Pre-Christmas Pyro

In the absence of a Dickens Fair in my life this year, I've been feeling extremely, ridiculously lonely. It's really hard because I'd sort of decided to take the thing off this year partly because I needed a break, but also partly because I'd intended to spend it with certain people who abruptly left my life.

So when I got an email late last week about possibly doing pyro the night before Christmas Eve, I jumped on it.  Today, (excuse me, by the time stamp it'll be yesterday) I got up nearly at the normal workaday time, ate something vaguely resembling breakfast, puttered a bit, packed my pyro gear into the car, went to PT, realized I was there 45 minutes early, got lunch at Town and Country (there's an Asian box there? huh), then went back to PT,  then got back in the car to drive to Candlestick.

Oh, did I mention that this was at the final game of the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park? Right. Because it was. They'd decided last minute to add two extra pyro positions to the lineup, so I was on the South point, as opposed to the inside-the-stadium part, or the East position. And because of it being the last hurrah, even though I left Palo Alto at 1:15 or so, it took me until 2:45 to get to the site. (The last 45 minutes or so I was literally *looking out across the lagoon at the pyro truck* and wishing I had a rowboat.)

I pull into one of the driveways that has caution tape across it, put on my blinkers, hop out of the car, leaving it running, and go to unfasten the caution tape. That done, I turn back to the car and realize... I locked the door. I locked the door, and the car is running.  I locked the door, the car is running, the hazards are on and the rear end is sticking out into the lane.  Oh, I locked the door, the car is running, the rear is in the lane, and my phone is on the front seat.

Cue panic attack.  Thankfully a nice man who was walking in let me borrow his phone to call AAA. And while this did literally nothing for my cause, it did give me the sense of having done *something*, so I was able to get out of my panic state.  I was literally shaking, and stuttering and dizzy. Wow.  Having at least set in motion the theoretically helpful wheels of roadside assistance, I ran out to the site to let them know what was going on. Then ran back and... sat on my bumper.

Eventually one of the Candlestick Point park rangers came over and asked if I needed help. He offered to get the slim jim that they apparently have for emergencies. When he came back with it, we spent a good fifteen fruitless minutes attempting to get the door unlocked, and he finally had to go back to his duties. He left the thing in my hands, so I idly continued trying to work at it - which was like trying to pick up something in an opaque narrow jar using chopsticks.  All this while the semi-legal ticket scalper guys are wandering around buying and selling and grifting their various grifts.

A pair of plainclothes cops roll by in an unmarked car and stop to hassle me - I tell them what's up and the laugh before leaving. (Thanks guys.) A giant stretch SUV limo goes by and some oddly-familiar looking black dude leans head and shoulders out of the back window and yells "THIEF! THIEF!" a few times while laughing as he goes by. I guess the sight of a woman in work clothes trying to slim jim a beat up 15 year old sub compact car *is* pretty comedic. And then a homeless dude in a bright yellow shirt comes up and sets his bag down near me. "You need some help?" I nod.  He takes the slim jim from me, and five minutes later, my door is open. AAA is nowhere in sight.  I thank him, he asks for money, I give him the entire contents of my wallet which sadly total $8, and proceed to the parking lot.

I figure, what's the worst that could happen if the best part of the day so far is having a homeless dude break into my car?  When I got to the site the racks were already built, it was nice and warm out, and there was a message from the AAA towing associate who basically said they weren't allowed on site until two hours after the game was done. Right. Useful.  I unloaded my gear and we loaded product, working in teams to help drop and wire the charges.

The ill-fated Candlestick behind me

Then we waited. And waited. And the sun went down, and I put on literally all of the layers I brought: base layer, then t shirt, then hoodie, wool hat under the hood, then eventually my turnout coat on top of it all, with the corduroy collar folded up to keep my neck and cheeks warm.  It wasn't that it was all that cold, really, but damp and sitting around just make you freeze.  I was really glad I'd thought to put on snowboarding socks this morning.

The shoot went well. Three low-breaks, but all of the charges lifted and we didn't have to re-placard the truck. Cleanup was a hassle, but I've been lucky to have so many shoots on golf greens and parking lots where they can bring the vacuum truck.

Home before midnight. But now it's rather past it - so a Happy Christmas Eve to you all.

