Autumn Zebra

Finished - entry on LJ . Picture for those who don't want to read that.

I made Chinese Lantern decorations. I wrapped cardboard toilet rolls in old wrapping paper that was cool but too crumpled to use to wrap presents then made the outer lantern bit out of coloured cardboard or this other very thick wrapping paper. I think it's better to have the outside patterned, but it needs to be stiffer than just paper. Wire through holes made in the side with a needle is used to hang them on string (I used blue hemp twine) across the opening to the stairs and the hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining room. They look really good hung up actually. If you make some, I think a yellowish or reddish paper on the inside is best, to be a bit more "lantern-like".

Posted on my Live Journal for the same reason as last time.... entry here .

I made cream puffs, which are the same recipe as eclairs, just a different shape. To make mutant doom puffs you add food colouring to them, have them end up a weird shape, and probably overcook them slightly even though they cooked for slightly less time than the recipe said. Due to them going a bit brown on the outside, the coloured ones don't show their colour as well as I was imagining, but on the inside they are a nice blue and pink. You can see I tried doing two long ones to make eclairs, but I quickly got bored of that. I shall put cream in them later when Mum comes over with the cream beater, but I'm not sure whether I will have time for chocolate icing.

I have sewn the inner and outer layers of the stays so far, but still need to make bias binding, bind the edges, and sew the eyelets. Also, I might want to hand-sew in a lining. Here's the outer layer. It is wonky because it is hard to get it to look sensible on the mannequin. I think the fabric looks better in the photos than in real life; it is rather poor quality because it is upholstery material, but I like it anyway and in this case it's supposed to look "rougher" as the one I liked in my book seemed itself very roughly made. I didn't think to pattern-match it until I had sewn it and it seems a waste to cut more, so I'll just have to make another one some time with pattern matching. There are a lot of straight lines so it shouldn't be too hard to get it looking a bit better. Since the inner layers are the "strength" layers, the outer layer wouldn't necessarily have to be cut on the grain, if it needed to be mucked around with to match th...

I posted this on Live Journal because I also posted it on the corset makers community over there. Link to the Live Journal post. I've since discovered it's fairly wrong, but I think it will still work well enough so I'll make them up anyway (I am about half-way through actually). It won't be too much of an investment of time etc if it doesn't work out that well, as it is machine sewn and doesn't use special materials.

3 little sewing machines, all in a row. The centre one is my good sewing machine, the Bernina 840 which was unfortunately not going properly so the sewing machine man is coming tomorrow, and hopefully he only needs to clean it or something... :( It's good. I hope it gets better. The one on the left is Mum's Globe which I am using instead of the Bernina, and which I borrowed before I got the Bernina. It's pretty good. It's quite heavy - that's how you can tell it's good. If I've got my companies right, then it is actually a copy of a Bernina. The one on the right is my first one and is the worst sewing machine ever, which is why I eventually borrowed Mum's. Not only is it terrible, but you actually feel insulted when you use it. It was the cheapest one available though, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone as unless they are very enthusiastic it will not help them to enjoy or improve at sewing. I use it to do button holes as I don't know h...

This is cool. You have to arrange these little squares in order of colour. http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77 I got 7, best score is 0. The ones I got wrong were right in the centre of the spectrum they used, in the blue-green area; it was interesting that they weren't scattered around. Aynia, as a designer, the pressure is on you to get 0 ;) I found it really hard to really "see" the colours and squares - the lines keep bending, the colours moved about and there are "light" and "dark" lines running through the screen*. This generally happens when I try and look at things (computer screens, the outdoors, etc) where there is high contrast (I think that is the problem), and it is a cloudy afternoon here**, with the computer screens a fair amount brighter than the surrounding light level, and it is hard to see what's on them clearly. Luckily I don't need to analyse the exact position of lines nor exact colours, so this isn't a pro...

We went on holiday. We came back. I decided I'll do NaNoWriMo in November. I estimate this will take up 2-3 hours per day. I have to make a Victorian cycling outfit by the 16th of November, and this week I am making a cloak for my brother's birthday. I am doing millinery (hatmaking) at the polytech this term. The process of actually enrolling in and doing a course is still a mess. I want a new job doing... something more fun, maybe my own business but I don't know what I'd actually do, which is a bit of a problem. I got my hair cut. I need to get the downstairs computer working as I finally set up the new computer before the holiday and it didn't work either. We are going to Queenstown in the weekend. I haven't done any gardening and I should. I still haven't thought of a form of exercise I actually like and would be at all convenient/practical which is bad because exercise is good for you. I am still obsessed with fabric but am trying to buy less/none beca...

