pameladlloyd: Happy Bear by Boynton, "Oh, What a Great Moment!" (What a Great Moment!)
I managed to announce this on most of my social networking sites, but not here. I was asked to do a guest blog post for a genealogy wiki, called WikiTree, and my first post went live on Tuesday. You can find Pamela's Perspective (Their name! I never thought to name it, somehow.) on the WikiTree blog. This is my first guest post for someone else's blog, so I was thrilled to be asked to participate.

You might also have seen my occasional mentions of posts on Searching for Roots and Branches. Searching for Roots and Branches is my journal of genealogical discovery, where I explore various aspects of genealogy, anything from a photo of an ancestor or other relative, to a biographical sketch, to a detailed examination of my research and proof process. This evening, instead of getting work done, I posted about a a sudden nostalgia I was feeling in An Unusual Lullaby: The Whiffenpoof Song. My husband tells me it's a weird post, but "in a good way." Go figure.

While I'm posting about blogging, perhaps I should mention that I also blog on Red Poulaine's Musings. This is a joint blog which my husband and I write. Red Poulaine's Musings started shortly after we opened an Etsy store, Red Poulaine, where we sell vintage postcards and photographs. In our item listings, we include a lot of historical information about the people featured in the images, the photographers who took the pictures, and other historical tidbits and trivia related to the paper ephemera we sell. (My genealogy work sometimes comes in handy when we're researching the people associated with the images, allowing us to share information not easily found elsewhere.) Our shop had readers! So, we decided to create a blog and give people who don't visit our shop a chance to read some of the historical work we do. Although almost every image we sell has a story associated with it, we don't manage to post as often to our blog as we post pictures in the shop. We wish we could, but there's only so much two busy people can manage. Still, we hope that the stories and history we share on our blog is interesting and fun for our readers.
pameladlloyd: Happy Bear by Boynton, "Oh, What a Great Moment!" (What a Great Moment!)
A friend of mine, [livejournal.com profile] mmegaera, just announced that her first curated virtual museum exhibits are now available on the Tacoma Historical Society website. These are historic postcards in four categories: Schools of Old Tacoma, People...Virtually, Parks of Tacoma, and Commerce in Tacoma. The links to each exhibit are on the left side of the page.
pameladlloyd: Alya, an original character by Ian L. Powell (reading fairy)
One of the things I sometimes discuss with the students I tutor is the fact that reading and writing are fairly new for humans. We didn't evolve (in the prehistorical sense) to do these things, because they weren't part of the environment we evolved to survive—but they are very much part of the environment we live in today, very much a survival requirement. [livejournal.com profile] mount_oregano touches on this briefly, when she notes, "Speaking is instinctive, but writing is a technology: a code," in the opening line of her informative and enjoyable post about the ways in which writing has developed to support the ways in which people read.
pameladlloyd: Alya, an original character by Ian L. Powell (queen)
My younger son recently told me that he's thinking of joining the SCA. When he and his brother were younger, we used to go down to Himmel Park on Sunday afternoons, where fighter practice was being held. My boys enjoyed watching the practice and I enjoyed sitting with the crafters, working on various needlework projects. More recently, Keith tagged along with a friend to Estrella and he's now eager to join. Which means he'll need a persona and a costume. I don't yet know what he's planning, or even if he's made up his mind, outside of his intention to build armor, so he can join in the fighting, so a discussion of his costume will have to wait.

In the meantime, I don't know about you, but I loved to play dress up when I was a kid. I still do, really, although I've rarely gotten my act together sufficiently to pull off the kind of elaborate costume I love so much, which may be why I'm enamored of sites that offer ready-made costumes to those who don't have the time and energy to make fantastic garb (or who want to spend that time and energy on other things). So, I really enjoyed finding a link in [livejournal.com profile] ellen_kushner's post, Olde York, to Past Images, a costume shop and photography studio in York, England that offers costumes from several periods along with some very creative CG backgrounds and settings. It makes me want to pack my bags and head for York, right now.

I also really admire and appreciate people who costume. Often, the level of time, effort, skill, and care put into their work is amazing. Recently, I've been seeing a lot of steampunk, which I think is a lot of fun. There's a live journal community, [livejournal.com profile] steamfashion, which is devoted to steampunk costuming, and they've recently posted about a steampunk fashion show in :Wicked Faire Steampunk Fashion Show - Post 1 and Wicked Faire Steampunk Fashion Show - Post 2.

It wouldn't be fair not to mention my own husband's recreationist fashion efforts. For Halloween, he made a metal plague doctor's mask for his youngest son, which he decorated with punch work repousse. (See my post Figurative Art for links to more information about plague doctors.) We didn't manage to get a good picture then, but if I can, I'll try to get him back into his costume and get a picture to post, sometime in the near future.

More recently, Karl has been experimenting with making poulaines. After reading some articles about them online, he started by putting on a pair of cheap socks and wrapping duct tape around them to conform to his foot shape, then cutting the tape-wrapped sock off to form a sole, a heel, and a body piece. From these, he developed pattern pieces. This evening, he cut up a big piece of green felt he'd found a year or so ago at a yard sale (I think it was originally intended as a puzzle-keeper). He'll be sewing these together to form the shoes. I'm not sure what he's going to use for the soles, although for this trial run he's just using the felt to make the equivalent of a pair of slippers.

We've had a few discussions about the soles, actually. He prefers the simplicity and semi-authenticity of a single layer of the sole material, as would have been used historically. I, plagued by sensitive feet all my life and foot problems as an adult, favor something with a bit of built in cushioning and support. For the moment, our compromise (for whenever he makes a pair for me) is to have me purchase a pair of insoles, which I will put on under the pattern sock when we wrap my foot, and which I will later wear inside my shoes.

A Few Almost Completely Random Costume-Related Links

A Few Completely Random Steampunk Links

UPDATED: I added a couple of links that absolutely had to be in the costume list.
UPDATE #2:Just came across the notice of a new Steampunk costume site, Clockwork Couture.
pameladlloyd: Alya, an original character by Ian L. Powell (lady with cup)
Our country has had mixed feelings about the relationship between religion and government for a very long time. This interview on Fresh Air with Steven Waldman of Beliefnet, the author of Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, throws a little bit of light on the antecedents of the social and political struggles that led to the creation of our constitution.

Steven Waldman Explores Founding Faith : NPR
pameladlloyd: Alya, an original character by Ian L. Powell (pyramids)
I've just been reminded of another community that writers may find useful: [livejournal.com profile] askahistorian.

Just in case people missed this, hidden in the comments of Bittercon: Research--Finding the Hard-to-Find Details, now that the discussion has slowed down. I've also posted this as a separate entry.
pameladlloyd: Alya, an original character by Ian L. Powell (dreaming)
This panel is about researching those little details that will make your story's setting feel real. Particularly research for a time and place that's not easy to find specifics about online or in one's local library.

This idea was sparked by my difficulties in finding information about 17th century Wales that will distinguish it from England during the same time period. Also by the experience of having my first published story, set in modern-day Chicago or a facsimile thereof, reviewed critically for its failure in this regard. (Not that it would actually have been difficult to research, but I got carried away and sent it out without doing the research that would have made that one telling detail work. Mea culpa.)

Experts, historians, librarians, and anyone else with awesome superpowers of research will be served virtual chocolate and very real accolades.

The official start time for this panel is Friday, but since we're online please feel free to drop in whenever you want to.

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