New Stuff
So this journal was supposed to be about my SCA projects, and then I got busy with the various projects and forgot to update the silly thing. So, I will forget about doing an update from the last year.. and start with what I'm working on now.
I need to finish up Sophia's new dress, and possibly make her a couple others in the same style. They're cute on her and she feels pretty and 2 yards of wool or linen is easier to come by than the 5.5 needed for my dresses. I have an idea to make her a tiny little Elizabethan, because part of the fun of having children is dressing them like dolls.. at least in my world, but I'm still pondering the idea. She's inching into the Princess stage of being, so I can probably talk her into wearing a simplified version.
I've been playing with period foods for the last couple of months. Trying to do at least one new recipe a month. That's been very fun and enlightening. I test all the recipes on Sophia, and my theory is that if the 3 year old responds with a yum, then it's a keeper. If she won't touch it, then it probably needs some reworking before serving it to the population at large.
I've been collecting the materials to make the dress in my user id. The portrait is by Raphael and is titled Portrait of Maddalena Doni, if anyone feels the urge to look at a larger version. I've currently got 7 yards of coral velvet in my stash and I've been casually hunting around for the right blue brocade to make sleeves from. I haven't been quite as proactive as I should be in getting things together, but with a set date in mind for dress completion, I should start on that soon.
The other sewing clothing type thing that is in the works is making an embroidered tunic for a friend. Since I don't have an extra 15 hours a day and I have a need by date that is in May, I'm cheating and a friend is going to teach me/lend me her embroidery machine. I feel vaguely guilty about taking the modern way out, but I'm choosing to consider it hiring out the embroidery services to a shop rather than doing it myself.
Other than food and clothing, I don't have a whole lot of projects going on right at this moment. I've been casually working on beading a forepart and embroidering a partlet, but I think I'm going to start over again on the partlet, because I'm not happy with the linen thread that I've been working with. I think it would be best to start over now with silk. Now that Sophia is old enough to stay out of my sewing basket, I think I'm going to set a goal for myself of at least 15 beads per night in the hopes of completing the forepart sometime in this decade.