A sewing circle
Who: Balkaiv, Hattie, Kiah, Rhodya, Winston
Where: Candidate barracks
When: Evening on day 28, monthy 1, turn 19
What: The candidates band together to mend robes for hatching day. And to eat cookies.
Sickness had me bailing early, but thumpykai and rhodya have the full log.
Along with chores for the day the candidates have had other things to do. Preparations for the sewing party were snuck in around errands and meals and orders from anyone looking for a spare pair of hands. After dinner the glows light up the candidate barracks and a couple of tables have been pushed together to make a work space. There's pots of hot cider, both slightly alcoholic and not at all, as well as platters of easy to consume and not so messy finger foods. But mostly there are robes. A couple of apprentice weavers brought from the craft hall are in charge of sorting them and they direct people to the pile of still usable. Another candidate from Fort Hold where he was a cook is busy helping those looking for their robe find one that will need the least altering to fit their size. Winston's placed himself in charge of the actual sewing table for now and he's making sure everyone who's going to be working on taking out seams or stitching them in knows what they are doing.
Balkaiv picks desultorily through the robes, trying without much interest or success to claim one for his own. "How long these s'posed t' be, anyway?" he asks the room at large as he holds up one that might fit his shoulders but comes barely to his knees. "Feel like I'm wearin' a sharding dress."
"Rather a long dress than a short dress," Hattie chirps as she passes by Balkaiv and selects a seat at the table. The robe she's chosen for herself gets slung over the back of the chair and she begins to paw through the ones on the table, soon directed to one in particular by a girl who looks barely old enough to Stand and has obviously never been given instruction in sewing from the nervous, flighty way in which she watches those already pulling out stitches. "Any major disasters yet?" she asks Winston, blinking between him and the needle she sets about threading.
"None yet," Winston tells Hattie with a grin. "I did have to tell Earri no matter how enthusiastic he felt he couldn't rip out seams unless he knew how." Earri, the former fishercraft apprentice has set himself up by the refreshments to help dole those out. Looking over at Balkaiv he grins at the man. "What she said. We're going to be wanting robes that will protect us from all the flying sand as those little fellas go running all over looking for people. Calf-length I imagine should do it. Try the smaller piles for the longer robes. Not so many of them, but if I found one you certainly can."
Balkaiv grunts - surely no one is surprised by this - and tosses the shorter robe off to one side of the pile. "Should just let us wear trous," he grumbles and digs through the white and not-so-white robes, trying and failing to find one that is both broad and long enough. "Maybe we ought t' sort these, so they're easier t' go through." The next one he 'tries on'? Looks more like a shirt on him - or maybe a sleeve. "Who's this small, anyway?"
Earri gets a long look from Hattie, like she's trying to fix him in her mind along with a mental note of 'do not let near the robes under any circumstances'. "Right. As long as everyone's being productive, this shouldn't take us too long." Needle threaded, she stabs it through her belt whilst she lays out the robe more properly across her little bit of the table, to assess the situation. "A kid who thought they could sneak onto the Sands with the last lot of Candidates?" she suggests, aimed in Balkaiv's direction.
Rhodya's a bit late, but it's not chores that kept her. Walking carefully in step with another female candidate, the two of them murmuring and giggling as they go, she's helping carry a giant, cloth-covered platter into the dorms. The two of them head straight for the table with the cider and finger foods, only to pause, stymied by the fact that their platter is just too big to fit into the current arrangement. "Uhhh," Rhodya says. Shifting her grip on the platter, she looks behind her for a pair of free hands. "Anybody wanna help us come move some stuff out of the way for this here? I swear, we've got all the cookies in the world." The other candidate dissolves into giggles at these words. "It'll be well worth your while."
"They are sorted," Winston points out with a grin. "But they're not sizes. They're more ranges. Can't really do sizes. And if you need to stitch a couple together that can be done as well." He hasn't got his own needle threaded yet, but also doesn't have a robe before him. He has one on his cot so he must have done his already. Now he's just needling for the group. "Can search em pretty young. What? Thirteen or so? Some of em are pretty small at that age. Seen some smaller people in our lot." Like one of the former weaver apprentices who continues to try to help people find the proper pile to search through. Earri, being at the table, begins to help clear a place for those cookies eyeing them like he's never eaten before. But he does tend to tuck the food away growing lad that he is.
