We survived another Landing Days at Jamestown, but this time the trek home was the most dangerous part of the weekend.

Since attack_laurel's Bob was unable to attend Landing Days this year, we had her-entertaining-self along for the ride. Last week had been a tough one and I was waffling on going to Jamestown this weekend, but as we were waiting for traffic to die down and Alan to complete his conference call, she and I chatted until I finally snapped and started packing. We got on the road kinda late, but meant that we had no traffic to deal with on the after-rush hour drive down. Our room was fine, if you don't care about having a fan in the bathroom, and at least nice and spacious.

Saturday was lovely, and I got to spend most of my day hanging out with Carla and stringmonkey in the barracks. They made food, a couple of dishes in the dutch ovens, but I mostly sat near the herbs and tried to engage visitors in identifying them. I plucked some rosemary, thyme, sage, hyssop, mint and lemon balm, and a staff member had picked an impressive fennel stalk, which was used in the pork, apple and onion dish. After the busy day was done we retired back to the LaQ and tried to motivate towards the shower, and rounded the day out with take-out from Red, Hot and Blue, and hanging out with friends, and even social time with Lara, Fred, Cin and folks. I did bend Cin's ear on sprang, but need to find some of the 18th Century examples for her to explore for use at Yorktown. I also played with my knitting and screwed it up twice, and eventually got it right after a bit of ripping out of rows with a bit of stringmonkey guidance.

Sunday ended up being cooler and comfortable and quieter, but not without fun. I spent much of the day with attack_laurel in the Governor's House so we could take turns and spell each other to take breaks. She worked on hemming curtains for the bed and trimming a cushion, and I did knitting, sewing and some servant-like cleaning up of cobwebs, and such. It was a good day, and we even got to start the day with a bus load of visitors from England. I was even able to take a little bit of time to do some shopping in the gift shop for some books and pamphlets. Alas a tornado watch was announced, and as attendance was down, we did decide to take our tired selves out about an hour early.

The drive home ended up being the worst part. I-64 became progressively packed, so we dove off for 17N to 301N which had much less traffic, but became slow due to the rain. There was also a bit of a back-up crossing the Nice bridge over the Potomac's choppy waters, but luckily there was no accident, just volume. Alan drove the first part and we took a break for dinner at the Outback in La Plata, before I drove the last bit in the driving rain on the beltway home. Despite leaving around 5pm, and noting that we did take an hour break, we still didn't get home until after 10pm. Once home and unpacked in as much as we cared to, we fell in bed and slept the sleep of the ded.

I am glad I went, and had a lovely time with friends, but am justifiably sore, with sore hands and arms from the knitting, sewing, cleaning, and gripping of the steering wheel to guide us home safe. It was awesome to see attack_laurel's lacing of the petticoat to the bodies in action. Really inspiring to make a new petticoat and bodies, but I should finish my new shift and convert an old serviceable back-closing petticoat to front closing so I can try lacing it in as well.

Upcoming is a fun trip to the MFA and more embroidery at Plimoth! excellent.

So yesterday, I got an email from a lady in the Netherlands all excited to find another sprang-fan. She included the link to her website which totally awesome. She has both Dutch and English versions of her site, for the most part.
Den Blauwen Swaen: http://www.denblauwenswaen.nl/engels.htm

Under the menu item for Techniques, she has great pictures for her sprang, nalbinding, and wool dying. (FYI: The pictures are the links to more information.) She does 800-1000 Frisian reenactment, as well as working for the Drents Museum in Assen, and takes some neat photos too. She seems like someone who would be fun to hang out with, but I'll just have to oooh and ahhh at her works from afar. Some of the patterns in sprang that Blue has done are amazing, and now I am really really inspired to try a pair of sprang mittens.

I've also added another sprang page to my site with information on the Sheep and Wool Festival: http://genvieve.net/sca/sprang3.html
It's nothing new from what I posted here on Sunday, but up on my site, which I need to remember not to neglect. It serves as a single location for compiling my works, to remind me of where I've come and what I've done, and also to remind me that I still have so much farther to go.

Had a great time at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend. I gave out all 75 handouts I'd made over the course of the two days, and introduced lots of folks to sprang who had never heard of it before.

Sprang - The history, origins, construction and use of thread twisting: http://www.regia.org/sprang.html
-Regia Anglorum’s introduction to the history of sprang, with some details on construction.

