More Jewelry!

Just for fun.  The other night when I was photographing the new necklace and earrings I made, I photographed all the other jewelry I've made for the SCA to show you, too.  Hilariously enough, the ONE piece I forgot to photograph was the gold and citrine set I keep talking about but not showing you...and then when I went to get it to do so, I realized I've lost it.   GAH.

Anyway, here are just a few of the pieces I've made for the SCA over the last couple of years.  If you'd like to see the full collection, they're on my Flickr set right here.

blue glass, pearl, and black glass bead chain

garnet + ruby glass + pewter set, made to wear to Fall 2011 Coronation

some of the earrings I've made

pearl + pewter earrings from pearl set for Candlemas 2012

I didn't make any of these rings, but they're part of my SCA jewelry collection
and I love them all, so I thought I'd share.   Clockwise from top left:  giant
stretchy  metal ring from World Market,  a sapphire glass ring from
Sapphire & Sage, aquamarine + sterling silver, green faux amber, silver
filigree from Pyramid Collection,  silver + garnet,  silver + moonstone
BADLY in need of polishing, and a blue mood ring, lol.  

pair of amethyst glass brooches from Michael's, which I use
to hold my skirt up, dress up my bodies, hold long necklaces
in place, and keep my hood together.  

Much more on the Flickr page. :)


Fun fact:  all of these jewelry photos, and the ones yesterday, were taken laid out on my new white linen underwear, which just happened to be handy while I was setting up, LOL.  Post about the underwear coming soon. :)

Jewelry!

Because I didn't have enough crap to do right now!

Actually, it was because of my purple dress with the pomegranate sleeves. I need to try it on to see if it still fits, but in order to do that, I have to finish the eyelets in the front - I'd removed the lacing rings the dress originally had in favor of smaller (and more numerous) eyelets, but I never finished sewing them in!  I took the dress, and my sewing kit, to work yesterday so I could work on it there in my spare time, but I forgot the steel jump rings I use to reinforce the lacing holes.  D'oh!

Last night, I hauled out my jewelry kit (which is less of a "kit" and more of a "random assemblage of boxes full of stuff, none of which are remotely organized") to look for the small bag of rings that I use for eyelet holes...and two hours later I'd organized the boxes a little bit and made a necklace and two pairs of earrings.
Like you do.

(click to enlarge)
pewter and black glass;  the cross was a site token
from Ffynnon Gath's Jagermeister tourney in
2012

And no, it's not terribly Period for our purposes, but hey - I'm working with what I have.  When I have money to make awsome and totally historically-accurate jewelry, I will.

I swear, jewelry making is the only thing besides Pinterest that sucks me in without my knowledge or permission, and makes me lost for hours on end.

sterling silver with teal glass,
and quartz crystal drops

More stuff soon!  And I mean it this time.  I seriously have like eight posts lined up, as soon as I get all the pictures taken and edited and stuff.  :D





P.S. - by the way, the eyelet rings I was looking for?  Were in one of *three* boxes of embroidery thread in my sewing room, each of which was in a completely different part of the room.   Fail.




.

To-Do List

Tonight, tomorrow, and this weekend:

• Put on my Caerleon ensemble and take pictures for this blog! 
• Pictures of the armor thing Vasilii and I made together, to show you
• Pictures of the things I sewed last weekend that I haven't even told you about yet, because I suck at blogging sometimes  :) 
• Try on all of my SCA outfits and see what fits and what doesn't
• Get my poop in a group for the upcoming event season, which starts in one week:  inventory all my head gear, jewelry, accessories, and camping stuff, and make sure it's all organized and ready to go

Meanwhile, I know I don't normally share jokes and things here, but I could NOT pass this up:  

In fact, I LOL'd so hard, I made a [slightly less polite]  Serger version last night: 

Heeheehee.

. 

Sleeve-ity Doo Dah*

Tonight I am overjoyed about two things.:

1.  The pavilion came in!  It's awesome! It's brown and rectangular and...oh, that's the box.  More news as the situation develops.