"Can I have that one?" That's Izach's voice piping up and Kai turns to lob the garment at the smaller boy. "S'what I mean, though," he answers Winston before shuffling out of the way of the blonde twins Yamarados and Tameatt. "Should maybe sort 'em by size so we ain't all digging, making a mess. How many we got of these things, anyway?" He pulls out one with a hem longer in the back than the front - or maybe it's the other way around. "We're up t' what, twenty-nine of us now? Anybody keepin' track?"
"Cookies?" Hattie echoes, looking sharply up and over towards Rhodya and the promise of the world's cookie supply. A little too eager there, she quickly looks down and runs her fingers along a seam to locate where the thread holding it together has snapped in two and left an uneven gap. She glances up in time to see the lobbed robe all but hit Izach in the face, though the boy only grins and snatches it away. As she begins to pull the stray thread from the robe she's concentrating on, she admits, "I haven't done a body-count recently." That makes her pause. "We should probably sew a few more when we're done, in an average size, just in-case."
Thanks to Earri, who proves unsurprisingly resourceful when it comes to making room for food, a place is quickly cleared for the large platter, and Rhodya and her companion get to set it down at last. "Cookies," Rhodya confirms, grinning as she pulls off the cloth that hid the collection. And there are all kinds of cookies, arranged in pretty concentric rows that are almost immediately spoiled by Earri and some other hungry types snagging handfuls. "The kitchens really outdid themselves," Rhodya observes, sounding proud, as she begins to collect cookies on a much smaller plate. Pinching one between her own lips, she takes the rest around for others to grab without risking the stampede at the main platter. She goes to the sewing group first, wiggling the plate temptingly at them, though the cookies in her mouth leaves her unable to speak.
"There's not big labels on em declaring sizes, I mean," Winston tells Balkaiv with a gesture of one hand. "They're sorted out by general size when we went through to find which were still wearable." He's got his own sewing kit in hand and one of the weaver's brings him a pile of robes good only for picking out usable thread. The girl gets a grin of thanks before he looks over at Rhodya. "No such thing as too many cookies," he tells her with wink. And Hattie's apparent agreement has him smiling at her and reminding her in a lowered voice, "Don't be forgetting out wager now." But he doesn't reach for a cookie when they're brought over. "Need to get these done. Especially if we're doing extras for people. Might also do some longer ones and hem them up good. So if they're needed we can just let the hem down."
Balkaiv half-snorts, pleased, at Izach's catch and abandons both robe and twins to migrate cookie-ward instead. "Just wrap me in a sheet and s'good enough for me. Who got all this food coming, anyway?" Eyebrows lift expectantly at Rhodya as he waits his turn to get a handful of munchies. "I ain't gonna be doing any sewing, anyway."
She tries to ignore the cookies. Hattie really does try, but then there's Rhodya right there and a plate of them dancing back and forth right in front of her. The seam gets quickly pinned into place and as soon as that's done, she sneaks one, two, three cookies away and sets them in a little stack to her right. "Thanks," she tells Rhodya, with a wry smile, still a little embarrassed at being over-eager. Winston's wager remark gets him a smirk and, "Multitasking, man, multitasking. Though I've heard men aren't so brilliant at it, so maybe it's safer for you to concentrate on one thing..." in an incredibly innocent voice. Oh so innocent. "Can you pin things, Kai?" she questions next.
Rhodya winks at Hattie. She takes her little plate of cookies on the road again, this time winding up near Kai, and stops there to peer at the robes for herself. Not to mention steal another cookie, since she's already managed to munc through the first. "I dunno, Kiah maybe. They just said they'd got wind we were having a party - well, stealin' all this cider ain't exactly subtle, I guess - so they made us stuff. Real nice of them." Since Kai seemed so eager to get cookies, Rhodya pushes the plate over to him for a second so she can peruse the robes with her free hand. "You found anything good for us tall folk?" she asks, oblivious to the whole size discussion that's been going on around her while she fetched cookies.