Phiala’s Sprang page: http://www.stringpage.com/sprang/sprang.html
-Pictures of her works, a handout on making sprang bags, another handout on patterned sprang, and the basics of creating a circular warp for sprang.

Oddny’s Basic Sprang Instructions: http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/donisfuff/sprang1.html
-a basic webpage from the creator of Sprang: A Twisted Little Art
: http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/donisfuff/coptic.html
-with pictures and instructions on creating Coptic patterned (twined) sprang

Sprang: http://housebarra.com/EP/ep07/11sprang.html
-Introduction to Sprang based on Peter Collingwood’s book, focusing on getting started with the technique.

Thora’s Old World Sprang through the Early Middle Ages: A Brief Bibliography: http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/sprangbib.html
-An annotated bibliography on sprang, technique, history, variations of techniques, and extant pieces

Den Blauwen Swaen: http://www.denblauwenswaen.nl/engels.htm
-A reenactor in the Netherlands who has great technique pages on sprang, as well as nalbinding and wool dying. (After following the link to the site in English, click on Techniques from the menu, and the picture next to Sprang for her works and inspirations.) Basic instructions with pictures and video outside of the main site's frames: http://www.denblauwenswaen.nl/public/sites/english/techniques/sprang_how_it_works.htm

Genevieve’s String page: http://genvieve.net/sca/stringarts.html
-Links to two pages of pictures of sprang bags, at the bottom of the page, created based on basic instructions

 

Collingwood, Peter The Techniques of Sprang: Plaiting on Stretched Threads. Green Editorial; First edition. June 1999.  ISBN-13: 978-1558219670. Copies available on Amazon.com and other booksellers.

Hald, Margrethe. Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials: A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles, translated by Jean Olsen. Publications of the National Museum, Archaeological-Historical Series, Vol. XXI. Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1980.

Sorry for lack of update.

Eddie Izzard was fun last night. Our seats down in the orchestra were awesome, and there was even a walking aisle space between the back of our seats and the next row, so no one breathing down our necks or kicking the back of our chairs. Those seated around us were nice and enjoyed the show as well, instead of talking or something rude. Eddie was naturally brilliant and entertaining, and handled the hecklers well. We all had an awesome outing.

Okay, onto the bad: Take Metro as finding parking was the suck. On the plus side, I got a good long walk from and to the truck. DAR Constitution Hall is more suited to musical shows than comedy. The acoustics sucked, and Eddie, being Eddie, is dynamic with the hand gestures and they really needed a headset mic for him.  And finally, there were signs that said no flash photography at the request of the artist. If you respect him enough to buy a ticket, please don't disrupt the performance with your damn flash, and if you insist on taking a really fuzzy bad picture with your camera-phone, do the rest of us a favor and turn off the sound on your phone. sigh. People are such children sometimes.

Wednesday night, Alan and I went to test drive some new to us cars to replace our smashed up Crown Vic. (sorry, I locked the post with the accident details.) He drove a Ford Five Hundred, another Crown Vic in need of some attention, and a Dodge Charger. On the whole, he was unimpressed with the 500, wistful for another Crown Vic, and the favorite was the charger, which was fun but out of our price range. Anyone have any suggestions on comfortable vehicles for Alan's 45 min (sometimes 2 hour) commute to and then from work? He's used to the Crown Vic, so recommendations for a Focus or Yaris will be completely ignored, but suggestions for cars with comfort and power are appreciated.

This weekend is the MD Sheep and Wool Fest. I need to warp up two more frames for practice and display, and determine today if I want to do a display board or what, and if a visit to Staples is necessary...

This Saturday was the Free Scholar/White Scarf gathering at Kit's place. There were over 30 fighters in attendance, and while I only took some pictures, laughed at some of the bouts, and got to hang out with friends before and after, here are a few photos of the day.



I did stay up until 3am both nights for a little chatty time with 'Nar and Christian, which could have been predicted.

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I've spent much of my time spranging in order to practice and have some nice examples to share this weekend at the Sheep and Wool Fest.

This is the red wool sprang pouch I made on Tuesday:


On Thursday night I warped up some natural gray hand-spun wool Kymber gave me a while back, and attempted some different twist patterns in this piece. Unfortunately, the wool was very sticky and while clearing the shed was a bit tough, making sure to only grab what was intended was tougher. So it is neither polished nor pretty, but a learning experience.


