Some Progress

I've made a little progress on the Killer Craft List (of DOOOOOM) and I thought I'd share what happened.

The kid got her Spanish Gown from the underthings out on time. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it worked out. I made a chemise with the giant hanging Spanish sleeves and a square neck. I learned the weight of the sleeves will pull that neck right off the shoulders no matter what and I'm going back to the portraits to see if there's something I can do to fix that.

The corset was a gift from a friend and I wound up buying a hoop skirt from a bridal store because I was out of time to mess with it. That changed the shape of the skirt in a way I hadn't wanted and pushed the time period from 1490's to 1560's. So instead of making the skirt and bodice all one and pretty unique, I just whipped up a regular separate Elizabethan over-skirt and turned an old dance vest into a square-necked bodice. The over-skirt had been most of a velvet Norman bliaunt that a friend had given me last year and the dance vest had been a gift from a few years back. I used leftover trim from another project for the neck and made the under-skirt out of some terrifying black stretch velvet that had been a gift also. The hat was one I had bought for myself years ago and never liked how it fit me. It fits the shape of her head much better. I'm rather proud of the fact that the only money I spent on this project was the hoops. Everything else came out of the stash and that makes the room just that much cleaner.

The kid and I have put in our money and gotten onto the list. We'll be going to Gulf Wars this year with one of my girlfriends from the acting troupe. Lots of estrogen on this excursion. We'll spend a week living in a tent together with no contact with the outside world. It's going to be very interesting, possibly in the Chinese sense of the word.

That being said, we don't have enough washable (and mud-able) period clothing to get us both through the week at the moment. I'm going to keep working away on the craft list and I'll probably see what of my old stuff I can make over for her as well. Emergency clothing always seems to come up when I least expect it.

If I can find a good looking photo of the new stuff I'll put it up here for you at some point. Right now I think the ones I have don't show the clothing well.

Self: Absorbsion, Entitlement, Adoration...Annoyance

I'm going to indulge in a shameless fit of hypocrisy. I'm going to use this forum, which few if anyone besides myself are (is?) aware of, to complain about a person who is currently complaining about me. The reason I feel no shame about this is because the complainer is my teen-aged daughter and I've been able to hear her complaints about me for well over an hour now. I'm sure the neighbors have heard it all as well.It's sheer hypocrisy of course because there's no way a person who can't hear the charges can defend themselves. Of course, she can't hear them when I'm telling them to her face.

Obviously, every parent of every teenager ever born has to deal with "You never let me do anything!!!" along with the associated slamming of doors and heavy sulks. Until I had a teen I didn't know that 'heavy sulks' could actually be felt. I've walked into them in my own home now and been convinced they're a form of emotional spider web. She manages to give a depth and breadth to sullen I haven't personally felt since my younger sister moved out. The few times I've slipped and called her by her aunt's name haven't helped I'm sure.

The door slamming itself might not be so bad, if she'd keep her fit inside the room. Instead, she gets on the phone with whichever one of her cronies she's not currently fighting with (aka her BFF!) and maligns me as loudly as possible for as long as her voice or her listeners' ear holds out. So far the max has been 3 hours, but I think she only gave up then when her phone ran out of battery. Sadly for me, since she has constant fights with all her friends, she gets to recount her story multiple times in one week. By the end of the list I'm 70ft tall with fangs, and I've never let her out in the sun since the day she was born, and I eat babies.

Sometimes, in a fit of outrage, she'll send really nasty texts to everyone on her contacts list informing them that she's had it with living here, she just can't handle it, etc. This produces instant results with worried parents calling me having found these things on their kids' phones or my own parents racing over to the house. What normally happens then is yet another visit from CPS or the school counselor, yet another round of "so where is she going to therapy?" questions, and in the end everyone except the teen figuring out that this is yet another time she's cried "wolf!" None of this registers as excessive to her of course. No matter how much help she's been given it's never enough and there's just never quite enough attention to satisfy her. The difference between good and bad attention never enters into it.

I love my daughter and I have every hope that she'll grow up to an intelligent, useful, generous member of society. Some days I have to sit on the floor in my closet telling myself that over and over, but I truly believe it. One day, when she is a mother of a teen, I will do what my mother is doing now. I'll come over when they need me, I'll always try to have an encouraging or distracting thing to say and I'll call once a week to make sure everyone is still alive.

