Category Archives: Work

We Have A Studio!

About a year ago I was hoping to have the studio finished – so we’re only a few several months behind schedule. The great news is that it has turned out to be everything I wanted for the space.

So way back last summer I showed you a picture of the unfinished studio space and told you all about what I wanted: I wanted a place where I could host fabric and fiber based arts things with spaces to handle a bunch of different project types. I wanted a big cutting table (which hasn’t been constructed yet) and some tables and soft furniture. A sewing area, and a place for all the fabric and cashmere that I had accumulated would also be required.

This is the finished studio – a calm and peaceful atmosphere with some tables and the sectional and even the bead cabinet is here. It looks exactly like I envisioned it all those months ago and I get to debut it this week to the local crafters.


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State of the Studio

A long time ago I held C&I at my house on Friday nights. Over the three or four years that I was doing it, pretty much everyone in the Barony attended at least once. About once a month we would get fishfry from the VFW hall down the street. I really enjoyed those evenings. And I miss them as well.

Eventually I moved and then there were no more C&I nights and I don’t think I even unpacked the majority of my C&I stuff. I didn’t really have space for it except in the basement and that became the sewing room. I didn’t (I’m being honest) play at the local level and I was getting deep into the silk flower research at that point which was a very solitary pursuit. Then I got married and I resumed playing again but I was still mainly focused on the flowers. Lack of space and no longer being centrally located really restricted my ability to host things. (And honestly, that group really had it covered before I got there.)

And then we moved again. I’ve tried to attend every business meeting and moot but fight practice isn’t really my thing. There are some other things locally but they don’t usually appeal to me or are inconvenient timewise. I also know me and I’m far more likely to attend something if I can host it.

I’m really looking forward to the studio getting completed. Hubby says by Labor Day! The downstairs is his domain (which I call the shop and is dedicated to woodworking) and the summer kitchen/garage. Upstairs is the studio – my giant sewing room. Giant is 1100 square feet dedicated to fabric based activities. I will have a 5×10 cutting table (counter height, lightly padded, and canvas covered) with a large light overhead and the ability to have the iron plugged in above so I can iron right from the table. I will have at least two sewing tables (I aspire to get a long-arm machine within a year) and two class tables. A television and the sectional sofa will also be up there and all the fabrics I have accumulated (like all that cashmere and the 100 plus yards of linen I haven’t used yet.)  I haven’t decided yet if the bead cabinet will get moved there (because I will still have a craft room in the house and it might be better at least for now to leave that in the craft room) but I’m pretty sure the silk stuff will get moved (it takes up less space than the beads but I usually use the silk in connection with the fabric and it’s what I most want to teach classes on.)

I think I want to make table coverings that are like fitted bedsheets – lightly padded but with a tight, no-slide fit to them. Or maybe make one fabric covered and the other one with a giant mapped-out cutting mat (the green ones that have all the grids and you can use a roller-cutter on them.) There will also be room to set up a quilt rack when I need to. I’m also thinking I might want a small beverage fridge up there. Even with all of that it feels like I’m missing something – what am I not planning for that I should have on the list? (All books will be in the actual library though there will be a shelf for the ones I really need to keep on hand in the sewing room.)

My hope is that by fall I can host open sewing/crafting/stitch ‘n bitch although I understand that the stairs are going to be a deterrent for some folks. I just hope not to many.


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My A&S Weekend

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It has been nearly a year since we moved south and into a new SCA kingdom – the Kingdom of Calontir, and I finally attended my first event as a member of this kingdom. I chose A&S as my first event because it happens to be where my interests are and it is generally a smaller event where I can meet more people and, when I enter, I get to talk to people more in depth.

Three years ago I entered the triathlon in the Kingdom of Northshield and my entries were: The Shrine (which was a bit overwhelming for the judges), my carved statue (which wasn’t complete and had rather low-level documentation), and my research paper (which lost points because it was too long and too in-depth to be just one research paper.) I lost the championship by less than a full point and won the Queen’s Prize which I felt was a very good outcome.

This year, because of the moving and not being able to find everything, and not having much free-time, I decided to just enter one thing. I didn’t know if A&S was basically the same as what I was used to as now there aren’t divisions and there are three levels to enter (novice, intermediate, and advanced) so you can pick the level you’re comfortable with.

I chose to enter at the advanced level because I’m pretty sure I’d get laughed at if I did anything else. I chose the category of string manipulation because it really best describes what I’m doing with this art. I started making some flowers last month. But right from the start I was thinking about the birds and how I’ve been wanting to concur more of the animal shapes. I decided to make a bird. When I finished that I made some more flowers and finished off a batch of grapes that I had been working on. I attached my new flowers and bird to a Styrofoam wedge that I had covered with silk and then brought the Shrine and the research to fill out the display. The documentation I wrote was six pages and was pretty much off the top of my head, referring to the book for more in-depth explanations.  Frankly, the joy in knowing this subject as well as I do now is that I can just rattle it off the top of my head and not have to spend so much time with the books. I also found the folder with every prior paper I ever wrote on this topic so I was covered when it came to the documentation.

