OT - Thankful?

NOTE: This was written Thanksgiving day between referencing cookbook sites.
Back to doublet-ing on Thursday...
------------------------------


This has been a difficult year, no lie. And on a day when we’re supposed to be tallying up the things we’re thankful for, the struggles of 2005 are thrown into sharp relief. We started the year on a high note, with a new house and a new job for me. Then our cat Coppertop died. But that tragedy had at its core a moment of befuddling joy because that was also the day I found out we were expecting a little one. In the end, that didn’t work out either.

With one thing and another, there were other obstacles. Kristin is still commuting five hours a day. When gas hit $3.00 a gallon I won’t tell you it wasn’t a hardship. There have been other things. The kitchen fire, car trouble, and we nearly lost Figaro recently. Each thing just one more reason to be glad when 2005 is in the rearview mirror.

But Thanksgiving isn’t about hardships. It’s about thankfulness.

The real question we must pose is “What do we have to be thankful for?” This is an important question because life is full of struggle and turmoil, a veritable potpourri of pain and suffering. Why then be thankful? How is it that one day a year, we can sit back and acknowledge that the glass really is half-full? Simply put… we can’t.

I can prophesy a chorus of depressed sighs and the rattle of shaking heads as my readers get to those words. But oh, you mistake me. I am not of the opinion that optimism is dead or even illogical. In fact, I find optimism to be the only logical state of being. I shall repeat what I said, only with the stress in the appropriate places. “How is it that one day a year, we can sit back and acknowledge that the glass really is half-full?” We can’t.

One day a year. That is my protest against most holidays. Not that the people being lauded on mother’s day or father’s day, or Breast Cancer Awareness day aren’t worth thinking about. Do not mistake me. What upsets me is that for too many people, those days are the only days of the year we acknowledge their contributions. So it is too with thankfulness.

That things are going to happen is inevitable. That the bad will occasionally pile up is simply an expression of the law of averages. And once a year, the national attention turns to finding things to be thankful for. Once a year is too few. We should be thankful every day.

In a year when bad things happened to us, one upon the other, I found myself searching harder and harder each day for the reasons I shouldn’t rage against the terrible awfulness of it all. Back in August I wrote an article about acting at renaissance faire and waxed lyrical about how each morning, despite the fury of the hay fever raging inside my head, I chose to be happy, to be go-lucky, to be a madcap man in striped socks, bringing smiles to the faces of children and adults alike. That is a good microcosm of how I’ve approached life this year.

Each and everything that has happened to us was horrible. I can’t get around that. I won’t ignore it or understate it. The darkest day of my life was the day we lost the baby. I thought I was at the bottom of a hole I could never climb out of. But a day or two later, I had to get back in the truck and go to work.

I work with a crowd of women, most of whom are my mother’s age. They have seen turmoil in their lives to beggar description. One has suffered more than ten miscarriages, one lost her adult daughter in a car wreck 25 years ago. Yet not one of them intimated that their suffering had been greater than ours. They all hugged me, and cried with me, and helped me find an attitude that allowed me to get the work done. I still struggle with it. I still cry about it from time to time.

Intellectually, I know that the only thing you can control about misfortune is how you react to it. Your attitude is yours to control. But until you’ve put it to the test you’ve no idea how hard that really is to do. But it is possible. One of my heroes, Peter Ustinov once said :

“I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out every day.”

Bad things happen once in awhile. Good things happen every day. The psychic footprint of bad things is so large that it often overshadows that fact. Each day is a day of wonders and miracles. Each day we are swept along in the slipstream of science and technology, of modern wonders whose impact is as great as it is ubiquitous. We are surrounded by the wonders of nature, the grace and glory of the Creator in the changing leaves and the growing grass.

Perhaps holidays really are necessary. Perhaps this hum of the modern world needs to die down once in awhile for us to truly have a second to breathe, to appreciate what we have and get an iota of perspective on it. Maybe it takes a special day for our modern lives to see the leaves as more than something that needs raking and the grass as something more than another hour pushing a lawnmower.

