baby surprise jacket

So the jacket looks really cute and I made a toque to go with it.  They don't know if it's going to be a boy or girl so it's in yellow.  I found some wooden buttons with a snowflake design on it.  I figure that's neutral enough and boy enough if need be.  I like the buttons.  I think I'll go and get more for myself ;-)
The neck hole looks really small, but I followed the instructions so I have no idea what went wrong.  I figure they'll just have to leave the top button undone.

holiday knitting

So since I don't have enough projects at this time of year my boss asked me for a favour.  She's having her first grandchild and asked if I could knit a sweater and hat for the baby to come.  She wants it for christmas of course :-P  How could I say no?

I found a pattern for the "baby surprise jacket" in my Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Workshop book.  On Ravelry there are something like 1600 people who have done this pattern.  In the knitting podcast that I listen to (yeah I know how geeky that sounds but I don't care, ha ha), by Kelley Petkun of Knit Picks, highly recommends it.  She's done several of them over the years.  I even found some YouTube videos with tips and tricks to make more sense of the vague wording of the pattern.
http://youtu.be/xMirlP_YuXo

So far I'm almost finished the first batch of decreases and I'll be onto the next stage of the sweater today.  I would have liked to have done stripes or a variegated yarn but she wanted plain jane so I guess I'll just have to make a second one for another bundle of joy somewhere down the road.  There are always more baby showers to go to right?

I used Bernat Satin Sport weight so it's super soft to the touch.  I wanted to avoid wool as I didn't know how they'd feel about that.  Some people are funny about wool.  I figured the washability was cool and you could throw it in the dryer without worry.  This line of yarn is a little fuzzy but I don't think it'll be an issue of wear for a baby as they grow so fast.  I hope they like it.

knitting

I've been working on some knitting projects but I can't post them as they are presents for this coming yule.  However, I've also just finished a baby hat for the charity I work with called LeeLee Hats.  I have a feeling I'll have to make a few of these due to the cuteness factor.

I don't have a baby to model it so this little guy will have to do.

this year's garden results

I'm rather disappointed with this year's garden.  It wasn't well organized, the weeds got away from me to the point of ridiculous.  I'm sure my neighbour with the perfect grass and robotic like garden has been cursing me.  I have a  plan for next year to downsize the garden in such a way to help with productivity and my management of it.  I'm going to try the "square-foot gardener method".  It should be less labour intensive.  I'd love to set up my gravity feed watering system but I'll have to see if I can afford it.

This year resulted in only two pumpkins, dried beans, some tomatoes and a handful of beets.  I did get a large batch of weld for dying.  Each year I learn what to change and  what works where.  Since this moving I've had to learn what works for our new location.

Sprang

So in  my travels I found that the local library has Collingwood's "The techniques of Sprang".  I began taking notes and it really helped me to get a clear image of technique.  A friend of mine showed interest in learning so I began trying to research more in depth to help her (and let's be honest I can let a fiber art alone to save me).

A year or two ago I took a class on basic sprang and another on circular warp sprang.  On the left is part of my circular warp from the class.  I still need to reach that part in the book to see what it can add to my understanding.  On the right is my playing with double intertwining at the top with single intertwining near the bottom.  It doesn't look much different when relaxed.  The difference shows when it's stretched making a hexagon as opposed to a diamond shape.  I think it would make a nice hair net.

Results of the Coif

So I found that the coif tended to slide back with the weight of my hair (no surprise there as I have a lot of it).  I used bobby pins to hold it on which seems to work well enough.  I meant to bring my hat pins but forgot them in the rush of packing for the day.  I was happy to find I still had a small black velvet cap, as I thought I had sold them all years ago.  It definitely can use the blackwork on the cap to tone down the white-ness.  Other than that I'm quite satisfied with the result.  Maybe I'll add it to the stash of merchant repertoire.

I didn't bring enough bobby pins to pin the coif, hat and my hair so you can see my braids pulling the coif back from the weight of it, but if I pin the braids up first it holds quite well.

