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.

HALP!

I'm really bad at making decisions, and tonight I have a really tough one to make, so I'm asking for some help! I've cut out all the bits I need to make a new hood with a silly hook, but I can't decide how to put them together!

Should I make it green with pink lining?

OR pink with green lining?

OR Parti-coloured?

You'll have to visualize it without the pins, and with the little shoulder gussets actually facing the right way. Silly me pinned it together so the seams were facing out. I should also mention that the edges will be finished with tablet weaving in some dark purple wool. Also I'll be wearing it with my green cotehardies, if that makes any difference. So far I have one vote from my Dad, he thinks I should make it pink with green lining. Please help by commenting or sending me an email!

Man things

Today I got a present from the postie!

Buttons! These are 2cm across, and were labelled as a Tibetan design on Aliexpress.com. I have no idea if the design is authentic or not, I think they're pretty and I got 40 of them for $10. They're a little darker than I expected, but they're the same zinc alloy as the little gold ones I got, so they're sturdy, cheap AND pretty. I think they'll do nicely for my linen man-cote.

Speaking of man-cotes, I finished my supportive shirt! I didn't think about how I don't have much arm movement in my cotehardies, and because that's due to the tightness around my torso rather than the actual sleeves themselves, I'll most likely have the same problem with this shirt. I haven't put it on yet because it's already 10:30pm and I still need to print of some stuff for clinic tomorrow. I'll most likely put it on later in the week to see how it fits and also to re-fit the red woolen man-cote over it, so I'll take photos and stuff then.

Midsummer Feast and Other Things

I finished the dress! I did wear it to the feast on the weekend and it fitted nicely and I got lots of comments from people asking if it was new because they weren't sure. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it was comfortable all night. I wasn't invisible at this event this time! There are photos up on the Aneala facebook group, but none of them show the whole dress. The hall was also really dark, so by the time I'd thought about getting someone to take a photo of me it was too dark for it to work.

In other news from the weekend, I managed to put together some documentation for my needle case! It turns out that even though lots of other SCA people around the world think this sort of needle case is a good idea, it seems it's a TySCA thing and not actually period. Although I didn't spend much time hunting for sources, I did find a whole lot of information about medieval sewing kits and how they were transported, and could not find anything at all about this sort of needle book/case thingity. If anyone has come across anything that references these in period, I'd be happy to hear about it! Anyway, I lost marks for authenticity and ended up losing to Lady Ydeneye, who entered a hand sewn Italian partlet.

BUT I did get this:

It's the Baronial level award for service. I feel kinda bad because I haven't been doing much lately since I've been busy with uni. I used to arrive early to events and help set up and stuff, but now I'm more of a consumer and just turn up to have fun. Anyway, it's a really pretty scroll. I seem to be collecting scrolls with my name misspelled, and even though it'd be easy to get them fixed, I kinda wanna keep them just to see how many different ways they can misspell my name, because so far they're all completely different. It's not like spelling is a period thing, anyway :P

So I've crossed off one thing on my list. Actually, I've crossed off one big thing, and a couple of smaller sub-things. My linen arrived from fabric-store.com on Monday, so I just gotta wash it and then it'll be ready to turn into a not-green cotehardie! I also bought a yard of the new even-weave linen, and it's niiiiice. I don't think I'll use it for embroidery because there are still slubs and the weave is pretty tiny, but it feels lovely and soft so I might make a couple more little chemises out of it. I also bought some buttons! I went back to aliexpress.com because I was so pleased with the little gold buttons I bought last year, and found some nice cheap buttons I can use for the linen man-cote I wanna make. They haven't arrived yet, but hopefully when they do they'll be just as nice as the little gold ones.

This week I'm hoping to get my supportive shirt finished so I can re-fit my red wool man-cote to go over it, and start making the linen one. Also, I've been invited to teach some tablet weaving stuff down in the Canton of Dragon's Bay in a couple of weeks, so I should probably start thinking about what I'm going to do for that. I have a whole morning, so I might use the handout from my one hour class, and then set everyone up with a few cards and some yarn so they can have a go playing with some doubleface diamonds and stuff.

So once again my plans did not go according to plan. I went down south last weekend and had an awesome time fishing, but the rest of the time was spent very unproductively. On Saturday we went into town to run some errands and stopped at just one winery because we couldn't very well go down south and not visit a winery. That all took ages, and by the time we got back to the house it was time to get all the fishing stuff set up, and couldn't be bothered anything so I read some of my book. Then we went FISHING and it was all very exciting and I did catch TWO FISHES and we were out there until midnight. Sunday was a lazy day in which we took the puppy to the beach and watched her frolic in the water and then I got stuck in a hot nap. There was a bit of groggy happening. But I figured I'd dragged my sewing all the way down there, I better do some, so I stitched the front seam of my dress together. That's it. Buttons and buttonholes got done on Tuesday and Wednesday, and yesterday I fixed the sleeves. Then last night I unpicked the sleeves again, because the top of the sleeves have holes that are waaay too small. I don't remember the dress being tight around the armpits, I'd just assumed that the sleeves were fine except they cut in at my elbows. But when I tried the dress on the sleeves were stupidly tight around the armpits, which means I need to add some fabric into the sleeves to make the holes bigger. Stupid sleeves are stupid. Hopefully I'll get them done tonight, because the feast is tomorrow and I hate rushing to finish garb. Also I completely forgot that I was going to enter the A&S competition at the feast, so I haven't even looked at documentation. I suppose if everything else is done then I'll see if I can put some together tomorrow afternoon.

