I’ve been thinking a lot lately about French hoods. I have one that matches a dress I haven’t worn in years. It is, in my opinion, incredibly flimsy and difficult to wear, requiring regular adjustment. I’ve noticed that this is a common problem. I have seen two examples of how to construct and wear a sturdier French hood so that it requires less frequent adjustment.
The first example is Sarah Lorraine’s French Hoods Page, which includes downloadable patterns and instructions on how to don and wear a French hood, with pictures. The details there I found to be rather important were that she braids her hair and then secures it to her head crown or halo style using period hair-taping, and that provides support for the hood, keeping it from sliding backward.
The second example was provided to me in person. Last year at Pennsic, I attended a beaded veil edging class given by Lady Sarra Bossard. At the end of the class, she brought out one of her French hoods, which was constructed differently than any other I’ve seen. Instead of being shaped like a headband or tiara, it had a really strong crown-shaped foundation, which would be hidden by the veil. It kind of looked like a modern sun visor with the visor turned about, and was custom fitted, not stretchy.
I want to take those two examples and make a super-hood. One I can wear for 8 hours and not have to “fix”. So far, I have figured that I can make the base using a strip of plastic canvas measured directly on my head, with the ends cut at an angle and stitched together so that it will sit directly and perfectly on my head. I’m thinking I will cover the base with duct tape to keep any sharp pointies from poking through. I can then cover the base with fabric and make the “visor” part separately, not attaching it until it is also covered with fabric. Then I can decorate the hood with beads and such, and attach a piece of cloth for the veil. I should then be able to secure it to my head using one or two pins and be done with it.
I can get my supplies for this project tomorrow morning. I will post a new post to report on how it turns out if I do manage to follow through
I had to get a replacement BlackBerry, as my previous one bricked itself on Tuesday. I haven’t yet gone and restored my address book from the backup I keep on my computer, so my address book looks really sparse. I figure now is an excellent time for contact information verification. If you have your contact information maintained somewhere online where I can see it (ie Facebook or Plaxo), go verify that it’s all correct. If you have neither of those, you can always email your current information to me (click here to see my email address)
I uploaded 6 new images to Flickr. They’re all HDRI images produced by combining multiple copies of the image taken at different exposures. I was on site at MDRF yesterday to help Tiger get her new booth ready, and while I rested my arms from paint fatigue, I took some image sequences.
This video was taken on July 11th, the day they arrived at the Post Office. They’d been shipped on Wednesday the 9th of July, and had hatched either the 8th or 9th.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you started but did not finish.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog
1. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger 2. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 3. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 4. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
5. Life of Pi – Yann Martel 6. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. The Color Purple – Alice Walker 8. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 9. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 10. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
11. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 12. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
13. His Dark Materials (trilogy) – Philip Pullman
14. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
15. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 16.The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien 17. Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
18. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
19. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 20. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 21. Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis 22. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 23. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
24. Animal Farm – George Orwell
25. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
26. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
27. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
28. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 29. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
30. Hamlet – William Shakespeare 31. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
32. Complete Works of Shakespeare
33. Ulysses – James Joyce
34. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
35. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo 36. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 37. The Bible 38. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
39. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
40. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
41. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
42. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
45. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
46. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 47. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery…(the French version)
48. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 49. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien 50. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling 51. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
52. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
53. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
54. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
55. Middlemarch – George Eliot
56. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
57. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
58. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
59. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 60. Emma – Jane Austen
61. Persuasion – Jane Austen
62. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres 63. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 64. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
65. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
66. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 67. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
68. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
69. Atonement – Ian McEwan 70. Dune – Frank Herbert
71. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
72. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
73. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 74. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
75. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
76. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
77. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold 78. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas… reading this right now
79. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
80. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
81. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
82. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
83. Dracula – Bram Stoker
84. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
85. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
86. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
87. Germinal – Emile Zola 88. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
89. Possession – A.S. Byatt
90. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
91. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
92. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
93. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
94. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
95. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
96. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
97. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 98. Watership Down – Richard Adams
99. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 100. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
While riding the elevator to my floor on my way in to work this morning (at USCG HQ), two other gentlemen were in the elevator with me, and were conversating about something or other. One of them was to exit the elevator before my floor, and the other, after. When the doors opened for the first stop, they paused to finish their conversation. I held the doors so they could do that. When the exiting gentleman had departed, the other apologetically said, “Sorry – my old boss.” I responded, “There are a lot of those in this building”
One of my lilies has finally opened. I think she’s a tiger lily, except that the dark markings on the inside are not spotty, so I’m not sure on that one. She’s pretty, though. Click the photo to see more images.
