*Hysterical Laughter*

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

SUCCESS! I finally figured out the stupid pattern with the stupid threading and the stupid twining direction. It only took me two months to get to this point, with another seven metres worth of warp ahead of me. I'd just about given up on it and was just ignoring my loom sitting in the corner gathering dust because I didn't really want to waste that much silk warp, but someone else on the internet had the same problem as I did and I just kept an eye on the thread until the right bit of information popped up that inspired me to try something different. In this case it was a threading diagram that was different to all the others. Each pair of tabletsacts as one, with the same threading direction and all four holes threaded between them. So tablet 1 is threaded A and C, tablet 2 is threaded B and D. THEN HERE'S THE CRUCIAL BIT! THE NEXT PAIR IS THE OPPOSITE! So tablet 3 is threaded B and D, and tablet 4 is threaded A and C. None of the other threading diagrams I saw were laid out this way. Anyway, here's the entirety of the last two month's tears and tantrums:




I figured out the threading thing, but the pattern didn't come out (also I lost track of some tablets so the end of the motif is a complete mess), so I flipped all the tablets and realised the pattern was coming out wrong AGAIN and I needed to flip all of the tablets back, so I did that again but swapped which tablets had the threads at the top and then it finally worked. Also I've gone back to my usual double face two pack method, but I've stacked some books underneath my packs to support them so they don't flip onto the diagonal. It's still really easy for cards to turn without me realising, no matter how careful I am but I'm so familiar with how they're all threaded now that I can fix it. I still refuse to do any unweaving though, so any mistakes are staying. The band is exactly 18mm wide, which is too narrow, but it's unlikely I'll get it finished before the end of the reign. I might just gift it to Their Majesties when it's done. and they can do whatever they want with it.

Anyway, I'm off to Anealan Championship tomorrow where I'm going to have a nice relaxing weekend with naps and drinks around the fire and lots of yummy foods. The weaving is not coming with me because I'm not moving it from my kitchen table. This is not a transportable pattern.

Bits and Pieces

The last two weeks have been pretty hectic, so I'm going to make a list with numbers.

1. I finished my weaving!

I'm pretty damn pleased with it. I ended up with a scarf about 1.8m long. The only bad thing is that it's really itchy! I haven't washed it yet though, so I might get some fabric softener or something and see how it goes with that.

2. I started some tablet weaving!

That's a really bad photo, but you get the idea. It's Anna Neuper's Pattern No. 11 with 41 tablets, plus 4 selvedge tablets. It's doubleface and is going to decorate a cushion in our tent. Our tent is going to be totally awesome at Championship! I'm really looking forward to it.

I started warping up my loom last weekend. My Ashford warping board had arrived so I used that. I warped up 34 tablets before my balls ran out, then I had a problem. I only had three balls of each colour, and I'd used up two of each, so I only had one ball of each colour left and you need two for continuous warp. Laaame. Anyway, I transfered what I had to my loom, and in the process I dropped my cards from a height of about 1cm. It was a complete disaster. I may as well have thrown them across the room, that's how much untangling of string I had to do. I also used my warping board to wind the remaining lengths of string, which I then threaded manually and it took me ages.

Anyway, I've now woven about 90cm, with 70cm left to go. I should finish it this week and then I'm going to enter it into the open A&S at Midwinter.

3. Midwinter Feast! I've been organising it. We have a hall, an awesome team and enough bookings to make a profit. Woohoo! The Taylors are running the kitchen, and last weekend we went to their place for a mini-feast rehearsal type thing. It was pretty awesome. We're serving all the old favourites like bunny stew and venison, and basing almost everything on period recipes which has kind of been missing from the feasts I've been to over the last couple of years. Except for the Middle Eastern themed feasts, but I've been missing the Western European food!

4. Moving house. I moved down to Katanning on Wednesday because I start a new job on Monday. For those of you who have no idea where Katanning is, it's 2-3 hours away from everything cool in the south of WA, like Albany, the southwest wine region and Perth. So it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Also it's really cold. But I has a job and I'm living in the Allied Health share house for seriously cheaps. There's also room for my loom! There's a big puzzle table on wheels in the front room with a half done puzzle on it which has apparently been there since forever and no one knows who it belongs to. So the puzzle is going to go back in its box and my loom is moving in! I think I might need to find a stool of some sort though. I shall be spending my weekends weaving, except next weekend when I go back to Perth to run a feast and pick up my loom.

So that's a very brief overview of everything I've been doing over the last two weeks. It's been pretty hectic, but lots of exciting things happening too!