Quiet Night

Tonight, it's supposed to get down into the upper 20s. I've brought as many of the carnivore garden pots in close to the building as I can, but I'm not sure how useful it'll be. Inside, I'm drinking hot herbal tea, and hot mulled cider, burning Christmas tree scented candles, and trying not to think of the coworker who I found out just died last night. Trying not to feel like the weight of four years of stagnation is weighing down on me, pressing down while panic bubbles up from the floor. Trying not to feel weight of the upcoming weeks in which I have but few evenings to myself, followed by the panic of one long gap in which I have nothing but lonliness.

This is hard.

(And now I recall why I'm not blogging much.)

Like Pulling Teeth

The sad thing is, when I am in an exciting new relationship, I don't feel like posting. And when that ends abruptly, I feel even less like posting, but I also feel less like doing the things I enjoy, so it's not like I have anything to post about anyway.

I am really bad at posting

I have lots to update you folks on, and yet there are Things afoot that I'm not super comfortably posting here. Oh well?

I just got back from Burning Man. After the nearly unmitigated disaster that 2010 was, I had toyed with the idea of Never Going Back Again (tm), but when some close friends decided to trek out for their virgin burn, I sort of kowtowed to Fate and said to the world that if pyro work presented itself, I would go.

Pyro work presented itself. Attached to that work came a staff-rate ticket. And so I went.

I was completely unprepared for the absolute surge in creative energy that accompanied that decision. I mean, I have most of my gear already, and I only really need to refresh the perishables each year (food, water, hand sanitizer, baby wipes, TP, condoms and vinyl gloves, AA batteries...) but for some reason the planning for this year just went FWOOM to my head. I ended up making a new shade structure - the first time I've ever invested in such significant infrastructure. And then I surprised myself by blowing through my mending pile. And starting some new sewing projects. (And then I jammed the serger the night before I was going to leave and didn't finish the wearable one, but oh well.)

It was a good Burn. There are several stories that are not mine to tell. And then there was the wedding, and lovely dinners with friends old and new, blues dancing under a sparkling rainbow dome to tango fusion music, running gear for Center Camp's main stage and staying up to watch the sunup. Playing with the gorgeous interactive CNC cut interactive math sculpture in front of the Cafe, stumbling home to beautiful low-key techno in the cool light of morning. I did pyro crew three times during the week - for BurnIt! on Monday, for DandasMan's Chapel burn on... Friday, was it? and then pyro load for the Burn at the Temple of Whollyness.

Sadly that Sunday Temple load was ten hours in a near-constant whiteout, during which I got some junk in my eye. I toughed it out through the remaining eight hours, and then went back to camp to mess with my contact lens... Only to find a 3mm whiteish spot on my eye from the playa that'd gotten under the lens and ground into my cornea. I spent the next several hours at Medical, first getting it washed out, then getting it numbed up proper and dyed with yellowy orange UV reactive dye so that they could say for certain that YEP, I had a corneal abrasion.  When Mike walked me out of Medical I looked over at the giant flames and realized that I'd just missed the burning of the thing I'd toiled on for ten hours. I bawled. Pain, exhaustion, disappointment, panic and grief just sort of overcame me.

Driving home was awful. We waited about ten hours in the Gate line. And all this time my eye hurt, and I was wearing my crappy overcorrected coke-bottle thick old glasses, which shoot my peripheral vision to shit. Even after we got *off* playa it was nerve wracking. I rolled in about 3 in the morning.

But it was, overall, a good Burn. And things outside of the Burn are going well. I have a tight group of friends to incite new funsies, fun projects on the horizon, and NRE filling my stomach with butterflies.

I'm Getting There.

Here we go

Let me not tell you about my weight. 

I'm not doing it for you, dear readers, and so let me not detail my nutrition plans, my exercise regimen, what I worry about, how I feel about skinny women or my naked body or that asshole who runs Abercrombie and Fitch. Let me not recite numbers of steps, flights of stairs, calories consumed, pounds measured, pounds lifted, minutes of cardio, hours of yoga. Am I being hostile? Perhaps. But mostly tired of watching women of my acquaintance make their weight their sole, life-wasting goal.

