you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

Aren't these hats absolutely nifty? I wish I could knit like that, but the only one I think I might be able to do is the Monmouth Cap (and that's because I found several other patterns for it elsewhere on the web.) I feel so unskilled.

I got impatient with my farthingale this morning, mostly because I think I am going to have to take out the straw rings and put something more reliable in, so I decided to start draping the bodice of my dress, because I shouldn't need an accurate sense of how the skirt will fall for that, should I? I want to do a doublet-style bodice, because a) They look much nicer than the standard low-cut kind, b) I've already made several "Renn-Faire" Elizabethan bodices, and c)women's doublets were semi-controversial in the 16th century, because they were men's clothing, and this makes the project more interesting!* I haven't decided whether to do the doublet + shirt + separate skirt/kirtle version or the doublet + attached or at least matching skirt + sleeves. I'm kind of leaning towards the latter, because all of the paintings of the former kind have lots of poofs and bows and decoration that I'm not sure I could do at all.

I managed to download Phillip Stubbes' Anatomie of Abuses to get the exact passage, which I transcribe here (I don't know how to get the s that looks like an f (does anyone know how to make this character? It looks all wrong when I change it to regular s), so I have to change it -- sadly, no Stan Freberg joke here):

Philo. The women also there haue dublets & Ierkins, as men haue heer, buttoned vp the brest, nd made with wings, welts, and pinions on the shoulder points, as mans apparel is for all the world; & though this be a kinde of attire appropriate onely to man, yet they blush not to wear it; and if they could as wel chaunge their sex, & put on th ekinde of man, as they can weare apparel assigned onely to man, I think they would as verely become men indeed, as no they degenerat from godly, sober women, in wearing this wanton lewd kinde of attire, proper onely to man.

It is written in the 22 of deuteronomie, that what man so euer weareth woman's apparel is accursed, and what woman weareth mans apparel is accursed also. Now, whether they be within the bands and lymits of that cursse, let them see to it them selves. Our Apparell was giuen vs as a signe distinctiue to discern betwixt sex and sex, & therefore one to weare the Apparel of another sex is to participate with the same, and to adulterate the verities of his owne kinde. Wherefore these Women may not improperly be called Hermaphroditi, that is, Monsters of bothe kindes, half women, half men.

Spud. I neuer read nor heard of any people, except drunken with Cyrces cups or poysoned with the exorcisms of Medea, that fmaous and renouned Sorceresse, that euer woulde weare suche kinde o attire as it is not onely stinking before the face of God, offensiue to man, but also painteth out to the whole world the venereous inclination of their corrup conuersation.


I mean with a recommendation like that, who wouldn't want to make one?

Hee! Stubbes is incredibly subtle: his pamphlet is entirely about that fictional country Aligna… I don't think I'll have time to read the whole thing, but the bits I am finding are quite funny.

I am feeling quite strange right now. I suppose I should either go practice or start trying to trick iDVD again. (I thought I had fooled it, but it caught on: the computer appears to be cleverer than I am.)

Today, I put the bottom two hoops in my farthingale. It was unbelievable how often the best laid plans of mice and men went awry during the process. I am telling myself that they only get smaller as I go, and I must get better and binding ~1 foot straws into several yard multi-strand bundles so that I can shove them through casings and not have them collapse, but I am not sure. I pinned it onto my dress-form so I could actually manipulate the "bents" properly, but I didn't do it with any concern for how it should actually hang; I hope that this is why it is collapsing in on itself instead of standing out completely. As it is quite full even so, I suspect I made it too wide. At the moment, I am not at all sure that it will support a skirt, even if I end up having enough cloth to make one full enough, but we shall see -- probably not until next year, at this rate.

I read King of Attolia today -- I got it from the library. I couldn't resist raiding the discards for sale corner: the Norton Critical Ed. of selected Canterbury Tales, "6 Restoration Dramas," a stupid-looking JV fiction novel about a girl who goes back in time to fall in love with Edward VI who, according to the back cover, "turns out to be kind of cute." I'm not sure why I have an affinity with this kind of thing. I also grabbed a paperback Wolves of Willoughby Chase partly because I read Joan Aiken's books when they were out of print, so I have an instinct to grab them whenever I see them. And then I found that I didn't have any change, so I ended up only paying 60 cents, although I owed more like 1.50. I always seem to find a lot of books I want to buy when I don't have the money, but I never am able to give them up. "I'll put money in next time," I have said several times, now, but have I? I really should make an effort, I suppose.

So. King of Attolia. I really like this series. Very much. And it isn't just because it fills a big gap where there should be more fantasy set in a vaguely classical era. That is, it isn't fantasy so much as ahistorical fiction. It annoys me that they have guns, though. I wish they didn't, even though they were slightly necessary to the plot of this one. I know they have been annoying you, voglia_di_notte, ever since Gen married the queen, and so this one will probably continue to annoy you. I liked it, but then, for some reason I didn't really have a problem with them getting married.

I find that I don't want to write too much, because the more I think about it, so little happens, in one sense, in this book, that to say anything would be to spoil it. At the end, everything seemed rather pointless: the wide-reaching political intrigue was there, at the borders, threatening to break into the story (and leaving much room for sequels -- I KNOW she is going to get sequels out of this) but in the end… something totally different turned out to be the focus. In one sense, this is a Book in Which Not Much Happens. But, I sort of like books that have a fantastical/historical setting but do not involve issues at the level of the country (Jackaroo is another rare exception to this pattern), if not the entire world. Obviously, with a title like "King of Attolia," this book does involve issues that are pretty big, but its ultimate concern turns out to be smaller. One of the really neat things here, is that the story is not narrated by Gen, or the queen, but mostly by Costis, a relatively nobody and clueless soldier of the Queen's Guard. This means we get an interesting worm's eye perspective on not just events but characters. Meghan Whalen Turner has had two books to build up Gen and Irene as interesting, severly flawed, passionate people, and now we see them as… something completely different. Costis's perceptions spoke quite a bit to my own ideas about, well, various things, and I would like to write more, but, again, I think it would spoil the book.

Also, I wish I got spam like Chaucer's