Autumn Zebra

As I was walking home, I saw a very helpful spray-painted message on the pavement - apparently there was an orc somewhere about! That way in fact! The same direction I was going! I feared for my life, but still needed to get home. I looked for the orc down the hill where the next arrow pointed, but saw only bush. I was not attacked by any orcs on the way home, nor saw any other sign of them. Note: the phrase most commonly abbreviated to ORC around here would be the Otago Regional Council, but I didn't see them down there either. I heard they were looking for new headquarters, but a small stream-bed seems less than ideal.

Primarily for 1820-1890. Books Everyday Dress 1650-1900 Elizabeth Ewing The Victorians and Edwardians at Work John Hannavy Fabric of Society - A Century of People and Their Clothes 1770-1870 Jane Tozer & Sarah Levitt Working Class Costume from Sketches of Characters William Johnstone White 1818 Working Dress: A History of Occupational Clothing Diana De Marly Museums with some relevant online stuff Manchester Galleries Collection search Manchester Galleries " Collection Themes " includes a "Clothes for Work" section The Museum of English Rural Life has a lot about smock-frocks, sun-bonnets and the Women's Land Army and a little about other things - Collection Search People's Collection Wales Collections (use "Discover" box to search or look through the pre-made collections) has a lot of prints of Welsh 19th Century people, and a few photos of extant clothing. They may or may not be working class, but they look like "normal people...

So, I bought the full set of 18 Golden Hands books. They're craft and sewing magazines that have been collated into books I think, and are copyrighted 1968-1972 or thereabouts. I had got volumes 8 and 9 and decided to get more so that I could make the clothes and stuff, and if I was going to get a few more I might as well get them all. The have sewing, knitting, crochet, embroidery and lots of "lace arts" - tatting, needle lace, bobbin lace, macrame - basically anything using a long piece of fibre and twisting it up into pretty patterns. They have pretty good instructions for things, as well as free-er, less hand-holding sections where they more just provide inspiration. I thought I'd go through all the sewing and some of the other clothes and make myself a wardrobe of outfits 60's-70's style. Of course, it is mainly the fabrics that make these things appropriate for those decades, otherwise they're pretty classic styles. Compared to modern sewing instruct...

Today is the first day of spring because a giant bumble bee flew in our window, and it is the first one I have seen this seasonal rotation. It flew in the window and I though it must be some giant alien insect come to kill me it was so noisy, but it turned out to not be that after all. Now, the giant bumble bees, especially those flying around at the start of spring, are the QUEENS. They have to lay the eggs, collect the food and raise the "children" all on their lonesome until the first little larvae turn into big grown-up bees and start helping out around the house. So, please don't kill them and please rescue them if they get stuck. I like all bumble bees, but I don't mind so much what your response is to a small one later in the season, but wiping out a potential nest in one blow is a bit harsh. Another thing is to not leave blue containers out where they can collect water as the bumble bees will fly in and drown themselves, being attracted to the blue. What if yo...

This here is my favourite dress, generally referred to as the orange dress. It is based on a drawing of a Victorian chemise, and this is where the neckline comes from in particular, but the ruffle I added myself. A chemise of the time would be white linen or cotton most likely. I like to wear it over some kind of top and some tights, and is more-or-less my ideal outfit as I have discovered I don't really like trousers that much., but this still keeps you warm. I am making some stays and had wanted to finish them to wear to Gwri's work dinner, but we had thought the dinner was on Saturday and when we discovered it was really on Friday I didn't have enough time. But on Thursday evening I had enough time to modify the pattern for the orange dress and make this new dress, all in 3.5 hours. I shortened the orange dress, widened the straps, shortened the upper back, widened the skirt very slightly and added a different kind of ruffle - the ruffle is actually twice as long at the...

At work, I decided I wanted fancy tea, so went through the building, briefly outside, and then into the organic food shop. I'm wearing my paint splatter effect tights, nearly-knee-high very expensive brown leather boots, orange dress with the purple striped top underneath, and a red and blue tartan cloak (so I figure I don't fit in anywhere). (They are my favourite clothes.) I ended up doing some very expensive grocery shopping, getting only 5 teabags as I am trying the dandelion and burdock flavour, no-salt NZ peanut butter made from Aussie peanuts, organic yellow yams (oca, from South America), organic cha soba (green tea noodles) and spicy blue-corn chips. I have some crackers at work that I might try some peanut butter on as I work late this evening. The soba luckily have a little recipe on the back for an appropriate soba sauce, which I might make, and somehow I will cook the yams and mix them with salady things I got from the Farmer's market last weekend, and that...