I can't wait.

Some Progress

So, a report on the Craft List o'Doom!

First up: A Black and Blue (and Grey) Jayne hat!

While said critter may look complete, I'm still unsure about the trustworthiness of that pom-pom. I think I may just sew the thing down before I release it into the wild.

Next: Kaitlyn's Candlemas Outfit!

I've got the chemise finished except for the hemming and the fancy work on the collar. The bodice is ready for eyelets and trim and the skirts, both hoop and outer, have yet to be cut out. I still need to go buy boning for the hoops anyway and I'm very temped to just go to a wedding supply place and purchase one due to the tight schedule.

Last but not least: The Gold Elizabethan hat!

It still needs bling, but since the last time you saw it was as a pile of parts I thought you might like to see how far it's come.

Craft List 2011

Often for New Years we make really silly resolutions such as "I'll jog 5 miles everyday!" when we hardly get off the couch on a regular basis or "I'll cut all the sugar out of my diet!" as we start another batch of cookies. I'll admit, I've done both of those in my time and like most unreasonable things they didn't work out. Many times I get so frustrated with my lack of success that I react in a childish way, stuffing my face with fats or sleeping until noon just because things didn't work the way I wanted. This year may be a little different though.One of my friends was joking around with me and made the comment that I should make a list of all the unfinished craft projects I have laying around and then finish them. I laughed and blew it off at the time, but the thought stuck with me.

From that old urge to start the New Year right and a random comment from my friend, I've created this list of UFO's floating around my house. Currently my goal is too just finish them. A very few of them have actual hard deadlines, so I feel I can take my time and enjoy the hobbies I've chosen to learn. I'll also be able to prioritize things better when I can see what needs to be done, so they won't get swallowed up in school work and other stressers. This is supposed to be fun, not a death march, but I'd like to have this whole list cleared by the end of year.

With all the best intentions in mind, I often still fall short of my goals. So I give myself permission to take it slow, or stop altogether if need be. In that case the item must be reduced to component parts or given to someone else who will finish it as soon as possible since I have a limited amount of space and tools. I give you, the reader, permission to randomly poke me and ask about the status of a project if you feel it hasn't been attended to recently enough.

If you're curious, anywhere I have 'materials' listed it doesn't mean I haven't bought the stuff yet, it just means I don't have enough on hand.

• Charles Hat- needs a pom-pom and shipping
• Kai Black/Grey Armwarmers- needs pattern, correct yarn
• Kaitlyn Gambeson- needs quilted, edged and closed
• Kaitlyn 1490 Spanish Gown- needs fitted, hooped, trimmed and closed
• Kaitlyn Purple/White Italian Ren- needs trimmed, hemmed and eyelets
• Kaitlyn Red fringe Dance Belt- needs bells, more fringe
• Kaitlyn Gold/ Blue Doublet- needs fitted, tabs, buttons (lots)
• Kaitlyn Purple fuzzy Armwarmers-needs re-mathed and finished
• Kaitlyn Green Persian Coat- needs fitted, lined, hemmed, closures
• Kaitlyn Black Persian Pants- needs cut-out, assembled
• Kaitlyn White Persian Shirt- needs cut-out, assembled
• Kaitlyn Breastplate- needs fitted, rivets reset, back plates removed, new straps
• Pink/Brown Starfish- needs more arms and belly
• Black/Red Choli -needs sleeves, front panel, trim
• Patchwork Choli- needs cut-out and assembled
• Gold Turkish Coat- needs to be taken-apart, refitted, re-assembled
• Blue/White Velvet Burgundian- needs fitted and assembled
• Blue wool scarf- finish
• Red lace Hat- check pattern, frog or finish
• Blue Tudor Gown and Kirtle- needs more material, cut out, assembled, hemmed, trimmed, closed
• Blue Sweater- check pattern, frog or finish
• Green Saxon Braid Sweater- frog or finish
• Red/White/Blue Stripe Scarf- frog or finish
• Blue Stripe Sock- frog or finish
• Grey Stripe Sock- finish # 2
• Fluffy Grey/ Rainbow Scarf- check pattern, frog and fix
• Blue Cotton Bikini- needs strap and assembled
• Black/Blue/Grey Stocking Cap- check pattern and finish
• Breastplate- needs bottom cut/curled, get help
• Metal Vambraces- needs pattern, materials, strapping/buckles
• Helm/Knees- needs rust removed and restrapped, look into plating
• Spinning Wheel- needs head fixed in place, drive belts
• Storage Chest- needs drawer repaired, top drawers waxed
• Desk- needs leather top cleaned/sealed
• Elizabethan Necklaces- needs pattern, pearls
• Black Velvet Hat- needs cut-out, assembled, trimmed
• Gold Brocade Hat- needs bling and feather
• Trailer Curtains- needs cut-out, assembled and hung
• Trailer Cabinets- needs materials, installation
• Trailer Walls- needs materials, paint, insulation, assembly

