All posts filed under: Miscellenia

What’s for dinner?

Who has been doing way more cooking at home than usual? Raises hand We don’t do a lot of eating out or getting takeaways, but with all restaurants closed for the 4+ weeks of Level 4 lockdown in NZ, cooking every meal showed how much premade food we do eat – and how much work it is to plan every menu in advance because you can only go shopping once a week. I don’t mind cooking. I do mind menu planning. Figuring out what to eat is hard work! Here are some of our favourites which have been in heavy rotation in the last few months. Bonus: they are all vegetarian or vegan, which is great if you’re trying to lower your carbon footprint. Spinach & Chickpea Curry I’m obsessed with this curry. It only has one major flaw: it uses a weird amount of coconut milk, and then you are left with half a can of coconut milk, and have to figure out what to do with it. I always use fresh spinach, and …

Playing at pastoralism in Augusta Stays

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve been hard at work planning online teaching for costume history and pattern drafting at Toi Whakaari, and doing pattern stuff for Scroop Patterns, and my brain is exhausted and tired of looking at the computer. I’ve got a whole bunch of blog ideas, but they were all just too much effort today. So I had a rummage around in my photo library for inspiration for today’s post, and found a bunch of gorgeous images from back in October and our 2019 Sew & Eat Historical Retreat which I’ve never posted. We spent an afternoon dressed up in Augusta stays, pretending to be 18th century ladies pretending to be milkmaids, wandering around in the meadows picking flowers and inspecting old farm equipment and having romantic interludes with attractively lichened fences (as you do). Eloise @eloise_faith_gladrags went very historical, in her gorgeous completely handsewn Augustas, and perfectly pastel ensemble. She always picks the most beautiful soft colours for her sewing! I went slightly less historical, because I’d forgotten to pack 18th c caps: And I dressed …

Aaron Martinet French, 1762 - 1841 Les Invisibles en tête-à-tête (Tête-à-Tête with Poke Bonnets) Le Supreme Bon Ton, pl. 16 (series) c. 1805

Emma echoes Regency Era prints

Published by The Dreamstress

Have you seen the new Emma movie yet? Some of the Wellington historical sewists and I went to see it earlier this week. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. If you haven’t seen it, you may wish to skip this post to avoid spoilers. Mini review: The cinematography was lush and deliciously beautiful, the screenplay was brilliant and gave a new twist to a story that has been done many times before (well done Eleanor Catton), the costumes were exactly what you’d expect from Alexandra Byrne (costumes rather than clothes, but very pretty, with many gorgeous covetable pieces, quite a few where you could immediately point to the extant piece that inspired them, and the occasional weird misfit that yanks you right out of the world), and Anya Taylor-Joy was skilled enough of an actress to overcome my misgivings about her as Emma. The only drawbacks were a few small moments when the film got weird (*cough* *cough* first look at Mr Knightley and after the ball at the Crown), and Emma’s hairstyles, which were so awful …