The original idea was a Moravian Wallachian folk costume shirt that could double as a Regency shirt and would involve this so far rather wonky embroidery...
... but seeing how long that's no doubt going to take and that I have other priorities than to spend the month of August embroidering, it got relegated to slow progress and the Silver Screen challenge (I do have a way to make it fit that, honestly).
The green stitches are me finally trying out the various stitches in the book on folk costume embroidery I bought years ago. The diagrams are rather confusing, but I think I've finally figured most of them out.
One of the things learned: Detached buttonhole stitch is called "stínek" in Czech; it's also the name for this, as it's used to connect two pieces of fabric. Based on that and a picture in the book, I'm assuming the name applies to the stitch because it was also used to connect two pieces of fabric.
* * *
What I turned to for this month is, instead, a Moravian Wallachian folk costume bodice.
Which will carry on to the later Sewing Secrets challenge with the addition of detachable sleeves to be turned into an approx. 1790s jacket/spencer (exact method of attachment to be determined). No, I don't think it's entirely accurate, but it's close enough and it works for me! If I'll be attending more of the Regency events, I'll need a spencer sooner or later, so why not kill two birds with one stone?
The pattern was derived from the kacabajka pattern, because I really do like killing two birds with one stone and using what I already have.
The fabric used to be a thrifted coat. It's only 80% wool, but how often would I find quite a lot of historically passable red wool fabric only for 50 CZK? I squeezed the whole of the body from the raglan sleeves. The new, curved sleeves will have to be cut from the body of the coat. Ah, the paradoxes of repurposing!
My main project for this challenge was a simple slip. Now, the reason I decided to make a simple slip is because simple = versatile.
I'd wanted to make a slip out of the batiste lingering in the stash for
years now. So when I realised a simple 1920s design of rectangles and
triangular gores at the sides (inspired by American Duchess' tutorial, but not the same) would be a reasonable approximation for
other eras as well, I decided to go for it. It's so simple and
unobtrusive that I can wear it under modern dresses as well: that was
the very first idea for the fabric. The slips I got from my mum years ago don't fit me anymore.
The final impulse came from the fact that this year's annual ball held by my church was 1920s themed. In the end, I did not attend, in part because I still don't have a dress to wear over the slip and in part because I want to go to a Regency ball in February and somehow the whole Regency thing takes precedence.
But it gave me the final kick of "Hey, Foundations challenge, and I want to bust the stash, I could make this thing I've pondered for years!"
It's also an approximation for medieval times, namely inspired by the chemises worn in various Czech illuminations, e.g. here. It's not in any way super accurate (and definitely does not look like this), but it's not meant to be - what medieval I do have is more of an approximation overall, anyway.
An 1837 lithograph of the folk costume from Hošťálková, near Vsetín, Moravian Wallachia. Scanned from Langhammerová, Jiřina. Lidové kroje České republiky. Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague, 2003.
I'm not going to make the full thing, I think, especially because I actually have nowhere to wear the folk costume of a region my family does not live in anymore. But I've always loved this particular style of folk costume and my family actually does, on one side, hail from Moravian Wallachia. And I do have ideas for uses for some parts of it.
Searching for what goes where in the costume, I came across the existence of a slip that goes under these folk costumes, at least in most places in Moravia if not everywhere. It's called "rubáč" in Moravia (and Slovakia, I think). Often, it has a gathered skirt - the only one I've found probably from the Wallachia region does, and so does this geographically unspecified 1940s piece in the Met Museum.
But then maybe that first one is not necessarily a slip that went under a folk costume - it looks quite modern to me in comparison to the traditional style of the Met one. And the Met costume is not a Wallachian costume.
What the dancers in this video seem to wear does probably not involve triangular gores, but it's definitely less full:
Besides, as I said, I don't aim to make a full, super-accurate folk costume, so as an approximation for versatile use, it works.
It's flat-felled, which is the only place where I'm not quite sure I nailed it: I still struggle with figuring out how flat-felled and French seams work where seams meet.
There are pintucks at the bust, which is perfectly fine for 1920s and probably less so for the other uses. (Oh, and those were actually my first pintucks. I'm not sure why I was so scared of them. Making just a few like here is super simple.)
And there's fine machine-made bobbin lace at the bottom hem.
Originally, I wanted to use another piece of lace from my stash (both laces given to me by my grandma or my aunt.) I did not have enough of it and in the end, I'm very glad that was the case, because the fabric is finer than I thought and the finer lace goes much better with it.
I did not hem it: I just used the selvedge.
Just the facts, ma'am:
The Challenge: #1 Foundations Fabric: less than 1.5 of cotton batiste (or something of that type) Pattern:my own: two rectangles (scooped down a little in the front after the pintucks were sewn down), four triangular gores at the sides Year: 1920s, with leeways for elsewhen Notions: white cotton thread, white cotton machine-made bobbin lace How historically accurate is it? Cca 95% for 1920s (fiddly flat-felled seams are a bit winged). With the machine-sewing, pintucks, lace, fiber content etc., less so for medieval times and folk costume. Hours to complete: I can never ever remember, even when I try to keep track. There were some mistakes along the way. Without them, it's quite quick to whip up. Maybe 2 hours? You still have to pin and sew the lace very carefully. First worn: Just trying it out. Total cost: It was all stash, given to me, so for me, zero. It would very much depend on the fabric used and your size.
P.S. If you go for it and decide to make yourself a simple slip like this, with gores, don't forget to start the gores at the waist, so that you already have enough fullness at the hips! Just thought I'd point that out. :-)
I got bored with the 2013 in review (there's still one more post to go, but I just did not feel like finishing up those answers...), and then got busy studying and sewing (still nothing to show, but things to come!), and well, I just want to share something nice with you.
I got inspired by the Hope Chest series Jessica Boyer's been doing, and decided to share more of those beautiful and useful household items with you. I've actually already taken some of those photos earlier, so it's easier.
So here's a cup from a set that I've appropriated for my virtual hope chest, because it's always been sitting in the back of the cupboard, never used, presumably because mom preferred the simpler, gold-rimmed set more, and I actually love the colours and floral pattern of this one! The combination of aqua and orange and green is a bit awkward in our current home, so yes, I can understand why they never got used. But it fits into the colour schemes for my dream home beautifully...
I photographed it on a pillowcase that never got used, either. It's vintage, inherited I believe from an old lady that my grandma used to take care of. We have several of similar bedding pieces, with a sad story attached to them - they were for the hope chest of the daughter of said lady, who however died young. So they went to my family instead. These particular ones never got used because they do not fit any of our pillows (and there are some stains). But they make for a nice vintage linen backdrop. :-)
Aside from the colour scheme, I like how precious the shape of these cups is. They are fairly small (so probably coffee cups rather than teacups) and look like a flimsy china affair (you know the type, don't you?), what with their tiny handles, but they are actually nice and quite sturdy in the hand. (I would not risk dropping them on the floor, though. :D)
They're made in China; the pattern is just printed, not painted, so it's not a super special set, but it's special for me.
1. happier or sadder? I think happier, because unlike the years before, I did keep in touch with more of my friends, at least a bit, and that helps a lot. And as evidenced in the previous post and below, I’ve discovered some great music, and realised a little thing about the way I spend my time, and that helps, too.
2. thinner or fatter? About the same, I think. I don't keep close trace. (The Little Black Dress still fits.)
3. richer or poorer? See above. The same student living on potatoes and onions and stuff. :D Though unlike the year before, I've discovered the awesomeness that are chicken skeletons for soup (with enough meat for a dinner for one!) and homemade noodles. (Why it took me so long? I guess because I was head over heels in love with leavened dough. I still am in love, but it's toned down now, and I've gained enough experience with it to whip it up confidently and shift my attention elsewhere.)
(And why I talk about food? Because it's part of what most of my money went into.)
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Sewing.
And more meeting with the editorial board, which due to my not being in Prague was not possible. This year, more of us are not from Prague, and so it will hopefully be better.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating, as usual...
And spending time on a certain Czech fashion-focused site/forum. I'm a happier person when I don't go there and don't engage in discussion with people who don't get my drift and try to force theirs on me. There were some interesting discussions (often historical-related) and some good advice, but it was mostly eating up my time and energy, and reinforcing a sort of negative approach to life and vainglory or what. The whole site has too broad a focus and it's pretty much all based on critique. And while I originally thought constructive criticism was useful, there was far less of it and far more of the other kind than was good for me; a tendency to find faults at any cost, or failure to explain why someone did not like something (a system of posts rating that leads to a lot of unexplained anonymous hate. Most notable case: American Duchess shoes!)
