To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)!
We took a trip to Trenton Falls this weekend. What was once one of the places to nature walk in the 19th Century is now only open two weekends a year. This is the first year I’ve been, and the short walk was definitely worth it. The falls and foliage were gorgeous.
Perhaps some year I can convince a group to go in 19th century clothing like in the days of old (granted, the trails are much improved and restrictive in modern times—we couldn’t see the falls further up stream this year). Carl just rolled his eyes when I suggested such a thing, however.
I think the changing seasons really got to me though, as I spent yesterday morning in bed, and the afternoon watching the second series of Sherlock, a bit of Doctor Who, and making progress on my first EPP block. It’s quite slow going, but fun nonetheless.
Finally, if you are in the northern New York area, consider going to the Women’s Day for the War of 1812 Bicentennial Workshops being held in Ogdensburg, NY on November 3. It’s a day of workshops including making a bonnet, chatelaine, and English dancing, as well as readings from women of the period. You can learn a bit more and get information about registering on the 1812 Quilt Challenge Blog. It’s a bit of a drive for me (2.5 hours or so), but it sounds like a good excuse to break out my Regency gown again (and take photos so that I can post all about it, finally).
This past weekend, we went on a rather last-minute spontaneous trip to Boston to celebrate five years together (and to embrace our love of traveling, which we haven’t been doing quite so often lately). It was a lovely break from the usual, with great food, wonderful tours, and a bit of biking around the city (the idea of having rentable bikes stationed throughout the city that you can just grab and return at any location may be the best thing since sliced bread).
Sometimes I think I should have studied history in college instead of computer science. I mean, I totally geek out about things like this headstone, with its pre-standardized spellings, type ligatures, Roman capitals and half years (a period of time where both the Julian and Gregorian calendars were used).
And, though I don’t have a photo of it, our guide’s historical costume was top-notch; the hand-stitching was beautiful and the linen looked sumptuous, yet well-worn (we took a Freedom Trail guided tour).
On the way home on Sunday, we went to Old Sturbridge Village. It was kismet—it happened to be Textile Weekend with a focus on early New England quilting. They had a lovely mix of original quilts and faithful reproductions on display throughout the village, and a small show of quilts by their members. We stopped into the member quilt show, and I was a bit disheartened when the woman soliciting votes for their viewer’s choice picks mentioned that some visitors had adamantly voiced that they were only voting for hand-quilted entries, or only machine-quilted entries, etc. Can’t we all just get along? All of the entries had admirable qualities.
This was my favorite quilt in the village itself. It’s just such quintessential early 19th century patchwork:
It was wonderful to hear about early quilting without being fed one single mostly mythological tidbit passed off as absolute fact (like humility blocks, making thirteen quilts before she wed, etc).
And, since I can’t go on vacation these days with buying some sort of fabric, I came home with a pair of reproduction FQs from the Village (haven’t a clue how I’ll use them, but these particular two really caught my eye), and some yardage of a print from IKEA that I love. It will likely be a quilt back. I joked that I only agreed to go to Boston because there’s a nearby IKEA. There may be a bit more truth to that statement than I want to admit. 😉
