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Ambi-whelmed

This is not a real word but it needs to be. To be both over and underwhelmed at once. This is me today in finding some incredible and extremely important work on trades and guilds. But. And it’s a big but and I cannot lie it’s the same but as always. It’s a near black…

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Research breakthrough

I decided to do a bit of a blunt search for the term for a specific craft in the hope I might, might, break through the big gaps in OCR of so many of the digitised books online have. I didn’t realise entire pages were missing in the I think 1600 pages I have on…

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At least I can still…

.. Every time I have that thought I wind up not being able to do the thing I was grateful to still be able to do. Unfortunately my Achilles tendon issue has turned a bit catastrophic and I’m now high priority to see an orthopaedic surgeon. Terrifying when you know how hard it is to…

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Gelderlander update

Apparently I decided I didn’t need as much blue wool as I would actually need so yet again I’m experiencing delays. I think I only have an issue with the sleeves which should actually be easier than I keep thinking once I get the wide crimson velveteen guarding sorted. PHEW! It’s not obvious from any…

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Pearls- part 1

Well. That’s a bit of an unexpected turn. I’ve been collecting bits and pieces about artificial pearls as I have projects where I use them and wanted to know if glass or plastic carry the properties they would have. But now I’ve managed to digitise and translate sections of one of the most important works…

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170 steps forward 340 steps back

There have been so many issues making it impossible to publish let alone work on costume projects that this title is no exaggeration. I’ve needed to digitise some older books but the OCR layer is only applied in one direction by my scanner so it’s been actually harder to fix than had I not applied…

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Oh no lost files

In order to track the etymology of different headgear terms I wound up in some lovely sites for tracht worn now. But I’ve lost them all. I’m sure I saw pieces of a hauben on a frame that included breaks in the pattern to allow the back to fold in without losing so much work….

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Blue and red

I have to admit I’m sort of working my way through all of the Codice de Trajes depictions of people in the North Rhine. It’s really fun but I’m suddenly faced with working with a synthetic for my Gelderlander frock and after so many years using them only for historic inspired work that I’m struggling…

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