After the trial of the gray wool, I then decided to try a small plain cream fisherman's wool bag. Alas, the chunk of wool I reeled off was riddled with worn places, and instead of just trashing it/ using it for stuffing or something else, I tied knots and tried to work with it. So I have another small lumpy piece with uneven patterning. pitiful, but completed on Saturday.


Finally, I warped up a piece of more of the cream fisherman's wool, along with some in a peach color that I had dyed with pokeberries a while ago, in order to try another bag of sprang with Coptic twined patterning. Luckily I paused on Saturday night when I was getting too tired, and finished the rest of the piece on Sunday afternoon. Someone said it looked like a dreamsicle, which I will take as a compliment.


So that was fun, but I would like a successful piece of the twist patterned sprang, like the Danish Bronze Age cap. Must try that this week. I also love the pattern idea in Collingwood's Sprang book on making mittens, so that looks like fun to try as well.

Okay, enough of being a scolding harridan.

Earth Day came and went.
I still drive an SUV, but I did do some research (and consulting with Alan) on installing some rain barrels in the back yard, thanks to Ealdthryth's post. Need to see if Behnke's has some in stock, or chase down this Arlington Echo place. I figure at the least, it will put a small dent into water bill when we need to top off the pond. Saving water in this house of three fish tanks and the koi pond (and a girl who loves her long showers) is like trying to fill the Grand Canyon one brick at a time, but it is a start. I also continue to use the reusable bags when shopping, and even got a free one today in trade for a pile of plastic grocery bags. I try to use cold water in the washing machine except for towels, sheets, etc. And we don't have any big desktop machines in the house sucking up energy, just some laptops and a mac-mini. I've thought of composting our coffee grounds and used tea bags and the few other plant matter bits, but flat spaces away from the fence are in short supply. hmm... Perhaps I could start a small garden plot in the backyard, but what would I grow? I like tomatoes. I have some herbs I never use (rosemary, oregano, chamomile, lavender and hopefully the mint will come back.) I liked the blackberries two summers ago, but they were a beast to harvest on the hill behind the pond. Perhaps I need waders. Oh, and there is the whole nature-hates-me aspect to trying to grow things. I'd need to convince Alan that HE wants to start a small garden plot...

So baby steps are at least steps. I took my manager's soda bottle from her to recycle before she trashed it. yeah, um, go me.

Last night, inspired by needing a reminder on how to do sprang, I made a little red wool bag. I warped up my faboo Spanish Peacock sprang loom at home while waiting for a load to finish the spin cycle before tossing the clothes in the dryer. Then I took it to fight practice and did most of the body of the pouch, and preparing it for the condensed chain stitch to form the bottom, just before heading out to dinner with folks. (BTW Miguel, Wally admired the workmanship of the loom and beater for quite some time, while we chatted about string stuff and the tools needed for the fiber addiction.) And I finished the bottom of the bag, sewing up the sides and braiding ties for the drawstring portion before crashing in bed. Hooray Sprang! I should take pictures. What to try next...

Brain fart. It is 5:20, and I am obviously not making my 5pm acupuncture appointment. DOH! I hate it when I flake out. But I called and apologized and rescheduled for Thursday. I'm sure there is a fee for forgetting an appointment and I wouldn't blame them. sigh.
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Remember this: "Oh, and yes, I do look over the sign-in sheets and will call out anyone I see who I noticed did not sign in." from Thursday's post?
Yeah, had to do that a couple of times. It is probably true that not all MOLs will continuously scan the field all day to check and see if they spot someone who didn't sign in, but I do. Heraldry works. Frankly it is not our jobs, but one I can't help but do. Oh, and the proper response to being called out from not signing in the weekend before is "Yes, I know, I'm sorry. I will do my best to not let it happen again."  Your answer should not be "yeah, I was running late, and besides, its only fencing..."  Really wrong answer buddy and you do not make friends with that sentiment.

Okay, it's not like it is difficult. You bloodly well will sign in at the list table when there is a tourney you want to get your name in. Why does that seem to be the only motivation? Are we not normally happy and smiley and glad to see you when you come to us at the tables? The rules haven't changed in years. If you want to fight at an official SCA event, you have to sign in at the list tables. You don't even have to be a member anymore. All you need is a fighter card and the ability to sign a waiver. How easy do we have to make it? (No, I will not roam around the list field going from shade to shade offering to sign you in.) End of story.