I also took my embroidery down south in case I felt like working on it. I didn't, so it stayed in its bag. When I got home I took it out, and found that it didn't survive the journey very well. It's as if something was catching on the threads and pulling at them. Sadfaaace. There's a good four or five spots that will need to be pulled out and redone, so all of a sudden I'm feeling less motivated to work on it. I foresee that it's gonna be put aside for a bit while I work on other stuff.

Well, what an exciting blog post. Hopefully I won't be invisible at this event, and I'll end up with some nice pictures of me in my fixed up dress that I can post here :)

Usefulness

LOOKIT WHAT I DID DO!

It's my brocade surcote all reshaped with lining and stuff! :D Now  just need to close up the front seam, sew the buttons and buttonholes, and fix up the sleeves. Yaaay I've finally done something useful. I should get it done this weekend, I'm going down south with Mister Nathan to do some fishing, and I intend to spend the rest of the time sewing. That means the dress will be finished in plenty of time for the Midsummer feast next weekend, I might even find the time to write up some documentation for my needle case and enter it in the A&S competition.

The End of Holidays

My holiday is over. I've made some progress! On my embroidery that is.

I'm really pleased with how it's turning out. The only thing is that I'm making a rectangle so that when it's finished I'll fold it in half to make the pouch, with the fold being the bottom of the pouch, which means that the bottom of the embroidery will be one of the top edges, which means that the green motif will be upside down! If I'd been clever and realised this in advance, I would've stitched half of it upside down so that when I folded it both sides of the pouch would have motifs facing the same way. I guess I could still make it so the motifs all face the same way, and it probably doesn't matter that they'll be upside down because it's just me that's decided what the right way and the wrong way is. It might bother me though. These are the type of important things that I need to ponder when I should be doing other things, like prepping for clinical placement tomorrow.

Yep, my holidays are all gone and I've not done anything at all. I can't really bring myself to care all that much either. I'll probably start caring when I'm a fortnight out from Rowany Festival, completely overloaded with uni work and I suddenly decide that I just can't face going without three new cotehardies and hoods. As wardrobes go, I've got a pretty good one for a week at a camping event. I also know that what I have now fits into half a suitcase. Even though I have enough outfits in half a suitcase to wear something different every day, it doesn't fill a suitcase so clearly I am failing at SCA.

I did make a really big effort about a week and a half ago to work on my list. I pulled apart my green brocade surcote. Sleeves came off, buttons came off, the whole front seam was pulled apart and the hems along the front and around the neckline where unpicked. Then it got bundled up into a pile on the couch next to my black drill and my cotehardie pattern, all ready to start actually working on it. And there it remains. I'd actually like to wear it to the Midsummer Feast on the first of February, which is two weeks away, so I really should start working on it. I think about working on it nearly every day. If I'd done as much work as I'd thought about, I'd have three brocade surcotes all ready to wear. Also, it looks like the extra side panels I put in a while ago are staying, seeing as I snipped the top of the gores that I attached them to. I was going to pull them out because they don't really do much, but that would mean shortening the gores and I already learned that short gores are a bad idea. So they're staying. I'm not going to finish any of the seams though, because I'm putting a lining in they should be fine.

In other news, I did buy some linen this morning. I bought another lot of the Autumn Gold colour from fabric-store.com to remake my gold cotehardie. I love the colour and I never wear the one I currently have because I made it from an earlier pattern and it's just so uncomfortable. I spent quite a bit of time adjusting it and making new sleeves for it too, but I think I'm just going to have to write it off. It looks really good, but I never wear it because it's not worth the uncomfortable. I also end up with the points of my shoulders and the fronts of my armpits being really sore after I've worn it despite the fact that I've cut down the armholes multiple times. I have a bunch of cotehardies that have contributed to my learning process and helped me get to my current pattern and comfortable wardrobe, and I guess that's worth the time and effort it took to make them even though I'm never going to wear them again.

In other news, remember a few entries back I told you to stay tuned for Awesome Bag the Sequel: Awesome Box? I also bought a yard of a new linen that fabric-store.com has released. It's the same weight as the ILO19 that I've been using for my cotehardies, but it's a better quality and an even weave fabric. It's quite a bit more expensive per yard, so I thought I'd just buy a yard of it to use for embroidery and see what it's like. Anyway, the point is that it's not a square even weave, which is the kind of linen that the extant example my project will be based on has.

Hopefully the next time I post I will have actually done some stuff rather than just thinking about doing some stuff, which should be far more interesting to read about :)