"Like we've got spare sheets," Winston says with a laugh. "Got spare nothing. If you can't find one that suits one of the others will help you sort it out." But he doesn't much care. The man will either find something appropriate with or without help or he'll be one less person on the sands to worry about. "Tall robes sorted out in the tall pile," he tells Rhodya with another smile. "Got mine and I think I'm the tallest here so there should be something left for you shorties." His head ducks to watch his work and not just because he's waiting for something to be thrown at him. But it does lift up again so he can wink at Hattie. "Can tell you what my concentration is on when I'm collecting the winning wager," he informs her with a low chuckle before carefully picking apart another seam.
"Mnh. Maybe I were lookin' in the wrong spot," Kai allows as he helps himself to not one, but two cookies. Oh, the hedonism. "I ain't found nothin' yet," he adds to Rhodya, "But I can look again in a minute." Tameatt moves away from the robes with his prize clutched in one hand, though his brother remains, still searching for his definition of perfect. Over Rhodya's shoulder, to Hattie, Kai continues, "Dunno. Long as someone shows me, I guess. Ain't a lot of call for any of that back home - least, not more'n my Ma could do."
Hattie's eyes narrow as they hone back in on Winston. "You concentrate on what you're doing now, boy." Boy now, not man. "You can talk winning all you like, but I don't see none of it yet," she continues, somewhere between a challenge and teasing. She leans forward to scrabble about a bit on the table and manages to yank three robes from one pile back her way. "I can show you how to pin hems on these when you're done looking for a robe," she suggests to Kai, though it's more telling than actual suggestion.
The plate of cookies starts to travel on its own, passed from hand to hand and no longer Rhodya's problem. She chuckles at Winston. "Says who? Maybe they breed 'em little in Fort, and that big robe you found was the last one." She shuffles around the table, drawn by a large looking robe she saw one of the other candidates checking out. She holds it up to herself. "Nah, too big in the shoulder. Might fit you," she tells Kai, "but I dunno, it ain't that long." Well, that's for him to figure it out. She tosses it over to his side of the table and keeps digging through the pile she's found.
"Mine's already done," Winston informs Hattie with a big grin. "All ready to go in fact. So now I am just here to lend assistance." And he flourishes his seam ripper before finishing up the robe he's on. "This one's got a decent length that could be used to add to another," he says as he folds the old white cloth and sets it aside. The sleeves are not good for anything but rags, but they get the thread removed from them as well. Tidy lengths of white thread are lined up by length ready for those who need it. "I think mine might be a bit big on you, Rhodya, but if you need to take it and let me fix something else I am happy to help. Could find another and do a little mending pretty quick." A wink gets dropped at Hattie as he tells her, "Give you a chance to catch up and all." Since Kai seems to be in hand he doesn't offer other suggestions to him for now, but leaves him to robe hunt in peace.
Balkaiv moves to collect Rhodya's possibility, only to find that if it isn't the same robe he had earlier, it's a close cousin. He snorts once at it, amused, and drapes the thing over his shoulder before wandering back to flop down at Hattie's other side, away from Winston. "Guess s'time for me t' learn how t' pin. What do I got t' do?" Leaning forward, he snags up a pincushion and gives the little ball an interested look, poking one thick finger at the shiny-headed objects.
"Good for you," Hattie shoots back at Winston. "But in my experience, it's better to set to ensuring a task is done well as a whole before concentrating on what you personally have to achieve," she elaborates, ever so sweetly and just about keeping her smile in check. "Your twitch seems to be back," gets murmured, then it's back to business. "Could always piece another one together," she says, seeking Rhodya out. "Just depends on whether to start from the basics or just add to the hem." Having finished re-sewing that seam, she turns her attention to Kai. "Measure about an inch from the bottom and fold it back on itself, then weave a pin through every few inches to hold it. 'Least on those. Might need bigger hems on the others." She quickly demonstrates and keeps one finger in place to hold it until Kai can thread a pin through the fabric.
"Well, with you here I had no concerns about things being done," Winston informs Hattie before blinks at her rapidly for several seconds. One eye, then the other, then both at the same time. He's reaching for the second sleeve on his robe when one of the nannies steps into the door and looks around the room. Her hand lifts and she waves towards Winston who gets a frown and stands up. "Excuse me a moment," he says before hurrying over to hear what the woman has to say. There's a bit of nodding, some frowning, and then some quiet swearing. Turning back to the room he says, "I need to see to something. Save work for me. I hopefully won't be long." He steps out following the woman and winds up missing the rest of the party, but is happy to do whatever is left needing done when he finally makes it back.