Let me say instead how sometimes my new pants are loose, even though I have a suspicion that this might just be a factory defect. Let me tell you how my chataranga has improved, how I can do more than two per cycle, but I still want to work on the push up required to make the multiple flow smoothly together. Let me tell you how my lower back hardly ever hurts anymore, and though I cannot see them, I know that my abdominal muscles are strong enough to pull my pelvis back to a normal tilt. How I can feel with icy clarity (that wows my chiropractor) when my ribheads have come askew and when the tight typist's muscles in my forearm prevent my radius from popping back into place beside my ulna and need a little "external motivation". Let me tell you about how instead I am watching money slip through my fingers like grains of sand and how I am hoping in the end that I will not regret it.

And let me leave you with a little Frida Khalo Marty McConnell, because I feel like it's relevant.

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell:

“Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”
        -Marty McConnell 

My Library Runneth Over: Books on Lacemaking for Reenactors

I realize I've strayed somewhat into squidgy territory here, posting costume content on my personal blog. Oh well, too late now.  I mean, technically, I'm posting about books, not costumes, so maybe it's a fine line?  Whatever.

Renaissance Lace!  It's a Thing.  There are an incredible glut of books on lace out there, but unfortunately there aren't a lot of good ones on Renaissance (meaning roughly between 1500 and 1600) laces. A surprisingly large number of the books out there are basically brag books of rich Victorian collectresses, some with viable historical research, some without, and some containing unverifiable research from sources that've since been lost to time. Unfortunately, since a lot of these are also now out of copyright, there are a bunch of shitty on-demand "publishers" printing illegible scans of the works for cheap - so if you find a copy of Old Italian Lace (vols 1 or 2) online for under $50, don't bother. The text is illegible in most of the book, so much the worse the patterns. (If you find an authentic copy, let me know?)

So here's my top four books on historical - and specifically Renaissance - lace, in ascending order.

A Pictorial Archive of Lace Designs by Carol Belanger Grafton. This one looks lovely, but contains mostly reticella and filet from the 16th century, and then skips over the 17th century nearly completely. And as it says, it's merely an archive of designs - I'm guessing culled from period sources and pattern books from some of the reproduction errors.  Still, here are some beauty shots to whet your whistle.

Reticella

Really fancy Reticella

Filet or possible re-embroidered lace

It's good for getting an idea of what you'd be going for, though not very helpful in getting there.

Next, there's a Dover book, Renaissance Patterns for Lace, Embroidery, and Needlepoint. While this one is genuinely 100% Renaissance, it's again a mixture of Reticella and filet, neither of which I really do.  Still, pretty, and very handy reference for the motifs.

(I just liked the unicorn, quite frankly)

Okay, so now we get in to the stuff you probably haven't seen. These are the two good ones in my collection. 

Small, but mighty.

First off is Elizabethan Lace, by Gillian Dye.  This is a great little book, and unlike any of the others I have, it covers a bunch of different techniques (Reticella, cutworks. bobbin lace, filet/lacis) and even throws in sections on pinking, and lucet and finger-loop braiding. She cites, and shows pictures of, extant laces, and she provides lacemaking patterns for many. Best yet (for me) she also wrote a very good book called "The Beginner's Guide to Bobbin Lace" which came highly recommended by the staff at Lacis in Berkeley. I worked through most of the exercises, and it was actually really easy to follow - and she uses the same scheme instructions in this book.
 If you're going to get one book on lace, this is the one I'd get. Better yet, you can get it (and her two other books on historical bobbin lace trimmings, which are FABULOUS) directly from the publisher.  There is no better way to directly support someone than to pay them direct with as few middlemen as possible.

Totally not joking. This is almost a one-stop-shop.

Just a lovely example, oooh, aaah.

The other "good one" in my collection is another specifically about bobbin lace.

 An Early Lace Workbook is Rosemary Shepherd's contribution to the study of historical lace. Oh how I wish I could get these two ladies in the same room and sharing info!  This is a much bigger book, and rather more thorough, than any of Gillian Dye's historical lace books.  It gives examples from art, discusses working, charting, and giving up on charting existing laces.  Bonus: it talks a lot about some of the gold and silver laces that you see on a lot of the later period gowns, when people realized how much faster it is to make bobbin lace than it is to embroider.  Again, you can also order directly from the publisher. I got mine with a signed bookplate.  Awwww. :)

Check out that extant coif!

We can start moving forward

How's that bricklayin' coming?

How's your engine runnin'?

Is that bridge getting built?

Are your hands getting filled?

Won't you tell me, my brother?

