Meeting neighbors

We officially funded the loan on our house and the title got transferred last Wednesday. Granted, we've been living here since the 1st of the month, but it's really and truly ours. And we've already started to put our stamp on it.
The first couple of days we were here, I met our neighbor to the south, Jennifer, who is a widow and has lived in her house for a little over 20 years. She's in real estate I think. I have also seen some 20-somethings at her place recently. I think it might be her son home from college (I'm only assuming). Later in the first week, I met Jeanine who lives across the street. She's been in her house since it was built in the 1960s. About 2 weeks ago, I met Jeanine's husband (but his name is totally escaping me right now) when he came over to help Hubster and I with my mom's car.

Well, I just met our next door neighbor to the north. Sandy's been here since '66. "I've known all 4 owners of your house. It's a good house." And she brought us grapes from her own vines and apologized for potentially waking us up because she and her husband get up around 3am. So now I've met everyone except the guy who lives behind us (who I've heard is pretty nice too).

It's a nice sense of pride when we move into a neighborhood like this. When these people hear that our kids are going to the local school, that husband works there and I am teaching at the junior high up the street, you can see in their eyes and smiles that they know we're bringing goodness back into the neighborhood; not that it's bad, but that there has been a transition in the neighborhood in the last few years. All these people have had their kids grow up and move away. There are not a lot of children in the actual neighborhood around the elementary school here anymore. In fact, on our street, I think there is only our family and the single-mom with her kids about 3 houses up the street. Everyone else is grandparents. You can see it in their smiles though; they're happy to have us here.

Helping others make patterns

Several weeks ago, I was asked to help Safiya do a toile so that she can make a pattern for a kirtle and then a pattern for her Burgundian dress. Part of me was really wanting to help her because I love the idea of bringing people into wearing later period garb in the SCA. But a very large part of me was terrified at the idea because I feel like I'm not very good at patterning for myself and helping someone else is SCARY! So I was honestly looking for plenty of excuses to get out of it. I also was down at the weekly Crosston dance practice in San Jose and staying overnight at my laurel's. So honestly, because Safiya lives in Vacaville (on my way home), I should not have been trying to get out of it.

Ok, so I sucked it up and showed up at her house at the appointed time. I didn't have any of my sewing stuff with me (that was another one of my potential excuses) but she had more than enough of what she needed. I followed the steps for patterning that I learned at a recent class taught by Master Charles de Bourbon from up in An Tir. (clicky linky). I draped her toile, explained to her how this was going to be a copy of her body that we will make future patterns out of. We drafted a sleeve that didn't turn out too bad either. (sleeves are evil) Had to message for help from my laurel when I was drapping the armscye, but it came out great.It took about 5 hours but we were chatting and dealing with her kids and husband (oh poor guy came back from the dentist with a bad wisdom tooth and lots of pain meds - suck!). I felt pretty good with how it went. Honestly, I did almost all of the work (it's pretty darn hard, afterall, to dape yourself). But our other friend Edith will probably be wanting to drape a toile soon and that time I think I'll take the teaching to the next level, making Safiya do the work on Edith while I walk her through it.