The dress is c. 1886, allowing for the fact that I designed it and am willing to dance about by a few years for the sake of theatrical ‘look’.  1886 is my baseline, because what I am doing is costuming Jekyll & Hyde.  In fact, the script direction I believe states 1888, but that is because I suspect the people who wrote the play didn’t actually read the book or, if they did, still chose to base the show off of a John Barrymore film from 1920, which was perhaps even more relevantly re-made for television in 1980.  These scripts, unlike the original novel, have girls in them.

Interestingly, the book was scripted for the stage as early as 1887, but looks to have been much closer to the book, and thus of little interest to a modern audience, who would like to have at least one pretty girl to look at.  Also they (Victorian women, that is) are more fun to dress, so it is much to my benefit that these films were the basis for the musical, even if it means they got the dates wrong.  And yes, these are the kind of things that I either know or automatically go find out as soon as I see a date that strikes me as odd, is it any wonder it takes me so long to accomplish anything?  And also I don’t get invited out much?  (Kidding. I wouldn’t go anyway.)

Anyway.  That dress, which now looks like this: (click to embiggen)

is for Jekyll’s girlfriend Emma, who is rich and fancy and hence gets all the tailored and simple-looking stuff.  Personally I am looking forward to the hookers, although Emma’s wedding dress will also be fun.  For the first time, I begin to understand what was going through the designer’s mind when that garish monstrosity that was Lucy’s wedding dress in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was conceived.  Although Emma’s will look nothing like that, I promise.  Oh, and that is a bonnet on the top, there.

As far as how I do this stuff – yes, Kate, I mostly drape.  I’ve had dress-forms available to me since I started doing serious costuming back in high school, and I love draping because the hands-on and the literal creation of the shapes before one’s very eyes are to me incredibly cool.  In fact, the incredible coolness of making wild and complicated shapes happen out of things which often used to be old sheets is pretty much why I do this stuff.  I’ve been doing it for a very long time, and so actually I find I can now do most of the draping in my head and then go draw the shapes on paper somewhere, and I am actually doing that more for this show in the interests of having paper record and actual extant patterns when I’m done – but it isn’t as much fun as just throwing stuff at a dress-form and watching it become.

I am even doing workup sketches, in order to prove (to no-one in particular) that yes, I really meant it like that.

It is a front closure, but the real closure is hidden beneath that front panel, the buttons are all fakes although some of them conceal hooks that hold the panel in place.  Under the panel is one of those nifty corset-closure metal button thingies.  There will also be (when I feel like boring myself that much) a lot of little hooks or possibly for the sake of dressers snaps, which hold the train of the bodice in place over the train of the skirt, which is only pretty in the front because it has the bodice drape to cover it.  This is, as anybody who isn’t bored rigid by now knows, also ‘period’, and damned convenient when trying to save money for stage as well.  There are going to be a lot of bedsheets in this show.

Also for this show I am building the bustles into the underskirts, instead of actually making the poor actresses wear constructions of steel and lace, as I have done in the past.  This is kind of a pain and also more expensive than just liberating steel strapping from a lumberyard, but it will make the costumes more re-usable without the theatre having to store awkward hardware.  Unless the dry-cleaners melt them, which is a possibility as I don’t completely trust dry-cleaners who are faced with something weird.  But frankly, that is not my problem right now.

Anything else I have done so far is pretty boring, although I do have a coat for Hyde that is showing potential.  And yesterday I started working on a dress for the Other Woman, Lucy, which will be Really Very Different from Emma’s stuff, so as soon as it looks like something other than a bedsheet tied to a pile of quilt batting, I will show you that too.  Ok, maybe I will also give you the bedsheet-and-batting, but I didn’t take a picture of it last night, so not yet.

Oh, one other thing – you can, as that picture only sort of shows, knit and felt a decent looking bowler hat.

But what I really wanted to say is, I feel great.  I feel like a naked alpaca with the breeze on my skin.  I spent six hours today in a really – intense, there is no other word – cutting session.  Having said that, I should mention for the sake of all the people who will now be misdirected by search engines that I mean cutting  fabric, not subcultural blood-letting.  Interesting as that may be, I’m only going to talk about costuming.  Sorry.

I am working on a dress for Jekyll & Hyde and it is somewhat complicated because that is the way I drew it on Saturday when I was doing sketches, and I got it all plotted out and all the pieces cut and rather a lot of assembly done, and I’ve had a lot of coffee and only a little sleep and it’s all going so amazingly well that I had to stop and dance on the front porch for a while to burn off energy.  It is good to feel this good.  It is good to remember that I can feel this good.

