In which Saraidh gets a teensy bit distracted

I will say this for demo-ing... I would not have been motivated to spend 6 solid hours spinning if it hadn't been for the Caponi Demo last Sunday. My hands didn't entirely forgive me for several days, and I'm pretty sure that the results on the spool are rather desperately overtwisted, but hey, I have a full bobbin of lace-weight Icelandic singles to show for it, and proof that I can in fact demonstrate effectively even when the wheel is set up for lace.

I've also picked up a bit of mojo on the knitting front and am in mid-insect on a lovely preying mantis, and I must say that even though she is currently just a thorax, abdomen and three legs, I am charmed. The only reason I'm not done yet is that I haven't yet laid hands on the "chenille stems" so she can have properly posable legs.

But in the meantime, I've drifted slightly off my usual fiber track and am taking a class at the MN Center for Book Arts. It's a 6 week intro to a whole range of skills. Thus far we've made paper and tried marbling. The next couple of weeks will be devoted to bookbinding, and after that we try out the letterpress. I'm having lots of fun. I wasn't originally a fan of marbling, but the process is a blast and having my own personalized results is growing on me. However, I don't know that I'm ever going to love the results on white or the acid green paper. But since we've made this stuff, I'm going to take at least a few pieces with me next week and try making it into a single project. Might as well, since I have no idea what I'd do with all these papers otherwise. Maybe I will make sure all my Christmas presents are on the small side and wrap packages in it.

Onwards!

Having finished the beading project and sent it off, I have been having the slow realization that I do actually want to get back to knitting after a fallow period in that arena. I discovered that I had a Blackberry Ridge sock kit in the stash. (I could've sworn it was leftovers from Mom, but she says she's never seen it before in her life.)

I made it through the first six inches, aka the pattern at the top of the sock, and then realized that the yarn is going to produce a really warm sock which isn't washable, and maybe I really wanted to make mitts instead.

So I decided to take the stripe sequence from the foot, and made mitts instead. It didn't go completely smoothly - I learned that I don't especially enjoy dealing with stripes and after a few attempts, it's still a bit baggy around the thumb, but it fits well, and I really like how it looks.

But I've got a lot of mitts because I like making them and can only use so many, so there's a limit to how likely I am to use them extensively. I'm toying with the idea of putting it in the Weaver's Guild Fiber Fair. However, there's always the question of copyright when selling one's work. I absolutely admit that my mitt is based heavily on the original kit. The first six inches are made exactly according to the pattern. On the other hand, I ended up with an entirely different category of finished object. So now I'm curious as to exactly how much deviation from the original there needs to be before it's reasonable to consider it something else. I don't know that I care enough to look into it especially, but I find the question kind of interesting.

And once I'm done with the other mitt - I really must finish both before I allow myself to start something else - I have finally given in and bought yarn for the Hwaet! socks that I've been eyeing for months, so I finally bought the pattern, along with the pattern for Lalique.

Side note, not related to fiber: I've also dabbled in calligraphy lately, and completed my first scroll text for Thalhurst so that we could get his scroll to him before he left on 8/4. It's becoming pretty clear that this is a skill that it's worthwhile for me to cultivate, so I would guess this won't be the last time. hard to believe that was two weeks ago already. Funny how time flies when you're on vacation...

Done!

For certain values of done, anyway. Last night I finished the beading. In case anybody has been following the saga of the beading needles on Facebook, the final coda to the whole silly thing was discovering last night that the beading needles I'd bought explicitly for the purpose are too big for the pearls. *facepalm* I had once again misplaced the needle I'd been using, so the final product is a bit heavier on beads as opposed to pearls than originally intended. However, the good news is that I found my original needle eventually and was able to apply a couple more rounds of peacock pearls, and it's not like the pearls aren't fabulous. Mmmm tiger's eye and gold beads...

Tonight, along with a bit of official business, I will be getting together with Katja so we can do the layout and get the orphery applied, and send the whole thing off to Pennsic. We're hoping to be able to send it by courier rather than having to resort to mail, but it'll get there one way or another...

