Ermine Spots

This looks interesting...

: lady_guenievre; June 22nd, 2011

Current Mood:: bored

Link parking / sharing:

Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield

Anyone seen/read it?

internet powers, activate!

: lady_guenievre; June 14th, 2011

Originally posted by

kythryne at internet powers, activate!

Okay, people. I need you to take this viral, and fast.

We know someone in upstate New York who needs a good custody lawyer ASAP. I'm not at liberty to go into details publicly, but this woman is very afraid that her abusive boyfriend is going to get sole custody of her young child. She's presently being represented by a public defender who doesn't seem to care about the case, and she has very few resources left at this point. Her next hearing is on Thursday.

If you know a good lawyer in New York State who might be willing to take this case for a low fee or pro bono, or at least offer her advice or support, please let me know. If you don't know anyone, please repost this far and wide. As a mother and an abuse survivor, it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach to contemplate a child being left in the hands of an abuser.

I can be reached at kythryne@gmail.com if you have any leads or want to help.

The internet can work miracles. Let's go.

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A new chapter...

: lady_guenievre; June 3rd, 2011

Current Mood:: determined

“It makes sense that it should happen, this way... as if to say, sure it all matters but in such an unimportant way...”

There’s something appropriate about ending a major chapter of your life just days before your 30th birthday. Two days ago I received notice that, barring a last minute hail-mary of a certain position opening, my last day at my job will be on June 30th. This job is one I’ve held for my entire adult life - 10 and a half years, since I was 19. Not that it has been the same job for that entire time, the company and my position in it changed constantly, in small ways and large, throughout. Still, it was constant, and terribly stable/secure. To be honest, there was a degree of golden handcuffs there in that at many points I was desperately unhappy with my job but did not believe I could find an equivalent.

“...specialization is for insects.”

It’s also terribly funny, and rather flattering, how many of my coworkers are surprised and/or angry on my behalf. I’m not - I’m a generalist, I’ve had to be, as part of a small company. I do a very large number of useful things (not quite to Heinlein’s standards, but more or less the corporate equivalent), but I do not fit in a “corporate niche”, and so they had no idea, really, what to do with me. Things I do are done by at least four or five different departments - and quite honestly I wouldn’t be happy doing any of these things full time.

“Eagle’s calling, and he’s calling your name...”

So this, on first glance, looks like awful timing. I’m 20 weeks pregnant! I’m actually quite happy about it though - I was considering not returning to work after Chase’s birth anyway, so while this changes the timing by some months, it is slightly financially advantageous, or at least neutral, when compared to that. But those few months it gives me of, well, gainful unemployment, are an amazing opportunity. Trying to start a freelance business on the side is a challenge - there are only so many hours in which one is awake and not working, especially when pregnant, and especially when one has a fabulous hobby and responsibilities there. But devoting yourself full time to it? well, if I can’t make THAT succeed, I’m not trying hard enough. (Details of what I’ll be doing will be posted soon, once I have the website up.)

Photo Database

: lady_guenievre; May 27th, 2011

In better news, I had a REALLY good idea. I realized that it’s actually tremendously easy to save photos from the web to iphoto… and once they’re there they can be tagged. SO… can we say “the contents of mandragore.bnf.fr tagged by garment type?” Or… the ability to make a smart album showing, say, images with women’s chaperones from 1400-1430 sorted by country? This is gonna be FUN. It’ll take a long time before it has enough data in it to be useful, and of course I’d never be able to *share* it really, but STILL… given the number of random images scattered across the web, in wikimedia and random museum sites…

So as I add images, I’m tagging garments (with comments on sleeves, collars, hems, and fastenings), headwear, accessories, decade, country, and genders in the picture. The source and folio, etc, are added if I can get them (and mostly I’m not adding things if I can’t). Is there anything I’m overlooking that I’m gonna regret, once I’m 1K images in?

Mirrored from Erminespot.

PPG, Part 2

: lady_guenievre; May 24th, 2011

On to cutting!
::insert montage here::

Well, dress is cut out… gores are sewn together, as is back seam… time to tweak the fit.

