Things I Have Learned This Week

1. Assignments take at least three times as long as I think they will.
Therefore, easing into study week with a day of setting up my study space (I have my desk chair back!) and a day spent organising things and shopping with Mum was not a good idea. It means my Thursday social day of going to watch Iron Man 3 with friends gets postponed in favour of completing assignment number one :(

2. An entire day spent working on an assignment leads to brain deadedness.
Therefore, evening time is spent either A) slouched on the couch mindlessly watching Family Guy and holding a pile of linen in the hope that it will magically sew itself together into a cotehardie, or B) at rehearsal desperately hoping my limbs are able to remember the tap dancing they learned six years ago, and somehow can transfer the choreography to the memory parts of my brain for me to access next week so the director doesn't cut me from the number.

3. Study week is not for getting SCA projects done.
I was silly to even think I'd get my green cotehardie nearly finished and my loom warped.

In other news, Twitter told me this morning that the Pennsic A&S timetable is available! Twitter is a bad bad man for telling me such distracting information, because then I had to go read the 85 page pdf file that lists ALL OF THE CLASSES. I'm a little disappointed in the small number of tablet weaving classes. There's two people teaching two seperate beginner's classes multiple times, but I am tempted to pop into one of them because she's selling small looms and I wants a small loom! But then again I'll probably find a million small looms at the markets. There's a class about weaving letters that is right up my alley, and also a tablet weavers tea which I am SO EXCITED about. Other than that, I might go to a ball or two, and some classes about hoods and veils. I'm also pondering the beginner's inkle class, because I'd like to know how it works. And maybe stick weaving, because I'm intrigued. I'm sure I'll be able to keep myself busy :P

Anyway, back to my assignment. Stupid assignment of stupid being all stupid and stuff *huff*

Packages!

I got some packages in the mail this week :D The first was the rest of the yarn that I need to weave the strap for my awesome bag of awesome

Here are all of the colours. I bought two more balls each of the gold and red, which will be my main pattern. The purple and green will be my selvedge. This week is study week, and I'm hoping to get my loom warped up so I can plod away at the actual weaving when uni goes back and I get my new shuttlebeater. I also think that I should read the Collingwood chapter on doubleface again properly, and get my pattern drafted up properly.

The other package is the next instalment of the buttons saga. First I ordered some nice buttons that arrived way bigger than the advertised size, then I found some awesome buttons on ebay but got outbid and was very sad. But then I found aliexpress.com, which sells wholesale buttons for ridiculously cheap. I spent about $15 and got these:

LOOKIT! I got 104 because the bulk lot comes in 100, and the other four were in their own seperate baggy labelled "small gift", which gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy. I was expecting some crappy plastic buttons that will peel and break really easily, but they't not, they're heavy and feel like some sort of metal, and are actually really very nice. I don't think I'll be replacing them after Pennsic after all. Instead I'll stock up on a stash of awesome Pennsic buttons and I'll never have to buy buttons ever again! I'm pretty happy with my purchase, they were so cheap, I've got enough for five sets of sleeves and they're quality and the right size :)

I've also been plodding along with the green cotehardie. I've got all the panels sewn up and the lining sewn in, I just need to iron the seams where the lining joins the outside, sew up the front seam, make lacing holes, hem the bottom and make sleeves. I've given up on the idea of a sleeveless cotehardie for now. That might be a project for the future.

Classes

I've had some ladies from Abertridwr nagging me for a while about sharing the secrets of tablet weaving with them. So I've been pondering volunteering to teach a class at Pencampwr. I've been hesitating because it's the weekend before the last week of uni so I'll have assignments due around that time, and it's the weekend before Hairspray opens so  have a lot of epic rehearsals scheduled. I'm day tripping on the Saturday of Pencampwr because I have rehearsal on Sunday and uni on Monday, but I definitely want to go because I want to see Abertwridwr elevated to a Barony. Anyway, last night I decided I needed to get going on one of the three assignments I have due in a couple of weeks, so I started putting together a class handout. I had intended to spend today also working on my assignment, so I finished the handout. It's a grand total of eight pages, but two of them are just links to useful websites and yarn suppliers and awesome books and stuff. I also have one page entirely dedicated to pictures, and small pictures dotted through the text. It's an awful lot of content, but I intend it to be used as a reference tool for people to refer back to. I'll cover most of the content in an interactive way with things to touch, and I want to have my small loom warped up with a simple pattern so everyone can have a go. I think the most important things I want people to take away from my class is not only the practical how-to of weaving (throw the weft, turn the cards, beat, etc), but an understanding of warp twining and what is actually happening to the threads as you weave, and how this can affect what shows up on the band. I also want to provide the tools so that these ladies can bounce off what I've taught them and seek out further knowledge in whatever specific area they're interested in. I put together my handout from a few different ones I've found on the internet, so I don't want to post it as my work, because it's not. I just didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I've just picked out the bits I thought were the most important, edited them and put them together. Anyway, since my handout was done and that's basically the most work for the class, I emailed the A&S coordinator for Pencampwr and I'm scheduled in on Saturday morning.

