There are some fantastic clothes, and I love the look of the woman above, but I am very put out by the amount of women who seem to have been unaware that their photos were being taken.
These are creepshots, just like the creepshots of today, invasions of the privacy and the lives of women, and I find it very strange that once a photograph reaches a certain age, people seem to forget that that woman would have had thoughts and feelings too, and instead celebrate the photographer.
Still, you can judge for yourself with the article here.
A fantastic look at some of Lace Embrace's collection of antiques.
Obviously this isn't how they would have been worn at the time, but if they were to wear them as they would have been at the time then you wouldn't be able to see them.
It's such a pretty collection, I'm also rather fond of all the hats in this video, particularly the bonnets on the twins.
Once again delving into my archive, this time updating a very popular post about The Sutherland Sisters, originally published on 15/06/2012.
Unfortunately the video that originally inspired this post no longer exists, and there are very few videos featuring the sisters on youtube, and those that do are not very sensitive, dwelling on their carnival days and referring to them as "freaks" thus this update remains sadly, video free.
I was watching youtube videos this morning looking for fancypants styles to put my hair into when this video popped up in my search results:
video no longer exists, sorry!
Actually the whole series of these videos is pretty awesome and I am seriously inspired now.
several of the photos in this one are marked as being "The Sutherland Sisters" and so I decided to investigate!
It turns out the seven Sutherland sisters (try saying that ten times fast), Sarah, Victoria, Isabel, Grace, Naomi, Kitty and Mary started out as singers one stage with their brother Charles before finding fame for their beautiful, extra long hair.
After selling their hair tonic (rumoured to be just another snake oil product of the time) the sisters joined Barnum and Bailey's circus as a sideshow.
Between them the sisters had a staggering 37 feet of hair!
Mary Sutherland suffered from mental illness, while treatment wasn't so great for anybody at that time it probably didn't help that people kept attributing the symptoms to her having such heavy hair.
Isabel married twice, first time when she was 40 to 27 year old Fredrick Castlemaine, whom she must have loved very much because after his suicide whilst the sisters were on tour in 1897, she had his body brought back to their home, where it was placed in the music room and the sisters would sing his favourite songs.
It took a visit from the local health authority to finally have his body moved to a mausoleum and even then Isabel spent the next two years walking three miles each day to talk to him.
Her next husband was Alonzo Swain, who conned her out of a huge sum of money before disappearing.
Another strange tale from their history is that when two of the sister died, instead of just becoming the six and then five sisters, the two passed sisters were replaced in the sideshow with two other women!
Unfortunately as the fashion for long hair faded, so to did the need for people to buy the Sister's hair tonic, and the remaining sisters died in poverty.
Follwing on from yesterday's post about RinRin Doll I was directed to this.
Now I don't completely agree with what she has to say, and I do feel like a bit of it is pretty rambly, however it's based on her personal experiences and not mine, so obviously her experience is going to be different to mine, but I can agree with the overall message of making something bigger.
Lolita has a pretty terrible reputation outside of the community because of a handful of people who like to hide under anonymity.
So LACE has my full support and I will likely make my own post fairly soon (although not video because my voice is still kinda screwed from the uvulaitus I had for the last fortnight).
Kind of a weird question, not sure if they meant alter cloth, but as I don't have one I'm just posting my favourite cloth. Textured taffeta that I used to make a skirt a few years back.
This year's visit from the Birthday Beagle has brought a lovely new suspender belt from What Katie Did.
It seems very nicely made, and fits like a glove, I'm very much looking forward to wearing it, as the last thing I had with suspenders had crappy plastic ones that wouldn't hold properly.
Today a selection of Pathe Newsreels I found on their youtube channel dealing with corsets and underwear.
This one from the 50's entitled "Grandma's Corsets" is a very interesting look at how underwear progressed from corsets to strapless bras and then to the "corslet" (or corset lite).
Corsets through the Ages, doesn't have any sound, but it's still a very interesting glimpse into how much underwear changed over the first half of the 20th Century. The audience reactions in this one are particularly fun, lots of disgruntled wives less than amused at their husbands ogling women in their knickers!
