Ada Lovelace Day 2010

It's been a while - the demands of a third-trimester, nearly-gestated thesis, and the setting-up of a new blog purely for historical kit-sewing for beginners, and so on...

But today is International Ada Lovelace Day 2010, and women in technology all over the world are blogging on the subject of women in technology.

That leaves me, dear Reader, with a slight problem as although I am fairly sure of my womanly charms, or at least of my womanly nature, I am not so steady on my certainty of technology. Electrical appliances work because the plug has a tiny imp on a bicycle with a dynamo and when you plug it into the wall-socket and press the switch, the imp pedals away like mad, thus generating electricity. This is necessary because I understand generation of electricity by dynamo (and by power-station) but not storage and transmission of energy. The National Grid transubstantiaties to a National Gridlock in my mind.

So how to blog about Women In Technology?

Historical Housekeepers were pretty damn technological. Over centuries they carried more scientific understanding and technological knowledge than most men, imo.

Chemistry and physics - also known as cooking and laundering. They didn't call it chemistry but they knew how leaving an acid and raw meat in conjunction for a bit meant the cheap tough meat was more tender to eat after cooking. They understood how different components in the hard tissues of animals react to heat, and that if you boil cheap meat rapidly you get indiarubber, but if you stew it gently you get tasty. They also knew how to prepare the bits we now throw away, the innards, the extremities - calf's head jelly, neat's foot jelly (neat = calf), sheep's heid broth, trotters and so on. They also understood the behaviour of different substances and different cloths for cleaning fabrics. No added synthesised chemicals, just water of different temperatures, milk, potatoes, the liquid from simmered rhubarb leaves, that kidn of thing. A treatment that worked on linen doesn't necessarily work on wool - oh yes, and you need to know about textiles and temperature and water because otherwise you get dinky little doll's clothes after boiling your woollens in the wash.

Anyone for advanced mathematics? Also known as needlework. Google geeky knitting for some of the amazing stuff ongoing with knitting and mathematics, genomes, Fibonacci and so on... I'm currently pondering a sweater knitted in two fractals which may not be possible but is worth a try. But no patterns for most housekeepers in the past, so they had to work out shaping, increases, decreases, patterning, all done in the round. Two stitches, plain and purl, and four needles and you get a silk stocking for a queen or you get a traditional water-resistant gansey for an East Coast fisherman. Making clothes - no patterns again so you need to understand how the pieces are built onto each other and then be able to see in the abstract and apply in the concrete in order to block the appropriate size and shape.

I could go on. I may well go on. I may come back and go on and on and on.

but I wanted to get something up, this morning, for Ada Lovelace and to show that women and technology have been alongside and intertwined for a very very long time.

I didn't even get onto preserving and pickling (osmosis anyone?), nor horticultural science... there's distilling (wahey!)... and of course some really interesting stuff around nutrition and medicine!

CELEBRATING ADA LOVELACE 2010

Cartridge Pleating

My old skirt (bottom two pictures) has bad cartridge pleats - not enough turnover to keep up the bulk so the pleats flatten easily; not enough fullness in general so each pleat is a little smaller and a little more widely-spaced than is ideal. Generally it just hangs and doesn't quite sit right, somehow...



My new petticoat (top pictures) has extra advice from Caroline Vincent and other reading - more fabric (4 metres rather than 3 at hem), a bulkier turnover, bigger pleats tighter together...



In these pics both are a bit flattened as I just whipped them out of compressive storage for the pics, and modelled on my mother, rather than me, but you can see the difference - the new petticoat has that 'spring' that you see in contemporary C17th engravings and especially in carvings in churches of common or middle-class women.

Carpet Freshener

In a big bowl, mix together two parts bicarbonate of soda to one part salt, or pretty much any granular stuff that can be vacuumed up without problems (cornflour, salt, cocaine...). Some recipes use entirely baking soda but that gets expensive, so I 'dilute' it with salt. It needs to be more than half bicarbonate fo soda since that's the stuff that absorbs smells (mix with water and wipe inside of fridge to get rid of odd smells; leave tiny dish of it at back of fridge to prevent weird smells).