This is part one of a two part post, but unlike other series of posts, this one might actually get past the first one, because the item in question is nearly finished, and I like it even if everyone else will probably think it's ridiculous. Currently, I am using the word "smock" to designate any garments of a particular basic type. One of the very common forms that clothing has taken, through time and in various parts of the world, is this "smock". For the basic pattern, the front and back are made of rectangles (with a shoulder seam or one continuous piece of fabric), obviously with some kind of hole for the head, triangular pieces are added at the sides to widen it, and rectangular pieces for sleeves. Underarm gussets may or may not be added, and additional triangles might be added to the centre front and centre back to widen it further. Variations can be made by having tapered sleeves, or sleeves that start rectangle and change to tapering around the elbow. T...

Some time ago, was Gwri's birthday. We were going to Christchurch to see his parents around his birthday, and they were coming to Dunedin after that, so we thought we should have the birthday dinner when they were here -I think that's how it went. But, I think one should always do something on your actual birthday, so I bought a giant muffin and lit a big red candle for his "actual birthday" birthday cake, and we had tea with the teapot and milk jug and everything. There isn't a really good photo cos it was kind of dark, so I can't really post one. Then, when his parents were here, we had a proper birthday dinner. I made crowns for everyone to wear out of some of my favourite fabrics. They're like paper hats from Christmas crackers, but made of fabric. They're all lined, interfaced, and machine sewn except for the join at the back which is hand-whip-stitched closed. Everyone had the option to keep their crown, and some people did. The one at the front...

Well, we are now past the winter solstice and midwinter two-times-over as both celebrations have occurred - the dance party in the bush kind of one, and the parade and fireworks in town kind of one. It's a bizarre kind of celebration because although it does start getting lighter again, it also tends to get colder and winter proper tends to occur after the solstice. Maybe it works differently in the Northern Hemisphere somehow, or maybe it is fairly irrelevant in our world of electric lighting, and before that was around the increasing light made everybody significantly more chirpy even though it was more cold. Some pictures of the "leftovers" of the party in the bush event, which occurred closer to the solstice itself. No description of the events, merely what is leftover, the only remainder aside from memories. Our masks: Spent glow bracelets in the dark:

I don't know why I call this the Russian Steppe Dress, I just do. I don't think it has anything to do with Russians or anything. I made it a while ago. I got the linen off trademe, and it had a nice weight to it, somewhat heavy, and has a nice natural colour, with the embroidery and black band along one edge, and it seemed peasanty, and the heavy nature of the linen made me think of wearing it in somewhat colder places. I had to do a dirndl type skirt (rectangle made into cylinder and gathered at the top, although I pleated it) in order to have the hem of the skirt straight so as to use the border as it was. I used the length of the fabric for the skirt, cutting it lengthwise to use some for the sleeves and bodice. I made my own block for a dartless bodice. I obviously wanted to get the whole dress out of the same fabric, but was designing the dress after getting the fabric and although I thought I could fit it all on, it didn't quite fit and so the back is a different line...

Last weekend they took down a stationary crane that had been working on a building for the last year. This meant of course that they needed another big crane to do so. I stood around in the cold for one hour in order to take these pictures, so you'd better appreciate them! (interesting note: from my observations, I can tell you that crane dismantling spectatorship is an activity practised equally by men and women) These first pics make our city look like it might be bigger, grittier and more generally city-like than it actually is. Note that it was actually about 11AM when I took these, not, say, dawn or dusk or any time that is supposed to be particularly dark. This is the crane doing all the work. Handily it has written on it that it has a 72m main boom, so there you go. It also says it has 32m HYD tilt - but I don't know what that bit means... So the boom of the stationary crane is being supported by the truck-crane, and this guy and his colleague appeared to be using a gia...

Since Christmas was about 6 months ago now, I thought maybe I should get round to posting something about it. I made lots of presents for people. I made my brother a hoodie, but like everything I make it turned out way too big; it was supposed to be over-sized, but it ended up huge. I haven't seen him wear it :( I pretty much copied the pattern from one of G's hoodies, just took the measurements and made the pattern. We made a zip-front hoodie in the industrial sewing class I made, so I know the general idea how to make one, and I copied the little triangle of ribbing from the commercial one - I quite like that feature, it adds stretch at the neck so you don't damage that section messing with the hood etc. I'm pretty sure I used tape on the shoulder seams, and maybe the hood-neck seam, to stop stretching . How to use tape on shoulder seams: get some non-stretchy woven tape and cut to correct shoulder seam length. Pin it to/lay it on (as per your normal sewing practise) ...

