So my mother had her living room redecorated not too long ago. It’s gorgeous, with beautiful chocolate browns, gold, tan, and dark red accents. I have a severe love for that sort of “rich” color scheme. I also found a great tutorial that seemed within my sewing skill level. But before I purchased fabric, I wanted to double check the colors a bit.

So I sent an email to my sister. Yes, my little wee baby sister? She has her own email now. This boggles me at times. In said email, I asked her to “Take some videos of the livingroom and throw pillows.”

She replies a bit oddly, saying she’ll have to wait until Sunday when Mom isn’t around so she doesn’t get in trouble. In trouble for taking video? Oookay. Then she continues and says, “So… you just want video of me throwing pillows?”

I laughed. For about 5 minutes straight. This is one I’ll be reminding her of until she’s 90. Sorry, kid. I know it’s probably not recommended to mock children, something about self esteem or whatnot, but HOLY CRAP THAT WAS FUNNY.

Anyway, once I had cleared up the misunderstanding, and she sent me my source photos, I bought some lovely shiny home decor fabric and some chocolate brown felt, and followed this tutorial.

The end result was this:

I’m pretty pleased with myself. The stripes lined up and everything! I even serged the edges, because holy crap does home decor fabric fray like a mofo.

Of course, I was immediately shown up by my mothers wonderful (and much better seamstress than I) cousin, Linda, who made my mother two absolutely stunning aprons, one of which I would totally wear in dress format and would make me feel like a frigging princess. Oh well. Even if my craft projects occasionally make me feel like a six year old looking for a gold star, I was proud of it…

I also made another thing recently: I signed up at Spool of Thread for their Schoolhouse Tunic class, and it was completed on Monday night. Ignoring the dumbass look on my face, I am SO proud of myself. It’s pretty much perfect, and it looks adorable.

Holy crap: I made something that is not only well done, but looks good? I WANT TO MAKE A HUNDRED OF THEM.

Gotta say, if you’re looking for a local sewing class to take, I can’t speak highly enough of Spool of Thread. They’re amazing, their instructors know their stuff, and everything I’ve made there has turned out fantastic. The ridiculously awesome selection of gorgeous fabric doesn’t hurt either.

I also recently picked up about 70 meters(!!) of fabric from Our Social Fabric so now I have huge inspiration to get better at this. I’ve been using Pinterest as a place to collect inspiration and tutorials I want to try. I am totally excited to sew more.

And on the knitwear side of things, I’ve been going to a knit night every Thursday with the awesome Shoshona of Wool is Not Enough. It’s a mere 4 blocks from my home, but totally worth traveling further for the excellent conversation and simply gorgeous shop and excellent yarn.

Speaking of which, I’m late for knit night. So long!

So tonight, the marmot came over for some claying and we sat around, drank a couple of gin & tonics, ate some tasty, tasty yam fries, and clayed it up. Jenn, who is infinitely more creative than I am, went freehand and made this absolutely awesome turtle with frog passenger and snake seatbelt. So much love, check out those awesome tongues!

Me, I mostly followed one of the tutorials in my new book, and came up with this:

He is a steampunk chameleon. I name him Jebediah, but you can call him Jed. He is made from polymer clay, old clock parts, a bit of jewelry hardware, a tiger eye bead for an eye, and some mica for extra shimmer.

I am so pleased with myself. Lizard!

It feels SO GOOD to be making things again.

Oops. I wrote this … two weeks ago, and forgot to post it. So, imagine you’re reading this somewhere around the 27th.

Another weekend completed, and that brings the end of the main SCA season for us. (There are a couple of events in November, but the “Every Weekend Is Another Tournament” season is over at least. You think I’m kidding — from about May to September, almost every weekend is filled with fighting.)

I’ve come to realize that this is our sport. Well, mostly Nick’s sport — you won’t see me armoring up and heading out to the field anytime soon (although I did learn to throw a wrap today!) — but it’s mine too. I just play from the sidelines. It’s a lot more involved for me than sitting in the bleachers watching people play hockey would be. Good, I never was much for hockey.