We arrived to the site at 9am and got everything set up – I was in space 9 which is a good number for me. I took the glass off the shrine and put it under the table cloth because it’s much easier to see the shrine without the glass in the way. I installed the statues and other mobile things that cant travel in there because they would tip over, and then sat down next to my display to answer questions. I didn’t get judged until 3pm.

It was a very long day and several people commented that I always seemed to have a crowd in front of me. I gave a brief synopsis of my entry to anyone who was moving slowly enough to hear it. I answered every question and I met a good number of people, several of whom were very interested in the period and locale of my entry. By the time the judging started for me I was ready for a nap.

One of my assigned judges didn’t show up but thankfully there was another lady hanging out with my judges who sat in for her. They read my documentation and then we started chatting – we may have exceeded the time allotted to us. The written comments were glowing but sparse and I got a perfect score – it’s pretty rare to get a perfect score and I’m very pleased. There isn’t much I can get in the way of constructive criticism because it’s an obscure art form that I tend to execute with precision but I was pleased with the whole of the conversation and letting the judges know how I discovered certain construction methods to get things to look exactly like the pictures.

I did get a chance to look at the other entries and I was quite amazed at how different the entries are from the ones I’ve seen in the past – the focuses are different but all within the same broader categories.  This kingdom appears to be way more musical based on the entries I saw.

We packed up everything and then headed to court. There was a laurel elevation (which might explain the large number of laurels at the event but I somehow feel that the laurels here have embraced the A&S venues and foster them here more than they did up north) and they announced the winner of the Judge’s Choice Award – who just happened to be me! I was surprised – and they gave me a big basket of “All the things” as my prize. There are some great things in that basket and I’m sure to get use out of all the things in there.

So – for my first event in my new kingdom – I think it was a smashing success and I look forward to participating more now that things have settled down a bit on the home front. I am very happy I got off on the right foot because it will make it easier for me to get to know people here quicker. I’m still kind of gob-smacked.

 


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The Status of Things

Five weeks ago we moved from the safety and peacefulness we have always known to the new and unknown, adventure-filled Here. Here is located in NW Arkansas and I am currently calling it Enddleton.

Enddleton is a wonderfully large estate compared to most of the other estates I have knowledge of – the house is 3k square feet and the land is 5.56 acres. We currently have two horses, a pony, a baby donkey, and nine chickens living on the estate with us although none of them actually belong to us. We have a large number of trees, a real pasture, a spring fed pond, and lots of flat green grassland that will be gardens in the future. This is a lovely estate just on the very edge of the city proper with all the amenities of city living and all the joys of country living rolled into one beautiful property. I love Enddleton.

Enddleton is a five bedroom, two and a half bath house with two living and two dining areas. There is plenty of room for all our various hobbies and we plan on building a workshop onto the horse barn so we will have greenhouse and woodworking space. The pasture will eventually become an orchard.

Of our five bedrooms, one is for us, two are for guests, one is for yoga, and one is designated sewing. Sewing is code for “all the craft stuff.” The sewing room is packed full and unpacking it has been my latest project. I had 15 medium size boxes with nothing but cashmere in them and those now live on wire shelving in one of the closets. There is an additional wire rack on wheels that doesn’t fit in the closet so I really have an abundance of sewing to do so it all fits in there like it’s supposed to fit!

The other closet is filled with garb and not much else. I then found another box of garb and have not yet integrated that into the rest of the collection but it occurred to me that I need to find someone who fits in the smaller ones and make their day!

There is the sewing table and the sewing machine table and a sofa and a workbench. There are also a small dresser and at least ten storage bins with fabric. The bead cabinet rounds out the furniture in the room. And one very large wool rug covers the floor. Overall it sounds cramped but I would describe it as cozy and comfortable with enough space to get some actual work done once everything is put away as it should be.

Hopefully it won’t take me too much longer to get the sewing room into working condition! Then I can focus on the rest of the spaces!

Not Much of a Vacation

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So – back in July we bought a new house. This week we took some excess stuff to the new house so that it wasn’t taking up space when we try to sell our current house in the spring. Because we are only going to be at the new house for a week or two we decided not to have internet installed and I had to take the two weeks off work  as a result.

I packed a billion boxes in recent months – this week I unpacked a lot of boxes – except books because I don’t have bookshelves here yet. I cleaned almost everything, I cut my finger on the food-processor blade, and now I’m trying to relax. Eventually I will get working on the class stuff.


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Work vs Art

And now it’s the end of May and I’m so far behind in what I wanted to accomplish this year.

