Social For Once

Yesterday we escaped the house in the afternoon and went to see The Town, which was good, and then went to Fresh Choice for some impromptu role playing. The latter reminded me, in a pleasant way, of hanging out at the dining hall in college. It lacked the likelihood of running into more friends there at any moment. But the atmosphere of hanging out with friends, having fun, debating silly things, and being able to graze on the sidebars of never-ending pretty-good-but-not-amazing food was all very reminiscent of the college dining hall experience.

I have to say, though, the dining hall's brownies were better. ;)

We didn't have very long to play, there being a baby sitter involved and we didn't start till dinner time, but it was fun. I got to play a character I made for a one-off who our GM found infuriatingly competent. He's placed severe restrictions on anyone ever playing a warlock again in our house solely because of her. I'm really quite fond of her. I even remembered her name from nearly a year ago which is quite a feat.

Manda and I both wove on our inkle looms as we played (when we weren't eating) and at one point we had a whole gaggle of girls come over and watch us. Once we spotted them we invited them to come over and have a look and answered questions.

I'm back to weaving the vine pattern that I derived from the ram's horn pattern. It's breathtakingly easier than the Birka was. Funny to think it after all the trouble the ram's horn gave me originally only about a month ago.

Beside Construction

I hate construction work. This is something I never really realized about myself before. I mean, few people actively like having their home under construction, particularly by outside forces--that is, those few people who actively like having their home under construction are probably those who like doing said construction themselves, who take a pride in their work. Most people, however, can to some extent tolerate construction. Me, I feel like I'm going stark raving mad.

This has had a positive influence of one sort however. I am definitely back in the ranks of the diurnal. The first week was partly miserable because I was waking to the start of the construction, waking to the knowledge that my chance for a shower was gone, that my opportunity to make coffee or anything else requiring running water was fast slipping away, to the knowledge that there were strangers in my home and I was in my PJs. And, of course, waking to chaotic noise, to screeches and crashes and pounding. I set alarms to wake up earlier...they arrived and began earlier still!

And even once I was up and dressed, I was trapped. Stuck listening to endless pounding, crashes and screeches. Stuck smelling the sharp scents of chemicals and soldered metal. And often stuck without running water or working toilets. Eventually, around noon or 1pm or so, I would get a chance to get out of the house. But by then, madness already had a foothold in my psyche for the day.

Today, however, I managed to wake to my alarm clock. Early. And then I was whisked away on the early bus (read: carpool) into town for several glorious hours of coffee shop splendor. Somehow the scree and whir of the espresso maker is soothing and familiar, the hubbub of voices a calming influence.

I did some job hunting. I worked on a weaving commission. I talked politics and public transit with perfect strangers in the cafe. A lovely morning.

Public Displays of Weaving

Construction began this morning on the front bathroom in the house we're staying and like yesterday, someone else stayed home from work/school (a different someone) thus putting a crimp in our plans for an at home "date"--the at home kind being the best because they're free. So much for having the house to ourselves.

Nevertheless, I figured I would try to be productive. But as the banging continued followed by odd chemical smells, I was driven to distraction. I grabbed my loom, my laptop and my husband and fled. Now Ron is trying to navigate DMV bureaucracy (poor man) and I am ensconced in Great Bear Coffee. I realized too late that by grabbing the lovely window alcove table which has the best natural light, I have cut myself off from all possible power outlets. This means my time on the laptop is really quite short. I'm already down to 36% and the last 6-10% is fictional on this laptop anyway.

It's quite amusing weaving in public. It attracts attention even when I do it at an SCA event. Most people there know what I'm doing, but the non-weavers usually haven't seen tablet weaving in action and the weavers drift over out of professional interest.

But here in the middle of downtown Los Gatos, people are mystified. And of course, I have all the people walking by on the street as well as those in the coffee shop. Some of those in the coffee shop actually come over and ask about it. With the most thoroughly mundane in outlook I find myself groping to put it in terms they understand. With the more open minded or quick witted I can give my usual spiel and answer questions pretty easily.

The people walking by outside are funniest though. There is a certain social dynamic to looking in shop windows that seems to spill over onto this. As long as I keep weaving, I can see them stop and watch me from just outside. But if I look up and smile, they may or may not smile back but they universally take it as their signal to move on. The window display just looked at them! Time to go! Hee hee.

I'm still having to backtrack with some regularity on the Birka. Anytime my concentration slips, I'm liable to forget to mark my place and then I'm doomed. If I'm unpicking I inevitably have to unpick about four rows before I'm sure where my problem was and where in the pattern I've ended up. But some of my early mistakes were more involved than that. Now I know what's gone wrong and how to fix it when I make inevitable errors.

I'm now using a paperclip to mark my place in the pattern, and moving it after every single row rather than each pair of rows--it was too easy to get momentarily distracted and then not know if I'd done the first row of the pair or now. I'm working it into my routine--check pattern, turn all cards, clear the shed, put the weft through, move the paperclip, repeat.

I just realized that given the blog I'm on now, those last couple paragraphs probably have less context than they might. I'll have to repost them on Playing with String later.

Talking about Crafts

I've been posting lots on my new blog. It helps, I think, having a specific topic to talk about. It helps too that I'm in a particularly crafts obsessed portion of my life. It's true that I'm contemplating the possibility and logistics of using my craft talents for supplemental income, but that's really in reaction to, not the cause of, this upswing in fiber arts activity.