See, I’m shooting here for something that looks light and breezy, something that looks simple even though it isn’t remotely.  Also it would be nice if the actress can get into it quickly and be something like comfortable because she’s got to wear it for a couple of scenes.  All of this so far seems to be working.  I’m speculating whether I can accomplish anything more today before the “no sewing after midnight” rule kicks in.  It’s iffy, all the straightforward stuff is out of the way.

I’m still pretty wired though, and haven’t got much in the way of a functioning vocabulary.  So I’m just gonna leave you with another alpaca because tell me this picture isn’t simply awesome:

Yep.

What the heck is this about? I have been trying to figure it out for ages, and while I have formulated some theories I don’t know if any are correct. Or maybe they all are. I know that my finished object to WIP ratio is bizarrely low, because I am the poster child for process orientation and I have the attention span of a small rodent when it comes to repeating any action or process that I thouroughly understand. I do have a boatload of guilt about the number of UFOs I have – but why? I don’t need these things, I only needed to figure them out. Which I have done.

It’s not as if I spend a lot of money on my crafts either. I build a lot of my own tools, I make do with salvaged or broken items. I work with found objects, and an exhaustive study of my crafting history would demonstrate that since I learned to sew at the age of five I have been moving further and ever further backward, always pursuing and fascinated by the step that comes before the thing I already know how to do.  At this point, the natural conclusion of my life should be that when I die I will be placed in an elaborate coffin of my own construction, hand carved by me and painted in hand ground pigments (egg based, naturally) and lined with hand spun, hand woven and naturally dyed wool.  In a perfect world said coffin would be burned on a pyre of wood cut from a tree I planted, while my friends danced around drinking beer and mead that I brewed.  It will be fun; you should come.  If I have enough warning, I will make paper and print invitations.  There will be door prizes.

Now, in the course of posting this, WordPress has managed to lose the latter half of it, and I have really no idea what I said.  I know the point was, that I would like to stop feeling bad about the things that make me feel good.  This is, after all, my life.  I know that I am never going to make any “significant” mark on the world, but that is ok because nothing I have ever done or ever wanted to do is particularly “significant” so that is not a problem for me.

Does anyone else experience this?  What, if anything, do you do about it if so?  Please, discuss.  In the meantime, I’ll get started on those invitations, as soon as I make Raven a frock coat, which I am going to start as soon as this collage is out of the way, and I will be finishing that right after I dye the yarn that I am currently carding wool for the spinning of.  Unless I just throw in the towel and go knit something.



So I started a shawl. Cast on seven stitches, started increasing on the ends and at the centre with some vague idea of stripes and perhaps a bit of lace. But not too much lace because what I’m actually going for is warm and practical rather than pretty. Also easy, because k2tog were giving me some trouble during the sock attempt. (yes, that is pathetic.)

By the way, I saw my x-rays yesterday. Holy hardware store, batman! I for some reason thought that medical screws were tiny, specially made items which would be carefully and delicately inserted by precision instruments. I was mistaken. Apparently they just sterilize a couple of wood screws and dive on in there with a Robertson. (that is the square headed one, which was invented by a Canadian and we like it.) anyway, no wonder my scar is so big, it looks like they were building a deck in there or something! /aside

So I’m knitting. At some point quite early on the stripes were abandoned as I began to consider cables. The lace went out the door at this point also. But just sticking in cables seemed kind of gratuitous, since let’s be honest, it only came up because I think cabling is neat.

And then Raven wandered by wearing the dressing gown I made with twining snakes appliquéd all over it and I thought “ooh, I could make the cables into snakes! Then I could have a matching shawl, sort of!” So that is what I am doing. It may be ghastly, I don’t know. I can’t really see it without taking it off the needles, which sounds like work, and there is no pattern, I have just randomly started making snakes as I go along. But I am knitting!

I have a vitally important reason for attempting this though… I have received new information regarding my broken arm.  I’ve been saying all along that the responsible sheep (who I am pretty sure was Chloe, but what do I know, I was lying on the ground waiting for the pieces of the world to re-assemble) was innocent; that it was an accident rather than a malicious attack.  Now, however, the truth has been revealed – my sheep was under the malevolent mind-control of my (thus) brand-new arch-nemesis Dani, crafty podcaster and villain extraordinaire.

Yes, in traditional arch-villainous fashion, Dani has admitted to her nefarious scheme.  Unfortunately the whole thing was retroactive, so I was unable to take advantage of her speechifying to dodge the sheep and save my own arse.  Or in this case, arm.  We may still need a little work perfecting this nemesis thing.  However!  Now I know to be on the lookout.  It is clearly my duty, as well as my new means of procrastinating getting anything real done, to keep my eye on this girl.  Society must be warned about her underhanded attempts to take over (or at least over-analyse) the crafting world, not to mention future attempts on my own well-being.  Or possibly I could just remember to take my pills and damp down this paranoia – but where’s the fun in that?