Add essential oils - If I use oneof those tubs of bicarb they sell in supermarket bakery aisles and half as much salt, I'll add a total of 15 drops of oils.

Lemon, lime, orange: all those citrus ones are good.
Thyme, rosemary, sage all have a kind of clean smell although a few people find it a bit hospital-y.
Lavender, rose-geranium: both lovely floral ones.
Cedarwood, ginger, rosemary makes a good autumny mix.

Last Christmas I used frankincense and myrrh and loved the combination; less cloying than I expected, very fresh-smelling.

Mix the oils well into the powder to work it right through. If not using immediately, cover the bowl with clingfilm.

Either scatter by hand or put into a spare flour-dredger and shake. Or I suppose an old shake'n'vac dispenser!

Leave at least an hour, ideally overnight (shut pets out of room) and then vacuum up.

You can use the same essential oils with a litre of water and a few drops of alcohol to mix them, in a plant-mister to use as an air-freshener that won't set off asthma or stink foully of chemicals!

***
IMPORTANT - some essential oils are dangerous to some people. Be extremely careful round anyone pregnant or with epilepsy.
***

Autumn Cleaning and homemade potions

I posted this elsewhere, but thought it makes a good introduction to some posts I'll be putting up this month, tagged 'cleaning'. Homemade cleaning things that don't cost a fortune, cost the earth or cost your health...



Officially in the UK, September 1st is the first day of autumn. Here we are. I just went out and checked and can see two yellow leaves on the trees round here, so it's not exactly a blaze of autumn colour yet!

It feels different... the last few days have felt autumnier somehow - I keep getting urges (oh no! Urges! No, not that sort...).

Urges to cook hot dinners instead of salads... last night I used up a long-frozen leftover lump of roast beef: sliced and wrapped in tinfoil with some ice-cubes of beef-stock, surrounded by a few shallots and fat cloves of garlic roasting in their skins to be squeezed out like savoury toothpaste onto the plate; tiny potatoes roasting in their skins to be split and buttered and peppered and fresh chives chopped over them; at the last minute a tinfoil bundle of chopped black kale* with a sprinkling of water to steam...

Urges to mend; finally to get round to all those lost buttons, dropped hems, taking-up of straps on vest-tops...

Urges to launder - well, okay I have a strange relationship with my laundry! But even I have a stronger than usual urge to launder my summer things to put away surrounded by dried lemon peel and herb sachets and stems of lemon-balm wrapped in scraps of pretty fabrics, all to deter moths; to retrieve my winter woollies and heavy trousers and wash the months of storage out of them, giving them a misting as they hang on the line with a mixture of water, a few drops of rum, and lime and thyme oils (my new mixture for a really clean-smelling, fresh scent).

Urges to fall-clean - now why don't we in Britain have a phrase for this? We spring-clean along with America, but we don't appear to autumn-clean, so we borrow your phrase. Do Americans still fall-clean?
Packing away the summer months and re-instating the winter outfits for my rooms - the feather duvet (a 'downie' in Scotland and iirc a 'comforter' in the USA?) to go under my quilt, turning my quilt form its summer old-gold to its winter muted deep red; the uncurtained light-flooded windows covered by heavy rich deep-green velvet curtains, turning my bed into something that Mary Queen of Scots might have slept in (and hurrah for charity shops)!
Emptying the shelves in my tiny kitchen and scrubbing them clean, drying them off and lining with pretty wrapping-paper before putting everything back onto them.
Finding the Kilner jars, and planning pickled onions and pickled red cabbage glowing rich deep brown and deep crimson red.

Anyone else getting a change in their housekeeping as the season tips over from summer carefree live-as-you-wish, to autumn's nest-making and stocking up against the winter to come?


*Scotland's dietary secrets: whilst famed for our deep-fried mars-bars, we actually have a heritage of wonderfully healthy food - kale is like cabbage but much lovelier!