Despite the turmoil of the year I am still thankful for every day. I still sip at the cup of wonder that is too hot to take all in one gulp. Yet this holiday will end. The turkey will become sandwiches and the family will disperse back to their daily haunts. I ask only this: each morning remember that as you’re drinking your morning coffee that what you’re really holding in your hands is a miracle of nature, the perfect conglomeration of agriculture, commerce, chemistry and engineering. If you don’t drink coffee, find some other ritual to remind you to be thankful for all we have, but choose a mind-set of wonder each day.

I have Kristin. (and I have Scott. -K 8-) )
I have a family that loves me.
I have a roof over my head.
I have books to read and ideas to write.
I have coffee in my mug.
I have a new kitten to frustrate and amuse me.
I have an old cat to give me love and perspective on my true place in the universe.
I have the infinite possibilities that we will be blessed again someday with a child, something I once thought impossible.
I have a garden that is still blooming roses and brings me joy.
I have birds to watch in the bird feeders (I think the cats are thankful for that also)

And I have you, my loyal readers.
What more could anyone ask for?

I wish you all good eats, good day, and God bless.

-Scott

Crewel World

Sorry for the obvious pun.

Since I'm still waiting for The Hotrod to get it's act together, I decided to keep myself from getting either too bored or too wrapped up in any video games by taking up the embroidery needle. Yeah, I called our sewing machine "The Hotrod" I told this was a guy's sewing site.

Anyway, for fun I did a raised satin stitch embroidery at the base of the neck using 1/4 of the tile design I used on my rapier carrier. Why at the base of the neck? No reason. I just thought it echoed the lines of the quilting and would look good there. Also there wouldn't be anything covering it up (baldrics and the like tend to cover the chest).

And - for those who didn't get the pun - this kind of embroidery is known (collectively) as "crewel work".

Mostly, I'm practicing because I plan to do some hand-embroidery on the final noble garment and I haven't done any embroidery in awhile.

It sort of looks like a glyph or
protective ward of some sort, doesn't it?
Speak this glyph and summon Great Cthulhu
from his watery home...

This shot is just to show the orientation.
I don't really plan to do any more, this is sort of a one-off
because I was bored and had a needle and thread handy...

A closeup of the (complete) design as
I incised it in the leather of my rapier carrier.

Oh! And for the record: Not all that long ago I said something to the effect of I avoided hand stitching if it wouldn't be better that way than doing it on the machine... I wanted to make it clear thatI don't think my embroidery is better than what a machine can do. Quite simply put: We don't have an embroidery machine so Scottie gets to practice his stitches.

Clothes Mocketh the Man...

There comes a time when sewing is no longer a solitary activity. So it is with mocking up and fitting patterns. The pattern I use is one I drafted a long time ago and I've lost weight and my desires have changed somewhat as to what I want the thing to look like, fit like, and be able to do. For the looser jerkin which will be worn over a doublet, the old pattern was fine. Since I lost weight proportionally across my frame, the largeness of it was consistant (if that makes any sense) so it suits me fine as an outer garment. For the more form-fitted doublet, that is not the case and I find myself in the predicament of needing a partner to help me re-size the thing.

Now, I've done this for others numerous times and been the guy who poked and grumbled at the 'model' for fidgeting and moving and generally being alive. Well, for all those out there who've had their garments fit by yours truly, rejoice... my uppance has come.

As I've mentioned in the past, I'm not going to get into drafting a pattern from scratch (at least not right away) for several reasons:

1. I don't need a (completely) new pattern at the moment.
2. There are so many others out there who have explained it so well that I would be re-inventing the wheel.
3. I find the process tedious.

However, as I get older I find that my bodyshape has been fluctuating far more than it did in my twenties, so re-sizing my pattern has become an important tool for me. The manner in which I do this works for both genders, by the way (with the obvious changes, of course). I re-drafted the pattern my wife used for her Italian noble bodice with the lacing back seams. I can't say there was a marked difference in the way that went together versus a doublet. Some things really are universal.