If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about right now – well, I’m not going to try and explain it here, you’ll just have to go listen to the Craft Culture podcast and try to figure it out.  But be warned!  She will try to charm you with her approachable personality, her so-familiar to so many of us artsy instability, her multiple projects on the go, her many talents… Don’t be deceived!  She is a charming, talented, crazy Monster! Beware!

Speaking of monsters, last monday was the final day of Workin’ Mom In The Sweatshop, and it all went very well.  See, I was working on this show.  Moliere.  Two one-acts, in fact.  Planning to be done on March 31.  (Which I totally would have been, by the way, even CK admits it, and she always mocks my sewing-in-the-car-on-the-way-to-the-event tendencies).  And then, the arm.  Ever tried to costume a show single-handedly, as it were?  I mean, I do it all the time in the euphemistic sense, but literally?  Not happening.  Even if I hadn’t been ricocheting between Horrible Pain and Stoned on Percoset, it was not going to happen.  So to my very great relief (because I was going to have to ask her and hated to do so) CK offered to step in and finish the sewing.  Followed a week of crazy back-breaking (unfortunately a little too actually back-hurting in CK’s case) work, but we did it.  And we didn’t even fight.  Yes, we had some lively debates about the horrors that pass for embellishment in the 17th century, but that’s just because they’re ugly.

So here’s a quick taste – I have a lot of photos but haven’t actually looked at all of them yet, so only a couple today.  And I’m going to just post them and cut this off abruptly, because it has just come to my attention that I cannot actually type this much yet.  So enjoy the pretty pictures – I’m going to go crack a Guinness and mutter at Dani under my breath.

One last note, and then I am seriously diving for that Guinness – that last gingham dress was 100% Clare Kilpatrick.  I had a notional idea of where I wanted to go with it, but had done nothing at all about it, and when I showed up the following day (and by “showed up” I mean called and said “mommy can I have a ride now” because nobody will let me drive yet), there it was.  In case there was anybody left anywhere who doubted that I come by my crazy fibre tendencies honestly.

Edit: ok I checked ‘em out on a real monitor and I still like ‘em! Yeah!

So this morning I tripped and fell  (there was a sheep involved, but I am not sure who, or what exactly happened).  I was just rather suddenly on the ground with a broken arm.  I have broken “two or three” chips off my Radial Long String Of Medical Terms, and they are floating and twisting around and it HURTS and tomorrow I have surgery because apparently I can’t even break an arm like a normal person.

And I will tell you more after surgery, but how the heck do all you hunt-and-peck types do this?  It’s taken forever to write this little bit, and it turns out the letters have worn off some of my keys.

Fortunately I was able to hum “I need a hero” ad nausiam while making this one, which helped lighten the mood considerably:

You’ll have to use your imagination a bit; I don’t have a photo on the actor.  Super hero costumes have a universally terrible hangar-life, they really need a body.  The actor had a pretty good body too, I hope I’ll get a picture someday.  That is Super-Duper-Ultra-Guy, who is rumored to be saving the day at various locations in the Windsor area.  Keep an eye out.

There has been knitting.  I made some yoga socks (?)  I dunno about yoga, but they are legwarmers with stirrups, is what they are.  And they are warm.

That is handspun from a while ago.  I still like it.

I also made (am making actually, one down and pushing to get the other done  by month’s end) socks – “Knits Inebriated” by Emma’s Daughter Designs:

This is a good elastic pattern with a simple, effective design, and it turns out that I am making them for Raven, because he said “that is a nice sock… who’s it for?” which he never says.  Probably this has something to do with my propensity for making socks that are yellow, pink and/or green.  Although he doesn’t steal the socks I made from Blackie’s wool, so maybe this really is just a guy-attractive pattern.  Take note for xmas, I guess!

They’re striped discreetly like that because I got the wool at the Salvation Army, two skeins in brown and grey with enough for one sock each.  So there you go.

And my current favorite of the knitted FOs, I have knitted a hat.

See?  Knitted, really.

Hat love.  I had no idea why I was making it except that I had to, but then Jeff needs a fop who will be conveniently garish in pink, mauve and silver, so I gave it to him for the show.  I’ve been otherwise spending my time churning out fops for this play, but haven’t bothered to take pictures yet because they’re all waiting to be trimmed and hemmed and such.  So that will be next.

