December 2022 Recap: Warm and Cozy Project Time
My December goals are:
Start writing the documentation for the almodrote.
Finish construction of the gonete.
Begin compiling resources and materials for the chopines and quiver.
Sew Evan a pair of SCA pants. If I have enough extra fabric, he’ll also get a sleeveless doublet.
Research of the Month: The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe by Ann Blair, 2010.
I’m really bummed because it looks like KASF is going to be down in North Carolina again in 2023. While most of my Persona Pentathlon entry would be easy to transport, the almodrote will not be. I love that recipe and its place in the entry as a whole. It makes me incredibly sad, but my priority is making sure that the art shows off the best it possibly can. Bea and I have discussed and should North Carolina be the choice, I’m not going to display this entry and hold off for Coronation to do as a display and not as a competition entry. I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to go to KASF still, but that’s the fate of Pentathlon. I am still committed to finishing all of these projects, and if possible, displaying them at Coronation, which will be local to me instead.
More A&S and Statistics!
I knocked out a quick spreadsheet to assess whether adding cinnamon sugar to the almodrote recipe and added that to the Arts and Sciences and Statistics page. Considering nearly 48% of the dishes with plating instructions had this combo, I am confident in the choice to add this to the dish. Working on this also gave me some time to think about the content of my Nola work, and I’ve decided to submit that as a lecture style class for Winter University in February 2023. I think even without snacks, it’ll be a fun class. I’ve also agreed to teach it for Ponte Alto sometime in March.
That decision, of course, led me to reassess my slide deck for my Nola work and flesh it out a lot more. I’m really excited to teach this new version of the class because I think if we’re not taking time out for snacks and to see ingredients (which is just as valuable in its own way), we can spend a little bit more time discussing the anthropology aspects a little bit more in depth/thoroughly. I felt like in my first class I glossed over a lot of why Roman and Moorish innovation in Spain was critical to its development as an agricultural economy and I’m looking forward to tackling that in a bit more depth.
Gonete with trim pinned in place. Please ignore my pajamas…
The gonete construction has been a labor of love but I truly do enjoy this garment. There are definitely things I want to do differently on the next one though. I learned the hard way that there is a very specific amount of tension I can leave between the hooks and eyes without creating either a gap between the two sides or a ridge down the middle. Having to reposition them made the front look sloppy so I decided to cover that with some of the green and gold trim I used on my mittens and I LOVE the result. The trim pops and has the added bonus of solving my too light of a hem. This particular style of trimming is not supported by my survey in entirety. No evidence of trim down the center front was found in those pieces, however, both hem and neckline trim was, so I’m not too upset about the final result. The piece is warm, comfortable as both a top and over my tan dress (I have yet to try it over my gray one), and very cute. I am, however, kind of glad that Persona Pentathlon 2023 isn’t happening for me. Because while I like this garment, it misses the mark for me on what I was trying to recreate. There are several things I need to change about my construction method before I consider this ready to present in a competition/display setting. Thankfully, with the release of The Typical Tudor I actually have some good ideas for proceeding with the next one. There are some good images and diagrams in there that I think will be very helpful in improving the next version.
From a fit perspective around the chest and shoulders, I’m actually very happy with this garment. It’s very comfortable to wear both as its own piece and over a dress. I like the amount of support and warmth it gives. However, there are a few definite areas of improvement to be made:
I made the sleeves too long and I honestly think I made the armscyes too deep. Neither of these are conducive to the bell shaped sleeve I was aiming for. I think if I made them shorter, particularly under the arm and made them trapezoidal instead of rectangular, the sleeve would lay better.
The waist flare/peplum isn’t quite right either. In part, this is a depth thing and in part, it’s that my hips are wonky. I think that doing the body piece and adding an applied peplum instead of an integral peplum all the way around might be better. I think it also needs to be about an inch longer than I made it and padded or weighted down somehow. Part of the fit problem occurs right around where the horizontal peplum seam in the back is and I’m wondering if that’s partially the culprit. It’s more noticeable after the trim was added, despite giving extra ease in the trim, but zooming in very closely on the not trimmed pictures does reveal a similar issue. As a completely different alternative, I do wonder if gores at the waistline are an appropriate solution as well, since there are side and back seams to work with.
This garment needs an interlining to add the closures and structural pieces to it without marring the smooth look of the front. I had to apply trim down the center front to cover up all the messiness from spacing out the hooks and eyes, and if I’d apply them to a lining fabric and an interlining before applying the outer fabric, I think this would have been more successful.
I also think the wool I used was the wrong choice. I picked it because I wanted something warm and cozy, but I think its thicker and less malleable drape was also a challenge for the sleeve shaping. A lighter, thinner, or less fulled wool would be a better choice. I do think in general, wool or silk is still the correct choice for this garment, though I may also choose to revisit my cotton sateen for the next one.
Shape and angle tests on the reed calligraphy pens.
I splurged on some reed pens that arrived this month and spent almost a whole day messing around with them from a writing perspective. Writing on the very absorbent paper of the commonplace book is a challenge, but I think I’ve sorted out the technical issues. I did some filing and testing and changed the edge geometry of the pen a little, and the result is rather striking. It’s easy to write with as it feels more like a pencil than a quill does, and once the edge was smoothed down a little, it flowed beautifully. In the picture to the left, the top paragraph and the bottom-most sentence were written by the exact same pen pre-sanding (top) and post-sanding (bottom) and the difference is noticeable! All in all, I love the visual effect of this pen as well. I think it more closely approximates a period hand, and knowing I’m using an appropriate tool for the job makes me quite happy. I need to get more practice in before I start writing the bulk of the commonplace book, but I think that’s within grasp in the coming weeks. I started practicing Greek letters as well, which was a fun challenge!
At our monthly A&S day, I knocked out Evan’s pants. I was really nervous about how these were going to go, because I haven’t made a lot of pants in the past. We had based the pattern off of his favorite pair of jeans and that turned out the be exactly the right call. I added too much ease when cutting, but it allowed me to take in and pin them until he was comfortable and happy with the fit. In a nod to his more modern preferences, I made belt loops and added those. He’ll use my brown leather belt with these for events and there’s enough ease at the waist to make them comfortable to tuck his shirt in, after he’s eaten, or in the heat. The belt loops were VERY fiddly to hem the tiny strips of fabric and I don’t think I’d do them again for anyone else but he’s happy so that’s good enough. I’m going to see in January about making him that vest garment I’m sort of envisioning as well.
I read The Rise of Note-Taking on my flight home from Michigan. It was an interesting article that covered a wide array of the causes and influences on note taking practices but it was pretty high level on those practices themselves. The focus was more on the movements that influenced the practice rather than how people took notes. There was some good take away on the types of notes taken and who took regular notes that I look forward to putting to use.
I did, in the home stretch, fail in my goal to not buy any fabric in 2022. I made it until December 17th, when Fabrics-store put their new Moroccan Blue on sale. I’ve been waiting for this to go on sale since it was launched, and it is destined to be part of my first attempt at Moorish sometime next year. I’m considering it for spring, and will likely start the project in March.
My January goals are:
Make a set of sleeves out of the remaining pink wool. I’d like to have these done in time to wear to Bright Hills with the gonete for additional warmth.
Make Evan’s vest thingy
Finally make time to go over to Hakon’s to do belt, quiver, and chopines
Keep on documenting the almodrote
Research of the Month: Jews, Food, and Spain by Hélène Jawhara Piñer. I don’t expect I’ll get through the whole book but I’m going to start it this month and try to incorporate what I’ve learned into my Nola class.