Elizabethan Coif

This Saturday is our local event and I'm in charge of running the fencing for the day.  So I may or may not fence myself.  While I'm fencing I wear Elizabethan age clothing to suit the blade and fencing style we use in the SCA, even though my persona is 7th century Irish.  The thing I've been missing is headwear and if I don't feel like changing after fencing for court I didn't want my fuzzy hair to do it's "troll doll" impression.  So I looked up the Attack Laurel's recreation (http://www.extremecostuming.com/reproductions/vacoift281975.html), the Blackwork Guild (http://www.theblackworkguild.com/COSTUMES-MEMBERS%202.html) and this last site which gave me another reference for sizing (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/00401/BBAB9B66128397DA499B1E6AF8A0DDEA5676ABD2.html).
There was no way I was embroidering a coif in time for this weekend, but I did see reference to plain coifs anyway.  That'll do for me to decide if I like them.  I tend to get headaches if my hair is too concentrated in one spot on my head (very thick hair).  It looks pretty good so here's to hoping.

Spinning history

So I taught a "how to spin with a drop spindle" class on the weekend and I kind of got my brain stuck on that path.  I bought a "Spin Off" magazine today and it had an article describing stone carvings clearly showing a spinning wheel in China maybe 2000 yrs old.  Cool, that would rewrite history a bit.  It's a rimless wheel with a treadle no less.  Normally, it's said that the invention of the wheel is from China or India 500 to 1000 yrs ago.

Now I'm collecting info about the history of spinning wheels in the hopes to have a clearer vision of how and where they developed.  I also took a class on "early medieval spinning wheels" at Pennsic.  Although not the best presentation, it did give me the bug to find out more.  I think that would be a fascinating addition to our medieval demos that we do every year.

Again, I stand at the edge of a cliff ready to take another step thinking "what am I getting into now?"
;-P

my first dress pants

So I bought a commercial pant pattern a few months back but didn't have the time to mess with it before the "Pennsic push".  It's a slow time of year for me minus the holiday stuff I'll have to start on, and I figured a good time to play.  I used some green linen I had in my stash to try out the pattern.  I made some adjustments to the pattern pieces based on Nancy Zieman's "Pattern Fitting with Confidence".  Mostly I just shortened some stuff.  Apparently this pattern is made for people over 6 feet tall, lol.  I'm still too long by about 4".  Based on what I wanted (pleated front, curved waistband with pockets) I purchased Simplicity pattern 2342.  It has three designs to choose from as well.  A slim fit, average and curvy.  I figured I had some good odds of finding the right one.  Wow, those are wide legs.  Let me just bring those in by another 4" around.  There, that's a little better.  I'm not quite sure what happened in the process but after following the pattern the pants could slide over my hips while done up.  Hmm.  Okay, this is either a case of people lying to themselves about their measurements and the company is placating them,  it's a crappy pattern, or its me.  Maybe a combo, but I'm not sure.  I don't tend to use as big of a seam allowance as it recommends, but this time I did it as it said so it wouldn't  be that.

I think they made it so huge to make sure that if the person screws up they have room to correct, but man that makes a lot of adjustment time for the rest of us.  I had to remove the top of the pockets to deepen the pleats.  I took in as much as I dared at the side seam until I was afraid of losing my pockets entirely!  Now there's too much fabric in the front but there isn't much I can do about it at this point.  I shortened the rise by a few more inches so I don't look like one of those teenagers with my pants fitting all funky.  It's hard to walk with the crotch length at your knees, lol.

I only need to add the inside layer to the waist band, hem the bottom (I'll get someone to measure that for me), and re finish the inside seams.  Voila!  Maybe I'll just reverse engineer these pants to make the next pair?  I do want to become better at using commercial patterns.  I think I'll play around some more with Nancy's methods.  I was afraid to make too many adjustments for fear of making them too small, but obviously I wasn't bold enough.

Knitting

So I'm reading through Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Workshop book (http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0942018001) and it's kind of a knit-a-long.  It asks you to knit a very large swatch for preparation for a sweater in the round.  I figured I'm knitting 5" in the round with 80 sts (stitches) so why not have some fun.  I need to wash the swatch so it's not like I can pull it out and reuse it for the sweater.  I thought, I need a new purse.  I love doing colour work and want to add it to the sweater.  A while back I found a chart for the Norwegian star pattern and added it to the 5" swatch.  Voila, a new purse after I line it and add a handle.

more research

I was listening to my audio book of Richard Rutt's History of Hand Knitting while spinning and found an interesting line.  So I looked it up in my book version on the shelf (I know such a nerd) and saw references to wire knitting.  I assumed they were referring to the "viking wire weaving" I'd seen in the SCA so I thought, finally some historical references to back the claims up.  I'd been skeptical about the origins of it so I looked up the items I could in reference to this craft.  No luck.  The references are not the "viking wire weaving" that seems so prevalent in the SCA and I'm still waiting to see the evidence.

