Fencing Armor Update

Well, its mostly complete and I've now worn it at two successive events, NRWC and GNEW.

I'm really liking how it looks and feels as I was a little worried that I would find it to restrictive, even though I constructed it so it wouldn't be. There' a couple of spots where the stitching needs repair because I did a bad job to start with but other than that it's holding up very well, as I'm not the daintiest of fencers!

Its been designed as a (modified) dress. The best thing about this is that it involves and undershirt which can be washed after every stinky practice and event. I've thrown together a very rough shirt for the time being but I need to look at shirt patterns, specifically bag-sleeves, because I'm not completely happy with this first iteration of it. However, it will work just fine for now.

The next step in my process is to just repair the stitching then try and get the neck area done for Pennsic.

Project Fencing Armor: Update

The main dress is almost complete with just some hemming, tidying up of the neck line and attaching the front closure to go. Its exactly how I imagined it and am really pleased with the result so far. I've been prancing around the house in it for the past little while and it moves wonderfully, its only gonna get better as the linen softens up even more.

Now I have to figure out the under shirt, I want pretty billowy sleeves...


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Project Fencing Armor

YAY! My nice new red linen arrived.

I decided back around the time of K&Q Fencing Champions (Jan / Feb?) that I really wasn't happy with my current armor. There's nothing really "wrong" with it, I just don't like it. It kinda just hangs like a sack and the sleeves are annoying me.

SO ... I have two pictures I'm going to be using for inspiration. Both can be found online at the Hope Greenberg site and they're actually part of the collection of  images I used while working on my red 15th/16th century Court dress that I've worn in the past.

This image probably shows the upper detailing a little better than the other one. The dress is going to be in red and will detail the square neckline and short sleeves as shown, it will also be just past knee-length so that I don't trip! The sleeve-ends and skirt bottom with be trimmed in black, similar to my current fencing armor.

However, because it's to be used for fencing I'll need to make sure that none of my skin is exposed at the neckline. This means that where you see the exposed throat in this image I will actually extend the black all the way up so that I still give the impression of the under-dress but that so it is list legal.

The Craft, Rather Than the Art

Very recently I've come to the realization that its the CRAFT behind scribing and illuminating that interests me the most. Don't get me wrong, I love producing works that are handed out to people, and I often loose myself for days when creating something. However, I get so much pleasure reading about all the practicalities of the craft, like producing my own pigments, of learning to cut my own quills, reading about all the industries that could be fed by-products of say woad or leather.

Not sure how this will translate so well into A&S displays / competitions as what I produce may well end up being more like a research paper than short documentation.

Soap

So, we've discovered the wonder world of hand-made soap. I bought some lavender soap from someone I know while at Birka this past January, we used it, loved it and then Ken just bought two more from the same person. This got me thinking that I should probably learn to make our own soaps.

So fast forward a little, after having done some reading, I've decided that I'm going to follow the instructions provided on this blog article by orthogonalthought.com. Its clear, concise and best off all it has pictures.

First things first, I need ingredients. So I headed off to Walmart for supplies and was very happy to discover that I could get everything but the lye there. I decided to buy cheap utensils and bowls that I can use specifically for soap making as I don't want to mix the regular kitchen supplies with lye...

My shopping list ended up looking like this:

• 100% Lye - bought from Ace Hardware under the drain cleaner brand on Rooto.
• Olive Oil - yes, the stuff you use for cooking.
• Coconut Oil -Mmmmmm, sounds good enough to eat!
• Caster Oil - found in the pharmacy dept. as a laxative.
• Distilled Water -do you know whats in your tap water?
• Digital Thermometer - obvious, is obvious.
• Measuring Jugs - plastic and heatproof.
• Hand Whisks - not buying an electric one until I know I'll make more soap.
• Plastic Spatula - for stirring the soap mixture.

Once everything was to hand and the hubby was sent packing it was time to experiment!

First things first, measure out the lye crystals and mix it into solution so that it could cool down while I prepared the other stuff. This actually happened very easily and without any mishaps. Everything was done in the sink so that I had a controlled working space and I could immediately flush things with water if needed.

Next up was the oils. I measured out all the oils and melted them together using the microwave as directed but I feel that next time I will only heat the solid oils and use the others at room temperature as they took a while to cool down.

Then its a waiting game. The instructions said to mix the lye-solution into the oils when they're at about 110F and within 20 degrees of each other. When I mixed mine (impatience) they were within 20 degrees of each other but the hotter of the two was at about 130F Hopefully this won't turn into an issue. I mixed them for about 45 minutes and achieved what I would consider to be "light trace", a kind of soupy, gravy consistency, before pouring into my mold.

And then it just sat there for two days. I did notice what I would consider a little "excess oil" on Saturday night but by Sunday morning it had absorbed back into the hardening block. This morning I pulled it out of the mold and sliced it into "bars" and it looks like I think it should. Now it just needs to cure for 4 weeks.

All in all it seems to be a success. I stupidly haven't taken any photos though so that will have to wait for the next batch I do.