It's a wonderfully 18th-century-like print. (Although it may have been meant to be Oriental.) I have no idea what the fibre content is - I'd have to pull a thread and play with fire, which I don't feel like doing. It's rather loosely woven and very soft, quite reminiscent of my Indian shawl which is, I believe, rayon. But this isn't an Indian kerchief, because there's this:
I googled "Felicitas Queisser" and did not get much. Most of my results were German. Some Polish. Some Etsy. Some e-Bay. Some claimed vintage. Some claimed new. Some claimed "made in Italy", which did not line up with the fact so many of the results were German. One German site I ran into was an account of 50s fashions and said Felicity Queisser clothing was particularly popular in Germany.
So that's about it. I own a mystery Felicity Queisser kerchief / scarf that could and could not be vintage. It would also make a fabulous printed fichu (there's one here), if only I had a frock that would more or less match it in colour. :D
(Well, of course I'm going to wear it in normal life, just like I wear my Indian shawl. And its colours are so perfectly me.)
Waitaminute, I didn't mean that. But Kuusi and Viisi were too cute to pass up when I had the camera...
The more I listen to this album, the more I love it. Or, rather, the songs on it - Privateering is a very song album.
Also, the colours are giving me ideas. As if I needed them!
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!
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...
This afternoon, me and my sister played guides to her friend and her friends in our hometown. Well - we mostly found out we don't know our own hometown. :D But it was all right; and it was so warm and sunny, it was unbelievable. It's great to have photography-friendly weather back. I feel more like blogging immediately. :-)
I'm not going to tell you what my hometown is, but I'm going to show you some pictures...
* * *
Yesterday, when I went out to take photos of the Regency-ish necklace, my usual object-photographing spot on the bench was taken...
Nelinka looks grown here, but she's still such a tiny cat. In Czech, I say she's prťavá. I'm not sure how to get the same effect with an English word... it's kind of mocking and kind of fond.
* * *
On a completely different note, American Duchess came with dyeable Regency slippers of the flat kind...
And you may win them in a giveaway - although with the number of American Duchess fans, the chances are pretty slim... :D
Completely different note, but these do look very Springy.
Sooo... better late than never, right? This could have been earlier if I had not gone to cinema on Sunday, had not had to read a long novel on Monday, and had not just enjoyed the Spring and listened to the blackbirds on Tuesday. Oh, and then somehow I took a photo except it was not there when I looked. Or maybe I did not take it after all.
That's all right: because I could not find the original
photo, I went to the garden today and took photos on my Indian shawl.
Which is infinitely better for a Regency-ish necklace than a photo with a
plain wood background would have been.
This necklace was inspired by the necklaces I posted a long time ago. For a long time, that shop did not have any medallion components with more holes than one. When I finally got some, they were silver. Then I could not find my white acryllic paint; and then I realised it was a good thing because white against silver would not look as good as it does against gold. So I took a cue from the malachite jewellery in the UPM instead. My colour ended up a bit more turqoise/teal...
So the butterfly necklace still looms before me as an idea for the future. This is a test necklace. A muslin, so to say.
The "stones" are made from an air-drying terracotta modelling paste (which is suspiciously paper-like in some respects) that I got years and years ago for birthday or Christmas. I had never used it, because while I liked modelling, I did not know what to use it for - it seemed too precious to waste on some experiments that would be thrown away years later, and because of its nature, it could not be used for more sturdy projects that clay would normally be used for.
The process - cutting the shapes from the paste, letting them dry, painting them with acrylic - still leaves something to be desired, but it's generally a good way to use the materials in my present situation and interests in life.
It'd be great if I reached a level of skill with the material to actually make reliefs like on the UPM jewellery, but I don't think that's very likely to happen anytime soon. I never achieved that level of detail, not even with conventional clay.
The Challenge: #7 - Accessorise.
Fabric: Obviously, none. Pattern:Likewise. Year: 1805-ish. Notions: Metal jewellery components (medallions, chains, rings, closure), air-drying terracotta modelling paste, acrylic paint, glue How historically accurate is it? As accurate as it can get with the list above... Also, I've only seen gold necklaces of this kind so far, but I could not get gold components. Hours to complete: I'm afraid I lost trace, as I made it over a longer course of time. Not counting the drying of modelling paste, paint and glue, about 2-3 hours? With it, several days. First worn: This Thursday to school, just because. Total cost: About 130 CZK for the components. The modelling paste was a gift. The cost of the paint and glue is just a fraction of the cost of the whole package...
The recent weeks were... I don't even know what. Frustrating for sure, because it's April already and there had been no Spring to speak of until about Monday. I also missed Easter Sunday service. That's really frustrating, and I thank everyone who wrote wonderful Easter posts on their blogs, because I fairly lived by those in these recent days, even if I did not comment. I think you'll know who you are...
As I said, though, Spring's finally, finally here. The sun's shining and the blackbirds are singing their syrinxes off.
I've been to the National Theatre.
The National Theatre is a perfect example of squeezing as much as
possible from as little as possible. It was built from money raised by
popular collections, on a plot by the river that looks very romantic
nowadays but was probably a low-rate spot back then. And small. It
seemed to us as if the stage was bigger than the auditory, and we sat
high above it and it gave my sister vertigo.
My Little Black Dress got another outing, the excitement of which was
kind of ruined by the heinous weather and badly fitting shoes (a case of
"they fit all right when I bought them, and never since").
The play was awesome, though.
In other news, my ooold computer finally died on me (as in, it kept hiccupping while doing the most basic things, and finally certain things stopped working), so now I have a new computer that Father's had in works for a long time now. The new computer is so, so much faster. And so, so much quieter. The old one was somewhere between 8 to 12 years old, though with upgrades...
