Logbook

Enough playing. Besides, the time stamp was a bit off.

For those who are interested, the photos are here

Note for those who wish to play with iron smelt results: Dropping a fragment of bloom on polished wooden floors produces a large dent and may have left some slag embedded in the hole. Oops says Z... (who didn't mean it...)

4 loads of laundry done (most of the wools and whites, with colours to go) and the car mostly unpacked with iron ore and charcoal to go. Don't ask about being able to see the lounge floor.

Ok, secend tent has all the machine sewing done, with only door ties and peg down points to go. This means that the big Tent Load can be done. Wheeeeee..... Time to load the last tent...
Fingers crossed this is the first of 3 main loads: tent load, chest (clothing and tool) and mattress load, wool and leather and last day essentials.
It is easy getting stuff out there, it is remembering you only have a day to get stuff back... The perils of living close...

Hope alpha_angel had a good trip over and is having fun wandering Sydney...

I should have remembered that despite how enthusiastic/alert you are on the way home from a Site prep day, with all sorts of things you want to do when you get home, by the time you get home, have a shower and eat dinner, your brain will have dribbled out your ears and all your plans will come to naught.
Hence I have done a very small amount of work on one cloak and am not awake enogh to work on the tent doors.

But, it has been a productive day:)
Trash and Treasure - 1st two of a vampire series by Tanya Huff, Bunnings new warehouse - pipes and fittings. Out to site by about 11:30am, pipes to the chuffer set up and trenched in by 12:30pm (most of the trench having been dug yesterday), rock shifting from the firepit, lunch break, dirt shifting and rock reshifting back to surrounding the fire pit, break for cute frog, I sorted out charcoal while others dug the kitchen sump, finished mudding the chuffer, building of the furnace, slumping, rebuilding of the furnace (gosh those baskets came in handy), helping of putting up one tent (others were up to 10+), final drift off Site after sunset.

Big thanks to Mynjon and Waldo for matocking, shoveling, rockshifting, more digging and finally playing with mud mud mud mud... (see furnace)

Then home to showers, dinner and docos on huge Roman ship remains and Homo Floriensis.

Z is being good and has just about spliced all twenty door ties (1 tent worth), and tommorrow, while he is stuck working, I get the fun of fiddling with doors and sewing them on.

"Plaster Caster" is a rather disturbing documentary. "Not quite displaying full capability". Those are not cohearant people...

Tonight has had one astronomer and wife outfitted with medeival clothing and ideas*, and a leather satchel finished. Yay to finished objects:)

Time to go back to cloaks I think.

And as for Casanova last night: nice and brainless and silly. Too silly for Z who decided it hit the fingernails on blackboard stage and left to play with packing crates and soapstone half way through.

I think tommorrow will be busy.

* 5 people coming to Festival Market Day from work. More for the Dark side. Should be interesting:)

Just as well the extra cloak I was finishing was left on the bed: it was only 12 degrees over night. She is forecast to go below 10 degrees at night for the next 7 days. Definitely need to make more cloaks/dig out more of the old ones. There are advantages to having a large woollen cloak collection. I am also looking forward to the fact that we will have the cloaks, flockarti rug, psuedo fur rug and woolen caps/hats for sleeping in/on at Festival.

And on the Festival progress front:
Tent 1 has the door/wall seams done and the base of the doors hemmed. Only door ties, trimming and side edge to go, but that does need a flat area and an extra person to put up and measure/mark. Also rope along base for pegging down walls.
Tent 2 has 3/10 eyelets done, but only needs 3 more and the guy ropes attached before it is put-up-able for the door positioning etc. Then it is waterproofing, doors to walls on the base and the same sequence as Tent 1.
Yellow linen tunic neckline repaired and wearable. Eowyn sideless surcoat de-looped so now more period. That was the only repairs I had, but Z tends to beat up his clothing more...
2nd cushion now finished, which means one for sleeping on and a spare for hitting people with. The embroidered one started in a fit of procrastination/curiousity at work can be ongoing.
2 green wool cloaks done - one for alpha_angel to use and any more finished will be retailed. I don't think I can make it through the full ~40+m left - Z has already sold the rest.
I wont start on the list of smaller things that are started and need finishing or need starting... satchel, hose, cloaks ...
That and pursuading the occasional workmate or two that they want to come out to the Festival Market day, so helping them with clothing etc...

Plenty to do.

