The July Weaving Saga

I can't believe it's August already! The time has just been flying past. I had planned to do a lot more SCA related stuff in July, but those plans sort of fell by the wayside.

First of all, I ran a feast! In the week leading up to it I felt a little bit like I was trying to herd cats, but in the end it turned out really well. I had a lot of positive comments about the food and the hall, and I thought it was really nice to go back to the kind of medieval feast we used to have, where we focused more on period recipes and ingredients rather than just having a roast dinner. I entered my tablet weaving in the A&S competition and it won! I was a little surprised because it wasn't my best band ever, but it was a bit of an experiment and I put a lot of work into documenting it really well.

Once the feast was over and my report was all finalised I'd planned to do a whole lot of weaving down here in Katanning on my weekends. My first problem with that was that my loom will not fit into my car. It's way too tall for the boot, and even though it will fit in the back seat, there was no way it would fit through the door and past the front seat. It was also too wide to fit in the front seat and still allow me to shut the door AND change gears as I drove. So my Mum and sister had a day trip down to Katanning and brought it with them the weekend after the feast. Then I had some problems getting some yarn to weave with. I'd ordered some Treenway silk and also some tencel from Webs, but the Treenway stuff takes about a month because they have to dye it and then ship it from the US, and some of the colours of tencel I ordered were out of stock so Webs is waiting until they come back in stock before they post the whole order together.

Anyway, I decided what I'd really like to do while I waited for the US stuff, was order some linen from Petlins and try my hand at doubleweave. I thought that it would take maybe a week at most to get across the country, since most things I order from over east arrive fairly quickly. Well. First of all even though they say on their website that they ship the same day or next day after payment clears, my order wasn't shipped until over a week after I paid. It does not take over a week for payments to clear. I also never got a receipt or confirmation of order, just an email to say my order had been posted. It did only take a week to get across the country, which would have been fine except the idiots posted it to my billing address instead of my postal address. So last Friday I got a text from my Mum to say that I had a package. In Perth. A three and a half hour drive from where the package should have been posted to. Not happy Jan. After spending the day pondering my weekend and rescheduling things, I ended up driving up to Perth and spending the whole weekend there. I emailed the Petlins people to voice my displeasure, and they've decided to ignore me. So I think I'll be finding another supplier for linen yarn, which is a shame because Petlins has a really good range.

When I got back to Katanning I did some calculations and realised that I need more linen for the plans I have in mind. I went searching online and found some linen of the same size at Glenora Weaving and Wool, which is another Australian supplier. I tried to order two cobs, but they only had one in stock, so the lady emailed to ask if I wanted natural or half bleached instead, and replied to say no, I'll just take one cob of bleached. Then she replied to ask if I wanted some 16/1 that I could use doubled, and I said no thanks, just one cob of 16/2 will do. Then she RANG me and left a voicemail message to ask if I wanted 16/1 that I could use doubled, so I emailed her AGAIN to say NO THANKS JUST SEND ME WHAT I BLOODY WELL ORDERED and was almost at the point of cancelling the order. Apparently she's posted it now with a seven day receipt (I have no idea what that means) and another receipt will be emailed to me. It hasn't been yet so I have no idea how or when I'm supposed to pay for it.

Meanwhile, good reliable old Treenway silks dyed and posted my order, and it arrived on Wednesday. I am now in the process of warping my loom to weave one of the Two Skeins, Two Scarves free patterns that Treenway sent me. Finally! I've been down here for five weeks and I'm only just warping up my loom.

So that's what's been happening. I also brought some fabric and my pearls down in the event that I somehow found the motivation to tackle a goldhaube for the Saxony gown I've been planning since forever. I also brought my embroidery down but I've completely lost enthusiasm for it, even though I'm over half way through it.

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!

More Weaving

I went to the Weavers and Spinners weaving day on Tuesday, and it was really cool. I stayed for the morning session and just walked around and chatted to people and looked at their weaving. Then everyone sits in a circle to eat their lunch and have a show and tell. Mostly the beginners weave and a couple of more advanced ladies run around and fix things up for them. I wished I'd had my loom with me, but if I had then one of the ladies surely would've unwound it and re-tensioned it.

