I've noticed that I've kept most things pretty well locked down. The more I think of it, the better this idea sounds.

However, I do know that people sometimes stop by looking for period clothing stuff or more of my wonderful bon mots ::cough:: and they see no recent entries. I've run into this myself in other places, and feel the frustration.

So. Comment if you want to be added. Please introduce yourself or remind me where/when/how we ran into each other. I am terrible at remembering this stuff, and between LJ, SCA and real life, that's a minimum of three names. I'm pretty good about adding people. If you're already on my friends list, you do not need to comment, you're already in the club. Thanks, and welcome. We have tea and cookies!

I'm still here, just decompressing from teaching this weekend and worried about thw whole no-job thing. I'm beyond dscouraged, but that's not an excuse for just wishng I had someone to enable me :|

Spent three hours writing the opening of the notes and prompts for a lecture class I'm giving next Saturday. I am *maybe* one-fifth done with the narrative, and have 15 pages. My original notes ended up being >25 pages. I have crossed off the topics on two of those pages. You can see where this is heading. To about 190 handwrtten pages.

I need to finish the narrative, scan the material for the slides, teach myself how to use Power Point, write the bibliography (since there is no 'class handout'). All in time to drive to Tacoma on Friday to get there in time to get a decent night's sleep.

I've informally titled this the 'boring git class'. I'll be talking about a subject and process that fascinates me (and that I assumed everyone else went through in selecting visual items for research [to recreate an item of period dress]). I have since found out that no, this is not an intuitive process for most people, in fact, it's pretty much not on their radar. Which could be why there are people using a description in a novel as a basis for an item, and their research doesn't go any further than that (and they wonder what's not working for them at A&S)..

However, I have the nagging fear that either (a) I'll be too abstract to make any real sense and people will be too polite to tell me, or (b) once I explain the topic a little, people will say "What the hell? Do you think we're fucking morons that you need to tell how to do something that's as natural as breathing???" and be all insulted. (b) Worries me the most.

Nagging fear #2: Most clases at this shindig are hands on. You get to make something and take it home with you. That has a great deal more appeal than listening to a boring git go on about how to look at things. Ergo, people will be singularly unimpressed.

So. I'll be checking in with you while I'm writing and putting together the rest of this nonsense. help?

VTY,
Consumed With Doubt

ETA: Crap. It's after 10:30, and I still haven't done my before-bed stuff or taken my meds yet.

Okay, for the three of you that didn't flee when you saw the subject line, here we go: ( Read more... )

After thoroughly humiliating myself with the French Meme yesterday (I got the lowest score of anyone else I know who took it), I have a couple of things to say in my defense: ::ahem:: I grew up speaking a dialect, and (b) the other girl who flunked first year French with me was a girl from West Africa, for whom it was her first language. I also think I was trying too hard. I do, on the other hand, know some interesting obscenities in French, not just the usual - and I can use 'em in context.

So, with that disposed of, let's talk costume:

You want to see the shift that absolutely ruined me? (Hey, wait, this is sort of a repeat of the French meme - I'm about to show you what a complete moron I am...)

( Here you go. )

Officially, it's not as hot as yesterday (yet), but right now, it's too hot to work upstairs for long comfortably, so I thought I'd come down and annoy you folks.

Here's what I'm doing ( in here )

...getting better slowly. Yesterday was the first day since I can remember that I (a) wasn't actively in pain somewhere and/or (b) so exhausted I slept most of the time. I have been sleeping a lot, and I confess that if it were up to me? I'd zonk out a couple of times during the day, but I know that I'm (a) not going to accomplish anything like that and (b) would be mad as hell at myself for wasting any time I don't have to spend in the DOSP workhouse. Granted, I can't quite put anything much to do together for the times I'm not at the workhouse, but I'm just so unbelievably grateful that I'm. Not. There. that on some level it doesn't matter.

I've found the tiny cute laptop stateside, but it still has a couple of problems. Right now, that's about twice as much money as I could scrape together on short notice, and (b) it runs Linux, and I have no clue how to use that. A good analogy for this would be me handing the cut pieces of a 16thC outfit to someone who couldn't sew and saying "Well, here it is, but if you actually expect to wear it, you're going to have to learn to sew, and then put it together yourself." Or at least that's my impression. And I do realize it's incredibly lame to not know enough about systems to be able to do this sort of thing on one's own. I feel pretty stupid.