I'm not going to go and delete my account to demonstrate my epiphany (a lot of the more reasonable members whom I actually enjoyed a discussion with seem to have done that), but phew, I do have better, more positive, productive things to do with my time.
Like the newer and so far mostly stagnant Czech sewing forum. That's much closer to my heart.
I mean, I like constructive criticism. I may not like it at first if it is aimed at something dear to me, but in the long run, it helps.
I just think it is a waste of - not just time, but humanity - to almost purposefully not like things in a not constructive way. And even though I said, and keep saying, that I do not make resolutions, my one resolution for 2014 and onwards might be the obvious and often repeated but still easily forgotten "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is
right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good
repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise,
dwell on these things." (Phillippians 4, 8)
Phew. Time for something more worthy of praise.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
Bombino!
So many thanks to Jana Š. for bringing him to my attention. It’s... just wow. Perfect feel good music for me.
Bruce Springsteen. It used to be one of those names you keep running into and for some reason never check out (does that happen to you?). So I finally did. And loved a lot of what I heard, particularly these two songs:
For the record - because these seem to spur a lot of heated political / social debate on YouTube - I am not going to pretend I know all that these songs are about. I love the music, and the fact that the lyrics are engaged and engaging does not hurt.
And now I regret that I did not check him out a year earlier and missed out on his concert in Prague last year.
Plus, in a convoluted internet wormhole way, I started listening to the Seatbelts' Cowboy Bebop soundtracks at the very end of the year, and again, wow – with this, and Privateering, and The Bad Plus that Oona brought to my attention earlier, I’m finding out that I actually like jazz and/or blues. :D
Aaand... once more, Radůza's Psalm 22.
Thank God for YouTube - it's an excellent source for musical discoveries! The world is full of great, great music.
How did you spend Christmas?
Fell ill before it, and did much less preparation than I planned to. Had fried carp. (I've had carp before, but not fried in the traditional Czech Christmas way. It was good.) Had our usual wine sausage, too, and wanted more, even though there was lots. Managed to make a good potato salad in spite of forgetting several ingredients: celery was a good addition, and it always helps when it's been in the cold for a day or two.
There is a decided lack of green in that salad, because I forgot the gherkins.
Made much less cookies than I wanted to.
My poor sister was actually ill during Christmas, so almost nothing went as planned, and our Christmas stretched over several days, but it was quite fine in the end. We did not decorate a tree, did not sing, and put the usual Bible reading from Luke together from memory, which made it all the more poignant.
The sermon did not give me much this year, but we sang the two best Czech Christmas songs. One is so popular that it's an unofficial Czech Christmas anthem (seriously: last year at an Advent concert, people stood up to sing it), the other is almost virtually unknown outside of church circles. Both are medieval.
You see, medieval Christmas songs are what I grew up with. Listening to an LP. And look, one of the tracks is up on YouTube now!
It's not my favourite, but the whole album is my favourite Christmas album. I already wanted to share last year, but it was nowhere to be found, so yay!
My friend gave me a fabulous scarf. I gave her The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I have yet to read it myself, but I've heard only good things about it.
We visited grandma as usual, and she filled us with food as usual. This time, I made use of my new camera and took photos of objects in her flat, things I've always been looking at there and never thought of photographing.
My favourite is this little glass monkey. Well, it used to be a monkey: it used to have a tail, once, I'm told. I'm told that when one of my sisters was very small, she somehow bit off the tail, and now the tail is lying on the bottom of the glass and the monkey is an ape.
It's the same word in Czech. Well, there is a special word for ape, but most people in everyday setting don't distinguish between them, even less so than in English. It makes the whole Librarian business in Discworld even more fun.
How are you spending New Year’s?
I spent the night with my sister, her husband and a bunch of their friends, like last year: singing and prayer (which I unfortunately missed this year, in part due to the water disaster mentioned in the previous post) and of course good food, and games! Dixit’s the best game ever, but I don't have a picture.
There is a terrace on top of the house they live in that makes for good fireworks watching. And I finally have a camera that sort of photographs them.
Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
I don’t phone much. Almost not at all. Probably my mom or my sister; those are the two I am on the phone with most often.
What was the best book you read?
Huh. Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Elliott? That did blow my mind, although not quite in the “the world’s never going to be the same” way...
And speaking of medieval English, Pearl is quite beautiful, and so well written.
It's school-related books that spring to mind, because my leasure readings were usually things I've read before. And fanfiction - there's some awesome stuff out there, but you have to wade through a lot of not-so-good. My favourite from this year, which is definitely reaching book proportions by now, is probably the stories Wholmes Productions are putting out.
