1. Work/Programming
No change so far with my work situation. I’m employed through the end of the year.. and still up in the air as to what will happen next year.
I finished my adopted project early on Thursday last week but then someone else had to deploy it (I was on PTO on Friday and sick on Monday and they wanted the project deployed sooner rather than later).
Now I’m working on the CTO’s pet project. My meeting with him went well and I’m going to be digging into this (really pretty neat) project for a while. I will even have twice-monthly meetings setup to check in with him on the progress. This project does have future looking aspects.. but nothing is officially official at this point.
2. Home
My parents came and stayed for a few days for the knighting. In fact they’re leaving town this morning. The house was in acceptable condition. Though it did get a bit more messy as we were prepping to pack-all-the-things for Crown. I still have an extra ironing board.. I think I’ll try to get rid of that tomorrow.
Tonight I’ll be able to turn our guest bedroom back into a sewing room. Next project is to re-fit my wedding dress and replace the zipper&fake buttons on the back with rings, a lace and a modesty panel.
As an early Birthday present my Dad went out and bought and then assembled an automatic sprinkler for my garden (which it badly needs because I fail at daily watering). I’m so looking forward to getting more yummy things from my no longer fried and desiccated garden.
3. Health
We have the big ultrasound on Wednesday this week. I’ll try to have Fearghus get a good, closeup video of the screen when it happens. This is the ultrasound where they count fingers and toes and (if we didn’t know already via genetic testing) this would be where they could let us know the sex of the baby.
Last night while cooking dinner I had a big glass of water.. and then had to go to the bathroom. While in the bathroom I heard “swish swish” like a fish flopping in the water that was too shallow and then it happened again.. and then it happened again. The first time it happened I thought it was hunger pangs.. the second time.. I thought “huh, that’s weird” then the third time I kinda got freaked out. I mean I’m fairly certain it was the baby.. and I’m also fairly certain there’s not supposed to be any air in the placenta for the baby to be making “sploosh sploosh” sounds from my belly. Later when I described it to Fearghus and my parents they said it was probably the baby moving around the water in my stomach. FREAKY!
Camping this last weekend was ok. I’m feeling a little bit more tired (more sitting) and a bit frustrated with the amount of things people won’t let me lift.. (and frankly it’s annoying to stand around giving orders to people to lift/carry things when I still look like I could be doing that lifting myself).
4. SCA/Projects
I was totally on schedule to finish the knighting tunic in plenty of time..until Sunday when the parade of tragedies started.
Tragedy 1:
I finally had the tunic together enough for Fearghus try it on Sunday night. It looks like somewhere in the fitting/fiddling with the new pattern I flubbed it up. For some reason on the new white tunic the under arm just came out HUGE. Huge to the point of unwearable (and in the short-term unfixable). Unfortunately we finally figured this out at 9pm on Sunday. So after messing with it for a while to see if there was a quick fix I had to admit defeat and we agreed that early on Monday morning we’d run get some new fabric and I’d make a whole new tunic based on our tried-and-true tunic pattern and go from there. So instead of being 75% done on Monday and having just a little bit more to do.. instead I was back to 0% done and spent the rest of the week rushing to try to catch up.
Tragedy 2:
On Thursday night I had the new tunic all together and I started trying to add the trim. I had finished a bit over 8 repeats of the trim before I ran out of string on the loom. After futzing with it for a while I finally figured out that I had just about 3-4 inches too little trim to be able to do both the neck and the sleeves. There was just no way I was going to be able to stretch the trim to fit the needed length.. and there was no way I’d be able to finish the tunic AND weave even more trim to make up the shortfall before he needed to wear the tunic on Saturday morning. I finally decided it was more important to have the trim on the neck opening.. and I spent about an hour pinning and fussing with the straight trim at the neck to get it to fit the rounded neck opening. After about an hour I sat back to look at the trim and realized it looked like crap on the neck. I was nearly in tears.
Tragedy 3:
The trim is tablet woven using Icelandic Missed Hole technique with long floats.. long floats meaning long strings sticking up at the surface of the trim.. long strings that really looked like crap when I tried to bend the trim to get it to fit the curve of the neck line. After having a minor freak out I sat down to consider my options. Finally I decided the only option would be to use the trim on only the sleeves and to do “something different” at the neck. Then I remembered the “Olympic ring” embroidery from Oseberg finds and I believe has also been found at Birka (image to the right). I decided this would be simple and elegant and perfect for the neckline.
Tragedy 4:
Finally, Friday night, during the Vigil I and my mother were able to finish the last of the tunic hem and decorative stitches. Sewing the night before the deadline sucks. I got done sewing at 3am. The Vigil completed at 4am. The tunic looks gorgeous and looks great on him.. but next time I’ll try harder to be done LONG before the deadline.
5.
So with that “looming deadline #1” is complete. On to the next deadline.. that is.. our wedding. Things to do, things to do. This week I want to address and send invitations, re-fit my wedding dress, get our wedding registry setup and finally buy our wedding rings. I think if I can get all of that done I’ll be fairly well caught up on “looming dealine #2”. Wish me luck.
Future:
June 29: Attending a wedding, Nevada City
July 6: Free-ish weekend (F will be in Vegas)
July 13: Cynaguan Summer Investiture, Modesto, CA (daytrip)
July 20: FREE WEEKEND!!! (We’re not attending Pennsic)
July 27: Bachelorette Party in VEGAS!
August 3: FREE WEEKEND!!!
August 10: Potential fitting someone for German dress.
August 17: FREE WEEKEND!!!
August 23-25: Purgatorio, Arcata, CA (possibly hoteling)
August 31, 2013 My wedding in Billings Montana (Wedding website: https://sites.google.com/site/stroudwed/)
September 14: Cyn-Mists War
September 28: Mists Fall Coronet (maybe)
October 4-6: October Crown
October 9-14: Great Western War (maybe)
October 25-27: Cynaguan Fall Coronet
November 9: Collegium Occidentalis (maybe)
November 18: Baby Due Date
December 7: Boar Hunt (maybe)
January 3-5: 12th Night, Concord CA? (maybe)