In any case, I am following up a couple of leads, and if I can't find anything workable secondhand (for what I can afford) I'll probably end up buy that one (eventually) and learning how to use it.

( Costume stuff and somewhat on-topic rant )

So I blew the whole day looking at Clouet and now I really don't want to go to the DMV. Screw it, I'm taking the day off.

The Clouet is fascinating. It has great detail pictures, plus enough relatively unpretentious art history stuff in the text for an art history wonk like me to be satisfied. I may not have been looking in the right places until now, but the spectrum of Clouet images I've come across (until now) has been fairly narrow. While the sketches might frustrate someone who's looking for an exact detail of a costume (many of them have the decorative elements only roughed in, but Holbein did that, too), the detail that is present in the later drawings is to. die. for. But even the preliminary sketches reveal a great deal.

I've also discovered that yes, it is possible to wear earrings and a French hood.

So, I now have partlets and French hoods on the brain, and - well.

Was there a truly French style? Only in the details, really. I'm now somewhat more convinced that in many 16thC portraits, we're seeing a mostly international style which is a melange of French, Spanish and Italian, with some elements dominating more at one time than another. I think the reason that the clothing in the portraiture of those countries (and England) may appear to have more differences than similarities, I honestly think that's mostly due to stylistic differences in the painters' rendering rather than differences in the garments themselves. Keeping in mind that just about every fashion quirk eventually dies a lingering death in Spain (and yay for that - I honestly love how they evolve into weirder and weirder forms), I'd say you'd still be safe buying clothes from a tailor in London and then travelling to Vienna or Milan. You wouldn't look out of place. A bit dorky and provincial, perhaps, but not out of place.

So, I've got more material to chew on for a prospective class on how to read portraiture and similar sources, and actually seeing what's there. Most people understand about the allegorical or religious aspects of paintings at the time, but - and out comes the art history wonk here - I've discovered that people sometimes don't know what they're looking at, nor how to dissect it. Which is understandable, because that's a pretty obscure process. Perhaps I've found a use for art history wonks at last.

Side note: So help me, my mother is SO impossibly French. I saw her looking out from half those sketches. Good thing I've got some detachment, and thank god I didn't inheiret that nose ;}

Lastly for now: If you'll be at AnTir A&S this coming weekend, stop by my room for cake Saturday!

This was the most time I’ve had off without being unemployed or unable to get out of bed. I didn’t know I was going to be able to do it until almost the last minute, so… after a big push to try to get some work out, my days off started on the 21st.

Let me say that my favorite holiday is actually sometime in the first week of January, when your otherwise well-meaning coworkers quit asking (both you and) each other about what they did over the holidays. Life back to normal. Thank deity.

That said, I always have a little twinge of disappointment at Christmas. I voluntarily don’t ‘do holidays’ because I just don’t want to deal with the mandatory socializing involved, and I’ve really got more to do than put up decorations most years - I have plenty of lovely ones, but this year I wanted to spend the time in some other pursuit. I make a serious effort not to get all butthurt over everyone else’s lists of terrific swag, although it pinches a little. I honestly cannot afford to get the sort of gifts I want to get for various friends, and that’s not even taking into account tracking them down and shipping them - if I weren’t so frazzled this wouldn’t be a problem. So, I figure I have no right to any sort of disappointment whatsoever - especially since I honestly have most things that I need, and right now my frame of mind isn’t very accepting of anything that’s not an absolute necessity. Also, I’ve got myself caught up to the point where there’s only one thing on my list that I honestly need - a general contractor, to start work on TudorHouse’s restoration/maintenance/improvement issues. When that’s what you need, going and getting yourself an ice cream doesn’t cut it. It’s frustrating - I’m starting to make headway against the bills, I’ve got enough to eat - but the thing I need is huge, and would involve trying to get a sizable loan while my credit score (temporarily) sucks rocks.

Add this to the fact that I come from a rather privileged background, and when I was a kid, I made out like a bandit on Christmas. It almost made up for having to put up with my family. Just before Christmas, I was thinking about the “last good year” - which was 1973. The last year we had anything resembling money, the last year anyone could stand to be in the same room with anyone else (which I believe was enabled largely by said money). Thank deity I had kind friends who I could visit over holidays, although my mother constantly kicked up a huge fuss over that. (She was one of those people who thought that not spending every possible holiday, including Arbor Day, at an elaborate sit-down meal with the entire extended family was positively evil, “sad”, and that there was something seriously morally and psychologically wrong with anyone who did not think exactly like she did. )

I admit that I miss the haul. I’ve tried to be all mature about it, but when the emails come trickling in about the lovely books, equipment, goodies, and miscellanea others have received, I feel a very unwelcome twinge of envy. I want to be able to say that I got all kinds of lovely stuff too, that my friends were well off enough that it wouldn’t be a burden to them, and that I had someone who thought so much of me that they could do that without sacrifice on their part. And... the stuff. Always the stuff.

