The pain.

i.e., sewing through your finger with a monster sewing machine.  I don’t recommend it.  I don’t recommend it at all.  Thankfully, it actually sounds worse than it is.  I didn’t hit the bone or the nerve pad.  It doesn’t hurt as long as I keep the broken nail stabilized.  And yes, I am keeping it very clean and covered, and yes, my tetanus shots are up to date.  I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.  It will be a pain trying to pack and make camp with a bum finger, but it should be healed up within the week.

All of which is balanced by the adolescent joy of showing people my injured middle finger.  Wanna see?  Do ya?

Sorry, no, just teasing.  No photos of yuck, and no photos of me flicking anyone off.  We’ll leave the yuck to web md, because they have so so much, and the flicking off to Johnny Cash, because he was so amazingly cool.   Sniff sniff.  I miss Johnny Cash so much.  Let me go put  Folsom on.  That’s better.  Where was I?

Cassie sent me an awesome book on Bolivian weaving.  Woot!  I can hear it calling me, right now.  It wants me to leave the sweatshop.  It is a temptress of a book.  But I am fully entrenched.  At this point, I can count the remaining seams I need to sew on my un-injured fingers.  That makes me very happy.  I still have a lot of handsewing to do, but I can do that while we’re camping.  And if I play my cards right, I may even have time to make myself a truly decadent dress out of some teal silk dupioni.  And maybe another one out of the two-faced linen I showed you.  Maybe even some apple green linen pants for me me me.  But I certainly don’t need clothes, so I’m feeling much more relaxed about the next few days.

Cassie also asked if I could post some pictures of all of these wacky things I’m making here in the sweatshop.  And the answer is yes, but not yet.  So far, I’ve made things that don’t have people to wear them yet.  They are owner-less clothes.  I posted some photos of un-modeled finished garments last year around this time, and they just seemed so, well, empty.   I promise to take as many photos as I can of my friends wearing these items I’m making once we get to camp.  I hope to also catch some of them wearing things I’ve made for them in the past.  Lots of the garments I make are relatively basic, since I’m normally making iron age clothing, and the folks we study didn’t make intensely complicated garments.  But I have a few gems out there, floating around on my friends’ backs.  I hope to make another gallery, specifically for things I make for our community.

And because it’s that time of year when I try to parse out the dividing lines between one vacation and another, having spent two weeks every year in the same campground with the same weirdos since I was 16, with time running together and sleep deprivation and too much hilarity for words . . . I’ll show you something from the way-back machine.   I made this a few years ago for our friend Roderick and the rest of the staff at Mandrake armory.   Lots of us play a relatively violent stick-fighting game, and Roderick and Richard and their handiwork keeps our bones whole.  Roderick made me a sweeeet helmet back in the day before my shoulder went kablooey and I had to quit fighting, and I’ve since given that helmet to John the Farrier, so his head will not crack open like a melon.  Richard then made me a repro sweeeet helmet just cuz, and he made Scott a gorgeous Mongol helm that is the talk of the field.  More importantly, some of the best times we’ve had over the years have been in Roderick’s shop at our fun summer outing.  Many of our favorite people have worked with him over the years, and our cabal of friends has, well, we’ve made a habit of making grand gestures just to entertain each other.   So, in the spirit of kindness and, um, smart-ass-ness, this is a banner that I made, using an illustration from the Krotchpunt, a send-up of a fectbuch.

In detail:

So, yes, it’s a funny ha ha.  And it’s hand-stitched embroidery on silk leftover from a tunic I made for Scott and another I made for Richard.  And you can’t see the detail too well, but those are little hand-tooled Green Boots as weights.

We just learned that Roderick and his wife Gretchen have decided to sell the business.  We wish them all the luck in the world (when we aren’t cursing their blasted free will).  And we’d also like to point out that if we see you any less frequently just because your job no longer has to do with protecting us from big sticks, we will hunt you down and give you such noogies.  You cannot hide, Hoghead.  You cannot hide anywhere.

Accomplishments.

• lots of good sewing on fabric
• one very bad stitch through a finger
• some excellent bandaging and general first aid
• some shopping with the lovely Ruadhan, whom we all love
• some list making
• a good deal of fretting
• some excellent procrastination
• plans for more and stranger hats

Off to sew.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS