"It's Done! Done!" she screamed madly

Yes, it's true ... I finally did it ...

I finished the log cabin blanket!!! It's done - done - done!

Can you tell I'm excited? Euphoric wouldn't be too strong a word. I can't stop heaving huge sighs of relief.

I did some checking back in my old blog posts, and I discovered that I started this blanket on January 19, 2007. And finished it one year and 2 1/2 weeks later. It's a little bigger than I thought I'd managed to get to before I gave up ... that's a queen size air mattress it's spread out on.




In other good news, I ran out to Joann's tonight after work, and got this little gem.




It's my OTT-Lite, the little 'task' light which was on sale for $39.99 (half price! can you believe the price of these things? it better help me embroidery and cure my mid-winter blahs) and will work just peachy for my embroidery. In fact, it's lighting up the left half of the blanket in those pictures above, since I had it sitting on a side table when I took the pictures. (It was a little too far away to light up the whole blanket; but you can sure see the difference in colors between the left side, and the right side lit by a regular household incandescent light).

So I'll be all set when I start on the embroidery again - soon! I'm still going through a bit of withdrawal from the log cabin blanket. You know, it's weird when you finish a very long-term knitting project. The first time I did it, I actually had a kind of post-partum depression ... something that had been attached to my hands for so long suddenly gone and living an independent life.

I didn't really get that with this blanket ... I would be lying if I said I wasn't glad it was done. It's less like post-partum depression and more like watching your 20-year-old finally get their own damned apartment.

But I still want to savor that feeling of accomplishment, of 'done-ness' for awhile, before I officially move onto another project - especially one that's destined to be so time-intensive. (Not that I'm complaining! I live for this stuff ... the day job's only purpose is to be able to afford more fiber).


(It's done!!!!)

Let There Be Light

I see my elusive friend Rhys posted a comment in reply to my recent whine about not being able to see my embroidery stitches in black on black. He reminded me about the full spectrum lighting available which would help with that. Very true - I am familiar at least with the "Ott-Lite" which Joann Fabrics carries. I had initially ruled it out because every time I'd ever looked at them, they were (to me) exorbitantly expensive.

But I was just checking online, and these lights happen to be on sale for 50% off through Saturday, which means I could get this small table-top model for $40. It's very small, but that also makes it very portable, for moving around to different embroidery locations (which will happen). And, I think my financial situation is going to improve in the very near future, so I think I'm going to go splurge on one of these lights for myself this weekend. Ah, if they have any left by the last day of the sale. That could be a problem. Maybe I should run out there tonight after work. Especially considering that I'm going to need it really soon, since the embroidery is about to shift to my primary focus now that I'm running out of other things to work on. (hint hint ... more on that later).

So thanks, Rhys! If you hadn't mentioned those lights, I'd have never bothered to check, and wouldn't have known they were on sale. I suppose this means you're going to claim an interest in my coat and want to borrow it at War Practice? Trust me - it won't be as warm as yours. Although I'm already thinking about making a second one, fur-lined (fake, of course) for those cold-weather events (i.e., every one I go to except Pennsic).

Magnum Opus: Pirate Coat Update

I worked on the pirate coat all day yesterday. Literally. I had a nice dinner planned, and was resisting even dragging myself away from it for that, so the Dread Reverend suggested we order pizza and wings. He so rocks.

I got the coat mostly done. It doesn't technically look much different than last week, just hanging on a hanger, so I didn't take a new picture. Maybe one evening this week I'll model it for a photo shoot. But I got the entire front and neck facing put on; I put the second sleeve in; and I completely fixed the cuffs.

The cuffs in this pattern are really difficult. The first time I made this coat, for the Dread Reverend, I ended up scrapping the suggested cuffs and just making some modified simple cuffs. A friend of mine who also made this coat told me he had trouble with the cuffs as well. The two problems are, the directions make no sense and don't tell you what you actually need to do; and the cuffs are way too huge. Everything else about the coat is very well made, but those cuffs are like a fantasy costume instead of a realistic pirate coat. They are just silly big.

