So much has happened since the last time I updated this. I finished at PwC at the end of February and temped for a couple of weeks in March. Then Genevieve and I spent a week with our good friends Stacy, Claire & James Mitchell and Alveen Thoresen at Stacy’s house in Normandy. It was very cold and actually snowed a couple of days but we chilled out in front of the fire and got a lot of reading done. We also saw the Bayeux Tapestry, which is incredibly well preserved for something made of fabric that’s 1000 years old! The colours were still vibrant and there was such a sense of movement and immediacy about it. Amazing!

I started temping at Reading Borough Council in the Child Protection department at the end of March and absolutely loved it. I really felt like I was making a difference, in my small way, which I’ve never had in any of my previous jobs. I was really sad to have to leave it last month. I’m now just temping till the end of November.

Genevieve finished her GCSEs in June and left straight away to spend the summer with my folks in California and she is now in her senior year at Rio Lindo Academy and has settled in well.

David and I have been spending the last few months getting things prepared for our move to the States – if we had known just how much work and hassle was going to be involved we might have thought twice about doing this, so it’s probably just as well we didn’t.

We had to have our dog, Willoughby, put to sleep last month which was very sad for us, but he was old, arthritic, blind, deaf and increasingly incontinent due to dog dementia and his quality of life was declining so we decided it was the for the best. We found him at the dog rescue four years ago and he has brightened our lives and we like to think we gave him a really good home in his declining years.

I may not have time to update this before we leave but I will try very hard to update regularly when we are in the States so you can see what we are getting up to there.

Major Update

OK - I join the long list of people who start a blog and never update. However, I have big news and thought this would be a good way to share it.

1) I've quit my job. Well, actually, they were making noises about cutting back in my department so I pre-empted them and said that if voluntary redundancy was on the cards I'd be interested. So, here I am two weeks later about to finish on a job I've been at for over seven years. Fortunately, the package was good enough I can pay off some debts and have enough left over as a buffer in case I have periods where there is no temp work and enough to cover December so I can go to California early.

2) Which leads me to major news item number two - we are moving to California for the year 2008. David has accepted a year-long research position at Pacific Union College. We will only be 2-2 1/2 hours from Mom & Dad and Lauren, Fin and the girls. I'm so excited I'm beside myself! Of course I already have a list as long as my arm of things we have to do before we go... David and I are getting UK citizenship so we don't have any problems when we want to come back (Genevieve of course is already a citizen by birth); David has to sort out work permits; we have to find tenants to rent the house while we are away; we have to do a major cull of junk and decide what goes, what stays and what will come with us; get quotes for shipping our stuff; I've got to get the house in a fit state to be rented out; we have to decide what to do with the pets - one frail, elderly dog, one middle aged cat and a budgie (parakeet). Arghhhh!

So, we will be looking forward to seeing all our friends on the other side of the pond and getting to know my nieces better.

I'll try and keep this updated with our progress as we get ready to go.

Links

I'm having a little trouble getting the links up to my favourite sites - bear with me and eventually I'll figure it out!

In the meantime I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. As soon as I get the (few) pictures I took downloaded I'll post them here.

Early garb attempts

This is my first attempt at a blog. It's really just to give the folks at home a chance to see what I'm up to.

These are pictures of some of my first attempts at garb for the SCA.





So far I've made four linen shifts, the green linen dress Gen is wearing, my purple linen dress, two wool dresses (one for each of us) and a couple of linen dresses for my friend Stacy (see above) and her daughter Claire.

Gen's is from a pattern she found (Simplicity if I remember rightly) - it's not entirely 12th century but she liked it and it works as a first attempt. It started out terracotta and cream (dyed from plain white linen) but she decided she'd rather have green so I used some dye remover on it and re-dyed it dark green and it has turned out really lovely. My purple dress is a basic T-tunic pattern and it looks a little bag-like because I didn't have a belt on. Stacy's is a t-tunic underneath and on top is a linen dress she already had which didn't quite fit so I took the sides out and put eyelets in so she could lace it up. We are both quite happy with the way it turned out.

I'll try and get a picture of up the wool dresses I made as well. I made them from plaid wool I found at our local "hole in the wall" fabric shop for 99p a metre! They are also basically modified T-tunics. When I made mine I was thinking I'd have a 13th century persona so I made it with Magyar sleeves but I've decided since to go for 1400 but it will be OK - I'm actually going to eventually try to have an outfit for every period because I can't decide which I like best!

I love the feeling of linen and wool, I love wearing it and I love working with it. Just gorgeous! I've just brought home a stack of fabric and things from my mom (more on that later) so I'm well stocked for the moment.