have a new pouch for Festival for night time tavern shenanigans, but I do have a suitable pouch so this is also a non-essential project.

THE END. Except my beautiful Pennsic fob watch has stopped and I am sad. I can't see how to get into it to change the battery, but cobblers tend to know seekrity seekrits like that so I might go ask one of them to fix it for me.

So once again my plans did not go according to plan. I went down south last weekend and had an awesome time fishing, but the rest of the time was spent very unproductively. On Saturday we went into town to run some errands and stopped at just one winery because we couldn't very well go down south and not visit a winery. That all took ages, and by the time we got back to the house it was time to get all the fishing stuff set up, and couldn't be bothered anything so I read some of my book. Then we went FISHING and it was all very exciting and I did catch TWO FISHES and we were out there until midnight. Sunday was a lazy day in which we took the puppy to the beach and watched her frolic in the water and then I got stuck in a hot nap. There was a bit of groggy happening. But I figured I'd dragged my sewing all the way down there, I better do some, so I stitched the front seam of my dress together. That's it. Buttons and buttonholes got done on Tuesday and Wednesday, and yesterday I fixed the sleeves. Then last night I unpicked the sleeves again, because the top of the sleeves have holes that are waaay too small. I don't remember the dress being tight around the armpits, I'd just assumed that the sleeves were fine except they cut in at my elbows. But when I tried the dress on the sleeves were stupidly tight around the armpits, which means I need to add some fabric into the sleeves to make the holes bigger. Stupid sleeves are stupid. Hopefully I'll get them done tonight, because the feast is tomorrow and I hate rushing to finish garb. Also I completely forgot that I was going to enter the A&S competition at the feast, so I haven't even looked at documentation. I suppose if everything else is done then I'll see if I can put some together tomorrow afternoon.

I also took my embroidery down south in case I felt like working on it. I didn't, so it stayed in its bag. When I got home I took it out, and found that it didn't survive the journey very well. It's as if something was catching on the threads and pulling at them. Sadfaaace. There's a good four or five spots that will need to be pulled out and redone, so all of a sudden I'm feeling less motivated to work on it. I foresee that it's gonna be put aside for a bit while I work on other stuff.

Well, what an exciting blog post. Hopefully I won't be invisible at this event, and I'll end up with some nice pictures of me in my fixed up dress that I can post here :)

The End of Holidays

My holiday is over. I've made some progress! On my embroidery that is.

I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. The only thing is that I'm making a rectangle so that when it's finished I'll fold it in half to make the pouch, with the fold being the bottom of the pouch, which means that the bottom of the embroidery will be one of the top edges, which means that the green motif will be upside down! If I'd been clever and realised this in advance, I would've stitched half of it upside down so that when I folded it both sides of the pouch would have motifs facing the same way. I guess I could still make it so the motifs all face the same way, and it probably doesn't matter that they'll be upside down because it's just me that's decided what the right way and the wrong way is. It might bother me though. These are the type of important things that I need to ponder when I should be doing other things, like prepping for clinical placement tomorrow.

Yep, my holidays are all gone and I've not done anything at all. I can't really bring myself to care all that much either. I'll probably start caring when I'm a fortnight out from Rowany Festival, completely overloaded with uni work and I suddenly decide that I just can't face going without three new cotehardies and hoods. As wardrobes go, I've got a pretty good one for a week at a camping event. I also know that what I have now fits into half a suitcase. Even though I have enough outfits in half a suitcase to wear something different every day, it doesn't fill a suitcase so clearly I am failing at SCA.

I did make a really big effort about a week and a half ago to work on my list. I pulled apart my green brocade surcote. Sleeves came off, buttons came off, the whole front seam was pulled apart and the hems along the front and around the neckline where unpicked. Then it got bundled up into a pile on the couch next to my black drill and my cotehardie pattern, all ready to start actually working on it. And there it remains. I'd actually like to wear it to the Midsummer Feast on the first of February, which is two weeks away, so I really should start working on it. I think about working on it nearly every day. If I'd done as much work as I'd thought about, I'd have three brocade surcotes all ready to wear. Also, it looks like the extra side panels I put in a while ago are staying, seeing as I snipped the top of the gores that I attached them to. I was going to pull them out because they don't really do much, but that would mean shortening the gores and I already learned that short gores are a bad idea. So they're staying. I'm not going to finish any of the seams though, because I'm putting a lining in they should be fine.