I'm hoping somebody will post pictures of the final result, because I'm convinced it's going to be great. If so, I'll either post them or a link.

Oh, and just in case this week needed any more deadlines, I ended up doing my very first calligraphy project last night for court tonight. Whee!

Beads, beads and more beads

After spending Thalhurst's going away party on Friday applying cord and a solid push on Saturday, even despite misplacing, replacing and then finding my beading needle, I've got three strips with the cord all applied, and all the pearls and garnets on. Now I just need to make some aesthetic decisions about which beads I want and it should be wrapped up in about an evening.

Right now, that looks to be Tuesday. Tonight I've promised to help Sefa move, and Wednesday is folk moot.

Progressing

Work continues. Last night I took the project on the road to Nordskogen's Wednesday meeting to much acclaim. Everybody wanted to know what I was working on and was very wowed. I may have to borrow this plan for some of my own garb in the future.

I got all the pearls done on the second strip, and just barely started applying cord to the third. The second still needs a few beads, but it's all but finished.

Also fabulous was that Constanza was there, likes the design and decided to order a whole bunch more pearls to be mailed directly to me, which means that the pearling will be uniform and I will have no fear of running out. Yay!

After meeting, I went and hauled boxes for Idonea, Crispin and Sefa as part of phase 1 of their move. As a result, I currently have all of Crispin's archery equipment in my car. Bwah ha ha! *ahem* (If you know Crispin, it will come as no surprise that while Constanza may have wound up with custody of the title of his car, he readily admitted that the archery gear was significantly more important to him.)

I can sometimes work on projects while on meetings where I'm mostly listening, but sadly today I'm hosting, which is very much not conducive, and after work I will be (probably ;-) giving Crispin back his gear and helping with the move, so I don't know how much progress I'm likely to make today. But there is still lunch, so I'm going to try...

New photo

As noted, at this point I'm down to about half the beading left on the second strip, and I'm pondering end treatments. I kind of like the wrapped one, rather than the splayed...

And pearls!

At this point, posting pictures is going to get a little repetitive, but I'll try anyway, if my phone cooperates. With a couple of nights of solid work, I've now got one complete strip and a second one with all the cord and half the beads applied.

Even more bling arrived in the mail yesterday, so the variety of beads has gone up substantially. Now the pattern is garnet, grey pearl, garnet, crystal beads, garnet, gold beads, garnet, tiger's eye, garnet, green pearls, garnet, small gold beads, garnet. It's difficult to get a photo of the whole length, but I like the beading pattern. There's enough regularity with the pearls and garnets that it's all unified even with the variety of materials.

Pretty soon, I need to start thinking in more detail about how this is going to interact with the body of the garment. My plan is that the long strips I'm currently working on will be the vertical panels on the front and back, so now I need to work on the bars of the Ys. I'm assuming the total requirement will be four strips - two long ones and two short ones back and front. Hopefully if that's off it's that we need less, not more. I don't think pieceing this would be fun or very easy to disguise. On the plus side, the way I've been working, the motifs are separate, so it would just be a matter of cutting at the narrowest point and securing the ends of the cords.

I've also been having conversations with Annetje, and we think that the best plan is to use a narrow band of red velvet so that it ends up being about 5 inches wide. That means there will be 3 inches of gold trim, and an inch of red velvet on either side.

Onwards!

Now with beads!

I've started beading and I'm very pleased with how it's turning out thus far.

I'm using Constanza's pearls for the top and bottom curves. For the accents I'm alternating a set of garnets with either peacock pearls and crystal beads. Meaning it goes garnet, peacock pearls, garnet, crystals, garnet... and so on.



And don't worry, it's only askew against the red because I was using the velvet as a backdrop. It's not attached yet. :-)

Bling has arrived!

