Since Mother Eve in the Garden long ago

CW is definitely not interviewing me at this point, I think. Ah well. I wonder if this current spate of curatorial jobs in fashion/textiles is a bizarre blip or if it reflects the museum field opening up and hiring more people ... or I guess maybe it reflects one fashion/textiles person getting a new job, and then their old job opens up, and then the old job of the person who gets hired for that one opens up, and so on. Looking forward to seeing who gets this one so I can compare myself to them and get depressed. (I was being defeatist at Sarah over how I thought being in collections for so long made people disqualify me for curatorial jobs and she was disagreeing with me because of people she knows who've made the jump, which I think was her being positive and supportive but unfortunately also implies that I just suck on an individual level and that's why I don't get interviews for these positions.)

I'm trying to finish my novel and I was making great strides - wrote several more chapters - until I decided to let myself have a little break and write some porn. And now I'm like "well I could write my one self-insert self-actualizing and thinking about stuff while locked in a room by the villain or I could write my other self-insert getting railed in a foursome," which is an unfortunately easy choice. (At least it is now! It's crazy when I think about how much more comfortable I've gotten with writing explicit sex over the past year.)

Shock and horror: I realized the other day that I somehow ended up scheduled for more shifts at the light show than nearly anyone else in our department ... I've had 5 shifts and a bunch of people have had 3-4, and also all but one of mine have been outdoors while nearly everyone else has been inside most of the time.

At first I was like, not cool, HR, but upon reflection I waited until the scheduling was done to take my vacation time around it while other, more selfish people may have simply taken the time they wanted and so if HR wasn't thinking long-term when scheduling each week individually she may have not taken that into account and given them more to do earlier. That being said, my two outdoors shifts this week were originally supposed to be indoors and I can't see any logical reason to have changed that.

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I ordered the first Murderbot book from the library and liked it, but since it was so short I figured I should order all the rest at the same time so I don't have to keep up the executive function task of ordering them/wait so long between them. Of course, the fourth one's arrived first. Sigh.

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Watched Lessons in Chemistry, and to my surprise, I liked it a lot! I'm always critical of historical pieces that center on sexist discrimination because it's typically dealt with badly on both historical and writing levels (IMO), but it was so much more nuanced and complex than I expected. Details under the cut.

( loved the costuming too )

I am still feeling all my PMS feels about Everyone Here Hates Me and It's Not Fair, You Can't Be A Curator Unless You Have A PhD No Matter How Much You Know And How Capable You Are, so I'm gritting my teeth and hanging onto sanity by my fingertips. Ugh ugh ugh.

Fun stuff! I just ordered a big lightbox today so that the photos I take for inventory can look not like shit, and so that if I can get permission to have objects other than the ~most specialest paintings in the world~ on our collections website we won't have to retake all of them. Thinking ahead. It will probably slow down the inventory but it will be more interesting. (Unfortunately, thinking about this reminds me of the way one of the Skinny Bitches immediately pooh-poohed it when I brought up having more objects online, onward, ONWARD.)

I made this pretty potholder and am excited to make a few more for gifts this winter. Close to being done with this - just doing the lace edging. It seems a little small, but maybe with the edging done it will look right.

Oh snap, Bloodline is also a Monte-Cristo-esque revenge show! I an even more intrigued.

So ... I think there's an issue with copper pipes at work. I've been having some stomach cramps in the morning after I start in on my first glass of water, and it finally occurred to me that this is because of the water, not a coincidence. There is a lot of greenish build up on some of the faucets. I'm going to try running the water before I get my glass tomorrow, and then we'll see if I still feel sick! And of course I will bring it up with the boss, but she's away for a couple of days.

I got another Amazon package - Fabricating Women: the Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791, which has been on my wishlist for ages, but I finally feel like I can and should buy fancy obscure academic texts in my field. I can't wait to read it.

The really awesome thing, though, is that in the same mail delivery I got a letter from NYS Parks & Rec with two "are you interested?" forms for historic site assistant jobs (because of the civil service test I took a couple of years ago). One at Crailo, one at Clermont! Crailo's in Troy, and Clermont is lower down on the Hudson, and I also know the education director at Clermont. So I PM'd her and told her I was sending the form in and she said she'd shortlisted me originally but at this point they're approved for the person creating the vacancy at Crailo to transfer over (he studies the family who owned Clermont and has done a lot of volunteering), but she'll recommend me really strongly to the people at Crailo. So I'm crossing my fingers and hoping hard.