I do get myself something for getting through the year, something I’ve been wanting and have been looking at for a while, but I feel a tremendous embarrassment over the fact that I pick out and buy my own gifts, even though this makes the most sense in the world. So, this year it was this. It even came in time. There are 39 pages of instructions with it, and it is twenty kinds of cool. It’s one of those outfit-of-a-lifetime things - a tremendous amount of work involved, but the payoff will be exquisite. (Even if I will still look like a lumpy loveseat in it.)

The other thing I did was that I got a secondhand digital camera. So, once I work out how to use it properly and upload the pictures, you guys are going to be stuck looking at them. My previous photography adventures have all involved a Pentax manual SLR - which requires you to actually learn how to focus, set the exposure, etc., etc. Which I did, and did reasonably well. The digital camera, though? Lots of little symbols that I have yet to decipher, and ninety features that I may or may not ever figure out. I think my problem with it is that I don’t automatically assume what’s obvious. I’ve printed out a copy of the manual, so…

So what did I do for 12 days? You’d think I’d have cleaned the whole house from top to bottom, made a complete 16thC outfit, gone somewhere, done something, but the truth is - I stayed quietly at home. Mostly I worked on the cheat bag (that’s not a typo for sweet bag. I’ll ‘splain in a minute.), made a gift for clearbell’s birthday, and finally tackled the fitting issues with the beta-test smock.

The cheat bag is actually a bit from a 1971 (really) Erica Wilson needlework kit I got in a thrift store for three dollars. It was meant to be made up into an evening purse. However, I took one look at the design, recognized it as being nearly identical to a cushion cover in the V&A, and thought it deserved better than the kit’s original intent. However, I wasn’t really sure what that was going to be until recently. It’s real linen, the crewel yarn supplied with it was early-70s scary and got made into cat toys. Instead of merely outlining all of the figures, I did all of them solid in split stitch, and while I had misgivings at first, it’s turning out not half bad. The embroidery is about 80% complete - after that I just need to sew it into a little bag, make some cording and tassels, and hey presto! Nice handy little thing I can put my checkbook in at events. Since it’s not an actual sweet bag design, nor did I draw it out myself, I’m calling it the cheat bag. But the embroidery isn’t too bad, and the colors are working out better than expected.

The beta-test smock… mocks me. I can hear it sniggering whenever I open the workroom door. It’s a square necked smock, which is always a pain to fit on me; I knew it was going to be, which is why it’s the beta-test smock. In some fit of overreaching, I embroidered a row of rather nice Tudor roses on the front of it, which worked pretty well and didn’t look entirely too PreRaphaelite. All of this would be fine, except that - I originally cut the long panel (front and back) in a size that would actually encompass my actual adiposity, without thinking that I’d be swimming in the shoulders and armscye. I knew I’d have to cut it back a little, but no matter - there was plenty of room.

So I cut it back to fit my shoulders. Made up as originally intended, it would have fit beautifully if I’d been about a size 6. However, I am not, not even close. Now I had the problem of needing to put in side panels so I could even think about getting into it, AND I was sufficiently disgusted with myself that I wasn’t going to allow myself any additional yardage - I had to work with what I had left. No do-overs.

Which led to side panels that are pieced in five parts each. Not period? Not hardly. I think if a 16thC seamstress had been handed a problem like that, she may well have come up with a very similar solution. The line is still correct, it actually fits, and the only visible part of the smock is the neckline anyhow, so…

The neckline is a little wider than I’d like it, but perfectly workable. I can use an underpartlet if I want, or not.

So, the take-home from all this? Don’t try fitting a smock on yourself while wearing two heavy sweaters (because it is 33F and bucketing rain outside and not exactly warm inside). You will end up with an armscye that reaches your waist. Trust me, I know ;)

Otherwise, I finally got caught up on sleep to the point where I had lots of REM sleep and crazy dreams, and I was basically about as content as I've ever been. At one point I didn't leave the house for several days simply because there was absolutely no need to. Oh, and I lost some weight, even though I had more than enough in the pantry. What's not perfect about all of that?