The Bertana-English Dictionary

Week has been long. But I've been doing good on keep on top of tasks (though I have towels to put away). I took Thursday night off from crafts but have been weaving and knitting this week. The Pride shawl is still going well. I've figured out how to fucking count using a ludicrous amount of stitch markers and keeping track by tens to make sure I'm spot on. And I have been for the last 3 rows and even caught my own error so that was good. Yes! I've weaving and I took the loom to knit night on Wednesday and managed to weave about a foot before I ran out of shuttle thread. NBD but I've woven 41" out of the 5ish yards that loom makes. So yay.

Monday I put away the clothes laundry hydra and cleaned up my side of the bedroom. Tuesday I folded towels/sheets and put the towels away. The bedding needs homes and I need time to pull the bind in the linen closet and do a kull so things will fit. But that will lead to the purge of the main bathroom (which is fine) to make room to have towels in there which I think is a fine plan. Might be this afternoons project. Dunno.

I have a retirement party tonight Reilly's to attend and then I and willa are hitting dinner and drinks at Cruda It will be nice to get out of the house. The boys will be packing for Champions in the Pines in Prescott and if Benton can get his ass up he will also be gone with his dad so I have the house to myself Saturday.

But work has changed our OT policy so now it doesn't count until we have 6 hours OT ready. I rarely work that much OT in a week, maybe 5 at the worst usually 3. So instead now I will be comp timing it until I have to take it which is like 3 weeks. So we've now told management to not expect any engineering on Friday afternoons and as the days get closer to the end of the year probably no support on Fridays either. We are burning folks out and things can wait to next week or we will count the time and then balance it. So eah. So today I'm done at noon.

My plan for the weekend is to convert the studio to sewing, make two wearing aprons (like the two I made in SD and left there, these are the other halves), cut out a caftan for Mel, and a least a new over dress for me for Crown.) That is my goals is cutting out. I don't not need things done, they just need to be cut out and ready for sewing. I think this is reasonable for the weekend. With the holiday on Friday I hope to start sewing then on the clothes. The aprons will get sewn since its like two seams and finding some trim for the belts. I will also be weaving and knitting on the pride shawl as well. So crafty weekend with ME TIME and no one to bother me? YES!

Though my need to put sheets away may mean I spend an hour or so cleaning out the cabinets in the bathroom and reorganizing there to fit the towels but still that is okay. Small steps.

I've also done really good at the gym this week and that makes me happy.

This whole dropping Benton off at 650am and having an off Friday means that after I got coffee Mel and pulled things out of trailers and packed into the minivan all before 8am. Then I sat on the couch and watched My Happy Marriage while knitting on the shawl which still is unfucked up. I finally am getting a feeling for how it is done and am past the green welt and onto the grey backgroup until the next welt.
Mel was in the shop cleaning things up but stuff was hot. I worked until noon and had planned to get my studio clean going but Benton texted me that he did not feel good and wanted to come home. I told him to go to the office and find out what the procedure is. I got a call from the nurse about 4 mins later. So I got into the car and headed up to pick him up and he was bad. He had a sore throat and a wet cough. (he had not felt good the night before so not surprised). I stopped and grabbed Eegees for him and Mel and a sandwich for him since he was in the office during his lunch. He ate part of it and when we got home he flopped on the floor and fell asleep. We had him take some meds, get up, change into comfy non-school clothes and he slept until 4pm.

I was hot when we got back but had a cool drink and then started on the studio. I was hot, it was hot in the studio and I dinked around a bit. My problem is I don't want to strip this room yet but I need to put things away. I cleaned up the "knitting" drawer and put more things in places but its hard since my brain is screaming that "FIX THIS ROOM IT HURTS MY BRAIN!!!" but the one thing I did find was I have way too many stitch markers and I'm not allowed to buy any more of them. I took pictures and its insane. I was also looking for the wooden cards I thought I had bought myself for weaving but all I found were some for Benton. But I was tired and the effort was half hearted in the heat. So I went to my massage at 5pm while mel was at the dojo. Benton was chilling in his room. Got home and had dinner of quesadilla and then mel and I had dueling warping of belts. He has to do one for a black belt for the dojo and I got going on the protege belt. I managed to get it warped with like 3 mistakes 2 of which i fixed while warping and the first turn of the cards but its all good. I was had setup to do a checkerboard of warp twining and left it at that.


Saturday we got up early cause Benton was screaming in pain. He had a sinus headache and got him ibuprofen and into a hot shower and that helped. I was having an issues finding clothes I wanted to wear. Finally got my 14th century shift and a short sleeve overdress and went with that. Benton stayed home and was drinking tea and ensconced on the couch when we left. We had him take some sudafed as well. Got to site at exactly 9am and court was still in setup stage. So we trolled in and then put the van next to our where the shade would be set up and got lots of help so we set up the day shade. We had brought the ryobi stuff and that made very very quick work to get it up. We then realized why that shade was in our personal trailer cause it needed repairs oops. But it was just the center grommet so NBD. Due to the wind we had another tear in a side grommet but I will set about fixing that coming up. But I spent most of the day, including during first court in our shade. I could hear court but there wasn't room in shade to watch court so I sat in ours and heard it all anyway. The tourneys happened and the baronial dragonwing was not set up near the eric so folks congregated in ours. NBD. HRM Sutton was telling tales of his first Pennsic. He had a run in with the Tuchuks that had him picking one of them up and throwing them off a bridge, where he then threw him self off the bridge. His comment before that was "dude, you don't want to keep doing that and being an ass, you are my warm up weight for bench" and yeah he totally chucked the dude off the bridge. And then a day later he was at a party and the Tuchucks were totally baller with him doing what he did. They were like "my dude why did you tussle with HRM...that man is huge!". I'm very glad my former Queen's champion, now Crown had such a good time at the war.

