Last week I made the carpet-supports for our broomsticks 7x7 cm instead of the 20x7 that we had in mind. I actually had to saw them because cutting was just too hard. Last Saturday I designed and made 12 fabric skins for those supports with small flaps on all four sides to sew them to the tent. And on Sunday I finished sewing them to our Sahara tent. Hard work. Oh, and on Saturday I also sewed 4x 10,75 meter for the hems of the tent wall.

Matthijs was away on Saturday to a workshop and bbq in Almere, where he also picked up a glass tabletop for free. It has lots of scratches on it, but it will do. On Sunday Matthijs was at home again to help with the tent; he cut strips of the tent fabric for the tunnels where the broomsticks will reside. He actually sewed 2 tunnels on to the wall and then we went outside to test it...

Well, of course a master plan will only be a master plan until you actually execute it. We had miscalculated somewhere so the wall was 20 cm too wide on one side of the entrance but only 3 cm on the other side. We had measured (we thought) for 25 cm allowance on both sides of the entrance. So we'll have to improvise there when we sew on the new door flaps.

Another set back was that the front pole that we had ordered was too short. We ordered it with allowance and then sawed off a piece of 16 cm and now we found out that it is 8 cm too short. So we have ordered a new center piece of the right length. Sigh, and it wasn't a cheap project to begin with.

Also, the back part of the wall between the two tunnels was too wide by 3 centimeters, we'll have to take it in giving us a center back seam. And even when the wall is standing straight and on tension, the flap that stands out from the tent does not cover the space between the 'old' tent wall and the new one, leaving ample space for rain to enter the tent. After we've tested again with the 'finished' wall we'll see if we'll need to add strings for actually connecting the centers between the broomsticks to the tent.

Today I varnished 15 wooden tent pegs, though we decided earlier that it would not be necessary. I also varnished the bottoms of the broomsticks again because yesterday I scraped off a bit of 1 cm high so they'll fit better in the wooden 'feet'. This evening Matthijs will sew on the last 4 tunnels on the wall. I hope there'll be enough light left to test again after that.

When the wall is ready the next step will be the doors. We still have to decide on how exactly we are going to connect them to the tent (probably loops and buttons; 'houtje-touwtje') and how the overlapping door flaps will close. The doors are the last step and we have only 2 evenings (after today) and 1 day (Sunday, if we skip Castlefest) left. The Wednesday before the Summoning we'd like to start packing things, but we might need it to finish this project.