WAMA Fair and Other Things

I went to the Perth Medieval Fair on Sunday, and for once I wasn't invisible! Pictures of me have popped up all over the place, and I am very pleased :)

Here's a photo of me that Phil took, from his awesome photobucket album of awesome. As you can see, I wore my new gold cotehardie. This one isn't as booby as the green one. It's funny how they all come out a little bit different, but I use the same pattern and try to be consistent. But it fits and it's comfy. I had a good day at the fair. I spent the morning helping to set up, and then I had gate duty, but most of my afternoon was spent weaving as part of the SCA display. I only got about 2cm of actual weaving done, because I had an almost constant stream of interested people to chat to which was really nice. My weaving is actually working out wonderfully, which is unusual for string and the complete opposite to my last experience trying to work with the gold wire.

LOOKIT HOW MUCH IT WORKS! It's pattern 38 from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, the version with 25 tablets across. The pattern repeat is 24 rows, and this picture is from the first day I started working on it. I got very excited because I could see the pattern and it was all working and stuff! Now I've done about 9 repeats of the pattern, which is just over half the length of one garter. Also, I'm hoping that once it's been off tension for a while it will compress together a bit more. I'm really happy with how it looks now, but it doesn't look anything close to the examples on the back of the book where there are no gaps between the bits of gold wire.

In other news, there's only three weeks left until Festival, and I managed to put my heel through the seam of one of my hose as I tried to put it on on Saturday. Dodgy machine stitching *shakes fist*. It should be repairable, but it highlights just how much maintenance my hose need. I don't know why I hate sewing hose so much, they're fairly quick and easy to make, I just LOATHE THEM. I'm almost ready to just wear explorer socks for the whole week. Festival has moved down near Canberra after all, where it gets stupid cold. The last time it was this late in April I was SO COLD that I crawled into bed with Mister Nathan in my desperation for warms, then I went and begged the combined colleges for extra blankets, not caring that they had already been rejected by collegians for reasons that are unknown and shall remain so. That Festival was up at Glenworth Valley, miles from the frozen reaches of Canberra.

In related news, I bought a new sleeping bag! I resorted to trawling the ebays for sub-zero sleeping bags that are only sold in the US because why would we need them in Australia? I have five pounds of non-allergenic Insul-Therma insulation wrapped in cosy flannel lining which is rated for 25F coming my way! It's gonna be massive and take up half my giant suitcase of bedding, but I'll be toasty warm at Festival!

Four Weeks!

Only four weeks and ten hours left until I leave for Rowany Festival, and I'm starting to feel slightly hysterical! Necessary projects are being downgraded to unnecessary, and unnecessary projects are moving off my list completely. I have four weeks to get two massive assignments completely finished and another one started, so SCA projects are starting to become those things I do to procrastinate. Also, I've almost completely given up napping during the week which makes me very sad.

So, what have I done in the two weeks since I last posted?

I made a cotehardie! It's not green! Yay! I haven't tried it on yet because I couldn't be bothered. I'll wear it on Saturday to the WAMA fair demo unless I put it on and something is horribly wrong with it. This is the third cotehardie I've made from my new awesome pattern, not counting my supportive man-shirt, so it should fit fine. I'm not sure what I'm going to use as a lacing cord because I forgot I needed one and didn't get any matching perle cotton from Spotlight while I was there for something else, and I'm not sure I can justify going all the way out there this week. I might just have to pick a random coloured lacing cord from one of my other cotes for this weekend :)

Today was one of those procrastinatey days, and my browser has decided all of a sudden that it doesn't like Facebook and kept freezing every time I logged in. What did I do instead? I warped my loom! I warped my loom for one of those unnecessary projects that has fallen off my Festival list, because I'm going to a demo on the weekend and tablet weaving is a cool thing for a demo. I'm turning one of Anna Neuper's brocade patterns into a pair of garters for my man outfit. I used some blue reeled silk that I bought off ebay before Christmas for really cheap. It's thinner than any silk I've used before, but is lovely and shiny. There are some flaws, some lumpy bits and the skein isn't one long piece, it's a bunch of fairly long pieces tied together. I only encountered one tie today, but could see some more in what was left. I got to use the yarn swift I got for Christmas!

Tory was very taken with the swift and felt the need to rub his face over every corner. He figured out fairly quickly that it turns and that seemed to delight him. Also, I think for the first time ever I'm going to have to guard my string, because apparently this yarn is tastier than any other yarn that has come before, even more tasty than the pegs of my warping board.