'secret Lady' Girdle (1960), is also unfortunately silent although very interesting, it features a Victorian themed burlesque act (who actually kind of reminds me a lot of Immodesty Blaise the way she moves), and a couple of the corsets featured look a lot like they could be from the Symmington Collection, although this video did get a scream of terror from me due to the bad lacing technique... Please people, don't lace yourselves or your friends up like that, it's a very good way to injure someone.
And yet again I vanish due to illness, this has been a super bad year for me as far as illness goes. I am starting to feel a little better but my throat is still very sore.
I really hope that this is the last time I am so ill.
I am of course a huge Harry Potter fan, and The Half Blood Prince is my favorite of the series, probably because it's so Snape heavy, and while yep Snape is pretty problematic (taking out being "friendzoned" by Lily out on her son is pretty shitty there Sev) he is probably one of the most interesting characters in the series.
I am so sorry for all of my vanishings lately, I have a lot going on in my life and my head at the moment, I try to put aside some time every day to blog because if nothing else it gives me something less stressful to think about, but I don't always manage.
I found this one on Instagram and I will be doing it both here and on Instagram. I'm probably going to explain the pictures more here as it's easier to type with a non-touchscreen keyboard for me.
I was tagged by Schnauzevoll of Just Keep Brains, I did actually do this already back in 2012 but I think it's long enough ago to give it another try.
Rules
1. Post the award on your blog.
2. Thank the blogger who presented this award and link back to their blog.
3. Write 11 random facts about yourself.
4. Nominate 11 bloggers who you feel deserve this award and who have fewer than 200 followers.
5. Answer 11 questions posted by the presenter and ask your nominees 11 questions.
Facts
1. Reading my post from 2012 made me cringe so hard my eyebrows vanished into my hairline.
2. Apparently I am aging backwards because I have been ID'd in pubs six times this year, previous to that I had only been asked for ID once since I was 16 (and of course it was the one time I didn't have my passport with me!).
3. "Drunky Alex" stories still happen, I once told a guy in a pizza shop in Sheffield he looked like Ned Stark, only to find out like a year later that apparently Sean Bean's brother owns a pizza shop in Sheffield.
4. I love to try new and exciting foods, well maybe new isn't the right word, I don't want to come off sounding like I'm Coloumbusing quinoa or anything, but food that's new to me. I love cooking new dishes too, not so much if they don't work out how I wanted!
5. I started corset training in November and already I am starting to see the effects on my body. Even without the corset I have a more pronounced waist and my posture is miles better than it used to be.
6. I am a Feminist and although I am not perfect at it I strive to be as inter-sectional as possible. Sometimes though I can't see past my own privilege and need people to explain what I'm missing.
7. Affirmation by Savage Garden is probably sums me up as a person. Yeah I know they were a boyband but I'm entitled to a little bit of cheese now and then right?
8. Speaking of cheese, I have been a vegetarian since I was born. I have never eaten meat. For almost ten years I was a vegan but I had to stop early last year because I had been pretty rubbish at making sure my diet was balanced and ended up calcium deficient. I wouldn't rule out trying again some time though. Although I don't necessarily disagree with eating animals in theory, as I've got older my argument has become more against farming than anything else, the farming system as it is is so wasteful, and I'm of the opinion that if you are going to eat an animal you should use the whole animal, and not kill more than you can use.
9. I still really want my ears pointed, I've even priced it up now (way more than I can justify spending at the moment), and I would like Samppa Von Cyborg to do it, as I A: Know from various people who he's modified that he's 100% professional and B: I really like his style of ear pointing.
10. I sometimes feel like I have a thousand songs floating around in my head waiting to be written, but every time I try it just comes out as terrible emo poetry, but I am talking a Futurelearn course on Songwriting next month so hopefully that will help.
11. I have a teeny tiny obsession with shoes and my collection is starting to take over the house.
– Do you believe in spirit animals or a connection to animals in any way?
Well I'm a cat person, I've spent most of my life with cats and was only without a cat for a couple of years when I was at uni. Horrible years so I think that says something really.
– What was your favourite city you’ve been travelling to so far?
