Random things make a post

[mme_hardy]

•  I am going to this class on making Regency jockey caps; I'm making the heavily-pleated one (in pale blue with bees) at the bottom.  I have cut out and hand-pleated the two main pieces; I've also made a couple of test cockades and may make more if I feel motivated.  My fabric is a lovely navy blue linen-silk blend that's lustrous but not as flashy as satin.
• I just cut a full-blown bloom of my favorite rose, Mme. Isaac Pereire.

Options for today:

• Unpick a dress binding that's just a tiny bit puckery.
• Watch Ep 2 of The Stuarts for mocking purposes.
• Work on fic (The Thick of It wingfic, don't ask).
• Watch The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
• Fiddle with bias fabric and make more cockades.

Non-options for today:

• Obsessively reload pages on Malaysian Airlines crash in Ukraine.

Comments

[recessional]

The Thick of It wingfic, don't ask

This strikes me as just such a quintessentially fannish sentence.

[mme_hardy]

Especially "Don't ask".

[recessional]

YEP. :D

[redstarrobot]

Thank you, I had skimmed passed that bit until you mentioned it. Now I am dying to ask.

[mme_hardy]

the-crazy-geek wrote a PWP that was TTOI wingfic, just because. Then she and themasterplanner worked out a complex social structure and biology for winged human beings, handwaving the usual square-cube problems, and then saying "assuming the physics actually work, what does a society with some winged and some non-winged people look like?" It's still porn now, but with plot.

I stepped in to fill in a bit of backstory, and now I have two other bits of backstory in progress.

On a f*cking wing and a f*cking prayer <= the original series
Indispensable <= my bit

If you're sorry you asked, please don't tell me!

[nineveh_uk]

I am deeply envious of your class! Your choice is gorgeous, though I also like the scarlet one.

It is the tragedy of my life that I live in an era in which the bonnet is not a possible fashion choice in daily life (I have got as close as I could with peaked caps, but they are not the real thing). Bonnets suit me, I look fantastic in them, and this display is forever denied.

[mme_hardy]

Last night as I went to sleep I was seriously contemplating making a mid-Victorian bonnet and wearing it on the street to keep the sun off. Wide-brimmed straw hats don't suit me, and the other preferred local options pare a baseball cap and a bucket hat. Ugh. If I can't be eccentric at 55, when can I be eccentric?

[nineveh_uk]

You can be eccentric! You just need to be brave enough to be eccentric...

As a fellow person who doesn't work well with wide brims, the choice of summer hats these days is very dispiriting. I was lucky enough a couple of years ago to acquire a nice straw one from M&S that has a small brim (cannot remember which sort of costume drama period is vaguely reminiscent of, probably some sort of 20s, but isn't a cloche), that works very nicely for town/city things when I won't need to take it off*, but that leaves all the other occasions, in which I just end up with battered linen lady explorer, and hope that everyone else looks even more crumped.


*My other hat problem is curly hair.

[mme_hardy]

My hat problems are (A) very wavy short hair and (B) round chin with no discernable cheekbones.

[rinue]

What a lovely hat. I think you have chosen the prettiest one, although I also like the square brimmed one quite a lot, and it seems it would do a good job of keeping the sun off (and they're all nice).

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I have a friend whose favourite film is the Bitter Tea of General Yen. This is a random fact brought to you by Lexin.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Somebody recommended it (I think on Tumblr?) last night and I was just in time to record it. Said to be visually lush and somewhat silly.

[that-which.livejournal.com]

Do you crochet? Because there's a pattern book called Austentatious you might enjoy.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I am just barely self-teaching to crochet. Are the patterns actuallly reasonably functional, or do they just have the names of Austen characters tacked on?

[that-which.livejournal.com]

It's not bad. There are a few open-work pieces that have nothing to do with Austen or her period, but there are also some pieces that seem like pretty reasonable adaptations. Some of the patterns are here (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/austentatious-crochet-36-contemporary-designs-from-the-world-of-jane-austen/patterns).

If you're looking for real period stuff, granted from a slightly later period, crochetme.com (an Interweave Knit site) has ebooks of Weldon's Practical Crochet (http://www.interweavestore.com/weldons-practical-crochet-vol-1-series-1-3-vol-2-series-4) from the 1880s. You might also like Piecework (), which is pretty much about historical crafts.

I like this tutorial (http://www.interweavestore.com/crochet-me-workshop-crochet-corner-basics-and-beyond-with-kristin-omdahl-download), FWIW, if you're self-teaching.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Oooh, the spencer pattern is available free! Downloading and will try.

I own several volumes of Weldon's from back when Interweave was still reprinting them instead of re-PDFing them. The bound volumes include pamphlets on leatherworking, ironworking, crepe-paper working -- they're a hoot!

And, yes, I am all about (reading, not generally performing) historical needlework, and am Interweave's slave.