Here's the whole setup. The yarn swift is amazing! Best idea ever! That little wooden chair you can see in the top left of the photo is what I used to hang my skeins around, and it's very questionable as to whether some of them are still skeins or a tangled mess of string. Anyway, loom is warped! I intend to use the gold wire stuff I bought for the brocade weft of that belt that was going to be awesome, because hopefully it'll work better with a different warp and a more geometric pattern. I've got some top stitch thread and some upholstery thread to use as structural wefts, so hopefully I'll be able to find a way that it'll all work together nicely. Or there will be tantrums and I'll be going to Spotlight after all to find something else to use as brocade weft. Wish me luck!

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.

Hood Update and Other Things

Thanks for helping me decide where to put what colours on my hood! I ended up going with green with pink lining. I stitched it all together on Thursday and Friday last week, and brought it along to the Dragon's Bay A&S workshop on Saturday. Nearly everyone there mentioned that the colours were completely different in real life than on their computers, which I thought was interesting. Of all the photos I have put up on this blog, that lot were the ones I did the least to because I thought the colours were pretty accurate, just a little washed out. Maybe I'll have to look at the colour settings on my computer.

Saturday's workshop was lots of fun! I taught some tablet weaving to a small group of enthusiastic students, and they seemed to enjoy it which is great. Most of them even warped up their looms and started their very own first piece of weaving. In the afternoon I threaded up some cards and began the edging for my hood. All up the length around the edges of the hood is nearly three metres, which sucks balls. After about an inch of weaving I'd already decided it was way too tedious, but I want the look to it must be finished! It might take me a while though. Nearly a week later I've only done half of the bottom edge. So far to go! Tomorrow is the St Basil O-day at UWA, so I'll bring it along to that and tie myself to a leg of the pavillion. What makes it super tedious is that it's quite simple and boring, which also makes it good for a demo, since I don't need to worry about counting anything or being interrupted. I can literally drop it and leave it at any point.

In other news, you may remember that my Gran passed away last year. I managed to inherit her sewing machine and a bunch of embroidery floss and odd and ends. By inherit I mean I went to her house and claimed a bunch of stuff. In actual fact, I received my actual inheritance the other day, in the form of $275 cash transferred straight to my bank account. It may not seem like much, but it's enough to by myself a present or two. First of all, I need a new pair of pointe shoes, since last night my current pair managed to munch their way through the adhesive gel pads I wear on my heels. One of them succeeded in sticking itself and my tights to the top layer of my skin. IT WAS NOT FUN. Anyway, since my Gran taught me ballet I thought it would be very fitting to spend some of my inheritance on pointe shoes. New ~fancy~ pointe shoes that require a fitting appointment at a dance physio. After that, I should have about $100 left FOR FABRIC :D.

Now I have choices. Lately there's been some enthusiasm for Cranach gowns around the place, which makes me wanna hurry up and make mine. I already have some dark green woolly velveteen stuff for the main part, and I did buy 3m of red shot gold silk dupion for the bands and the contrasting bits on the bodice. BUUUT I've only got 3m and maybe I think I sort of might want Fancy Orange Brocade.

This is called Brocade Ornaments, from Sartor. It's US$20 per metre, but only 75cm wide and made from a polyester rayon. Also there's big warnings about shrinkage.

Other brocades that have caught my eye from Sartor include:

GREEN AND GOLD 14TH CENTURY RABBITS!

Wine red and white pretty

Miscellaneous "Historical Brocade" in gold and blue.

So the green on has a few downsides. Number 1: It's green. I already have too much green things! Number 2: It's US$64.95 per metre. That's because it's 100% silk and it's slightly wider than the other brocades, a whole 110cm. IT'S SO PRETTY. I think I need a larger inheritance for that one though. Sadface. I actually quite like the gold and blue one, I think it'll make a great cotehardie. The only things that worry me are that it's polyester, it's only 75cm wide and there's warnings of high shrinkage. That means that actually at the width I normally buy fabric, these brocades are actually $40 per metre. Maybe I should keep shopping.

ERMAGERD

Lookit what arrived in the post today!

THREE SKEINS OF SILK! I spent ages fiddling with my camera and lights and stuff, but I couldn't get the colours to come out right. The blue and the green are just as bright as the red, they look awesome! I ordered these weeks ago from ebay because they were $10 each plus $10 shipping each, but then because I ordered three the shipping was combined. I ended up paying $45 for three skeins of silk! It was advertised as reeled silk and each skein is about 470 yards. The skeins are smaller than I expected, probably because the yarn is a little finer than 20/2. It doesn't say what thickness it actually is, but I'd say it's about 30/2 or 40/2. It looks quite manageable, not silly like 60/2 :P. More to the point, it was cheap. It's not as tightly spun as the fine cord from Treenway Silks, and it doesn't look as good quality, but it's shiny and super soft. It's a bit fluffy, so I guess I'll see if it does the piling thing that spun silk does. Actually, for that price, if it behaves like the Treenway spun silk but is shiny like the reeled, I'll be ecstatic.