In other news, I did buy some linen this morning. I bought another lot of the Autumn Gold colour from fabric-store.com to remake my gold cotehardie. I love the colour and I never wear the one I currently have because I made it from an earlier pattern and it's just so uncomfortable. I spent quite a bit of time adjusting it and making new sleeves for it too, but I think I'm just going to have to write it off. It looks really good, but I never wear it because it's not worth the uncomfortable. I also end up with the points of my shoulders and the fronts of my armpits being really sore after I've worn it despite the fact that I've cut down the armholes multiple times. I have a bunch of cotehardies that have contributed to my learning process and helped me get to my current pattern and comfortable wardrobe, and I guess that's worth the time and effort it took to make them even though I'm never going to wear them again.

In other news, remember a few entries back I told you to stay tuned for Awesome Bag the Sequel: Awesome Box? I also bought a yard of a new linen that fabric-store.com has released. It's the same weight as the ILO19 that I've been using for my cotehardies, but it's a better quality and an even weave fabric. It's quite a bit more expensive per yard, so I thought I'd just buy a yard of it to use for embroidery and see what it's like. Anyway, the point is that it's not a square even weave, which is the kind of linen that the extant example my project will be based on has.

Hopefully the next time I post I will have actually done some stuff rather than just thinking about doing some stuff, which should be far more interesting to read about :)

Holidays Week 3

Happy new year! I had a fun week, beginning with my first taste of Absinthe (which didn't mess me up anywhere close to the amount I expected), funtimes at the dog beach, new years parties and movie days. I'm now over half way through my holidays, and nothing has been ticked off my SCA projects list. Sadface. I've finished the lacing holes on my supportive man-shirt, but now I'm feeling very uninspired to make and attach sleeves and finish the hem. Instead, I decided to begin something NEW because I wanted to play with my new embroidery frame. Note that embroidery was not on my list of things that need to be completed before Rowany Festival.

But I wanted to start a new embroidery! I think I'll make it into a pouch, with tablet woven edges. I really do need to get moving on my other projects though. I've just been feeling so lazy, and I have nothing to procrastinate, except my projects. There's only a week and a half until my stuttering orientation, and I have something like 11 articles to read before that, so maybe I'll get moving on my projects :P

In other news, I have a Google Plus account. I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work, but this blog is connected to it, and there's an option to email people in my circles when I post an entry. Some people have mentioned to me that they would like some sort of email notification when I update this blog, but the Blogger email gadget has some seriously negative comments about how it doesn't work. If you'd like an email notification, then let me know by posting a comment or something like that, and adding me on Google Plus.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a good holiday! I've been having quite a cruisy time just lazing about, eating and going to the beach. I got a pretty good Christmas haul this year too. Things that will appear in this blog at some point in the future include a yarn swift and a big wooden embroidery frame. Actually, it's a 40cm tapestry frame. The fancy embroidery frames that were adjustable were way expensive so I ended up with this one. But that's ok, I'm quite happy to work with it :)

My man-shirt is coming along slowly, I've not worked on it until I picked it up to start the lacing holes last night. This break in the project was brought to you by the New Year's Eve costume party theme!

The theme this year is Circus! I went to Spotlight and bought a proper commercial pattern and made a tail coat! I'm going as a ringmaster, and I still need to make a little black vest and work out what sort of pants I'm gonna wear. I'm thinking tights of some sort and a pair of shorts or a skirt, since it's gonna be fairly warm and I'm already wearing a coat. Commercial patterns are difficult and the instructions are confusing. I'm quite happy to stick with making my own calico patterns from now on :) Also I apologise once again for the awful photo. I think the blur is my dirty mirror, not my camera being crap.

I wrote a list of things I want to get done before Rowany Festival, but I'm running out of time! Once the silly season is over I'll only have a couple of solid weeks before Clinical Placement begins. I'm hoping to get everything at least started, so that I won't have to sit down and do anything big like Cutting Out, I'll just be able to pick up projects and sit in front of the tv for a bit, or bring them along with me wherever I'm going.