Yes, color me a bit frustrated at having to hunt down and report fighters for not signing in.

Again, I say Thank You to the 95% of fighters who are patient, kind and just who do sign-in every time. You stand as a good example to others, and have my gratitude.
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Tournament of Chivalry boasted 84 fighters upon the field, 20 of whom were knights. 3 members of the Order of Chivalry took the black and gold staff to marshal all day instead of fight, with several other volunteers, so that those 84 could fight in safety. I think this must have been the first Tournament of Chivalry to have enough marshals, as Alan signed in to marshal if needed, but relaxed in shade instead. Folks did seem to have a fun time both on and off the field. I just made it over to our dayshade to witness Sir Corby taking Girard as a squire of his household, and welcome him to the fold. I was blessed with excellent company at the list table as Gabrell helped me sign in fighters, and random other entertaining folks brought food and stopped by for a visit.

We departed the site fairly early to retire back to our house for cleaning up, starting the grill and eating some of the metric ton of food I made available. I forgot the chips though. We had a lovely full house of friends and "family" and much chatting took place throughout the evening. Eventually, all the tired folks crawled up to bed, I gave Gabrell a ride back home, and read a bit before hitting the sack myself. Sunday dawned nice and rainy, and everyone beat me out of bed to wakefulness but Corby. We made a breakfast of left over sausages and burger meat, scrambled eggs, and waffles. Mmm... waffles. Alan then napped on the couch as I checked email, and as soon as I turned off all the lights and TV, and went to nap on the living-room couch, he awoke, so I got to snuggle into a pre-warmed couch for my nap.  We watched some of John Adams, did the dishes and clean up, started the laundry,  and did more clean-up for the rest of the evening. I then read a bit, but my brain decided at midnight that the kitchen floors must be cleaned, so I swept and swept, and spot cleaned a few places before finally crashing in bed and calling it a weekend.
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Since we've decided we're not going to Crown, I contacted Ingvild and offered to come up and help out at the MD Sheep and Wool Festival in the Medieval and Renaissance Textiles Showcase tent. I've been assigned sprang to demo, which should be a ton of fun, and has me inspired to pull out the loom again and play with it some more so I'll have more examples to display. I wonder if I could set-up the banner stand Alan made for whipcording at the Children's Fete last year for a really tall loom to work on a belt or sash or something? The mind reels. Is it safe to assume we are to be in garb for the demo? Who else can I look forward to seeing there?

Just a quick post to show off some pictures of our Glades Pottery items.

Friday night, after battling traffic to get home, Alan was disinclined to want to leave the house. So I picked up dinner from Harry's, and we snuggled in at home and went to bed a little early.

Saturday, I slept in late, Alan made brunch, and then we went out to the Men's Wearhouse to look into replacing some of his dress shirts and his charcoal gray suit. Sadly, there was badness at work, and he took a few calls at the store, and then we headed home so he could head into work. So poor Alan was at work from around 3 until 10ish. I thought about going out for some shopping errands on my own, but decided to conserve gas and money and stay home to read, watch tv and nap. Belatedly I headed over to Roland and Theo's for an indescribable evening of muppetry and alcohol. I confess I liked the Mhanamana alcoholic purple kool-aid, but eventually deferred to my signature Janice, a Mike's Hard Lemonade. Peep art was created (I claim the Marie Antoin-peep before and after, Buffy the Vampeep slayer, and Zompeeps), sugary snacks were imbibed, as well as savory tasty nibbles, Muppets were watched, music was sung along to, Hobbes the Fuzzy Loofa was played with while Ninja-Kitty hid, inner Muppets were more or less assigned, and a good time was had by all. Alan confessed his father's affinity for the Muppets, which helped explain Alan's otherwise inexplicable advanced Muppet knowledge. You learn something new everyday. It was a great evening spent with friends.

Sunday was more sleeping in, relaxing, watching DIY tv, reading and in general spending time snuggled deep in my comfy chair. I finally finished reading Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley, which was great once I got beyond the first 50 pages. In general I think she does better with young female voices, but she made it work for a teenage male voice this time. Quite an enjoyable read in my opinion.

Oh, and not surprisingly my inner muppet is Janice...

Apparently this weekend was the 25th MTA held at Jamestown. I guess after making a big fuss for the 400th Anniversary, celebrating a 25th seemed kinda eh. But it was cool to see the variety of camps and troops. I hadn't seen the grand parade before, so I played paparazzi a bit on Sunday towards the end of the day.


After all the stress of ramping up and surviving the 400th, it was nice to be a bit more laid back. Lara, the new fort manager, asked us what we wanted to do and let us have our ease. Since Sandy's mom was in the Barracks, it seemed a bit crowded on Saturday, so I spent time knitting on my Tudor stocking outside the Buttery to draw folks in, checked on Dexter doing medical demos in the Gov's house to spell him a bit, and pretty much bounced around. I did have a small triumph in that the apricot almond custard needed to be removed from the Dutch Oven while Sandy and Carla were out looking at the sutlers and it was just Diane and myself. So, I managed to lift the pie plate out without cracking and dropping anything, and also without burning myself. Hooray! The food that was made on Saturday was extremely yummy and even sustained us some into Sunday.

Sunday was a smaller staff, so I worked with Jennie and Lara in the Barracks cooking simple pottages. I was able to take a few breaks and visit with others, drool over Eadric's pottery, chat with the nice folks of Grey's Company, buy the last of the amazing Canadian's knives (although I still need to arrange payment), and at Alan's direction, bought a nice chafing dish and pitcher so Alan can start doing period coffee preparation at events instead of using the camp stove and metal coffeepot. Yes ladies, I was asked to buy more pottery. Force my hand...

Alan and I exited the fort around 4:30pm, changed and got on the road home. We didn't encounter much traffic since we took 301 home to avoid the stretch of hell between Fredericksburg and Springfield, but we were dogged tired when we did get home. I've got an aching neck and sore feets, and Alan has an aching shoulder from a pinched nerve in his neck that he's visiting the chiropractor for. We've survived James Fort yet again, to play another weekend.

For my records.

I used Lady Sylvie la chardonnière's handout [Introduction to Fingerloop braiding class handout(.DOC)] for the Fingerloop Braiding class I taught last week at the Blackspear night. It is a really neat handout with a nice balance of history and how-to that I thought was perfect for my beginners. I made sure to send a thank-you email to the author for putting it online.

Not bothering to re-invent the wheel, all I did prep-wise was make up a webliography of links related to the topic for those who want more information.

Fingerloop Braiding Webliography:

http://fingerloop.org/ - An online version of the Compleat Anachronist #108 on the subject

http://www.lightlink.com/rhiannon/Fingerloop/flb_intro.html - Errata from CA #108 and more braid instructions from one of the authors.

http://www.stringpage.com/braid/fl/fingerloop.html - Phiala's String Page, instructions on the most basic braid, and diagrams for other braids, as well as a nice set of references.

http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/fingerloop.html - Thora Sharptooth's article on Sample Fingerlooped Braids from a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript.

http://www.bumply.com/Medieval/braiding01.html - A series of pages with more history and uses, in addition to more instructions.

http://fibergeek.com/narrowwork/ - Tablet Weaving and Fingerloop Braiding instructions and links for supplies.

http://takvbowes.et-tu.com/ - Take V Bowes Departed: A 15^th Century Braiding Manual Examined, a website for the recent book with information about the book and Errata.

Let me know if I missed one in the comments section.
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Oh, and there is this cool How to Lucet video on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y5K7FiT2Og Not a technique I've used before, but looks simple and straight-forward.

Ohh... fingerloop braiding on YouTube as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UG4CZkZFdM

Happy Birthday to Tara, Tamma and (the missing triplet) Gina! T&T are in New Orleans and hopefully having a blast today and tonight. I told Tara to go and try at least $20 in the slots at Harrah's if she's often lucky on her birthday.

I'm finally mostly over this viral funk. Man, the fatigue seems to last forever, but as my doctor said in my follow-up appointment today, it is the first thing to come and the last to go. I was so glad my appt. wasn't until 10:30, so I could sleep in until 9am. ah...  I even took a day off yesterday, and spent it mostly in my pink fluffy bathrobe, sleeping in, nap from 12-2 and from 6-7.

