Since Mother Eve in the Garden long ago

Installed at Mom's house. It's so small - my dresser is literally two drawers, and I could look out for a bigger one on CraigsList but it simply wouldn't fit in the room. I only have a twin bed, which is tricky to get used to, but it has a good mattress. And it's basically cold all the time. But it's nice here, and it's nice being back in Greenwich and being able to walk to the stores and library.

Which we did today, and I bought a box of antique/vintage books from the library basement which I am now putting on Etsy, since I've (mysteriously) sold all the rest I had up.

Still trying to decide how I feel about this Robin Hood fanfic I'm reading. It's clearly based on the BBC show with strategic details changed so it's public domain fic. See, on the one hand I have a juvenile "lol Mary Sue" reaction to the author's OFC, who loooves Guy of Gisbourne when that horrible Marian couldn't. On the other, I'm kind of rooting for her because hell yeah, you publish your self-insert fic for real money like all the rest of us wished we could have at 15. On the third hand, I'm disapproving of how the heroine can't understand that Guy pressing Marian when she was in love with someone else was the issue, not Marian's inability to stop spurning Guy. On the fourth hand, I realized that there's a big difference between Rhapsody/Ayla Sues that are just soooo amazing, and the kind of Sues that are not that amazing in and of themselves (ability-wise, looks-wise) but are ~special~ because of something emotional, the way they connect with someone or fulfill someone's need. And that second type doesn't annoy me half as much as the first. And one of the reasons Twilight irritates me is that Bella is so much the second that she becomes the first.

I am probably going to get one of Kay Gnagey's hoops at some point - the pictures on her website are pretty sketchy, but looking at LR Stern's 2013 wrap-up it actually is a really good shape.

AAAAHHHH so nervous about first day tomorrow even though I'm going back to a place where I know everyone, I know some of what I need to know and am going to learn what I don't, and what I don't is something nobody there knows so it's not like I'm going to be held up to some standard. Plus I REALLY, REALLY want to do some patterns for the website, and what will I doooo if they say no. But I mean, that would be an excellent draw, wouldn't it? If I did a good enough job and did interesting enough garments, people could care about it and use them, right? And it would be like "oh, you want an 1880s walking dress with an asymmetrical closure? or an everyday cotton dress from the early 1900s? or a sexy Directoire evening dress? Here's this site, they have a few of these patterns, if you're okay with scaling up." (Is anyone else okay with scaling up? It used to seem to me like most people used Arnold and Waugh, but now it feels like everyone uses Reconstructing History/Past Patterns/Truly Victorian/etc. and the people who can drape patterns just look at the books for general shapes. But I can't tell if this is real or just paranoia/confirmation bias.) And maybe that would increase site traffic and even give them some more visitors and researchers. I don't know, would you use them if there were some new free patterns posted, within the range 1850-1950 and not generally super fashionable (don't think there's any Paris couture)?

I'm reading an article on struggling historic houses (super depressing, implies it's not just that the economy's bad but that the bicentennial sort of inflated all the numbers and it's just been decreasing since then because it was a special time), and on the second page they're talking about smartphone apps for self-guided tours and such.

“But there’s so much more we want to do,” he said, noting how great it would be to be able to lift his iPhone anywhere at Montpelier and see what life used to be like there, through images and interpretive videos and other information that would be presented based on the smartphone’s exact location and orientation.

THAT IS SO COOL.

I bought a couple more magazines on eBay. I can't help but be a little nervous that I'm spending too much and getting ~addicted~, but really everybody spends money on their passions and I've got a paycheck now. I need to figure out what I'm doing with the scans - I might make pages on my blog for each magazine, and just upload all the pictures? How much bandwidth does Blogger give you? Well, I'm trying it now.

Yesterday I looked into the Chapman's library more - there is a tiny card catalogue down in the archive, and I looked up Godey's, Peterson's, Montgomery-Ward, etc. in it. There was one Godey's (1858, I think), and none of the others, so I'm thinking that most of the ones I'm interested in are actually in the house's library, which is sort of interesting. After talking with Tim, I think the sort of books they want to give to the town library are the city directories and high school yearbooks and local histories. Which is pretty obvious, now that I think about it without the same panic I get when I see a Delineator on eBay for $80, that "oh no gone forever from my hot little hands" feeling.

ETA: Well, here is one magazine, not all the scans are great but I can fix them sometime. I bought an 1834 magazine on eBay for $26 including shipping, so that should go up sometime.

ETA2: Well, that ate a lot of my Blogger/Picasa space. Switching to Flickr for scan hosting, I'm not sure I want to buy extra storage space just yet. Except Flickr is giving me sass as well. Um. Give me some more time to think about this.

I'm starting to feel more like I belong in the Dance Museum, mainly because they've stopped being like, "give us your expert opinion please," and started being more, "can you just do this?" That sounds bad but I'm much more comfortable with this. It's just easier, because when they're asking me for my expert opinion they're still not really giving me any power, and if I'm not going to have the power to actually change things I'd rather just be useful.

Tomorrow I'm going to Bennington to look at a few historic houses I plan to send resumes to.

Oh well. I did find like a million more paintings of neoclassical dress to look at.