'Cause there are stars - up above.

We can start - moving forward.

                                            - Lost in My Mind, The Head and the Heart

Work happens whenever you have the most full plate imaginable.  At the same time, there is that old saying "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

I'm finally getting to do the things I want at work. And I feel like pushing away the constraints of my traditional model of Calvinist virtue has made -space- for new things.  More on that later. The world is finally filled with opportunity, and opportunity that I can take. All it takes is to let go.

My Library Runneth Over: Books on Victorian Clothing

I have a lot of books.  You're all surprised. The other day I discovered two new books that'd been hitherto unknown to me, and it inspired me to write a bit of a review, since my current pet peeve is the lack of critical and comparative reviewing on self-published works.

(No, I haven't had a chance to clean up and start the next corset yet)

Right, so.  Almost everyone I know has the trio of Dover collections of Victorian photography, so I'll start there.

Alison Gernsheim's collection in Victorian and Edwardian Fashion is a very good overview, as you'd expect from the title. It starts out around 1845, and contains about twice as much academic commentary on the history of Western (and particularly British) dress as it does pictures of it. The book has an amazing variety of styles represented, all neatly labeled with year and studio when available. Additional notes are available at the front of the book.  My quibble with this one is that it contains less about the high-crinoline era than I'd like, and it tends to capture the exceptional - the exceptionally rich or richly dressed, the royals, and people in rather interesting poses - rather than the mundane. It's difficult to critique as a representative sample because of that, and so I think it's a great introduction to the wide variety and novelty in Victorian photography, but not necessarily a good generalized costume reference.

(Also, I totally cracked up when I saw the doll furniture carving guy on The Wire looking at a copy.)

Kristina Harris's Victorian Fashion In America is a good deal more specific, but suffers from the same issues as above. The quest seems to mainly be for novelty, and little attention is paid to the prevailing fashions. I'm also really disappointed that in a book of 88 pages, only 9 pages cover the period of most interest to most American Victorian reenactors, which is to say the Civil War. There's a lot of randomness in there, and again, novelty, but it's also mostly pictures of young and middle aged rich white women and their children.  Hardly a diverse representative sample.

American Victorian Costume in Early Photographs by Priscilla Harris Dalrymple does much, much better. The book is helpfuly divided by decade, and contains a much wider variety of subjects and different economic classes, though again, no really poor people or servants. (I wouldn't expect that of a book of portraits, but hey, I could dream.) There's a bare page or so of description for each decade, which I actually greatly appreciate - it's much better, IMO, to let your eyes tell you what you're seeing first and not let the text lead you down other paths. For example, that picture of the kid in the diagonally buttoning tunic? It's a la Russe, which is to say in the style of a Russian peasant tunic, but if you'd read the caption first you might assume that the applied description was the ultimate one.

As a great companion to these books, I recommend Asa Briggs' Victorian Portrait.  While the photographs reproduced in the book aren't clearly labeled with a year, the book provides a good introduction to the practices of Victorian photography. It's an invaluable introduction to spotting the more posed specimens - theatrical promo photos, staged curio or souvenir photos, fancy dress balls, satirical or comedic photos - and correctly identifying genuine occupational photos, as opposed to those produced as a sort of propaganda campaign glorifying the Industrial Revolution.  It's very meta. There are also some interesting pictures of working poor and laboring servants, which is a nice change.

Next, the acclaimed Who Wore What? by Juanita Leisch.  This is a really good book for anyone just starting in Civil War reenacting, because it covers a rather narrow span of years (1861 to 1865) and breaks down a woman's ensemble into parts. However, it's not always clear where a certain aspect being discussed belongs on the socio-economic scale, and it's also not clear when certain aspects do or do not go together. (Described in a vacuum, you could just assume they were mix-and-match, but they really weren't.)  Still, the line drawings are very clear and helpful, and the book also contains a quick and helpful introduction to historical interpretation (a la The Ruritainian Purple Feathers, if you're familiar with that article). My only problem is that the author takes some very strong proscriptive stands, which I think you could find exceptions to quite easily. It seems that this book was written as a bespoke manual in reaction to some sub-par costuming somewhere.  That said, as a book for dressing an ensemble, this is a great start.

And since I failed to acquire a copy of Dressed for the Photographer at a reasonable price, we'll skip to the newest acquisitions.

