Year: 2011

Rate the Dress: Late Elizabethan pastels

Last week I showed you a very bright blue plaid dress, and despite the fact that so many of you said you liked blue, most of you did not like this blue, especially not in a plaid! Rowenna even called it “The Plaid Scotland Rejected.” A few of you were more favorable though, and felt you could pull it off. It averaged out with a marginal rating of 5.4 out of 10. This week, let’s take a deep, calming breath, and tone things down a little with a 1605 portrait of Anne of Denmark. Well, kinda tone things down. This is early 17th century fashion we are talking about after all, and while the wife of James I of England is clad in muted whites and pinks, there is nothing toned down and muted about her silhouette. Anne’s hair is piled high, and her famously beautiful neck and bust are framed by a fine lace collar and pink trim. Blue and pink ribbon rosettes on her bodice further lead the eye up to her best …

How to Wear the New Furs: Christmas 1911

Published by The Dreamstress

As winter closes in here in the Southern hemisphere, it seems a good time to show you a fascinating article from the Girl’s Own Paper, Christmas 1911, explaining the styles of furs in that winter: The magazine also presents a selection of charming fur styles: And I thought you might enjoy a close up at our feature model: It’s certainly different from our modern attitude towards fur isn’t it! And I had no idea that fur colours, and the type of fur, changed in style!

Of mice and men

Published by The Dreamstress

A few years ago, just after we got Felicity, while she was still a tiny kitten, our neighborhood had a mouse outbreak. It started in the camilla hedge a few houses down, and a week later, we had a mouse in our kitchen. Ick. Eww. So of course I needed to get rid of it, and Felicity wasn’t big enough to do the job, so we needed a mousetrap. I didn’t want to use poison because of Felicity and the possibility of the mouse dying in the walls if it worked. Double ick and eww. And I didn’t want to use a snap trap because of Felicity and the probability of dead mouse spilling guts and goo if it worked. Triple ick and eww. So, what I needed was one of those nifty little box moustraps that traps the mouse alive and lets you release it a couple of miles down the road, thus inflicting it on someone else. Yippe? So off I went to the hardware store. No dice. Nothing but the ick snap …