Holidays: Week 1

I've been on holidays for a week now. I have commandeered the couch and turned it into my own personal sewing nook, set up my laptop on the coffee table for Start Trek TNG and I am making progress! Also I think I've eaten an entire watermelon over the course of the week :P

Here is the fruit of my labours. I haven't exactly been working hard, just trundling along around my compulsory naptimes and various errands. What you see here is the makings of a supportive shirt for my man-cote. What's that you say? It looks a lot like the top part of one of my cotehardies? Well that's because it is :P. I cut it out on Monday night from my cotehardie pattern and since then I've hand sewn it together. I'm currently up to lacing holes, which has interrupted my momentum because I DUN WANNA. When I eventually get over my reluctance and get them done, all that will be left is to make and attach sleeves, and sew up the hem. I won't do my normal hinge sleeve with buttons because it's mostly going to be worn underneath hinge sleeves with buttons, and two layers of buttons would be a bit awkward. I'll probably make the sleeves as one piece each.

In the meantime while I'm procrastinating making lacing holes, I've been working on a TOP SEEKRITY SEEKRIT Christmas present for Mister Nathan. And by TOP SEEKRITY SEEKRIT I mean I'm making him some lucet cords to hold up his hose, and he knows all about them because I told him that's what I'm making and he's been providing me with preferences and specifications :P I'm still not gonna post pictures of them until after Christmas, because he really should see the finished product first.

In other news, you know how I said I'm not allowed to make any more green garb because everything I have is green? I'M MAKING A GREEN HOOD! My green oopsie wool goes really well with the hideous pink really well, and I have enough leftover for a hood. I still haven't decided which colour will be the lining and which will be the outside, but I can leave that decision until I've cut out the pieces. I'll pin them together and wear it both ways to decide which is best. I went to Joondalup Spotlight the other day and they had a whole bunch of different colours of the same wool for $20 per metre. I refrained from buying it and I hope you're proud of me. There was yellow and blue and bright green and booger green and a greyish colour and I really wanted it but I can't afford it all when I don't have a project for it :( What I did buy was a couple of balls of dark purple wool, for the tablet woven edges of my hood. I've never woven with wool before, so I guess we'll see how that goes.

Also ruminating over a new project, titled Awesome Bag the Sequel: Awesome Box. Stay tuned for more details.

Funny Story

So, a funny thing happened yesterday. On Sunday I ran out of weft for my weaving about 40cm before the end of the bag, so I decided I would see if Spotlight had anything. They do sell size 8 DMC cotton after all, and if they didn't have the right purple then maybe they'd have one close enough. Yesterday morning I woke up to find an email about a 30% off sale they were having, which was funny since I was going there already. When I got there I found they had the exact right thread! Yay! Then I made an oops.

You can tell it's an expensive oops because the cat likes it even more than my linen. I may have accidently bought 5 metres of wool flannel suiting. It was originally $39.99 per metre, but after the 30% off and the $40 voucher I got given as my going away gift, it only cost me $100! I couldn't resist, it's so pretty! It's quite a bit greener than in the picture, and maybe I might be pondering giving up on the idea of fixing one of my already existing surcotes for Pennsic, and just make a whole new one out of this fabric! It goes with my underdresses, and it's significantly lighter than the wool I made the blue one out of. Hmmm. I also have some really nice deep purple miscellaneous satiny silky stuff that  could use to line the tippets and bind the edges.

In other news, Mister Nathan fixed my shuttlebeater! Yaaay! I still feel a bit guilty, but I've been very careful using it and it hasn't broken again. My weaving is not as tight as it was, so the motif has stretched out an extra centimetre in length. I'm not very happy with that but I can't seem to beat it as tight when I'm making sure not to pull on the edges of the beater. Oh well. I'm a little sick of the motif but I've only got about 25cm left to do before I'm finished! I'll finish that today. I've also been procrastinating Cutting Out my hose and chemises. I washed my chemise linen on Friday and then it stayed on the line for the whole weekend because I was busy doing other things, like looking at visa stuff for the US and researching money things for storing my US monies. Hopefully today will be productive and I'll get the hose and chemises mostly out of the way so I can start working on more ambitious projects like my plain belt and this new surcote :)

THOUGHTS

You guys! I finished ALL the lacing holes last night, and I put the cote on this morning AND THEN I HAD A THOUGHT! It's a thought that gives me OPTIONS and now I need to make a CHOICE and it's all so agonising D:

