Plodding Along

I don't like the new blogger interface. I. Don't. Like it *huff* Why does google feel the need to fix things that aren't broken? Hopefully I'll get used to it soon, like all the other changes to various things :P

Anyway, I just handed in the last assignment of the four I had in due the two weeks after festival, and I've caught up on all the lectures and stuff I missed in the couple of weeks before festival :P I've also been plodding along with SCA related stuff. In my last post I made a list of things I wanted to do for the Anealan 25th birthday camping weekend, which starts tomorrow. Number one was fix my shoes. I only had to fix one shoe actually, since there was only one hole. Thank goodness.

Here's a picture that Lady Celestria sneakily took while I wasn't looking. I fixed my shoe at the pas d'arms tourney I went to on Sunday. As Mister Nathan commented on facebook, the caption should read "stitch, whaa, stitch, whaa" because that's what I was doing. There was a lot of whining, and I don't apologise, because leatherwork is a tedious bitch and I don't like it *huff*

As a side note, notice the garb I'm wearing? Yes indeed, that is my gold cote under my parti-coloured surcote. I managed to fix one of the sleeves before festival, but I never ended up wearing it at festival. Lemme tell you, that cote is so much more comfortable now that only one sleeve pinches a bit. Now I just gotta fix the other one and it'll be all good! I also took the tippets off the surcote during the Anealan council meeting on Friday night, made them bigger, and reattached them, so now they actually fit around my arm instead of being too tight :) I do need to do a bit more work on that dress though, the opening at the front under the buttons needs some reinforcing, and I have no idea what I did wrong, but my stitching around all the buttonholes is coming undone too. How annoying.

Ok, number two on the list was to make new man-hose. I did that on Saturday. I had a very productive day in which I finished researching for my presentation on Monday, then cut out and machine sewed up a pair of man-hose, all before noon! Then I went to the Taylor's open-house day and finished all the seams and stuff. All that's left to do is a couple of lacing holes on each one so I can tie them to my belt...

Which was number three on the list! So. Belt. I've done this much:

That's about a foot of weaving there. I may be really skinny, but there's no way that's gonna fit around my hips. You can see I've been playing with changing the threading direction and stuff. I just wanted to see what would happen and how the band behaves. Now my cards are all jumbled up instead of all sitting neatly together with the A hole at the top. My slight obsessive compulsiveness is quite bothered by this :P I've also been a bit uninspired with this one, especially since the forecast is for relatively warm weather on the weekend, so I probably won't end up wearing my man-cote anyway. I toyed with the idea of whacking up a linen one out of whatever spare linen I could find lying around, but that idea only lasted about two minutes before I realised that I only had about four hours in total to finish the entire thing.

I might get my embroidery out to work on over the weekend. It's been rather neglected since uni started and I had festival projects to do. The next couple of weeks are pretty quiet assessment-wise, so I should have time to start another project, and do some mending of old things. This should mean more blog posts! Then more assessments will happen, then exams, then holidays! I have big plans for the holidays, plans which include dying more fabric and making wool cotehardies, and finally starting the patterning process for epic German gown of epicness :)

Good Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stupidity

A year ago I suddenly decided that I desperately needed period turnshoes for Rowany Festival. With something stupid like three weeks until Festival, my only option was to make them myself. I thought this was a good option since it would get me shoes on time, and it is significantly cheaper to buy the leather than to buy already made shoes. So I spent two entire weekends with Mister Nathan, who walked me through the entire process and listened to my constant whining because it turns out that making shoes is a tedious and painful business. My poor hands were sore for weeks afterwards. But I ended up with my very own pair of 14th century turnshoes which I had completely made from scratch.

The only problem was that the soles were too thin. I plastered a ridiculous amount of scotch guard and dubbin on them, but the damp just leaked straight through. With two weeks to go until Rowany Festival again, and with my man-cote outfit planned and the underwear almost finished, there's no way I can wear my gumboots. Gumboots under a skirt is one thing, or with a crappy viking tunic worn over a jumper and leggings, but not with hose and brais and a nice wool cote. But seeing as it's so wet in NSW at the moment, even more than usual, my thin little soles don't stand a chance. So I decided to take my shoes to a shoe repair place and get them to nail on a nice new thick sole.

I dropped them off today before work, and after work I picked them up. My medieval turnshoes now have rubber soles on them. Rubber. On my MEDIEVAL shoes. RUBBER. [Insert obscenities here]. I am completely aware that it is my own extreme stupidity that let this happen, because somehow I neglected to mention that I wanted leather soles on my medieval shoes. The thought didn't even cross my mind that they would use something other than leather. So I just paid for my rubber soles and headed straight for my car, where my stupidity started sinking in. I bawled my eyes out the whole way home, because all my hours of hard work have been wasted, because my medieval shoes now have rubber soles. I just want to bury them in the bottom of my closet and forget that they ever existed, but that will have to wait until after Festival. My feet may have a chance at staying dry this Festival, but I would much rather they got soaked.

I might just curl up in the corner and wallow in self misery for the rest of the evening.