2.  I tried on my SCA LBD (Little Black Dress, lol) for Caerleon uniform purposes, as I'd mentioned the other day, and IT FITS!!!  Oh, I was sooo sure it was going to be about fifteen sizes too small by now, but it still fits beautifully!  No alterations needed! :D


Well, okay, a few more things:

3.  I finished my Caerleon sleeves - painted the company motto around the shoulders like I was thinking of doing.

4.  The yellow-gold snood I ordered from Etsy came in this week, and it's lovely, comfy, and exactly the right shade of yellow (also the seller was very nice and shipping was fast, and I'll definitely order more from this shop).

5.  While I still have no yellow belt (argh, you Pelicans! KIDDING love you), I do have some gold and faux-citrine jewelry that I made to go with the LBD for the last Queen's Champion...not that I ever got around to taking pictures of it (fail).

Pics of the full outfit soon!   Meantime...

sleebs

* What?  At no point in this blog have I claimed to be good at thinking up titles.

Pushing Furniture?

Wait, which blog is this?  Maybe this just one of those crossover TV episodes where a detective from the cop show turns up on the paranormal investigation show to help the FBI agents or something.  Welcome to my DIY and home decor blog!  Hee hee.

Today's post is all about the campsite - I've got camp decor on the brain this week, as I wait for my new tent to show up at my house.  I really can't tell you how excited I am to finally have a tent that's not a giant, bright blue, nylon square, lol.  I have several things for my campsite that I just need to finish or put together:

This is the bed I built for myself at home a few years ago.  It's a queen size, and I don't use it anymore because I have a king sized mattress now.  I'm embarrassed to admit, I never thought to use it for SCA purposes until a friend asked me why I didn't.   I built it with moving in mind, so the entire thing breaks down and packs flat.  The hardware is modern, but it's not visible from the outside.

All it needs is some new, short, corner posts.  I'm going to keep using my air mattress on top of it for the time being, until I can figure out an affordable mattress solution;  but I have all the bedding I need to make it look nice.

This is a cooler cover with a padded seat that I made last year, with some eggcrate foam I had laying around after another project, and about $4 worth of clearance drapery fabric.  I got the idea from a good friend of mine.  I would really like to make more of these - for my other cooler, and also some that are purely decorative, to throw over my plastic storage tubs that I use to pack my things in when I travel.  (I've been just throwing sarongs, skirts, and lengths of cloth over them).

Pinterest

Vasilii and I have a red box like this made for us by a friend.  Eventually I'd like to paint our arms on the outside (and how fortunate that both of our arms use red, black, and white as our colors).  For now, though, I'd like to install some horizontal wooden cleats on the inside walls like in this picture, so that we can put a box or storage tray in there, too, and expand the box's function.

This little guy I picked up for $5 at Goodwill and reupholstered last year.  Um...just ignore the 18th century Queen Anne legs.  One day I'll replace those, and upholster it in something snazzier (this is just a scrap of red upholstery velvet; I'd really like to tuft it and put something shiny on it).

I'm not sure I'll keep camping with this, though. At least, not in the rain.  I brought it to Gulf War in March, and I was constantly cleaning mud off of it.

a tutorial! 

This is next, though, before I do ANYTHING else. I am TIRED of ugly-ass camp chairs.

Since I do build and fix up furniture, I do plan to build some nice wooden SCA furniture for us to use, but at the moment I have neither the money nor the shop space to do so.  For the time being, some camp chair covers made from Goodwill sheets and duvet covers will cost me about ten dollars and maybe a couple of hours of sewing.

Next camp post:  accessories! 

.

Abode a La Mode

Ice cream on your house!  Wait...

Look what I ordered this week!

That's a Guide Gear Single Wigwam Tent.  A fully modern tent - made of nylon, with screen windows and doors that zip, fiberglass poles, a vented roof, and a tarp bathtub floor...that just happens to basically look exactly like the round bells by SoulPad that are so popular in the SCA.  And for a fraction of the price, at only ninety bucks!

It's 12'x12' (it's round, so I was expecting a diameter measurement?), and 8'10" high - my current [Coleman] tent is 8'x14'.  It sets up with only a single center pole, stakes and guide lines around the edge.   I photoshopped a picture of me from another photograph into this promotional shot of the tent from the website, based on a 13-14" average height on those little folding campstools like you see in the picture - my kneecap is about 16" from the floor.

image from soulpad.com

My new tent is much smaller than a "real" canvas bell, but for what basically amounts to a starter pavilion, it ain't half bad!  I think it's safe to say that it passes "the ten foot rule"  (looks period and looks good from ten feet away to the passing observer).  And it'll be even better  once I get my hands on it.