Great idea, except for the part where it doesn’t fit at all. Apparently this fabric doesn’t stretch as much as my other pull-over kirtles (which still fit!), thus I can’t actually put it on, so looks like I’ll be moving some gores and it won’t be as tight as I’d like (or I’ll add buttons/lacing). At least I have a bit of extra fabric, so I can add slivers of fabric to the bust/side seams if I have to…

Mirrored from Erminespot.

Pennsic Pregnancy Garb – Dress 1, part 1

: lady_guenievre; May 23rd, 2011

So. 7 months preggers @ Pennsic. I’m probably crazy. But then everyone said I was crazy for wearing the garb I wore at Pennsics past, so my new goal: how not to roast the kid while still looking *reasonably* true to my actual persona. (And before I get the health-and-safety lecture, *I know*. No, really, *I know*. If I have to compromise and find different garb while I’m there, I will, but I’m trying to plan ahead so that I don’t have to. Yes, I will drink water, etc etc etc. < end digression>)

Anyway, so I long ago drank the Koolaid and learned to love layers. As such, all of my garb, basically, requires me to wear an inner dress and an outer dress to look right – if I skip the outer dress I look like a peasant, if I skip the underdress i’m running around with visibly bare arms. This won’t do at ALL. I have one dress which I *can* wear without the undergown, as it has closed sleeves (and it’s even unlined! in other words, it was actually made for Pennsic, though I’ve never been QUITE warm enough to wear it without the supportive layer underneath.)

So, obviously, I need more garb like this. I’m still not thrilled with this, as honestly that’s more closed-sleeve dresses than I want to have, but it’ll work. My first one is going to be based on this dress:
though with a wildly different color scheme, as I found some black/white mini-checked tropical wool I had forgotten I bought. I think I meant to make a GFD with it, as those always look interesting in slightly patterned fabric, but ah well. Unlined and with just a supportive smock underneath, it should be as cool as Roman etc. I have 5 yards of the fabric in question, maybe closer to 5.5 since it’s fabric.com and I ordered 5, so that gives me an extra 15”.

Enter my trusty Visio/analog. (Actually on the Mac I use Conceptdraw, but same idea. Really Visio’s the one piece of software I wish would get ported win->mac, but I digress again.) So here’s the layout:

wpid-whitecheckedgowndagged-seamsleeves-small-2011-05-23-18-14.png For some reason the labels don’t show up, but the purple is the body pieces, light blue is gores, and dark blue is sleeves. I have an existing gown pattern I can impose on the body pieces for shoulder/bust line preliminary fitting.

Only question is what color shall I make the dags, and should I put faux “underdress cuffs” on the bottom of the sleeves? Am leaning towards blue, but will have to see what’s in the stash, and decide how much work I want to put in this. My other one has cut dags, , which is easier in the “I don’t have to hem these” sort of way, but requires a fairly significantly difference in fabric weight between the dress and the dags…

Hmm, I guess I also have to decide whether I need to lace the bust at all – am leaning against, given how scoop necked it is I suspect I can move it out of the way for nursing, but will have to see…

Mirrored from Erminespot.

Tags: sewing

A Theory on Hats (perhaps to be shot down).

: lady_guenievre; May 21st, 2011

So Amy sent me a picture which spawned thought, which I decided to write down before I forgot about it.

I have been known to wear a hood in the men’s chaperone style, which I had seen a few images of, but knew was rare. Still, I figured I had just enough evidence to justify it. However, I realized today that (with one *marginal* exception, that I think may not actually be an exception) unless I want to move my persona WAY north, I don’t actually have justification for it. On the up side, it DOES fill in a mental gap in “how europe north and west of france differed a bit from english/french styles in the early 15th century”.

