stellar_muddle: (Default)
We had some purple silk fabric - perfect for roman tunica.

No can find.
We found apple green silk (2.5m so too short), brown silk (2.8m so still too short, but might get way with it), ivory bridal silk (too stiff and Z had bags that anyway), coarse green silk (too heavy and more Z's thing again), green silk/linen satin (too stiff), brown silk/linen satin (ditto), white tussa silk in various forms.
And large amounts of wool.
But no purple silk.
Did we give it away?
stellar_muddle: (Default)
Doco on the battle of Trafalgar - must be a repeat given daylight tv.
(Upon checking, Battlefield Detectives, which has been rather irritating in some of its coverage of various medieval battles - shonky archery testing etc. This one appears more fun. Too late to tape though.)

But they actually still have one of the sails from the Victory.

They want to know the sort and rate of fire she was under as the lead ship in the charge.

So, what else are you going to do than make a replica flax canvas sail, get a cannon and fire different types of shot at it... And then play match the hole types and shapes.

I wanna do that...

Aside: Wonder where they got their flax canvas from. Would be great for tents... What? What do you mean enough canvas?
stellar_muddle: (Default)
Thurs: rehenna time. Used cheap henna from Brisbane. Not as good as Piccos. At least it isn't a couple inches of brown regrowth though.

Fri: Z back to work so I spent the day surfing, reading up on hoods (bloody lirapipes), and sewing. Phonecall re job applications: interview (for both at once) on the 19th - they will send more details later. Evening started well heading out to dinner, but very bad stomach cramps (starting as we were heading there) put an end to that for me - profuse sweating and an interesting shade of white/green didn't help. Rest of the evening was spent curled up with a book and direct access to the loo. Kicked Z off back to rejoin people since I wasn't going to be scintilating company*. Sounds as though people had fun and the food was good.

Sat: Up and about but still feeling odd with temperature sensing screwed. Tour of antique shops. Some suprisingly cheap, others amazingly expensive. Various people looted and I resisted a book. Made mediocre kangaroo casserole for dinner and the rest of the evening was so uneventful that I can't remember what happened.

Sun: No longer feeling odd. This is good. General fortnightly cleaning frenzy. Met with one of my NZ PhD supervisors (over here visiting family) to discuss a paper or two in progress. The ratio is currently one paper to 2-3 years discussion, so must be about time to pull finger out again. Need to arrange meeting after CF. Checked fabric chests (yay for lists at the top of each chest) and located linen for undertunic. Gosh we have some nice wools and silks we should get around to doing something with. Not quite at the stage of dragging them out and rolling in them, but definitely handling/fondling them. Oilskin first, silks/wool after Festival...

Z is off into the field til Thurs(?), so I see a lot of sewing in my future.

* Sometimes when you are ill you want company, and other times you really don't...
stellar_muddle: (Default)
Bit the bullet, adjusted the lengths for my tunic so it is a shorter Anglo-Saxon overdress, and cut the fabric (marroon/red/brown wool with woven in diamonds). There is now a stack of pieces for Z's tunic and pieces of my tunic and spare fabric. Dug out the bone needle - it seems to be happy with this wool, and am sewing using thread from the fabric. We shall see how it turns out, though it will be interesting to see how much thread is used. I somehow doubt I can get both ready by 20th Ann - less my copious spare time at present and more I don't want to fuck up my neck and back that much. I suspect it will be an all of LOTR + P&P + Hornblower + others project.*

Lunch and shopping break first. Then start sewing.

*What else do you measure project work time in? Last tunic was Firefly + P&P and a couple other movies. This one has shorter seams, but there are two of them.
stellar_muddle: (Default)
I bought fabric (though not 500m of oilskin or canvas...)
Mopey morning mood was very well distracted by a trip to the new place to clear out the letter box and check that it hasn't been burnt down or anything. Then I got introduced to a local dangerous fabric store. Mostly it was safe (prices a bit higher than I tend towards) til we went upstairs. Weakness found.
I paid more than $10 a metre for wool...
However it was 190cm wide medium to light weight brown red wool with a woven in diamond pattern - I have been looking such woven in patterns for ages since they are far more applicable to early period fabrics which weren't fulled. So, $15 a metre, but only 3 m needed for 2 garments.
So, another 3 m of wool for the stash. Will start on making stuff with it as soon as I finish the blue linen tunic.
Oops...
stellar_muddle: (Default)
So, yes, back in Canberra 2 1/2 days and what happens? We acquire more fabric (See here).

