Succulents: La última

¿Cuál es 

más suculento?

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They don't make 'em 

more succulent!

And your little DOG too!

Click on the picture below 

for all the terrifying detail

Time Travel: The Ultimate Escape

The she-bears great paws stepped unhesitatingly into the whirling vortex of the time portal. The twenty-first century had lost one more California native. Mariah's own feet, however, seemed incapable of moving forward. There was no longer any thing, or any one, tying her to this place. What was holding her back from making her own journey back to 1893?

Very slowly, the woman reached out to part the clump of sage, behind which, the great bear’s body had  disappeared just moments before.

Take the plunge yourself. CLICK on the illustration above, 

to fully enjoy the time-travelling details.

Part 9: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

Cecily and Hannah were fussing over Lettice’s bum roll, re-stitching it to add a little more oomph in all the right places. I was wandering around the room, observing the proceedings in a desultory manner. Fully dressed and ready to captivate, I was suddenly anxious to start playing my role as Lady Liz to the hilt.

My green wool outfit and period-appropriate accoutrements were making me feel pretty close to fully Tudor. That is, about seventy-five percent Elizabethan-era and the remainder just a little bit of nervy, time-traveling blogger. Mark Twain wasn’t kidding though. Clothes really do make the womyne ( Ok I’m paraphrasing just a tad, but Samuel Clemens would be the last person to mind that).  As my roommates fussed over Lettice’s underpinnings, an alluring cascade of delicate tones drove me outside our door. The sweet tones of a golden table clock embellished with a rose medallion were chiming the hour.

Cecily came out on the landing looking distracted. “Oh dear, when the hour rings, we’re supposed to go down to sup.”

I moved the clock slightly, turning it so I could admire all the sides, and heard the other woman gasp. “Is this valuable?”

Ceclly nodded. I don’t think we’re supposed to touch it. Lady Margaret had it sent from Augsburg. You may have noticed, that there are many fine objects in the house. Her ladyship brought them with her on her marriage three years ago. She’s a wealthy woman in her own right, much more so than Sir Thomas, and she continues to hold the purse strings, even now.”

The little clock completed it’s delightful cadence. I studied the central medallion. “There’s something familiar about that design. Don’t you think it-“

But Cecily had already turned back towards the open door, her hand reaching for the tiny waist pocket that held her sewing kit. “Perhaps you could go on down to the hall without us, Elizabeth, and let Lady Margaret know we’ll be there momentarily.”

So, I was going to make my entrance alone. Just a few minutes before, I’d been excited about my newly garbed presence. Now I found that there were tiny frogs jumping somewhere inside me, about five inches above the level of my bony busk point.

I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised to find William on the wide landing. He was scribbling away on a stack of papers, as fast as a man who has to stop and dip a pen at regular intervals can scrawl. I gave him a very brief nod of my head but continued walking past.

He dropped his pen as I brushed by and stared at me with a feigned look of comic disbelief. “Well me-oh-my if it isn’t the Tudor Maide herself! Hey, don’t you want to examine a real monastery table, now you’ve got the chance? For all you know, this might be the piece that’s going to inspire Stickley in another four hundred and some years. Believe me, this table is the real deal. Just wait until you hear Sir Thomas’s story, about how his father acquired this estate during the dissolution of the monasteries. 

Ignoring his banter, I adjusted my heavily supported skirts, and began to make a careful descent of the staircase. I still hadn’t entirely forgiven Will Sainsbury for pulling me along with him through time. No matter how interesting, it was living amidst history in the making,  it was still a chancy adventure. Unfortunately my air of disinterest was ruined slightly, as I caught my heel in the hem of my green skirts and made a wild grab for the newel post.

Come tripping down the stairs,

Throwin’ back her copper hair

And bid farewell to Sweet William-O.

He sang in a low voice.

“That song hasn’t even been composed yet, “ I hissed as I righted myself. I noticed that Sainsbury hadn’t jumped right up to make sure I didn’t plummet down the staircase. “And Pretty Peggy-O has yellow hair anyway,” I added inconsequentially.

“Well you don’t. And besides, how do you know Fennario’s not the product of an old tudor ballad composed by some pitiful estate agent, who was scorned by his lady love? It’ll probably got copped by some wandering minstrel and then get passed around until old Alan Lomax gets ahold of a version and decides it’s eighteenth or nineteenth century.”

Refusing to laugh at this foolishness (which I admit I might have found humorous in my own century), I gave him a haughty look, deciding to ignore the faulty ‘lady love’ business.

My encounter with William had left me in a fighting humor.  I have an odd feeling that was what he’d intended. It was just a play, after all, and a short-running one to boot. The song buzzing around in me now (kind of like the jingle of an irritating commercial I can’t get rid of), seeming to fill up some of the space where the frogs had been jumping. I straightened my shoulders, shook back a few errant curls, and stomped down the stairs with just a shade more determination. Pulling off this out-of-time persona was going to be all about attitude, after all.