I have no idea what to make with it, but I wanna do some weaving now! I actually have no weaving projects in mind at the moment. I'm going to be booking for Rowany festival today, since tomorrow is the last day before the price rise, and this has been making me think about all the the things I want to have done by then. Mostly it's garb. Firstly, I WILL get around to fixing that green brocade surcote. I wore it at Championship and it was so uncomfortable! I had to squish myself into it because it didn't fit over my new cotehardies properly, and the sleeves were digging into my armpits and my elbows. It's going to be cold at Festival next year because it's late in April and the site is closer to Canberra, so I want to have more than one surcote for warms. I get sick of wearing my wool one all the time. I've also been pondering the fact that most of my garb is green. I am now putting a ban on making anything green. The two cotehardies that fit the best and are most comfortable are my green one and my sphinx one, which is almost green. My wool surcote is green. The brocade one is also green, but there's not much I can do about that and I'm going to be putting black all over it to make it fit better, so it should look quite striking. I think I need to start wearing my ginger cote again. Also, I think I'll remake my gold cote, and start wearing my green and purple linen surcote again. The gold cote I have looks awesome, but it's so uncomfortable. So I'm going to buy some more of the gold fabric and make it again using my new pattern. I think I need to look through my wool collection and make another surcote that isn't green. I think I have some maroon wool that should do nicely.

There's also a high chance that it'll be raining at Festival too, so I think I'll get on with making that linen man-cote and supportive shirt that I wanted to do before Pennsic. The fabric is all pre-washed and ready to go. Then I'll fix my red wool man-cote and hood, so I have a linen and wool option for rainy days when I don't want skirts dragging in the mud. I also need some more wool hose, since the pink one shrank in the wash. Only two more weeks until freedom!

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 :)

Warp

I does have a warping board! My dad is pretty awesome, making me all these weaving things, and making them NICE. I've seen a lot of functional wooden bits and pieces that people have made for weaving, and they're not always nice, just functional. It's fine to have functional things, but it's nice of my dad to put in a little more effort to finish things off nicely. Anyway, here it is!

Tada! Complete with warp. It's 40cm x 50cm, which is a nice small size for storing places, and has heaps of pegs. I can measure out 8 metres of warp on this thing, which is probably more than I'll ever need. SO, how to use a warping board? I finally realised what it was and how to use it from this tutorial. I wanna make that hood by the way. The only thing that wasn't clear to me was the stuff about threading the cards. I get that you need to cross the threads on every pass, like this:

Because crossing them keeps them in the order you warped them, so when you transfer the warp to the loom it's all nice and flat and not all tangled. What I ended up doing was using some things as spacers.

A spare tablet and a pen. These are essential tablet weaving accessories that everyone should invest in, the proper tools for keeping your threads neat. When you awkwardly remove the warp from the board, trying to hold these spacers in place, and put them flat on the couch, you can pull each thread off in the order it went on, and it's all very neat and the string behaves and stuff. It's AMAZING. I had an epic argument with my skein of green silk, so what I ended up doing was warping up the correct number of black threads and laying them out with the spacers between the crossy over bit. Then I used the warping board to measure off two or three lengths of the green silk. I kept having to pull the end of the skein back through knots that had spontaneously occurred, so I wasn't able to just keep wrapping the thread around the board. Anyway, I'd have however many green threads I needed for the next tablet, and I'd pull off the correct amount of black ones from my nice neat row. It worked in the end. That whole process was a little tedious, but when I had finished warping the threaded-in part of the pattern, I had 18 tablets of alternate S and Z threaded to warp. This bit was super easy and quick. I measured off the correct amount of black threads, laid them down with the spacers, and just sat there threading the cards one by one.

I threw a few tantrums during the process, but that's not my fault, my skeins threw their tantrums first. I had epic knots in the green one, then right near the end the black skein decided that it had been behaving waaaay too well, and it spontaneously tangled up. So the process happened over a few days. I was able to literally just get up and walk away from it, because the cat is a very strange cat, and he hasn't yet been interesting in stationary string. He was dead to the world asleep on my bed when I quietly pulled my basket of silk down off the shelf to start warping. I turned around to find him alert and awake and watching me very closely. If I'm making the string move, he wants to play with it, but if it's just sitting there it doesn't interest him at all. What does interest him is little bits of round wood. I've caught him chewing on the pegs of my warping board, and he's almost totally destroyed a pencil I used to hold the end of my warp on my little loom, it's all splintered and covered in little teeth marks. Anyway, I finished warping last night, tensioned my loom and started weaving.