Edit: And managed a 4 strand plait in hair. Bit messy and it definitely wont work in dutch or french mode, but still works. Would try 5 strand which should work dutch or french, but I don't think I have enough fingers...:)

Today was concreting the shower base day, with the assistance of R. 20 20kg bags of concrete was just enough after we packed the base with LOTS of small rocks - had hoped to get though this weekend without shifting rocks... Then we found out that the sump component is actually way too close to the creek (based on Yass council regs) - however it is an out of the way corner and since we had followed the right channels and got it cleared first, it should be fine unless the council itself complains. Silly goings on. Just as well that we hadn'st started the kitchen sump and chuff since that will now need to be against the valley wall. I suspect the St Floz camp will have to be a bit reorganized compared to last year. People will be contacted tonight.

Tent survived overnight well and the ocasional beaded wax on it looks cool. Forgot the chalk and pins, so the door sorting will be done in the next week or two. Also need a good way of securing the walls to the ground. Can't quite use the same scheme as the Viking A-frame, as that involves groundsheets and chests.

Shorter driving practice today - brief figure eights on the war field, before heading out.

Very buggered now, though food and washing hair/shower has improve brain activity.

I am severly looking forward to sleeping in tommorrow morning - ya to regional holidays. Looks like hose, leatherwork and hats are on the cards.
But tonight, the choice is between Ghengis Khan and the Blitz...

Edit: Ghengis Khan won, with the bonus that it had lots on modern Mongolia, including a few minutes on archery and bow making. Z is still bouncing:)

Hmmm, I should possibly have it witnessed that following Festival, I do not wish to sew another tent for about 12 months. A review at 6 months is allowed if people are really pursuasive, but I think 3 in a little over a year is plenty. And yes, yurts are tents...

But on a brighter note, more than half the machine sewing on the second tent is done, with the doors attached and 2 of the 4 roof double edge seams done. Z turn to pin the other sides together, but "Baby Cart in the land of Demons" is winning. You realise how much practice you have going when one of your pairs of jeans is currently specificly devoted to wearing while tent sewing - have you seen the scratches you can get after 7m of pinned seam has brushed past an unprotected leg? Been there, learnt that.

This leaves the 2 remaining seams (tommorrow night), eyelets for guy ropes (so the bastard can be put up), waterproofing (unfortunatly both tents), putting up and marking out doors (ditto), eyelets and door toggles (ditto). This should be doable in 3 weeks. There is however the hitch that the wankers at Lincraft sold us polycotton, labeled as cotton. This has waterproofing implications given polycotton doesn't expand when wet. Bastards. Does mean that paint may be trialed for waterproofing, but we shall see. At least there is several metres of spare fabric to experiment on.

Other Festival progress: yay for extended Faculty meetings in lecture theatres (don't ask the topic, but I left after 2 1/2 hours and they went on beyond that), since it meant I got the second ho sewn and some cushion edge done. So, I have one complete set of back linen hose:) Should start on Z's pair soon, but it will take getting him to stand still for a while... I could at least get the basic start sizes off a pair of trousers and his cut out ducttaped sock. Suspect that wont be til Mon though.

And on the wildlife front:
1 kangaroo lounging between the main buildings at work.
1 large Lounge Bob on the window frame above Z's head.
1 teenage Bob formerly known as Bedroom Bob... He will turn up somewhere...

The parrot watching front has been helped by walking over the mountain for the past 4 mornings. This morning managed a very nice rainbow and sunrise, before raining the full hour and 10 min to the campus bus stop. And then it stopped. But the thunderstorms last night were good.

And since I am now rambling, I think I should head off to bed.

Oops, I appear to have a functioning hose pattern. No tent doors but a good pattern which I will use to cut out fabric Fri or Sat because it is after 11:30pm and cutting fabric out after then is baaaaaad... unless you have switched to observing time, in which case 4am is the cut off. Basic shape is based on the Bocksten Man's Hose, but also looking at pictures of alpha_angel's pair. Kiddums, how did you end up doing the toe? Still have to decide for linen or wool first. The wool is quite light weight and soft, but the linen is ironed and ready for use. And I am happier to muck up in it... which is silly given the wool was the $4 per m stuff. Gorgeous stuff for a dress though.
Z has worked on his Viking boot pattern. I think "Baby Cart in Hades" has rescued the leather from slicing tonight. The decapitated head's eye view was a little disturbing. And the less said about the soundtrack, the better.
Little bit of tablet weaving to add to the procrastination set, then bed.

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... 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...

( Festival sewing chore count: )
Doesn't solve the sewing project for tommorrow problem...
Must work out runes for fluffy ducklings...