Eva's journal

I just finished the lacing holes and tried on my new bliaut. And it's soo sexy. The defined waist and the rounded hips that are caused by the pleated on skirt gives it a sort of pre-raphaelite look, a more curvy medieval style. Usually I make bliauts in one piece and with gores, but there is enough evidence for the pleated on skirt to convince me that it existed too, although not so wide-spread as the "normal" type, and the result is great!
now I just have to put on the trim around the sleeves and around the neck.
Before I can take pictures of it I have to make a new girdle and a chainse to wear under it. But I know this dress will be wonderful. The only thing that I'm worried about is that it is made from thin habotai and though it has no problem taking the strain of lacing i'm afraid it will get caught in things and damaged. Well, it's partly a test piece so that won't be a total disaster, but I hope it won't happen.

I have now (yesterday night) made 6 lacing holes in my green silk bliaut. Only 74 to go!
Apart from that Maja has been awake almost all night so I'm probably staying home from work to sleep today and make it up in hours tomorrow and on friday. she had a lot of gas and woke crying all the time.

has now got a page of it's own with more pictures, documentation and such. Enjoy!

I have put in 50 more grommets (twice as many as there were before) along the lower edge of the roof of my pavillion, making it easier to lace it together with the walls. I have not yet put in more grommets in the wall, maybe some time this week, but more likely later, since we have our event this coming weekend.

I have sewn all but 40 cm of trim around the hem of my new bliaut.

I have made three diapers from old sheets. Our diapers have been used by so many children that usually one breaks into small pieces/gets large holes every second time we wash them or so. So they need to be replaced by new diapers. I also have many sheet for 90 cm beds, many more than I need. So if it works using them I will not need to buy new diapers. The "real" ones are of a different weave and I don't know if thin plain tabby works as well.

Maja slept a little more (or I was allowed to stay in bed longer than to 7 am) during the weekend so I have now had two night with 6 hours sleep fragmented in to two hour intervals. Hooray! I hope tonight will go well too, I hate having to get by on 4-5 hours of sleep.

Slippery fabric is the work of an evil deity. I have just cut out all pieces for my bliaut and was cutting the lining for the sleeves, which is in a very slippery tomato orange viscose. One of the pieces looks terribly wonky, there is no way it could get the same shape as the sleeve it's supposed to line. Which is funny, because it's cut exactly after that sleeve!
Right now I'm ignoring this fact and I'm going to try to force it into that shape anyway, because I have no more fabric. I guess I could use scraps to make another sleeve, but I'm going to try with this one first, I mean it once had the same shape as the sleeve.

will be pale yellow with pattern in brown and have pendant sleeves lined in orange and black and gold trim around the sleeve and neck openings. The neck opening will go far down so that I will be able to nurse in it. I've put all the materials together and it looks glorious!

I just put up some pictures of me nursing in my 12th century dress. I would write more about it if I didn't have a baby hanging on my shoulder.

This is from a late 12th century manuscript in the British Library. Note the orange dress of the virgin. And all the other orange stuff.

Eva

The trim I had intended to edge the applique with was to broad and too loosely woven so it looked really bad when I tried sewing it to one of the motifs. So I have to buy some other braid, I might even end up having to use black soutach braid, but I really wanted something else. Since it's 12th night almost no shops are open so that will have to wait at least until tomorrow.

So I have started putting trim on my light purple 1130s dress instead. If I just get a better scan of the pictures that are my sources (a german manuscript of the legend of St. Lucy) I might get a new dress up in the Costume Gallery this weekend.
Right now I'm going to take sewing break and play some Caesar III, which I haven't done for a year or so.

I'm getting more ill again, I just slept between ten and one for no apparent reason since I had slept at least eight hours during the night. I also feel like I have a temperature. And tomorrow my vacation is over and I have lots of work to do.

Last weekend was 80s weekend on MTV Nordic so we watched some old videos with the kids, who like to see what was popular when Rickard and I were teenagers. When they showed Van Halen with "Jump" I told them how much I had liked that song (and David Lee Roth) and then Rickard tells me he also liked it, but in Aztec Camera's acoustic version. I didn't even know that version existed and had never heard Aztec Camera, even though I had read about them in the 80s (Rickard and I had very different musical taste in the 80s, at least the earlier 80s). So he got inspired and dug out his old records, which inspired me to play some of my records too, so for now it's only vinyl in our home. We started the day with the Toy Dolls ("Dig that groove baby" and "A far out disc") and just now my husband started playing Bauhaus. Or record player, which was bought cheaply at the end of the 80s, is really getting bad though and can give up any minute. Now we have to save money for the birth so we can't get a new record player now and getting one cheap is considerably more difficult now that there isn't a big market for them anymore. Well, we'll solve that problem when we have to.

Now, off to imperial Rome!