Needle Case

I'm on holidays! Clinical year is finally finished, meaning I am now officially half way through my degree! It's all very exciting. My Nigel car got his annual bath yesterday, and I even got the vacuum out. I was going to polish him today, but I've been procrastinating because it's hot outside. I know because I pre-washed that hideous pink wool, went outside to hang it up, came back inside for a cold glass of water, then went back outside to bring the wool back in because it was dry. Then I parked myself under the airconditioner and made THIS:

I finished it! I decided to try the braiding around the edges rather than tablet weaving, and I don't think I'll every do it again. It was annoying. Even more annoying was the supposedly awesome online tutorial that Duenna Catalina recommended. I think I'm just really bad at understanding tutorials, because I've come across a few lately that I read, think they're really confusing and missing vital bits of information, then I get to the comments at the bottom which are countless people gushing about how well explained the process was and how awesome the person that wrote it is. Clearly either everyone else is wrong or I have some deficit which makes online tutorials confusing. Tutorial dyslexia or something. Anyway, after a few false starts and throwing the whole thing across the room, I managed to figure it out. What I'm not happy with is that even though I finished the seams of the linen so that there was no extra past the embroidery, there ended up being a gap between the braid and the embroidery where you can see the linen. I managed to mostly get the braid to sit on the front as close as I could get it to the embroidery, but it's not very wide so it doesn't cover much. I ended up finding a whole bunch of that green oopsie wool left over, so I lined it in that.

Before I attached it together I threaded a strip of the wool through a couple of holes that I pushed through the fabric with my awl to hold the scissors. The top flops around a bit, but they don't fall out which is awesome. I also messily attached some wool ties as well, not sure if they're going to stay or if I'll make some nice braid to replace them. The lining is smaller than the outside because I wanted it to sit nicely when the whole thing was closed instead of bunching up, so it doesn't open flat.

There we go. One project completed. Tonight I'm going out for drinks with the girls from uni to celebrate the end of our first year, so I think I'll have a nap now :)

Embroidery

I did just finish my embroidery! Yaaay!

It is a massive 12cm by 11.5cm. It took four months, but that's because there were times when I didn't touch it for a few weeks, and when I did I'd just do one length of thread and put it away again. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and now I just need to turn it into a needle case. On the weekend I might have a look through my fabric to find something suitable for lining. I'm thinking wool since it might be more durable while it's being repeatedly stabbed with needles. I might even use my hideous pink stuff :P I also think I'll finish the edges with that braided technique rather than tablet weaving. I like the idea of the herringbone pattern, which I can get with tablet weaving but things I've seen with braiding have been nice and neat. I want tassels though, so I may have to rethink this plan.

Speaking of finishing things, I have exactly three more days until I finish clinical placement. Yay! Then all I have to do is hand in my final assignment and I'm done for the year! I'm very excited.

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 :)

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.

Study week

It's study week. Guess how much study I've gotten done.

THIS MUCH! Nearly half way through my embroidery now. Clearly I've been procrastinating and have done minimal study, which is a bit sad. I've also watched season 2 of Smash and I'm half way through season 1 of Star Trek TNG. But back to my embroidery, I came across something a bit puzzling. I've been following the pattern on Mitchell Wymarc's page

The pattern has two different motifs. The blue strip and the dark brown strip have one, and the light brown strip has another one. So I alternated my motifs too, my purple strip has the different one (which is actually really annoying to stitch). A while ago I noticed that the stitching example only has one type of motif. THEN when I went to add a fourth strip up the top because I needed my needle case to be a bit taller, I realised that the pattern has dark brown, light brown, blue... LIGHT BROWN. That would mean my fourth strip should be purple, and every second strip should be purple. The stitching example has the three colours alternating, which I like better, so I decided to alternate the colours, but also alternate the motifs. So that's why the top blue strip has the annoying motif instead of the same one as the first blue strip.

Also I had an idea for some fittings I bought at Pennsic

I had an idea before I left for a belt using my leftover black spun silk and green reeled silk. I'll use the 14 tablet threaded in pattern of leaves that I used for my garters on either side of a black stripe. When I move back home I'll have a look at the fittings and decide how wide the belt bit needs to be, which will help me decide whether to do some twist patterning in the black middle section. I think the leaf pattern will look good with the flower leafy brass fittings, even if it completely not period :)

And that has been my very exciting study week as a crazy cat lady, looking after Miss Wendy's cats and spending most of my time in my onesie doing embroidery.

