Better late than never

October 9, 2009 · Posted in Games, Meta, Reviews, Sewing, Tech and coding · 1 Comment 

I’m about to upload my photos of our Dragonfire LARP, which happened only two months ago. This is still less laggy than Hodgestar’s birthday party. In order to upload the photos I am upgrading digikam, so that I can use a non-faily flickr upload plugin. In order to upgrade digikam I need to upgrade the rest of KDE from the kubuntu-backports PPA — this is currently chugging away in the background.

I have embarked on an epic sewing project — making myself and Hodgestar medieval Japanese outfits for Here Be Dragons, the annual SCA away weekend event which is about a month away. I’m making this (except with a maroon hakama because the shop had no red linen) and this kind of thing (except black, because that’s the colour of the hakama Hodgestar already has).

The nice thing about Japanese clothing is that it’s mostly a whole lot of rectangles. The only tricky part of the kimono-type garment is the collar. I think I’ve been having problems because my seams are tiny and all the instructions on the interwebs assume that you’re going to leave enormous seam allowances — so my collars are too wide and too high up on the body and need to be re-sewn. I need to test this theory out on the two very nearly finished kosode I’ve just made. The reason I’m writing a rambly blog post and not sewing right now is that V:TES players have taken over the lounge table.

After a very long wait, my kalahari.net book order arrived, and here is my loot:

  • The Never Ending Sacrifice by Una McCormack — it’s a DS9 tie-in novel; don’t judge me. I first read Una McCormack’s fanfiction during one of my previous love affairs with Deep Space Nine, and her pro fiction is just as good. This is a stand-alone story about a minor canon character.
  • Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Cardassia and Andor (purchased for the Cardassia half, also by Una McCormack; I’m leaving the other half for later) — also good, but (obviously) shorter.
  • Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Lisa Dalby — a well-regarded reference book about the history of kimono.
  • Seed to Harvest by Octavia E. Butler — a collected edition of the entire Patternist series, except for one instalment Butler really didn’t like. Haven’t read it yet.
  • Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany — currently reading. It’s slow going, because of the unusual language, but I’m enjoying it.
  • Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks — a fun, short zombie comic. Not much to the plot, but I really like Hicks’ art. (If she sounds familiar, it’s because she did Demonology 101.)

Recently discovered webcomics:

The upgrade has become unexpectedly exciting — I’ve hit some kind of packaging bug. I guess the photos will have to wait a bit longer. :/

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Freddie’s new old ruffler

November 8, 2007 · Posted in Sewing · 3 Comments 

My sewing machine is a Singer 99K, apparently made in Clydebank, Scotland in September 1950. Since yesterday evening, it is called Freddie — I blame Hodgestar; I was going to use some long and improbable woman’s name, but he said I should name it after a singer. So.

Freddie is an old-school sewing machine, made from durable metal parts in an era when appliances were built to last forever. I bought it from an old Muslim lady for R500 a couple of years ago. It’s in pretty good condition, although the original manual was mouldy and I’m going to have to sand and re-varnish the wooden case.

Freddie with Ruffler

It came with many random attachments and mysterious metal pieces, most of which I have managed to identify thanks to the awesome power of Teh Internets. One of them is a ruffler foot. I have previously met with crushing defeat when trying it out — thread jam and general badness. Some of its surface is a bit rusty, and I was worried that it was irretrievably damaged. However, yesterday I decided to make a renewed effort to resurrect it — I unscrewed all the bits that were unscrewable, doused everything in WD40 and wiggled all the joints. Lo and behold, a previously unmoving part began to move! I cleaned it off, put everything back together… and it ruffles, as advertised!

I don’t know what I’m actually ever going to put ruffles on, but that’s not the point.

I have recently been spending a lot more time with Freddie, raising my sewing XP by resizing all my huge, baggy t-shirts to shirts that actually fit me (I’ll make a post once I have a nice collection to photograph). It’s sort of like killing kobolds. Firstfallen has started a monthly sewing circle thing, which is very helpful for prying me off the internet and actually making me sew. Future projects include more clothing surgery and a corded corset.

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