I am so excited that tomorrow I can go to the university library to copy out information on how to make some Victorian combinations, as these will be the first item in my bicycling outfit I am going to make. Maybe there will be some bloomers or something in there too. I thought about doing a divided skirt, but I've decided to do wool bloomers, a woollen wide-lapelled jacket, combinations and a button-up pseudo corset thing. The cycling outfit came out of my wanting to make some "reform" clothing, so I'm also going to do a divided petticoat and some non-cycling late-Victorian or Edwardian clothes too. There's two books in the city about the women's reform clothing movement from 1850 onwards, and one has been out for the last 3 weeks and the other is at at the university library. I've applied for a library card, but they haven't sent it to me yet; maybe they lost my application :( I was going to read the book before making the clothes, but I got bored wa...

My currently most listened to song is Sitting Inside My Head ( lyrics ) by Supergroove . I've listened to it 20+ times in the last 3 days at work (lucky I have headphones). You should probably get "Postage - A best of" if you want to get a CD, as pretty much every song on it is good (as one would expect from a compilation). It's really hard to express how generally awesome Supergroove is, so that's why you should get a CD! They are said to be a "funk" band, which in itself is awesome, because what does that even mean? Their music is very humourous and quirky and a mixture of styles, and I love hearing NZ accents in songs, it makes me happy. The end.

No. You shouldn't. See this photo. How much taller is that tree than the house it is in the front yard of?! (left, you can just see the grey roof and a white chimney, I know it is a bad photo to see it in). If you had to remove that tree, you'd need a crane. (Click on the photo to see it bigger; I like this photo) UPDATE: That post was in 2008, now it's 2014. The house went up for sale, and no one would buy it, probably because of the tree. The tree had started to die several months before. The situation remained for a few months until finally the tree was indeed removed with a crane and the house was sold.

There's this weird site where you can get dragon eggs and if people click on them and view them, they hatch into little dragons, or something... So you should click on people's when you see them*. Like this one! It's orange, it's one of my favourite colours. It is pretty. *Otherwise I think they die. :-( I don't know if I can deal with the emotional trauma of possibly killing the imaginary dragon! ;) Edit: I got more - you can have up to 4. This one sounded cool - " This egg is sitting in a patch of grass and small flowers even though there's no sun in the cave" :-) Unfortunately these ones are not so exciting colours, but I would feel bad if I got rid of them. There was one that was described as purple that I could have got, but that was at the same time as the "patch of grass" one, and that just sounded too cool. You'll have to click on the light green and white ones to see what they say about them ;)

Last month's goal was to study Polish for at least 30 minutes a day, which I pretty much achieved except 2 days when I was out too much (work + out in the evening + no time in the morning before work) to do so. But some days I did 1 hour, so hopefully that makes up for it. So I achieved my goal. I think that's the first time I have achieved an explicit goal (despite endless "goal-setting" classes and exercises at school), so that's pretty weird/exciting. I think I see how it works now. Sort of. It might be the first time I've wanted something enough to have it work, but I think there's more to it than that, but I don't know what. I'm not sure how much I learnt (of Polish), as there's no way to really measure the amount of knowledge currently stored in your head on any given subject. You could do some kind of test, but I have no test handy, and how would you know you had tested for everything you know? I can't explicitly remember any Polish ...

I did cooking in the weekend, cooking new things. I am obviously very clever. Both recipes are very simple, so you should make them. First I made leek and pototo soup. I can give you the recipe because I modified it from what was in the book, reducing the amount of butter, cream and stock, thus making it healthier, and also enabling me to actually eat it without feeling ill from too much fat and salt. Leek and Potato Soup olive oil 1 onion, finely chopped 2 leeks*, stem only, sliced 1 celery stalk, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 200g (7 oz) potatoes, chopped 1 cup chicken stock, 2 cups water ~160ml (2/3 cup) cream some chopped chives black pepper Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onion, leek, celery and garlic and cook, covered, for 15 minutes. Stir occasionally, and cook till softened, not browned. Add the potato, stock and water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and cook covered for 20 minutes. Allow the soup to cool a little (this is where I tried to find the...

Same story - copied from my LiveJournal post I don't think I actually said in the previous post (although at least a couple of people realised without my making it explicit) that I am making something for everyday wear, not SCA, etc. The reasons for this are that although there is an SCA here, I am not part of it, and I'm not really into group kind of activities of any kind (although I am considering it) and I'd like to be able to wear regularly what I put all this effort into, and I just want to make these historical clothes, to see what they are like, and how they are made, and then to wear them because I am bored of modern clothes. Plus, I find it amusing to have strangers compliment me on clothes based on those worn 500 years ago. There are fitting issues, as we have observed, although I do intend to wear this sometimes over my kirtle (although it also fits poorly, being a first try) and sometimes over modern clothing, so there is a bit of a problem there, regarding sty...