Anyway, here's me in the cote

Yay it fits all good and boobies and stuff :D So the thought that I had was about sleeves. What if I DIDN'T MAKE SLEEVES??? What if I just sew up the armscye and wear it with my chemise just like that? It will be cool and not making sleeves will be awesome because I hate making sleeves. Also I won't need to worry about buttons. But I DUNNO maybe this one should have sleeves and be a proper cotehardie because it's my favourite colour and maybe I want to wear it on not so hot days too. Maybe the green one can be sleeveless. As far as sleeveless being period goes, lookit this picture:

This is from something called the Birth of John The Baptists Turin-Milano prayer book from the early fifteenth century. Apparently there's a few fifteenth century examples of sleeveless kirtles that could still be made of long panels like a cotehardie, without a waist seam. I'm looking specifically at the lady in green at the foot of the bed. I've seen a lot of pictures of fifteenth century kirtles with a seperate skirt and bodice and a round neck and short sleeves that go about halfway to the elbow. This one definitely has no sleeves at all, and a short sleeved chemise underneath, or a chemise with the sleeves pushed up.

Anyway, now I have thoughts and I need to ponder them and make DECISIONS and stuff, which I'm not very good at. I have until I fix up the hem to decide what I'm doing, because sleeves are the next step. I have found some decent looking buttons on ebay that will cost me under $10 for a set of 20, and a mixed set of 30 small and 20 big that will also cost under $10. I think I'll buy both lots because they're cheap and versatile and I need buttons whether or not this particular cote has sleeves or not. I also found 18 more stag buttons which was very exciting, I'll have to put them on something too :)

Brilliant Plan!

I have a brilliant plan! It's not at all ambitious and stupid. I've been thinking about Pennsic and how my pilgrim bag is probably too small to carry around all the things I will need to carry around with me and all the things I'll be buying. It was too small even before it shrunk in the wash. I've been thinking how I really like my little pilgrim bag, and I don't wanna make a bigger one and put all my pilgrims on it because that will be like replacing my little one. But I can't have a pilgrim bag without pilgrims. So what if I make a different sort of bag? An awesome giant bag of awesome! I WANT TO MAKE THIS:

Yay a giant german brick stitch bag! I'm not gonna worry about a drawstring or anything, I'll just leave it open at the top, but I'll weave a strap for it. I'm sure I could try out a 3/1 broken twill and design a pattern that matches the bag. At the moment I'm thinking I'll just embroider the front of the bag and use some plain dyed linen or something for the back, because it's going to be giant and embroidering the whole thing is just stupid. I think I'll use cotton, because I'll need a lot of it and silk is expensive. Besides, The Stitchers' Corner only ever has a couple of packets of each colour, and I hate having to drive over there to get more of something. I'd rather only do it once. I'll have to go to get some evenweave linen, unless Spotlight happens to have some. I think I'll use 28 count because that worked for my little pouch and if I go any smaller I'll kill myself before I get very far with the embroidery.

But the most important thing to think about here is colours! What colours should I use? Mitchell Wymarc says red, purple, dark gold, gold and white. I'll leave the white how it is, and I like the purple bits around the white. I might change the dark gold to green around the other white bits. I like the red squigglies, but not sure about gold around them. I kind of like orange, but not sure if I like the idea of red next to orange. Maybe I could find a light orangey sort of gold. There's tons of DMC colours so it's not like I'll be stuck on options.

I was toying with the idea of tablet weaving the edges and having it extend out to the strap instead of splitting and going along the top, but I don't want a skinny strap digging into my shoulder, so the edges would be really chunky. Then I was thinking about having the flat band go along the edges so I'd have sort of a walled bag rather than a large pouch, which would mean more space! But then it would be even more open at the top which I'm not sure that I want. But I can think about all that once the embroidery is done. I think I might buy some embroidery floss after work on Monday, and hopefully Spotlight will also have linen evenweave. Then I can start working on it on Christmas night when I'm vegging in front of the TV.

Holidays!

I'm on holidays! I've written a list of THINGS and hopefully most of them will get done or at least started in the next five weeks before uni goes back.