Dead Week

The week between Christmas and New Year's is always a strange one. We rush into the holidays so fast and then we sit around and stare at each other when the big day is over. Personally, I like to take the medieval point of view. This is a Holiday Season and isn't over until Twelfth Night in January. I plan to leave the tree and all the holiday-fu up, eat stuff that is delicious (and therefore bad for me), and hand people random gifts during this time. I plan to visit as many at-homes as I can and see all the family who can tolerate me or vice versa. I'm going to take advantage of the post-holiday lethargy to sleep in and enjoy my life again in the simple times.

Plus, I figure if I extend the time I might actually get all the Christmas cards out for a change!

Enjoy your Dead Week!

At The Turning Of The Year

Isn't it magical what a little bit of darkness can do? It gets dark this time of year so much earlier, and in the dark things happen that we don't often see in the light. We get sleepy earlier, the noises in an empty house become louder and scarier, and Deep Thoughts happen more often. Personally, I suspect this is why they changed the calender to make this time of year the New Year.

Deep Thoughts are those 3 three am thoughts, the ones you have when you're past tired and into contemplative. Maybe it's just you alone or maybe you're with one or two of your friends. You've been talking but the talk has dwindled, little by little to comfortable silences and you stare into the sky or the fire or some other light source and you think. These dark thoughts are all shaped by a light source of some kind too, streaming away in the night.

When you get right down to it, these Deep Thoughts are really pretty basic stuff. We think about God, chew over all the might-be's and wonderings. We think about Love, and our place in the giving and receiving. We think about the Past, all the stuff we might have done or maybe shouldn't have done and we think about the Future with whatever possibilities we can see. There in the dark, we contemplate Time, Space, and Matter with all the skill we can. All our best navel-gazing happens in the dark.

So here at the turn of another year I wish these things for you.

• Love of yourself- so you will never undervalue who you are or what you've accomplished.
• Love of others - so you never undervalue others either
• Clarity - so you can see the road ahead of you with open eyes
• Warmth - so you can face that road without undue stress
• and Light - Hope for your New Year and all your many years to come!

Merry Christmas and A Very Happy New Year to you all!

Two Pulls and a Pass

As expected, school has gobbled up all my free time and a large portion of my brain. However, I feel that I owe you, my random reader, something a little more then the recent blankness I've left here. To that end I give you three separate books reviews, one of which is actually a text I've been reading for school.

Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery is a really interesting book with several authors. This fairly weighty book was written by Terry Jones, Robert Yeager, Terry Dolan, Alan Fletcher, and Juliette Dor. While having that many different authors can make for a book that jumps around a little in literary style, whoever the editor was did an excellent job on smoothing most of the rough edges off.

To quote from the book jacket "...Chaucer was celebrated as his country's finest living poet, rhetorician and scholar:the pre-eminent intellectual superstar of his time. We have a great deal of information about his life. And yet nothing at all is known of his death." The book goes on to advance the theory that perhaps Chaucer was murdered, or if he himself wasn't killed, perhaps his reputation was. The lack of information about his death and about his manuscripts (or lack thereof) is explored and discussed very throughly. Chaucer's political and religious run-ins with Archbishop Thomas Arundel and other notable figures of the period and his dodging of heresy charges due to his development of the English language as a respected means of communication are covered in depth.

