January 23, 2006

• I am not sure that it is possible to see the details of my 1912 nightgown.

  
  

  The front is on the left and the back is on the right.

  
  

  It may be for the best that the pictures are not very clear, as I appear to be ruffle challenged. Oh, my hand-rolling is nice enough, but the whole distribution of the gathers… well… There are supposed to be ruffles at the sleeve as well, but I will think about them for another day before deciding. There may just be enough ruffles already.

  
  

  In any case, I did get a bit of work done on this sewing project yesterday. It is Folkwear Pattern #224, “Beautiful Dreamer.” In case you are considering making one yourself, I will share my experience with it. Having read several comments about it from others complaining about the tightness at the shoulders and bodice, I made a larger size and cut the armscye an inch deeper. This solved the problem entirely. It also made for a sufficiently voluminous gown that I left out the godets. The fullness which in modern gowns of this type is usually provided by gathers is, in this case, done with pleats in the back and a small yoke at the front, which makes for a more graceful line. It is quite comfortable, and the sleeves, made in the old and complicated way, are particularly nice.

  
  

  Apart from sewing (and church of course), I spent yesterday writing. I worked on my second encyclopedia article (I have made it past Reconstruction), and also the mystery story contest Ozarque told me about. Chanthaboune and I are going to try our luck. It is only a total of 3,000 words, and should be fun.

  
  

  “Fun” may describe the encyclopedia entry, too, but in an entirely different way. This time I am writing about the county seat of the county to the east of us, a town which is still trying to reach 2,000 in population. All the sources of information on this town are little books full of stuff people made up. For example, one book claims that this town is the oldest inhabited place in the United States. Just like that, with no references or reasons for believing it or anything of that nature. Another gives the name of a native American chief who used to live here, or maybe just hang out here. This name turns up nothing when googled, and hasn’t come up in any reliable source. But these are sufficiently intriguing claims that a body wants to follow them up, so I am once again getting my hourly pay rate down to nothing on this project.

  
  

  My boys went to the gym without me. I do very slightly regret not joining them (although the football game meant that there probably would not have been a treadmill available for me), but I did enjoy the quiet spell while they were gone. I did handsewing before the fire and listened to the rain and read Claire Matturro’s excellent novel. My eldest daughter always wanted to be a lawyer, and the main character is the kind of lawyer I imagine #1 daughter would be if she pursued that — honest, rather tough, rather glamorous. Matturro’s heroine also has obsessive-compulsive disorder and gets shot at, but after all, it is fiction.

  • 6:43 am
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