Terry Pratchett – Page 4 – Deborah Makarios

February 6, 2015

Eccentric Æsthetics: In Which I Attempt the Historical Sew Monthly

You know how it is. You lurk for a while, then you comment for a while, and then you decide you just can’t resist and you get involved. So it was with me and the Historical Sew Fortnightly. In 2013 I lurked, in 2014 I commented, and now in 2015, I plan to take part. Ths year it’s been revamped as the Historical Sew Monthly, but I still don’t think I’ll manage all twelve challenges. Small but sustainable, that’s my beginner’s ambition.

I didn’t want to make anything that I couldn’t wear in daily life, but being æsthetically eccentric, that’s a wide range. Not as wide as a crinoline, though. I do have some sense of practicality.

So I decided to start with a simple chemise or shift, the foundation of Western clothing for centuries, and something which would fill the gap in my wardrobe marked “light summer nightgown”.

I give you, therefore, my first HSM project: The Igor Thift!
(Apologies for the exoskeletal dress-form – she’s in shape, but I haven’t got around to covering her yet.)

Challenge: Foundations (Jan)
Fabric: an old sheet, feels like mostly cotton
Pattern: I used marquise.de’s 18th century chemise instructions
Year: eighteenth century
Notions: thread, bias binding

How historically accurate is it? Somewhat? The pattern is all good; the fabric is possibly part man-made fibre, but “old sheet” is a historically accurate fabric, in my opinion 🙂 The binding is of uncertain age, but it is bias binding, which is historically inaccurate, as far as I know.

The construction is a bit mixed: I used historically accurate flat-felled seams, but they were sewn partly by hand and partly by ye notte quite olde enoughe hand-crank sewing machine (post WWII Japanese Singer knock-off).

The finished shift includes lock-stitch (machine), back-stitch, running stitch, whip stitch and even, embarrasingly, blanket stitch. This, combined with the fact that the Caped Gooseberry was reading me Terry Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant as I worked, caused me to dub this the Igor Thift. Alas, my ~~thtitcheth~~ stitches are not quite Igor-worthy in their tininess, although the hand-crank does up to 30 stitches per inch, should anyone be mad enough to want it to.

Hours to complete: embarrasingly many. Perhaps as many as 20? The whole process was slowed down by not deciding it was too wide until I had already sewn the side gores on. So I tore part of it off, cut two new side gores and started again on that side. (The pattern suggests adding 20cm ease – I should have done this before halving my maximum circumference, not after.) I did two side gores on each side, attached to the body along the hypotenuse for that isosceles-triangle effect.

First worn: as a nightdress for a trip to the Coromandel in the last week of January. Light and comfortable.

Total cost: time and energy. The sheet was discovered in an archaeological dig of the rag cupboard, and the binding was inherited from my grandmother’s stash. So it could also be considered as an entry for March (Stash-Busting) were it not against the rules to enter one item for multiple challenges.

What I Have Learned From This Project:
1) Even with simple things, it pays to plan ahead. Especially where one is going to have three seams merging into one.
2) It’s all right for things to not be perfect.

I had originally planned to do about six items, each of which would work for two consecutive challenges. But that was when I thought Stash-busting was February and Colour Challenge Blue was March, rather than the other way around. I may still try to do six items which between them cover all twelve challenges, as I have an idea for something which will work excellently for both Blue (Feb) and War & Peace (Apr). Opinions? Advice?

December 13, 2014

Rx for Readers

Are your humours out of balance? You could be cupped, or bled, or purged. You could consider emetics, or even dally with leeches. Or perhaps you could just read a book instead.

Myself, I always go for the book.

I don’t know when I realized that I self-medicate with books. Possibly when I wrote this post, or possibly this one.
Or possibly when I read one of the new editions of P.G. Wodehouse and noted that his works were described as “cheaper than Prozac, and 100 per cent more effective.”

Here are a few of my favourite prescriptions.

