A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I had very grand plans for this weekend, that as the school semester progressed, kept getting scaled down...and down...til eventually all I managed to make new was one measly bonnet. So this mightn't be the most exciting post for those of you that have been reading here for a while! But I'll do a costume-weekend recap anyway. Entertainingly-slash-annoyingly, I didn't actually get to wear the bonnet at all, other than the ten minutes I had it on outside while taking pictures of it on Friday afternoon, as we only dressed for the tintype on Friday, and then Saturday was a monsoon so I wasn't about to wear a buckram and silk bonnet outside! Played with filters to make it look more autumnal (and me less blindingly white. That's difficult)

(All of these pictures are courtesy of In the Long Run ...I didn't bother with pics of an old dress, but then she got a nice shot of it that I decided I want to share!) Over the weekend I drove down to Ellicott City in Maryland, for our annual holiday tea. We had it at Tea on the Tiber, which was a charming little tea house with pleasant staff and delicious food - I think almost nobody got around to eating the cake on the top tier because we were stuffed from the first two tiers! NOM. Don't we look nice? So christmassy! I do like this dress. It didn't fit super well in the shop, but...

Back! And was absolutely horrid at picture-taking, especially from a blogging point of view. I lost my camera for a good chunk of the weekend (of course the day I wore my new day dress), so I'm going to try and get out this week to take pictures of it. I make no guarantees, though, as it's a holiday week... Shall leave you with a photo of the tintype of our group that was taken on Saturday. I'm wearing my old candy-stripe plaid silk, which I was surprised looked pretty boring on the plate. Wait til you see Katherine 's in color, though!

I went to Pennypacker Mills with two friends last night for their Victorian Christmas tour; PPM is an 18thc house that was added on to and remodeled in 1901(ish?), and they did a great job of decorating for the season. Everything was lit by oil lamps, and they had Santa, a bell choir, and a candymaking demonstration in the kitchen. And free hot cider after the tour! None of us have any late Victorian or Edwardian winter-wear, but we've all got 1860s, which always seems very Christmassy to me. Most of the tour was too dark for my poor old camera so I didn't bother taking it out the whole night...at least til we got to Taco Bell afterward! That was well lit, haha. But we made sure to get pics of my new dress while it was still light.

I'm having an event-y sort of weekend this upcoming Saturday and Sunday, but I went on an impromptu window-shopping/historical society visit in an adorable little historic neighboring town today, with Robin . Of course we had to dress! Just my old grey dress, but we bundled up and felt very festive. People thought the town hired us. Quite funny.

I'm in retail, so today and tomorrow will be madly busy for me (at least I wasn't on the opening shift, eh what), but I haven't posted here in a bit so I thought I'd do so today! I have been sewing; after the Pumpkin Tea I decided I needed a new dress for a little Victorian Christmas event at a local historic house. Totally needed. I had some plaid silk taffeta from Jen Thompson in the stash, which I think is shaping up to be a very nice 1860s dress. That'll be worn the weekend of Dec. 13-14, but I'll take a couple pics when I finish it, which should be well before that! This week, I also made a cute-ugly print 1960s shift dress for Thanksgiving...which turned out to not fit over my butt, so no photos of that. And I just bought some imperfect Renoirs from American Duchess' sale! You're welcome .