Back in my LiveJournal days, we said, “Five things makes a post.” If you didn’t have enough to say on any one topic to make a post, you could roll up five smaller topics and call it macaroni.<\/p>\n
(This was in the days before Twitter. Ah, how I miss them.)<\/p>\n
So, my five things:<\/p>\n
Roisin Kiberd’s article “The Internet of Estranged Families<\/a>“<\/strong> is out, and it’s delightful. Not least because she interviewed me for it. Go! Read!<\/p>\n I figured out how to adjust the tension on my serger<\/strong>, which is the missing piece I needed to actually use my serger. Turns out that you need to lift the presser foot before adjusting the tension. WHICH MAKES PERFECT SENSE, YES, OF COURSE, WHY SHOULD A COMPLETELY UNRELATED LEVER CONTROL THE TENSION PLATES AAAAAAUGH. But now my serger is obeying, and I’m serging everything<\/em>. I may never do a period seam finish again.<\/p>\n Next step: Figuring out how to change the tension so the stitches from the left needle, the ones that create the actual seam, are as tight as sewing-machine stitches would be. Right now I sew with the machine and use the serger to finish the seam, which is one step more than my lazy ass needs to do.<\/p>\n After that: Figuring out how to do precision sewing when the serger is set up to prevent you from having any earthly idea where the needles meet the fabric.<\/p>\n And then: Figuring out how to pin fabric for the serger. Sewing machines pass over pins easily,\u00a0but sergers have two needles AND A BLADE, which means that for a pin, the serger is like a temple room\u00a0out of Indiana Jones. And every time the pin loses, the temple-builder has to pay money to fix the swinging blades and restock the poison darts.<\/p>\n I finally got Burda Pattern 7977!<\/strong> After much fussing and dithering and being told by the Internet that it wasn’t in stock at Joann’s, I checked the drawers on a whim, and it was there. I feel oddly accomplished for something that I could have done weeks ago by handing money to Amazon. BUT. It’s done! I have it!<\/p>\n The sleeves are indeed early period-shallow, with only a slight curve instead of the convoluted arches and concavities of modern sleeves. The downside is that the shoulder seam is well off the shoulder. Once I get the rest of the dress to fit I can modify it. I think. Maybe? It’s more complicated than tilting the curve of the armhole to meet the right point on the shoulder, but I’m in denial about that and plan to stay there for a while. For now, I have a pattern to use to get started on period sleeves.<\/p>\n Viking male garb is extremely comfortable<\/strong>, even when you miscalculate the crotch curve of your poofy pants and can’t cross your legs as a result.\u00a0It turns out that poofy pants create an\u00a0air pocket around your legs, so you have your own waist-to-knee AC even on hot and sweaty days. And if you make them poofy enough you can add extremely un-period pockets, and no one will ever know.<\/p>\n I updated the lists of female<\/a> and family names<\/a> from Haiti<\/strong>, and decided the data on male names<\/a> was ready for the world. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in my LiveJournal days, we said, “Five things makes a post.” If you didn’t have enough to say on any one topic to make a post, you could roll up five smaller topics and call it macaroni. (This was in the days before Twitter. Ah, how I miss them.) So, my five things: Roisin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical-reenactment","category-meta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/issendai.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}