Did you fall in love in 2013?
I don’t think so...
What was your favourite TV show?
I don’t have TV, so I catch up with them where and how I can, and Doctor Who remains my favourite, even though I admit the quality is variable. I enjoy it the most because I tend to like the thinking behind it.
Besides that, I basically discovered that I like series that have self-contained episodes. Sci-fi and detective series fit the bill most often for some reason.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.
What did you want and get?
Honey. :D
What did you want and not get?
Doctor Who DVDs for Christmas, but there’s no complaint whatsoever, because instead, my whole family bought me a ticket for an Ennio Morricone concert this February!
I'm not showing you where exactly my seat is, but for that huge arena, it's pretty close!
What were your favourite films of this year?
Smoke Signals. That did blow my mind in the “the world’s never going to be the same” way, so much so that anything else I can come up with pales in comparison.
Go and see Smoke Signals. It’s much less of what you’d expect it to be, and all it should be. Huh, I guess I’ve just come up with a sort of my own definition of an outstanding film or something...
This never fails to crack me up. :-)
And the ending always blows my mind.
My aunt is moving, and getting rid of stuff. She decided to get rid of a large part of her sewing supplies, because, as she said, sewing clothes is not really her thing after all (she makes super-cute toys, like my old teddy). Among other things, that means those old magazines are now definitively mine.
Today, I went to her home to pick some thread and other things (which turned out to be quite a load). I walked, and made a detour through two more villages - well, through one additional one as opposed to the usual way. As I walked through that village, I met a dog. The dog decided I was interesting and went on with me.
This is Dog, before I realised he was not going to stay in the village...
At the edge of the village, I got a first indication of Dog's unique nature. Dog kept running away to inspect various interesting smells along the road; but he kept running back to me. During one such expedition, he got in the way of a car. The driver glowered at me. I shouted at the driver that Dog wasn't mine.
Dog thought I was his, though.
He continued running around me, following me, running in front of me, running through puddles, getting in my way, getting in the way of cars (one stopped just in the nick of time, with a terrible screech) and being a total disgrace.
A clever and audacious and stubborn and cute disgrace.
He went with me all the way to aunt's door, where I had to get in through a narrow gap so that Dog would not follow me into the yard.
I got so many things from aunt that I don't think I can show you all of them here... maybe I'll never show you all of them anyway. :D
A sleeve board! This one I actually already got on Sunday. But oooh, I've been thinking for some time now that I really really needed this!
Some trim. The gold one on top is almost like knitted net, so I'm thinking that maybe I could manipulate it into a hairnet or something...
I also got lots of lace, but that I did not bother photographing. Sooner or later, I'll hopefully use it for something, and then you'll get a photo.
A box full of tailor's chalk! I think I'm going to share this. :D Although I'm definitely keeping the magenta one.
Bias binding! And some khaki twill tape.
A box full of tools, somewhat mysterious.
I have a feeling I've seen something like these before, but I can't place it.
It looks like some sort of smoothing tool?
A little sharp hook.
A curved bodkin.
A tiny hook. (Crochet? Crewelwork?)
A wooden needlecase! How wonderful is that? Also, now I have one of those bone awls! I think that may come in useful when I want to be sure my eyelets won't get too big.
And then I got lots and lots of thread; mostly polyester, but also lots of thick linen heavy duty thread, and two spools of Gütermann's buttonhole twist!
It can't get much better than free Gütermann's buttonhole twist, I think. If I manage it before aunt moves, I think I at least owe her a Tiramisu or something...
After I got home and sorted out most of the things, I
eventually got a text from my aunt, telling me the dog was now sitting
at the bus stop in my hometown: just to wrap up the story.
I’m stealing
this feature from the Dreamstress to make sense of my own musings... Some things
I remembered yesterday trigged this, and I thought it could be a good way of
introducing you to some tiny details about the Czech Republic (and me, admittedly).
I may,
sometimes, somewhere, mention that I’ve been to the USA. That was in 2007,
thanks to a Presbyterian congregation that decided to play host to someone from
my church in connection to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, something they
call “youth conference” which quite scared me at first before I realised it was almost the same sort of youth meeting I was used to, only much bigger and with more paperwork. The Triennium was a huge, and
kind of eye-opening and life-changing event, if in small ways. There’s nothing
quite like meeting fellow young Christians from all over the country and all
over the world... And, well, let’s say that after having spoken in prayer in front of some 7000 people, delivering a school presentation to some 30 people
is not much of a problem anymore...