Anyway. This was a pretty good weekend. Saturday was the Coronet tournament, to pick the next prince & princess (congratulations to Kheron & Ksenia!) Nick made it to the fourth round before being taken out by one of the fighters who made it to the semi finals. I was quite pleased (and a little touched) when Viscount Ieuan asked Nick & I to process in with him during both the Processional (where each fighter & inspiration asks the current prince & princess for permission to fight in their tournament) and the finals (Ieuan came in second in the tournament, so just before the finals both fighters gather their SCA families, vassals, etc and process in.) SCA’s a lot about pomp, and I’m starting to like it. Even if it meant being at the front of the line. Nick got his Award of Arms in August, so … we’re usually pretty far back in line. You know, where nobody is watching us. Where it’s safe!

Anyway, we left just after court (where a good friend received her AoA — congrats, Lady Johanna!) and returned Sunday morning for the Squires tournament. The format of the Squires tournament is like this: Any squire (or a fighter who can get a knight to sponsor them for the day — Nick is not a squire, but for the last few squires tournaments, Ieuan has been his “knight for the day/weekend/whatever”) can sign up. When the tournament starts, they gather in a circle, announce who they are, who their knight is (if it’s a for the day, you would say something like “Squired this day to Viscount Ieuan Gower”, for example), and who they fight for (that’s me!). They’d gotten 3/4 of the way through and it was Magnus’s (Richard, for those of you playing at home) turn. He starts off with, “Squired this day by…” and is interrupted as Viscount Ulfgar walks into the circle, followed by his three squires… and makes Magnus his fourth. Hooray! Congratulations, Magnus Ulfgarsson.

Anyway, the tournament then commences into a grand melee, where all the fighters just kind of pick a partner and smash each other with sticks. Reporting to the lists is optional (but recommended, as it helps the knights figure out who they want to pick for the the Knights Invitational.) Aaand that brings us to part two of a Squires Tournament, the Knights Invitational. The squires pick one of their own to elevate to the invitational (Magnus was chosen) and then the Knights pick the rest, based on who they’d like to see fight. Nick has been picked for the last few Squires tournies he’s been in, and I was happy to find that this trend continued on, and Nick was one of those picked. As was Dan, a brand new heavy fighter (with a rapier & MMA background, so this should be right up his alley) wearing Nick’s loaner armor. (Good job, Dan!)

Nick came in third in the Knights invitational, which was good — it was a tough field with some damn good squires who I’m sure will be knighted soon.

After the invitational was a short court, and during court (but off in our own tent) I got my first birthday celebration: cupcakes! Hooray! At Crown in early September, I realized that Coronet was going to be just before my birthday, so I demanded Birthday Cake at Coronet. Nick MAY have completely forgotten about his promise to comply with my Cake demands until Saturday, but after my reminder we headed out to Safeway on Saturday night and got me my cake (a cupcake cake. While I tend to agree with Cake Wrecks on cupcake cakes, it WAS easier to share & eat at a camping-style event.)

Hooray for cake! I made myself quite popular with my leftover cupcakes by wandering around offering them up to people. “Who’s birthday is it?” “Mine!”

I was also quite pleased that my post on our banner was found by a local scribe who needed to make a viking flag for her husbands first Coronet tournament, and it helped them come up with a design for their banner as well. (And it looks great! I really like the half-circle style they used.) Excellent! I rarely expect actual SCA people to read this stuff (hence why I include explanations for every little thing) so when they do, and when it’s actually useful… score!

Other things of note: I finished my jorvik hood, even though I put it together wrong (brain fart — I’ve made them correctly before, but for some reason I decided this would be a good time to be a dumb). Whatever, it still looks fine, it’s just sewn wrong. More importantly, it has a lovely little lizard embroidered on one side. Nick & I have a Lizard/Rock thing going on. So I’ve chosen a lizard as my personal “theme”.

How it started: I am cold. I am ALWAYS cold. I am perpetually, constantly, epically freezing cold. I have often commented on the fact that I am obviously cold blooded, because without a great deal of external heat, I will shrivel up into a cold ball of ice. I keep a hoodie and a blanket at my desk at work, because the office is airconditioned and it’s not exactly fair to ask the rest of the office to sweat just so that I can be comfortable. It’s true: I’m a lizard.

