hounds

Last year, Julie and I had a fantastic time playing for a weekend with Her Majesty's Hounds at the Virginia Renaissance Faire.
This year, we auditioned for places on the cast (auditions! memorization! public singing! scary!). And as you might imagine, since I'm writing this, we got invited to join the cast for the 2007 season. Best of all, we get to be part of the Guild of St. Hubert, which is to say, the previously linked greyhound adoption group. We are, shall we say, excited. We're playing two of the royal houndmaster's sisters-in-law, actual historical characters.

The picture above is of my charge book, which is a little book of useful information each new member is compiling. I wanted to do a little bit of embroidery to dress it up a bit. It's nothing fancy, just cotton embroidery floss on pale green linen. The HMH is in chain stitch. The dog is filled with a sort of staggered split stitch. The border is a chain stitch that then has been threaded through with the green. The dog is definitely supposed to be a greyhound, but I'm thinking it ended up looking a bit like Lucy. Oops.

the dog is SO over hats

New hat. Better than the old hat. Lighter at any rate, since I used buckram and wire instead of plastic canvas. This is a pleated-crown hat covered in grey wool leftover from the ropa. The crown really is pleated, although it's tough to tell that since I went ahead and used black silk thread to cover the pleats with a decorative herringbone stitch. The twisty thing around the brim is black velvet with a contrasting chain stitch. I'm into these "new" stitches. It's lined with black linen. I followed the general method for construction from the Tudor Tailor, but made up my own shape since I wanted a curvy brim.

The dog is, however, not particularly impressed. He thinks it could have at least shaded his eyes a bit better for the nap.