etienettebluet

Wednesday at moot my Laurel volunteered himself and his apprentices to get pennants made for the fighters; that we would work on them Thursday  Since only two of his apprentices are 'in town' I knew my Thursday was thereby spoken for.  He later said he did it 'cause the discussion on who, how and when would have taken up another hour at least.

Thursday I gathered up the black duck I'd saved from the de-constructed former baronial pavilion (I KNEW it would come in handy some day) along with my favorite sewing machine and headed to Sash's for a sewing night.

At home when I'm not on the computer (when Leofwyna has claimed her time using it) I have been working on a pair of brais that I'm making from two cotton-linen blend shirts.

Saturday I got on the ball and did my laundry which pretty much tied up the entire afternoon.  I've been harvesting a few tomatoes fairly regularly.  Their skins are tough and I'm thinking I should be watering more often... my bad!  I pretty much decided not to go around to the Goodwills this weekend for the 99-cent sales.  I hardly need to add to the piles of stuff around here and I'm more aware of them since we're packing things up for the renovation.  Since they do these sales one weekend nearly every month I can wait until August for the next one.

Sunday I bailed on the baronial archery event.  I never did decide about a dish for feast and when it came time to dress and go I procrastinated.  Once I realized I'd probably only go for court it seemed silly to drive that far so I ran some errands instead.  Tonight while watching Olympics I finished the ecru linen shift and got back to work on a shirt-pieces linen shift.  So far I've put pieces from four shirts/blouses into this shift and will probably do most of a fifth to finish it. 

Friday and Saturday I'm working on three cotton organdy partlets.  Never thought they'd take so long but the organdy is fiddly and I don't have any pattern and have to invent them as I go.  Saturday I took time to go to the fabric store for velcro, chiffon and heavy pellon.  I'll be doing a couple hennins next and making sure everything already done has fastenings in the back.

I am very frustrated!!!  I went out Saturday evening after Leofwyna woke up and got two bags full mowed.  When I went to start up the mower again, it wouldn't.  Turns out the primer bulb is worn through again and I can't even get the repair process started until I can call Monday.  The front lawn and verges are undone and already several days past due 'cause of the rain earlier this week.  Instead I trimmed back the yews in front of the house so at least those look good.  Then I went in back and finished getting the tomato bed ready to plant; I'll get the plants tomorrow and get them in.

After supper I started sewing up two linen coifs I cut last night from a 99-cent linen shirt.  I want to have some for Lilies and some more for Gold Kay so I plan to get half a dozen (or so) made up.

WEDNESDAY

Made numerous phonecalls trying to deal with TIAA-CREF and the creditors. I think progress was made; won't know for sure until maybe Monday but I think it's done. This tied me up the entire day so during the evening I put the binding on the quilt although the quilting isn't entirely finished. I'll have to borrow it back to get that completed. It is looking very good though and I'm thinking of doing that pattern again with a different background.

THURSDAY

Packed and loaded up this morning and got on the road around noon. I worked on hemming down the binding on the quilt the whole way and got about halfway 'round. We got into Kansas City in time to go to the Nelson-Adkins for a few hours. We went through the second floor pretty thoroughly. Our favorites were the illuminations with the gorgeous goldleaf. We ate our favorite Thai lettuce wraps and Farfalle at the Cheesecake factory before going to find a room for the night. I was able to get the third side of the quilt binding done before we tucked in for the night.

FRIDAY

We hit Savers, a quilt shop and a couple scrapbooking shops during the afternoon. When we got from one end of town to the other we learned our other Savers, and a couple other places on our list were closed/gone. We had thought we might stop back at the Nelson-Adkins but with the rain we thought we'd need more time to get to Columbia and we were right; an accident on I-70 held us up for an hour for about 15 miles. We were glad when we were finally clear of that and able to get up to speed. We got to Columbia, checked in our motel and went to find supper around 8pm. I got the binding completed on the quilt and worked on the quilting until 3am. It's still not completely done but at least it's symetrical with two of the borders nearly done.

SATURDAY

A gentle, slow start to the day with waffles in the lobby, wrapping up the quilt and dressing for the wedding. Our Lady of Lourdes is a beautiful building, the chorus was great, and the ceremony was wonderful. The day continued with dinner and reception at a nearby Knights of Columbus where we learned of the backstories of the day. Gale and Kate have to stay in town a couple days to deal with getting the license and having a civil ceremony to complete the marriage; apparently there was a 'failure to communicate' as it were and it was a close call for the Saturday ceremony to carry on.

SUNDAY

We took our time starting the day but was up in time for waffles again before heading out. We stopped in at a small town along the way back with a block of antique shops and browsed our way through them. Back in Kansas City we were looking for used furniture stores as Leofwyna wanted something with drawers for her SCA clothes. After a long drive out of our way to a place that was closed we found the Flea Market where we were in luck and she found a nice five drawer piece for $40. We stopped for a BBQ supper before heading on home.

Od must have taken excellent care of Maggie as she scarcely scolded us for our absence.

TUESDAY

Sorting, sorting, sorting. Cleaning, too. Maude's 'sitting room' is clean and tidy. Moved new cotton and cotton cutters downstairs to attend to later. I have piles on my bed and the living room sofas. Sorted the linen cutters to purpose reducing that pile by a quarter. Re-discovered and washed/fulled purple wool; it'll be great for a couple chaparones. With all this stuff better organized it will soon be time to add to the stash challenge lists. For tonight though I'll sleep on Leofwyna's bed since mine is completely buried; lots more to do tomorrow.