The Way They Were: Dressed in 1860-1865's somewhat awkwardly placed semicolon makes me wonder if Donna J. Abraham (of the somewhat eponymous Abraham's Lady sutlery) plans to tackle other subjects in the future. I hope so. The books are a quarto sized, about 150 pages each, with 4 cartes de visite reproduced on most pages. None of the pictures are explicitly dated, but given that the subject matter is very narrowly dated, I can't find fault there. The photos are helpfully grouped by main feature: outerwear, fancy bonnets, fabric types, dress details, accessories, hairstyles. There are sections on children and men, and a very sweet section of group portraits. Very little background information is presented, and I actually prefer this.  By looking at such a large volume of pictures, you get a sense of the trends and styles, taste and sensibilities at work behind the actual garments. You truly begin to understand the generalities of the fashion, and less the specifics as picked out in exceptional portraiture.  This would also be a great reference for ensembles, and as a self-published work it is quite inexpensive.

If I ever decide to shell out $60 for Dressed for the Photographer, I'll update this entry. ;)

World's Dirtiest...?

About two years ago I started collecting vintage and antique gelatin molds. Yeah, this is like, the dorkiest weirdest hobby ever. And what's funny is that until that point, I always hated "old fashioned" jello, because it meant jello full of random slimy fruit that tasted bitter in comparison to the jello it was in, and often clashed flavor-wise to boot.  (I'm thinking of YOU, Mandarin-orange-Blackberry Delight Ring! ::shudder::)

But anyway.  I have a Collection.  And I want to document it in its entirety someday, but for now let me tell you a hilarious story.

I tend to pick up molds when I see something that is either unique, undervalued, or intriguing. I found one online that was all three.

It's a 1 pint mold of thin pressed copper, with a separate soldered-on top boss, and a tin lined interior. The tinning is intact. It was still amazingly cheap, particularly considering both condition and that it's *copper*.  Add to that the interestingly unique shell-like top design, and an outside stamping pattern I hadn't seen before, and I put in a bid without even thinking.

Fancy side stampings and flutings take up the extra diameter in a circular sheet of metal as it's put through the presses. And the Victorians never passed up a chance to make something more decorative. Later, the flutings were no longer required as the sides of the mold were made of two semi-circular pieces of crimped sheet metal soldered together and then soldered to an embossed top.

Many of the crimping designs resemble Gothic church windows, flying buttresses, steeples, and other such highfalutin' architectural concerns.  You can get something of an idea of the manufacturer by matching the side stampings - though I imagine that there was a certain amount of copying from manufacturer to manufacturer, especially as fashions in architecture changed over time.

The shell-top mold arrived from an estate sale in Canada, reeking of smoke. I cleaned it and didn't think much more of it until the other day when I was looking at it out of the corner of my eye while reading an article that touches on the naugty-themed foods sometimes served to private diners.  And then I noticed a... certain resemblance to a particular anatomical part.

I put it aside as my imagination, but then after looking through my research collection, I discovered only one more example of this... ah, motif.  And the top boss, which I shall cease to call "shell" and maybe now call "fountains", is the same.

This one even appears to have the accessory parts rendered so subtly at the base!

So the question then remains: Is this the dirtiest jelly mold in history, or is my mind the dirtiest of all the history dorks?

Getting there

I recently turned 30. I'm trying to reclaim my life from the encroaching burden of work, and kinda winning. I'm sewing a bit more. I'm juggling a billion expectations and duties, and starting to learn where what is real stops and where my reaction begins. I went skiing, backpacking, traveled for work, got rear ended, am planning a huge cultural social event for work, am working with a larger group for an even larger event.  And yet so far the most jarring thing is that after three years of parking in the same downtown Palo Alto garage, I got upgraded, significantly.

As cheesy as it sounds to my own ears, I'm giving myself permission to do what I want, and to say yes to things which I feel are worthwhile. (Like, coincidentally, going to Rocky Horror again... )

Yup. Feeling alright.


Still can't seem to stop buying jelly molds. That's fine though, there'll be a post soon on a hilarious one I bought the other day and only recently figured out what it *was*.

Incipient Birthdayness

I am almost 30.

Honestly, I'm not freaking out about the number, so much as the bizarre mental and emotional changes I've watched other friends encounter as they strike, then pass, that mark.

I do not want to become awful-unfunny-comic-strip Cathy.