I spent a bit less than a week on the Triennium, and about three
weeks with people from the congregation, thanks to whose hospitality I had a
chance to visit various places along the East Coast. (My least favourite, and
my favourite, was Baltimore, which I’ll get to.
Aside from
the following five things I missed, there’s also the matter of “the feeling of safety” that
surfaced during the long security lines in the Spy Museum in Washington and at
the Statue of Liberty. At the Statue of Liberty, I realised with quite a shock
that I was in a country where a Swiss Army knife was a weapon, while I’d lived
all my life in a country where it is a tool.
Not that I discount the possibility of it being used as a weapon, or the fact that terrible things did happen in New York and elsewhere. It’s just that
I live in a country that has a very different mindset, and had a different mindset even before that, which is a bit of an explanation why those things happened in the USA and not in the Czech Republic, whether that's a bad thing or not.
Enough of
that.
#1: Soups.
As a child, I used to hate soups with a passion, the notable exception being
the sauerkraut soup and some three or four others. I gradually came to accept
soups and like more of them. Then I went to the USA.
During my
month in the USA, I had a soup two times: in a
Viet-Thai restaurant the day after I arrived, and in an Irish restaurant the day before I left. In the
interim, I missed soups terribly. In the Czech Republic, you would very often
get both soup and a main course for dinner (lunch, because the main meal of the
day is the midday meal). You would, also, very often only get soup for your
dinner. Living on sandwiches and salads (I ate much more salads in the USA than
I normally do, in an attempt to escape the less healthy options) and the occasional chicken, I realised
that I actually loved soups. And begged mother to cook a soup for me when I come home.
#2: Bread.
There’s Czech bread. And then there’s the bread in my hometown. About a thousand
light-years removed from both, there’s the white bread I encountered in the
USA.
Czech bread
isn’t just any bread. It’s bread you actually, hypothetically, could live on.
There are days when I pretty much do.
Father sometimes says, quoting
something (I wish I knew what): “It seemed to me that nobody loved me, so I
bought a loaf of bread and wolfed the whole thing.” ("Zdálo se mi, že mě nikdo nemá rád, tak jsem si koupil bochník chleba a celej jsem ho sežral.")
The loaf of bread we’re
talking about here is usually 0,9-1,2 kg. And when it’s fresh, it is quite
possible to eat the whole thing, as it is, just because it’s so good as it is. Czech
bread, when done properly, has a crunchy crust and a wholesome inside, and it
smells of grain and caraway seeds. My uncle, (in)famously, was once instructed
by my aunt to buy a whole loaf of bread, but the bread was so enticing that he
kept nibbling at it on his way home, and at home he sliced off the eaten part
cleanly, pretending to have only bought a half of a loaf... (Yep, that's a pound of bread nibbled at.)
Moreover, I
live in a town where the local bakery is apparently one of the last mass-produce
bakeries in the Czech Republic to make genuine sourdough bread. And a bakery in
a town not so far away makes the best breadrolls, the kind of breadrolls that’s
spoken about far away as something you have to taste to truly have lived...
Compare
this to the white, tasteless sponge that the Western world calls "bread", and you’ll
understand why I missed bread so much.
#3: Trains.
And walking. I did get my share of walking on the Triennium, and here and
there, but the fact that we travelled everywhere by car, while at home I travel
everywhere by train, was quite a culture shock.
It’s the
little things that throw you. The little thing that threw me was the absence of
an under-the-window heater to rest my leg on. It’s an automatic thing for me. I
have somewhat short legs, and the comfortable way to sit while travelling is to
sit at the window and rest my leg on the heater. It is, also, something I
cannot do in a car, making car rides all the more tiresome.
But there
was also the general absence of trains from the country and from people’s
lives. No timetables to observe when travelling. Almost no railroads to cross. Czech
Republic is criss-crossed by railways, one of the countries with the highest
density of railways in the world (guessing by a map I found online, surpassed
only by Germany and Switzerland). The USA, while it has the longest railways in
the world apparently, has none of the railway culture the Czech Republic has.
My father is a railway enthusiast, and I practically grew up with trains. (I
still find an article on prototype locomotives in Czech history a far more
interesting thing to read in a magazine for railway passengers than, say, an
interview with a famous person...)