It did get me thinking about my tension problems though, and later that evening when I rolled the whole thing forward the right edge got even tighter and I just couldn't get the rest of it to match. I was having huge problems opening up a shed because the middle was so saggy, so I stopped weaving and left it overnight. Then I decided to re-tension it myself. I also decided I was bored with plain weave and had a look through my books to see if I could find a nice twill pattern that would be more interesting. Anyway, because I'm INSANE I ended up rewinding the warp so it was even and tensioned and good and stuff, then I cut off the piece of weaving I'd done (it's about a metre long), then I COMPLETELY RE-THREADED ALL MY HEDDLES AND MY REED. I couldn't find anything interesting for the threading that I already had, so I had to change it. I must be crazy, but it's done now and it was so totally worth it because LOOKIT

I MADE DIAMONDS! :D :D It's all even and neat and I seem to have figured out how to keep my edges all smooth and straight too. It's so much nicer to have it all tensioned evenly to start with, so it rolls along smoothly and all I need to worry about is the actual weaving part.

The piece I pulled off turned out ok for a first go. One edge is shorter than the other because of the tension issues I had, and some of the twill sections are really messy because the end warp threads didn't always get caught with the weft. I've put a floating warp on the edges of the diamonds which is working really well for me and probably helping keep my edges neat. I washed the first piece to see what happens with the felting, since this wool is felting wool, and it's only fluffed up a little bit. I was worried it would fluff out a lot and obscure the patterns, but it's not actually made much of a difference. I did put it on the gentle wool cycle, and I'm wondering if the washing machine doesn't heat it past 40 degrees on that cycle even though I set it to hot/warm. We have a commercial top loader washing machine that only has hot, warm or cold settings to choose from instead of actual temperatures. Anyway, I'm hoping to use my diamonds piece as a scarf, and I won't be washing it very hot anyway so if there is more felting to happen then I most likely won't be seeing it.

Other than my weaving, I've been planning Midwinter Feast. It's in three weeks and it's taking AGES to get everything organised and signed off. I really need to start advertising soon or no one will come, because I think most people are thinking that it's not happening this year. It is! I'm working on it and it will be totally awesome with delicious foods and stuff. I even found a really nice old hall that's really pretty and has a convenient wire running along the walls at banner hanging height.

Weaving

LOOKIT MY WEAVING!

It took me all afternoon/evening Saturday to wind a warp, put it on the loom and then thread the first 60 heddles. I need a new warping board especially for warping this loom, because the one I have for tablet weaving doesn't have long enough pegs to fit a proper warp. Also it's made from scrappy bits that Dad had in his shed so it couldn't deal with the tension.

MY WARPING BOARD WAS WARPING! It's all munched and I don't think it'll survive another big warp being wound onto it. I also had to wind my warp in two bits which is not ideal, but it worked out in the end. Monday was spent threading the rest of the heddles and then sleying the reed. The whole process takes ages but it's all very methodical and the warp is always tied up somewhere neatly. At one point when I was half way through threading the heddles, the cat jumped up and walked across my warp at the back of the loom, and it didn't move anywhere. Unless he sits up there and pulls on the strings with his claws, the warp is pretty safe. So far he's more interested in smelling the loom and rubbing his face all over it.

Anyway, I threaded four shafts with the idea of doing a plain weave with the option to fiddle with different sequences and stuff. I got bored of plain weave pretty quickly and started doing some 3/1 twill. Or 1/3, I'm not sure which is which. I didn't roll my warp onto the back roller bar dealie evenly, and my paper wasn't quite wide enough so I'm having some tension issues, mostly on the right edge. Also I have NO IDEA how to keep my width even and not have little loopy bits on the edges from my weft. I think I'm getting better now but I'm not very consistent and can't figure out how to get consistent.

Next Tuesday the Weavers and Spinners Guild is meeting for a weaving day, so I think I'll go check it out and maybe get some tips and stuff. I can't take my loom with me because it's heavy and won't fit in my car, which is a shame because I'd like to show them exactly what my issues are. But they might have some looms warped up for practice, and I'll take lots of photos to show them.