In any case, 75 m of oilskin. Now thinking and wondering how well oilskin cloaks and especially hoods would do at Festival and other camping events. First of all for us, and depending on the effort to on-sell price ratio, possibly to sell... Gonna need some form of documentation for them and/or it would be good to know the actual historical precident though. Anyone know of info on oilskin and its history?

And in other puchases for the week, finally doing something about music in the car - there are some mighty boring straight bits on the route to Adelaide apparently. So, now have a teeni tiny iRiver MP3 and OGG player (T30 2 Gb for anyone to whom that means something). And a little set of speakers which can run off batteries or mains, and most importantly, a 150W power inverter, so can run the appropriate powered electrical devices off the car battery via the cigarette lighter (which was only used for burn testing fabric anyway). Z has finished hacksawing bits of the dashboard so all this will fit, the player is loaded with music*, so now "all" we need to do is pack the car, have some lunch, head to the Lifeline book fair for something to read along the way, and we will be ready to leave town. This should be about 3pmish...

*Unfortunately the general music division is such that most of Z's music is mp3 etc, which mine is on CDs. I have the stuff which (I think) is better to sing along to, but his is actually in a format we can copy over. Need to remedy this at some point.
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Since we sorta got more fabric while back in NZ (oops, we fell into Bedford Row twice - the second time cause they were willing to offer us the $4 per m sale deal a little early), the fabric list has needed updating. It says something when a spreadsheet is needed/useful. Updated LJ link is here and both the fabric list entries are now under the memories (which probably noone but me and [livejournal.com profile] basal_surge cares about). And for my reference, the spreadsheet is filed under medievalstuff.

But it does mean that after updating for usage and sale, the fabric collection is up to:
66.6m wool
29.55m silk*
27.3m linen*
18m cotton
+ other stuff
= 148.35m total (excluding the ~6m of wool on the bed... and the canvas bits which fill a large moving box)
* ~6m Silk warp, linen weft is classed under silk but could go under either.

4 chests of fabric + boxes of scraps and bits and odds and sods.

I should point put that we did get rid of about 10m of cotton drill and other stuff last night.

Hoard, what hoard... Behind the garage is starting to fill up and we haven't even started putting books down there.
stellar_muddle: (Default)
What, you still want to read about the wool, linen and silk? )

And in one of the boxes (Edited 30/7/06) )

I was going to start a 12th C bliaut, but the Elizabethan black velvet doublet may be more fun... Slashed silk, couching and all...

So the running total so far is 125.95m total. 53.1 wool (underestimate due to blanketage/unfinished cloakage, probably another 10+m there), 20.95m of silk, 42.5m of linen, 2.4m hemp, 5m cotton (other cottons are elsewhere...), 2m synthetic (should really file elsewhere).
And this is ignoring the fabric widths...
And we sold 90m of wool to the AAF and at Festival.

Z's response to the numbers: "Shaft me gently with a fishfork..." Given he is the main one reponsible...
stellar_muddle: (Default)
Cause not all of you are interested in how many acres of linen, wool and silk Z and I own... )
Argh, that was just one chest. One more chest and 4+ boxes to go. And that doesn't include the wool pieces for cloaks etc currently in use on our and R's beds.
Evil biology.
stellar_muddle: (Default)
Hmph... On and off headache since Fri evening. May be hormone related. Restart of hormone pills - in case of later reference.

Big sleep in today (noon), after cocktails and Scrubs episodes til 2am...

Tent rope making this afternoon. 2 ropes done so far, one more to be done out of the yellow jute macrame cord. Also got around to washing fabric for later use. Need a better system than feel for being about to tell if it has been washed before. We have a lot of wool. There are discussions as to whether or not to sell some of it at Festival. Moving it to WA would be less than pleasant, but there is so much we could get around to doing with it...

In the mean time, getting rid of scratchy black linen by making more cushions and using the rest to work out hose patterns... [livejournal.com profile] alpha_angel, the "The Medieval Tailor's Assistant" hose pattern appears directly based off the Bocksten Man's hose (well, one of the pairs from Marc Carlson's website). Want to play with them this evening, but fireworks have won over over "The Constant Gardener" (although we both really want to see it some time, it will probably be ok on DVD).

Time to get Z to put some clothes on, pick up Pide, and head off to fireworks. Would be bad to vary the order in that...

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