This....is gonna be a long one. Way back in the summer of 2019 my mom and I took a long weekend to travel to LA. The main reason for our trip was to visit the Getty Center, but we stopped by the fashion district as well....and dropped some money. I ended up purchasing 8 yards [...]
Category: SCA
Opus Bag of Doom
Wow. I disappeared there. Like, seriously. I don't even have an excuse this time--my internship ended in January (I actually managed to finish rehousing the 500+ pieces in the core collection by myself with FOUR DAYS TO SPARE [the other intern left early because she got a permanent position, so I was flying solo for [...]
Tiny Human and the Sleeves of Doom
Ok. Where were we. March-ish? Right, well in the intervening time I have: finished all my classwork for my master's, done all of the research AND written up my dissertation, gotten a job (ok, internship, but paid), moved countries (again), and packed most of my reenactment kit into a box that I will see again [...]
Zen and the art of not messing up counted thread embroidery
The most common thing I hear when talking to people about my counted thread embroidery obsession is "I can't do that, there's too much counting and looking at charts". And they do have a point-- if you are a person who hates looking up from your work, finding your place in a chart, and looking down again, counted thread might drive you a bit mad. But, there are a number of tricks you can use to make the whole process easier.
Ask me anything
A while back there was a trend on social media with people saying "I've been re-enacting since 1976"/"I'm a Laurel and a Pelican in the SCA"/"I'm King of Whatever" ASK ME ANYTHING. And people did, and there were some interesting questions and just as interesting answers. Now I have not been re-enacting since 1976 (I [...]
Costuming in the time of Covid
(Roughly equivalent to Love in the time of Cholera but with less death, steamboats, and letter-writing) (Yes I have not read that book in years, and yes, those are apparently the details my brain has retained) Hi everyone. It's been a while. There is a lot going on in the world. I've had a rough [...]
Designing for Heat (again)
Ok we are backing up even further on the Designing for Heat wagon here because I realized I skipped a lot of what I consider to be the essential beginning steps last time! Here we go again. ~~Note that as always this is informed by my personal experiences, your mileage may vary~~ My goals: to [...]
Designing for Heat
Hopefully some of you remember the Avoiding Heatstroke Dress from a while back, which was intentionally designed and built to keep one (1) tiny human who is bad at homeostasis from developing heatstroke at events in the 95-105 ºF range. It was....moderately successful, I survived June Crown 2018 but Purgatorio 2019 killed me. It [...]
Hip hip…vivat?
Drachenwald Crown Tourney has come and gone, actually more than a week ago? I did kind of massively overdo things that weekend and spent most of the week recovering. But! I went! I did finish my fitted gown in time, thank god, because it was chilly. Going up the spiral staircase to the dormitories in [...]
WOOL. SO MUCH WOOL.
I've wanted for a while to make a lower-status 14th C dress. As I've continued to read and learn I discovered that the fitted dress+deep-cut surcote we think of as being quintessentially 14th C was actually only worn at the end of the 14th and early 15th and primarily by upper-status women. Inspired by a [...]
Not Another Costuming Blog 