What, after all, could happen in the two weeks before the next neaps tide? 

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Part 8: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

Gold on black,

Silver and wine.

 Thy clothes show the world

Ye can afford fine.

 Pithy sayings of Lady Margaret Hobey

Part 8: Clothes make the Maide

Since my readers are sewers, you’ll want to hear what I wore my first night down to supper. Did you wonder what I was going to do for clothes, beyond the outfit William had snatched up for me from the day-in-a-life dress up zone in the British Galleries? (That's right when he was supposedly looking for his cell phone, that weasel!) The real Lady Elizabeth’s trunk had been sent on ahead of her. That was before her uncle’s state of health had kept her from starting out as soon as she’d intended.  No one in the Hobey's household, other than the aforementioned weasel, had gotten a chance to read the letter from the other Liz’s auntie, conveying this rather pertinent piece of information. Ole Will had seen to that.

Luckily for me, Lady E.’s clothes fit me. Wouldn’t it have been tricky to explain otherwise?

So here's the scoop. First off, let me remind you that that the currently (current in 1581 that is) in style dropped-waist look, is carried off by means of a busk-point, in my case that's a nasty hard piece of bone, whittled into a kind of v-shape, that’s inserted into the front of my stays. This instrument of torture gives me that glamorous long pointy Elizabethan torso-look and it also makes sitting down a whole new experience. I'm sure you know, that the stays are laced over the chemise and the under petticoat. They stays also push all my womanliness into nearly full view, providing me with that bosom-on-a-platter look you see in all the portraits. There's also a farthangale. Cecily was surprised that I made any complaint about that, because apparently it’s the minimalist's version. Don’t even get me started on the joys of dealing with a farthingale. Are you wondering how long it took me to learn how to walk around in just my undergarments?

Over all this I somehow, with a lot of help from the maideservant Hannah, managed to struggle into a deliciously smocked soft yellow linen kirtle undergown. As far as I was concerned, that would have been enough. But then we got on to the outer bits, a deep green woolen bodice and matching bell shaped skirt, that opened down the front to display the rows of yellow smocking. About that time the whole process was starting to seem worth it.

Did I mention that there was blackwork embroidery on the sleeve and neck edges of the chemise? It just peeked out (rather fetchingly I thought) at the edges of the sleeves and the neckline of the green bodice. Oh, I didn’t tell you about the sleeves, did I? They were tied on to my kirtle (of course who wouldn’t want her sleeves tied on?) and were heavily embroidered with a couch stitch in black wool thread.- an all over intertwined arabesque design. 

The whole thing was yummy. I figured now I’d just run a brush through my curls and get on down to eat, that's assuming I could squeeze food into my stomach under those stays. Cecily had more plans for me however. I looked down at the fragile lacey item Hannah was starting to stitch onto the back neckline of my bodice.

“But the Queen’s 'Statutes of Apparel' forbids anyone not of noble birth from wearing lace or ruffs. I uh – well that is to say we never wear anything like that at home.”

“But we’re gentry, dear. It’s only a collar, not a full ruff. And besides that, it’s drawn-thread work, not proper bobbin lace like the nobility wears. 

I was starting to see just why the sumptuary laws had been a failure. The new merchant class could afford to be conspicuous consumers and no old-school noble types were really going to get in their way. There’s always a way around the rules aren’t there?

The household boosted a Venetian mirror on the landing just outside our chamber. Despite the fact that it made it hard to turn my head, I found the stiff lacey collar quite pretty. It frames my face nicely and would make anybody look like she’s got more neck than she does. Hannah brushed my hair back and secured it in a black threadwork caul embellished with little seed pearls and tied in place with a fillet of green ribbon. Cecily volunteered to pluck all those nasty hairs away from the top of my brow herself. It would look so much lovelier, but I said no thanks. Though she’s clearly too sweet and polite to let on, I can just imagine what Cecily thinks about me. A good thing I can put on my dogpatch attitude, blaming my total lack of fashion sense on my remote island upbringing.

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Those Tudors Keep Me in Stitches (Co-Published)

These blog entries come from an iPad that my cousin Lizbeth left at my house when she went off to London for the summer. She asked me to post them for her in her blog, A Stitche in Time, if she ended up doing any traveling in areas where she might have difficulty accessing wifi. I’d say that being trapped in Tudor times, fills that bill.

So while Liz is otherwise engaged I’ll help out by cleaning up her notes and posting them on both our blogs, whenever I get a chance.

Laurel Shimer

I hope you've been enjoying Liz's story, The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Liz: Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide, in this journal.  There's plenty more to come!

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In the time of England’s Elizabeth I, the merchant class was enjoying new opportunities to travel and make a buck (ok let’s say a pound or a piece of eight) in the export/import business. That’s right, that means that if you were a white male, you might be enjoying new financial opportunities. These men and their families was beginning to rise in society by buying a place in the upper echelons. Sometimes their gold paved the way to marriages that united them with the titled classes. Their upper middle class wives and daughters, who might some day marry a lord, were enjoying some of the new prosperity as well.