Just Quickly...

I know I blogged last night, but then afterwards I got out my embroidery stuff and made little samples of both of the patterns I wanna try.

All I had was leftover DMC embroidery floss from my awesome bag, and 28 thread count evenweave. The top one is most of the top left edge of the motif, and the bottom one is one whole motif of the other pattern. Clearly the bottom one is tiny and will go better on the smaller needle case. The top pattern is quite large, even when it'll be on 44 count. I still don't know which one I want to do first. My other problem is smuggling a needle and scissors onto the plane. I'm pretty sure the Stitcher's Corner sells those tiny plastic scissors with the rounded point that are supposedly allowed on planes, but Tex has said that she's had them taken off her before. Maybe I'll also get one of those round cutter pendant dealies that you can hang around your neck. I've got three embroidery needles and I think I'll stick them in three different places in my bag. I've heard that you can stick one in your clothing and the scanner thingy won't pick it up.

Anyway, enough about embroidery. Today I need to Cut Out Mister Nathan's chausses and go visit my Gran in the hospital. And maybe while I'm out I'll go to the Stitcher's Corner too :P

Three More Sleeps!

Only three sleeps to go! I have now finished all my VIPT, but I'm not going to have time to make a man-cote. I have two whole days, then Wednesday is packing day, which would be a bit of a stretch to get a man-cote and supportive undergarment completely finished. It would involve forty buttonholes, and that's because I only have twenty buttons to go down the front, which really isn't enough. So I'll get some awesome buttons at Pennsic and make it when I get back. I also have another VIPT to get finished. I made a deal with Mister Nathan. I'm gonna make him a pair of chausses and he is going to make me an awesome belt buckle and tip for my plain belt. I am armed with his pattern, some drill, some wadding and some blankety stuff, and I'm gonna try my hand at quilting for the first time!

On Saturday I finished my oopsie surcote. I took an awful picture and did some things to it to try and make it less awful, but it's still awful and the colour is not right. But I'll post it anyway for illustrative purposes.

It looks less awful when it's small, so here's a small picture of me wearing the surcote. Yay! I'm quite pleased with how it came out, it is so much better than my last wool one. I lined the sleeves and tippets with some royal purple silky satiny stuff, and I think they look pretty awesome :)

I had planned to knock out the sleeves on Saturday morning, then spend the rest of the day Cutting Out Nathan's chausses and my man-cote, but my Gran went to hospital on Friday night so I spent most of the day fretting talking to various family members. Saturday night was when I decided I need to take the pressure off myself for these last few days. I'd also like to go to the Stitcher's Corner and get some materials for embroidery. I'm itching to do some more. I reallyreally wanna make this pattern:

It looks so pretty! I was thinking about making a needle case, but there are four different motifs in this pattern and they're quite large, so I probably won't end up finishing more than one whole motif. I really like the pattern so I'd prefer to be able to use the whole thing, so I was thinking of making another pouch, this one can be normal sized. I might even look at doing another tablet woven edge, AND weave a little narrow hanging strap. But I'd still really like a cool needle case, so I might use this pattern:

The colours are pretty awful, so I'll definitely be changing them to something brighter and less brown. I really like how there are motifs that are the same colour as the background, it's just the longer stitches that make them stand out. Wymarc recommends 72 count evenweave for this pattern, and 44 count for the other, but I think I'll use 44 count for both of them. Both of these pattern are a little different to what I've done before. The first is a bunch of little squares making up the motifs, the second doesn't have tesselating motifs. There's motifs but there's a whole bunch of plain background around them, which could be a little boring to stitch.

I'm starting to get REALLY REALLY EXCITED. I went shopping the other day for things like undies and socks and little bottles of shampoo. I bought myself a new reasonably sized toiletries bag, and I've decided that if it doesn't fit in the bag, it's not coming with me. I'm sick of carting around a massive toiletries bag. I always pack my suitcase, then have to squeeze in this giant weirdly shaped bag. No more! Anyway, apart from the actual packing part, I'm pretty much ready for this trip!

