affreca

Was productive this weekend. Started off with early morning garage sales Saturday morning. Haul included four tank tops, two swords (for sale to friends for what I paid, inquire if interested), a glass pendant and a flowing water bowl for the cats (hopefully fun enough that they won't need to bat it across the room like they do the old one. I'll get used to the sound soon).

Enough time to get bagels and strawberry plants at the farmers market, get home, start chicken and still get to Lindley by 11 to meet my helpers for another round of data collection. Various mishaps insue, but data was collected and I didn't break the system. Made a batch of Kahlua and headed over to yanbaoqin's party. Ate, drank and was merry.

Woke up early this morning and lacked ambition. Decided to plant strawberry plants.

I wanted to be outside, so decided to start the great natural dyeing experiment (though the camping stove didn't work well, so ended up inside). Thanks to auroraceleste had silk scraps. Now, most books and sites I've found on natural dyeing focus on wool. Most places only talk about the commercial silk dyes. Wool produces differing colors depending on the mordant used (mordant being a metal salt you treat the material with first). So I'm curious how differing mordants affect other linen, cotton and silk. Sample time. I finished treating scraps with alum and copper sulfate.

Still was restless. I can't work any further on my kirtle mockup, due to my inability to figure out how to put in triangle gores (will ask for help on Tuesday). Decided to make a mockup of a viking apron dress. Done, minus the gores (again) and hemming.

In between, much trying to research medieval dress patterns via internet. Not trusting much of it. As long as I blend in. Someday I'll figure out what all KU has.

Which I'm spending alone. lawnchair is off being a ham for a charity race. I could have gone with him, but I really didn't feel like getting up early, because I was social last night.

I was productive yesterday. Ok, I sat around lazying until noon. And then I attacked the mess which was the living room. It could use a dusting/vacuuming/table wash, but the junk is up. I have organized my shoes (and realized I have more than I need). My goal today is to put away my clean clothes and clean up the kitchen. I need to sort through beads, but not ready for that yet. Trying to think of betting organization method or place for my beads.

Then I got ready for queza7's birthday party. The theme was catgirl/boy (I declared myself to be a catlady), so I decided to make a tail and ears to match my hair. So, off to Hancock fabrics for blue fur. I didn't find any (ended up with blue fleece), but I did find what I had been looking for earlier in the week. A bolt of white, thin, worsted wool for less than my soul. I bought it all. I shall use it for my dyeing experiment, and then make some garb out of it. Much more period than the polylinen I have now.

On the linen front, I got my swatches in the mail, and they're more see through than I want. So, off to search some more.

Ok, did any of my cable watching/SCAdian audience see the Queer Eye with a SCA guy?

EDIT After I found an actual listing, I learned that it shall air on July 18th. I may have schedule a visit to lawnchiar's office (which is how I normally watch cable when something interesting is on, and it has AC).