Embroideries done!

Today I did the whole back piece embroidery for the viking coat.

I am really happy how it came out even though it isn't as big as I had pictured doing it from the start.

It was rather tricky to work with the handspun and vegetable dyed yarn since it breaks so easily, but as so many have said before me – who needs to see the backside of the embroidery? ;)

Now I only need to sew the coat together the other side of the coat, stitch down ome seams and do the lining and put on the tablet woven ribbon.

And it really feels like only after the amount of hours spent on embroidery. :)

Close up of the embroidery.

The coat being put together. Still needs some work. :)

Events and embroidery

Last few weeks I have been occupied with planing Double Wars and Crown Tourney ofcourse. Since I have excellent people to help out with Crown Tourney I am not at all worried and I am pretty sure that it will be a fabulous event!

I have some neat classes lined up for Double Wars but all of that is a bit on hold until Crown Tourney is over and done with. Once that is done I still have 3 weeks to schedule all the classes and make the hand out and... *sigh* :)

I landed another extra job aswell that will take 2 of my days off and some work before those two days, but it is a fun thing and I am really glad that I have my extra gigs since it forces me to think more outside of the box of what is comfy and familiar. Tomorrow I have to write up some stuff for my students at the University but it shouldn't take to much time.

I had a bit of a break in my medieval handicrafting while my sister and her kids were here visiting for their sports holiday. My sister taught me to knit and at the age of... ehr... 23 I finally learned how to knit and finished a project!

OK it didn't turn out all that well since I did some silly mistakes - but I did do it mostly on my own!

Now I will do it all over again just to make sure it sticks and because I found a fabulous yarn that would make a wonderful sahwl.... actually, I will make the project all over again twice since I found two wonderful yarns that I just HAD to bring home... ;)

It is nice to have another hobby that sort of sticks within the familiar but that is a bit more mundane. It also will result in me having to buy another shelf for my hobby room so that i can fit all my yarns...

The Viking coat project is now my main priority and I have finished the second Mammen lynx. The other Mammen motif I will use for the back is drawed out and pinned on to the coat so I can start it tomorrow. I have been home sick for the last few days with a cold from hell so I decided to at least make some use of the time inbeween naps and work on some garb.

On Monday me and GrimR are off to London for a mundane holiday!

I think it is the first since we met and especially Grimr haven't had much of mundane holidays lately so it will be nice to stay in a hotel and just relax and do fun stuff for a few days.

Even though the trip is mundane we will ofcourse use most of the time to visit places interesting for scadians. Victoria & Albert, The Wallace collection, The Tower (we have both been there pre SCA), Museum of London... and so on.

Gosh I am looking forward to that trip!

One down!

Today I finally finished the first embroidery on my viking coat.
It is one of the lynxes from the Mammen finds and I have made them so that the two lynxes will face eachother in the down part of the front panels of the coat.

The yarns I have used are hand spunn wool yarns that have been naturally dyed.

They were given to me by a woman at work who did all the work once upon a time but never used the yarns. And who would say no to a gift like that?!

Anyway – here is the result of my endevours.

I have to admit that I have never really had the patience for any big embroidery projects, but this went rather fast and I could pretty quickly see a result so it was easy to stick to this project.

Perhaps there is now hope for all the other embroidery projects I have started but never finished. :)

Tomorrow I will start cat number two!

Embroidery is FUN!

I haven't really done that much embroidery – mostly because I think it is way to time consuming. I usually start a project and when I can't see a ”result” 3 hours later I get bored and toss it aside and therefor I have about 8 different embroidery projects started at home that aren't really close to finished.
Then I started doing some outline embroidery with the Mammen motifs. And suddenly it was all really fun!

Perhaps because using only outlines and split stitch is quite fast and also – I am doing the embroidery straight on the Vking coat that actually IS something already. :)

The first leopard should be done during the weekend! And hopefully I will find time to do some more during next week when I have a few days off since my sister comes to Finland with her kids.

Oh – and I bought cross country skis! So I will actually BENEFIT from the cold and snow... :)

Why?!

So here's a question:

Why do you always manage to attatch at least two pieces of a garb the wrong way?!

It is a VERY anoying thing and when you discover it you think it is quite obvious and you don't understand how you could have been so stupid to do it that way.

Or perhaps this just happens to certain people?

I am one of those who always has a mess in her handbag, who always finds that a shampoo bottle has leaked in the toilettery bag when travelling and whos newly pressed garb always comes out of the bag looking like a scrungy...

So perhaps I am just simply cursed.

I was working on the viking coat today and was about to sew the side panel on so that I could actually get the garment all pieced together on one side.

Did I put in the panel the right way? Ofcourse not! *sigh*

I undid it, remade it only to find out what I have been suspecting – the side panel/gore is a bit to small due to the fact that I didn't really have that much of the fabric I am using for the coat so it doesn't look that nice by the armpits. Then again – might just be me and my renaissance perfect fitting experience that can't deal with the straight pieced together viking cut... ;)

Anyway – it gives me another little push to loose weight.

Always have to find something good in the bad!

Now off to bed!

PS. I have given up on having a viking coat for Midwinter. I will settle for having a coat ”at some point”. :)