Technically, "historic site assistant" is a more accurate description of what I do now, which I said I would prefer not to do in favor of working with historic fashion collections. But here are the many, many advantages of working at Crailo:

- STATE JOB with state job benefits and state job pay - 12k more than I make now
- closer to the family dog
- closer to family and friends (but not Julie :( ), closer to period-dress events
- job is what it is - less frustrating than being collections manager but not doing collections stuff
- way closer to museums with historic costume collections
- NYC is a reliable Megabus ride away
- protected by the Adirondacks from Canadian cold fronts
- I find Dutch Hudson Valley fascinating
- lots and lots of opportunities to use 17th Century Women's Dress Patterns 1&2
- in the state system, so will be in a good position to move up
- is in a region with a lot of museums -> job openings that I'll live close enough to to be considered for

I mean, is it better than the Mint? Probably paywise, but no, working in a fashion collection would be my first choice. But considering that I probably will not get an interview or even an official "no" from the Mint, this would be excellent.

Done with my last coatrack of clothes, loaded up another of 1930s-1940s-1950s-1960s. I think I can get one of the permanent racks out of the room now! I would really love to be able to space out everything that's hanging more, but IMO it's better for everything if I keep the hanging garments just as tightly packed on the racks but have some space to maneuver boxes around.

We desperately need a new vacuum, there's a hole in the bag of ours that blows stuff back out if it's held at a certain angle and also I can't take the bag off to empty it because I can tell I won't be able to get it back on. :( I plan to write another tiny local grant to get money to buy a new one, because grant writing experience! OTOH I might just buy us a vacuum with my own money as a donation.

Real talk time. Since things have died down, I've been thinking about pattern stuff for me'n'Julie. Since we've never done a graded pattern before, obvs the first one should be simple. But at the same time, it should be something people are interested in making (OBVS), and especially something people (you??) might be interested in pattern testing. The things I'm thinking of right now are:

- 1920s robe de style, unpanniered. The original is pretty fantastic, pink satin and gold lace, with a gold lamé-backed velvet ribbon

- more traditional 1920s waistless evening or afternoon dress (I don't have a specific one in mind)

- some type of chemise

- a 1910s shirtwaist with a, you know, a kind of stomacher front that buttons on one side

I'm leaning toward the robe de style, but then I'm like, what if nobody feels inclined to test the pattern because it's not something they planned on making? This is probably crazy but yeah.

Today I found this gorgeous black faille/blue velvet early Natural Form dress with the bodice accessioned in 1983 and the skrit in 1966. (The skirt's acc. number is, of course, written on the lining in pen.) I'm torn between a need to figure out the provenance with genealogy of the two donors and a need to just sit around fantasizing about reproducing it, because it's so cute. Oh, and a desire to display it, supposing we had a mannequin or even dress form, because being faille it's in great shape. (Cannot find a good comparison piece to link to. It has a shortish cuirass bodice with a long tail in the back, and the untrained skirt has a panel down the front made of narrow horizontal bands of faille, with velvet ones at intervals.)

Sunday is my podcast interview, I'm scared! But 400-rabbits sent me a list of questions in response to my notes on the period, and I'm going to go over them and try to answer them so that I'll be ready.

Okay, here's a bad thing about Windows 10. It's not telling me when the battery gets too low, it just suddenly flicks into sleep and coming back is twice as painful as a total restart. Not crazy about that.

Did the Friday evening shift, so I get tomorrow off, and a three day weekend! Yay! I did not get a lot done, boo, because JeanMarie asked me to slow down giving her things to put away. (The majority of the backlog is archival.) While I spent a decent amount of time futzing around on the internet, I also investigated grants to get necessary PastPerfect updates (they only have it on one computer, it's madness) and worked on writing for a "mini-grant".

Around 7:30 I decided to go look at the dress room because why not? Pulled up the 1840s dress I thought might be a costume, and I'm about 99% sure it's not. It's just in fantastic condition. Wool, slightly crepey, printed with chiné pink flower-blobs on an apple-green background. Fan front, belled sleeves. Just gorgeous.

Last night I made a loaf of ricotta whole wheat olive oil bread with this recipe, plus some sunflower and flax seeds thrown in while I was kneading. It has a bit of a funny taste to it, but it's so nice and soft compared to my last whole wheat loaf (which didn't even really rise). I also let the dough sit a while before I started kneading, which I've read lets the whole wheat flour absorb more water.