Tallinn, I visited in 2005 with my old youth group as part of a youth exchange. Our exchange was actually with a school in Narva and we had to take a two hour bus to get there and a two hour bus to come back to Tallinn where we were staying in a hotel by the docks (Fun fact: We passed a bunch of really blatant prostitutes on the way to our hotel and our youth leader freaked the fuck out and begged us all not to tell our parents. Also I stole a shoe horn, that's not actually related to the prostitutes, it was just a thing that happened because I thought I was super edgy but now I feel bad SO THIS IS ME CONFESSING TO THEFT). On our first day in Estonia we stayed in Tallinn and a girl from the group in Narva (who had taken the two hour bus) gave us a very detailed tour of the city, some might say overly detailed as one of the places she took us was to the top floor of the Coca Cola mall to show us the fence that had been put up to stop people trying to kill themselves. It was a very odd trip, but Tallinn appealed to me as an artist, I liked the clashes in architecture and how you could walk down a street and go from harsh, industrial leftovers from the communist era, to bits of crumbly old medieval prettiness. Also I got glared at by an old lady on a tram for talking too loudly and had one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten (it had peach and broccoli on it, which is kind of an odd combo BUT IT WORKED SO WELL) whilst watching Neighbors badly dubbed into Russian.
– If you could live as any creature in any time and any place you’d like, what would it look like?
Can I be a Direwolf?
– Why did you start blogging and are you still blogging about the same subject/s?
Oh gawd you made me go and re-read my intro post and mostly it comes off like I was trying to show off *cringecringecringe* I guess I do still show off a bit, I'm just (hopefully) less tacky about it.
– How did you come up with your blogs name?
I was humming Kings of the Wild Frontier.
– Favorite Season?
Swinter
– Who is your favourite Villain?
Cersei Lannister, I am sympathetic to her, after all her power crazed father basically sold her off to a drunk who beat her and reading the books Jamie comes off pretty rapey (she told him no more than once in the events that lead up to Bran being pushed out of the window), and it totally makes sense that she'd try and live through Joffery and ended up spoiling him but she still manages to pull some pretty nasty, totally unforgivable stuff.
– What are you afraid of – any phobia?
Money, having too little or too much. It's the thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes. What if it changes me? Money is weird, can I not just trade camels instead?
– Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies?
Vampires
– What would be your top wardrobe staple?
Probably a corset lately!
– Would you prefer a night at the club / a bar or on the couch or in nature?
It kind of depends on what mood I'm in, yesterday I just wanted to veg out on the sofa forever because I was made of broken from Resistanz, today I feel like I could club and watch like a thousand more live bands and I have Rabia Sorda's "Die in Berlin" stuck in an infinite loop in my head.
My Questions
1.Where would you most like to visit?
2. How many languages do you speak?
3. What is your favorite recipe?
4. Who is your favorite hero?
5. What is your best drunk story?
6. What is the strangest accessory you own?
7. A strange fact about you.
8. What is your favourite kind of footwear?
9. If a train is travelling North at 30 mph and another train is travelling South at 50 mph at what point do you get sick of waiting and travel by Floo Powder instead?
10. If you had all the money in the world to spend on a line up for a music festival which bands would you pick to play?
11. If you could give one piece of advice to the whole world, what would it be?
Yesterday morning a real treat arrived in the post, two vintage blouse patterns I bought from Ebay.
I decided I need more Lolita friendly blouses in my wardrobe, but I couldn't quite find what I wanted and I'm not too good at drafting my own blouse patterns quite yet so I took to ebay to find some vintage patterns.
I was super lucky to find two completely unused patterns complete with their factory folds, the Peter Pan collar blouse pattern even includes a newspaper clipping that has an advert for the pattern on one side and a TV listing on the other!
I'm really looking forward to sewing them all up, the ones I took close up snaps of are the ones I want to make up first.
The hilarity started on the train on the way down as when we were switching trains the soles fell off both of my shoes and I had to borrow Kev's boots for the night (which totally went with my velvet mini dress o.0).
Starting Saturday with a much needed Weatherspoons Veggie Big Breakfast!
I don't actually have any photos of the bands because I was too busy enjoying them to take photos. We missed Unity One because we didn't get there in time, but enjoyed Ruinizer when we did arrive, weren't so keen on Solitary Experiments, I thought they sounded a little generic so we wandered off to the chill area and ran into some (already drunk!) friends, before heading back in for Hoccico, who was awesome as always.
