Ummm.. I don’t really know where to start but what started as a bad week on Tuesday just.. managed to get worse.

Sometime before Tuesday (sunday? Monday?) we spotted my chair had worn a hole in the carpet. The culprit? The chair is metal tubing and the feet are plastic which turns out were not fit for purpose and collapsed inside the tube feet! Once that happened the chair only needed a small amount of horizontal pressure to make a hole.

Fortunately I should be able to afford a repair and then get a mat specifically for my chair.

Then I picked up a fabric panel from the dining table and it stuck, I thought oh wow it really has been on the for a while and the condensation must have been very bad last night. And then I smelt it and ummm… not water. And oh look a stain in the varnish. Possibly into the wood? It was cleaned asap but the stain is there.

So I go to reheat my lunch on the stove (ceramic) and turnd my back and heard a crackle pop that sounded like a really firm peg snapping and shattering. Nope. Turns out there was a short and the oven swtitch at the mains flipped down. So we checked the surface for any residue of any sort, and turned it back on and..

Well it happened again. A couple of seconds of crackle, then a bang and flash of red then the unmistakable smell of electricity. I swore it was the element itself that glowed red (which is embedded in the glass top) but two sets of eyes saw different things due to the nature of how eyes work.

There is no apparent damage anywhere on the stove or pan. Apparent, I don’t have the tools to test of check the element or suface in any meaningful way.

But it does mean we can’t use it and need to replace it.

And today mum’s macbook screen has just stopped working. Soooo…

Our stresses have been financial. And just weird in their timing.

This week has also been stressful in terms of what is going on globally and locally so it’s been hard to even find any joy in making or doing.

But I have tidied my current project stash and do have a plan for that.

I have so many projects that have been put off for health and responsibilities that I think I’d like to just change a few things so I don’t feel so overwhelmed by them again.

My word. No words for so long. I’m absolutely not managing to even keep up with health. Health, then responsibilities, mean I’ve been been overly stressful for months and it’s leaking out in all kinds of ways. But nothing cathartic.

Each time I think I have a handle on managing my exposure to stress it is cut away. Everything I am stressed about is very real, very much about what I cannot control. But I have to know.

I do indeed have to weigh risk factors for everything. I tend to have some kind of infection at any one time. Interestingly I have so far avoided them this year. Well I have been isolating more than usual, so there is that.

But it means I have no time left to Do. And it’s an important part of mental health to have that.

I find the kind of art I do is very stressful anyway. I used to love to sketch and paint and that is where I let out a lot of emotional stuff. I think a massive canvas and room to fling paint would be very useful right now.

But costuming? The only part I find relaxing is draping. So much bliss. But I have run out of draping fabric and so I’m left with cutting my actual fabric and oh wow. Stress distracts at this point and so I wind either making mistakes or assuming I’ll maks mistakes which means I try to keep extra and extra extra seam allowances. That eats into fabric alloted and I have also run out of funds to buy the ~100m of cotton cording I need for my main replica costume project right now.

It’s really just the bottom end of a cascade of everything but it means I have kind of run out of a lot of Go.

I have not made many posts at all, and it’s a reflection of simply not being able to do, not a reflection of how much I am having to think. I’m just not really able to keep ahead of what I need to keep myself safe while there is a severe respiratory virus out there. I have some kind of lung damage, we just don’t know what it is as it has not shown up in an x-ray.

Oh it’s A Thing for both Rheumatoid Disease and Fibro but then also during this pandemic. I’m over the panic, and my body is paying for that rush of hormones used to get through that high stress.

Normally I pay for one day of activity through careful planning and then a week of (extra) exhaustion and (extra) pain and often then still a bit of a decline in health which means each event takes me back a little more.

So I had started to accept afternoon rest even when I think it feels like some sort of indulgence. It’s not, it’s therapy. It doesn’t help that so often in history it has been fashionable to look like you are sick- but it’s never really been okay to be sick. Fashion is usually about taking an aesthetic from a group of people without wanting the reality of life as part of that community.

But this pandemic? It’s like an event every few days and my body is not recovering.

So I have been very quiet here, my projects are a mess and everywhere as I’ve started to feel the stress of them being unfinished again.

My research is also in a holding pattern in terms of updating. It’s all there in my notes, and archives, and I have a number of unfinished pages to publish. But I am not able to focus for more than an hour at a time.

