 Hi, I'm Rebecca Olds of Times With Dressmaking. Welcome to my channel, especially welcome to anyone here who discovered my channel through Cocovid. It was such an amazing weekend, and we've met so many people. I'm really, really glad you're here. I actually only launched on YouTube at the beginning of June, and up to Cocovid, I had a couple of hundred subscribers who were mainly people who were familiar with my work, had been following me on Facebook and Instagram, and lots of interactions there, really enthusiastic about the various projects that I have done, and the projects I'm excited to be doing in the future. So, leading up to Cocovid, I had a small group of people who I knew were already familiar with my work, and then Cocovid just introduced all of us to so many new exciting channels to watch, and incredibly skilled people that we want to see what they're doing and follow along. And I seem to now have about a thousand more subscribers on this channel, and a lot of you, I know, aren't that familiar with my background and what I've been doing and what I want to be doing in the future. So, if you haven't already, I can have a quick look at the forget which corner I need to point to for this video that was by welcome to my channel, that was just a couple of months ago at the beginning of June, so that's pretty up to date, and I'll tell you a bit about me and my background and what I aim to do on this channel. I guess as you hear you must have seen something on Cocovid on my channel that you really liked, so that's really great to hear and to know that people enjoyed that, and there will be more of that kind of thing to come. If you're interested in particularly what my slant is, what my particular focus, what really fires me up. Another video about man show making, have a quick look at that, because that's the kind of thing going forward. You'll see a particular kind of focus and things kind of tied to those sorts of things going forward. Cocovid was my first experience with having guest speakers and co-presenters. I loved doing that, so there'll be more of that in the future. I definitely have some exciting people I'm hoping to have on the channel talk about their interests, so I'll definitely be doing more of that in the future. I love reading what you think, so your thoughts, your comments, your suggestions. I'd love to hear them in the comments. So what's ahead? If you've watched any of the videos that I posted before Cocovid, you might know that I'm in the middle now of making a pair of stays. I drafted the pattern, this book for me using the ARC method that's outlined in the book Patterns of Passion 5, and I tweaked that pattern to fit me a little better, and I'm now working on the final stays, building them up. Following on from that, I will be making pocket hoops also from Patterns of Passion 5, and those will then be the foundation for my big gown project. I'm going to be making a chintz long sack gown based on the one that's on display at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich. I've also got a lot of content planned that's taking a look at finished projects that haven't been posted on YouTube yet. People who followed me on Facebook and Instagram have seen some works in progress, and on Instagram usually finished projects, but they've not been on YouTube before. So for a lot of you who are new to my channel, you won't have seen some of these projects before, so I'm going to be kind of working through some of those and bringing them on to the channel. So in coming months, you'll see a wide variety of different projects that I have worked on in the past. This is a good time to be doing this, because as some of you know, I've been struggling with a wrist and hand problem that seems to be decorbing a type of tendonitis. I saw the physiotherapist this morning and she says I'm not resting enough, so I am downing tools on my stay-making for the moment for at least a couple of weeks. And actually it's really really good timing. The point that I've got to, I haven't got very far along, I'll just give you a quick look. I'm still sewing, stitching the boning channels. And while I love doing this, I actually find it quite peaceful and soothing to do. It's hard work on the hands and even just for short spells, it does make my wrists and thumbs hurt quite a lot. So it's a good time to take a rest. And as it happens, Luca Costuglioli of the School of Historical Dress, one of the co-authors of Patterns of Fashion 5, over on the Foundation's review of membership site, he's doing a series of workshops online about making these exact stays that I'm doing. So I've decided to stop a little bit on the stay-making and then sync my work on that with the content of the workshops he's teaching in the series. So right now I need to finish my boning channels and do a bit of prepping and a bit of work along the skirts, along the bottom, to get ready for binding. But then from that point onward, I'm waiting for his next workshop, so I'm going to sync up my work on the stays with the series that he's teaching, which lets me also build in a little bit of a break time for my breath. So that's a good thing. So I'm taking a break from the stay-making, hopefully just a short one. And then in the next month, I start my university course, the University of Oxford, studying local history and studying particularly how to find more period sources, original documentation, and how to write, how to collate and create databases and analyze your data, and to be able to turn it into good pieces of academic writing. I have a lot of writing skills from my legal background, but converting that to being able to write history effectively, really, really excited to have this opportunity to do that. And that's going to involve a lot of reading to start with. The first few months, I'm going to be up to my novels and books. Again, a good chance to just rest the hands. So in the next few weeks, the videos here on my channel are going to be quite a variety of topics. No one project, single project theme just now. I'll probably talk about book recommendations, some patterns that I've worked with, possibly do some short demonstrations, and I might even give you a little tour of my new workshop that I've been showing glimpses of the last few months. In any case, I aim to post a new video on this channel once a week, it's usually Thursdays, so I will be keeping to that schedule with a variety of topics. And also, very exciting and a little bit nervous, nerve wracking, I will be launching a Patreon on the 1st of September. So watch for news of that in the next few days. I will talk about that a bit more next Thursday in my video here, but also over on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, there will be bits more information about what I'm planning to offer for you and help build a community that is ongoing support for all of us with an interest in 18th century dressmaking. That's very exciting. It should be a lot of fun. We're going to have a lot of things like live casts and behind the scenes looks things and works in progress and research I'm doing and new skills I'm trying to master and learn, so you can come along on that journey with me too. Also on the Patreon, there will be some opportunities for one-to-one consulting, bit of mentoring, but one-to-one tailored content for you, certain tiers on the Patreon, so I think you'll be really excited about that, and I certainly am. So again, welcome. If you're new here, could you please pop your thoughts in the comments below to introduce yourself, saying hi, who you are, what your special interests are, what drew you to the 18th century historical dress or costuming world. I'd love to know what your background is and what you'd really like to see on this channel as we grow it together. Thank you so much and I'll see you next week.