May Update

What have I been getting up to in May? I'm still unemployed so mostly I've been hanging out with Spoh and helping to refurbish our tent. I did a little bit of blacksmithing to make hooks to hang from the spokes of the tent. Spoh did most of the work and I acted as third hand and did some twisting of metal which was cool. We also added some extra bits of fabric to the socks that the spokes slot into. That was a bit tedious, sitting with a pile of canvas and pulling out each sock to cut it open and hand stitch extra fabric onto it. But it was worth it because the spokes now sit in the correct spot. The canvas has stretched a little in weird places so it's a little wibbly, but not really that noticeable. We also did some more painting on the valance, and now it looks FIVE HUNDRED MILLIONTY times better, and more like the pictures. Last weekend my Dad left us unsupervised in his shed and we used POWER TOOLS and stuff to clean up all the wooden poles and make some toggles for the door. We also oiled all the wood so it's all nice and won't go crazy if it gets wet. We can now put up the tent in about 15 minutes, but it does take both of us to get the centre pole up. We haven't waterproofed it yet because the weather has been sunny but cold with about 50% humidity and patches of cloud that sometimes rain, and the waterproofing stuff says it needs 12 hours to dry in warmer than 20 degrees with low humidity. We want to do this properly, so we decided not to just wing it and hope it turns out alright. Hopefully when Spoh gets back from skiing again the weather will be a bit better and we can waterproof it then. Spoh was also very industrious and sewed up bags for all the wooden bits and the tent itself, and made a bunch of curtains and chair covers and things. She also made a cushion and table runner that need some trim, so I think I'll make up some doubleface tablet weaving in one of Anna Neuper's patterns. I tried to buy some size 10 DMC balls from the Embroidery Den, but their website's broken and they haven't answered my email or fixed it yet.

BUT BUT I don't care anymore because yesterday was my birthday and Nathan and Catherine got me THIS:

OMG MY VERY OWN LOOM! Catherine's Dad MADE it when he was doing weavy type things and it's pretty awesome. It's been sitting in storage for some time now apparently, so now it's ALL MINE. It's got ten shafts. TEN. Count them. I'M SO EXCITED. I had to just stare at it for ages because I had no idea where to even start, or what to do with TEN SHAFTS. I think I might just ignore eight of the shafts and try dressing it for a plain tabby weave. I hunted all over the Googles for shops in Perth that sell cones or skeins of yarn for weaving, and eventually found one place that sells cones for knitting machines. For a while there I thought I'd have to order some yarn online and then WAIT UNTIL FOREVER for it to arrive so I could play with my loom.

I also had a brilliant idea. Back in January I left a bunch of old textbooks and stuff at the UWA secondhand bookstore, so I decided it was about time to see if any of them had sold. All the expensive ones sold and I got $103.50 to by ALL the yarn! Then I went adventuring out to the yarn shop, which is actually the bottom floor of a house and it looked like it wasn't a shop but then it was! The owner guy was fabulous and very helpful. I wanted to get some cotton or cottolin to start with, and they had this great mercerized cotton that was all shiny and looked like it'd be really easy to manage, but it only came in cream or baby pink. So I went looking and then there was some TEAL and it was 100% WOOL and then I'd bought it along with some brown AND I'M SO EXCITED IT WILL LOOK AMAZING but it's felting wool so will probably be an absolute pain in the butt and there will be tears and tantrums. It was fairly cheap too, only $33 for a 350g cone. They also had some polyester stuff that came in ALL THE COLOURS which would've been my second choice because there was also teal, but it was about the same price as the wool, so wool won.

Last Friday I went to the craft fair and bought some small 25g skeins of silk because they were shiny and I couldn't resist. But there was also a display from the Weavers and Spinners Guild of WA, so I got talking to the ladies there and I think I'll go along to their next weaving meeting in a couple of weeks, and see if I can do some workshops to learn some stuff instead of trying to muddle along completely on my own. I don't think my loom will be going with me though, there's no way it'll fit into my car.

Stay tuned for my next entry, which will undoubtedly be about how evil string is and whaaa whaaa whine whine warping is tedious :)

Half way!

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

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

In other news, I made a jewellery!

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

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

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

Rowany Festival AS49

This year I had my best Rowany Festival ever. I've always had a good time at Festival, but mostly I left having not really done much except hang out, and feeling a little bit like a nanna for struggling to stay awake at night and going to bed early. Not this year! I dormed instead of camping and ate at the Greesispoone which was completely different from previous years. This year was much warmer than last year (though still not actually warm), but a whole lot wetter. Going back to a warm, dry bed in a building made a wet festival a whole lot more comfortable. I slept awesomely which probably contributed to how productive I was during the day. 