This brings
me to Baltimore. Baltimore is a terrible city for someone used to walking
everywhere. But, as I learned after my first visit there, it houses a railway
museum. (Railroad. Whatever.) The day before I left, then, I visited Baltimore
again, and spent a very enjoyable day at the museum, including a very short,
not at all picture-perfect train ride. I put my leg on the heater and I was a
very happy marmot.
#4: The
landscape and the countryside. The thing about Czech landscape is that it is
very rarely flat. And it is quite green. When flying home, I knew we had
crossed the border by the bunches of little forests scattered all over the
country. A village, a field, a forest. A village, a field, a forest. And so on.
Czech
Republic has almost no truly high mountains (our highest mountain is 1602 m
high). But it also has almost no plains. Czech Republic is one of the watersheds
of Europe, and everybody knows that rivers flow downwards. And Czech Republic
is full of hills. It’s a rumpled country, and I missed that rumpledness
terribly in the flat, flat, flat regions of the USA I visited. Czech Republic’s
rumpledness makes it a very cosy country.
#5: The
music. This is the one I would not have expected at all. I expected to miss the
food, and the language, and the cultural customs – maybe even the landscape. I
do not listen to Czech music all that much and modern music seems to be so
American anyway, right?
Well, that’s
modern music, perhaps. But I missed Czech Christian music. I missed the music
of my church. On the Triennium, on one of the meetings with the other
international participants, we sang a song (Jesus Loves Me, or some such) that
they chose because they thought everyone would know it. Everyone did, except
me. Because, while I come from a church with a Presbyterian organisation, my
church has a very different history, very different background, very different
tradition. I only knew two of the songs sung on the Triennium: Bless the Lord, My Soul –
which, to the best of my knowledge, originates with the Taizé community in
France – and Amazing Grace which is... well... Amazing Grace.
Here comes
a rant. It could have been an excellent opportunity to learn new songs, if only
the majority of songs sung at the Triennium had not been “worship songs”. In
retrospect, on the Triennium I came to realise that while I definitely believe
in worship by song, I do not believe in “worship songs”. They were all so tepid,
without any taste of their own (just like the white bread...). The tunes were
interchangeable, and the words were interchangeable, too. Had I known nothing
else, I might have found these songs, sung by the mass of people, moving – I did
find it moving at times. The thing is, before I attended the PYT, I had
attended numerous youth meetings in my own church, and experienced a very
different kind of song. The sad fact is, even compared to the many medieval, renaissance and
baroque songs I know, those modern worship songs were very much dead.
Spirituals and gospel songs and songs based on 1960s folk are very much popular with the
youth in my church which was why I was quite surprised by the blandness
present at the Triennium. (It wasn’t just me, though – I had a very animated
discussion on the subject with a black member of the Presbytery I was
there with, who treated me and some passers-by to a much more soulful rendition
of Amazing Grace than the one at worship). But a number of very old songs
enjoy the same level of popularity, maybe even greater (one of the perennial
favourites is a song recorded in a 1567 hymn-book.)
This, for your info, is a 1630s song.
It helps that my church’s
current cantor really has a knack for bringing those old songs to life.
Unfortunately, this is not one of those old songs. Neither is, technically, this, because that's his own creation. But it gives you an idea of what he is capable of. This is originally from 1490.
Sorry about the bad quality; while Ladislav Moravetz is a celebrity in my own church, he's not much of one elsewhere.
I missed
variety. “Worship” is all fine, but not even all Psalms are “worship songs”,
are they? There is a lot of anxiety, a lot of despair, a lot of almost prideful
assuredness, a lot of joy that makes you burst and want to dance. You do not
get any of that from the sort of tune that usually accompanies “worship songs”.
I do not
want to mislead you: the “music culture” (for lack of a better term) at my own
congregation is quite atrocious. But I can’t help myself; I now have a lot of
almost prideful assuredness in my church’s variety in Christian
songs. It's not just in comparison with the Triennium: many other churches I encountered also tend to have songs from only one period, songs of only one style.
My church's very checkered history prevented that from happening. We have some (few but some) songs from before the hussite period. We have hussite songs. We have songs from the Unity of Brethren. We have renaissance songs like those written by Martin Luther, baroque songs like those written by Jan Ámos Komenský AKA Comenius, classicist songs, 19th century songs, 20th century songs. There’s something for every situation. There are songs that tell a
story. And there are songs that are very much a credo; those are usually the
best...