This is the first of three entries about my making a fitted english gown from the book the tudor tailor (3 entries because I don't want to type it all out all at once). I've already made it but have not typed much this month due to RSI so I have lots of stuff back logged! (Did you know everything I want to do aggravates the RSI? That in itself is aggravating.) Hopefully this makes enough sense, I posted it already to a sewing community, who will mostly know what I am talking about. So anyway, the "fitted English gown" is kind of like a cross between a coat and a dress, with a fitted bodice with a kind of built-up neckline, a flared skirt and either puffy sleeves or those with an extended cap. I am doing long sleeves. It's a mixture of hand and machine sewing, a mixture of 16th century techniques and modern/those I made up. It is non-authentic materials - ?olive? cotton drill lining because I had 10m just lying around, as you do, and it was a good colour I thought....

(obviously copyrighted to the person with their name on the picture )

I'm making myself some 15th and 16th Century lower class gear to wear around as normal clothes. Here's a pic of the kirtle/support layer - essentially a close fitting dress that might be worn under other clothing or as the top layer as the situation demands. It's 100% hand sewn, pattern based on information from a few different books and websites. I'm wearing it over a polypropelene top and a Victorian style chemise that you obviously can't see - 3 different centuries in one! I wore this to get a coffee at a pub (we like to mix things up a bit don't we...) then to lunch at Mum and Dad's house. I hate photos of myself, so I also learnt today how to blur out my face, like they do of criminals, suspects and witnesses ;) I'm going to post more on this properly later, this entry is actually going on a Live Journal community, but I need somewhere to post the picture so I can get to it - everytime I try and use photobucket it crashes my browser.

I've been at work for an hour, and so far: The computer was running unbearably slow with several seconds required to change from one window to another, etc, and the task manager wouldn't open so I couldn't find out what program might be malfunctioning. Eventually the task manager sort of opened - but minimised itself into the task bar tray and refused to come out. Eventually it opened it's menu to close/restore/whatever, but I couldn't click on anything and the menu would not go away eithr - you know those dislocated floating menus? So I restarted the computer. Within 15 minutes of restarting, Windows Explorer crashed and had to restart, so I had to reopen the folders I was using, which annoys me. Five minutes later, Word crashed and had to restart. Two days ago I had an interesting problem where the computer was running very slowly and then all the windows froze up, and I couldn't restart because the start menu refused to open. After a couple of minutes it did...

From this website (http://fingerloop.org/) : Fingerloop braids are braids woven using loops (or "bowes") of string on your fingers. Fingerloop braiding reached a high point in Medieval Europe and England between 1200 and 1600 CE. This braiding technique still survives today in isolated areas of Europe, the Middle East, South America and Japan. Said website had instructions from manuals from the 1400's - 1600's telling you how to make the fingerbraids. It's like more complicated finger-knitting like we did at school. (At my school finger knitting involved only one finger and making loops, which we used to make friendship bracelets, not the more fingers kind of finger knitting.) I always wanted to know how to do more complicated ones, but no one knew. However, I was looking at this because of my 16th century outfit I am making, and these can be used for the laces. I won't explain anything about it because the website is really good and you can just go look a...

The Mill in Dunedin is selling some Polish vodka, surprisingly. It comes unflavoured, and in cherry, ginger and chocolate flavours. We got cherry and ginger ($40 each, normally $50 I think). It comes in really cool bottles, they're quite big and look like they hold a lot more than they do, because they are very tall I guess. Anyway, they look awesome, and also have indentations on each side exactly where you would hold it. presumably to make it easier to hold - good design then! The labels are cool, they're labelled as if they were elements, which you can also see on the bottles above (Im - imbirowa - ginger; Wi - wiśniowa - wild cherry). I'm not sure Gary likes the ginger one, but I thnik that's mostly because it isn't very strong flavour (which is good because strong ginger flavour can be very bad) so it tastes like... vodka, ie. like alcohol. The cherry flavour is stronger so the vodka taste is less. I think they are both fairly good, but not as good as the unfl...

I covered the lid of a computer paper box with material, to make a tray to put stuff in for the day - like, put my diary in, and the things I have to put in my bag like wallet, etc. Otherwise, I forget every day to look in my diary, and forget to take things to work with me. There's no use putting things in your diary if you never remember to look in it - I look in it about once a month. I also got myself a calendar, but I never look at that either. Here it is with a notebook and pen in it, the pen should give you an idea of size. Here it is when I was making it, and the cat was helping (no flash, indoors, so photo a bit funny).