NUMBER ONE
I need to make new sleeves for my man-cote. I finished the rest of it in time for Pencampwr, but my essay got in the way of making new sleeves. I ended up getting to site on the second day of the event with the sleeves from my first attempt and a sleeveless and hemless cote. I parked myself in the BBT with the Baroness and some ladies and finished the hem and attached the sleeves. The next day I wore it! Here's a picture:

I was really tired in the afternoon so I had a nap with a dinosaur in front of the thrones. This is the only picture if me wearing my man-cote :(. It is so much more comfortable than the first one, even though the sleeves were still a bit tight. It's really good for shooting in, I didn't get all tangled up in my skirts traipsing up and down the range to fetch my arrows. The brais take a bit of getting used to though. Last time I wore them I established that my hose were tugging on my belt as I walked because I had the brais up too high at the back, but this time I wore them a bit lower and tried not to worry about the feeling that they were falling off, because they weren't. I also wore normal undies underneath, which poked out the top by a lot because I'm just not comfortable wearing only baggy white linen brais that sit really low on the hips. They didn't ever come close to slipping or falling down, so maybe with some more wear I'll start to trust them more :P My new belt works good! Anyway, I need new sleeves, and I want them by next weekend because I think I might wear this cote to shoot in the Vallon d'Or IKAC before their feast. Although I think I want to wear a dress to the feast, so this probably means bringing another outfit and changing for the feast.

NUMBER TWO
I posted last time about my plans for the green brocade surcote. I think this is the dress I'd like to wear to the Vallon d'Or feast, which means getting it fixed before then :P I need to see if I can match the buttons to replace the ones I lost, or look at buying a whole new set of buttons, which is annoying. There's 20 on that dress, which makes it a bit expensive.

NUMBER THREE
I still need to re-sew the buttonholes on my parti-coloured surcote. Stupid buttonholes.

NUMBER FOUR
I need to fix my red twelve-panel-cote. I figured out last time I wore it that it flares out too suddenly, so it's just a matter of pulling in the side seams a little bit to make the flare more gradual.

NUMBER FIVE
I made the red twelve-panel-cote as part of an outfit, even though it's also designed to be worn by itself as lighter day wear, I originally wanted it to wear underneath a blue wool surcote. I have wool. I have blue dye. Those things need to be combined to create blue wool. HOWEVER whilst the original idea was for blue wool, I LOVE LOVE this teal blue colour wool. So I have two packets of brilliant blue iDye, which dyes 2.3kg of fabric. I have no idea what my fabric weighs, but I've got six metres. I dyed four metres of the same wool with one packet of green, and the colour came out quite nicely. But I'm thinking that maybe I could throw in one packet of green with the two packets of blue to attempt a teal colour. I dunno, it could come out more of an aqua than a teal. I'm not sure whether to risk it or just go with blue and buy some of the teal stuff at a later date and make something else.

NUMBER SIX
I've sort of already started this one. I want to weave a new belt properly with silk and make a fancy buckle and document it to enter it into the November Crown A&S competition. I've finally started reading Ecclesiastical Pomp, my first chance since I bought it in March, and so far I think I would like the ground weave to be purple and green stripes along the belt. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to tackle some sort of twill weave, or just go for the much simpler alternate S and Z threaded option. I am pondering the idea of metallic thread for the brocading, and if I do that I really should do it properly and use the real stuff. I haven't come up with a design yet, I could make it heraldic, since I'm going for my heraldic colours as the ground weave, or I could recreate some extant design. We shall see what ideas Ecclesiastical Pomp gives me. I think I'll probably end up doing the actual weaving once semester starts, since I'm looking at buying the silk from Treenway Silks, and they take 3-4 weeks to dye it. But I should be able to at least design it and start my documentation over the holidays.

NUMBER SEVEN

This was supposed to be my big project for these holidays, but I forgot about it :( I still want to make it though! I have the fabric and everything! It's something that I definitely want to take my time over and get it right, so I don't have a specific occasion in mind for it. These holidays I want to start patterning the bodice. I have some ideas of how to make it look right, but there's going to be a lot of trial and error going on with calico before I start making it in the proper fabric.

OPTIONAL NUMBER EIGHT
And finally, I also have some white fabric-store.com linen sitting in it's postal box under my bed. I've had it since last year and haven't touched it, but I intend to eventually make a white cotehardie to wear under the green brocade dress. This should be a relatively simple project since I already have the pattern (the one for 8 panels, not 12 :P) and I just need to cut it out and sew it up. If I have the time and inspiration these holidays, I'll make a start on it.

This may seem like a lot of stuff, but a lot of it is just adjusting and fixing up garb that I already have. I think this list is definitely achievable for the next five weeks :)

May Fail

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Things!

UPDATES ON THINGS:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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