While the book and its dedicated authors never really answer their own question of 'How did Chaucer die?' they have put forth a huge amount of effort to give the reader as much information about the time, place, and players as they can. This book is an excellent read for history majors, fans of mysteries, and other inquisitive sorts. Be warned that there is no solid ending though so if that frustrates you, skip it.

The End of Days: A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny, And The Expulsion Of The Jews From Spain by Erna Paris is also a very good book, although not in the same style at all. One of the more frustrating things for me in my field of study is that I was born and raised in a former colony of England. That makes it very hard to find good books, in English, written about Spain. Most of my contemporaries know about conquistadors and Columbus, but not much else about the exceptional history of Spain. That's one of the reasons I prize this book aside from the copious end-of-chapter notes.

"Celts, Romans, Visigoths, and Moors;pagans, Christians, Jews and Muslims. It was a rich, multicultural stew that bubbled and simmered over the Iberian Peninsula for more then a thousand years producing a unique, pluralistic society...That Spain was, for centuries, the most tolerant nation in Europe, and subsequently became the most zealously intolerant, is the heart of this book." Ms. Paris uses written records of the time and lots of research to reveal how people in Spain at one point lived side by side in relative friendliness until the combined pressure of changing politics and religion pushed them to a breaking point. She points out the similarities between the circumstances in Spain at the time, late 19th and early 20th century France and Germany, and many of the current issues facing the world now. I firmly believe that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it badly and this book in its final chapters points out some fairly scary parallels in the fight of Church vs. State that the Spanish Crown then and the current governments of the world face now.

I strongly recommend this book to people with a little time to chew it over. It does use many excerpts from period sources, although thankfully they've all been modernized in spelling and punctuation to make an easier read. If you're interested in how people failed at segregation in the past, this book will have you fully engaged. It's not a casual read, but it's worth it.

Now for the book I can not recommend to anyone although I have been forced by my history professor to read it. The Stripping of The Altars by Eamon Duffy starts out with a really interesting hypothesis, and totally fails to back it up in a way anyone could stand to read.He states firmly his “conviction that the Reformation as actually experienced by ordinary people was not an uncomplicated imaginative liberation...but...a great cultural hiatus, which dug a ditch...between the English people and their past.”[xiv, Duffy]. He is of the opinion that the Protestant Reformation was not an anticipated event, looked for by reformers and people all over Europe, but rather something sort of awful that ruined a way of life forever and prevents us from ever knowing what it was like beforehand. While it is true that many great things were lost, the sheer number of examples that Mr. Duffy can provide us proves that it's clearly not gone forever.

He goes on,and on, and on some more, for 593 pages. Most of them are filled with lists of things that actually survived The Reformation and the some of which even survived the Puritan Interregnum of the English Civil War. He talks about the medieval Catholic Church in England and its centrality to every day life. However, his insistence that The Protestant Reformation wasn't welcomed or wanted practically anywhere outside of Court rings false as does his repeated statements that all of the 'traditional' religion was lost forever by force. I've stated before that I don't care for massive lists in books, but this one really does feel like the author is trying to salvage a weak argument by throwing up smoke-screens of stuff.

I think that while many things changed in England and the world, they weren't all lost. Some of them, like pictures of Mary holding the baby Jesus, became a symbol used only during parts of the year. Others are issues kept alive by vigorous debate and questioning even now, like Transubstitution and Purgatory. The painted saints images and stained glass are gone and are a great loss to the history of England, but I maintain that the sheer amount of evidence that Duffy was able to find to write his book counteracts his claim of “a great cultural hiatus”. In short, pass on this book unless you're really having trouble sleeping. It's become my favorite non-prescription sleep aid this semester and I look forward to the end of year so I can finally quit reading it.

Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery, Dolan, Terry; Dor, Juliette; Fletcher, Alan; Jones, Terry;Yeager, Robert

2003 St. Martins Press, New York, NY

ISBN 0-312-33587-3

The End of Days: A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny, And The Expulsion Of The Jews From Spain , Paris, Erna

1995 Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY

ISBN 1-57392-017-7

The Stripping of The Altars , Duffy, Eamon

1992, Yale University

ISBN 978-0-300-10828-6