I finally, after a very, very long time, made it to an editorial meeting of our youth magazine again. Nearly everyone in the "editorial board" is from Prague or studies in Prague, except me, so I have not been able to attend for a long time, and it was another frustrating thing, being in touch with these people only through the internet.
The last post still remains unfinished. And I realise I must have forgotten to inform some of the last blogger awards nominees...
Best school quote of the week: "You should not be surprised by American hypocrisy. America has the greatest ideals, and therefore also the greatest hypocrisy."
Apologies to my American readers. The man who said that is American, too.
And I have only finished a single Historical Sew Fortnightly item so far, and that one a bit late. Item to come.
The most exciting thing for now: Once Upon A Time In The West in cinema! Sunday evening. I had not been able to just let something roll for a long, long time. I needed that. I love the music. I cried at the end, as always. (It's beautiful in that very raw Western way.)
Here's an iconic costume-related scene that may explain at least part of it.
This is a kind of unfinished, dirty version I'm putting up so that it's still on time... I'll hopefully clean it up tomorrow evening, add pictures, add things to some answers and so on. School and other duties, you know the drill... Questions unanswered have been answered before.
1. Introduce yourself! Divulge your life's vision, likes, dislikes, aspirations, or something completely random!
I would like to be a translator. Maybe an interpreter, too: I enjoy interpreting, but it leaves me completely exhausted. Which, I’m told, is normal. I love languages, and I want to have that contact with people; when I’m lost in myself, bad things happen.
2. What, to you, forms the essence of a true heroine?
3. Share (up to) four heroines of literature that you most admire and relate to.
4. Five of your favourite historical novels?
5. Out of those five books who is your favourite main character and why?
6. Out of those five books who is your favourite secondary character and why?
7. If you were to plan out your dream vacation, where would you travel to - and what would you plan to do there?
8. What is your favourite time period and culture to read about?
9. You have been invited to perform at the local charity concert. Singing, comedy, recitation - what is your act comprised of?
10. If you were to attend a party where each guest was to portray a heroine of literature, who would you select to represent?
11. What are your sentiments on the subject of chocolate?
12. Favourite author(s)?
C.S. Lewis.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Neil Gaiman (with some reservations)
Adam Mickiewicz (though I like his other works less than Pan Tadeusz)
Astrid Lindgren
13. Besides essentials, what would you take on a visiting voyage to a foreign land?
Besides essentials, and my old panda teddy... My camera, rather obviously, and many memory cards (I’ve run out of memory during my 2011 trip to the Baltic countries and we had to buy a new one...) and many spare batteries for it (I’ve ran out of batteries at some of the most interesting spots during my 2007 journey to the USA – the Statue of Liberty and the Baltimore Railway Museum, aaargh!). And a notebook. I’m not very likely to keep a diary (I’ve tried), but it’s good to take notes when something strikes my imagination.
14. In which century were most of the books you read written?
The 20th century: just look at my favourite authors, the majority of them wrote then.
15. In your opinion, the ultimate hero in literature is…
16. Describe your ideal dwelling place.
An early 20th century house somewhere in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, with easy access to the railway, with a forest nearby, with a small flower garden in the front (phloxes are imperative, the rest is up for debate) and a somewhat messy vegetable and fruit garden in the back. Tart green summer apple trees. A cherry tree. Maybe more. Green beans! Um, hopefully.
Oh, and clotheslines in the garden.
Early 20th century, because it will have large enough windows to allow lots of light, but still thick enough walls to keep the heat out in summer or the warmth in in winter.
A light kitchen. A cool pantry. A library. A sewing room. An attic bedroom (blue and white). An orange and green bathroom, because I’ve found out, by experience with various kinds of bathrooms, that that’s the only colourway that does not make me feel cold in a bathroom.
17. Sum up your fashion style in a short sentence.
18. Have you ever wanted to change a character’s name?
Like I said: A.C. Doyle naming a semi-villain “A. Dvorak” was really, really stupid. At least he could have used a different initial, right? Right. In my head-canon, he’s really F. Liska and comes from Vienna (where there were many Czechs at that time). :D
19. In your opinion, the most dastardly villain of all literature is...
Iago still reigns supreme. As Lisa said back then, he’s properly diabolical...
20. Three favourite Non-fiction books?
Aside from those already mentioned...
The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis. I’ve just used it in an essay. And it’s not the first time I used it for school, either. It’s a very useful book overall, not just for school.
21. Your duties met for the day, how would you choose to spend a carefree summer afternoon?
22. Create a verbal sketch of your dream hat - in such a way as will best portray your true character.
There’s that straw hat I still have not made...
Then there’s the Madeline hat: a classic felt number, wide-brimmed, that goes with my Little Black Dress, and is a bit whimsy for everyday wear, which is precisely why I love wearing it in an everyday setting from time to time.
And then there’s my newest acquisition, which I never dreamed of, but is absolutely perfect: a beige felt cloche with a self-fabric bow at a side, a classic number that can be worn every day and add a touch of class to my everyday clothing: just what I’ve always wanted to be like, and always rather struggled with.
23. Share the most significant event(s) that have marked your life in the past year.
Helping out an elderly couple; the lady is handicapped. Especially staying with them for several days on a vacation in my church’s camp. It stretched my abilities in some ways, showed me what I was (and wasn’t) capable of.
Visiting Finland (interpreting on an international workshop), which is something I wanted to post about and did not get around to, in part because I got a terrible flu right afterwards and then, because of school, didn’t get around to going through the photos until recently. But, yes: I’ve been to Finland! I picked blueberries in September! :D
14. Share the Bible passage(s) that have been most inspiring to you recently.