Update

Good morning! Only nine more sleeps to go until we leave for the US! I found my sense of urgency last week and my productivity exploded over the weekend. On Friday after finishing my hose and awesome bag, I cut out my oopsie wool. Then I remembered that it will need lining, so I cut that out of some leftover white linen, AND I even sewed most of it up. I was handsewing in front of the tv, and I was all set to get it completely finished except that I started doing silly things like sewing panels on backwards and stuff, and it was after midnight so I decided to go to bed. After five hours sleep it was time to get up and go to the collegia! There was classes in one room all day, and the other room was for general arts and sciences. I spent my day in the other room, and completely warped my loom. Then I finished off my lining. I even got to see one class, because one session had two classes running concurrently, so my room was invaded by a class about veils, which was pretty interesting.

I spent my Saturday evening at Nathan and Catherine's house sewing up my oopsie wool. I got all the panels sewn up and finished. I used a sewing machine to sew the seams, then hand finished them, which is so much faster than handsewing everything. Once again I fell into bed after midnight and got up stupid early to go back to the collegia. I didn't get as much done on Sunday because I had to take time out to teach my tablet weaving class. It went well, there were quite a lot of people there and most of them seemed really interested. I was quite pleased with how it went anyway.

By about 3pm my sense of urgency had evaporated and turned into tired. I'd managed to get the lining hand sewn into the dress (had to do it twice, because I put it together inside out the first time, epic faaail) and I've finished the hems on the front two panels, ready to be joined. I'm housesitting again, I (hopefully) packed up all the things I need for my projects and moved in last night. Today I'm not aiming for anything ambitious, I have some errands to run and then I'll probably just sit on the couch and do some weaving. At some point this week I need to put on a cotehardie, because this time I intend to make sure the surcote fits before I go any further, because I don't have time to fix it after it's finished. It looks quite small to me, which could be a good thing since my last one ended up being gigantic. I added three inches to the pattern, which should hopefully be enough that it's still fitted but loose enough to hang smoothly over the supportive cotehardie.

ALSO I think I might be a little crazy, but I'm itching to start another embroidery. I've been idly looking at more German Brick Stitch patterns, and I've picked a couple I like from the Wymarc web page, but I've also found that there are MOAR patterns and I like them all. I've been pondering it for a couple of days, and my problem was that I don't have anything to make out of them. I don't want to just start an embroidery project without an idea of how I'm going to use it, but I had some ideas last night. I've got this vague idea of making a needle case with a little pocket in it for things like thread and a small pair of scissors. In my head it's a stiff case, but right now I'm not sure how to achieve that. I suppose I could line it in buckram or something like the girls do with their tudor bodices. Another vague idea I had was to make my basket a little cover. At the moment I've been using a piece of leftover white linen and tucking it around whatever's in the basket. This has two purposes, to hide mundane looking things like my water bottle, and to hide things that might be stolen like my phone and purse. That's another really big project though, and I want to move to 44 count evenweave. Another thing I saw on the internet was an extant box that was made out of wood and covered in embroidery. I immediately thought I'd like to reconstruct it, but the person who'd redacted it wrote that the embroidery was done on some weird fabric that had a thick weft and a really thin warp, so it was 44 count one way and 27 count the other way. I'd use normal evenweave, but that would mean the pattern will end up a different size, so I'd have to really think about how I would go about it. Another idea is to make a cushion. That would be cool but I'm not sure I'd actually use it :P.

Anyway, now I'm thinking that the problem with long flights is that I get bored. There's sleeping to do, but I can't sleep for 30 hours straight. I'll watch some movies on the entertainment system, but I still get bored doing that. Then I realised that it's not very often that I just sit still and watch tv or movies at home, I'm usually doing something like sewing or weaving at the same time. So maybe what I need to keep me entertained is some embroidery to do while I watch movies on the plane! This is a brilliant plan except that it requires me taking the time to plan a project, then go out to the Stitcher's Corner to buy the things and spend ages talking to the lady there because she's really nice and remembers me and my projects. The point is that I might not have the time. I think I'll keep pondering and see what happens. Only nine more sleeps!

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!