Flora, Fauna and Music

We went to a Mark Knopfler & Co.'s concert in Prague yesterday. I cannot refer to it as just Mark Knopfler anymore, and below is a taste of why.



The security at the venue was fairly tight. I began to think my previous post had been premature... I had gone there straight from Brno, and I had a backpack with lots of things that would not have gone down well, like a jar of pins, a tin of needles and my trusty ol' Swiss pocketknife. Thankfully, there was a "depository" where you could leave your backpacks (for money, of course). My sister said the concert better be worth it. I said, with Mark Knopfler, it's fortunately a sure thing.
And boy was I right.

They started out with What It Is, and that alone would have sufficed me. They went on with two new songs - I fell in love with Privateering immediately (must buy the album!) - and then came Hill Farmer's Blues, and that would have sufficed me, too.
But it did not end there. Eventually, Marbletown (the song from the video above) came up. That's a song both me and my sister enjoy a lot, and we kind of even sang, before we realised that probably disturbed the others; and then the band went and did that - although the best part is more or less missing from the video. I wonder how often a single fiddle and a bass keep a hall of some 6000 people on their toes?
They played many other songs, of course, including Sultans of Swing (which is a decade older than me, but you would not know from the audience reaction), and I kept clapping so my hands soon hurt (my arms are still aching a bit) and I kept grinning with utter delight. Until about halfway through Speedway at Nazareth (which is another of those songs that would be in my top ten by MK, except that I'm not sure there are ten of them), when I started biting my finger in order not to cry, because it was so monumental. And then they played Telegraph Road, and I cried.

They got a standing ovation; and I'm still processing the experience.





In other news, Sabine of Kleidung um 1800 made an amazing, amazing discovery concerning early Regency stays and shared her source, so if you're the least bit interested in the clothing of the era, go and read her "Short Stays Studies"!

Oh, and then HSF Challenge: Flora and Fauna. I wanted to sew a dress (I would have cheated by machine), but as I travelled between home and school, I kept forgetting things - material, and pattern, and suddenly it was Sunday and nothing had been done; so I took out a handkerchief I had started a while back, finished the hems and added an embroidery on my way to Brno. The fact that I forgot my embroidery hoop and drew the pattern on a train shows, but I think all in all it's good.

The fabric is this one - stashbusting is going on, too, even though I never officially signed up! I had used more of it for bias binding on a very Frankensteined project that has yet to be photographed...

The Challenge: Flora & Fauna
Fabric: Cotton remnant
Pattern: None whatsover - the handkerchief is obviously just a square, the embroidery is winged (it kind of shows)
Year: 1800-ish, but that's just the overall "feel" I was aiming at
Notions: white cotton thread
How historically accurate is it? It's natural fibers and fully handmade, but I wasn't able to determine what your common handkerchief would have looked like (I only found lacy ones), and did not have time to check whether the stitches are truly accurate.
Hours to complete: I'm bad at this - maybe four?
First worn: Not worn, not used yet. It needs a wash first.
Total cost: The whole remnant was 9 CZK, and this is just a piece of that. The thread was vintage. Even the needle was a vintage pass-me-down! So it's somewhere around 3 CZK plus time and work. Yay for remnants!