Tag: Calontir Clothing Challenge

Words and phrases turn / through my head, a tumult of / metaphor and analogy. / Counted out in syllables, / ordered chaos on the page.

My poems usually feel like that, plucked from the ether, phrases turned over and around, substitutions and elongations…

The plan is to eventually be able to compose a poem in less than 5 minutes on any topic I’m given. To test me my partner supplied a very random word. I took a few minutes and came up with this:

Venomous mammal / From an egg your beginning  / And water your life / swimmer of the Southern Isle / Nature’s glowing chimera.

It’s not bad for what it is. I would have much rather preferred a color or object or emotion…but when life gives you a platypus…

I am considering adding my poems to the blog in a different format. I’ve never really liked the slashes for syllable delineation. In period they would just be written in two lines, the first three and then the couplet. My problem lies more in the limitations of my interface with the blog and how little I know about manipulating it. Eventually I’ll find something I like more. Until I take the time to play with format, it will stay as is.

And now, the project progress update:

This little rolled hem is taking a good long while. I can say that I’m more than halfway done with it. It’s actually taking so long to do that I’m seriously considering lengthening the sleeves by adding that strip of fabric just to make them go faster. Because it would be faster (so much faster) to add a half panel width to each sleeve giving me selvage edges than it would to hem them both. I’ll still have to hem the collar either way.

Well, I have the rest of this hem and then the collar during which to consider my dilemma.

The other dye showed up this morning. Currently the fabric is in a wash cycle having already had it’s blue-green bath. It looks kind of bright, but I won’t know until it’s dry in another hour or so.

A cold autumn rain / tapping on the window sill / keeping me from sleep / the sky weeps for fallen leaves, / unabashed melancholy

The rain this morning around three launched me out of bed until I wrote that poem. The rain has since given way to snow and wind. And I finally made it Facebook Official, so I’ll say the same here, I intend to keep up daily tanka for at least a year. That also gives me something to share daily after I finish the travelling outfit and before I move on to the hitatare kamishimo (that’s a men’s ensemble).

The okumi overlap panels were finished last night, and today I’ve been working on a lovely rolled hem while attending a few classes at a virtual SCA event.

Moment of truth for the fabric…nope. It’s noticeably different. The first round of dye was done with old dye, and I suppose that is what caused such a difference. There was also about a yard and a half less in this batch. It is a pretty color. It’ll get used for something else.

I have enough scrap fabric to make one sleeve and can turn the piece that was to be the collar into the other sleeve. I’ll use one of the okumi off cuts for the collar. This is the only way to complete the garment. It means I have to hem the sleeves and collar instead of using the selvage edges. Boo. Unless I enlarge the sleeves…it was done. Eh. I think I’ll just keep the miscut sleeves in case I decide in the future to lengthen them. And by lengthen I mean the dimension moving from the shoulder to the wrist horizontally across the arm. Heian ladies were known to exaggerate their sleeves, to the point that some ladies had their sleeves on only one side cut extra large for hanging out of carriage windows. I believe Sei Shonagon of Pillow Book fame lists this as a distasteful thing.

The okumi or overlap panels for the hitoe or green garment are almost attached.

The rest of the dye I ordered should show up tomorrow. If I work really hard, I may have the okumi attached and hem done before it arrives. At the very least, I’ll have all that finished by the time the fabric is done being dyed. The one good thing about having to dye more fabric is the collar can now be recut so that it is also on a selvage edge.

I’m considering making a doll and using off-cuts to make her clothing. It would be a lovely way to display different outfits…great, now I want to research period dolls. I mean, I did before, but I have the urge to find out now, and there are other things to do… It figures that I’d get a little distracted by toys. Back to sewing!

As sunlight dances / dappled on the window pane / I let out a sigh. / Would that I could capture this / gold drenched beam for stormy days.

I had the silk laid out on the table, prepped to measure and cut a chunk off to dye it.

And I stopped.

Stuck. Frozen in fear / unable to move or think / in white hot terror. / Is it continued failure / or success that holds me fast?

I had a big fat doubt holding me back. What if my dye bath is off? I asked my parter if I should give it a go and try or order more dye and repeat my process as close to the same as possible. Yeah, I heard the right answer as it fell out of my mouth too.

I have ordered the dye I need. It will be here between Friday and Monday. This means sleeves for the hitoe are on hold for a few days. For now I need to cut the actual okumi overlap panels and start stitching those on.

Yes. Another one. Instead of cutting my okumi overlap panels down, I cut my sleeves which look the same as the overlap except they’re 10 inches shorter.

I’ve been in tears off and on since I realized what I had done.

The solution is not perfect. I went to the fabric store again. They had the fabric, but not enough to remake it in it’s entirety. I bought all they had left. The chain fabric store was out of dye. So I can’t just dye the whole lot of it. Tomorrow, because you had better believe I’m stopped for the day, I’ll edge a section of fabric and dye it according to the proportions I used in the sample dyeing phase. Fingers crossed it comes out close enough.

I’m seriously considering skipping A&S Champs for this year. We’ll see how well I recover from this latest set back. It’s really looking like I cant meet the deadline for the entire ensemble, and I still don’t really like the idea of entering just one piece.

Another mistake / precious time and resources / lost, squandered on carelessness / Another day spent scrambling / in attempts to salvage it.