Today I managed to get underway with my frog needle case. I wanted to reframe my nifty antique purse but I need to dremel out the pins and I need to prepare for that well in advance. It will need to be the first thing I do in a day. It also is a bit hard as I never did replace my workstation (aka the thing wot holds the dremel in place and takes all the pressure off my busted hands and oh also prevents me hurting myself as the neuropathy is bad and I could you know… wobble the dremel into something.)

But yeah. This pandemic is hard, and the world has actually sped up in terms of expectations of productivity.

If you are finding it difficult, you are not alone, you are also not imagining things, and you are not failing. I can’t even quantify the degree of extra pressure, but I do know it’s gone from feeling like I can finish a project in a few years to not being sure I can get any done ever again.

Even my accessories are taking longer than it should. But they are light, I don’t have to engage my full body, which is part of why working at my computer is so draining difficult, and why machine sewing is so very difficult.

Writing this post has taken effort I really wanted to put into other things but I also know how important is can be to know that other people share an experience. It may not offer the solution needed, but it can help take some of the burden off yourself, set it aside, and focus on what you do know helps you.

This last week, I think, I shared privately an experience that upset me. A friend I admire greatly said she went through the same thing, she had seen it happen to other people, and gave me some peace as I was starting to have self doubt, and thought maybe it was egotistical to feel what I did.

So while I don’t have a solution to prevent that experience happening again, I have some peace that my feelings are not just valid but also not out of place.

Acknowledging an experience is negative is part of the process of getting through it. I can do a whole lot more if I know where my effort has effect. It doesn’t stop me putting in effort, but it channels it into healing and trying to make things better for others.

And it means I can also put a line under it and let the good experiences happen as well. And understand what makes them good. And express what makes them good.

Guess who finally found SWTOR armour she loves from head to foot, all layers!!!! and good grief is it going to look good on my Togruta toons….

https://swtorista.com/armor/exiled-padawan

I’ll wait for everyone to spot the detailing on the helmet and body.

As per my last post I am still experiencing that stress to be doing, to not “waste” this time and instead I’m tending towards spending so much time trying to just keep up to date on how to keep myself safe that I’m sort or not.

But my red and black gown has a lining and underlining cut. I have washed the velvet. My next lot of itty bitty pearls arrived and my beading thread arrived.

My hands are a bit sore (a bit… sigh, very) from some tidying I needed to do to be able to start scultping some jewelry to match. Also sore from typing up a page on said jewelry and searching for what the heck I’m looking at.

Also it took an hour to write this with breaks so.. that’s on brand at least…

Aside from working on my pattern book, pearled hat, extant garment pattern redrawings (to be able to share more easily) I have been also finally sorting my images that will become part of my Frazzled Frau relaunch and been inspired all over again.

My taste is I think quite easy to spot. I like bold lines, colour blocks, if there are details they are also clean and clear. I have entirely one “fussy” frock, my Robe de Style and even that uses bold lines.

I think I love them as they are able to be drawn as thumbnail sketches and retain what can be captured in such a constricted format.

And so I have been going through all the portraits and yep, I love the Cranch “Princess” variations, and I love the Nuernberg clean contrast, and I really love the Augsberg style that is also about high contrast but has sleeve variations.

But I’m currently besotted with the clothing of two women who happen to have been captured in portraiture several times. They both have sleeves I reeeeeaally want to make. One portrait at least was turned into a full length printed piece which is very exciting as it is very clearly a circle skirt. Which means if I do make the dress I can add it into my pattern book!

I believe I can take my teal “Saxon” gown into this as it retains the skirt and bodice but gives me sleeves that are accurate. I may though have to swap out the trim. But I need to really plan it out as I don’t really want to regret making it over, especially if I have decided I want to

And in line with this I’ve also been sorting portraits that will make up part of my Saya Espanola relaunch which gets very difficult when the style was so quickly taken up by various regions including the Duchy of Klve-Juellich-Berg. More so that Cologne which kept the Northern spin of a sleeveless mantel (or ropa) contrasting wams/doublet, and matching skirt.

But I went on a Dune (1984) image searching spree for Princess Trulan’s gown and yes, it is very much on my really want to make list as it takes nearly pure c1600 patterning and fit with the trim and fabric choice being very much within modern ideas of historic while not being HA. I can’t tell if the fabric is silk or rayon but the trim is from a few saree with a real metal thread border.

