a bookstore and a comic shop later...

Who's on first

Today in homeschool we read "Take Me Out to Pronoun Game" in our splendid and beloved grammar text, Grammar Town. It is, as the title implies, an homage to the famous vaudeville routine performed by Abbot and Costello.



Sean mentioned the Carson Reagan impression which is also hilarious:



Funny stuff!

Bugger Wars Take Two

I just ordered some Tick Tubes. They're cardboard tubes full of permethrin-infused cotton. Mice use the cotton for nesting material and it kills their ticks, which means it kills MY ticks.

Because we have scads of the little bloodsucking bastards.

Faith was wandering around outside, reading a Harry Potter book, and mentioned to me a few hours later that there were lots of little black bugs on her.

"What kind of bugs? How little?" I asked.

"Tiny," she replied.

I pointed to a crumb from a sandwich. "Like that tiny?"

"Yeah, that's about right."

To make a long story short, fifteen minutes later I had removed 27 (TWENTY SEVEN!) deer ticks from the body of my oldest child. The poor kid! She was so brave.

So since then Sean has sprayed the yard and I've ordered Tick Tubes. I also got some permethrin spray for clothing and I'll be using it on a few outfits, hereafter to be referred to as "The Trousers of Death."

The enemy's gate is down!

the mismeasure of Gloria

I finished Gloria's leine but it's too difficult to get it on her.

Sigh.

It happened because I used French seams. They take up approximately twice as much fabric as normal seams when you are a novice like myself, which means they ate up a good inch and a half to inch and three quarters of fabric. I likely didn't allow enough ease to begin with either.

Lesson learned. It sure looks cute.

gleeson is denied

What follows is some long navelgazing about my inability to regulate my internet usage.

I changed my Facebook password a while back. I used a different password schema than I usually use and I traded some letters for numbers, and then I didn't use it for a month.

I've since forgotten it.

I tried to log in last night and I couldn't. Now, I know I could request it - and I might - but I don't think I will. I had been checking in on a few folks and looking at my wall, to see if anyone Liked my most recent blog entries. I'm notified by email if anyone actually comments, and I don't have to log in to read it. So the story is now, if you Like me I won't know it unless you also comment. Just so you know.

Facebook eats my time. I tried to go back a little bit but the neophilla takes over. I don't know if that's actually a word, but what I mean by it is the way Facebook rewards my brain with new drips of information. No good. I am unable to regulate it. I'm also getting rid of friends-only blogs and subbing to everyone in Google Reader. I used GTweet to put Twitter into Google Reader as well. Maybe with only one site to visit I'll be less likely to get distracted.

I'm interested in so much outside the Internet. I'm attempting to sew (Gloria the Guinea Pig's leine is almost finished, pictures to follow,) and the fall knitting season is upon me, and we're high-tide homeschooling daily, and I have so many books to read.

There's so many wonderful things I don't want to waste a moment.

saturday pictures

Hey look!



It's Abby!



You're going to clean up all that cut paper, right?



Sigh. Ah, here's Gilbert!



And Trixie!



Oh, I got all the fabric! That's red wool twill, white linen, unbleached cotton muslin, light blue check wool flannel, purple check wool twill, and black/grey coating underneath it all.



Faith approves.



The end.

holding pattern

I got some of the fabric for our garb yesterday, and three penannular brooches to hold our brats. Brats being the cloaks we'll wear, not the children themselves. It's said "braht", I'm told.



The ones I got for the girls are similar, just a little smaller.

I'd show you the pins in our cloaks, but the fabric that came yesterday is the linen and cotton I purchased for our leinte. I'm supposed to get the wool on Monday.

This is meshing so well with our homeschool studies. Faith has already picked an SCA name and Abby is pretty excited about making our garb. Now to get that machine threaded... I think I'll make a little test leine for a teddy bear this weekend.

British Museum on penannular brooches

just a wee reminder

Talk Like A Pirate Day is next Sunday, September 19th! Yarr!

Sean, below, showing his pirattitude in 2008 in the tricorn I knitted:

Random Shoes, or It Begins

How exciting! I got the first piece of Official SCA Garb today - shoes!

Not authentic in the least! But they Look Okay, and they're cheap.



Kung Fu shoes. Got a pair for me, for Faith and for Abby. I bought them from Natasha's Cafe, in hypocritical fashion because we try* not to buy from China. As soon as I know we're in this for a long haul I'll make our own shoes or purchase some made domestically. Ahem.

Getting this first burst of garb is an expensive endeavor. The great thing about medieval clothing, however, is that it was made to utilize fabric as efficiently as possible. I've found several schematics (not quite patterns) that describe a T tunic by the numbers approach. I have a pretty extensive background in knitting clothing from body measurements, so I'm not afraid to do the same thing with sewn clothes.

I am a little afraid of my sewing machine, which I have never used. It's a Janome Sew Mini, which I'm told is a nice machine to start with. I hope so! I like how tiny and easy to store it is. I'll have to put it away every time I'm done sewing, as leaving it out with the kids around is not an option. Insert mental image of Bede sewing Warner Brothers logos into our clothing.

*for certain values of 'try', apparently.

Natasha's Cafe

T-tunic the period way

Janome Sew Mini

accomplishments

Today I baked bread. Here is the dough, first rise.



Here is Gloria, looking at the dough.



It pleases her!



Here is Bede, in the new "blue yarn shirt" I knit for him.



And the sweater itself.



Time to start the yearly mittens!

the kinks

Not the band.

I went ahead and imported my old posts to this blog. The problem with that is my old posts used SmartyPants markup, which doesn't translate to Blogger. So old links may be gibberish-y. The URLs are there though, just in a heap of markup. I guess it's another plus to trying to avoid in-text hyperlinks.

So, anyway, sorry about the mess.

Testing the twitterfeed

I'm using twitterfeed to post to (duh) Twitter and Facebook. Hope it works...

Also testing an Amazon widget.

Link

Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152 (Mouse Guard Graphic Novels)

Image



Link+Image

In your face, Gore-Tex

Replica clothes pass Everest test

Wearing replica gear made from gabardine, wool, cotton and silk, he wanted to disprove the common myth that the 1920s climbers were ill-equipped to reach the summit.

"This is just another brick in my wall of evidence," Hoyland said.

you do not require tea?

getting carried away

I'm getting back into the SCA. That's the Society for Creative Anachronism,
>*...an international living history group with the aim of studying and recreating mainly Medieval European cultures and their histories before the 17th century.*



Those guys.

I used to be in the SCA as a teen. I have thought about it for a few years but decided against it because the kids were too young. They keep growing up, these kids, so I'm going to take the plunge.

The two things that tipped me over the edge were S.M. Stirling's novels of The Change - most particularly the first three, Dies the Fire, The Protector's War and A Meeting at Corvallis - and the plan of study for the Gleeschool this year: the Middle Ages.

So I want things like this (hold the rayon, please)

Linen Fabrics at Dharma Trading Co.

and perhaps a pair of these, with decidedly non-period soles, thanks.

Soft Star Shoes for Grown-Ups

Of course we'll need some outerwear from this

Denver Fabrics 100% wool

or this

Wool Blankets

The plan is for me, Faith and Abby to get set up first. Then, we can see whether we like it before going all-in as a family. Bede, while very appropriately named for a historical reenactor, is maybe not so much the fan. We'll see.

I'm glad that the period I'm interested in has nice, simple clothing. I'm leaning toward ninth century Ireland. And at this point that means everyone gets ninth century Ireland.

This is completely insane.