Since most everyone is gearing up for KA&SFest, this is a reminder that I won't be there. Someone take lots of good pictures of the displays. We will be celebrating alisandramel's wedding which I know will be just lovely. I just wish I knew what to wear, other than not red, as that will be her color. And black at weddings is really not my cup of tea, hello? happy occasion?!? I'm thinking of busting back out the cute purple sweater-dress to honor her purpleness. We'll see.

Not much else going on. Planning a trip to visit my folks in Florida to go sailing with Captain Walter for a day. I need to schedule a day to head to the DC Zoo with friends since I've never been. Thinking of signing up for the May 16-19 session at Plimoth now that they have posted the Spring/Summer embroidery sessions schedule. And progress is not too bad on the first stocking of the pair I'm knitting for Plimoth. I can tell I'm getting closer and closer to the ankle and thus the heel. I'm sure it will be fine.

Off to fetch groceries!

 Wheeee!

Okay, so the past 28 hours has been awesome.

First, last night we went to see Argonautika at the Lansburg Theater downtown, and it was amazing. Truly, truly! If you can swing it to get tickets, I highly recommend seeing this show. Alan and I went in thinking, yay, more greek tragedy. But my constant comment was Best Greek Tragedy Evar! The writing was brilliant, the costumes were fitting, and the puppetry was fabulous. Yes, puppetry. Trust me, best use of puppets since Punch and Judy, or the Lonely Goatherd from the Sound of Music. It was hilarious, stirring, entertaining and poignant at the same time. How could you not love a play with a sparkly Naiad and Juno's amazing mood wings? Two thumbs up from me. 

Last night after the play, we made it home fairly quickly, and then I got 8 hours of full sleep and even got to sleep in a bit since I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor. (Doing better but not well yet..) Seriously, sleep, and lots of it. awesome.

Then I made it into work for a bit and out to lunch with two of my fabulous faculty members for great Indian food at the Bombay Indian Restaurant in White Oak for their lunch buffet. It was fun to have a relaxing lunch and get to know them better in the process. Oh, and eat lots of bits of really yummy food. MmmmMmm.

And then tonight I prepped and headed over to Bess and Shecky's for their Blackspear night to teach fingerloop braiding. I was happy that first of all I was able to teach myself the method that most directions and recipes are written for, and then I was able to pass the learning on to Bess, Tara, Maggie and Zig. Always nice to have successful students, and I left my pink on pink trial piece for the wall of accomplishment in the basement. What a really fun evening with wonderful folks. 

And now it is snowing. yay. With any luck I'll either get to take a snow day tomorrow, or at least sleep in a bit more.

We haz teh awesomist friendz evar!

Yesterday Kirsten and Scott installed stairs to our attic so we have easy access to additional storage instead of the dinky little hole the builder put in the ceiling that is barely wide enough for Alan's shoulders. Hooray! They are so pretty and functional and completely non-scary. I do need to put a longer string on the attic light so we can reach it from the new stairs now. The opening is all framed out and pretty and painted with one coat (could use a second). Kirsten, I assume, even painted over the patch in our bedroom ceiling that she and Scott patched up last time they visited. Some guests have a permanent welcome carpet rolled out. SRSLY

(For the record, it's not that we couldn't have done these projects ourselves, but we had extremely talented volunteers, and my momma taught me not to look gift horses in the mouth. Especially when they come willing and able and with their own tools. And Alan and I probably wouldn't get to those projects for another year or so.)

I think I'm finally starting to get the upper-hand on this bug of mine, but man...

Tonight we have a play to attend. It is called Argonautika and will be at the more comfortable theater at the least. Alas the Morgensterns are sick and moved their tickets, so we will not have their fun, if plague-ridden, company tonight.

I guess I should come up with a handout for the Fingerloop braiding class I'm teaching tomorrow night to the Blackspear folks. Handouts are good.

 I had a good weekend. (Too good of a weekend if you ask the bathroom scale...) 

Friday night we were lazy and ordered a pizza while we watched the Tomb Raider Double Feature on HD TNT. It was cool, with limited commercial interruptions, and I got to contemplate outfits for Bob's next party. Alan had also started a fire in the fireplace, so I watched much of the movies from the floor near the fire with my knitting in hand. I got a start this weekend on a pair of stockings for Plimoth Plantation, and so far things appear to be going well. 

