Thursday, May 24, 2007

Isn't it funny...

..how when you're happily hip-deep in knitting, with projects to finish and projects to start that all have deadlines, that you get caught up in completely non-knitting projects?

The weather is lovely today, so lovely that I began to think about pulling out and wearing one of my favorite medieval-styled gowns. It's (gosh!) nearly ten years old now, and much-worn and -loved. It's also probably not going to live another ten years, since it's made of handkerchief-weight linen, which is now starting to wear holes at some seams. Although it's starting to wear thin in the fabric, it's actually mostly intact. I've had to repair and alter it a few times - the different-colored gores and guards I put on it to honor my foster father, the patches where the sleeves started to shred in the wash, etc. Well, I pulled it out today, and put it on, and was startled to find that it no longer fits as it used to! I've added some curves here and there, but as recently as maybe a year ago it was loose in all those places still..

Well, I don't mind a few womanly curves here and there, and my husband sure doesn't, either. ;p So, I'm taking this as an opportunity to do some refurbishing I've been dreaming about for some time now. I've already taken off the sleeves and the band of black around the neck. My current plan is to drop the neckline a couple of inches (it was always maybe a bit too modest) and add new, shorter sleeves.. same weight linen, but yet another different color, probably navy (because that's the color of the scraps I saw while I was tooling around in those bits earlier). So the gown will end up faded orange (the original color), with faded black gores and new dark navy sleeves. I'm ok with that. It's meant to be comfortable, not fancy!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes. I'm totally in your boat. I just came across my half-finished Danish folk costume and realized I wanted to have it done for the Midsummer Festival. Yeah right.