Nick, on the other hand, is not cold. Ever. He is, to put it mildly, a fairly sweaty guy. When he takes off his t-shirt after fighting, it usually has a cup or so of sweat that you can squeeze out of it. Yes, it’s really quite gross. One of the mainstays of my SCA basket is a towel to sop up some of the sweat invariably beading up on his shiny head.

Being that he is such a wonderful source of heat, I treat him like a lizard treats a hot rock. I curl up on him and bask in the glorious radiating heat that his body produces without trying. It is divine.

We’ve had this Lizard/Rock thing going on for pretty much the length of our relationship. So when this comic came out, I was tickled pink. He DOES make me lizard happy.

And coincidentally, the “Stein” in Steinarr means “Stone”.

Anyway, so it adds to the theme, and has cemented it: I’m a lizard, he’s my rock, and now I have to learn to embroider and paint more lizards. And maybe a rock or two.

One of the things we needed was some form of heraldry. A couple of tournaments have required it recently, and the Crown Tournament (aka, the tournament to choose the next king & queen) this weekend has asked for it as well. Last time, we borrowed from a friend… and while it looked lovely, it’s not really OUR heraldry.

So Nick & I spent three evenings working on our new banner. He designed, I added input, we both cut, pieced things together, and I sewed. And sewed. And made my poor sewing machine cry a little. And sewed more. In the middle of it, I also made a new jorvik hood, which I realized later that I made differently from my last one… oh well. It’ll do, I mostly just wear it if it rains anyway.

Anyway, so banners are a little odd for our personas, which is 9th-10th century norse/viking… since banners weren’t in popular use until 12th century or so. But, they are pretty, and a little heraldry never hurt anyone, and there is at least ONE known Viking banner, the Raven Banner. It has an odd shape, triangular (or a long, thin half circle) with little streamer things coming off the side. Okay then.

So here’s our version:

Eventually, we’ll have the “flagpole” be a spear, so it looks prettier than a plain dowel (and will have a nice sharp point so we can stick it in the ground.)

Anyway, the construction: It’s doublesided, and the symbol painted on the front will eventually be on the back as well, we just ran out of time and that sort of detailed painting on fabric is bloody annoying. The streamers are all little folded over sleeves, then sewn into the seam of the triangle. Each of the banner loops are also sewn into the seam, and you can see why my sewing machine was shrieking in pain by the time we were done — this is all medium-weight canvas, although thankfully not treated canvas. At a few points, I was sewing through 8-10 layers of canvas… very, very slowly. Ugh.

The design is a triskele, traced onto the fabric with carbon paper, then painted with fabric paint. I’m pretty happy with the result. We have a banner!

And so, tonight we’re off to Crown. What do you think, shall I be Queen?

These just got unmolded tonight. They’re my first round of breast cancer soaps! Colored with french pink clay and red morrocan clay, these soaps are great for your skin (excellent facial soaps for oily skin!) and smell delicious.

These are my breast cancer soaps. All proceeds from breast cancer soaps now and in the future (they’ll be the ones with the embossed ribbons) will be donated to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. They won’t be ready to go for a few more weeks, but they’ll be ready in time for the Blim Community Market at Car Free Day!

I’m very pleased with how they came out, and can’t wait to try them!

I will have space invader soaps. And brain soaps. And pirate soaps. And proper non-silly soaps, too! And if I manage to get a free hour between now and then, I might even have some beeswax candles!

A portion of my proceeds go directly to HugABull, who just brought in 23 neglected dogs into their program. These guys need vet care and that don’t come cheap, come out and help support the adorable little buggers!

I think they’re adorable. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I actually think they’re so ugly that they’ve transcended uggo and moved right back into “holy crap, you’re cute!” And really, no dog can smile half as well as a happy pittie.

It’s one of the few breeds I would never own. And this really depresses me, because they are SUCH sweethearts. But… I already have one aggressive dog with a bad reputation, the last thing I need is a dog with a bad reputation just from looking at him. I’m the asshole with the snarly dog, I don’t want to also be the asshole with the pit bull… because no matter how sweet a pittie you have, there’s a stigma.

And the stigma totally sucks. The pit bull myths that are still common today are outrageous. And don’t get me wrong — I respect what dogs were bred for, and pitties absolutely are bred for dog aggression, but they’re also bred for human non-aggression. And quite frankly, how a dog is raised, trained, and shown how to behave by his handlers is FAR more important to any dogs behaviour than his ancestors.