Anyway, without further ado, Blanche of England – married a german prince, died in austria, had her picture painted on the ceiling (circa 1430):

Look at that hat! It’s like a very elaborate version of a men’s chaperone. And the thing I realized, looking at it, was that every example I could think of with a woman wearing this sort of hat? Netherlands, German, Switzerland, Cleves… somewhere not France. (Thus why it’s technically “right out” for me… though I want Blanche’s outfit.
This one’s netherlandish and from 1425. And I’ve got 2 more in “A Visual History of Costume (The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century” that are also Netherlandish (images 66 and 71, if you have it, I couldn’t find either online). Cynthia Virtue has a redrawing of a Swiss Tapestry that seems to be the same idea (3rd image), though without additional citation.

The only counter example I could find, I suspect is actually a guy – English, 1415 – http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucerreading.jpg – the figure in pink in the bottom right corner.

Anyone want to shoot me down? As I *like* wearing “men’s” hats, they’re easy… but I’m not from the Netherlands…

Mirrored from Erminespot.

Hey look, it's a post!

: lady_guenievre; April 12th, 2011

Yes, I'm posting at dreamwidth. I plan to keep posting at LJ as a crosspost, but I really don't feel like my journal being in the middle of Russian political fu. ::shrug:: 'Course, I let the "paid" portion of the experience lapse ages ago, anyway, so... At this point I'm still reading both and don't really care where you read/comment/etc, so ::shrug:: guess it's kind of a moot point.

So... life... let's see...

Pregnancy Yep, still pregnant, now with even fewer symptoms. Which, honestly, is a bit disconcerting, as at this point I could really just be pudgy - if I hadn't seen the ultrasound I'd be in some serious disbelief. Am really wishing we'd get to the kicking stage. (And I know I'll regret saying that, but for right now...)

House The kitchen is *basically* done (there's a little tile-grout cleanup that needs to happen where we had to regrout a few spots, and there are a few spots that the trim needs a bit of wood putty and paint in the nail holes, and of course there are the curtains, but yeah. Which of course means we're starting on a new project...
Attic conversion! Our house has 3 bedrooms right now, a master on the first floor and 2 upstairs. We use the master as my sewing/craft room, along with some bookcases etc, and (previously) Nick's computer desk (he got rid of the desktop, so it's just a desk / filing area for bills and stuff now). Which means we sleep upstairs in one of the smaller bedrooms - which is really too small for our kingsize bed if one REALLY wants to be honest and the 3rd is the guest room. Needless to say, this is getting shuffled soon. I'd still like to have a guest room - and/or if Podling ever has a sibling it'll need a bedroom - which leads us to start pondering the walk-in attic. It's over the master bedroom, so it's much larger than you would think (we're thinking the finished size will be something like 8.5 x 16 of useable space, with some storage nooks on the edges). And the joists are already built to support it, so the actual work will be significantly easier than the kitchen. (Really, ANYTHING is easier than the kitchen, we definitely jumped in the deep end there.) Maybe we'll even be more prompt about posting pictures. Once that's done, the guest room (with a new floor) gets to be the nursery, and our current room gets to be the guest room. Yay. (Might even move some of the bookcases up. It'll make the sewing room a bit more open.)

SCA
Coronation was lovely, and I'm really looking forward to the Baronial Work Day at the end of the month. (It'll be fun. No, really, painting the list fence is fun! ::end Tom Sawyer Mode::) But really I think I'm focusing on Pennsic right now - there are LOTS of people going, we MIGHT even hit the 40 for 40 target (WINDMASTERS NEEDS YOU! ::end recruiting mode::), and I had (err, stole) the Best Idea Ever for the Baroness's tea.

Baa, Baa, Pennsic meme...

: lady_guenievre; July 29th, 2010

1. Windmasters' Hill Camp, of course. Block N31, next to Ponte Alto.
2. I'll be there Friday night, though it'll be late enough I don't know how much I'll be out-and-about after setting up until Saturday.
3. All SORTS of cool things. I'm teaching two classes (intro to feast cooking and le menagier de paris), I'm going to the St. Michael's Pas, there are lots of parties planned... it's not much of a vacation in that my calendar is full enough that there are several spots I want to be in three places at once. But that's how Pennsic always is.
4. Oh, right - I'm Baronne Guenièvre de Monmarché. That's me in the picture. :)

lady_guenievre

Ermine Spots

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.