I finished Raising Steam today when I popped home for a short break around three. I've been holding off writing about it until I finished. It feels awful to have such a low opinion of it - I mean, I started reading it on the day Pterry died - but it was so aggressively dull. (I'm assuming Pratchett dictated the book, but some people have suggested it was ghostwritten.) ( cut for spoilers I guess but I think I'm the last person to read it )

Why does it have an average of four stars? The five star reviews seem to be real ones. My only thought is that there are a lot of loyal/pitying people there.

I hate Vimes now. After this, and Snuff, I'm not even sure I could reread a Watch book. IDK, maybe I will try to see if I hate him less in Guards! Guards! But what I really want to reread is a Susan book, several Witches books

So very tired. I don't understand how a five day workweek with half the number of hours as a normal one can be so tiring. Probably it's all the standing. But this is my Friday and I am home now, and when I was called about coming in to close because the closer can't come, I lied and said I had scheduled something for today.

I think I'm finding a good middle ground between "self-effacing" and "self-aggrandizing" by practicing on Facebook. Like, I always have the anxiety about making discussions about myself (SORRY, KATY) but I'm reminding myself that what I say is the same percent right as everyone else and probably nobody else is thinking I'm arrogant. Related: I keep trying to hand out copies of my patterns to people, and nobody seems to want to take me up on it!

Much later: Oops, forgot I had this going. Well, someone did take me up on a look at some patterns, so everything's coming up Milhouse.

Work was pretty excellent today, and hopefully acknowledging that won't jinx it. The AM was cheerful and did say "chop chop!" like five times, but I solidly base iced and decorated for hours without really feeling like I was falling behind.

While I was working, I remembered that NaNo is coming up, and wondered whether I wanted to do it. I have a book I'm supposed to be writing, and the two times I "won" I hated what I'd written to the point where I didn't want to revise and publish it. (Also I technically never finished the second one - I hit 50k at what should have been a few pages from the end and never bothered to write the actual end.) And then I thought about the Doucet research I've been doing and how interesting it is, how few fashion encyclopedias distinguish between the father and son and how many act like the place was off the radar until Jacques took over. Then I thought about writing a novel set in the turn of the century Paris fashion world - what about the Paquins, could I research them enough to feel comfortable writing historical fiction about them? (No, because I find the idea of my writing historical RPF weird, plus I could never do enough research to feel comfortable that I was't making the kind of blunders people make fun of, although there are no Paquin fans like there are Marie Antoinette fans or Elizabeth I fans or whatever.) But what if I fictionalize it more and come up with my own business/design duo? It could be set in the 1890s, nobody writes about the 1890s. But I tend to use the same relationship dynamics, how can I change it up? And I ended up thinking about this semi-Pygmalion homage/pastiche-thing where this rich guy is like, omg, the fashion press is ridiculous and the way people go on and on about clothing is so stupid, I bet you (friend) that I can put a back-alley dressmaker in a fancy salon and everyone will go crazy over how innovative and fantastic she is! So he does so but she thinks he seriously means it, and everybody does go wild over her. And now I think I do have to do NaNo this year.

When I first heard about The Knick, I thought it was going to be an Americanization of Casualty 1906/07/09. It very much is not. When I started watching it my first impression was that it was an historicization of House, but it very much isn't that either. It's more like Mad Men, despite the heavy gore and dirt that Mad Men lacks. But like Mad Men, it's a) an ensemble show focusing on many characters who range from powerful to oppressed and effective to frustrated, b) which tackles serious issues of -ism without making them the focus of after-school-special-style storylines, c) while putting serious effort in to making the setting complete and perfect. The Knick is even more impressive than Mad Men in the last regard, because Mad Men mainly takes place inside, in offices and homes and restaurants, where The Knick is frequently out on the street - with yards of perfect turn-of-the-century signage and awnings and perfectly dressed extras. In that way, it's more like Boardwalk Empire - but while Boardwalk does focus on multiple storylines, it rarely feels like an ensemble show to me, rather than one that focuses on multiple storylines. Maybe because there's usually A Nucky Plot, A Margaret Plot, A Chalky Plot, etc. rather than all of the leads doing things together, as leads?

( slightly spoilery, but not for the latest episode because we haven't seen it yet )

I would like to see more ethnicities, though. It's a very Irish-heavy show, and I don't quite know what the neighborhood was like in 1900 so maybe it's just accurate ... I just want some Jewish and Italian immigrants.