Happy new year!

Our Dickensian Christmas

 Welcome to our Dickensian Christmas.

The pendulum swings back every time and so it did this year. 4 years ago I wanted everything to be as British as possibly could be and now I understood why that tasted like it did (Horrible. Just raisins and horribleness) so to spare my soulsister I decided to make things look like a Dickensian Christmas but make it taste nice as well!

There was goose, we all loved that, now I know what that fuss was about. We all dressed up Victorian-style + one santa claus. There was mr Tudors mince pies. We had candles and oil lamps and greenery inside. There was a Christmas pudding made out of chocolate (with a coin inside to see who is king or queen). And roast vegetables.. (Damn it, I forgot the mistletoe!) We even watched a Christmas carol. Most of all though, we were all more or less ill and that's very Dickensian.

Lots of cooking, lying around, paper everywhere, chocolate and I must have re-done my Victorian hairstyles 100 times but we got trough it

Even if the English seems to have left that behind I think the Victorian Christmas is the prettiest of all so I always feel a bit Dickensian over Christmas.. One thing I can't do though, as a friend of mine suggested trying out, is celebrating Christmas day instead of Christmas eve. I don't feel like integrating THAT much. Much like driving on the left side and not using the metric system it must be a thing of the past that they have held on to. I prefer holding onto non-sparkly tinsels and meat in pies. So Christmas eve it is! 

Later on I found a series on bbc called Dickensian that kept me a little longer in the Dickensian Christmas spirit so I made a new skirt out of a Christmas present fabric.. It's just checked wool fabric but it really fits surprisingly well with the rest! It's also really warm so this might be my new favourite. (I'm not really crying in the picture, I just couldn't keep a straight face in pictures this Christmas.)

Luckily a month and 12 days..ish..is enough for me to tire of the whole thing entirely and I am now very happy for Christmas to be over. I'll probably still make a 12th night cake, but that will be it!

See you again next year Christmas spirit!

Oh yes, I almost forgot! 

Best thing about that is that if this actually happened we could all easily switch and all would be happy! 

Merry Christmas.

Satan and underwear. Two words that would be ill matched on a Christmas card.

I don't know what it is..maybe it's the Victorian farm Christmas in the background or maybe I enjoy the contrast of the white symbolising purity.. but I have a liking for white dresses. Especially white underdresses! So even if I wear the mismatched everyday clothes of the late Victorian towns people (I imagine!)  underneath its all white. I love my white underwear. 

This time I made an underdress for my bustle skirts. Partly because I "need" one but also because I have spent long enough gazing at the bustle-underdress in my local museum.. So here it is! made from one single sheet, which I find pretty impressive because that's not as much fabric to work with as it sounds. I might add more lace as I go along..

So how does satan fit into this? Well, technically he fits in very well! since the Victorians were the first ones to take underwear seriously in a moral way in probably forever.. Aside from other some eras not really having much underwear to speak of and Victorians  really made it into a moral artform (hence the white symbolising purity), they really ruined being naked for everyone. 

BUT that's not something I plan to build on since I quite like being naked so no, satan comes into it via a game that was invented in my bed last night by my friend and soulsister Amanda. She had misheard "secret Santa", the game where you fail at getting a random colleague or friend a suitable Christmas present, and instead it became #SecretSatan, the game where you give a random colleague or friend something they really couldn't or wouldn't use, but you have to put thought into it! So now, lets play a quiz! Of me, Carlos and Amanda, who is who in #SecretSatan.

Answers next time.

Oh and speaking of Dickens fair...!

 

 As a Scandinavian I didn't have Charles Dickens embedded in my culture so my first meeting  that I can remember with a Christmas carol came as a junior seamstress at the theatre. I liked the clothes even then.

I also remember this as the time when my tastes turned distinctly Victorian.. 

Make of that what you will.

Dickens Fair!!

So yes. Yesterday was this years Dickensian Christmas fair in Rochester and it was, as it usually is, cold, crowded and slightly confusing. And a little stressful. But it's still very much worth it! Probably more for the build up than the actual fair. 

Firstly the clothes!

I decided to make a new dress this year and actually started slowly already in September so my dress was finished way before the day. I'm actually more pleased with this one than anyone ever before so I'm happy I went with my feeling rather than what looks most accurate. I like the miss-matched street look of someone not quite as fashionable.. And I like Dickens fair because it feels like I can step into a character that is part less me but also partly more me than in normal life. 

My favourite Charles Dickens character is by far Estella (Great Expectations) or * Nancy (Oliver Twist). Mostly though, Charles Dickens characters are very hard to emulate for a woman because they are so badly written. He is not known for a deep understanding of females in his surroundings so I suppose that is as far as it goes. What I like is the stories and the world around it. I have found that I understand them much better than maybe a girl born in the 80's should.. Some might say though, that life hasn't fundamentally changed all that much. Not for all of us anyway.