I knew going in that I'd need to modify them. But since I had never completed the cuffs on this pattern before, I didn't know how or how much I would need to modify them without seeing them in their original form. So I made one complete cuff, basting it only, and then once I figured out what it needed, I removed it and modified it. I ended up taking off 2" from each side of each cuff piece (for a total circumference reduction of 4"), and taking 1 1/2" off the height of the cuff. I had already taken 3" off the bottom of the sleeve to fit me, which also reduce the width somewhat, since the sleeves flared out at the bottom (for some stupid reason). After taking another 2" off the width of the sleeve, everything fit together great.

And it was perfect. The cuffs looked much better this way. So I put both cuffs together, but did not attach them - because I have to have them unattached until after I finish the embroidery, so I am not embroidering through both layers, and the underside of the stitching will be hidden inside the cuff.

The only other thing I didn't finish on the coat was the bottom hem. That's a pretty simple thing which can be done any time, but which is going to take awhile (it's many yards of just straight stitching a hem), so I left it for later.

Now comes the embroidery - and with the ideas I've been having and the brief experimenting I've been doing, if I pull this off, and do what I want to do, the way I want to do it, this thing is going to be a work of art. It's going to be my embroidery magnum opus. Which is pretty ambitious considering I haven't really done all that much embroidery in the past - I've started a few small projects, only one of which I ever actually finished. It's going to be amazing. It's a lot of embroidery. I'm only mildly intimidated. (Okay, maybe a little beyond mildly). But I'm going to forge ahead and go for it.

I decided (quite wisely, it turns out) to do practice embroidery before I start on the actual coat, using some leftover scraps of the fabric. I'm starting out trying rayon embroidery floss, because it's satiny with just a tiny bit of shine, which I thought would look nice. Here's a picture, more or less - it was very difficult to get a good picture this morning, due to bad lighting ... future pictures will probably have to be taken outdoors with natural light to look like anything.

I began with 3 strands (the part labeled A), but it seemed too bulky and was hard to keep neat ... it just looked kind of sloppy. Then I tried just one strand, outlining the design in regular split stitch (part B), but that wasn't doing anything for me either. (It looks far neater in this picture than it looks in real life).

My next experiment was outlining the design in split stitch, then going back over that line with a tiny satin stitch (C). I liked that better, but decided it was a little too tiny, delicate and tedious. I'd been having an idea of doing a sort of couching over a piece of string of some type, to give nice raised edges to the designs. So I tried that next, over a piece of sock yarn (D).

That looked pretty awesome - although for the actual coat I'll use black yarn. This just happened to be something I had on hand to experiment with.

And if I decide to do that over most of the design, it may well take me the rest of my life. Ah well. It'll be worth it.

One thing I know for a fact I have to do is find some better lighting to work on this. One of the reasons even the single strand embroidery was getting sloppy is because I couldn't really see very well ... black floss on black material, indoors at night, with nothing but a regular table lamp for light - no freaking way that will work for this entire project. But I'm sure we can rig up some better lighting for me.

The other issue with the practice pieces is that I just drew some quick designs out freehand, with a white pencil which desperately needed sharpened. So the designs weren't neat or clear at all. But that's okay for just practice. When I go to transfer the real embroidery patterns to the coat, I'll be much more careful. Saturday when I was out I found some transfer paper in white and yellow, for dark colored fabric. When I go to transfer the actual patterns, I'll make sure I have clean, clear drawings, then trace them onto the coat with the transfer paper, and I'll be able to do a much better job embroidering them.

And I gotta tell you ... when I accomplish those two things (better lighting and a clean pattern to work from), this is going to go extremely well.