I had wanted to complete the statues for the shrine and then fill in with some additional flowers. I was going to get that done in the spring but A&S was held early this year and there just wasn’t enough time after the end-of-year rush at work in order to complete my entries for the competition. So I put it on hold but then didn’t get back to it (yet. I will get back to it eventually!)

Work has been crazy busy and, while I’m supposed to function more as a consultant, I got promoted and am now a team lead. I was hoping to be finished with my work project sometime within the next year but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen either. The company has postponed some of the key things I was there to do and so I’m functionally at a lose.

A good number of the summer plans have been set and the rest of the major ones were (again) put on hold because I never heard back from the contacts. Oh well – I’m not going to sweat it. Not much I can do about it since I don’t have much in the line of vacation time anyway. Then again – without my major work project I guess I could take the time and not worry about the consequences.

Change

Nothing stays the same – or so I’m told…

We are no longer on schedule to move in the next couple of months. Things are kind of up in the air for the moment and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I really want to move but at the same time – there is so much I want to get accomplished before I have to think about having to pack or weed stuff out.

I accepted a position doing payroll installations which is what I’m professionally very good at doing. I’ve been burdened with overtime which was to be expected but I didn’t really think it would eat into my freetime like it has. I’m thinking I wasn’t being realistic when I decided to enter A&S again this year – but we will see.

I’ve been waiting for the inevitable cold snap so I could test drive some cashmere underthings and I made several pairs for other people to test drive and report back on the fit and comfort. I have converts! So comfortable and soft and warm without trapping in the heat. I have to make many more pairs because I now have a preferred style and I think I have the fit down so I now need a half dozen so I don’t have to do laundry during the week. It’s a weird bit of luxury.

Happy New Year. I resolve to take better care of everything. That about covers it.

 


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Cashmere Underwear

So far I have completed three pair of underwear and have several more cut out and ready to sew up. I have one pair of long pants cut out and ready to sew and many more sweaters prepped and ready to cut.

But the serger wasn’t working properly and I spent several hours getting that fixed. It works great now. But in the meantime I decided I needed more thread so I got more thread. And while I was at the store I also got stretch cotton for the crotch liners. And I bought more stretch lace so I’m really all set to sew now.

We are finding that the price of cashmere is going up. It’s difficult at this point to say how far spread the problem is but in some areas all of the cashmere sweaters have been priced much higher than every other piece of clothing. So while the rest of the sweaters are four to six dollars each, the cashmere sweaters in the same store are twenty dollars each. This isn’t reasonable in my opinion. I can’t pay twenty dollars for the sweater and still make a profit when I turn that sweater into something else. And frankly if the sweater is in really good condition then I’m not going to cut it up anyway. I will pay ten dollars for really large ones or ones I can wear that are nice or even really desirable colors like white and yellow that are larger. I’m fortunate in that I already have a large stockpile of sweaters to work with so I’m not constrained in having to pay large sums for base materials.

I also have a good number of alpaca sweaters. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with those yet but for the most part they are much larger sweaters.

Now I have to get back to the sewing room….


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Sewing Again

So I had spent about month working at regular work – helping out with a change over. And now I’m left to my own devises again and I really need to find something useful to do with my time, or at least the bulk of my time. Something productive.

So I went and purchased some lovely hunks of linen. I was thinking of making some quilts and getting rid of some of this cashmere. And hubby needs some garb so he can attend events. Basic stuff really. And the linen was on sale so I got some.

I also needed to get some elastic so I could make some cashmere underpants. I’ve been wanting some cashmere underwear and I’ve been wanting to make some cashmere leggings or stretch pants. Comfort wear. So I found a nice place online where I could get some elastic lace and then I went overboard and ordered 170 yards of elastic in various types, materials, widths, colors, and designs. Lots of elastic so I can make lots of underwear. But it wasn’t until that point that I decided I wanted to make lots of underwear. So now I’ve basically committed to making lots of underwear.

The elastic should arrive tomorrow and I already have lots of cashmere to make underwear out of – a whole lot of cashmere. Just in case, I went out and found even more cashmere which needs to be washed and added to the collection. We’ll see how it goes but I’ve already compiled some pictures on pintrest of things to make out of all the lovely cashmere. Several different quilt designs, socks, slippers, and of course the underwear.

This way I can stay busy and productive and maybe even make a little money. We’ll see.


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Continuing the Rebuilding

Updating and rebuilding the website is an almost overwhelming task.

I think I have the majority of it figured out and now I need to add an abundance of photos and probably a bunch of new categories. I have some rather grand visions for what the website can become. So far I have moved over both of the blogs and over half of the research papers. The worst of it is still left to do – That would be the silke part of the website. The problem with that part is that there were a huge number of pages that moved from one page to the next without the use of menus and I have yet to figure out how to do that in the new site designer.

But I can now add additional topics like garb references and other research because I’m discovering how incredibly easy it is to add pages and map them in without having to redo everything that went before it.