In the end I'm more of a late 19th century kind of woman than a Dickensian one, so because of that I made my dress in my typical 1870-80's style. I like the gothic angles and the deep colours. And the bustle does great on my sway back.

My co-Dickensian Michelle went for a more mid century look and pulled it off very well I must say. Or 3 gentlemen Carlos, Steve and little Lus were all in waistcoats and smart trousers. In the end it seems we made a pretty good Dickensian street team.

Secondly the hair!

It turned out ok. Victorian hairstyles are so very sturdy but they take forever to make, even my quick one, so in the hurry I just got it good enough and ran out the door. And my God did it last. I could have fallen down a cliff and get recognised only by the hair, that's how long lasting that hair was. I'm so doing that again.

Lastly, the actual fair.

When we finally got there we were earlier than usually which meant that, even though there was a lot of confused pushing around, it actually felt like we saw everything we came to see (except the parade, what happened to that?!). We had some cakes on the street and looked at craft stalls and rode the ferris wheel.. I dug trough a basket of lace tablecloths in complete darkness. It was fun. Did I wish it hadn't been so cold? yes I did. Did it annoy me that people kept stepping on my dress? Definitely. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

I think this tradition means so much to me because we have done it ever since the first year we lived in England and before that it was something I always had wanted to do so it's become a symbol of having achieved my dream in a way. It was nice to share it with our friends and it's always a little different every year but it's always something I look forward too a ridiculous amount and I think sometimes people find it odd..its just a market after all.. But I went trough so much to get to be there. So if I want to go every year for the rest of my life and always start getting ready in September for it then I will. 

Because Dickens fair is the jewel in my crown. 

* If I could I would have picked literally ANY other clip of her, because showing women as victims first is common enough, but this seems to be the only way she is remembered so I'll take what I can get.

There's no money to save us. But there's always money for war..isn't there.

Today I read that only hours after the government decided to bomb Syria with no plan or idea of how many will die just to prove a point, the army fired away the bombs. 

As I read that my 7 year old was opening his Christmas calendar. That's how lucky we are. And I am happy to be so lucky because somewhere there's a 7 year old being killed by bombs that we sent instead of opening calendars this morning. 

That blood is on all of our hands. It is. And may God forgive us.

Because they wont.

Dickens Christmas fair!

3 days to go! I have all of mine and most of my familys things ready for dressing up..and my friends almost kitted out (yes, I DO have all the bits other people need for it too, I love dickens fair!) so now the only thing I need to figure out is my hair. I say "need" in the most 1st world country way possible because we all know there are more important things in this world than my Victorian hairstyle, such as convincing people to stop voting Tory and drive us into a 3rd world war over oil in the middle east (and I can't believe we think of our selves as more modern than other conquering nations and times, how full of one self can one be?) and if I'm evil to let the terrible school system be my sons shitty thing in life that makes him a better person so I don't have to take the blow and...you know..squirrels. But since I don't have much of a say about either of those things I'm gonna stick to the hair.

So! I did find a really helpful blog the other day where a woman did really simple instructions on everyday hairstyles (without loose hair) so I thought I'd try my favourite of those! Turns out..my hair hates staying up. So I made almost the same one with hair wrapped around a bun but then I left some of it down but it looked a little bit tarty so I'm going to try again later today... I did like it though so I might leave it that way anyway! It went well with my little hat.

The thing I like about Victorian hairstyles is that they tend to sweep all the hair out of my face, and that's something I really want right now that my hair is longer than ever! But will see..

Bittersweet Dollshouses

Today I fell in love at first sight. Or my inner 9 year old did anyway.. I was looking at blankets in a charity shop for my sewing and, dramatically, turned around and saw it. A wooden dollshouse with staircases and openable windows and doors..a fireplace..tiny little doorknobs and hooks for tiny little clothes..lanolin floor pattern in the kitchen. A lamp already plugged into the little outlet in the wall. 

If only it had been 20 years ago.

Made me think of those moments when something so perfect, something one might have always wished for or really needed comes around much too late. It's a kind of bitter happiness isn't it? Like always having believed in unicorns and then you see one on your very last day alive. And I kept thinking how happy that would have made me 20 years ago and now.. Now I have that life I always imagined for my dolls. Almost. And I don't need it anymore.. My vintage posters are now original sized and my bed iron framed..And the warmth I imagined they felt for their bundled up babies I now pick up from school everyday..in my perfect housewife life. In matching clothes. 

It's different with people..People one can't replace or replicate. But with things I do have the initial reaction to want to become one of those sportscar driving old men who finally got it (!) but then..wasn't this where I wanted to be all along? Wasn't my Lundby house decorating my own childlike escape into the life I wish I had? And everything has it's time and place and my time and place was then. Not now.

The dollshouses I make now are very different, they are not to be furnished or played with, lived in.. they are more like and artistic expression. I didn't really realise until I just wrote that line how far away I have walked form where I started.. 

Metaphorically.

So I left it there for some 9 year old to maybe get for this Christmas. 

Hopefully. 

And I'll make a custard tart instead.