I made it to SIX A&S classes, which is a record for me. Two of those were embroidery discussion classes with Ceara, one practical smocking class, one about cloth structures and weavy stuff, a really awesome medieval surgery class that I had to leave half way through to go to the WCoB meeting, which I had to leave halfway through to go to the most awesomest class ever, weave a napkin!

Photo by Lady Aleinya

I WEAVED A NAPKIN! :D Lady Aleinya Thrakesina warped up her two shaft looms and showed some random punters like me and Rosamond how to weave, and sat with us to fix up our mistakes and deal with the looms when they had tantrums. IT WAS SO AWESOME and now I want a loom so I can weave MOAR THINGS.

I also bought some things at the markets, it doesn't seem like much but I spent all my monies so it must've been a good haul. Ceara helped me find some gold thread that I can use for couching, because I think I wanna do some couching on my Saxony gown when I get around to making it. I've decided I can't afford to order the silk I need until I'm employed, so the whole project is probably going to be put aside for a while. I might still look into making the chemise, since I know how to smock now. I haven't decided if it's going to be smocked, but I mentioned I'd done a smocking class to my Mum and suddenly I have all of Gran's old smocking books and patterns and a pleating machine, so it's all very possible.

I watched a few tourneys and went to a lot of vigils. It seemed that every party was a vigil this year. I helped Katherne get dressed for her vigil and her Pelican ceremony, and I even did her HAIR. I'm so not a hair person, but her do worked out really well, and it helped that there was a hat to hide all the messy bits under :P She was so pretty!

My silly hood also acquired a bell. I did steal it from a Lindt bunny. I stitched it on for the last day, but it had to come off for my hood to go in the wash when I got home. It was kinda fun having it on there, so I might think about stitching it back on for special occasions.

Photo by Ceara

Before Festival, I managed to make all the warm things that I had planned. I made two flannel chemises, which only just squeeze under my cotehardies and are not very comfortable in the sleeves. Luckily I didn't end up having to wear them because it was so much warmer this year. I got by with just a linen chemise, a linen cotehardie, wool cotehardie, wool partlet, short wool circle cloak and my hood (and thermal leggings). The wool partlet made a huge difference, and mostly only got worn at night when it was really cold. I don't have any pictures of the partlet, probably because I always had my cloak and hood on over it, but here's me in my cloak.

Photo by Ceara, with Stanzi's camera

I bought that brooch holding it together at the markets. The cloak is wool lined in bright green linen, and it's really lightweight but warm. It comes to just below my elbows, so it doesn't get in the way like a full length cloak does. It also doesn't pull on my neck and shoulders like my heavy full length cloak does, so it's really comfy to wear. I didn't seem to have the problem I've had in the past of the hood not sitting on top of the cloak well, which was awesome. The hood itself doesn't really wanna cooperate, I think the wool I used for the tablet woven edges might be shrinking when I wash it or something because it doesn't wanna turn back at the front anymore.

I also bought some little ankle gumboots from ebay, which were totally awesome. I wore them for pretty much the whole of the event, and because it was so wet I was kirtling up my skirts in my belt so the boots ended up being on show. I got a few compliments on them, and they don't look overly obvious like proper size gumboots do.

Just as an extra note, the above photo was taken on the only day that I wore contacts instead of glasses. It was very wet that day so I was worried about having to constantly clean water of my glasses. Turns out I didn't need to worry, if I pull my hood far enough forward then my glasses don't get wet. Anyway, I ended up leaving my smocking class early because the contacts were feeling scratchy, and they don't quite correct my vision as well as my glasses. Mostly I wore my glasses during the day and ditched them at night because it's so dark and smokey with fires that it doesn't make any difference if my vision is corrected or not, I can't see much anyway. Anyway, I think I'm coming to terms with wearing modern glasses with my garb. I really dislike my contacts so I'll only put up with them when wearing glasses is weird and distracting, like at dancing.

I didn't end up finishing my embroidery. I'm almost half way now, when I get there I'll post a picture. I did bring it with me and cart it around for most of Festival though. I showed it to Mistress Acacia who said some really nice things about it, and Mistress Rowan who said I'm insane for doing something so small and tedious, but also said some nice things too. I'd like to start entering the WCoB competitions which will make me start tackling different styles of embroidery.

Also MOAR WEAVING is a thing that I want to do. Weaving is fun and awesome. Yay weaving.