The items in question that you may be curious about referred to the Birka digs.  In Inga Hagg's book she has beautiful pictures of the finds and none of them are the jewellry cording that is the SCAdianism item.  There's a pdf available if you search Inga Hagg called "Fornvannen 1971".  I'd found the snippet of the book a while back when searching for Rus costuming info and I'm still translating the text.  The appliqued metal designs that is believed to be on a caftan-like coat are beautiful and I saw some replicas at "Viking U Like" at Pennsic.  I had a discussion with him about them and I think he was happy to have an intelligent conversation with another person who knew their stuff :-)

Next was some viking relics at Croy and Ballinaby in Scotland.  The Trewiddle hoard in Cornwall and some irish finds at Tara and Clonmacnoise.  It makes reference to Byzantine examples but I can't find anything with such a wide search word.  Finally, the Ardagh chalice in Dublin where the underside has some metal braidwork designs applied to it.

If anyone finds anything,  Please, let me know.  I'd hate to think that the SCA is promoting (unintentionally, but wrongly) another SCAdianism that is not historical.

Addendum:  the word trichinopoly is applied to the "wire knitting" and I tried this search as well.  Apparently that's the name of a city and when combined with weaving that brings up the wire weaving but still no historical images.  There are claims of examples but nothing concrete or specific.  There are plenty of twisted metal jewellry examples.

On a more positive note, I've added to my collection of bling.  I'm working towards some accurate Irish costuming and came across a ring pin at Pennsic.  Happy, happy, joy, joy...

The penannular brooches are much better known and I have some of those but I thought the earlier ring pin would be a nice alternative and I can show people different options in early period costuming.

Pennsic projects

I'm just about through washing all the laundry from two weeks at Pennsic.  I taught naalbinding twice this year and had some nice class sizes of 12 and 8, as opposed to the 40 that showed up last year.  That was nerve wracking.  The fibery-goodness day went quite well.  I was in the natural dyeing tent and had my first successful indigo dyebath.  I wanted to make some more green with my weld and that turned out just fine too.  I've discovered that logwood with alum makes a very pretty purple.  Here's the indigo in the dyebath and out of it:

People found the "magical colour change" of indigo fascinating.  It actually made a really good demo and I think I should do it for local demos too.  I think it would make a really good educational and memorable day for some people.  The colour change is cool and reminds me of a Hello Kitty toy I had as a kid that changed colours in hot/cold water ;-)

pattern hunting

So I bought a simplicity pattern for dress pants.  I have a book by "Sewing with Nancy" that shows you step by step how to adjust patterns and I wanted to try and see if I can come up with a dress pant pattern just for little old me.  As I was hunting I came across a Vogue pattern that was labeled "couture".  Is that not a bit of a, oh I don't know,  Lie?  It's a Vogue pattern for goodness sake.  That's only a step away from buying off of the rack.  The waistband was straight (unlike the curved band design I picked up from the Simplicity pattern) and the only thing that made it adjustable was the size of the pleats.  sigh.  Why are words so misused?  Don't know what the term Couture means?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute_couture
It's actually pretty specific.  I can't qualify my stuff as couture even though I make to order with specifics to my client, pay attention to detail, and use quality materials.
So if you see this label somewhere.  Chances are they're using it wrong and know very well what it should refer to.  Just my two cents.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled sewing program.  I flew through four tunics yesterday and four pairs of pants today.  Tomorrow's a day off as we're heading out to an event.  Maybe I'll bring some hand work or something.  I just had my tattoo filled in on my upper arm and it's still healing so fencing would unfortunately probably be a bad idea.  At this rate I won't fence until Pennsic.  I'll take the missed occasions rather than an infection though.  So be it.  It looks good.  We just have to finish it later after the wedding I'm standing in.  I don't think a scabbed and peeling tattoo would look too nice in the wedding photos ;-)

the lady in the blue dress

Well, the bridesmaid dress I needed to make is finished.  I added another layer than the pattern said to in the skirt to fill it out a bit.  It really needs some proper crinolines to make it lay right, but I hate wearing those and I'm not going to suggest it to "the powers that be" for the day.

