What Black Friday sales are you going to hit this year? I'm not going to get up early, but I plan to hit some of the sales for items on my shopping list.

For Father's Day, I ordered an e-Gift Card from Target for my Dad (since he wanted a Target gift certificate). Bad idea.

First, he was able to find what he wanted to purchase online but the total came out to be $49.98. Target.com only had free shipping if you spend more then $50. They wanted to charge an extra 9.99 for shipping plus tax. Argh. After looking around a bit more to see if there was anything else we would want to get, we decided that I would just use the e-GiftCert to purchase a Gift Card that he could use in the store instead. No-can-do unfortunately.

Now I'm trying to work with Target Customer Support to see if they can work some type of magic for me to refund the e-GiftCert even though it is applied to my account. Ah Well. If anything, I'll have $40 to spend on Target.com.

Dang, I've been working on my to do list of all of the things I would like to get done this summer and it just keeps on growing!

Time to prioritize I guess.

I *really* need to start getting in the garden again and clean up the new weeds that have come up over the last few weeks.   I've been focusing so much on craft related projects I have been letting this go a bit.   Once we're back from Fargo this upcoming weekend, this is the first thing that I'm going to do.    

I also want to finish my Spanish outfit and it is reallly getting close.  Instead of trying to rush through it I've been taking a bit more time.   I'm doing a lot more hand sewing than I originally planned, but the finished product will be much nicer I think.   Unfortunately, I'm a bit short on some of the trim I wanted to use, but I've been able to find good substitutes that I actually like a bit more than what I was originally going to use.    Most likely I'll be entering this into some A&S faire in the future due to the amount of research, time and effort put into it.    I was thinking of entering it in the Baronial A&S competition this week, but I just didn't want to rush through the rest of the work to get it done in time (plus find time to finish the documentation needed).   I also didn't want to just enter in a part of the outfit such as the 'sleeves' or just my hat.  :)   I'm curious to see what everyone else will be entering though. 

At this point, I need to finish hand sewing the trim on one of the oversleeves, attach the ties, then attach the oversleeves to the bodice.  The bodice is done other than for attaching the sleeves, skirt (which is already put together), and adding the hook/eyes and lacings.

Once the dress is done, I'm going to be moving onto a 'Cosplay' type costume that is inspired by one of the characters I play in Warhammer Online (Goggle for White Lion).   It is going to be the most challenging non-SCA costume that I've done to date since it will include making armor (breastplate, helm, bracers, scalemail, etc.), a stuffed lion for my shoulders, and a large prop weapon.    I will be using the lightweight materials to make 'fake' armor and weapons that are often used by other cosplay designers.   I've used Wonderflex in the past and am planning on making my breastplate and helm out of this material.   I'll have to cover it then with an epoxy resin and paint it so that then has the correct 'look' once done.    Thank you Hancock Fabrics, JoAnn Fabrics, and Michaels for your 40-50% coupons.   I've been using them for this   :)   Now if only Home Depot had the items I needed on sale.

Other than the projects mentioned above, we really need to re-stain our deck this year.   I'm assuming that will be about a one weekend project.     Also throughout the summer, I want to start to go room by room and get rid of the 'junk' that we no longer need.     We still have boxes out in the garage from when we moved ~ 4 years ago that need to get looked through too.   I have a feeling that a lot of it can be donated, thrown away, or sold off at this point.  

I've already gone through our master bedroom closet and found a bunch of clothes that we no longer wear that should be sent off to Goodwill or another organization.     I'll be taking on the master bathroom next.     Over all, I just want to get the house a bit more organized.  :)

Saw the movie, UP tonight. It actually was very good. I was not expecting much from what I had seen of the preview.

Well is is that time of the year for me to start the sprinkler system back up.  It was not been very cooportive though.   First I had to remember how to open the values correctly again.  Then some of the heads were not coming up right or pointed in the right directions.  Also for some reason one of the zones has less water pressure then the others. 

Anyway, I ended up with wet jeans from my knees downward after I decided I was done dealing with it.   Joy.

Wow, it has been a busy weekend.  The time went by way too fast and I definately didn't get done as much as I wanted to.

My parents are visiting this week so Jer and I picked them up in Hinckley yesterday.   They will staying at our place until Saturday. 