I can't wait to get it done and wear it!! But it's going to be a long time before that happens. I'm seriously wondering if I'll even be able to get it done by Pennsic in August, much less the first event in May. But I'll have to decide early, because once I start on the embroidery on the main coat, I won't be able to wear it till it's done ... I can't wear it around with half-done embroidery around the skirts. It'll be all or nothing.

I'm going to do the cuffs first, so I can attach them and be done with them. Next I'll do the buttons and loops, and I'll be embroidering something decorative up both sides of the facing, around the buttons and loops, and across the back of the neck. I don't know what yet, but that will be Phase 2.

When I finish those two sections, technically I could wear it as is, since that part of the embroidery will be done. The next phase will be moving on to the voluminous skirts - that part will take a very long time, and that's the part I won't be able to stop in the middle of to wear the coat. So I'll have to see how much time I still have when I finish the cuff and facings, and whether to start the skirts, or leave it alone until after this year's events. Knowing me I'll plow ahead and try to finish the whole thing before wearing it anywhere. Maybe, if I plan well, I can do the embroidery in phases which will allow me to still wear it when only part of it is done. Well ... it's something to consider, anyway.

The embroidery itself seems to go fairly quickly, despite it's tiny size, once started. But it's kind of deceptive ... each tiny motify may go fairly quickly, but when there are so many of them over such a large area, there's no way around it taking a very long time.

One of my biggest challenges right now is choosing the actual patterns I'll be using. I have a bunch of ideas, stuff I found in books or online. Now it's down to designing the actual patterns, modifying the patterns I've decided to use to fit the space I'm working in, and making clear copies in the proper size to trace onto the fabric. That, too, is going to take awhile.

Needless to say, the log cabin blanket didn't get finished this weekend. And I'm so close ... I'm on the fourth border, and have about 4 rows of that done. It's going to be hard to tear myself away from the pirate coat now to finish it, but it's so close, I can't abandon it now!

Unfortunately I may not get to work on either tonight ... since I fluffed off the whole weekend on my fiber obsession, I didn't get anything else done I should have. I have a tax appointment Thursday to prepare for (all my tax papers are stuffed randomly in a big tote bag ... I don't think the tax lady would be very happy with me if that's what I hand her), laundry to do, and a pig-sty of a house to clean up. I hate when mundania interferes with my creative endeavors.

Missed It By *That* Much

My goal of finishing one thing a month is going to fall a wee bit behind. I was trying to finish the log cabin blanket by the end of January (that'd be today), but I'm not quite going to make it. Every evening this week I've been working steadily on it for a couple hours before bed, and had I done that again last night I'd say I had a shot at finishing it tonight. But I couldn't manage it last night. I was incredibly tired for some reason ... every once in awhile (okay, maybe once a week) I have a night where I just lay around and completely veg after dinner, doing nothing, falling asleep by 9:00 or so, and getting about 10 hours sleep. That's fine with me, obviously I needed the rest, so I never fight it when I feel one of those nights coming on. Rest is good.

But consequently, I got a little behind in the finishing schedule. I completed the border on two sides and part of the third side this week. So I still have what's left of the third border and all of the fourth border, plus weaving in all the yarn ends on the back. For a time I was doing that as I went along, then I just kind of got tired of it and stopped ... so now there are dozens of them still to weave in. I don't mind, but it's going to take awhile.

So the blanket probably isn't going to be done till this weekend. But the good news is, it WILL be done this weekend!!

I'm trying not to obsess about my next project already. I'm not sure whether I'm going to make myself a pair of socks first - I've been wanting a pair since I made the three pairs of Christmas socks in the last couple months - or get out those 2 skeins of stash yarn and work on that scarf I have in mind.

Of course, the pirate coat will be an ongoing project as well, because I would like to get that done by May (the first event of the year that I'll be attending), and to do that, I'm going to have to work pretty steadily on it, amidst whatever knitting project I have going as well.

On that note, I have some time before work ... I think I'll knit.

And so it begins ...