In other news, last week I cut out another cotehardie. This one is green. I did the same thing I did last month and sewed up the lining at the Taylors' blacksmithing/open house day last Saturday. Since then I've just sewn one panel at a time on my evenings free, and right now I have two and a half panels to go. I'll just slowly chug away at it until I'm finished. The only event I can attend between now and Pennsic is my day at Pencampwr, so there's no rush to finish.

I pre-registered for Pennsic! It's all getting very exciting, I have so many plans but it's still over three months away! I intend to buy a massive stash of findings and buckles and buttons and things, as well as things like silk yarn. I'm also going to keep an eye out for a small inkle loom, but it will have to depend on whether I can get it back to Australia or not.

I decided to buy some silk for my plain doublefaced belt. I ordered it from Treenway Silks last weekend, so I'm expecting it to arrive in about four weeks. I also bought a colour card, because I'm sick of trying to guess from the online pictures. I've been itching to warp up my loom and do some weaving, but Mister Nathan hasn't finished my shuttlebeater yet. Also, I worked out exactly how much yarn I'll need for the strap of my awesome bag of awesome, and I didn't buy enough. I ordered some more today, so it should arrive sometime in the next few weeks, before the silk. When it arrives I'll start warping. I should be able to do a continuous warp, I just need to figure out how to make it three metres long :P

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!

Buttons

I forgot to mention that last week I bought some buttons. I bought these buttons, which are plastic but they were super cheap and look good. They arrived on Monday and I'm pretty happy with them, even if I have no idea what I will use them for :P. The other buttons I bought were these ones, and I bought them specifically to replace the ones I took off my red cote and transfered to the new sphinx ones. You might notice that the listing says that the size is half an inch. Well I assumed that meant diameter, but it turns out they are actually three quarters of an inch in diameter. I have no idea what the seller was measuring, but I was expecting much smaller buttons. These will do for surcote buttons, but they are way too big for sleeve buttons, especially since I already have button holes on the red cote that fit buttons half an inch across. I gave the seller neutral feedback and ticked the box that said item was not as described, but I won't do anything else about it because they cost me a grand total of $10. I will put them away in my stash and possibly use them in the future, or give them away or something. It's more trouble than it's worth to send them back.

So it looks like I'll need to go looking for more buttons to buy so I can replace the ones on my red cote :P

Things

I decided to make sleeves for my cote. They took me an entire week because uni started getting intense and I found myself with less time for sewing. I managed to finish the cote just after midnight last Friday night (or Saturday morning :P), then I got up early on Saturday to spend the day at Perth Medieval Fayre. Here's the one picture that has surfaced of me in the cote:

It's me and Mister Nathan! It's a lovely photo of the two of us looking very elegant and stuff. I stole it from Nancy's facebook album, thanks Nancy! Just ignore the soft drink can that I'm holding. We were waiting for our lunch kebabs to cook, and it was taking ages, and the weather was really hot and sticky, and we'd been there for HOURS and there was tired. But look, boobies! I was really happy with how the cote turned out, it looks good and it was comfortable. I think that may have been the very last outing for my gold ho, because the stitching has come apart in a couple of places and the seam allowance is all frayed as well, so it's not like I could just patch it up. It went through the wash again this week and I really think it's time to say goodbye, which is a shame because I only have four linen hose, so now I only have three. Not a very useful number. I really should dig out those two in the bottom of my basket that just need sewing up, no Cutting Out required.

I spent a little bit of time on my embroidery at the Fayre, because it was something to do, but also the colours and design make it really eye catching whilst still being simple enough to work on and talk to people at the same time. I got a lot of looks of amazement and awe, especially from the lady that asked who had taught me the technique. Mister Mitchell Wymarc taught me from the internet. Also Miss Wendy helped with the bgeinner's stuff like choosing how many plys to use and how to start and finish threads. But the rest of it is pretty much self taught, because it's such a simple technique. The trick is that it LOOKS complicated :P

I haven't done anything at all project-wise this week. Uni is keeping me fairly busy, and I feel like when I'm not in class, I'm either commuting, doing homework or I'm at rehearsal. I get Easter weekend off as well as the following week. I have a couple of assignments to get mostly finished, but the work won't be building up so I should have some downtime to warp up my loom and finish my embroidery or something. My aim for this semester is to have at least one project on the go and spend at least some time each week working on it, even if it's only an hour. That way I can make slow and steady progress on stuff for Pennsic, and hopefully when I get to the end of semester I won't have to cram too much stuff into the three weeks before flying out. I also get two study weeks! TWO! I'm hoping to use the second one to Cut Out my green linen into cotehardie shaped pieces.

Right now I think I deserve a night off, so I'm going to sit in front of the tv with my embroidery, then get an early night.

THOUGHTS

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

Anyway, here's me in the cote

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

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

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