Rachel's armor

Rachel got me a quick turn around on her plates. She finished sanding and drilling them and got them back to me before the weekend was over. I've been adding a few plates everyday and today I finished! Hooray! She now has functional torso armor. Next time she comes by I'll size the buckles and then she'll be ready for action.

Her coat of plates is basically the same pattern as mine, sized down just a bit. Check a major item off my to-do list :)

Snow Day

Yesterday was a real snow day in Austin, Texas! As a result, I had the kiddo home and was lounging around with him doing some more stitching on the white work. Alas, now my spools are empty! Its very sad. I am completely out of my nice linen thread. I couldn't even get more, since we were snowed it (well, the Texas version of snowed in).

I fidgeted for a bit and then realized I had enough room on the frame for another piece. I recently took a black work class at Candlemas, so I (rather impulsively) pulled out my class packet and started a small blackwork bit.

The only thing is that I was trying to finish the white work so that I could put a larger piece on my frame for fun during Gulf Wars. Now I have another piece to finish before I can free up the frame. *sigh* I have sabotaged myself by adding another item on my to-do list. On top of that work is going to keep me pretty busy as well. The good news is that its a small piece and it seems to be moving rather quickly. I am going to have to do a run for more linen next time I head that direction for errands.

On the bright side, I had a fun day with the kiddo and got some stitching done when we were all romped out and lounging around. A good streak of stitching always makes me feel better about life, so its nice. I also learned that while the little boy doesn't mind cold at all, he considers snow a nuisance.

Gulf Wars Preparations

I haven't had a lot of time for SCA stuff, but the time I've used has been on preparations for Gulf War. Rachel and I have made a garb generation plan, divided up fabric piles, taken measurements, picked patterns, and even begun making stuff. A whole week is a lot of garb!

We need to get Rachel's coat of plates finished, so I've been working on that. Its going to be just like mine, only shorter and in brown. This weekend, I finished cutting a pile of plastic plates for it and marked all the drill holes and grinding points. I handed them off to Rachel and she's going to do the next bit.

Cutting out the rest of Rachel's plates pretty much finished off our second plastic barrel. I picked up two more for a friend who is also trying to get her armor going. I've gotten a couple of questions about the plastic barrels, so here's the scoop. They are trash for the local car wash, so they let me pick them up for free. This picture below shows one of the barrels with a 6 inch x 24 inch quilting ruler, so you can see that they are quite big. Always check the labels on your barrel and make sure you don't pick up one that held anything toxic, and clean them out well just to be safe. We cut ours up with a jig saw, and the plastic sands and drills nicely. As the barrel gets cut down it starts to vibrate with the saw. I solved this problem by nailing it to the workbench, which worked really well. The curve to the barrel works well for the coat of plates (but you do end up looking a little barrel-like).



With all the busy at work and armor projects, I haven't stopped making pretty things, I've just slowed the rate. The picture below shows some German white work that is currently on my frame. Its a yummy linen thread on linen that I picked up on an impulse at Christmas. The texture on the white work is turning out very nice, but the linen thread is a bit temperamental. I have to use short lengths of it because it tires easily and ends up fuzzy. The pattern is Pattern #14.