I adore my Margarethe fabric but real metal wrapped threads just have a very different lustre. I managed to find a saree nearly fully covered in metal wrapped threads and it is magic. I used a nearly fully covered one for my Anne of Cleves dress (based on an illustration I now have more evidence as being based on her) and some with double borders for my webbe (still in progress) and hat (the back is done I am going to line the front piece today.)

But yes, very distracted by going back into those portrait folders.

So it’s still as difficult now as before to decide how to put these into workable folders. But I now have options.

I might start with my faves and work backwards from there.

A few days ago I shared some of my woes in trying to get a font that is suitable for my pattern book. Which is a follow up of several attempts over the last few years.

https://www.facebook.com/thefrockchick/posts/3664855356920383

Social media does not have a deep memory and it is hard to repeat a post too often in a short space of time as then the risk is that it will annoy and thus be forgotten even sooner. Except for the feeling (anyone want a post on how emotions drive SM content? I’ve got years of experience that matches various peer reviewed papers!)

I got feedback earlier the font was too small, that was perfect! I already have that as part of the desired list of things to modify! But I’m struggling to get feedback on other aspects of the fonts that are tricky.

Is it the serif (flicky bits)? Is it squareness of round letters (o e a p d etc.) Is it line height? Spacing? Letters too similar to each other? Unfamiliar special letters?

I am trying to get feed back on the font as it will entirely transform my book. Entirely. En.Tire.Ly

I shared a bew links including this book of script writing from the 1560s:

Examples of the script I try to read in formal documents (ish) https://archive.org/details/gri_libellusvald00wyss/page/n77/mode/2up

I like this font https://archive.org/details/gri_libellusvald00wyss/page/n59/mode/2up

So, region appropriate examples of printed work:

Quentell (Koeln! My ideal)

Cook book, Anna Weckerin

Seimachen modelbuch

Hoffman modelbuch

Shoen modelbuch

French text Quentell

I can read all of this, but the way I do is to not skim like I often do in my own language, so I focus on the individual words and that also means I look at each individual letter, less scanning in context of each line which I usually do to get an idea of where a sentence is heading.

So then there is the Antwerp press. With the super handy de Bruyn books:

The introductory pages are translated and use fonts immediately recognised for each language:

Boissard does the same.

Though internally one font for latin, french, and german:

I like this font for say.. a printer who maybe got hold of a book and copied it… This is very common for the modelbucher! But plates of clothing were also copied across many printers

But what people are most familiar with and can read most easily are the printed Spanish books:

Alcega 1580 (shape of book is not what we are used to)

But the pattern books we have from the North are hand written and so are very very very different.

1540 (later copy?)Schuster

Not going to pretend I can read all of this, I can read “lang” for length. But the font has a character I’d like to try for.

So, to that end I have gone on a font hunt spree!

1: Civitype FG

2: CanzleyAD160

3: Gondola (might be a bit open.)

4: Italian Cursive- similar to de Bruyn et al.

5: CalimaDB Also similar to de Bruyn

6: Black Chancery (lower case very clean)

7: Matura

8: Kanslei Script HJ2

9: Kanzlei

10: CAT Franken Deutch

11: Typographer Unicalgotisch

12: DS Fette

13: My Electronic Schwabach

14: alte Schwabacher

15: Schwaben Alt

16: fin-fraktur (y looks like an n)

17: Bauern Fraktur

18: Kleukens Fraktur

My hope is to make it a printed work to include this utterly ridiculous passive aggressive prologue as so many books have this. I want to be able to include a quote from a patron.

If I go for a hand written book I can include an “insert” type of introduction as you often find manuscripts taken apart and put together again with new context.

I’m currently working on the pattern plates to get very clear accurate lines that can then be processed in another program to fake print marks or maybe ink blots.

Today I managed to reply to an important email and also got my Sunburst gown project into the lounge. I have no idea if I will will my pink or my tiny white pearls but I am finally in a position where I can view this project as a positive use of my time.

If you want my line art for the Sunburst embroidery I will have it ready to go as soon as I know of any interest (@TheFrockChick almost everywhere.) But I also have examples of other tablier as they are my favourite solution to many fashion questions of the era from Bustle to Bustle which is, what do we do with this flat skirt front?? Often the solution was Ruffles! or Swags! I love the “understated” solution of beads. Just beads.

BEADS!!!!

#BeadAlong maybe?