I keep telling folks, it's not the age I'm worried about, it's the sudden loss of identity that some of those wrenching changes bring. I remember with acute clarity the last one and I can only hope not to repeat the whiplash portion.

On the other hand, it seems like (oh god please don't let this be jinxing it) a bunch of people are coming to my partyhike this year. I hope it doesn't rain.

Ski Trip 2013

I just got back from the (fourth!) company ski trip.  I think, and I hate to say this, that it peaked last year. (The food and bar were not nearly as good as they had been - though there were some more activities that made up for it.) Though this year the company I kept was fantastic, and unequivocally *actually into me*. It's amazing how much of a difference that makes.

I drank, danced, sang some group karaoke. I got on skis for the first time since 4H Snow Camp in like... I kept saying 1998 but I think it might have actually been 1996 or 1997.  The equipment is totally different than it used to be - skis aren't pointy at the tips anymore!  And they turn a *lot* easier, holy cow. I actually did pretty well on the big wide open, not too steep parts. As long as I was going slowly enough that I felt like I was in control, I managed to be reasonably comfortable.  I think it's speed that screws me up; I start getting scared, and turning into the hill to slow down too much, which tires me out, which makes turning harder, which scares me more.  I *did* start to lose control on my right leg by lunchtime, but I had a lovely post-lunch session going down the mountain with Mike.

Today it was raining down in the valley, so we slept in and skipped the cross-country skiing. Bummer. Then in the shuffle to get on the bus early (though we did sign up for the 2pm one after all) we skipped the custom cupcake place, and the yearly tradition of the Belgian waffles.  Somehow, the Sunday is the most tiring day of all, bleh.

I did get some sewing done on the bus. Just need to stitch the armholes on the Regency corset - which probably will no longer fit me since I made it like... two years ago now?

A Pinterest Manifesto

I feel like I need to spout about this.

I am more acquainted with the operating principles of Pinterest than most people. And I understand that for many, this is a source of creative inspiration and delight.

So here's the thing. I refuse to follow boards that talk about food, or beauty.  Maybe this is touchy of me, but the food ones either make me hungry, and then guilty for feeling hungry, or make me wistful for the things I should not eat, and then guilty that I don't cook enough, and THEN I also feel bad about allowing food this power over me.  Yes, I'm in therapy. No, it's not touching this just yet. And this is to say nothing of the many websites out there pushing their own soapbox agendas: Gluten is evil, soybeans are evil, meat is murder, fishing is ruining the planet, agave is a killer, stevia is an a

Beauty is sort of the same. While I admire a lot of the creativity out there, collecting tips on beauty for me is tantamount to stapling pictures of other people to my psyche. I will never figure out how to have perfect hair or nails, or skin, or legs, or whatever, and I feel like Pinterest in many ways begins a whole new and considerably more dangerous grassroots and DIY realm of perfection-seeking objectification.  And again, this is to say nothing of the folks pushing their own beauty remedies (for all else, so much like Sir Kenelem Digby and Sir Hugh Platt that I just HAVE to laugh) - face cream made of almond oil and toothpaste? Cold cream made from coconut oil and avocado? I give you all your leave to try it, but I've done my reading and I know that sometimes an industrial process isn't a bad thing when we're talking beauty treatments.

Anyway, if you're a Pinterest friend of mine, and you see me slowly defriending you, it's nothing personal, it's just a sanity-related choice.

I realize that when I feel like I have a two-page Facebook status, I'm going to migrate it to an actual, you know, BLOG.

Fantastic wedding of two friends, one of whom I've known since high school (and miraculously kept in touch with). And by "miraculously" I mean, "possibly infected him with this 'dancing' thing, which means I get to see him at Dickens".  The wedding was beautiful, and I got to see tons of people I knew and catch up. I mean there were like maybe twenty people there who I didn't already know - We're talking Draggin' Bytes, UCSC, Renaissance Faire, Dickens Fair, and Belmont House - all wrapped up into one long scrawling social network.  There was dancing, oh there was dancing!  And I got to see a lovely gentleman all dressed up in a gorgeous new tuxedo - and take him home.

Today is cleanup, because I was literally frantic trying to figure out how to get my hair to do the thing I wanted it to do - I spent an hour trying to figure out some way to mousse, curl, gel, or pin it, and in the end I got something *close* to the roll effect I wanted, so I just piled lots of other stuff on top and nobody could tell. So today I sort things back to where they ought to go, put the many items of dry cleaning into the dry-cleaner bag, and so on.