The velvet and various bits of bling just arrived on my doorstep, so here's a quick photo what the band looks like against the velvet. (And my couch. You're likely to see a lot of my couch as this project moves along...)




I think this is going to be really impressive.

Chasuble project

THL Dahrien Cordell is being elevated to the Pelican this Pennsic, and he has asked people to create a chasuble as a thank you gift for Fr. Olav, the priest who has agreed to say Mass for him. I and a bunch of other folks volunteered, and Annetje, who's running the project asked me to design the orphery, which is the ornate embellishment which overlays the body of the chasuble. Due to time constraint of needing to finish by August 9 and preferably earlier so I can send it to Pennsic complete, while I want as much period accuracy as we can manage, realistically we're not going to be able to get much heavy duty embroidery in place by August 9th.

So those are the constraints. On the upside, people have been very generous with materials and I think I understand what the overall vision of the project is. Handmade, period style, with as much bling as we can manage in the limited time we have.

My hope has been to find fabric that will help us get as much bling as we can for the effort. In this case, I have a gold fabric which happens to have the sort of S curves that Annetje asked for as part of the design. It'll be going over a wider piece of red velvet, which will then be applied to the gold silk body of the chasuble itself. We've decided on a Y shape like the St. Bernard of Clairvaux chasuble.



I decided to try to add some visual definition to the fabric with black satin cord.





I'm pretty happy with the effect. It does definitely make the pattern pop from across the room as compared to the plain fabric.

Once I finish applying the cord, the next phase is beading. Constanza was good enough to donate several strands of pearls, and more will be arriving with the velvet, plus garnets, and possibly gold beads and peacock pearls. So this is my somewhat optimistic beading layout idea. I don't think I'm going to finish it all, front and back, but if I get the arms of the Y finished I'll be pretty happy.




My Paint skills are pretty nonexistent so don't zoom in too close, but this should convey the idea of what I have in mind. The white dots are pearls, and the red and grey are garnet, peacock pearls and whatever else ends up in the final package of bling.

So that's the plan. Now I just need to make sure everybody else is okay with it and make it happen.

I'm recently back from Gulf Wars, which was a lot of fun. I took a class on flax prep which mostly confirmed that I do understand the basics of the process, but I didn't take advantage of the main opportunity, which was to try it myself. On the third hand, it did give me an interesting opportunity to see one improvised method of making a flax break which looked very useful ...for when we have a bigger house. I do not want to buy a workbench just so I can fill it with baseboard "teeth", mostly because then I still have to store it.

I was very pleased that Caoilfhionn won the first-given (and therefore maybe biggest?) prize at the Open A&S for the goldwork squirrels I commissioned for her. Yay! And now I will have award winning squirrels!

I also talked to Nikolena briefly at lunch as we were packing up to go, and she told me that she's planning to bring all her silk gear with her to Lilies, which is why I'm now changing my opinion of the war from near-complete lack of interest to Want! I appear to have (pun intended) gotten the bug. Alas. I don't have a particular interest in Lilies, but I do very much want to do more silk reeling with Nikolena. Even more intriguing, a silk worker from the Midrealm is being Laureled at Pennsic and she and Michael Cook will be doing a silk reeling demo in front of the vigil, which also significantly ups my interest in going to Pennsic.

Actually, I'm pretty seriously considering trying to raise worms. It turns out that it's possible to buy Silkworm Chow as well as eggs and such, which gets me past my major objection, which is that I don't have a food supply on hand.

Google has found me a site that will sell me 1 ton (minimum) of cocoons for $9,000. That might be a wee bit excessive unless I decide that my real ambition is to remake the Northshield pavilion in silk. Doing the math, that ends up being about a million cocoons, assuming we're talking metric tons. I bet if we emptied the garage there would be space...

More seriously, I am probably going to make an order from Treenway soon, because right now I have a bag with about 25 cocoons and that's just not enough to really bother setting the whole kit up for. I just have to figure out how many I actually want. And it sounds like Giulia might also be interested, so bulk pricing is possible-to-likely.