Where: Candidate barracks
When: Evening on day 28, monthy 1, turn 19
What: The candidates band together to mend robes for hatching day. And to eat cookies.
Sickness had me bailing early, but thumpykai and rhodya have the full log.
Along with chores for the day the candidates have had other things to do. Preparations for the sewing party were snuck in around errands and meals and orders from anyone looking for a spare pair of hands. After dinner the glows light up the candidate barracks and a couple of tables have been pushed together to make a work space. There's pots of hot cider, both slightly alcoholic and not at all, as well as platters of easy to consume and not so messy finger foods. But mostly there are robes. A couple of apprentice weavers brought from the craft hall are in charge of sorting them and they direct people to the pile of still usable. Another candidate from Fort Hold where he was a cook is busy helping those looking for their robe find one that will need the least altering to fit their size. Winston's placed himself in charge of the actual sewing table for now and he's making sure everyone who's going to be working on taking out seams or stitching them in knows what they are doing.
Balkaiv picks desultorily through the robes, trying without much interest or success to claim one for his own. "How long these s'posed t' be, anyway?" he asks the room at large as he holds up one that might fit his shoulders but comes barely to his knees. "Feel like I'm wearin' a sharding dress."
"Rather a long dress than a short dress," Hattie chirps as she passes by Balkaiv and selects a seat at the table. The robe she's chosen for herself gets slung over the back of the chair and she begins to paw through the ones on the table, soon directed to one in particular by a girl who looks barely old enough to Stand and has obviously never been given instruction in sewing from the nervous, flighty way in which she watches those already pulling out stitches. "Any major disasters yet?" she asks Winston, blinking between him and the needle she sets about threading.
"None yet," Winston tells Hattie with a grin. "I did have to tell Earri no matter how enthusiastic he felt he couldn't rip out seams unless he knew how." Earri, the former fishercraft apprentice has set himself up by the refreshments to help dole those out. Looking over at Balkaiv he grins at the man. "What she said. We're going to be wanting robes that will protect us from all the flying sand as those little fellas go running all over looking for people. Calf-length I imagine should do it. Try the smaller piles for the longer robes. Not so many of them, but if I found one you certainly can."
Balkaiv grunts - surely no one is surprised by this - and tosses the shorter robe off to one side of the pile. "Should just let us wear trous," he grumbles and digs through the white and not-so-white robes, trying and failing to find one that is both broad and long enough. "Maybe we ought t' sort these, so they're easier t' go through." The next one he 'tries on'? Looks more like a shirt on him - or maybe a sleeve. "Who's this small, anyway?"
Earri gets a long look from Hattie, like she's trying to fix him in her mind along with a mental note of 'do not let near the robes under any circumstances'. "Right. As long as everyone's being productive, this shouldn't take us too long." Needle threaded, she stabs it through her belt whilst she lays out the robe more properly across her little bit of the table, to assess the situation. "A kid who thought they could sneak onto the Sands with the last lot of Candidates?" she suggests, aimed in Balkaiv's direction.
Rhodya's a bit late, but it's not chores that kept her. Walking carefully in step with another female candidate, the two of them murmuring and giggling as they go, she's helping carry a giant, cloth-covered platter into the dorms. The two of them head straight for the table with the cider and finger foods, only to pause, stymied by the fact that their platter is just too big to fit into the current arrangement. "Uhhh," Rhodya says. Shifting her grip on the platter, she looks behind her for a pair of free hands. "Anybody wanna help us come move some stuff out of the way for this here? I swear, we've got all the cookies in the world." The other candidate dissolves into giggles at these words. "It'll be well worth your while."
"They are sorted," Winston points out with a grin. "But they're not sizes. They're more ranges. Can't really do sizes. And if you need to stitch a couple together that can be done as well." He hasn't got his own needle threaded yet, but also doesn't have a robe before him. He has one on his cot so he must have done his already. Now he's just needling for the group. "Can search em pretty young. What? Thirteen or so? Some of em are pretty small at that age. Seen some smaller people in our lot." Like one of the former weaver apprentices who continues to try to help people find the proper pile to search through. Earri, being at the table, begins to help clear a place for those cookies eyeing them like he's never eaten before. But he does tend to tuck the food away growing lad that he is.
