Since Mother Eve in the Garden long ago

This week, I got to photograph a couple of dresses! We had an intern cataloguing the shoe collection, and she found two pairs that were donated with their wedding dresses, so I put them on mannequins and photographed them. They look kind of mediocre ... I never have sufficient/the right underthings for support, because many regular ones, like lobstertail bustles, don't quite work! You'd be surprised how many things requires you to have legs and/or an ass, neither of which our forms have. I used my very janky bustle hoop for the one from ca. 1871, which at least gave basically the right silhouette, but it is, again, janky.

I'm thinking that I might make some small-ish quilted petticoats to act as legs and a basic skirt support, and I know I've said this before so I'm ordering the fabric to do it. (Ordering and making it on my own dime/time so that they're mine and I can do whatever I want with them.) I need to make some bustle pads of varying sizes, too (to create asses for under bustles and hoops, or for skirts that just need a butt under there). Also wondering a bit about the possible utility of canvas petticoats. And/or very small hoops, like in situations where a human woman wouldn't have worn one, but where it's useful to support a full hem.

Then while I was on the "making myself get around to it" train, I went upstairs and did a huge amount of work in the sewing storage room, which has always been the kind of place I just chuck things inside and close the door. But I want to turn the room that has the cat box into a bedroom (nursery) (trying not to act like that's a certain thing in case I can't conceive) (but it's the nursery), which means cleaning up the SSR to the point where cats can't pee/barf/shed on fabric. And it honestly was not that hard, which is depressing because it's been like that since I moved in. I got it to the point where I could move the litter box in there and leave the door open, and now it looks very neat and the bedroom, which I vacuumed, also looks very neat.

Have a cold again. Sick of this. I feel like I've spent more time coughing than not over the last few months!!

The other week, I finished the vest I was knitting. (REALLY funny to compare it on me vs the only other person who's made it, it looks like an entirely different pattern.) I've worn it a couple of times and really like it - I just wish, as I say in the Ravelry note, that I'd done another iteration of the "darts" so that the waist would be a bit more snug. I always have this problem, between the thickness of the knit fabric and the short distance between my bust and waist and the looseness at the waist when I make something to fit the bust, they can be a bit frumpy. Going to try to be more proactive about doing shaping that's not in the pattern in the future.

I tried to go back to the socks I started last winter but ugh. Socks are boring and the black Wool of the Andes is so dark that I frankly can't see the stitches! So I started my pi shawl yesterday and it's racing along.

Accepted another Yuletide pinch hit like a sap! I'll never finish my Regency novella at this rate.

Was off work on Tuesday for covid vaccine symptoms, and now am off again today with vacation time to go to Schenectady for lunch with my stepmother and see Some Like It Hot at Proctor's.

Have been productive lately but still feel unproductive - it's the thing where even little basic stuff like cleaning around the tub drain or getting every dish at the sink taken care of is hard, so I'm putting them on my mental list and victoriously crossing them off when they're done, but at the end of the day/weekend/week I haven't done any novel revisions, haven't progressed on 18thc Dress, haven't edited the podcast ep I recorded, etc. Which isn't kind to myself, blah blah blah, but it is frustrating.

(I'm scared to edit the podcast ep and post it because it's on the tailoring revolution (with a detour into the bliaut/chainse), which is not really My Area and what if people listen to it and ridicule me for being wrong??? But tbh I'd really like to shift to doing some interviews of the lovely long-time costumer folks I know.)

I have finally reached the end of this weighty tome! (Now I will finish The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800 and then read Netherford Hall.) Though TBH it was a faster read than I expected, especially in the small bites I typically read these days, which is a great point in its favor. Still, I had a lot of complex feelings while reading it.

Basic synopsis: A mistreated young man from the Isle of Mull travels south to join the Round Table, only to find that the grail quest plus a massive battle has already killed most of the knights and King Arthur himself. He (lmao I never finished this synopsis last night) joins the remnants and they take on a new quest to find Arthur's replacement.

( spoilery, so I'll cut )

I've been meaning to post for ages, but between many days of being on my feet at work and many evenings of working on Twelfth Night costuming, sewing my Pride Prom dress, and rewriting Mary Marchbanks I just have not had the time!

The sewing ended up being your typical right-up-until-the-event work, of course. I think I did a very good job on it, all in all, but the horizontal gathered darts on the bodice could probably be done lower for my larger bust (larger than the one in the illustration, I mean) - the proportion feels wrong, it kind of cuts my boobs in half and makes them look small. Or maybe I'm overly critical. Anyway, I do need to redo the buttons for a bit more ease at the top but it's pretty good and I'm not planning to wear it again until the annual fundraiser/gala at work.

Pride Prom was ... not entirely bad, I saw a couple of people I knew and got some praise for the dress and I think I looked pretty. But it was also super isolating because I'd kind of built up an idea that being in a queer space would Change Everything and maybe someone would ask me to dance etc etc etc and it didn't even remotely happen. (Yes, there were tears after I got home.) I'm thinking of getting involved as a volunteer with Otsego Pride Alliance to make more friends and be able to come to events without having to dive in and just hope I know anyone there.

