Nope, not April Fools day! It’s the one-year anniversary of Scroop Patterns!
Obviously it’s time to celebrate!
So….there is going to be a sale!
(Yay! Yay! Hooray!)
Sale starts 8am April 1st and goes until 8am April 8th (NZ times).
So, start saving your pennies*, planning your wardrobe and spreading the word!
Check back in on Friday the 31st for the sale code!
*or, if you live in NZ, your 10 cent pieces, because we don’t have anything smaller!
What I’m working on:
Regency stuff! Last night I scanned and re-sized the 1810-20s stays pattern from Percoco’s Regency Women’s Dress, the 1795 transitional stays from Salen’s Corsets, and did the (super easy) re-sizing of J.S. Bernhardt’s View C 1810s stays on Kleidung um 1800.
And then realised that none of these is low enough to fit beneath my Recamier gown, so I decided to be super lazy and just draft a really simple pair of ca. 1800 transitional stays of the style beloved by reenactors, but not so common in extant examples or the visual records of the period. I’m really trying to avoid reenactorisms, but this does seem like the best thing to wear beneath that dress in this case.
Maybe…it’s entirely possible that I’ll have changed my mind by the next time I blog, and be well progressed on one of the other ones!
What I’ve been reading:
I’ve just finished Terry Pratchett’s Dodger, set in Dickensian (literally, as Mr Charles himself is a major character in the book) London. Not my favourite Pratchett, especially when compared to Nation, his other non-Diskworld late-life novel, but, like all of Pratchett’s writings, still pretty amazing. And it features Angela Burdett-Coattes, one of my personal heroes (and also someone who upholds my pet theory that beekeepers are always reasonably decent people).
What’s for dinner:
I’ve been making a lot of roast vegetable pastas. Super easy – 10 minutes prep time, and the oven does the rest while I get to do more interesting things (aka, work on Scroop patterns)
To make: Chop vegetables (tomatoes, corgettes (zuchinni), capsicum (bell pepper), green beans, yellow squash, eggplant are all options), put on baking tray, drizzle olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Roast in oven for 45 minutes. Make pasta. Chop a big handful of basil or parsley. Stir together vegetables, pasta, basil, and protein (parmesan cheese, chickpeas or pinenuts if I’m feeling really posh).
What else I’ve been up to:
Lots of trying to get outdoors whenever the weather permits. It’s been a really rubbish summer, with lots of cold, grey days, but we’ve still managed some nice walks on the not-too-terrible ones. We even got out to Staglands (a petting zoo/nature reserve), and made friends with peacocks and donkeys and emus and trout.
What’s been exciting?
Well, finding this guy in the bathroom late at night was pretty exciting! I was alerted to his presence by Felicity, who was VERY excited, and spent a lot of time telling me how much she wanted him.
(no Felicity, trust me, you don’t want a weta!)
*It’s Friday somewhere! For another 6 hours in Hawaii!
Ticket sales for the New Zealand Jane Austen Symposium close on the 25th of March! Pop over to EventBrite to get yours!
Saturday 8 April at the historic Thistle Inn, with period food and fantastic speakers.
I’m going to be talking about Jane Austen & Regency fashion, with lots of visuals and reproductions.
I’m using this as an excuse to make some of those key pieces I’ve always intended to make (or finish…), so there are going to be some exciting new things!
In related news, you can expect some Regency garment construction posts here on the blog over the next couple of weeks! 😉
