Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

[hudebnik]

Last night after dinner shalmestere brought a couple of pieces of wool into the dining room and asked me to stand up so she could try something on me. The "pieces of wool" are in fact an old, pale-blue GFD that no longer fits her. She cut off the bodice section and the sleeves, put shoulder seams in the skirt where the waist used to be, put arm-holes in the skirt where the hips used to be, and fit the sleeves back into the new arm-holes to make it a Greenlandish-style gown for me. Part of the bodice section is being recycled as upper-arm gores (since I have more muscular upper arms than shalmestere does); the lower arms, with their buttons and buttonholes intact, seem to work as-is. All terribly efficient, appropriate to "a dying colony on the edge of the civilized world". And it's old, new, borrowed, and blue, all in one item.

Before we leave for Pennsic in a few days, I need to do a bunch of narrow-work: one or two new dress-lacing cords for her, and several hose-points for me. I need to finish attaching a new valence to our extremely-old tent. And we need to pre-cook a bunch of meat-pies for lunches, and tartlets for breakfasts. It would be nice to make some wafers, although that's lower priority. We need to write and copy a program for our concert at Pennsic. And make sure we each have enough undergarments, hosen, shoes, and outer garments for the time we're there. And check instruments for strings, reeds, etc. And pack everything we need, and nothing we don't.

Comments

[metahacker]

GFD?

[hudebnik]

"Gothic Fitted Dress". Robin Netherton coined the term 30-40 years ago to refer to an apparently coherent women's-dress design that survived, with slight variations, from the early 14th to mid 15th centuries, maybe longer. It's the minimal layer that would be considered "dressed" -- not underwear, you could be seen in public in it, but for fancy occasions you would have another layer over it like a houppelande. Notably, it's sufficiently tailored, and of sufficiently sturdy fabric, to provide bust support, so the underwear layer can be of lighter fabric and the fancy layer can be looser.

It's generally made up of four body panels -- front left, front right, back left, and back right -- with the back-center seam following the curve of the spine, and the front-center opening closed with a lace from navel to neck (so you can tighten it enough to provide bust support). There are religious wars over whether/when the front-center seam should be curved or strictly straight-grain.

[cellio]

"And nothing we don't" seems especially challenging, especially on top of having to re-learn how to Pennsic after three years. Here's hoping it all works out.

[hudebnik]

Yes, that's a definite problem.

One thing we very much like having at Pennsic is a goat-wagon that holds a lot of musical instruments in their cases. But we had pulled that out of the trailer some time in the past three years to carry one or another elderly dog to the park, which they still liked very much but no longer had the stamina to walk to. Since then, the goat-wagon has been in one side of the garage, the trailer in the other side, and an ever-increasing accumulation of stuff in between. So to get the goat-wagon back into the trailer, I emptied a bunch of stuff out of the trailer and pulled it out of the garage by hand onto the sidewalk. Then, since it was already out there and accessible, I packed not only the goat-wagon but a bunch of furniture and tentage into it. Which of course made it too heavy to move by hand, so I hitched it to the car just long enough to get it back into the garage for the night. Today, we throw a few more things into the trailer, put foodstuffs and instruments into the car, and head out. Or that's the theory.