I used to walk dogs for the Burnaby SPCA, and of course many of the dogs that wind up in their care are pitties. And a sweeter bunch you’ve never seen. Untrained little whackadoos to a T, but with a little love and attention, these guys would make fantastic pets… if it wasn’t for all the pitbull hate.

I’m from Surrey, so … I get it. I really do understand the stigma, and it’s why I would never get one myself. Honestly, if I see someone walking a pitbull (ESPECIALLY an offleash one) while I’m out with Justice, I hightail it. Ok, to be honest, I do that with most dogs — avoidance is still our best management technique for her particular issues. But moreso with a pittie, because sadly most of the people who are likely to get a pitbull are absolutely the wrong person to be adopting one to begin with. I don’t blame the breed, I blame the jackasses who keep fucking them up.

So, I’ve got this new dog trainer, and she’s awesome, right? Justice & I are really enjoying the classes we’re taking, and she’s come so far just in a few months. Our rally classes are great practice, and I was very pleased that our reactive dog training classmate was a gorgeous pittie named Maya, because Justice can be sensitive to specific breeds, and having her less reactive toward pitbulls is a good thing. (On the flipside, please don’t bring any cranky rat terriers or min pins around. She’s not a fan. Aussies are in, though!)

How’s this related? New trainer is on the board of directors for HugABull, a local Pit Bull advocacy & rescue organization. I was so, so pleased when Shelagh told me about her reactive dog — a pit bull. And I thought I had bad stigma against my friendly looking reactive dog. Here’s someone who has to deal with not just reactivity, but the pit bull stigma to go along with it. She’s realistic, experienced, and damn good at coming up with solutions tailored to each individual dog. And the fact that she also works with rescues in her spare time, instead of “oh, well, all of my dogs are perfect…” well, it’s just easier to relate, you know? I mean, perfect dogs are great, and everyone should have one, but that’s not what I have. Raising a perfect dog from a perfect puppy is a laudable achievement, but one that is a lot easier than getting a dog with issues to learn how to manage them.

Anyway. So, breed discrimination: Bad. Shitty owners: Bad. Pitbull stigma: Bad. HugABull: Good!

And therefore, I get to my point: May 16th, HugABull will be holding a fundraiser at Dizine Canine Training Centre at 1730 Vernon St (under the 1st Ave overpass at Clark, accessible from the north side of 1st.) And I’ll be there with soaps and candles to sell, donating 15% of proceeds to HugABull. There will also be food and other goodies available, so come down and check it out!

And now that I do my own vending, and spend a lot more time at craft fairs, I hear people who not only say this, but say it loud enough for the vendor to hear. I’ve even heard it myself from another soapmaker about some of my own soaps. I hear this at SCA events, heck, I hear it in pretty much any gathering of people who like to make their own things. And this is what really gets me: It’s not non-crafters saying this. It’s the very people who are making, creating, crafting. Wow, that hurts. The people who should get it the most are most guilty of devaluing other crafters hard work.

I’m occasionally guilty of thinking this. And sometimes even more of a “wow, I really want to make that myself!” And gaining inspiration from someone elses work is fine, but don’t rip it off directly. Inspiration is a compliment. Imitation is theft.

You know, making soap? Not hard. Anyone can do it, really. Don’t want to play with lye? There are plenty of options around that as well. I have fun with it, but it’s not overly complicated. On the other hand, it is pretty time consuming. Given enough time & money, I’m sure you could duplicate everything I’ve ever made. I’m not ridiculously talented, I just like to play. But the next time you’re looking at something and thinking “I could do that!” ask yourself: Would you?

And don’t say it out loud. Crafters take pride in their work, even if our work isn’t super difficult.

Little known fact: I love buying handmade soap. This is slightly ridiculous, because not only CAN I make my own, but I do, gobs of it. I have enough soap to last through the apocalypse. I will be very clean when the zombies come. I also believe in supporting fellow soapmakers, because there’s nothing more depressing than someone rolling their eyes and dismissing your hard work with, “I can do that.”

Anyway, I mentioned this to a coworker who has known Nick for about 20 years.