I did weave on the belt most of the main part of the day. After about 6 inches I hated the checks. So I just went with the same twining and had everything moving the same directions and then the variegated sections .

But it was hot and when we had a breeze it was okay. I did my best to keep drinking water but it was hot and dry and about the time afternoon court was to happen it was 97F mostly still and high humidity for our area. And the little breeze we had was from the back of court forward which didn't work. I sat through the 2 hours cause it was an investiture court and the new B&B haven't learned the gift basket lookies happen after court. Or Gift baskets happen after court not during hostage theartre. But there was a presentation of doggo clothes that the Graduates student made that were adorable and all the dogs even wore the hats. OMG. So cute but still while cute took time in the heat. I was getting a large headache and it was hot. Did I mention it was hot? We baked in the sun and no breeze. Ugh. We got done and I grabbed the van and we tore down pretty quickly. There was a party for the after investiture gearing up but i wanted home before it got any later. We got things loaded and I had been (somewhat) smart and had iced coffees in the cooler but half way driving to the highway I realized I'd just consumed a partial can of milk coffee. So Mel got more and he dug out another cold fizzy water for me. I was so done by the time we got home and unloaded the personal items and the ryobi stuff. Everything else will get put away tonight.

I moved to take a shower and my head was pounding even though I had pain killers on board and was peeing pretty clear. I got more water with electronlytes in tap cold my shower and then just collapsed in bed. i had intended to take a bit of a rest and woke up 2 hours later. I was tired and hydrated but was up for a dinner of tacquitos and some DF ben and jerry's. Benton was still kinda rough and was taking baths to help with the congestion but he was actually cracking some jokes. Needless to say we all went to bed early. I crashed by 10pm.

Sunday I was told to bed rot by Mel for a while. I had awoken at 6am cause body clock and bladder and then snuggled down for a bit but then just read on my phone for a while. Mel got up and then brought me coffee. so I had my cuppa and then made my mental plan for the day and stalled out...I could not movitvate past getting dressed. So i asked if anyone on the girls chat wanted to accompany me to Costco. Willa responded "give me 10 mins" and then I rushed about getting my sCA murse emptied into my purse and finding the correct keys cause the van keys were attached to the lanyard versus the car keys. I also got more water cause I felt hung over and I hadn't drank anything...thank you dairy. We had a really nice time. Other people were being asshats but having someone else with me was nice and less anxiety. I dropped her off with her 3 items and then it was home to unload and cool down. It was already hot and got to 107 here and was 101 or 102 when we got back at 1115am. So I got the groceries put away and then had some lunch to cool down. I then made a concerted effort on the studio since Willa reminded me my glass stuff can get moved to her place. So after waffling I started there. I cleared off the kiln and moved that. Cleared off the floor beside the worktable corner where the torch/gas stuff were stored. I got it all moved except the 100lb O2 cylinder. Remember that is 100lbs empty and it was full so probably 200 lbs? I needed Mel's help with that but I shimmied under the workbench and lifted by the bottom while Mel grabbed the top and slid it across where the kiln was since the tank was in the corner of the room. We got it and the rest of my glass stuff loaded into the truck and I got that over to Willas and unloaded. We have plans for after crown for me to come and play and relearn how to do something I used to be very good at. Then I had this open spot in my studio that I needed to rejigger things into. That was successful and while not perfect its usable for now and then I put more things away and put fabric away and pulled more out for making a new dress for crown and Mel a caftan. It was about 5pm when I finshed that and then I sat down watching a movie on my tv (I'd had stuff on it the whole time) and started in on a botanical lego set I had picked up recently. Got that to the half way point, realized I needed to vacuum. Found the vacuum overfull from our housekeeper and troubleshot why she hadn't emptied it. It was stuck. I got that fixed and then filled the canister with all of the pet hair I took out of my tiny studio. Willow was very happy the carpet was clean and lounged. Today there are 3 large clumps of fur. Sighs.

But its clean and tidy and I can actually cut fabric out soon etc? My filing cabinet still is a mess, I have a tote full of paperwork to go into it but that is a different weekend or evening problem not today.


We settled in with bean and ham soup for dinner. So good from scratch. Thank you honey. And then it was weaving while I finished watching My Happy Marriage which mel said was too telenovella and I'm like its not regency bullshit its victorian. He did not see the difference. He can be wrong. Its pretty and delightful and the magical machinations were interesting. So 8/10 I recommend and its an easy 2 seasons to watch.

Today in-between meetings has been laundry and sorting it to put away. I'm down to the hang dry stuff and then I will run a load of towels. I've then got to put everything away before scriptorium. This is doable and then I can work on cleaning up the bed room. Things got messy with everything but now that I have a deadline for clothing I need to plan out my weekends before Sept 19th. Mel is going to an event next weekend since he's King's Champion and I may spend the day cutting out fabric and getting the studio set for that. We only have a 3 day weekend for labor day followed by a 3 day work week and then another 3 day weekend so I think I will have time.

So yeah that was the weekend.