17th century christening clothes

I had the immense pleasure of making baby-clothes for the christening of a 3-month old baby girl this summer.

I used the long-ago-produced sketch-pattern from the SK for the basic shape and a bit of leeway in design.

The shift is unbleached cotton as it's softer and finer (hard to get very fine linen, harder still to get it softened in time!). In retrospect, I do wish I'd used linen, just to have everything right, but then again cotton was around for very special outfits in the 1640s, and you don't get much more special than a christening gown!
















The overdress is red linen (from Ikea...), a kind of deep pink cherry-red that I boilwashed in the machine and then hung on the line outside for a month to soften the harshness of the chemical dye a bit.


I used smocking for the first time, and am really impressed with its elasticity (someone asked if I'd used shirring elastic which just shows how stretchy smocking is!).


I used red thread on the shift so the pattern came from the stitches, and red thread on the overdress so the pattern came from the pleats and folds.




I may add more about smocking in the future as I really like it - not so much as a decorative thing as I always thought but for its practical applications as in the shift, and the way the fabric can speak for itself as in the overdress.

The Gunnister coat

Here are some photographs of the coat worn by a chap dug up in the C20th at Gunnister in Shetland. He had probably been there since the late C17th, but his clothes were very worn and mended and are consistent with the middle and even early-middle of the C17th.

I've added a page of sketches - top ones made at the museum, lower three are my ideas of how it was constructed, based on what I could see and very much NOT to scale!
DAMN! It also persists in being upside-down. Curses. Okay, either stand on your head to read, or do something clever like right-click to save image and then rotate it... I did that but it seems only to want to upload the original which is upside-down...

These pictures show the jacket's skirts, after a discussion about where the triangular gores referred to in the Technical Report are inserted.
After much peering up his skirts and lying on the floor of the museum causing much bemusement to Japanese tour parties at whom I just smiled and waved, my conclusion is that the inserts are just BEHIND the side, and not where one might expect them in the front off-centre.

I could see all the seams clearly, including the joining seams making "pieced" pattern-pieces (ie one sleeve made from 2 bits, t'other made from 3), and the front of the left-hand side of the coat-skirt is closest to the viewer and I couldn't see any sign of stitching, joining or anything indicating an insert. There is a heavy fold but I think this is just the effect of the front leading-edge being flared in cutting.

It is hard to see behind his arm and I don't think it shows in the pics but as far as I could see, the area just behind his elbow has what looks like a box-pleat, possibly with a covered button at the top of it, and at the bottom of this was definitely some overcasting stitching. I will try and do a sketch later.

So it looks like the inserts are just behind the elbow, kind of left-left-back. If the breastbone is North then it would be West-south-west!

Frantic sewing for tomorrow's voyage north for a weekend camping and being C17th with the re-enactment mob.

Weather forecast is for bitter cold, sleet and snow, becoming very windy...!

So - I've nearly finished the stays (straps and top binding still to do; all else done and looking good although slightly too big). I've got the linen shift my pal made me last summer. I've got long grey woollen stockings (and am being inauthentic by wearing knee-length black leggings as well). I'm borrowing latchet shoes.
And I've got last summer's bodice of dark grey fine wool, which now is a bit big for me as it was made without stays.
And I've got my new skirt - 4 Scotch ells* sewn together with vertical seams, cartridge-pleated onto a waistband; one eyelet-hole and the other side of waist has a length of ribbon sewn on.
Once on and the fastening hidden to one side, I'll be wearing my last season's skirt (oh daaahling, that is sooo last season!) over it but with the front seam opened and the corners tucked up to kilt it. I've re-hemmed it so it's a little shorter than the lighter-grey petticoat under it.

Then I've a linen coif on my head and a linen kerchief round my neckline, and a black woollen shawl for extra warmth.

I think it will look quite good... no time for photos just now.

I hope it will be very warm!!!

thk

*37.1 inches