“Nick is like a samurai!”
“How’s that?”
“Because he can do totally gay shit and nobody would ever question his masculinity for it.”

Precursor: These are not instructions. If you’ve never made cold process soap before, go read a proper “how to” guide, or get someone to teach you. This is written for people who already know how to make soap and don’t need every step laid out. There’s lye involved, don’t play with that without knowing what you’re doing. Also, never use a found recipe without running it through a lye calculator on your own first. (I made this one up for myself.)

First, here’s the recipe I used — it’s a little varied from my usual mix, because I wanted to use the last of my cocoa butter & shea butter, hence the odd numbers:

400g Coconut Oil
400g Palm Oil
200g Water
200g Coconut Milk
200g Olive Oil
172g Sodium Hydroxide
100g Grapeseed Oil
56g Cocoa Butter
22g Shea Butter
28ml Lemongrass Essential Oil

I did the usual measuring out of the lye & water. I can’t be sure, but I think the lower volume of water made it heat up more. At least, I can only assume that’s the reason that the glass jug I’ve been using for 8 months to hold my lye/water solution broke off cleanly at the bottom when I submerged it into the water bath. Crap. Well, at least it broke in the sink and not all over my counter. At worst, my sink will drain a little more clearly. Lye all over my kitchen is NOT something I want to think about.

So, I switched to a pyrex measuring cup instead. This worked fine. Phew. Left that sitting in the water bath while I went on to measure & mix the rest of my oils.

The shea butter & cocoa butter were already measured out, because I needed to see how much I had left so I could run that through my lye calculator first. I added the rest of my oils, and measured out the coconut milk and set it aside. Heated the oils, cooled the lye until everything was about 120F (Yes, I measure my oils in g, and my temperature in F — “120″ is a bit more exact than “50″ so being a degree or two off is less of a big deal.)

Got my stick blender out, and started stirring the lye solution into my oils. Blended in very short bursts — I’ve discovered before that a low-water soap can go from “untraced” to “seized in the pot” SUPER fast, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up with a solid lump again. Huge pain in the butt. When I guessed it was roughly halfway to tracing, I added in the room temperature coconut milk, stirred a bit more to get everything fully blended, added in my essential oil (lemongrass — yummy!) and grabbed my prepared mold.

It was starting to trace super fast at that point, so I started lumping it into the mold as fast as I could. I usually make round soaps, using a lined PVC pipe, so the more firmly traced it is, the harder it is to get it into the mold. By the time I was finished molding it up, it was roughly the consistency of playdoh, which is ridiculously hard to work with, especially with a narrow mold. Upon reflection, I probably should have grabbed one of my flat pan molds, but I really like my round soaps. Here’s hoping there aren’t any major air holes in there — I pushed at it a lot with my spatula to try to shove it down. Next time, I think I’ll add the essential oil at the same time as the milk so I can avoid extra stirring.

I had a bit more than fit into my single round mold, so I grabbed one of the washed, clean milk cartons I save for exactly this purpose. They’re neat, they make perfectly square soaps.

So, everything is in the molds, and I’m leaving them uninsulated because… well, it’s a milk soap, and I’m told those heat up a ton. They’re sitting out in my pantry right now, and I’m looking forward to unmolding them on Wednesday.

…stay tuned for how they turn out! I didn’t add any color because I wanted to see what the coconut milk did. My soaps tend to be a fairly standard light cream color when left uncolored, so we’ll see how they turn out with the milk.

Updated! Now, with pictures!

I unmolded my coconut milk soaps, and hooray, they seem to have turned out! Will wait a few weeks to really try them, but washing the residue off my hands sudded up quite nicely and left my hands nice and soft, so I think it’s going to be pretty good stuff.

As expected, there are a few "gaps" where there were air pockets. Next time, I have to work on getting it into the molds faster, it’s difficult to work with a long narrow mold when you’re at a super thick trace.

Color: Not much different from my normal soaps, maybe a tinge more yellow… although that’s probably from the lemongrass, which has some minor discoloring effects. Next batch I do (I still have another 200g of coconut milk) I will probably try to color a bit. We’ll see.

I scented these a lot stronger than I usually do, and my kitchen smells very strongly of lemongrass. I am totally okay with this, because lemongrass is awesome.