All at once

For weeks, things have been painfully stagnant, slow, and painful at work. I've been waiting waiting waiting and every question has had a one or two-week latency.

Today things began to move. And by move, I mean quickly. At 4pm I got an email introduction, at 7pm I was on a new team list.

I am both thrilled and terrified by the velocity of the change.

No sewing news to report, but let me tell you, I haven't really been idle. (It only feels that way because the progress is less visible.) (Besides, if there was sewing progress, I'd go post about it on the other blog!)

I took two boxes worth of books down to a used bookshop. $78 in store credit later, they handed me back a whole freakin' box. I'll sort through most of them and pick over any that might have some sort of textile interest, but the rest are going to Goodwill.

Honestly Mr. Stephenson, if you would just write portable length books, I think more people would read them. The Kindle is a godsend in that regard - I tore through Quicksilver without thinking about it, and now I'm on to The Confusion.

The Big Three-Oh

And here I sit, still trying to figure out how to bid my twenties farewell in style.

A friend of mine is a chef, who does sort of a bespoke dining experience - but that would limit it to 12 people, and while I know I have at least six who'd appreciate that level of cuisine, I wouldn't want to limit my BIG GIANT BIRTHDAY to 6, or even 12 people.  Great idea - but for some other time I think.

I have a bunch of friends who're Makers. But they all make different stuff.

I also have a bunch of friends who are students, poor, underemployed, unemployed, or just plain ol' cheapskates. So that takes a lot of the "admission required" items off the table: go-karting, mini golf, theme parks, etc.  It also also means that a lot of folks won't come if it's not within a certain distance of their houses.

I love museums. Only a relatively small subset of my friends do.  Dancing?

Well, yes, but everyone's into rather varied things when they're not doing their stints at Fezziwigs.

Hiking? I've done it a bit. It works out alright. You have the issue of people being at different fitness levels, of people coming under or completely un-prepared,

And then I also realized - I haven't had much in the way of birthdays lately. Why am I trying so hard when I know most of the people won't show?

I really just need to make this about me. For once.

Notes on Books for Reenactors: Victorian

I started writing this for a friend, and it got to the point where I was writing at such length I figured I might as well share it all.  Here's a peek into my collection of books for reenactment - these are only books that I might bring along, not my favorite research tomes. (Though as primary sources, they're pretty good!)  This set is for Victorian/Dickens Fair - meaning sometime after 1855 or so.

Enquire Within Upon Everything (the good, period-looking facsimile): 1978 reprint of a British 1856 original 0-214-20575-4 (Comes in this hilariously 1970s-Williamsburg-nostalgic hard sleeve, which is kinda handy actually.)

Contains recipes, hints on speech and grammar, first aid and medicine, household cleaning, card games, gardening, descriptions of the latest technologies on display at the Crystal Palace.

Including the Tempest Prognosticator (AKA Leech Barometer)!

 Makes a great bathroom book as the sections are interesting, short, and generally randomly distributed throughout the book (though the index is very very good).

Beeton's Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book: 1984 reprint of the British 1865 edition ISBN 0-8317-6176-8 (Gallery Press)

A nice, enlarged edition (meaning readable without a magnifying glass) in a nice red binding suitable for display at reenactment sites. (Only two pages that give away its status as a reprint!)  Contains housekeeping instructions in the front, and alphabetized list of recipes in the middle, color plates at the end. (Also has period advertisements in the end papers!)

Desserts... oooo.

Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management: 1982/1985 reprint of the British 1861 edition (end papers unclear on which edition is reproduced here) ISBN 0-907486-18-5 (Chancellor Press)

A really big, readable version of the book, grouped by subject matter instead of alphabetized. Bound in a sadly modern plasticized cover. (This was the one I wrapped in brown paper.) Beautiful color endpapers including a picture of Mrs. Beeton.

A portrait of the lady herself!

 Housekeeping instructions in the front, recipes in the middle, Bills of Fare, followed by instructions on the hiring of servants, their duties, some misc receipts for cleaning aids (blacking, grate-cleaner, &c.), home medicine, and then home lawyering.