Saturday was alisandramel's Bridal Shower of amazing pinkness. The pink was apparently to annoy her, but there were pink balloons, pink napkins and cutlery, and folks mostly came in pink-ish PJ's. Though Mel in her custom pink union-suit was the best part. We had a great afternoon of sitting around and chatting, and reading from a 1950's book of articles on a Successful Marriage (yes, I found the article on petting amusing), and playing the TP dress game, and eating way too much tasty food, including the biggest, densest, and tastiest cake I'd had in a long time. We all had such a ball that we even overstayed the time allotted, and finally removed the burden of playing hostess from Christy and left. 

I had carpooled to the event with Theo, and got a ride home from Vic who was staying with us overnight. I had offered to those who wanted to continue the Slumber Party theme into the night that our home (with bartender) was available. I also called the attack_laurel  and her Bob to come on over since I had a feeling she'd like some Vic time too. We hung out and partied well into the evening with delivery chinese food and sushi, as well as purple drinks from the bar, pool and girlie movies in the basement, and lots of fun chatting in the living room. I ended the evening knitting in the basement, after folks had gone home, and watching Firefly. I then went upstairs to clean up from the party, re-load the dishwasher since Mel's sis had put in items that aren't dishwasher friendly, re-stacked to include other found items of glassware, and dug through the trash to find the missing spoon, japanese soy sauce dish, and pair of permanent chopsticks, before setting the dishwasher to run overnight.

Sunday morning was waffles and chicken mango sausages with Vic before she got on the road to visit with a friend before heading back home. (Vic was kind and helped me unload and reload the dishwasher before she got on the road.) Hooray for fun guests. Then we settled down to the work at hand. Alan had plans to take down and rebuild the 90 gallon fish tank in the living room to do a fish rotation before the delivery of the new 90 gallon fish tank and stand for the den. While Alan was playing with fish and fish poo water, I set to working on the closet re-org in the blue guest room. Phase One was planning and buying materials from the Container Store Elfa shelving sale a few weeks ago. Phase Two was demolition of the old cheap closet system trying not to tear up the walls too much. Phase Three was completed last night before the bulk of the Superbowl, which was spackling, sanding, painting and cutting in on the edges of the closet. Now that those are done, we can get on with Stage Four which is installation of the Elfa closet system and putting back away more organized of the pile of stuff currently taking up residence on the guest bed and floor of the guest room. We pack a goodly amount of stuff in that 7'x5'x2' space. :)

Sadly the weekend ended with the Patriots losing, me screwing up a row in the knitting and having to take it out and re-doing it poorly (twisted stitches), and us losing our two pink-striped torpedo barbs and the jawless rainbow fish in the trauma of moving them to a holding tank while the living room tank is redone. sigh.

As mentioned in my previous entry, I uploaded pictures this weekend, but am finally getting around to linking to them. Because I am just that lazy/busy/tired...

So, this weekend was a good time. We had a lovely lazy evening on Friday, watching a movie, eating pizza, and then Alan watched much of the Red Sox game, while I indulged in some What Not to Wear. Saturday was Dave and Kymber's wedding. Running on typical Thies-time, we strolled in right after the procession, but I think we managed to quietly slip in the back of the bride's side. She was naturally beautiful, he was wonderfully dashing, the ceremony was elegant, and the reception was full of friends, food and a little bit of booze. And, wow, was the cake tasty. What a great time, and it was nice to see folks in their fancy clothes. I even got a little DangerBaby time, which is always nice.

After the wedding, we invited some folks over to our place for more hanging out time. It started out low-key, but we sent Alan and Kirsten over to Wendy's place to steal some snacks and booze, and bring it back to our place for the gathering crowd. Eventually Val and Wendy brought over Iron Chef like dinner, made from the stock in Wendy's kitchen. Dinner was great, there was extra leftover wedding cake that made it into Wendy's truck, and then there was a present for Val. I couldn't resist the new ducal coronet I bought for Val. Sometimes you're never quite sure how a gift will be received, but he was so jazzed he wore it out the door at the end of the night. It was nice to have more relaxed hangout time with friends