I started on the pirate coat today. I was obsessed, I was a sewing fiend ... mostly because I don't really care so much for the sewing part, and really just wanted to get to the embroidery part.

I didn't make it that far ... but here's what I did get done between about 11:30 this morning and 6:00 tonight.

First I cut out all the pattern pieces and pinned them to my fabric. This took a lot of time, for several reasons. First, my fabric was 54" wide rather than the 45" called for in the pattern. If I had any math sense, I may have been able to figure out how much less I needed, since the fabric was wider, and not have had to get the whole 6 1/2 yards. But I'm not that mathtelligent, so I just got the 6 1/2 yards. Consequently, after first pinning the pattern pieces out according to the pattern schematic, I realized I could save a lot of space by rearranging them ... so I did. (I also had quite a bit of fabric left over, but I'm sure I'll find a use for such nice twill).

Finally, I was ready to start cutting ...


... this part always makes me nervous. I'm always afraid, what if I screwed something up? At this point, I'm totally committed ... if I screwed up, it'll be too late to fix it once I cut everything out.

Eh, whatever. I cut them out, and then laid out the back and one front side on the table, to begin brainstorming my embroidery coup de grace. (The material is all black, it just looks all different kinds of shades in these pictures).




But I wasn't really getting inspired from looking at it this way, so I decided to put at least some of the coat together. I figured I could envision my embroidery scheme better that way, and it wouldn't really make it any harder to embroider some parts of it ... like the skirts.




Then I got paranoid that the sleeves might not fit, so thought I'd better do them to make sure, before I invest any time in embroidery. I got one done ...

... and it fit fine, but by then I'd pretty well lost steam (it was getting close to 6:00) so I called it a day. My one-armed pirate coat is hanging out awaiting further developments.

One small project I might have been able to start on tonight, embroidery-wise, is the cuffs. But I needed interfacing to begin putting them together, and I hadn't gotten any at the store yesterday. I thought I had some, but it turns out I didn't have enough. I don't want to embroider through the interfacing, but the way this pattern is set up, there is a cuff set with interfacing (the 'facing' cuff) and then a cuff set without interfacing (the 'outer' cuff), which you then sew together, turn right side out, and use as the cuff proper. I don't want to get that far before I do the embroidery, but I do I want to put them all together at least pinned, to get a good idea of exactly where on the cuff the embroidery will be most effective, and how much space I have after seams. To do that, it would be easier to work through the process in order, and that would have required putting the interfacing on the cuff facings to proceed from there.

Had my mind been clearer, I may well have been able to figure it out without the interfacing, but ... it was getting late, I was hungry, there'd been rum, and I'd been working on it for over 6 hours. I decided anything else I did at that point was highly susceptible to serious screw-up, and my best bet was to call it a day, and relax in front of the TV knitting (and probably watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3!).

Meanwhile through much of this, I'd been throwing together a pot of beef stew. It's funny - I learned to make beef stew from my mom years ago. Then for a long time I couldn't get it to turn out quite right, and was always futzing with it. But the more I futzed, the worse it turned out. This time I really wasn't in the mood to cook, and was just tossing stuff at the pot on my downstairs breaks from sewing on the way to or from the bathroom or to make another drink ... and this is the best beef stew I've made in a long time. Apparently it doesn't like futzing.

I'm so psyched about getting to the embroidery on this coat!! But I know I have to take it one phase at a time, and do each one well, if I want the whole thing to really turn out nice, and not just look trashy. So I'll be patient, and work through it. I need to get interfacing, and finish the front facing before I can hem it ... then I can start planning the embroidery for the 'skirt' panels. And I need to figure out the cuffs, and then I can start embroidery on them as well. I'm also going to be embroidering up the front facing and around the neck, and that part I could probably start on any time, although it might be wise to decide what type of fasteners I'm going to put on the coat, and get them, so I can plan my embroidery around them.

There's still a lot of prep work before I can get to the embroidery. Not to mention, finding or making up designs for the embroidery itself.

