Auris Lothol Historical costuming, Japanese Lolita fashion and Cosplay.

Hello lovelies,

after a year break, we went to the school of old handcraft congress again. The last one was in 2023, read the post about it here.

We were glad that the event took place in July as we were freezing cold in November 2023. But our joy didn't last long because when we saw the temperatures the week before, we couldn't believe our eyes. 5°C to 15°C plus rain? That's so cold for July, even for this region. But, we couldn't change it and therefore packed warm clothes, a coat, scarf and blanket. And boy oh boy, did we need them.

The weather was okay when we left Vienna and it started raining, or rather pouring.

It rained so hard when we arrived that we just sat in the car for 10minutes and hoped it would get better soon.

As for the location, it was a true downgrade from the amazing monastery but I later found out that the monastery as location cost 8000€. And for such a tiny event that was truly too much. Papstin, where the event was held, looked and felt like a big beer tent built right next to a wooden lodge. I was very happy that the classes were held in the wooden lodge because it was freezing cold in the tent. But all of the poor vendors had to stand in the cold for three days, I'm happy I declined the invitation to vend at the event because I would have gotten sick.

We stayed for the opening speech from the organizer and the mayor of the town. There were maybe 30 people in the room, not a great start to the event.

My partner and I booked classes to attend and while his straw hat class was cancelled, the reason for this will be mentioned later, mine took place as planned. Friday in the afternoon and Saturday in the morning I had medieval embroidery and Sunday in the morning I had fingerloop. Hias switched to Sashiko in the last moment and he really enjoyed it.

The medieval embroidery was purely done with silk thread. I came to really hate those slippery bastards. Silk is just a pain in the butt to work with wether it be fabric or thread. But at least my progress looked nice. And in typical medieval fashion, the pattern is just a weird guy with a djin- like body.

All stitches were made as a split stitch which was an interesting choice.

We first had to do the outlines and then fill in the motif. The embroidery of the late middle-ages was big on shading and in depth, which hasn't been in the earlier middle ages and surprisingly enough, wouldn't continue on to later centuries. My instructor thought that it might have been too expensive to have all embroidery this way. But who knows.

After the congress we drove to our hotel. We stayed at Hotel St. Lambrecht again and the owners recognized us again. We had this amazing view from our hotel room and I marvelled at the low hanging clouds.

I continued working on my medieval jin-man in the evening until the light vanished. Eva-Maria, my embroidery teacher, told us that the medieval guilds had very strict rules. Embroiderers were usually male and they were forbidden to embroider when the light is gone. Which means he could stop working in winter around 3-4pm (?) but had to work overtime in summer. Rules that I thought were pretty modern.

We rushed to the location of the congress again Saturday in the morning after breakfast as both of our classes commenced at 9am. Definitely not my time of the day. I wore my rabbit tooth dress as it was super comfy and a warm cardigan. :

And that is my whole progress in 7 hours and two days lol. But at least it looks like I'm halfway through? So maybe another 7-10 hours and then I'm done.

In the afternoon Hias and I sat at the lectures and it was icy. We both wore thick cloathing, and I also had a small blanket but it didn't really help.

Eva-Maria had a lecture about embroidery during the high and late medieval time.

Then Lydia talked about Reenactment and Living history, and the later on, she also held the stays lecture but only because the lecturer got sick.

I told her jokingly that I already made about 3 or 4 stays and they never turned out good. One was too big, the other too long and the others too tiny. The lacing gap was just too much. Oh well, at least I only hand-sewed two of them.

I was famished and Hias promised to drive me to mcdonalds afterwards. Look at those amazing low hanging clouds again!

The flowers in the hotel were also super pretty, I just had to take pictures.

Once again we drove to the congress hall at 9am because my fingerloop class was this early. And once again Eva-Maria way my instructor. This time I wore a newer dress I got this year secondhand.

The technique of fingerloop reminded me a bit of lace making. My brain had to get used to the loops going from one hand to another and then from finger to finger and sometimes I just stood there for a split second and tried to find out where this loop was supposed to go again. Haha. Fun times.

But in the end I managed to make three different designs and I was really proud of myself. Nevertheless, it's not really my technique and I think Hias would have thrived much better in the class than I did. At least it was an amazing work out as we had to stand and us our arms to tighten it.

Hias was done with his classes on Satuday and he finished his Sashiko piece: look at his amazing work!

We went around the shops after my class and I bought a cute ring, ordered a new ring from lydia and got a new headband from the Klosterarbeiten shop.

The ring is from Wizart and is an amethyst in a copper socket.

So, and now to the hardest part of the story. What happened that made us weary to go and even think about cancelling the event entirely?

Nazis, because Austria is Nazi ground zero. Or at least, a publishing company that is on the far right of the spectrum. They were announced to have a booth there but, at least, not to sell their Nazi trash, only old handcraft books. You see, they are one of the only small publishing companies willing to produce a small number of books in the niche of old handcrafts. One artist found out and decided to cancel her class and boycott the event. But before she could send out word explaining why and her side of the story, the organizer sent an email saying it wasn’t as bad because the publishing company wouldn’t actually have a booth there and wouldn’t sell their books. But the can of worms was already open, and in our eyes, she didn’t think it was such a big deal. In my eyes, it was. I do not want to attend an event where Nazi books or books from a far-right publishing company are sold. We later found out they had to sell the books at the event because of a contract with one of the vendors who was there. The contract stated that if they were at the event, they also had to sell the books (if I remember correctly). But that was not the information given to us. So it was a huge mess, but we did learn from it. Now we know the name of the publishing company, and if they have a booth again in 2027, we will not attend.