Remember it's supposed to be a black belt edged with leaves? Guess who got her Z and S threading backwards? Yeah. *hangs head*. I bloody hate stupid S and Z threading, it makes no sense to me. I spent ages figuring out which way to thread the cards and I got it backwards. So the first bit is all munted. Then I started troubleshooting, and flipped the cards over. Then the left side started looking closer to leaves, but the right side was different. Different? How can this be? So I compared the two sets and somehow I'd managed to thread two tablets wrong. Luckily they both just needed a half turn, so I did that and kept going. The last two blobby bits it what I got after all that. I dunno. Something is still wrong. The cards are all threaded the correct way, I double checked how Guntram labels his holes and I got it right, and the pattern is not on the bottom. The cards now face the right instead of the left, so maybe the home position needs to change. I'll try that next. Right now I have some study to do before I can go play at Nathan and Catherine's house. I'll bring my loom and work on it there.

One week!

One week until we leave for the US! Seven more sleeps! I'm getting really excited now :). I had my relaxing day on Monday, getting only about 20cm of weaving done. I made up for it yesterday though.

Here it is! I'm weaving with the black on top, but underneath is blue! I started with all my tablets threaded in the same direction, but I didn't really like the look of it, so I flipped every second card and I liked that way more betterer. The eight selvedge cards are still threaded in the same direction, so it gived it quite a nice border. The band is 2cm wide, and after weaving the bag strap which was 4cm it seems so tiny! It's coming up really nicely, but I'm not sure that I'll want to work with this silk again. It's spun silk so it's made up of shorter fibres, which means that I've got quite a problem with piling. The string is really fluffy, and mostly it gets stuck on the weft wrapped around my shuttlebeater. I get to a point where the weft won't unwind anymore and I have to pull all the fluff off. Every now and then it gets stuck in the band and I have to pull it out, but mostly the finished band is fine. I also get it all over my hands every time I untwist and shift the warp along the loom. The reeled silk from Treenway that I used for my fail belt was plied really tightly, and I'm wondering if that's what made it not compress at all. The reeled silk was a better quality and made from longer fibres, and it was shiny, which is nice in a silk. I may have to go hunting for a supplier that sells reeled silk that isn't so tightly plied, since Treenway only has four or five different varieties. Three of them are the tightly plied cord, and the other two aren't very fine. Although this spun silk may do really well as a weft for the reeled silk, since it compresses more.

Yesterday I also went on an adventure to buy a D-ring and some sheet brass for the buckle, AND while I was out I even went and bought a travel card for my US monies. Then I went to Nathan and Catherine's house to look at hotels for our one night in Pittsburgh, and I did some work on my oopsie surcote. I threw it on over a cotehardie yesterday and it was too small. I would have been able to button it closed, but it was a little tight over my boobs which I didn't like. Luckily I had stopped to check this before making the buttonholes, because I was able to take the front seams out half an inch each, and I also lowered the neckline a little bit. So last night was spent fixing that up, and then I closed up the skirt down the front. So now I has a dress shaped thing. All that's left to do is the buttons and buttonholes, the bottom hem and the sleeves.

Today I'm hoping to finish the last 50cm or so of my weaving, and get the buttonholes done on the dress. I should have both completely finished by the weekend, which gives me time to do the little fixes on a couple of things, and even maybe make a man-cote :)

Doubleface

Here I am posting from my new tablet, Timothy. We've had some dramaz talking to the sd card on the dock, but I think we have it all sorted now, so hopefully I'll get to post my pictures! Anyway, on Sunday I warped up my loom to make the strap for my awesome bag of awesome! I did a continuous warp, but I had to do it in two lots because I needed to use eight balls of cotton. It also took way longer than I thought it would, as usual. I also ended up just manually threading the eight selvedge cards because it was easier.

On Sunday night I went to Nathan and Catherine's house to watch Eurovision and have snuggles with the puppy, and Mister Nathan finished my shuttlebeater!