Feeling blue? In a brown study? Life just drab and grey? Take a course of P.G. Wodehouse. Read anything he wrote: a novel, a preface, even the account of his experiences being interned by the Nazis. Uniformly hilarious.
Overdoses can cause symptoms similar to intoxication; possible side effects include aching stomach muscles and snorted drinks.

Are you jaded by the harried complexities of urban life, the rush, the pollution, the noise? Try the old classic Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. Warning: may cause uncontrollable urge to move to Switzerland.

Plenty of housework to do, but don’t fancy drudging it? Monica Dickens’ autobiographical caper One Pair of Hands should get you in the mood – or, for a more fictional twist, try the exploits of Lucy Eyelesbarrow in Agatha Christie’s 4:50 from Paddington.

Most of Agatha Christie’s works are ideal for when you are in need of something warm and comforting to curl up in. They’re not mindless junk, but neither are there nasty surprises. (Not unless you read Endless Night.) Plenty of unexpected twists, though – I’ve read them over and over again and I still sometimes miss whodunnit.

Also excellent for the early stages of recuperation are Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver novels. There is no-one I would rather have in my sick-room than this quietly knitting, Tennyson-quoting gentlewoman detective, ahem, private enquiry agent.

Are you oppressed? By life, by work, by circumstance? If, like the man trapped by the date tree which grew under him as he slept, you are unable to alter circumstances to your will; adapt your will to circumstances instead: try being heroically or nobly oppressed, for variety.
Nicholas Nickleby (by Monica’s great-granddaddy Charles) would be delighted to be of assistance; or Part One of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women may serve the turn instead.

Like Hamlet, do you find life “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”? Try Terry Pratchett for some “interesting times.”

Does time weigh heavily on your hands? Do the days bore you by their prosaic banality? The ideal solution is J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, The Lord of the Rings – the ultimate reason to “not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel,” as Miss Prism warns her charge.

What home remedies do you have on your bookshelf? I’d love to hear!

February 9, 2014

the Master Metaphor

I recently read The Creative Compass by Dan Millman and Sierra Prasada, and came across the really rather interesting idea of the Master Metaphor. To quote:

“At some point in your life, perhaps more than once, you achieved something, despite the odds against it, because of a longing or determination that you can’t fully explain. It might be a skill that initially seemed out of reach or a one-time accomplishment: jumping off the high diving board, delivering a speech at a school assembly, or travelling to a distant country. That experience, as distinguished by the inexplicable feeling that accompanied it, forms your Master Metaphor.”

It doesn’t have to be an accomplishment that the world deems great, it just has to be something that was hard but you did anyway. A symbol of your ability to succeed against whatever’s pushing the other way – tiredness, lack of ability, your own character flaws.
It’s the ace up your sleeve you pull out when the chips are down. (Mixed metaphor? Not sure.) I did that, I can do this, you tell yourself.

It took me a while to figure out what my Master Metaphor could be, given my propensity for giving up if I don’t get it right the first time, a besetting flaw if ever there was one.
Then it came to me. Socks.

Not the sort Polly Oliver uses to -er, bolster her male impersonation, nor yet the shortened form of ‘Socrates’ with which Walter Judson tries to maintain a philosophic calm on the golf course.

To be precise, turning the heel when knitting a pair of socks. I have mentioned before how long it took me to figure out how to do it, even with a clear and simple pattern to hand. I’m surprised I persevered, given that I had no pressing need to knit socks, only a pressing desire, and that much shaken by repeated failure.

The problem was that I couldn’t see how what I was doing was going to produce the desired result. I couldn’t visualise how it all went together, so in the end I just had to carry on in faith that it would turn (pardon the pun) into a heel. And it did.

That’s a good metaphor for writing right there. You get your structure sorted (the pattern) and then you just keep going even if it looks like nothing on earth, trusting that it will come out the right shape if you just keep going.

So what’s your Master Metaphor? And do you know any good patterns for socks?