"Can I have that one?" That's Izach's voice piping up and Kai turns to lob the garment at the smaller boy. "S'what I mean, though," he answers Winston before shuffling out of the way of the blonde twins Yamarados and Tameatt. "Should maybe sort 'em by size so we ain't all digging, making a mess. How many we got of these things, anyway?" He pulls out one with a hem longer in the back than the front - or maybe it's the other way around. "We're up t' what, twenty-nine of us now? Anybody keepin' track?"
"Cookies?" Hattie echoes, looking sharply up and over towards Rhodya and the promise of the world's cookie supply. A little too eager there, she quickly looks down and runs her fingers along a seam to locate where the thread holding it together has snapped in two and left an uneven gap. She glances up in time to see the lobbed robe all but hit Izach in the face, though the boy only grins and snatches it away. As she begins to pull the stray thread from the robe she's concentrating on, she admits, "I haven't done a body-count recently." That makes her pause. "We should probably sew a few more when we're done, in an average size, just in-case."
Thanks to Earri, who proves unsurprisingly resourceful when it comes to making room for food, a place is quickly cleared for the large platter, and Rhodya and her companion get to set it down at last. "Cookies," Rhodya confirms, grinning as she pulls off the cloth that hid the collection. And there are all kinds of cookies, arranged in pretty concentric rows that are almost immediately spoiled by Earri and some other hungry types snagging handfuls. "The kitchens really outdid themselves," Rhodya observes, sounding proud, as she begins to collect cookies on a much smaller plate. Pinching one between her own lips, she takes the rest around for others to grab without risking the stampede at the main platter. She goes to the sewing group first, wiggling the plate temptingly at them, though the cookies in her mouth leaves her unable to speak.
"There's not big labels on em declaring sizes, I mean," Winston tells Balkaiv with a gesture of one hand. "They're sorted out by general size when we went through to find which were still wearable." He's got his own sewing kit in hand and one of the weaver's brings him a pile of robes good only for picking out usable thread. The girl gets a grin of thanks before he looks over at Rhodya. "No such thing as too many cookies," he tells her with wink. And Hattie's apparent agreement has him smiling at her and reminding her in a lowered voice, "Don't be forgetting out wager now." But he doesn't reach for a cookie when they're brought over. "Need to get these done. Especially if we're doing extras for people. Might also do some longer ones and hem them up good. So if they're needed we can just let the hem down."
Balkaiv half-snorts, pleased, at Izach's catch and abandons both robe and twins to migrate cookie-ward instead. "Just wrap me in a sheet and s'good enough for me. Who got all this food coming, anyway?" Eyebrows lift expectantly at Rhodya as he waits his turn to get a handful of munchies. "I ain't gonna be doing any sewing, anyway."
She tries to ignore the cookies. Hattie really does try, but then there's Rhodya right there and a plate of them dancing back and forth right in front of her. The seam gets quickly pinned into place and as soon as that's done, she sneaks one, two, three cookies away and sets them in a little stack to her right. "Thanks," she tells Rhodya, with a wry smile, still a little embarrassed at being over-eager. Winston's wager remark gets him a smirk and, "Multitasking, man, multitasking. Though I've heard men aren't so brilliant at it, so maybe it's safer for you to concentrate on one thing..." in an incredibly innocent voice. Oh so innocent. "Can you pin things, Kai?" she questions next.
Rhodya winks at Hattie. She takes her little plate of cookies on the road again, this time winding up near Kai, and stops there to peer at the robes for herself. Not to mention steal another cookie, since she's already managed to munc through the first. "I dunno, Kiah maybe. They just said they'd got wind we were having a party - well, stealin' all this cider ain't exactly subtle, I guess - so they made us stuff. Real nice of them." Since Kai seemed so eager to get cookies, Rhodya pushes the plate over to him for a second so she can peruse the robes with her free hand. "You found anything good for us tall folk?" she asks, oblivious to the whole size discussion that's been going on around her while she fetched cookies.