For tonight, though ... looks like it's back to finishing the Log Cabin Blanket. And a big ol' woo-hoo to that.

You want the Futzless Mom's Beef Stew Recipe? Here ya go ... but remember ... this is totally futzless, so if you're not comfortable cooking this way, either bite the bullet and give it a try once, or move on to something more precise. But I'm telling you ... all the years I tried so hard to make this beef stew "right," this is the first time it's turned out this good, and this is exactly how I did it.

Mom's Beef Stew

about 1 1/2 lbs stew beef (give or take a chunk or two)
about 3 carrots
about 3 potatoes
a can of peas
some water
some cooking oil
some flour
a heavy pot

Cut the beef into pieces you'd like to see in your stew. I use scissors for this. Trim any excess fat.

Pour some cooking oil into the bottom of the pot and heat it up.

Dump some all purpose flour into a gallon-size ziplock bag. Throw in the meat, shake it up really well. When the oil's hot, open the bag and pull out handfuls of the meat, with whatever flour you happen to grab with it. (don't try to get all the flour, but don't make a serious effort to shake any flour off the meat, either). Toss it in the pot. Let that cook a little while, then use a spatula, wooden spoon, or whatever you find handy to stir it up a bit.

Continue to cook and stir the beef with flour until it's mostly browned. Stop before it burns.

Put hot tap water in the pot till it covers the beef by about an inch or two. Cook this for 2 hours. Once it starts boiling good, turn the heat down and adjust until it's mostly simmering. Keep a lid on. Stir often. Keep it simmering. (Usually when I make beef stew it doesn't stick; this stuck horribly and had to be stirred a lot; however, as I mentioned, it turned out better than usual, so I figured it was worth it).

Go do something fun for awhile. When it's been almost 2 hours, peel 3 carrots (more or less) and chop them into about 1/2" rounds. Throw those in the pot, stir again, put the lid on.

About 25 minutes later you're going to add potatoes, so sometime before that peel 3 or so potatoes, and chop them up into more or less bite-size pieces. Toss those in, stir, put the lid on.

At various points in this process shake in quite a bit of salt (if you like salt; if you're on a low-salt diet, I'm sorry ... do your best). A generous portion of pepper wouldn't go amiss, either. Stir often, since - as I said - this version seemed to stick more than usual. (I think it was the excess flour; but that's what makes it thick and stewy - so it's worth it).

When the potatoes have cooked about 25 minutes, open a can of peas. Now you can do two things with the liquid in the can: if your beef stew is just about the right thickness (and if you played loose with the flour, it should be), you can drain the liquid into the sink. If your beef stew has managed to get too thick (hard to imagine) you can dump the liquid from the can of peas in with the peas. Either way, dump in the can of peas and stir it up. At this point it's basically done ... just leave on the heat and stir long enough to heat the peas (about 5 seconds).

If the stew isn't thick at all, you did what I'd been doing wrong for years - not enough flour at the start. This is where I start futzing, and usually bugger it up. The only fix for it I've found out at that point is to make a flour and warm water slurry, and add it to the stew. It will probably thicken it up some, but it always detracts from the color and flavor when I have to do that. That's why this pot turned out so well - I didn't have to do that this time. So remember - lots of flour at the beginning.

There ... that's my N0-Futz Mom's Beef Stew. If it's excellent, thank my mom. If it turns out like crap, it's your fault.

Do you see this?? Do you?

That's a black border. That means I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have finally gotten sick of adding patches to this log cabin, and I'm declaring myself four borders away from done.

Woo. Hoo.

I wanted to stop working on it before I got so sick of it that I couldn't stand to use it once it was finished. And I finally snapped and reached that point this week. Unfortunately, the black I happened to have on hand was sport weight, while most of the rest of the blanket is made out of worsted weight. It will work ... it will ... but it's a little awkward in these first rows. Oh well. Whatever. It'll be fine. Really. Fine.

