17 March 1999

Amazing. No one has bugged me about updating my journal. That means either I've trained everyone to look once a week, or no one cares. Good job, everyone! Treats all 'round. (I refuse to believe that no one reads this.)

I'm totally wiped out. I'm also an idiot. I've been staying up until the wee (and I do mean wee) hours of the morning, working on garb for Northern Lights this weekend in Maine.

I've known about this event for a couple of months. I've had the fabric even longer than that. I could have had everything done in one weekend of hard sewing. What did I do? I farted around. And now I'm paying for it with a head that feels like it's full of mercury -- heavy, viscous, almost ponderous but still liquid. Bleah. I need to sleep.

I got home at around 11:30 last night and started laying out a new rubahka to wear with my sarafan. (For those of you who are tuning in late, a rubakha is a long shirt Russian women wore under their clothing. A sarafan is a sort of jumper -- very comfy, and probably out of period for the SCA. I don't care at the moment; I like it.) I cut a shirt last week that I dont like at all. I can probably adapt it into something else; maybe a shorter version of the one I cut last night. It's a very simple pattern. I could have had it done in a day, easily; I got everything cut and put together last night. All I have to do now is set a collar and hem it. I managed to get the end of the sleeves on the selvedges of the material, so if I don't want to, I don't even have to hem them. I need something to keep them up and out of my food, though; I may make cuffs that button on over the sleeves. I'm such a garb geek.

I'm also in mortal danger of becoming a fabric snob. The linen has been such sheer pleasure to work with that I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to go back to lesser fabrics. I may even try my hand at sewing silk one of these days. That sort of scares me. Silk is very slippery, so I'm afraid that it'll slither out from under the presser foot or cut crooked. I'll have to do some prior planning -- new silk pins, brand-new needle in the machine, freshly-sharpened shears, and a muslin mockup so I'm sure the pattern works. While I can find inexpensive silk, it's still too dear to be mucking about with.

I need to order some fabric, anyway. I'm bartering work on a velvet robe for Troll in return for a custom-made box for embroidery stuff. Troll is so named (as far as I know) because he worked the troll booth (entry gate) the first several events he went to. He's also really big and goes around saying "BOOGA" to people. I guess you have to be there. Suffice to say, he's nice to have around when it's really cold out and you can't get into Court, where it's warm, because the room is too crowded.

Oh, and Eclipsic? I love you too.