 I have a black belt to go with the dress.  Hopefully that will help with the blue-ness :S

Upcoming Pennsic rush

As per usual I have a pile of Pennsic sewing to do in a short period of time.  We'll see how many commissions actually come through.  I just finished working out details with an online customer and I'll be delivering that one at Pennsic so save on shipping and time (and my sanity).  There are people that have told me they want stuff for Pennsic but I haven't received specifics for them.  It could be a pretty comfy Pennsic if it all comes through, but pretty hectic pre-Pennsic.  I started prepping for the pile of sewing I do have already to get that out of the way, and of course I'm working on the bridesmaid dress.  The bodice is together with the lining and surprise, surprise I need to tweak it again.  I did find the shoes and belt to go with the outfit today.  Good.  I hate shopping for shoes. :-P

sewing adventures

Well, for those who know me will see this as obvious:  I don't use commercial patterns.  I design my own.  By the time I adjust and correct what's off on a commercial pattern to fit me, I might have as well just looked on the pattern cover picture and done it from scratch.  This time there is no option.  I'm a bridesmaid in a wedding and I'm making my own dress.  It's a 1952 vintage vogue pattern and if they made their dresses like this in 1952 I think they would have lost the war.  There is so much wasted fabric in this pattern it's ridiculous.

It's also built for a barbie doll apparently...I size 16 will not have a 30" waist. Period.  After seam allowance that's what the paper pattern measured.  I'm serious.  On the other hand it had a 40" chest.  Even with a corset I can't imagine fitting into that waist.  A 10" difference?  What is that a J cup?  Anyway everything is cut out except for the skirt lining.  We will commence the sewing portion of the program momentarily.  Please stand by...

this year's garden

This year I'm focusing a bit more on the garden.  Giving it some more structure you might say.  I'm still going to have "the three sisters" (that's beans, corn and squash), tomatoes, lettuce, kale, leeks, brussel sprouts, hot peppers, strawberries and a bunch of herbs.  I'm blocking out the gardens with bricks and plan to lay down some pea gravel on the pathways to reduce mud and weeds.  Sheet mulching is my friend, and free newspapers for me to do it make even more friends ;-)  I may put some amaranth again because it was so pretty at the back fence but it didn't yield as much as I had hoped.  I'd need a field of it to feed me for more than a couple of meals, darn it.  Same with the quinoa

Now that's the back garden.  My flowers are slowly expanding.  The Echinacea came back nicely and I should be getting some daisies from my mom, herbs from Diane, and peppermint from David.  Now if I can just get the water collection system up and running.  Why do most things have to cost money?  No fair :-P

warp weighted loom project

I just finished taking my lozenge twill/ broken diamond twill off of my warp weighted loom.  It's being washed gently after taking thorough measurements for warp and weft density, width and length of the fabric and amount of shrinkage.  Not as perfect as I would have liked but I learned a LOT on this project which makes me very happy.  I still have a nice size piece of weaving to use for its original purpose.  A front apron for my viking age costumes.  That'll be a cool demo/teaching piece.
I'm in the right range for threads per inch of that time although on the lower end of course.  My next plan is to do a simpler weave with my hand spun, which should give me a finer fabric than using commercial yarn.

cosplay outfits

Well, the cosplay outfits for Full metal alchemist are finally complete.  It took me four and half days in working hours to complete the two outfits of Mustang and Hawkeye.  I would have liked nicer stars for on the epilets but sometimes you have to go with what you can find.

Hopefully I won't have to make any adjustments to the outfits and they'll be off my plate.  On to the next project! *whooshes away with the super cape flapping in the wind!*

New blog, new beginning

I'm beginning this blog to specifically chart my projects in sewing, weaving, dying, spinning and the like.  Most of the projects will relate to the medieval re-creation but not all.  I hope you enjoy watching the progress of some of my more ridiculously sized projects.  If you're going to do something you might as well go all the way and make it big, right?
At the moment I'm working on some cosplay outfits from commission and I'll post pics when that's done.  I'm still weaving away a broken diamond twill on my warp weighted loom and that will be for an arts and science competition at the beginning of May.  I have a woolen A-Frame tent that I'm hand stitching that I need to pick back up.  My knitted Eleanora di Toledo stockings are slowly making progress.  I just got my hands on a four-shaft floor loom and as soon as the twill is done on my warp-weighted, I'm going to try setting up the floor loom.  I have a couple of techniques of tablet weaving that I've set up but haven't tried yet.  Hand stitching an early Irish leinne that I will be embroidering.  There are quite a few more projects in the brain but that's a good starter for now.