First things first:  as soon as I get it, I need to set it up in the backyard at home, both to learn how to set it up, and to hose it down with silicone waterproofing spray.  I know it'll be waterproof because it's new, but I always double up on the waterproofing, and I re-spray every single time I use a tent.  In eighteen years I've only gone through three tents, and the only leak I've ever had was during a torrential downpour and flash flood.  I think that's a pretty good track record.


Anyhow, past that, here are some ideas I've had for sprucing this thing up and making it look even more period:

• Add a door flap to cover the zippered front door, since that's the most obviously modern part
• replace the nylon ropes with hemp, or with colored, woven cord;  I could make little flags to hang on the rope, too! 
• Paint or cover the center pole with something bright and pretty (or replace it). 
• I may or may not paint designs on the walls of the tent.  You can, with ripstop nylon; but I won't have time to do it for several months.  Maybe someday. 

There are lots of decorative things I need to get in gear on for this season - furnishings and hangings and covers and accessories - but that'll be another post.  

As We Don the Sleeves of Gold

Sir John's 11thC Norman

Bad Sting reference, no no!  Sorry.  I didn't get much sleep last night.  I spent several hours finishing the secret surprise A&S project that I can't tell you about, and did a bit of sewing - but mostly it's because after that I stayed up too late de-compressing with video games, lol.  I can never get to bed after working on something creative without some brainless downtime in between, otherwise my head spins and I can't sleep.  So staying up past two racing little radio-controlled cars on the Playstation is better, right?  Glad you're coming with me on that one.

Takuan's 14thC Samurai

ANYWAY.  I made a pair of pin-on sleeves last night:  yellow-gold trimmed with black.  Why?  If you guessed "kingdom colors" you're close, but no cigar.  I joined up with Caerleon (fighting company/household) earlier this year - just as event season was drawing to a close, so I never got to wear a company uniform.  Each member creates a unique uniform for him/herself based on their own persona guidelines, but in Caerleon colors and with the Caerleon insignia on it.  It looks pretty cool when we're all together. :)

standard cote + sleeves + veil

Being your standard, run-of-the-mill mid-15thC Englishwoman, my options are pretty wide open.  I have several ideas about my uniform, but I'm in the process of putting together a sort of "starter uniform" first.  While anyone in the company may display the company motto on their clothing (bottom hem of Sir John's picture, above), you actually have to earn your lions, by fighting with or supporting the company through three or more melee-based events.  Since I joined at the end of event season, I haven't had the chance yet, so, no lions for me.  Which gives me time to decide what I want to wear. :)

LBD = little black dress

For the time being, I made a pair of gold sleeves to wear with my "LBD" cotehardie.    I was thinking of making a matching gold cloth belt with the motto painted or stitched along the length of it, until I remembered that yellow belts are for Pelicans.  D'oh!  I think I might paint the motto around the black band at the top of the sleeves instead.

I've also ordered myself a pretty yellow-gold crocheted snood from Etsy, to wear with the outfit.  

All this babbling is to say that I'm SUPER excited about getting to wear my very own Caerleon colors for the first time in a couple of weeks.  Yay!

The beginning of my first Caerleon uniform.  <3 

IT LIVES.

More or less.   No kidding, I was sick for like two and a half weeks.  And I've been back at work this week, catching up and trying to get my shizz in order.

At the moment I'm working on an A&S thing that I can't tell you about yet (it's a surprise for someone); and I'm about to start my pre-event-season sewing, so there'll be LOTS of updates soon, I promise!

Meanwhile, here's

June in Review

• navy Bliaut for me
• Blue + white houppelande for Sir John
• got my new belt hardware in the mail! 

July in Review

• small wooden honor shield for Sir John
• sick!

Not a very productive couple of months, but hey, it's Summer!  And did I mention I had the freaking plague?  Yeah.  

Anyway - onward! To event season in Ansteorra! 

.