It was becoming quite the thing now for women in such households to be educated. The well-read English woman was reading more than her book of Commoyne Prayer and hot-off-the-press Englishe Bible. She was also following artistic movements in Italy, Germany and France. Pattern-books for embroidery were becoming available and new designs emerged from her needle. Naturalistic styalized designs were hot. Flowers, as always, were big. With more freedom of movement, European designs were also influenced by interlaced Islamic arabesque designs.

With pattern books in her hands and money in her pockets, our Elizabethan-era sister also created a demand for new styles of embroidery from the professional workshops that provided the sumptuous hangings, that turned her brand new half-timbered house or stately brick manor into a right cozy nest.

Some of her needlework survives. The lovely linen piece above(*) is embroidered in deep pink silk thread, and features an interlaced trellis-work design (think Islamic motif) of carnations and roses worked in outline stitch.

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I highly recommend the book 5,000 years of Textiles, ed. by Harris. Check your library or, mebbe even break down and buy it.

* This gorgeous piece of work is housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Part 7: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

A ladye should be able with her pen

As well as with her needle.

With it, she should strive to keep her accounts well,

maintain a regular record of her devotions,

                           and record any unrighteous behavior amongst the members of her household.

Unless that behavior implicates those of  the higher orders,

            who ought not ever be discussed by their inferiors.

Pithy sayings of Lady Margaret Hobey

It might not occur to you, if you tend to stay in your own century, just how hard it was for me to turn up something like this diary to write in. There’s not much in the way of accessible writing materials around in these days. Back home if the battery on my iPad runs out of juice and I’m forced to jot down my shopping list or an idea for my blog the old-fashioned way, I’m used to opening up a drawer or grabbing a piece of paper off the printer tray. If I’m in some public place, well there’s usually a recycling bin where I can scrounge something to write on the back of.

But around here, if a woman needs a piece of paper, even assuming that woman is educated enough to be able to write her name, she’s going to have to ask for it and explain what she needs it for. And to add insult to injury she’s going to have to account for what she did with it. Lady Margaret reads all of Cecily’s letters to her grandmother out loud to her husband Sir Thomas before he puts them into the mail bag that goes into town. Reading about lack of privacy is one thing, actually dealing with it is quite another. So you can imagine how happy I was when I went to paw through that pile of linen scrap and wool thread ends that Lady Margaret had told one of the maidservants to drop off for me, and found this little book buried deep down in the pile of odds and ends. Maybe somebody as anxious as me to record their secrets hid it there, and then forgot where it was or had to leave the house suddenly. It’s old, but it will sure do the trick.

Lady Margaret also keeps a diary, but hers is public, so public, in fact, that she reads little passages out loud to us Maides when we’re stitching in the upstairs in the afternoons. My little book, on the other hand, is quite secret. Funny really when you consider that I’ve shared so many details about my life in my blog, not to mention that I plan to transcribe these entries into that blog just as soon as I get back to my own times. If I shared my diary here in the same way as good old Lady Madge, I’d be in for big trouble. I’ve seen the nasty ways they treat people who don’t fit the mainstream patterns here. Time on the ducking stool would be the lightest result, there’s a much greater possibility I’d be burnt as a witch.  Livin’ an alternative lifestyle in Tudor times ain’t , as my Aunt Grace (who was much influenced by coming of age in the sixties) used to say, “where it’s at”. Having to hide my journaling, makes me feel a little bit like the Emperor Claudius in that great book series by Robert Graves. 

This little book is going to help keep me sane until William helps me catch my ride back into the twenty-first century on the next neaps tide. The nerve of that man, putting on the big romantic-act in the museum! Did I mention he was responsible for posting all those tidbits about London and the Victoria and Albert to my blog, using different ids none-the-less? It seems he had some method for picking me out of the crowd as travel-able when he worked our spring feste last year. Though I didn’t meet him, he apparently learned quite a lot about me. And that included the fact that I was planning to come here this summer. Seems  then he just started planting  his little clues on my page when he got back to London. Then he maneuvered Gwen into that summer study abroad, and brought up the idea of oh-gee-that-blogger-needs-a-place-to-rent. Talk about manipulative! That toad-spotted malkin needed a time-able guide to help him steer through the portal because he was too weak to do the trick on his own. I was just his little time travelin’ guinea pig. Yes, ladies, I was set up!

It’s not exactly easy being tossed back in time, and I don’t just mean the getting there part. Everything’s different from peas to pottage. It’s tough not having anybody I can really let my hair down with about my sudden transition, except William that is and I’m determined I’m not speaking to him right now until I cool off. I could really care less that he stumbled out of his own slip-stream by mistake. If he can’t figure out how to stay put, that’s his problem. Unfortunately now he’s made it mine. 

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