I'd been recommended to look at etsy as a potential way to sell tablet weaving. At first, taking a look, I was rather uninspired. There's a couple people on there who indeed sell tablet weaving, but it was priced so cheap that at the rate I make my complex stuff I'd be paying myself around $1/hour or less! On the other hand, it wasn't nearly as complex as the stuff I'm doing now. Still, I wasn't sure that I could compete against things selling on the order of $18! But yesterday I found someone who is doing stuff much more similar to what I'm doing and most of her stuff was in the $65-$100 range with a few outliers as low as $45 and as high as $325 though the latter was for fingerweaving. She's doing a lot of the same patterns I've been doing, plus a few closer to Native American in look and a few that are simpler but very tightly done. Like me she's using a lot of tight cotton string with occasional forays into other fibers. I think her edges look a bit more firm and even than mine, but I'd like a second opinion on that since I might just be peering at my own work too close. Anyway, it's restored hope that this might be worthwhile to try.

Anyway, if you want to hear about the weaving, wire work and spinning I've been doing the last couple of days, you'll have to check out the other blog!

Another Blog

I've started another blog. Why? Because this way I can have a place to yammer on about my crafts and SCA research without boring my friends and family to tears, and also have a place with my research on SCA stuff I can refer other people to without knowing they'll also see my blog entries about my daily life. Not that one group can't seek out the other blog, but at least you'll know what you're getting yourself into if you do.

Here it is, rashly named Playing With String before I thought about including research on things like Pictish names as well. But, in truth, it will probably mostly be about string projects, so I think it'll be fine. You'll notice the url is actually "kitten with string," a nice little reference back to this blog (especially since playingwithstring.blogger.com was taken).

Anyway, feel free to follow both if you want to continue to hear my adventures with string and wire and twine and whatnot.

A Car!

I keep forgetting to mention, amidst all the weaving posts, but Ron and I have our first car! It's not much of a looker (though it's not bad, I think the picture actually flatters it) and it makes funny noises, but it runs and it's ours. We've decided it should be measured in gerbils (perhaps kilo-gerbils) rather than horsepower.

Finding insurance was looking scary there for a while. Though we're not teenagers, we get a lot of the same mark ups for being newly licensed drivers (or I will, once I get my license. I will get my license!) Luckily I remembered something. You see, though I'm not licensed yet, the trick was to insure the car through me. Thank goodness for USAA. They totally rock.

Having a car that's ours has definitely improved life. The car shuffle was definitely straining tempers. Though in truth I find it a little disturbing that life couldn't run smoothly in a household of 5 adults until we had 4 working cars between us (I'm the one without my own). But I suppose that's not fair. A big part of the problem is having the toddler and teenagers that also have places to go. (Yes, toddlers have places to go: the park, the petting zoo, music class, the beach, story time at the library...anywhere that isn't the house at times.) Anyway, it's not an issue now that we have a car for the two of us. Yay transportation!

From Tablet to Inkle

Yet more weaving. Yay, weaving. This one was in record time too. I warped it up at Thursday fighter practice (also talked to one of the marshals about learning to marshal next time). Then I stayed up late weaving the first bit. Then Friday I was having a bad day. I've had headaches and wonkiness more often than not the last week after months of being relatively headache free. Anyway, I was feeling irritable and obsessive. Any attempts to accomplish things on the computer just resulted in me wasting an hour or so on nothing. So finally I just decided to weave and pretty much wove up the whole 3+ yards that day.

Today Knights Errant came to Santa Cruz and we had a fantastic afternoon. Ron got in lots of great fighting and I warped up my loom for my second ever inkle project. I had to go back and fix things about a half dozen times (forgot where the "open" vs "heddle" threads went and reversed them, missed out some blue threads and had to add them belatedly, and so on). Nevertheless, even with mistakes, I think I had it fully warped in well less than 2 hours, in stark contrast to warping a tablet weaving project.

I wove the first few feet of the inkle project and I'm fairly happy with it. It doesn't look quite like I pictured, but it's a fun simple pattern. The nice thing about inkle weaving is that the pattern also shows up on the reverse side. Since this piece is destined to be a hair ribbon rather than sewn down as trim, I though that might be a good feature.

I learned a bit more about how to do complex stuff with inkle weaving recently and it sounds agonizingly slow. Nevertheless, I may try some at some point.

The Knights Errant practice was lots of fun and the food was fantastic. Garlic steak cooked on the BBQ pit. Yum. Sky got to run around with other kids, play in mud puddles, beep people's noses, etc. She even started to sing with me, or back and forth with me. That took the cake for cuteness for the day.

More String: Ram's Horn and Vines

I've finally got some pictures up to share the tablet weaving I've been doing. Both of these shots are of the bands still on the loom. The one in purple, red, white and gold was my first attempt at this kind of pattern, the one I mentioned earlier where the tension bar broke in the middle. I'd taken a whole sequence of shots during the stringing mishaps and the process of getting it going, but most of them are blurry so I'll spare you unless someone has a burning desire to see the before and after shots.

The black band with green and blue and cream is a variant on the pattern frequently called the "vine" or "flame" (depending primarily, it seems, on whether the weaver is using warm or cool colors...mine therefore being a vine pattern :P ). I was rather inordinately pleased that it came out just the way I wanted on the first try. I did spend most of a day stringing it up, as usual. I made one threading error I caught at once and fixed quickly. And one stringing miscalculation which has introduced an interesting "flaw" in the band. The last card of black has only three strands of string instead of the usual four. This means that that side is slightly more thin and loose than the other side, and it means that card tries to "fall" out of position quite routinely. That aside, it is hardly noticeable and I'm fairly pleased with the experiment. If I'd been more patient I could have added in some of the crochet yarn I bought for weft, but I was too excited about beginning to weave!

I've been getting lots of compliments about these recent bands and the last belt, and I think I am opening myself to paid commissions. Now I just have to figure out a fair asking price. They do take a lot of hours...but I can't charge the moon either. Bah!

Off now to weave some more... Bwahahaha! String!!!