The following three books are from the Cookbook Collector's Library: all really quite nice reprints of American books, but none of them have ISBNs that I can find. It looks like CCL may have either become "Favorite Recipes Press" or been a side project of theirs in the late 1950s through 1970s. FRP appears to be a vanity publisher now. Huh. Perhaps I'll enquire.

Housekeeping in Old Virgina: 1965 reprint (my copy is marked "Cookbook Collector's Library" on the spine, but Favorite Recipes Press on the inside) of the American 1879 edition

 

Red boards with gold-ish stamped decoration. Completely re-typeset in reasonably period but much more legible serif font.  If you search Google Books for this, you get to see the scanned magazine adverts for this collector's library as a subscription service. It seems like a lot of people bought, and then decided they didn't like this book, because there are TONS of them on the market on Bookfinder. The recipes were apparently collected from a bunch of housewives, making this the original Ladies' Club Cookbook. Recipes are divided into sections, and there's a section on cooking for sick folks, housekeeping and cleaning, and paints and dyes.


Dr. Chase's Recipes or Information for Everybody: 1970 reprint of the American 1866 edition, (if you look on Bookfinder.com there are a HUGE number of variants of this book out there).

 Period size (small), period style binding (green with gold embossing), period end paper advertisements (beautiful), but it is so painstakingly faithful a copy that the pages appear dingy from discoloration of the original, and you can see where something rubbed up against and stained the edge of the book, and thus this mark appears on the edge of the repro. Kinda amazing.
Contains a section on home beverage production (both alcoholic and non-) in a section called "The Saloon", medical advice, then information on various crafts: leatherworking (tanning, shoemaking, harnessmaking), painting (which seems to be all manner of decorative stains, etchings, and various house-furnishing operations), blacksmithing, tinning, gunsmithing, a short "jeweler's section", a farrier's section (various veterinary advice), cabinetmaking, barber's department, baker/cooking department, a long miscellany, a section on coloring, and two interest calculating tables and a glossary.
Not sure how much faith I'd put in the food recipes, since this guy was clearly not a cook in the main, and one of his recipes is for "Apple Pie Which Is Digestible".

Ladies' Indispensable Assistant: 1971 reprint of the American 1852 original.

Contains home medicine information including a section on medicinal plants and herbs, then some cooking recipes, a section on cooking for sick people, a section on various fun handicrafts (Berlin work, making slippers, beading, wire baskets, etc), a section on dyes and dying, etiquette for ladies and gentlemen, a section on beauty (mostly fashion, some cosmetics), then, of all things, a short chapter on keeping Canary-birds. Looks rather like something you'd send your daughter off with into the frontier.





So, speaking of books for the frontier, an extra one that I didn't have on hand at Dickens:
The Prairie Traveler: 1993 reprint of the original 1859 edition by Applewood Books. ISBN 978-0-918222-89-3

Brown paper wrapper, which might be period? The back cover unfortunately is undeniably modern, but I suppose you could glue another piece of brown paper over it.
I actually picked this one up at the Smithsonian Museum of American History at the end of a whirlwind business trip. If you ever played Oregon Trail as a kid, especially if you played the weirdly expanded version 2 in the early 1990's, you'll recognize a lot of the content in this book. While it's different from other books I mention in that is has no recipes, it does have a bunch of camp medicine info, plus valuable suggestions for outfitting wagon trains, the best time of year to leave, camp furniture, quicksand, stampedes, Indians, tents, and hunting.

Holidays are over

I'm not going to lie, it's a little distressing to dump out all that angst and know for a fact that people aren't reading.

Ahwell. It's 12:05am, my RSA token is dead, and the holiday break is over.

We made the trek out to visit the folks, gifts were given, RGB LEDs were geeked out over, steak was eaten, and then we drove home. Less than 6 hours spent all in all and it worked out pretty well, I think. Everyone seemed pretty happy with their presents, and I got to regift the atomic hotsauce that I got at the New Year's Eve party to someone who will truly appreciate it (my little brother).
My loot? Another Zoid Camelbak to replace the one I got in like 2003. (The new versions are pretty sweet, really.) A yoga mat, an industrial strength soldering gun, both of which I asked for, and a pile of candy.  I think my dad was really confused by my request for a "vintage vanity set" so I ended up with some insanely expensive... manicure cream and nail file set.  That's fine, just means I get to pick a nice celluloid one out for myself.

And now to bed!