I'm going out Saturday to pick up some more black yarn (I don't have enough to finish all the borders). I'll get worsted weight then. It'll all work out. That's one of the cool things about this blanket ... it's very forgiving.

I'm desperate to start something new. I'm not sure what. I have that luscious Cat Bordhi book to work on. I found two skeins of yarn in my stash, a very pretty wool I bought on a whim one time. It was the only time I'd ever bought yarn without a project in mind, and being a neophyte at it, only bought two skeins. So there's not enough there to make much of anything, but when I re-discovered it the other day, I thought, "I want to make something out of this." I'm thinking about seeing if there's enough to make a lacy scarf or something. Maybe I'll try that.

I have an addendum to the knitting goal for the year ... not only do I want to finish my current projects, but I want to try to finish one project a month. Which means a lot of smaller projects throughout the year, interspersed with my larger, life-long projects (like the Celtic Icon sweater). Well ... it may not be a good idea, because the more time I spend on little projects, the less time I can spend on the big ones.

But maybe I just need a little instant gratification, a few quick projects to make me feel better.

Of course ... that's exactly how the log cabin blanket started ... ...

Pennsic Pre-Planning, Phase I

Every year around this time I start serious Pennsic planning. I don't know why it hits so hard in January - whether because, in years past, Pennsic was such a highlight of the year I looked forward to it for so long, and January was really the first realistic time I could start planning; or whether it was just that there is always so much to do that I knew if I didn't start in January, I'd never get it all done; or if it's just that mid-winter blah settling in, when there's really nothing else much going on for the next couple months and a good time to plan and look forward to warm-weather activities.

Maybe a combination of all three, but for whatever reason, January's always been the first of the new year's Pennsic planning time.

This year is no exception, although it's not with great anticipation I approach it, but more with a bit of apprehension. Last Pennsic was the worst I ever had. So bad that up until just a few weeks ago I told everyone it might effect that I was still seriously considering not going this year. And I was, it was serious, not just being pissy. The reasons it was so awful are many and varied, and some are my own fault, but that doesn't change that it was Really. Bad.

But it gets in your blood somehow, and it's a hard habit to give up. It has so much potential to be really awesome, and all too often by January I've forgotten the bad and only look forward to the good - remembered previous good years and hopes for future good years.

At least I did learn one lesson this year - the definition of insanity: continuing to do the exact same thing, and expecting different results. I have finally gotten two important rules through my head:

• if I don't change something about the way I do Pennsic, it's going to continue to suck and leave me depressed and disappointed at the end of it every year
• I can only change the way I, myself, do things; I can't force anyone else to change the way they do Pennsic to make it better for me

This makes it tricky when part of my problem does, in fact, involve the way the people I camp with do things. But trying to change that isn't an option, so I have to look for new ways to make things bearable for me, without expecting them to change what is comfortable and works for them.

My worst complaint last year was it taking an entire day to tear down camp, and not getting to leave till late in the evening, and finally getting home long after dark, so exhausted that for the very first time in my life I was literally falling asleep behind the wheel on the way home. I have never, ever done that to myself before. And never will again, I don't care what the rest of my camp wants to do. So one new thing for this year is that I intend to leave site that last Saturday at 3:00 p.m. I will happily help my campmates tear down and pack up camp from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Saturday, I will even happily do my own personal packing before that (either in the morning or the night before) to ensure I can devote a full 6 hours to camp work.

But come 3:00 I'm outta there. This will solve the problem of coming home at night, exhausted and frustrated and completely worn out. Six hours ought to be more than enough to completely dismantle and pack our camp - it's not that large or complex - if we all work together on it. So I don't think this plan is out of line or too much to ask of my campmates. If they prefer not to do it, well, there's nothing I can do about that - but at 3:00 I'm gone, whether the camp's done or not. So hopefully, instead, we can all work together so that it's a win-win for everyone: they get my help tearing down and hauling stuff home, and I get to leave at a reasonable hour.