Sunday, Mike and Kirsten got on the road after breakfast of french toast and turkey bacon. Alan did some massive pruning of our overgrown azaleas, the blue spruce, and the holly, and discussed what to do with the boxwoods encroaching on the path to the backyard. Then we went furniture shopping for a new bedroom set. I had done lots of online looking and hadn't found the right style that seemed us and useful without being too dark or too over the top. After shopping at Columbia Oak and Indoor Furniture, we finally found a set that sung to us, though we never would have predicted it, at Top Drawer. I get to pick it up in the big truck tomorrow/today after work. I've also been brainstorming and searching on ideas for upgrading the non-furniture accents of the room (waste basket, shoe storage, lighting, bedding, curtains, etc.) but need to have the furniture installed before moving forward with those. I have a great idea for a quilt, but know that I might not finish it for years (given my current project pace) so we'll see if current bedding will work or if there is something on sale that I like.

Next we need to find some antique pieces (chest of drawers and a nightstand) to go with the antique rope style bed frame in the Blue/Guest room, and then we'll need to seriously look into upgrading the bathrooms and patio. The joys of homeownership.

and now I'm sick, but I went to my Dr. this morning, so I hope to be feeling better soon. I think I've been fighting a low grade something for a few weeks now, and I'm done fighting it on my own. yay, drugs. 

 So, as planned, and mentioned by Theo and Padraigia, Theo and I went shopping on Tuesday night. She and I are very different shopper types. She goes in with a goal, and is done once she finds the solution to her problem. Me? As attested to earlier, I like to make sure I haven't missed anything in the store. While I can do the occasional surgical strike missions, I don't necessarily need a goal to go shopping. Ah, another successful night of retail therapy. I think for Theo it was like the torture of physical therapy, my amusing antics aside. But for me, it was like chocolate and peanut butter therapy.

Wednesday was taken up with some errands at CVS, the dry cleaners, the chiropractor, and the grocery store before coming home to put stuff away and start on the laundry. Sadly I got a later start on the laundry and also wasted time trying to paint my toes (that I really need to remove and start all over on) so I didn't finish the laundry and still got to bed very late. (I swear, I'm a pretty good girly girl until it comes to the areas of make-up and nail polish, and then I might as well just give up, because I end up looking like I had a turret's attack during the application.)

So, last night I finally finished up the laundry, and did a little beading/jewelry making. One of my sweet faculty members brought back a beautiful lozenge shaped tiger's eye pendant for me from his recent trip to Taiwan. It is so lovely, but it has been sitting around in its plastic baggy waiting for something to be done with it. Inspired by a recent LJ chat with Courtney and by looking at Isobel's lovely jewelry at MOD, I decided it was time to get this done. I had a peach colored strand of jasper beads which would do, but not directly against the pendant itself, so I needed some other stuff to make it work. So, Monday I had swung by a JoAnn's to get some basic supplies (wire, tools, clasps, additional glass beads in the right tone, etc.) and I spent that night organizing the materials a bit. Last night I sat down in my comfy chair with the supplies and laid the pattern out and went to town. Once I finished the necklace, with glass pearl spacers between the pendant and jasper beads, I started noodling around the idea of a matching bracelet. I had enough beads to make two interesting and coordinating bracelets (with no clasps, b/c bracelet clasps are from the debil) and finished up the entire set before midnight while watching Tim Gunn's Guide to Style. (I love this new show on Bravo btw.) I thought about wearing my new necklace and bracelets set today, but it's causal Friday, so I will end up debuting it for the wedding tomorrow. 

I really need to spend some quality time with my laptop and the camera to get some pictures of my new jewelry and our new organization furniture up onto my Flickr site. This is just pitiful. 

For those who missed, and care, here are links to my Friday night and Saturday night posts on our Plimoth trip.

I think I have mostly calmed down, and napped, but I can still get spun up by discussions on the details of the trip.


I napped for 3 hours on Saturday, and did some work on my sampler in a fleur de lys pattern on Sunday. It was such a great experience, I think I am still processing it all.

Here are my pictures from our Plimoth experience.

First is a set of embroidery. There were two 17th century extant examples, one sampler and one stumpwork panel. The other current embroideries were done by the lead consultant, Tricia Wilson Nguyen, and one other embroiderer.


The next set is from our visit to the Plimoth Plantation Craft Center, the Gallery on Thanksgiving, the 1627 Village, and the Costume Shop.


And finally, our participation in the embroidered jacket project.


Update with details to follow later...