Anyway, now that that's all done hopefully I can get on all of the things I've been letting slide - getting plane tickets and hotel reservations for next month, getting an electrician to prep the garage for a better car charger, scheduling patterning visits, etc. I'm considering trying to do a couple at the V&A, since I've been let down on a few options stateside.

I haaaaaaaaaaate having a cold. There's something about how prosaic the misery is - it's not like vomiting, which is so dramatic and debilitating. You just have to blow your nose over and over and over until your face hurts, and deal with the pain in your sinuses and down the sides of your neck from the drainage, and cough perpetually. Nobody else IRL takes your illness seriously because it's Just A Cold. And it lasts for weeks.

Well, I have bought an expensive chicken from the farmer's market to turn into soup. There will be matzoh balls. (I mostly try to buy my meat from the farmer's market which means it's expensive and so I don't eat it much at home.)

Deep into the Peneloise fic. It turns out that having Eloise recognize that she and Penelope are in very different positions (that is, that she has thin privilege and, uh, older-money privilege) is super cathartic for me.

Hacks feels like 30 Rock filmed more as a drama, I think. Like I can picture these actors doing exactly the same scripts but played a little more broad/slapsticky, with the 30 Rock background music. It's also interesting to watch s3 after having read (most of) a biography of Joan Rivers (it was by a journalist and wasn't very good, which is why I stopped reading it a bit after her husband died) and so having context for Deborah's desire to be a late-night host and her back catalogue of hideously offensive material.

I'm in one of those "I want to write but when I think of/open any of my WIPs I don't want to write" moods.

Got car back! And yesterday I went to dad's and back, which practically emptied the charge. But I stopped to recharge a bit in Cobleskill, which did very little (about 25 miles worth over an hour) - was good to try it out, though.

I got some stretch denim capris on Amazon last week, and they've been driving me crazy with how they keep falling down. So just now I took a tuck on either side of CB and they fit so much better now! This will make the cleaning/organizing work at the off-site storage facility much less annoying.

Now I need to buckle down and make V9108 for Pride Prom (end of June) and a wedding in San Francisco (end of July). I've already done a bodice muslin so I should just jump in! I already know the buttonholes are going to take me forever.

Okay, something positive to talk about!

I finished my wool skirt, which just needed a hem and fastenings. Fastenings took probably two minutes at most; hem took longer as the circumference is ridiculous. The wool (suiting from FFC) was excellent to work with, even doing a fairly deep hem on a steep curve - I should have faced it instead, probably, but it's fine. Very big pockets. No issues with the fit or look at all, although whenever I see a full-body reflection in my floofy petticoat I'm dissatisfied with the silhouette. I wish I could get a more bell-shaped profile. Maybe I should try going back to my old net one? I mean, what I should really do is sew a few cotton petticoats, but I haaaaaate gathering. (I just ordered something on Etsy, my hope being that I like it so much it inspires me to do a lot of petticoat-sewing.)

Writing it up for the blog. Tomorrow the weather's supposed to be better, so I might throw on some lipstick and do a little photoshoot in the backyard. While I'd decided not to do any more graded patterns because annoying, I'd kind of like to turn this into one: it's simple, it's wearable, and if I use mine as the base I can go down and up to get a great range of straight and plus sizes.

I also hemmed my TV Edwardian blouse, and when I tried it on I pinned it closed to see if I really need buttons. Turns out that I could sew it closed up to the point where I'd want to wear it open anyway, and it will still go on and off over my head! So no buttons needed. But it looks really dowdy. In my head it was cutely old-fashioned. So ... not sure what I'm going to do with it. My hope is that pairing the wool skirt with a more modern top and the Edwardian blouse with a more modern skirt will balance out any issues. But I might put this pattern on ice, because as much as I liked making it (despite the gathers), I don't know how wearable it'll be.

Thinking about better options for making shirts. Needs: short sleeves, neckline below collarbones, minimal buttonholes.

My two favorite things about the Murderbot Diaries are:

a) the way Murderbot gets so pissed off at ART largely because ART does exactly the same kind of thing as it (prioritizes its humans above all else, uses its weapons and abilities to make a point when necessary, tells the truth bluntly) but to it, and because it's better at interacting with humans, or acts a bit more like a human, and

b) Murderbot is soooo traumatized and everyone cares about it soooo much and it hates that. I'm always like "🥺🥺🥺 you poor baby," when it has a panic attack or is so upset it can't make eye contact, and I know if it saw me doing that it would be furious. The ultimate woobie.

Actually, b) ties into a) because another part of the tension between ART and Murderbot is that ART isn't particularly traumatized. I think Murderbot is aware on some level (despite being in denial about its own trauma) that ART has a certain amount of self-confidence/self-esteem due to having been valued pretty highly, not being forced to kill and fight constantly for a company, not being continuously rented out to new people who treated it as expendable, etc. and as a result isn't carrying that weight or feeling that tension all the time.