The other changes in plans I'm making are more personal. For one thing, I'm taking less stuff. My Pennsic stuff has grown through a slow arc over the years, initially taking way too much, then taking more for several years, then slowly paring it down. This year I'll be going extremely minimalist. I have learned over the 6 or so Pennsics I've been to that I don't use half of the stuff I take with me ... so there's no point in packing it, finding room for it in my crowded tent, and then hauling it all home. I don't need to take half my possessions: a book to read, a knitting project, an embroidery project. That's about all I'll actually do.

For a few years I was putting shelves in my tent - plastic, stacking shelves. It was rather convenient for storing stuff in my tent, except that my tent's always on a hill, so everything being at a steep angle made it a little tricky. I could have leveled up the shelves with some wood shims, but ... more stuff to take, so I never bothered. I'm doing away with the shelves this year - less stuff to pack, and I can just use the totes I haul stuff in to store it in my tent, with the bonus that if we have one of those Noah Pennsics where it rains and rains and rains, stuff will stay dry. That was another problem last year - it rained so much, everything in my tent got soaked. You never know when you're going to have one of those years, and it always rains at some point, so I may as well anticipate that.

There are a few other personal things I know I need to do as well, most of them attitudinal in nature ... like not turning Pennsic into a pilgrimage to Mecca and placing such high expectations on it that there's no way it or I can live up to them. But I won't bore you with the gory details of those.

Otherwise, I have a lot of fun stuff I want to do in the coming months as well. The never-ending garb-making, of course. Although there's never enough garb, I have an issue in that much of the garb I made and wore my first few years no longer fits (bad Rayne), and the new stuff I made last year that does fit isn't quite enough to cover a whole Pennsic without coming home to do landry. So a few new outfits are in order. I also want to start sprucing up what I do have - some embroidery or inkle trim on a few things. I'm going to make a haversack like the one the Dread Reverend bought last year ... a canvas sack with a strap long enough to wear over your shoulder, cross-wise across your body. Great for carrying things on outings, day or night. I've yet to find a belt pouch I like, and the few I've tried to make have never worked either. This is one thing that will really come in handy.

My big project this year is a pirate coat. I made the Dread Reverend one from a pattern that came out after 'Pirates of the Caribbean' - it is, of course, a coat similar to the one Johnny Depp wears. (I'd post a picture, but can't seem to find one of him wearing it ... I lost many of my pictures when my computer got stolen last August). I made his out of a purplish upholstery velvet, very cool. But knowing how the heat gets to me at Pennsic, I'm going to make mine out of a much thinner material - a cotton just heavy enough to hold its shape, or something along those lines - and black. Then I intend to embroider all over it, also in black, so it'll be very subtley fancy. I don't go in for much flash. I looked for some nice understated brocade material online, but couldn't really find anything appropriate (that wasn't hideously expensive), so ... I'll make my own, as it were.

That project alone could take from now till Pennsic, and I'm anxious to get to the fabric store and find the material. I would have gone this weekend, but we're in a deep freeze at the moment, with temperatures in the single digits and wind chills in the negatives, so I really didn't care to leave the house this weekend.

Anyway, that's how I've spent my morning ... Pennsic planning. But with a little forethought and much attitude adjustment, I think I can make this a fun and relaxing vacation again, instead of the sad downhill spiral it's been the last few years. There is so much potential in this event, and not just a lot of "go, go, go" and "do, do, do" ... my favorite memories of Pennsic are beautiful, relaxing things like sitting on a hillside in the shade of a tree half-reading a book, and half just watching people and admiring the ambience ... or strolling casually through the marketplace with no buying goal in mind, just seeing all the amazing things that are there like at a bazaar in a foreign country or something ... or sitting around a fire listening to good music (or even the not-so-good music ... it's all pretty fun there). There's lots of good, I just have to remember what works and what doesn't ... and quit being the living embodiment of the definition of insanity.