Things that have kept me busy the last few weeks; preparing for the day of amateur arts (dag van de amateurkunst) with Amersical. That was a great way to start the season again. This year we'll be playing The Mama Mia Musical; an edited version of the official musical (everything in Dutch). We'll hear who gets to play which part this week. I applied for Tanja or Rosa, Donna's friends.

Then there was the wig and headdress course I've been taking at Faces in Gorinchem. Three Mondays with the last day this past Monday. We had to make a wig out of wool (sewn to a wig cap liner strand by strand (or in bunches)), one out of hemp (Rococo style) and a headdress from somewhere between 1200 and 1450. The hemp wig was mainly made on the second day of the course and finished at home, the other two projects were homework. And my goodness what a lot of work! But the results were so worth it. I'm still waiting for the official pictures, but I took some of my hemp wig and made it a project at Cut Out and Keep. We had a photo shoot with an amateur photographer last Monday with matching costumes to the wigs/headdress. The Rococo costume was entirely improvised from newspapers (for the bustles and a frame to work on) and fabric. So no sewing at all, just tacking and pinning. Oh, and make-up of course. When I finally get the photos (somewhere in November) I'll post some here.

I also reinstalled windows 7 on my computer. Took me more than a day to get everything up and running again. We improved the walls of our Sahara tent by adding mud flaps to keep out the rain (which bothered us a lot last Summoning) and we added a bit of fabric to our tarp so that it now matches our small green tent better without leaving a gap for the rain to pour through. This will all be tested next week. This weekend we have Charm for which we will lend out our tent and the week after that we'll be sleeping in it at the Moots.

I've also entered a contest at Urban Threads with a vest with 3 embroidered designs on it. Took me 1,5 day to get it finished. I was really nervous about embroidering the designs on fleece because these designs are really densely stitched and fleece is stretchy. But as long as you don't embroider on pieces that need to stretch (like the body) it will work out. The embroidery is a bit stiff which is especially notable at the right sleeve (where the mermaid lives) but it is not uncomfortable to wear. I love my machine!! Next challenge: try to make lace. Oh, and finish the 'portfolio' with thread listings and embroidery time for each design I already bought so it is easier to plan a design on a piece of work.

Another thing that happened, though it didn't take up much time, was that I found a new job. My first work day is tomorrow (aaahh.. nerves!). I put a semi-desperate add on Marktplaats asking if someone could give me a chance without any prior experience in their field of work. This was on a Sunday. The Tuesday after that I had an e-mail and on Wednesday I was in Utrecht for a job interview at Covers Housing. A week later we had signed the contract. It's a 24 hours a week job and for a while I'll be combining it with my mail-girl work for Sandd. Until I can decide if this new job suits me well enough to keep at it. (Hey, it's a first for me.. working in administration) Then I'll end my job at Sandd (a month notice time...) and hopefully after that I can get my own business up and running. Which has been stagnating a bit because of above reasons (yes, yes, priorities..).

Today I plan to do some shopping for some more decent clothes to wear to work. My new shoes have already come in, now I need some longsleeves or blouses to combine with other stuff. I don't much like shopping for clothes, but it is sunny and cheery outside so I'll live. So, here we go!

For the Dutch readers: 'kat in de zak', and for those who are interested the origin of the English phrase.

I bought thread on Marktplaats, said to be usable for embroidery machines. Well, it ain't. The threads break every so many stitches and I tried it on lower speed and with lower thread tension, to no avail. That's 43 euros down the drain for 50 spools of thread that might not work in a normal sewing machine either (have not tried that yet).

The seller did not mention brand and could not look it up for me because he didn't have the goods; his 'supplier' would send it (took 5-12 days too!). I have enlightened him about the brand and the sorry state of the thread. There's even one spool with a visible knot in the thread and in some places you can see that is has not twined correctly! Cheap ass third world stuff. Grmbl. After I Googled the brand I found a lot of disappointed buyers, but then it was already too late for me. The label on the spools state that it is high quality silk for chikan machines. Well, it ain't no silk and those chikan (Indian embroidery style) machines must be a lot different from my embroidery machine to work with this thread without the stuff snapping.

I've found a few other sellers on Marktplaats, but now I ask brand and more detailed pictures before buying anything. The reason that I'm looking on Marktplaats is that the stuff is very expensive and there's quite a few people that give up the hobby/business and sell their leftovers. I already have an official Madeira set of colors, but 18 colors is a very limited set to choose from when embroidering great designs from Urban Threads.

Urban Threads has oodles of wonderful designs, yet it would be great if I could make my own of course. For now I'm trying a free piece of software called SophieSew. You have to redraw every line of the image you want to digitize (converting a design to an embroidery pattern that your machine kan 'read' is called digitizing) as an outline and add properties like stitch type, color, density etc. There are programs that let you import a picture and digitize it for you, but those are 200+ dollars. I might want to buy such a program at some point, but I think I'll find out how badly I need/want it before jumping in head first. Perhaps I can Google some more for cheap/free software.