Ooopsy

The weekend was a complete wash - I got absolutely nothing done. No quilting, no sewing, nothing. Okay, I tell I lie. I got a little tiny bit done on the log cabin blanket. And some reading - I finished the current medieval mystery, "The Sempster's Tale." It's too bad that I need to wait for weekends to do any quilting or sewing, but by the time I get home in the evenings, I really don't have the brain power left for the concentration or thought. Knitting comes much easier to me (even following a pattern of some sort) so that's my weeknight brain-dead activity.

Well, I'm sure I'll get back to it ... it's starting to get to be that time of year ... when I want to start working on garb for my SCA events this summer. I have new things I want to make this year, and in some cases even already have the material ... all I have to do is get up there, cut out patterns, and sew. I like to start garb early, because what I've done in most other years is not started it until about June. The big event of the SCA year - Pennsic War - has been taking place the first two full weeks of August every year (except this year they moved it up to start at the end of July), and by not starting till June, I'd be spending ridiculous hours, every night of the week, sewing garb. I really hate the last minute rush, and would much prefer to start things earlier and have plenty of time to do a nice job. In fact, I'd even like to do some embroidery on some of my garb, and since I embroider by hand, and I'm crazy slow about it, I really need to start that now.

One may wonder, if I go to these events every year, and have been doing so for about 5 or 6 years, why I need yet more garb. Variety of reasons. First, it's a disease. No matter what garb you made last year, there's always more to make, something new to try. It's funny - in 'real life' I couldn't care less about clothes. Not a 'typical' girl in that regard. I'm a minimalist. I managed to simplify my dress code over the years till all I ever wear, work or weekends, is jeans and pirate t-shirts (black jeans for work, blue jeans for weekends); a cardigan over the pirate t-shirts at work, or in the winter a pullover sweater; and sometimes a sweatshirt on weekends. For evenings, pj pants and whatever t-shirt I wore to work that day. Simple.

Not so with garb. There are so many different things I'd like to try. Making clothes that are, or pass for, authentically medieval, often without a pattern, is quite an interesting challenge. Another valid reason is that very unfortunately, some of the stuff I made those first few years no longer fits.

In other news, we're about to get buried ... big winter storm hitting today. Where I live in northeast Ohio I've dubbed the Valley of No Weather, because usually all of this type of stuff passes us right by. I live just south of the snow belt, and while they can get 6", 8" or a foot of snow a couple miles north of us, we might only get a trace ... nothing more than a "coverlet to cool a hobbit's toes." We also manage to avoid the majority of the severe weather that sweeps across mid-Ohio in the spring and early summer - it always seems to skate just to the north or south of us.

But this time it doesn't look like we're going to get overlooked. NOAA is calling for between 8" and 16" of snow even here - inconceivable. When I went out to take the garbage down to the curb this morning it was already starting, but it was sleet. Sleet is far worse than snow - deep snow doesn't worry me since I have the 4-wheel drive truck now, but sleet and freezing rain scares me. Well ... we'll see how the day shapes up.