MONDAY

Leofwyna got put on call today so she was still sleeping when I headed out for my haircut. I stopped at a couple thrift stores downtown and limited myself to a $3 bedskirt made entirely of cotton-linen blend (yes, even the platform) which I think I can get a shirt out of the platform and britches out of the skirt for a man's casual garb for gold key. I've gotta get the final details done on the gold key garb I've already worked on so I can turn it in to Marianne and get it off my bedroom door frame. I did the initial preparation of my federal tax return and don't believe the results. I'm going to do it over again another day to see if I come up with the same results. Also, I think there's a major typo problem with the Nebraska tax return as they have me subtracting what I owe in taxes from my adjusted income instead of from what I actually paid in for taxes. The result would certainly be nice to receive but is terribly unrealistic. This evening I finished stripping out and sewing together the last of the trim shirts and shut the lid on the now full trim box.

TUESDAY

Today I spent the afternoon waiting for phonecalls. It was a terribly nice day out and I had thought I'd work in the garden but I couldn't chance missing the calls so... Naturally none of the calls came in. Bummer!

Instead I got the wool apron dress sewed up; just handwork left to be done on it.

Spent considerable time Friday putting together half a dozen leather covered journals using leather upholstery samples for the covers.  I decided to leave the grommets on rather than trimming them away so the books can be hung from the belt with a length of cord or ribbon.  I used them for Twelfth Night household gifts.  I would have made more for largess but ran out of paper for the quires but I'll still do this sometime the next couple weeks.  While I had the leather out I recovered a 'boughten' journal with green leather to surprise Leofwyna.

I'm reconsidering how I'm counting for the stash challenge.  The quilt tops for the mission quilts will be counted as one unit as will the leather covered journals.  I want to be motivated to deal with a LOT more of the stash to get to the fifty count.

1.      Xlg doublet
2.      Xlg shirt
3.      Med doublet
4.      Med shirt
5.      Med kneepants
6.      20 quilt tops for African mission
7.      New stand for old dress form
8.      Reline winter coat
9.      6 leather covered journals

10.    1 leather recovered boughten journal

THURSDAY

Spent the day transcribing Standing Bear Part Two and starting Part Three.  It's always a good thing when this process is on an interesting subject.  That is the case with Standing Bear because twenty years ago at work we were doing a dramatization of this subject for public television.   This time is more for a historical documentary. 

When Standing Bear was being done then I had only been working with the producers a couple years and it was a real learning experience seeing how a television show of this type goes together.  There was all the planning years before hand, most of which I'd missed for this program but I got in on the process of finallizing the script, selecting actors, arranging for production sites, costumes and props, making travel, room and catering arrangements.  Whether youj're doing 60-minutes, 90-minues or 120-minutes the actual amount of material taped is many times this amount (perhaps 10-20 times as much) which is then cut down into the final program.   And locations were in several different places for various lengths of time.  I got to go on a couple of the out-of-studio shoots to manage the paperwork and talent payments.  And since I'm a deft sewer I got to work with the costumer a little, too. 

When the shoots were all finished and rented costumes were returned to the West Coast the locally made costumes, which were thoroughly and roughly used, and uncleaned (phew), were going to be thrown away I claimed the big box full and made several lovely quilts from them.  Being on the inside certainly had unexpected benefits. 

On an unscripted program which is full of interviews instead is when the transcription work comes along.  The 10-20 times rule still applies but in this case ALL the interviews must be transcribed.  Sometimes the interviews are highly informative and interesting.  Other times the subject is difficult to transcribe because of accent, multiple people like in a meeting, or noisy background; that's when it becomes exceedinly tedious.  And then sometimes the subject simply is not interesting to the transcriptionist, that can't be helped I suppose but then it's deadly tiring.  This was particularly true for me when the subject was football... OMG some of those people are inarticulate!  In spite of this  I really, really miss that job!

Anyway today when I was just shutting down to get ready to go to fiber arts Gyda called to let me know it was cancelled due to threat of ice storm.  Probably a good thing as when Leofwyna got home she said it was really icy-bad out there.  I worked on the sample quilts while Leofwyna put in some computer time.

FRIDAY

I thought the sun was trying to peep through this morning when I woke up so I scooped snow and de-iced the car hoping the sun might finish the job with the ice under the snow.  No such luck, the sun vanished totally about the same time I went in.  Oh well.  Went to get groceries, sent out a couple more job applications at the University and then worked on the transcription again until supper.  Finished the last of the poly-blend quilts and counted them up prepratory to shipping them out to Kronberg.  There's 20 tops for the church ladies to tie and bind for their African missions.  I'll be glad to get them out of the house.  I'm back to cleaning samples again, this time the cotton-blends.   These will probably go to Kronberg too but I'll have more fun with these and make them more organized so they'll look better and will probably be used for stress situations like fire, flood or tornado sympathy offerings of a more local nature. 

MONDAY-TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

I spent three evenings piecing four tops from the fabric gleaned from the sample books I brought home last August.  These will be passed on to my hometown church to be finished for African mission quilts.  The rest of the time has been spent doing the housecleaning and cooking for Thursday, busy-busy-busy.

Tonight we spent a little time relaxing together over a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle; it turned out to be a rather easy one and is already put away again.