Animals continue well, except that they all say they will starve to death RIGHT NOW if I don’t go top up the stores, so I’m off in the rain to buy everybody-chow.  I leave you with a cuddly little tiny puppy,  and her teddy bear:

This year we’ve had such a mild winter (sorry, East Coast!) that I haven’t been tempted at all, and was perfectly willing to let the seasons change as they would, without interference from me.  But, I was moving some dirt tonight, and the inevitable Helping Hen found… worms!  Quite close to the surface too.  So there’s no help for it, it must be spring.  Crazy – we haven’t even run out of wood, yet!

Pupdate – Ulster doesn’t live here any more.  Ulster was killing chickens, and although he felt quite bad about it after, he wouldn’t stop.  Since the whole reason Ulster lived here at all was to prevent someone else from killing chickens, that just wasn’t going to work.  So he has moved in, at least for a while, with CK and The Ed.  And their other five hundred dogs and cats.

Ulster had not been gone twenty minutes when I walked in on this:

Funny, I didn’t think I was the one keeping the dogs off the furniture.  On the other hand, I was enjoying the lack of destruction.  Oh well.  Does anybody else have this problem where the thing that you do is “make nice stuff” and your whole life and acquaintance seem specifically arranged to “make stuff dirty and broken”?  I get upset about this, I’m not kidding.  I hate so much living in and around junky ripped-up furniture or whatever, but if I fix it, it will just be junky ripped-up stuff that I spent a lot of time and effort on.  I’m not sure which is more depressing.  Oh well, at least the puppy is cute.

Honestly, I love that picture.  I think we should blow it up and hang it over the couch.

Speaking of cute, you will no doubt have noticed that there are lambs.  Freyja’s two, born yesterday morning, are both ewes.  Freyja had no problems, and gave me just enough warning that I was able to be there and watch the whole process, from clearing a little nest with her hooves to lambing.  I had put down fresh bedding, but apparently it was not good enough.  What do I know, I’ve never had lambs.

Vellum watched too.

Chloe and Solly were more polite, and took Dash (yes, we went with Dashing the WonderLamb) outside.  I ran out of battery power, and thus have some really gross and exciting pictures on my cell phone.

The babies are adorable.  It turns out, apparently if you mix a white sheep with a blackface sheep, you just get polka-dot sheep, it isn’t only Chloe.  The youngest literally has white ears with black dots on them.  She looks more like Freyja, the older favors Vellum.

This is big sister:

And here is the baby:

That’s at about ten hours old.  As you can see, they are not as camera-shy as previous lambs have been.  Probably they get that from their father, as well.

That’s what I kept getting when I was trying to take pictures of the babies.

The older twin is the leader, and I swear, at less than ten hours on this earth I was already saying “you’re just like your mother”.  She was the first one to find and want to play with Dashing

(The pink is pepto-bismol, Chloe really did have a tummyache).  Chloe is good with Freyja’s lambs, she just kind of nudges them away, and she baby-talks to them the same as she does Dashing.  I love sheep baby-talk.

Apparently Freja and Chloe have both decided that Solly will be a good baby-sitter.  I’m not sure whether they asked Solly or told him, but they both left him watching the lambs today while they went to grab a quick bite to eat and some alone time.

Today I woke up. Then I went to sleep and woke up again. I had a pee. Mommy says I’m doing everything just right. She says I’m smart.

I had milk, too. I really like milk. And sleep. And waking up.

Day Two:

Last night I got half the barn to sleep in, except Mommy stayed with me. She said I needed that much room in case I grew, but I didn’t.

This morning I am learning how to be a sheep, which is what Mommy says we are. She knows everything. This is a picture of Mommy, isn’t she beautiful?

That is our favorite sunny spot.

Sometimes Sheep go Over There Really Quickly. We have to do it all at the same time. I don’t know why yet. I think it has something to do with chickens. There are a lot of chickens. Mommy says don’t worry about it unless they are eating, but I don’t know how you tell. I didn’t see any milk.

Sometimes other things happen like Wheelbarrows. If it was up to me we would run then too, but it isn’t. There is a lot to remember.

Day Three:

Mommy had a tummyache today. Bucket Lady said Mommy had too much corn but Mommy said no. Bucket Lady is dumb. I stayed by Mommy and licked her. When Mommy licked me it felt good, so that will help.

Freyja had a tummyache too she said, but then she started acting really strange.

I don’t think Sheep should do that. Mommy took me to the sunny spot for a nap. Now there are more Sheep! I don’t know where they came from. They are dumb, they don’t know anything. They don’t even know about the sunny spot! Mommy and Freyja said I can teach them how to be Sheep.

They have little coats. I had a little coat when I was a baby but then I lay down in a puddle so now I don’t.

Here is a picture of Everybody Except Solly Who Was Over There. That is Vellum. Bucket Lady says he is “Daddy”. I don’t know what that means. Mommy says sometimes the lady doesn’t make any sense but she has treats. That didn’t make any sense either.