"Like we've got spare sheets," Winston says with a laugh. "Got spare nothing. If you can't find one that suits one of the others will help you sort it out." But he doesn't much care. The man will either find something appropriate with or without help or he'll be one less person on the sands to worry about. "Tall robes sorted out in the tall pile," he tells Rhodya with another smile. "Got mine and I think I'm the tallest here so there should be something left for you shorties." His head ducks to watch his work and not just because he's waiting for something to be thrown at him. But it does lift up again so he can wink at Hattie. "Can tell you what my concentration is on when I'm collecting the winning wager," he informs her with a low chuckle before carefully picking apart another seam.
"Mnh. Maybe I were lookin' in the wrong spot," Kai allows as he helps himself to not one, but two cookies. Oh, the hedonism. "I ain't found nothin' yet," he adds to Rhodya, "But I can look again in a minute." Tameatt moves away from the robes with his prize clutched in one hand, though his brother remains, still searching for his definition of perfect. Over Rhodya's shoulder, to Hattie, Kai continues, "Dunno. Long as someone shows me, I guess. Ain't a lot of call for any of that back home - least, not more'n my Ma could do."
Hattie's eyes narrow as they hone back in on Winston. "You concentrate on what you're doing now, boy." Boy now, not man. "You can talk winning all you like, but I don't see none of it yet," she continues, somewhere between a challenge and teasing. She leans forward to scrabble about a bit on the table and manages to yank three robes from one pile back her way. "I can show you how to pin hems on these when you're done looking for a robe," she suggests to Kai, though it's more telling than actual suggestion.
The plate of cookies starts to travel on its own, passed from hand to hand and no longer Rhodya's problem. She chuckles at Winston. "Says who? Maybe they breed 'em little in Fort, and that big robe you found was the last one." She shuffles around the table, drawn by a large looking robe she saw one of the other candidates checking out. She holds it up to herself. "Nah, too big in the shoulder. Might fit you," she tells Kai, "but I dunno, it ain't that long." Well, that's for him to figure it out. She tosses it over to his side of the table and keeps digging through the pile she's found.
"Mine's already done," Winston informs Hattie with a big grin. "All ready to go in fact. So now I am just here to lend assistance." And he flourishes his seam ripper before finishing up the robe he's on. "This one's got a decent length that could be used to add to another," he says as he folds the old white cloth and sets it aside. The sleeves are not good for anything but rags, but they get the thread removed from them as well. Tidy lengths of white thread are lined up by length ready for those who need it. "I think mine might be a bit big on you, Rhodya, but if you need to take it and let me fix something else I am happy to help. Could find another and do a little mending pretty quick." A wink gets dropped at Hattie as he tells her, "Give you a chance to catch up and all." Since Kai seems to be in hand he doesn't offer other suggestions to him for now, but leaves him to robe hunt in peace.
Balkaiv moves to collect Rhodya's possibility, only to find that if it isn't the same robe he had earlier, it's a close cousin. He snorts once at it, amused, and drapes the thing over his shoulder before wandering back to flop down at Hattie's other side, away from Winston. "Guess s'time for me t' learn how t' pin. What do I got t' do?" Leaning forward, he snags up a pincushion and gives the little ball an interested look, poking one thick finger at the shiny-headed objects.
"Good for you," Hattie shoots back at Winston. "But in my experience, it's better to set to ensuring a task is done well as a whole before concentrating on what you personally have to achieve," she elaborates, ever so sweetly and just about keeping her smile in check. "Your twitch seems to be back," gets murmured, then it's back to business. "Could always piece another one together," she says, seeking Rhodya out. "Just depends on whether to start from the basics or just add to the hem." Having finished re-sewing that seam, she turns her attention to Kai. "Measure about an inch from the bottom and fold it back on itself, then weave a pin through every few inches to hold it. 'Least on those. Might need bigger hems on the others." She quickly demonstrates and keeps one finger in place to hold it until Kai can thread a pin through the fabric.
"Well, with you here I had no concerns about things being done," Winston informs Hattie before blinks at her rapidly for several seconds. One eye, then the other, then both at the same time. He's reaching for the second sleeve on his robe when one of the nannies steps into the door and looks around the room. Her hand lifts and she waves towards Winston who gets a frown and stands up. "Excuse me a moment," he says before hurrying over to hear what the woman has to say. There's a bit of nodding, some frowning, and then some quiet swearing. Turning back to the room he says, "I need to see to something. Save work for me. I hopefully won't be long." He steps out following the woman and winds up missing the rest of the party, but is happy to do whatever is left needing done when he finally makes it back.