We eat a lot of strange food. I had this realisation a couple of weeks ago, when I suddenly saw our meal from an outside perspective. Along with making a lot of recipes from outside our culture, I also make a lot of stuff up. Here's a random side dish I made a while ago - chop parsnip into chip-sized pieces, and "sweet bread" (eg. this was raisin and malt loaf) into stamp or domino sized pieces and fry in butter, adding sesame seeds and a sprinkling of salt part way through. I pretty much like anything related to bread or fried/roasted food, so this is all good. With oil instead of butter, it would be healthy. If your definition of healthy includes a bit of butter now and then, then it's healthy already. I like taking pictures of the stuff I cook, because it is another interesting creative exercise of planning and putting things together, so I might post some more interesting recipes. Also, if you can afford it, you should get a titanium non-stick frying pan like...

Part 1 of this skirt is here . I actually finished this ages ago but didn't post it. This is the kind of skirt that strangers comment on. Since it doesn't look that awesome in the photos, I assume it looks a lot better when it's on, probably when moving. The orange fabric is quite thin and light, so it doesn't end up weighing too much. People, adults and children, seem to find it worrying that it drags on the ground when I go down stairs or slopes, but I mainly only mind when I'm trying to go up and I keep stepping on it, and it's hard to hold up because even if you hold it up in one or two places, there is still enough skirt to get in the way down by one's feet. Finished skirt, with one side tucked into waist-band: Both sides held up: Small details - the skirt is hemmed by sewing a strip of fabric onto the hem-edge, folding it to the back and sewing it down and then sewing a wiggly line around too, for decoration and to hold the strip in place and...

This is what I got this time - 10 SF books, 8 magazines, and 14 non-fiction. There's pictures of the books below the list. The best ones: "Simple Dressmaking" which is in near-perfect condition, and from what I can find on google, appears to have been published 100 years ago - pretty cool. "Smocks and Smocking" which is about smocking but specifically as derived from English smock-frocks rather than just generic smocking with no history. This is the book they couldn't find at the library when I went to get out books on smock-frocks 2-3 weeks ago, so that is an interesting coincidence don't you think? "Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire" which is a biography about the woman played by Keira Knightly in that film recently and lots of people complained that Keira is neither buxom nor sensuous enough to play such a character. David Brin's "The Postman" - I always liked the movie based on it, and David Brin is good. Others: To Your Scatte...

Outside the Farmer's Market today, and a few weeks ago, there was a guy busking - with a drum kit. Which is something I haven't seen before, and looks pretty unusual on the grass lawn, with a few saplings growing nearby, outside the railway station. I took my camera to the market a few times after I saw him the first time, but he wasn't there then, and then I didn't have my camera today. Very unusual. Today, in addition to the crazy drumming, only 50m away we had a bag-piper who may have been busking, or may have been there simply for general ambiance, as they like to have bag-pipers for special occasions and in touristy places (like the railway station). Anyway, bagpipes and drums at most 50m away from each other equals a lot of competing noise... Exciting Farmer's Market purchase today: crab apples.

Near the Farmer's market on Saturday was a woman with a small stall of things apparently made by indigenous Mexican people. I think she was also Mexican herself. There were some fabrics and some jewellery, and also lots of Frida Kahlo postcards and some bags with her on (which hadn't been made by the indigenous people, she just really liked her). They also had these beaded animals where brightly coloured beads are stuck onto a wooden form. For some reason Mexican people like bright colours, whereas in NZ no one particularly likes colours at all... There were wooden turtles where the shell lifted up like a lid so you could put stuff inside and the top of the shell was beaded, which I considered getting as a present for Mum, but I thought they'd be very expensive. Instead I got the first thing I liked, which was a beaded deer, and when I said I wanted to get it, she said "Really?!" and seemed very surprised, and said NZ people didn't buy those ones usually. I th...

The cat caught a cave weta of some type this evening, but I rescued it before it was hurt. Here are some photos; I think it is gorgeous. To start with is the worst photo, but also the most overhead and thus "overview" kind of one. Now, two better ones. It was hard taking photos of it, I couldn't get enough light. I have to work out a better way of taking photos of insects at night (indoors, but I mean there's not enough light for closeups from our lights).

I made this last year, it was going to be part of a Halloween costume of this character in a book I was reading, but I never did the rest of the costume. The shape of the robe is from a 14th century (I think) item of clothing. This is the fabric, and essentially the pattern. It is cut on the fold, just one piece of fabric. The fabric is linen, and was white with the green embroidery, but I dyed it. The headhole and neckline is done like so: the shape sewn below is sewn onto the outside along the lines marked on it, then cut inside the lines and folded to the inside and sewn down. The hem of the "sleeves" is done by sewing a strip of fabric on the right-side, then folding to the inside and sewing it down. I sewed (by hand) a shape of a kind of lacy wool fabric over the shoulders, for decoration, because wool is awesome, and to make the shoulders water resistant to a light shower (the water drops would sit on the surface). The character was a forest dweller of a fantasy past, s...