Post event ... reds?

Festival of Fools III is long over, and I think I'm just about recovered.

The food for the event was exceptional, even if the feastocrat of Saturday's feast insisted on sharing with us the flavour of her farts....

As with each year, new games were held, such as the Tower, where the poor shire Duck sat on a pile of boxes to be mercilessly batted across the field.. and the armoured fighters swear they were aiming for the tower...

The archery tournament, a clout shoot named "Shooting Fish in a Barrel" which proved that come the apocalypse, we're all going to starve...

The equestrian tournament was run by Don Juan, though I can't summon enough flem or roll my "r"'s enough to do his name justice. Black Numpty, a traditionally skittish horse, topped the field!

The thrown weapons tourney diced with the offspring of the elder gods, but eventually the target was hit and octopus tentacles were added to the menu that night.

And Sharks!, a timed survival fencing tournament that was over rather quickly, though the sharks ate well that night.

We also experimented with the format of the event, with Sunday feast being served at lunchtime, to be followed by the casino, and having a game themed feast board was a beautiful flavour of introduction to the  games night, where escudos flowed eagerly across the boards.

The event in all had a slowish, easy pace. Nothing was rushed, there was plenty of time between each tournament for gentles to get in some practice or sparring or relax as they wished. I generally don't like to timetable things against each other, such as running a tournament and a class at the same time, as I do like watching everything that's going on, but there probably would be space to fit in a class or two if the same timetable format was repeated.

And how did it go for me? I had time to sew! An autocrat with a reputation for angsting and worring over every little thing, fretting even when nothing goes wrong because a part of me kinda enjoys it... I had time to relax, though that was likely in no small part due to the presence of my co-autocrat and my Governor of Games (delegation for the win). 

So I relaxed, and by relaxed I mean sewing. I decided to try out pleating on my red dress instead of the gathers of my black dress, and will have more details on those in a separate post. And as I mentioned in my last post, did I get the dress finished? Well, yes, kind of. It was wearable, but it wasn't finished. And I had promised myself I wouldn't rush these projects any more, so I decided not to wear it at all. It will be finished in plenty of time for Raglan though.

The Period Little Black Dress

Due to play related nerves, I didn't get a whole lot of crafting done at Raglan. What I wasn't expecting was the heat wave we got, so if I didn't get the newly re-cut linen dress sewn up, having only my linen linen wool gown to wear, something was going to give.

I'd had the fine black linen dress made up previously and had worn it for Medieval Dead last year, but I wasn't entirely happy with how it had turned out, so I put off the finishing of it. But then in June of this year I met the Honourable Lady Christine Bess Duvant, who introduced me to the pattern she had developed for making the magical gravity-defying shoulder style dress of the Italian reaissance. We completed the mock up at the Dun in Mara garb workshop weekend, and having gotten the new pattern cut just before the event, there was so much frantic sewing that some of my friends commented on the fact that they didn't really see any other pictures of me from Raglan.

But thanks to the generosity and permission of Lord Rashid al-Jallab, I have a few pictures which he took at the Friday evening court session that show off the dress well. So yes, the sleeves still need to be completed, and I need to add trim, which I'm hoping to get done before an upcoming demo (and most definitely has to be done before Coronet in November), but it's swiftly become my new favourite dress.

The original pattern, as Lady Christine focuses mainly on the late 15th and early 16th centuries, had quite a high waistline, so I dropped the waistline to my natural waist to reflect the style of the later half of the 16th century. The skirt is just a single layer of linen, gathered at the waist, with a strip of wool fabric in the hem to maintain the body. The bodice is interlined with wool and lined with purple linen. The bodice was side laced, and after this court I added a few more lacing holes in the side split of the skirt, as due to my hourglass figure, this was lying open more than I would have liked. But it looks sexy and it feels oh so comfortable (and sexy). I just don't enjoy the feel of mundane clothing half as much after wearing this dress. I can't really justify any more dresses in my wardrobe at the moment; most events just don't require that many costume changes, but damn I want more of these.

And one final picture in which I'm handed my Lindquistringes, because I just love it so.