CAVEAT: This is how I do this. Kris informs me that there are numerous other ways in which this is and can be done. Also, by the time I'm finished it is quite possible that it would have been less effort to just draft a new pattern. Stubbornness, thy name is Scott.

Since Kristin was one of the first victims of my tailoring pins, it's fitting (pun intended) that she gets to be the tailor this time around.

I laid out the pattern in the usual way on the eggplant denim. This dark heavy fabric has roughly the same body as the final doublet material and is dark enough to see the white chalk lines. If you're using lighter material, use blue chalk. It's not that big a deal, really. White lines on dark fabric photograph better and I'm doing everything with half an eye on how it will look on this site.

I cut out my pattern with an overly-generous seam allowance. (Sometimes, the angle of the entire seam will need to change and a the extra material will allow for this.) Then I basted the thing together with a nice long stitch length. Then I put it on and pin it together in a manner replicating how it will be when it has button holes.

CAVEAT: When you are doing this, remember that you need to account for a final seam allowance. Wherever the rough edge of your fabric is, the real edge will be a 1/4 to 1/2 inch back depending on your preferred allowance. If you don't account for this in the fitting, it will be too small when you've got it put together into a final piece.

In the following photos you may notice that I added an extra seam up the back. I can't remember if I mentioned that when I was discussing plans for the doublet. Every seam you have is one more point of adjustment and makes the fit that much more tailored. Some patterns I've noticed have a back seam, a 'princess' seam, and a side seam, allowing a maximum degree of adjustment. There is such a thing as overkill. At some point your doublet starts to resemble a patchwork quilt.


At each seam, pull the wrinkly slack out of the fabric and pin it. We used safety pins here, I've had good luck doing this with binder clips as well. Look for puckers and obvious fit issues and play with the seams until they're gone.

Keep in mind that everytime you adjust the back or the front piece, you need to keep an eye on your shoulder and neck seams lest they be pulled too far forward or back. Communication between the pinner and the pinned is essential and why doing this over a dress form or duct-tape dummy is not as desireable as having your clothing fit to you. If the collar is choking you, or if the armscrye is too tight and cutting off circulation to your sword arm, the dummy won't tell you.


When you get the fit like you want it, take the chalk and trace along the pinned lines. These will be the place for your new seams.

While you're doing this, the person whose doublet this will be needs to goof around a little. It goes back to what I was saying about making certain your doublet will do everything it will be called to do. Do you need to fence in it? Wear it under armor? Swing from a chandelier? Climb trees? Think of all the things you could possibly need to do and do them, or at least simulate them. Then ask your tailor to make the appropriate adjustments before you take it off. It should be snug, but not too tight to move.

Once the sewing machine in back from the shop, I will baste seams along the chalk lines. Then one more fitting like this one to mark any easements I will need in terms of making or moving the armscrye, collar etcetera (these things move a little when you do that)

---------------------------
All my life I've had trouble buying suits off the rack and I never understood why until I learned to sew. Now that I've fitted and drafted patterns to my bony carcass, I understand why. I'm all torso, which makes pairing up a jacket and slacks difficult without looking like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins when he's dancing with the penguins. Which isn't a good look for anyone, in the renaissance or whenever.

I sometimes wax prosaic about why we differentiate between a costume and garb. A key part of what makes an outfit cross the costume/garb barrier is fit.

In my mind, Costumes are put together to look good for a short time. Some of them look spectacular for thier intended lifespan: the run of a play, the costume ball, or even the run of a season of faire. But it's in the final weekend of a three-weekend faire that you begin to see the difference between costume and garb. If your faire lasts more than a month, the people wearing costumes suffer like a sprinter who entered a marathon and thought they were doing well because they led the first half of the race. Marathons are won in the final mile.

I have nothing against costumes per se. But if you sew your renaissance wear like I do, with fit and function as your watchwords, stressing wearability and endurance... well, you'll be wearing clothing, not costume. And - for me at least - that makes all the difference.

-Scott