Further adventures of the Duffle Coat - pattern problems

 It's been difficult to work on my Albion Coat when the weather has been so warm.  But the rains are trying to break through and it's now cool enough in the mornings to light the woodstove until the sun is high enough to heat the house.  

So I'm spending that half an hour of coolness between the time I light the fire and my coffee is finished brewing and ... what's a good way to say "getting drunk" without it sounding like my coffee is boozing it up at 6am?  Anyway, I'm spending that time working on my Duffle Coat.

The worst part so far was cutting up the paper for the PDF pattern.  There is so much wasted paper in this pattern (and yes, I checked the measurement to make sure it was printing the right size).   It's especially noticeable after working on that free PDF pattern for my cloak where I didn't have to cut up any pieces of paper.  Here, I'll show the difference.

The pattern on the left is from the cloak, the one on the right is from the Albion Duffle Coat.  Both are formatted to print on North American or Metric paper, and yet here we are.  So much wasted space on the right one.  I feel like they could have reduced the paper by almost a quarter by doing better with the margins.

Sewing a homegrown cloak - Mood winterberry cloak pattern

Wow, I may have just jumped the shark here, but I did it.  I made a cloak, entirely by hand, using traditional methods, from sheep to finished clothing!

For those of you new to the adventure, you can catch the full playlist here.

Basically, I gave in to peer pressure and put my life on hold to make this cloak.  It turned out amazing, but I still have a lot of work to do to finish it up.  Something to keep me busy this winter.

I want to talk about the pattern because the video was long and I edited that bit out.  Also I don't really feel qualified to assess a sewing pattern as a complete N00b!

Learning a new craft - and a teaser

 I get obsessed when learning a new craft.  I take great pleasure in learning everything and to find out what the limits of the craft are, what my limits doing that craft are, and what happens when I push past those limits.

Last month, I experimented with pushing past those limits - twice.

First, I finally took the dive into making a fully (ish) homegrown garment from sheep to wearable clothing.  To keep me focused, I gave myself a timeframe - one month - to get it done.  

I choose the wrong month because September is pretty much the busiest time on the farm and the only month of the year the weather is friendly, so I'm regretting this.

But the yarn community is lovely and supportive.  Sure there are opinions, but so long as we remember when someone says "the best way" or "the right way" what they really mean is "this worked well for me", it's much easier to deal with absolutes.

The second limit was to see if I could make videos about this adventure on a time budget.  (time budget?  deadline).  

I did better than I expected.  

And worse.

The thing I'm learning about making videos is that it is a craft - like knitting, spinning, weaving...

I talked about how the craft of weaving has its own personality (ISTP on the Myers-Briggs scale).  I suspect we could do that for any craft.  Video editing and youtube creation is no exception.  Actually, I think it might be entirely off the scale.  

But first, proof that I did finish the cloak in time - even if I'm still struggling to finish the video.