I forgot to take a picture before winding my weft on, but you get the idea. YAY SHUTTLEBEATER! I love it very much, and it smells like oranges because Mister Nathan used his special orange flavoured wax stuff :) Thanks Mister Nathan! I took my loom up to visit Spoh on Tuesday night because she's home for two weeks! I realised I couldn't use my embroidery pattern as a weaving pattern, because the embroidery pattern has zigzaggy stitches, and plain doubleface has all the stitches next to each other. Anyway, I fiddled a bit to see how doubleface actually works. Even though I didn't get much done, I understand more about doubleface and I got to do a lot of unweaving too.

Yesterday I used Guntram's Tabletweaving Thingy to draft a pattern. I haven't used the program much except to print off Guntram's threading diagrams and turning sequences, but actually it's really useful. I drew this:

GTT even changes the colours and stuff, and you can set the threading direction and look at how it will look as an actual band. Anyway, I couldn't fit the motifs on the embroidery pattern in the middle, so I decided to just do the diamonds. It still looks nice. I started weaving this yesterday, but I only got a few picks in before I realised that once again my weaving stretches patterns way longer than they should be, so I unwove it and drafted a new pattern.

It looks ugly and squashed, but then I started weaving it

I think it looks pretty awesome. The bottom looks a bit chunky, so I modified the pattern a little when I got to the top and it looks heaps better. I can't be bothered unweaving it and it doesn't bother me too much so I'll just leave it how it is. You might also notice that my picks get smaller as I go along, which is good. It took me ages to tension it but so far I'm not having any trouble.

I'm pretty happy with how it's going, I think it looks great. I haven't decided which side I'll use for the top yet, I guess we'll see how it looks when I'm done :)

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!

Nearly There

I've counted and recounted and checked the number of motifs multiple times, and I'm pretty confident that I just made it to the three quarter mark :)

I am so close! I've done a huge amount of work, but I can see the end now. I started this project eight weeks ago, and it should only take me a couple more weeks to finish.

My yarn arrived! I've decided to weave the motifs in red and gold, and have a border with a stripe of green and a stripe of purple. I managed to get the same gold, red and purple as the embroidery floss I used, but DMC doesn't make the same green in size 8 cotton. There wasn't much choice, so I just got the closest green that I could. It will still look fine, and I'm pretty happy I could get the rest of the colours. I'll try and warp up my loom at some point next week, but I don't want to start weaving until I have my new shuttlebeater. Mister Nathan offered to make me one for Christmas, and it was just up to me to decide what I wanted. I know I definitely want a beater that is a shuttle as well, and I want it to be made from a dark, hard wood. I really like the functionality of Catherine's, but I want it to be pretty as well as functional. Anyway, I've given him my specifications, and I guess I'll have to wait until he's got a bit of spare time. Hopefully that will be soon :). I don't want to swap beaters part way through the weaving because that could change the band. I definitely had a significant difference between weaving with my old school ruler and Catherine's beater when I was working on my belt.

My linen hasn't arrived yet. I suppose the days of six day shipping from fabric-store.com are long past, which is a shame. Hopefully this order doesn't go missing like the last one. My last day of work was today, and next week is orientation week at uni. I only have to go in on Monday, so I have the rest of the week off. I was hoping to start working on a new cotehardie, so hopefully the linen will arrive early next week. I've decided not to make one in white, because that will mean sewing three cotehardies in four months, and I don't think I want to do that to myself. If my linen doesn't arrive next week then I'll string up my loom and keep working on my embroidery. I might even start constructing the bag, as much as I can do without the front panel anyway. I can't imagine getting much done quickly once uni starts, but I'll try to allocate time every week for sewing. I will also have about four weeks between semester finishing and leaving for Pennsic, so I will have that time to work on last minute things. I don't want an epic rush to get things done though, but it is nice to have that buffer.

A New Thing

I got a text yesterday morning from Mum telling me there was a package waiting for me at home. I'm waiting for a few different things, so I asked her the dimensions of the package before I raced over there all excited to pick it up. Lookee!

MY COLLINGWOOD ARRIVED! I raced home to pick it up before work, and even had a short look at the double face chapter in one of my breaks. I'll have a proper read this morning, and start drafting up a pattern for the strap of my awesome bag of awesome. Now all I need is to order some thread and wait for that and my new set of cards to arrive. I think the main motif pattern will be in gold and red, and I'll add a selvedge border of green and purple. I haven't decided what sort of weft to use. I have a feeling that I'm going to have epic problems with the motif stretching along the band way too much, so I'll need something smaller. I want to use size 8 thread for the warp, which means using a sewing thread weft again, or size 12 cotton. That probably means dealing with snapping issues again. I guess we shall see what happens when I warp up my loom.

