Anyway!
I shall not be around this weekend as I am leaving Friday afternoon to go to a Dickens festival in a neighboring city. I have not been to a Dickens festival before, but I have a dear friend who has, and she assures me that this is a very classy, family-oriented event. This particular one, apparently, is a favourite of the descendants of Mr. Dickens out of all the Dickens festivals in the world, and they try to send at least one family member every year.
I have been working for the past two months or so to make historically accurate dresses and hats for my sister and myself. I'm really quite proud of the way they turned out.
The smallest size dress on the pattern was still a size too big for me, so I had to figure out how to shrink a rather complicated garment. I also had to finagle a way of gathering the overskirt up, as the supplies that the pattern called for are not available around here.An unexpected cold snap caught us off guard this week. (The temperatures at this time of year are normally such that I would not need any outerwear with my Arkadyan dress.) Usually it would take me little time to whip up a lined wool cloak or capelet, but with my Chinese oral exam being this week I had no chance to do so. Instead, it was a mad rush around the city to find some sort of cloak- or jacket-like garment that would not look too terribly out of place. I am convinced that I got the last beige capelet in the city. Alas, the colour does not match my outfit, but at least I will not freeze my little shrimpy tail off.
(By the way, I was in and out of my Chinese exam in less than the allotted fifteen minutes, so I assume that that means I did well. My professor said that if we did not do well, she would ask more questions so that we would have more chances to score points.)
I still need to sew the lining into my hat and take in the waist of my jacket, but all else is ready to go.
Activities at the festival will include book signings with a descendant of Mr. Dickens (hooray!), a parade with Queen Victoria (hooray!), Victorian bed races (what?), items from the Charles Dickens Museum (hooray!), and a lantern parade (hooray!).
Hopefully I will be back Sunday evening with lots of pictures of pretty Arkadyan ladies!
