Now that I have finished the migration I can hopefully get back to blogging regularly.  I know I’ve done a really poor job of blogging regularly since the summer and getting back to regular posts is actually one of my goals for the next year (see upcoming obligatory New Year’s Resolutions post).  Since I’ve been rather bad about posting recently I’d like to do a “State of the Mafia” post to cover what I’ve been up to over the past couple of months.  This will not replace the equally obligatory Year in Review post but will hopefully get us all back up to speed.

• I made a pair of trunkhose for my husband for muster
• I finished a commission and it will be picked up after the new year
• I’m working on finishing the pluderhose project
• I started a project for 12th Night (details will have to wait until after the event)
• I am working on a third installment in the 1903 Savoy Corset series for Foundations Revealed
• Two websites I did will be going live in the new year
• I start back to fighter practices on Wednesday nights.
• I joined a new gym and I’ve been working out on Tuesday and Thursday nights to get ready for Gulf Wars.  Thinking seriously about hiring a personal trainer.
• I want to get back to regularly attending Thursday practices too but I’m having trouble figuring out how to fit everything into a week.
• My black silk suit fits again and I plan on wearing it for 12th Night.  Need to make sure I get some good pictures.

So that’s where things stand right now.

No related posts.

I hope all of you had a very happy Thanksgiving.  We spent the holiday with my husband’s family and had a lovely day.

I’m still in the process of organizing my plans for the wardrobe project, what I want to work on first, and what I’m going to do about the Flanders gown.  I’m almost ready to make a fabric order but first I need to make a couple of pairs of brais and maybe a new fighting shirt to send of with my husband to Gulf Wars.

One thing I have been debating is whether or not I should merge my website with my blog moving everything into WordPress, or whether I should continue to maintain both a separate site and blog.  While I still think Joomla is better than Worpress for creating a stand alone site, I do like the idea of having everything together and I think WordPress would work better for merging the two since it’s way better at handling static pages (its weakness) than Joomla is at blogging.  Still weighing things out though.

KASF was really inspiring.  I’ve been rather uninspired project wise lately and it really helped to get my juices flowing.  I’m currently brainstorming a couple of projects and I’m getting back to my long sidelined jacket project.  I am doing some reevaluating of the jacket project though.  My vision of where I’d like it to go has changed a bit and I don’t know whether it’s better to alter to project to suit my vision or to continue to push on to finish it as is.

I’m also considering a website reorg and maybe a new template.  It’s been about two years since the last one and since I usually get this itch every 2 years or so this one is hitting me pretty much right on schedule.

I know I generally reserve this blog for posts about my projects or my fencing but I’m going through a rather introspective time right now and it’s brought these thoughts around because it’s during these introspective periods that I miss LJ and the community feeling the most I think.

I love WordPress.  The platform is so much better for blogging than LJ’s old platform and I love the control that having a self hosted site allows me.  But I do miss that community feeling LJ had.  I don’t feel like my blog posts are read anymore like they used to be, even with posting links on Facebook, Twitter, and cross posting to LJ.  I don’t feel as in touch with my friends as I used.  I miss that connection and I wonder what I can do to regain it.

Things felt a little closer knit on LJ I think mostly because of the filter features.  You could direct your posts to particular friends and I think that allowed us to feel like we were forming connections and bonds even with people we hadn’t yet had a chance to meet in real life.   I also think the blogging format geared around longer posts allowed us to feel like we were deepening those connections, both new bonds and old.  Facebook’s shorter format feels more superficial.  It’s not that Facebook is bad and LJ was good.  Facebook is a perfectly great site and its set up allows me to stay in touch with far more friends than LJ did.  But the shorter status format makes me feel a bit like I’m missing something.  I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

I don’t know what the answer is.  Mostly I’m just thinking out loud about a few things I’ve had running around in my head lately.  I would like to hear your thoughts though.  Did you use to blog on Livejournal or on a platform like Livejournal?  Have you noticed similar things lately with the growing popularity of platforms like Facebook and Twitter?  What are your thoughts?

There are things I had hoped to finish this year that I haven’t been able to devote the time to that I wanted (my jacket project) and things that inadvertently ended up on the back burner as other projects took over (my Silver and Swetnam series).  But I also accomplished a lot of things that I hadn’t even thought about last year when I set my goals.  I’ve written three tutorials for Foundations Revealed, I wrote and taught a new class on dueling, I finished my green linen GFG that had sat on my shelf for embarrassingly too long, I learned a ton about working with fur (even if my Flander’s gown isn’t done yet), and I learned a lot about myself and my own fencing.  It’s not where I want it to be but I did learn a good deal about myself and my own mindset this year and I feel good about that.

The year isn’t done yet though.  There is still time to make some good headway on my jacket and now is a great time to start training for Ymir.  It’s also a great time to begin reflecting on 2010 and to start to think about goals for 2011.

So in the spirit of getting back to my unfinished projects I pulled it down last week to get to work on it.  All the pieces had to be re-ironed and the interlinings needed to be basted to the outer layer.  I then assembled the outer layer and the lining and stitched them together.

The next thing I did was assemble the sleeves and prep them for inserting into the gown.  But part of the problem with picking back up old projects that have been sitting on the shelf for a while is that sometimes you run into one of those “what was I doing here?” moments.  The sleeves I had cut ended up being much too large to ease into the armscyes.  This could end up being a bit of a blessing in disguise though.  The sleeves I had originally cut were short.  I had thought about making new long sleeves but in the end decided that I’d just go ahead and use what I had already cut.  Now I get to decide whether I want to alter the short sleeves a bit or just cut new long sleeves.  I think the long sleeves would be more versatile and could be layered with other gowns and surcoats but the short sleeves would be cooler.  Decisions, Decisions.

Anyway, I put up a few pictures in my gallery.  Left to do I have:

1. clip curves
2. press front opening
3. make up new sleeves
4. insert sleeves
5. hand finish front opening and sleeves
6. eyelets
7. hem

Not such a bad list.  Also, for those of you who missed it I have new pictures up of my jacket in addition to the stills I pulled out of the video from last week.  I also finally got my dueling article for the class I taught at June University up on the site.

We’ve gone through a few different versions, two web hosts, and a lot of fun years together.  What started as just a place to display my research has become one of my longest and most rewarding projects.

I know it’s been a bit more quiet than usual over here as I’ve worked to finish my articles for Foundations Revealed and my class for University.  But now that those are finished things are picking back up around here again and there are lots of new posts coming down the pipe on Silver, Swetnam, fencing, fashion, and all my many projects.