I've slowed down a bit with my embroidery. I've only done another three motifs since last week, and that's only because I carried it with me all weekend and worked on it while I was doing social things. I haven't been picking it up as much at home in my spare time. It's a good thing I started this project so early!

One Quarter

I've finished one quarter of my embroidery! I forgot to bring my camera to A&S tonight, so you get a dodgy phone picture :)

Yay what an awful picture. But you get the idea. Only 22.5 more motifs to go and I'll be finished! This week I've also been starting to think seriously about the band I want to weave to make the strap. I've found a place online that sells DMC crochet cotton in all the colours, so I can get an exact match to the embroidery colours. I'm thinking I'll use size 8 cotton because it's fine without being stupidly fine, and I have a feeling that if I try to use size 5 with doubleface weave it'll stretch out a lot. I've counted the stitches in one motif and it's 53 stitches across. From the information I've looked at about doubleface weaving I think I can use the embroidery pattern as a weaving draft as well, with each stitch being two turns of the tablets. But I only have 50 cards, and as well as the motif pattern I'll want a couple of cards on each side as a doubleface border, and another couple as a selvedge. I'll need roughly 60 cards, so I ordered another pack of 25 today from the internet. Last week I also ordered my very own copy of Collingwood, so hopefully that should arrive sometime next week and I can read up a bit more about doubleface and get to actually drafting a pattern and working it all out.

One thing I've been pondering is how I'm going to attach the strap to the bag. The strap is going to be about 3cm wide. I could have it running all the way down the edges of the bag, making a walled bag with tassels in the bottom corners. Or I could make the bag like a big pouch and have the strap coming out from the inside, or attach it to the outside somehow. At this stage I like the idea of a big pouch, even though it gives me less room inside. I can do tassels no matter what I decide. I'm really bad at decisions, so I'm going to leave this one alone for now until I absolutely have to decide :P

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.

Christmas

Tada!

I just finished the snowmen. I think I've had enough of Christmas bands now. I want to go back to period techniques and stuff. I'd like to try doubleface. I'd also like to try 3/1 twill. I'd like to make another belt with one of these techniques, so I have a belt to wear with my purple and green cote. I'm a little bit over my leaf and motto thing, but I have no idea what sort of pattern would be 14th century and fit with my garb. What I need is Peter Collingwood, and I think if I don't get it for Christmas I'll buy it myself.

I've also done absolutely no sewing from my fix-it basket. The red cote fits properly now, but one of the sleeves has started coming apart and needs repairs. My man cote needs taking in and new sleeves, my blue wool surcote needs a lot of work done, and my green brocade surcote also needs looking at. I'm just feeling very uninspired. It'll probably take until next winter to fix the wool stuff, and it'll be when there's an event coming up and it's gonna be cold, so I'll be all rushed. At the moment there's not much happening in the way of events. There's a couple of feasts happening early next year but they'll be inside in airconditioning, and anyway I have lots of light linen stuff for hot weather. I'd like to make a couple of new cotes for Pennsic, ones like my brown one that are comfy and I can just chuck on over a chemise, and hopefully I'll have the blue wool and green brocade done to throw on over the top if I get cold at night.

Maybe after Christmas I'll get motivated to do things.

Christmas

I finished my Santas on Thursday, and warped up my loom again for Christmas trees!

I like the colours of this one better. I should've used this blue for the Santas instead of the really pale grey/blue, but oh well. Hopefully I'll finish this band today and then I'll be up to Snowmen. I've decided to give the bands as gifts to some of the ladies at work. I mostly just work with two older ladies and my department manager, so that's three bands. Then there's another department manager who I think will really appreciate one, but I'm not sure that I'll have the time. We shall see.

My hands are looking awesome after all this weaving. The patterns are so simple that I've been moving really fast, so I have blisters in the creases of some of my fingers and some spots on my fingers where the skin is really dry and flaky. Wednesday was awful, my fingers were so sore, but since then I think the blisters have developed into callouses.

Time for more weaving!

I win!

I won!

On Friday night I was 10cm away from finishing, when my weft snapped three times in a row. It was very frustrating, I wanted to have finished it before dinner so I could warp up my loom for christmas bands. I decided that it was getting too close to the end up the loom, and shifted it forwards as far as I could. WELL it didn't like that, and I couldn't get the tension tight enough after about an hour of trying. I gave up when my fingers started bleeding and sulked off to bed. I was upset because I was so close to finishing and it just wasn't working. Then the stupid string sorted itself out overnight and when I picked it up on Saturday after work it was fine. UGH. Anyway, I finished it and cut it off the loom on Sunday morning, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. There's a line of bubbly bits on the back about a third of the way through the middle where I was having tension issues, but they're on the back so it's fine.

