From whence we come (a book rec)

I think it was given my sister and me around 1964.

I was just learning to write cursive, as you can see. In my preteen years, our very battered copy became the recipent of an embroidered book cover, which I pasted onto hard board without nearly enough swing-room for the covers to open…

The pages are filled with these delightful illustrations, and the familiar nursery rhymes are brilliantly reenterpeted. Anyone who reads the snippet from “The Theory That Jack Built will know where I developed my brand of scepticism!

To-do; sell stuff

Take pictures of, write descriptions of, and offer on Etsy, the estimated half-ton of vintage jewelry that I have accumulated over the decades. Some samples;

Desert Raider Zombie Hunter

This is Wolf, heading into the canebreak.

We made this outfit for the Wasteland event…

Wrap pants in a double layer of muslin to the knees, with canvas tube for the lower half. The shirt is an approximation of the same technique.

Wolf hotglued and tied bundles of corn straw to make the hat.

The furs are courtesy of my dear friend Walter. All the weaponry, and those amazing elkhide boots, circa 1970, courtesy of Keith Longino.

A recipe for Embattled Lace

alllaceOne gigantic spool of black cotton Cluny point lace. Don’t waste your time trying this with acrylic or polyester.

Bleach.

Patience– or impatience, which ever seems most appropriate to the dish at hand.

Reel off as much lace as you feel like fiddling with. Wet the lace, if you want, scrunch it into a very random wad, and drop it into a bowl.

pour some bleach into a cup, and add the same amount of water. Sprinkle it over the wadded lace, and pour more of it carefully down the edge of the bowl so that it puddles on the botoom, and the lace is sitting in a highly reactive little puddle. if you’re outdoors you’ll be able to watch the black dye oxidize, begin to turn brown and go away. Turn the lace once or twice, if, like me, you just can’t trust the Gods of entropy and chaos to do their work unaided.

When you’ve reached the end of your patience, pull the lace out and rinse like crazy.

Your black lace– or anyway, the black lace I have– will bleach into sepias and mushroom browns. If you want to tune the grunge you can overdye in a similar patchy fashion, using Rit dyes in those wierd colors– teal, purple, scarlet– you know, the ones that don’t mingle well. We do not want our lace to feel comfortable, not for a second!

You will have to wash the lace after the dye process unless you plan to use it on something that can take a bit of spreading stain, which has it’s own naive charm of course. I put it into a lingerie bag, but it still gets knotted and twisted. it’s nearly impossible to unknot wet lace. Let it dry in a seaweed-like tangle hanging off of something, before you start picking out the knots.

You can see that the process leaves the lace rumpled and cowering, which slows down the sewing process considerably. On the other hand, ironing it is a pain in the whatsit; Six of one, half dozen of the other…

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