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All the best,

Auris Lothol

Hello lovelies,

it's been a while since I posted my brooch creations and it is definitely time for an update.

In just one month I created so many brooches that I could also start with version two of some of them. Version two is the same design but with a better, at least that's what I hope, bead design and usage of rhinestones and pearls.

Sailor Moon Brooches

This is version two of the sailor moon brooch and it is so much better than my first try. (see my blog post about it here).

For this brooch I used small sequins for the wings and a swarovski stone as the heart of the moon. Top and bottom part are smaller and less clunky. It is still not the version I want to go with and I need to make a version three but all in time. It takes me ages to do this brooch and I really want to do other ones too.

Another brooch and another version two. This one already looks so much better than version one.

Version one and two (left and right). Left still looks clunky. Instead of pearls I used rhinestones and the rhinestone chain was cut to build crisp edges on the star. I don't like how it blends into the pink and I want a bigger gold chain so the star is more visible. Version three will come soon.

And this is already version three! It's much better than the other versions, again see below.

Left is the first version and right is the new version. The newer version only looks a bit wobbly because it has a pink on the back and the others don't. It's also fatter but smaller, I need to change that and I guess there will be a version four...

Sailor Moon would be nothing without Luna and this is her own brooch. It took me ages to find a bead that is moon shaped and when it arrived I realized that it just has one hole and is very unstable. I glued and sewed it onto the pearls beneath but I hate using glue for projects like this. And now I have to order new moon beads again from aliexpress. That is annoying.

Pokemon brooches

Yes, you read correctly! I also made Pokemon brooches, or at least pokeball brooches. I also have pikachu on my list but did not yet have the time to figure him out.

Thhe first pokeball is more 3D, it looks really amazing far away but a bit wobbly up front. I need to change the gray area, it's too dark but the rest is fine.

This Pokeball is made with big pearls and just looks like an old 2D picture of a pokeball. But I like dthe project because it didn't take ages, compared to the other one.

Happy Pride

This special collection is my tribute to pride. The first brooch is a rainbow with silver lining in white clouds. It's my SO's favourite and he likes to borrow it when we go to events.

The next one is my favourite as it has the pride colours and is heart shaped. I also made a trans-pride heart a few months ago, see here.

The rest

Not to be mean to my other brooches but they don't really fall in a special category. They are forms which I thought were cute or would work with that style of bead and pearl embroidery.

This is the only brooch I do not have anymore because I gave it to a friend. It's a sakura blossom and I tried to blend the colours into each other.

These are the sweet as candy collection. I absolutely love this technique of not being in a straight line and just sew anything I want onto the brooches. It's a bit chaotic but very fun. Usually I start with going from the largest beads to the smallest and fill in the gaps left with tiny beads.

No collection of mine would be done without a fleur de lis. I challenged myself to a colourway which was not previously done and that was the wonderful result.

This is is actually a shell but looks more like a fan. I did not blend in the pearls and it looks very weird. Not my best work but that is how I realized that I can also blend them and I guess it helped me with the sakura blossom which came afterwards.

And that is what I did the last month or couple of months.

I hope you enjoyed my small tour of the brooches I made and let me tell you, I am not done and still have so many ideas.

I am planning on selling the brooches and other things I made on the next animarket on the 26th of October. So if you are in Vienna and want one, be sure to check out my booth at the market.

If you like what you saw and want to tip me, go over to my ko-fi or support me on patreon from just one euro a month.

All the best,

Auris

Hello lovelies,

I recently spent my time making brooches from small rocailles and miyuki pearls. I love how delicate they look and while I am not very good and still learning so much while going along, I really enjoy doing them.

Last week I finished a sailor moon brooch, a teacup (no pictures will be shown because it turned out really ugly) and a shell, although it looks more like a fan than a shell. Another post on this will follow. Or not, I haven't decided yet.

I am so happy that the sailor moon brooches turned out so nice, it is way from perfect but looks great with my minimum experience in beading.

This is the brooch I am talking about, it looks magical with it's wings and the cute heart and moon.

The first thing I did was doing the outline with bouillon wire. I traced the outlines with a gold gel pen and it did not work out at all, it was all wobbly and not visible at all. But I kind of managed to stitch the heart symmetrical, but not the wings; left is higher up than left. The outlines of the heart was then again traced with a rhinestone chain. The moon was created with bouillon wire too and then filled with gold rhinestones. I was thinking about using a rhinestone in the middle but I did not have one this size, I then resorted to make sew the rhinestones over a small round pad.

Then filled in the heart with pink silver lined rocailles.

The wings was filled in too with gold rocailles and I made a padding again for the top and bottom. Seeing it now, I should have used pearls instead of the pad because I feel it made it a bit clumsy and rough. But I want to do a new and better version with all the things I learned..

After I finished the embroidery, I cut it and then burned the edges off with a candle. It always reminds me of a small ritual were I offer the brooches to the gods and hope they approve.

The last thing I did was mount the brooch onto a gold leather and sew it on with these gold rocailles pearls all along the sides. And the brooch was done.