I spent all of last night warping up my loom for Christmas bands! I've hardly done any threaded-in patterns, so I still haven't gotten the hang of the whole S and Z thing. With the stuff I've been doing I've needed alternating S and Z, or blocks of S and Z, or threaded all the same but it hasn't been vital which one is which. Anyway, I stared at my thread and my cards for ages, figuring out which was which, and started threading. Then I got all confused and checked again, and realised they were all backwards. So I rethreaded some cards and kept going. Then I got all confused again and went and got out a picture of the different threadings, and realised all the cards I'd threaded were backwards. UGH. So I just flipped them over and kept going. This means that instead of my cards all facing the left, how I like them, they all face the right. I thought this would be ok, it just means that Santa's feet are on the left of the band instead of the right. John Mullarky threads his cards clockwise and doesn't specify which way they face. In the end it was ok, it just took a bit of fiddling to realise that the A corner has to start at the far top, which it usually does if my cards face the left, but not if they face the right. Anyway, it's working!

My Santas a quite a lot fatter than John Mullarky's, but that's ok, Santa is supposed to be fat. My tension is also working itself out and the third one is skinnier than the first. I think they're cute! Right now I have to go to work, but I have all day tomorrow to weave, so I should zoom through, seeing as it's such a simple pattern in good old #5 cotton.

This is just getting ridiculous

On Saturday I took my weaving to Nathan and Catherine's house, and tackled it for a couple of hours. First of all I wound a fresh shuttle from one of my other balls of leftover black cotton. Then I dug out the end of my snapped weft, and went to tie on my new shuttle. Because I'm very clever, I put the new shuttle on the floor right next to the old one and couldn't tell which was which. I clearly picked the wrong one because it snapped straight away. So I threw it far away so it wouldn't get confused, dug out the end again and tied on the new shuttle. I was doing ok for a while, until the weft snapped yet again. That's now two different balls of cotton that I've snapped, so I pouted for a bit. Then Catherine offered me some spools of various black threads that I might want to use instead, and I decided to give the poly top stitch thread a try. This is the same weft I was using for my belt, and the thickness is roughly the same as the #12 cotton. I tied it on and was going pretty well until my knots decided they didn't want to hold anymore, and went all slack again. UGH. That was my cue to give up for the day, before I sent the loom flying from frustration. I'd managed to weave a grand total of 20 picks, about 3.5cm.

Since then my string has been behaving remarkably well. My tension is perfect and I've woven a good 15cm, almost double what I'd done up to on Saturday. BUT THEN I snapped my weft again. I SNAPPED MY WEFT AGAIN. I snapped the poly top stitch thread. Now I'm thinking it's something I'm doing that's snapping the thread, rather than my choice of thread or a flaw. I've been so conscious not to pull too hard, but it's been getting harder to tighten the weft, it's just not sliding through the shed easily. Maybe this particular cotton is just rough or something, and the constant friction is weakening it.

I'm just over half way through this band, so I can't give up now, but I really wanted to finish it soon because THIS:

CHRISTMAS BANDS! I found them over at the Malarky Crafts blog, and I want to make one! They're just so cute! They're simple threaded in patterns with a 4F 4B turning sequence, so it'd be really quite quick and easy to make one. Mum said if I made one we'd hang it up somewhere as decoration, but I'd like to have a specific use for it. I'd have to make metres of it to wrap it around the tree, although if I make a short one and we wrap it around the top of the tree, then the cat won't be able to reach it. I suppose I'll go buy myself some milford satin and just figure out what we'll do with it later.

In other news, look at this:

It's the end of my belt. AND the end of my wefts. Poking out. Visible. WTF? I used this technique to finish the band, and it has never failed me before. This time it seems it has been slowly unravelling and now the end of my belt is a bit of a mess. I wore it to an event on Sunday and that's all it took for it to end up like this. I showed it to some people and I think my options are to unthread the wefts to the neat bit, then stick them on a needle and thread them back through the band. Then I can whipstitch the end to hold everything in place. OR I could divide the threads back into their cards and tie some knots. Either way the whole thing seems way too tedious for me to tackle right now.

It's getting a little bit ridiculous how much trouble I'm encountering with my weaving. At the moment I just have to laugh at my weft snapping all over the place and my belt coming undone, because it's like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, just because it can. I'm past being frustrated at it because of the ridiculousness of the situation. I should rename this blog THE DISASTER ZONE or something :P