The key crafting and sewing priorities at the moment, at least as far as I can remember, and I'm sure I can't remember what my priorities were yesterday, are: Fit a basic torso pattern properly so I can stuff it to use as a mannequin that is shaped more like me; the bought one has very little back compared to me, it is weird. I need about 5cm more across the back somehow, but not the front, and not the waist, just the top of the back. Make a linen smock, as suitable for the 15th or 16th centuries, or thereabouts. The linen is pale pink colour however, when it should be white. However, since it is not for any purpose that requires it to be historically accurate, that is fine. I might get some white linen though when I've made this one and know how much material I need, and make a high necked one. I am arranging wool and linen for the rest of the outfit, and am nearly sorted I think, although there will be less wool than I originally wanted because it is hard to get stuff lik...

As it rains, I wonder whether I would be better off in 15th Century (European) clothing, or not. As I sit here with my butt and lower legs of my trousers still wet 2 hours after coming out of the rain, I consider that a shift, petticoat and dress, of linen, wool and wool, would no doubt have stopped the water soaking through to my skin. In "the past" it was sometime acceptable to take off "dresses" or gowns and sit around in petticoats and whatever else was worn on the top half, so I could be doing that whilst drying my dress. Of course I would have had a long woollen cloak over the top too. I'm not sure if they were lined or not. In any case, I'd like to make some common woman's clothing from anywhere in the 15th to 18th centuries and see what it is like wearing only linen and wool. One definite advantage is the multiple layers on the top AND bottom halves, instead of only a skirt or trousers covering your legs.

Two videos I found quite funny. An Engineer's Guide to Cats , by engineers. Suitable for other non-engineer people as well. (approx. 7 minutes) Something from an Australian TV Program(?) - Who will receive the Trojan horse ? Features real wooden horse. (approx. 2:45 minutes) EDIT! More from the Australians - why you should dress like an American rather than "a crude Arab cliche" if you want to film or take photos of landmarks or nuclear power stations.

This guy does really cool graffiti in London. His site is here . He does subversive or commentary ones: Article about " One nation under CCTV " artwork/stunt. 4 photos of his efforts, made into a postcard. He does cute ones, generally with rats: He does beautiful ones: (Some categories may overlap) *All photos from http://www.banksy.co.uk , where there are many more. I like graffiti.

The online shop "Edible" has rare and unusual food items such as chocolate covered ants and Thai curry crickets or even sugar-free toffee-candy with an edible scorpion inside. You can order them and eat them. There are non-insect products like the "brandy like liquor fermented in a cask with lizards" and a lollipop made of ground pearls and sugar. The stuff is fairly expensive although it's not like you're likely to be buying it frequently. They seem to ship all over the world. I'm not sure if I would want to try any or not. Maybe. http://www.edible.com/shop/

My score on The "What Type of Intellectual are You?" Test : Your Score : The Collaborator You scored 66% empirical, 40% public, and 23% teaching-oriented You are The Collaborator! The Collaborator is one of the most beloved types of intellectuals. With an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, you spread your sights over a broad range of disciplines, eager to tap the knowledge of the brightest in their fields. Acting as a sort of honey bee to these great minds, you synthesize an eclectic array of abilities. Your name may be second on a lot of books and papers, but you'll always be first in the hearts of your peers! Link: The "What Type of Intellectual are You?" Test Luckily, I was just reading about Erdos numbers the other day, so I have actually heard of their example. This is probably somewhat correct in the "broad range of disciplines" bit, and I'd rather not be the pioneer discovering something in an area, or leading s...

Somewhat alarmingly we found this spider yesterday: And this one today: It looks like it is rock-climbing: What's up with all the big spiders? One is not alarming in itself, but two in two days? The second one was smaller than the first. It had legs about 3cm long, and a body about 1.2cm long. Here's a bad picture of the larger first one in a container held in G's hand: For some reason he did not leave it on the wall for me to take good pictures of. The pictures of the second one are better - you can see it's hairy legs, etc - and you can click on them to see big versions! Yay!

There was a small cardboard box in G's room upstairs that, surprisingly, he wasn't using. So I got to have it. I thought I might make it into a box for gloves, but then it turned out I had gloves that went further up the arm than just the wrist bone, so the box would be too small for all my gloves to lie flat, making it a bit pointless because I might as well just use any box. Then I discovered CDs fit in it absolutely perfectly. Maybe it originally had CDs shipped in it. So I started with this box and material, and some other material I needed because some of this stuff was too annoying: And finished with this, how exciting. I think it looks cool. In position with the CD rack:

I cannot be bothered writing properly for this. So you may glean information from these resources. Fabric - Mainly the striped one, but maybe I need some part of it to be another colour. The denim-like blue looks boring with it, because it is too similar to the stripe colour perhaps. The brighter blue looks better. Picture, from Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 1 book. But I probably won't do the collar, just the basic dress. It has a kind of pattern, but I'm not sure how the skirt is supposed to be attached. Dress from the same era that someone made that looks really awesome. Don't you think everyone should dress like that? This is the link to her page about the dress - A Blue Printed Cotton 1780s Gown.