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?