EDIT: I just ran into this on YouTube, and had to share...
My grandfather is a dental technician. Don't freak out just yet; it means he had always had easy access to resins.
That means he could make these:
Resin and ink shank buttons he made for my mom years and years ago. I don't understand the details of working with resin, but it basically sounds like something very easy (if you know how to work with resin) with very impressive results.
They were originally not attached to this bright blue jacket. The buttons that came with it looked like this:
It looked worse in real life than it does on the photo. This very bright, very blue jacket was fitted with greenish-greyish blue buttons; a very wrong colour that made it look shabby, while it is actually so bright and shiny and cool.
I pronounce my grandfather's buttons a big improvement.
(Bright and shiny and cool against a very shabby backdrop.)
Today, I have a guest post up at Steph's place, 3 Hours Past the Edge of the World. It is a result of my previous rather ranty post on the subject of crochet vs. bobbin lace, and my correcting Steph on the same mistake. She asked me to write a guest post on the subject, and I tried to be more precise in my explanation.
It is a bit of a strange feeling, to have (relatively) expert knowledge on a bloggable subject, especially compared to someone like Steph, who is a perfect example of a knowledgeable sewing blogger who does not shy away from sharing that knowledge. I'm definitely not an expert on sewing, or any of the other things I usually write about. And I'm not such an expert on this either, compared to other people, but it's something I know more about than your average sewist. And that's the strange feeling.
So, to get away from that - here are some more vintage/antique laces I got from my grandma. :-) The first two are crochet, the one inserted into fabric is bobbin lace, the last one is, again, crochet. Notice how the maker of that one forgot one of the picots. :-)
I'm not very good at crochet, and I still have not finished that first bobbin lace bookmark. But I understand what the techniques are about, so I was growing increasingly surprised (and slightly annoyed) when I saw many online sellers (including the very knowledgable proprietor of Vintage Textile!) describing what I knew to be bobbin lace (even if of the machine-made-type) as crochet. Why is that? The techniques are completely different! Not only do they work in completely different ways, they usually look different.
It probably would not bug me so much if it went both ways, but it's always bobbin lace labelled as crochet. Are people simply not familiar with the technique of bobbin lace? That would surprise me with Czech sellers; bobbin lace is rather big here. (As in, traditional and admired.) Is crochet somehow considered "desirable", as opposed to bobbin lace?!
I do not want to sound like I'm looking down my nose on crochet because I can't get it right. Consider this:
This is a vintage/antique crochet trim I got from my Wonderful Crafty Grandma. (It was probably originally sewn into a bedding piece or something like that.) It's approx. 4,2 cm wide and 1 m long. All handmade.
So, yes, consider this, as an example of what crochet looks like - click on the picture to see it in detail. Of course, this is a specific style of crochet (filet crochet), and there are other ways that make it look different, with scallops and picots and what-have-you.
(The only other example of crochet lace I found at home...)
But it's still crochet: a technique that works with one continuous thread, working it into chains and what is called "stitches" (English sucks here; it's called "columns" in Czech, which gives you a much better idea of what it looks like). There is never, I repeat, NEVER, a simple, "unworked" thread to be seen in a crochet work.
Unlike here:
This is a machine-made bobbin lace trim (again from my grandma). As you can see, hopefully, bobbin lace is completely different. Bobbin lace is, essentially, a type of weaving. It works with several threads and weaves them together. Sometimes it's quite open, like here.
Sometimes, there are tighter-woven motifs, like here:
But it's still very different from crochet. Simple, "unworked" threads. Weaving structure. Obvious on first sight.
The mix-up would not surprise me so much with this trim:
This is machine made just like the two examples above, and seems to be playing up to the crochet similarity. (BTW, as far as I know, there is no machine-made crochet. Feel free to correct me if you know otherwise. If you know it for a fact.) But if you look closely, you can still see the weaving structure here: there are several threads, not a single continuous one.
So here, that's the one signature difference, and now you should be able to tell crochet trim from bobbin lace.
(Note: Some types of sewn lace can look similar to bobbin lace, but those are rarer. Also, I'm only dealing with the cotton thread kind of lace in this post - I'm not as knowledgeable on the techniques involved in the making of other types of lace, like the - usually artificial fibre - stuff you find on your underwear.)
EDIT: Here are some more examples of what bobbin lace can do, from my grandma's work:
