Heard back from guy-with-doctorate at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum about the many-units-of-measure sticks they have. Wonder if he'll take me seriously if I say "I want to know how long a Milanese bracchia is, because the Milanese Tailor's Handbook has tent patterns in it, and I want to know how tall an 8 bracchia centerpole is, and how wide fabric that is 0.95 braccia wide is, etc"
I'm also going to ask if the ell-stick has a Castilian ell marked on it.... If that comes out to 33", then okay. But if it's shorter, that would rock too :) Alcega's farthingale pattern....

Hopefully today will be a nice lazy day. Yesterday was way too productive. I cleaned out the gutters on my garage (put the ladder up and climbed on the garage roof, and got everything that way), cleaned out one of the downspouts that was starting to get clogged, did damage with the tree pruner thingey to the branches of the tree from next door that love to drop leaves onto my garage roof and thus into the gutters, cleaned out the last of the gutters on my house, and then raked half of my yard. Today if I'm good, I'll figure out where I can dump the leaves (legally!) so that I can reuse the trash bags for the rest of the yard. Have also determined that I despise maple trees, just because the neighbor with the trees has at least one maple tree that dumps leaves in my yard, and maple leaves don't squish well.

Saturday, I went to Norborough's Newcomer's Event. Got to take all sorts of neat classes, and also spent the majority of class time working on the embroidered coif I started. I need to get another picture to show the progress :) It's little, but it's there.
On the way back home, taking the "scenic" route (ie, state highways and not interstates), I discovered that some of the towns go crazy with Halloween. As in, 2 of the towns we drove through had every single (or so it seemed) policey-car, ambulance and firetruck out and with lights on. I guess to dissuade any creeps from bothering the kids. And trick-or-treating was from 6-8. Meh. Glad I grew up in a time when we got to trick-or-treat after dark and on Halloween.

On Sunday, I got up early. The time change allowed for getting up at 6 and out the door by 7 to mean that I got to leave in daylight. Of course, this also means that for at least the next few weeks, some parts of the drive to work will be with sun in my eyes, but at least I'll be seeing it!! Anyhow... Drove down to Charlotte, NC for the Blackmore's Night concert. The venue was fabulous! It was held in an old, converted Baptist Church, complete with stained glass windows. I think I would have enjoyed seeing that place as a church. The concert was great - the opening act was Albert, from the band "Des Geyers" (must look up their music) - he played several different types of bagpipes, a wooden flute, the Hurdy Gudry, and the ocarina. All well. That was an unexpected treat! The entire concert was well worth the drive, and hopefully next time they come out, I'll be able to hit a concert a little closer to home. Although, by driving all the way out to Charlotte, I was able to see Juliana & Aldemere, Allegranza & her husband, and saw several other people in the audience that I recognized but couldn't name and also Ackbar. Was great fun!!

I had a nice leisurely drive back home today, and got to spend time contemplating how I'm going to manage to get everything done on my house that I want to. It's really a nice exercise in futility, but at some point, I might make a list to help organize things... Heh. But traffic moved well the entire way, and all the cops I passed were already busy, so it made for a good drive :)

I'm curious, and need help collecting data.

There was a comment in some article I read online about the Pfalzgrafin Dorothea bodies and Queen Elizabeth's Effigy bodies fitting different body types differently. I'm wondering if others have noticed.

For what it's worth, here's the measurements off the pattern:
Pfalzgrafin Dorothea:
waist: 20"
chest/bustline: 29"

QE:
waist: 23"
chest/bustline: 33"

The curved front seam is there in pretty much all of the doublets. Even the 6 yr old girl's doublet (though to a much lesser extent than the grown-ups' doublets). Now I want to go back and look at the patterns I have drawn out.
The 1560s - 1570s mens doublets (in PoF, not my patterns) have the same curve, in different proportions. Now I want to redraft patterns to see if that fixes some problems I've had in fittings.

I've discovered that sewing in pockets turns venetians into a sort of moebius strip. Well, not really, because that twist is there only if you screw up, but there it is.
In 6 hours, I managed to, cut out the remaining 2 panels for the venetians (1 panel = right front, etc), baste the outer fabric and interlining on 3 out of 4 panels (1 was already done), sew a bunch of seams, put in 1 pocket the majority of the way (need to stitch the bottom of the pocket so that things don't fall into the venetians).
Left to do is buttons & buttonholes, sew in the lining, 1 pocket, finish other pocket, waistband, hooks & eyes at knees.

It's a pity my little sister came out last week, because this was where I would have been before the weekend if she hadn't been here to be a time-suck.

Hopefully this will be done by KWAR/KWCS, even if it's not worn, because there's supposed to be a matching jerkin with it, but that hasn't been done yet. Or even started

Oh, and there has to be some easier way for ensuring that the lining fabric isn't wonky before tracing the pattern onto it. 3 out of 4 panels were okay and reasonably same-shaped. The 4th, not so much. I'm hoping the not-same-ness will not be noticible when the thing is put together, because otherwise I'll get to re-cut one panel, and undo lots of stitching to put it back in.

I got some awesome eggplant wool and some lightweight blue wool with pinstripes at 1" spacings to make Elizabethan men's clothes from. I need to go back and do some research on the layers I should have, with wool, interlining and such, and I'll probably go ransack one of Drea's books on tailoring suits with the padstitching and such. But this'll be fun.
I also bought some light blue cotton with a print almost the same shade of the cotton to make a round gown from. I also found out a resource for a pattern for the 1790's corset - one of the merchants at New Boston had a 1790s corset that almost fit - it was about 2-4 inches too small around. But hey, pattern almost fits. And in one of the other books, the extant corset had the most curious elastic one the side panels, which may get put into mine (because the one that was made up dug horridly into my waist, and there's no tabs to prevent it from digging in) I'm halfway wondering if the pattern in Corsets and Crinolines is supposed to have elastic in the sides, also, and the pattern was the finished size.

It's now fixed... But my quick Regency petticoat (out of white cotton, as opposed to the navy cotton one I have) didn't quite work out. The "waist" measurement was about 3 inches too big - one inch larger than what I'd measured. The extra two inches taken out helps account for both the stretch of the material and the fact that the ribcage measurement needs to be tight on the petticoat to have it actually fit.
Petticoat needs the hem serged and sewn up the center front. Easy-peasy.
Now I just need to see if I have enough of the off-white printed cotton I bought to make the real dress out of, or if I get to raid Drea's striped fabric.

And apparently the 80's are coming back for fashion. Cuz it wasn't scary enough the first time 'round.... :)

This: 1795-ish round gown. I love the silhouette, but want to see what it looks like from the front and back.

In other words, I need to read up on taking xml to html. The lt we had in our office working with us (who has gone on to other things), wrote a program to do that. But we've changed things.... And now it doesn't do what we want. And requires us to mess with the html page before we load it. *sigh*

In this case, a pulled back. Ouch!! I was moving a trunk at my house (in the hopes of hmmm... I can pack clothes in this for Pennsic, and it'll look nicer than a rubbermade tub. not so much anymore), and my back went *crunch* *crack* And I went Owwwwww.....
But I stole/borrowed one of Drea's fabulous hot chocolate mixes - from Kakawa Chocolates - the 1666 Italian Citrus Elixir. It is good....

In other news, before I threw my back out - I got one leg for linen long hose all made at work today (I got to watch contractors today), and the other one got the machine stitching I'd put in wrong ripped out and part of the foot put together. I also read Dead Until Dark, which was a fun read - not intellectually stimulating by any means, but still fun.

I jarred cucumbers & brine & dill tonight. Canning was far too laborous a process for me when my back hurts this much. So once the jars cool down, the lids will be tightened and they'll go in the fridge.
And the granola supposedly-bars I made last night went back in the oven in the hopes that it will become bar-like and not just granola. I think the oven is on around 285F, and I'm going to try for an hour. *shrugs* It's worth a try.

Am annoyed that my computer can connect to the internet at Drea's house, just not get out to the web. Which is less than useful.
Anyone else had experience with trying to get PCs to work with an Airport and had this problem? And remember how to fix it?