I asked them to bring down their PC though so that I could upgrade it with some of the spare parts that I have laying around here.   Doing this has always been an interesting challenge though. 

Using spare parts though has both pros and cons.  Pros = the upgrade costs a lot less for an upgrade from what they have (1.1ghz to about 1.8 ghz).   Cons = The system does not want to work now after I put in the 'new' parts.  

We're now in debug mode to find out what parts are not working correctly.  First, we found out that the power switch on their old case is now shot (more than it was).  Basically once we put in the new parts, the PC would not turn on.   We put in the old motherboard just to see if it was an issue with the new motherboard, and the old motherboard would not turn on either.   I decided to pick up a new $20 PC case to eliminate that issue.    Now that we have the new case, it seems like the motherboard that I'm attempting to use is not working correctly either.  The system will still not power up even though the motherboard light is on.   Our next step will be to put in the old motherboard again, and get the system to power up with that.   I can then put in the better CPU in the old motherboard since the CPU is luckly compatible for that board too. 

I also picked up a new AGP video card since the one they had was very old.  Since my mom would also like to play a few PC games she has, a new video card was definately needed so that some of the games they have will work.

Other then struggling with the PC, today (Sunday) my Mom and I spent the majority of the day running errands.   We went to Target, Micro Center (for the new PC parts), JoAnn Fabrics, and eventually made it to Cub (about 6 hours later).   My feet hurt!  :)

Yesterday, we also worked a bit on my new garb.  To help with my progress, I asked my Mom to help with some of the embelishment work on my hat, necklace and belt (since she will have some free time this week).   I definately am not where I would like to be with my progress though.  Unfortunately, last week I was not able to get in as many hours as I wanted to on the project due to other priorities that came up.

Right now it is questionable if I'll have it done for Crown, but I'm going to keep plugging away on it over the next two weeks to see how far I get.   If it is not done for Crown though, I'll have it done when I go to Fargo in June for the Silks, Needles & More event.   I'll be teaching an Introduction to Bobbin Lace class at the event and once my dress is done, my next project will be to put together the class kits that will be used in the class.

(re-post from my blog)

My doublet top and skirt for my Spanish gown are almost done, but I'll post more information about them later on.

Of late, I've been working on the sleeves for my Spanish gown though.   For the undersleeves, I'm using a pattern that I've used before with success.

Similar to the undersleeves in the below portrait, I decided to use a gold cording to decorate the sleeve.  I'm using gold thread with a couching stitch to stitch the cording in place.

For the oversleeves, I decided to draft a sleeve similar to the one in this portrait:

After a lot of investigation, I was not able to find an existing example of a period or modern pattern for this style of sleeve.   I noticed though that this Spanish sleeve also had another varient that I found in several portraits found here: http://sayaespanola.glittersweet.com/anadeaustria.htm Unfortunately you can only view the thumbnails for most images, but if you look closely you'll notice that the bottom of the sleeve is not tucked into itself like the variation I'm working on is.

Since I didn't have a pattern to start with, I decided to start from scratch.    I used the basic sleeve shape of a Spanish Round sleeve, but instead of the opening being in the front, my desired variation has the opening in the back closed using ties/points.

The sleeve cap for this pattern also took a bit of time to play with since I couldn't use a standard bell shape sleeve head.   Ultimately, below is what I came up for with the shape needed.   There is a slash in the middle of the sleeve to allow for the arm opening.

A decorated band will be added at wrist level to which tabs will also be attached.

If you've visited my blog in the past, you will have noticed that I'm current costuming project is to recreate a 1570's + Spanish gown.   The gown will be of black velveteen with gold trim accents.

My goal is to finish the gown for the Northshield Crown tourney on May 9th.   My time is running short though so If I'm not happy with my status I'll just continue to work on it over the next months to wear at the next indoor event.

Below are a few of the portraits that I'm using for inspiration:

Gown:

 

Undersleeves:

As you can see, I have many of the pieces in progress right now.   I estimated that it will take about 40 hours of work to finish all of the above.   I just need enough time to finish it all!

Just a test entry.  :)   More to come, but for now you can check out my blog at:

http://gweniver.wordpress.com