Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a good holiday! I've been having quite a cruisy time just lazing about, eating and going to the beach. I got a pretty good Christmas haul this year too. Things that will appear in this blog at some point in the future include a yarn swift and a big wooden embroidery frame. Actually, it's a 40cm tapestry frame. The fancy embroidery frames that were adjustable were way expensive so I ended up with this one. But that's ok, I'm quite happy to work with it :)

My man-shirt is coming along slowly, I've not worked on it until I picked it up to start the lacing holes last night. This break in the project was brought to you by the New Year's Eve costume party theme!

The theme this year is Circus! I went to Spotlight and bought a proper commercial pattern and made a tail coat! I'm going as a ringmaster, and I still need to make a little black vest and work out what sort of pants I'm gonna wear. I'm thinking tights of some sort and a pair of shorts or a skirt, since it's gonna be fairly warm and I'm already wearing a coat. Commercial patterns are difficult and the instructions are confusing. I'm quite happy to stick with making my own calico patterns from now on :) Also I apologise once again for the awful photo. I think the blur is my dirty mirror, not my camera being crap.

I wrote a list of things I want to get done before Rowany Festival, but I'm running out of time! Once the silly season is over I'll only have a couple of solid weeks before Clinical Placement begins. I'm hoping to get everything at least started, so that I won't have to sit down and do anything big like Cutting Out, I'll just be able to pick up projects and sit in front of the tv for a bit, or bring them along with me wherever I'm going.

Holidays: Week 1

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

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

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

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

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

Needle Case

I'm on holidays! Clinical year is finally finished, meaning I am now officially half way through my degree! It's all very exciting. My Nigel car got his annual bath yesterday, and I even got the vacuum out. I was going to polish him today, but I've been procrastinating because it's hot outside. I know because I pre-washed that hideous pink wool, went outside to hang it up, came back inside for a cold glass of water, then went back outside to bring the wool back in because it was dry. Then I parked myself under the airconditioner and made THIS:

I finished it! I decided to try the braiding around the edges rather than tablet weaving, and I don't think I'll every do it again. It was annoying. Even more annoying was the supposedly awesome online tutorial that Duenna Catalina recommended. I think I'm just really bad at understanding tutorials, because I've come across a few lately that I read, think they're really confusing and missing vital bits of information, then I get to the comments at the bottom which are countless people gushing about how well explained the process was and how awesome the person that wrote it is. Clearly either everyone else is wrong or I have some deficit which makes online tutorials confusing. Tutorial dyslexia or something. Anyway, after a few false starts and throwing the whole thing across the room, I managed to figure it out. What I'm not happy with is that even though I finished the seams of the linen so that there was no extra past the embroidery, there ended up being a gap between the braid and the embroidery where you can see the linen. I managed to mostly get the braid to sit on the front as close as I could get it to the embroidery, but it's not very wide so it doesn't cover much. I ended up finding a whole bunch of that green oopsie wool left over, so I lined it in that.

Before I attached it together I threaded a strip of the wool through a couple of holes that I pushed through the fabric with my awl to hold the scissors. The top flops around a bit, but they don't fall out which is awesome. I also messily attached some wool ties as well, not sure if they're going to stay or if I'll make some nice braid to replace them. The lining is smaller than the outside because I wanted it to sit nicely when the whole thing was closed instead of bunching up, so it doesn't open flat.

There we go. One project completed. Tonight I'm going out for drinks with the girls from uni to celebrate the end of our first year, so I think I'll have a nap now :)

Embroidery

I did just finish my embroidery! Yaaay!

It is a massive 12cm by 11.5cm. It took four months, but that's because there were times when I didn't touch it for a few weeks, and when I did I'd just do one length of thread and put it away again. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and now I just need to turn it into a needle case. On the weekend I might have a look through my fabric to find something suitable for lining. I'm thinking wool since it might be more durable while it's being repeatedly stabbed with needles. I might even use my hideous pink stuff :P I also think I'll finish the edges with that braided technique rather than tablet weaving. I like the idea of the herringbone pattern, which I can get with tablet weaving but things I've seen with braiding have been nice and neat. I want tassels though, so I may have to rethink this plan.

Speaking of finishing things, I have exactly three more days until I finish clinical placement. Yay! Then all I have to do is hand in my final assignment and I'm done for the year! I'm very excited.

Surprises

I went to Spotlight on Saturday. I needed to go out to run some errands, and Mum mentioned that she would be going to all the places I needed, plus Spotlight. You may remember the last time I went to Spotlight was before Pennsic and I accidently spent $100 on what I called my oopsie wool, which became my green wool surcote. NO REGRETS. Well, this time I thought I may as well buy some black drill to fix my green brocade surcote when I'm ready. But then I accidently walked past the clearance table.

PINK! HIDEOUS PINK WOOL! I think it's the same kind of flannel wool blend as my oopsie wool, but it was marked down to half price at $20 per metre. I had one of those spend $100 get $40 off vouchers, and once Mum and I added our purchases together it came to just over $100. I ended up spending $40 on three metres of black drill and two metres of the pink, so not bad in the end :) I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. My two main ideas are to line a hood with it, but I'll need a dark plainish colour like a black or brown to go with it I think. I'll have to go looking through my stash to see what I've got. The other option is to make a ho. I need another wool one, I'll be replacing the salmon pink one that shrunk with this bright pink :P

In other news, on the weekend I went to a tourney and was awarded this:

It's a token for the Order of the Star and Lily, a Kingdom A&S award that their Majesties awarded me at the royal visit weekend a couple of weeks ago, on the day that I stayed home to study. All my friends kept it seekrity seekrit for two weeks. I'm quite chuffed, I didn't expect it at all so it was a really nice surprise to be called up in court on Sunday and awarded this :)

Only 9 more sleeps until my last day of placement, then I'll be free! Then I can start doing lots of fun SCA things :)

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 :)