Dammit boots :(
We woke up Saturday super hungry (which I blame on how hard I danced to Hoccico the night before) and with me needing new shoes headed to Shoezone and then Weatherspoons.
I bought a lovely pair of knee high boots, but didn't try them on until I was in Weatherspoons, and of course they didn't fit.
Patisserie Valerie
Thus we had to go back to Shoezone, but we passed this awesome bakery on the way and grabbed a slice of cake each for later.
Traded the knee highs for these beauties!
Then went back to the hotel to eat our cake, I had Black Forest Gateaux because it's been my favorite since childhood, one of my earliest memories is eating Black Forest Gateaux with my granda.
It was very delicious, but somewhat hard to eat without a fork!
I went for a bit of a fetish-y cat girl themed outfit on the Saturday.
Hugging Filip from Rave The Reqvium *purring noises*
So Saturday we watched Mental Discipline, who were good, but a little strange as they're more of a studio project and the guy who was doing the singing live writes all of the songs and music but usually has guest vocalists sing them in recordings, so a couple of the songs sounded really out because his vocals are so different to the person who sang them on the album.
Advance were ok, but they had a bit of a tech problem that made the entire backing track (including the keyboard... AWKWARD) cut out and left the keyboard player flailing around like keyboard cat. Still I did quite like their cover of Madonna's Frozen,
Next up were Rave The Reqvium, who are super hard to describe musically because basically they sound like everything all at once and it works really well... Actually here, go click this and see for yourself!
Definitely one of the best bands of the weekend in my opinion, and the start of my gig neck. Gig neck is a malady that doesn't affect me so often now that I go to so many gigs, but my goodness my neck STILL hurts today.
Erik, also from Rave The Reqvium *more purring*
Following them was a break, during which we ran around to The Devonshire Cat for some dinner, Kev had Duck and I had a Pine Nut Risotto. I am very picky about risotto, this was a pretty incredible risotto :D
Reaper and WASTE were a little too dancy for me, so we headed back to the chill out room and caught up with some more friends and also spotted Rave The Reqvium wandering around, so of course we had to tell them how much we enjoyed their set and then hugs and photos happened (Kev's phone was kind of on the blink when he was trying to take my photo with Filip, so I got an even longer hug... MY LIFE IS SO HARD!).
Last up for Saturday were 3̤̱͕͢ ̱̣͕̜̀͟͜T̹̜̗͈̠̼̀Ę̶̻E̵̢̤̩T̢̡͕̦̥̦͍̟̳̩ͅH̰̼̺͎, who I was super excited about seeing and they didn't disappoint. They have kind of an old school industrial sound, with a crisp newness that really sets them apart from the 5 billion other bands I keep hearing people harp on about that just sound like terrible attempts to be Front 242.
3̤̱͕͢ ̱̣͕̜̀͟͜T̹̜̗͈̠̼̀Ę̶̻E̵̢̤̩T̢̡͕̦̥̦͍̟̳̩ͅH̰̼̺͎ are reason number 2 my neck really hurts... All of the headbanging!
Can't help thinking their vocalist looks eerily like Dorian from Dragon Age though.
The lovely religious themed shirt Kev wore on Easter Sunday
On Sunday we headed to Weatherspoons and had lunch with our friend Nel, it's been over a year since we last met up with her, so there was lots of chatting and catching up to do.
It was kind of a strange Weatherspoons though as they didn't do Sunday Dinners, so instead I had to have a veggie burger with avocado and haloumi.
Mmmmm Hendos
Afterwards we went on a mission to find some Henderson's Relish. which is a lot like Worcestershire Sauce only without the fish so it's vegetarian, but it's very hard to get in the real north, so every time I am in Yorkshire I fill my bags with the stuff!
Sunday's bands, I wasn't too keen on Sirus or Dirty K, which worked out fine for me as I was pretty broken from the night before at this point and my feet were pretty sore from being out all night in new boots.
Preverse were quite interesting, although they were pretty strange, Kev really enjoyed them though.
Comaduster, were not my thing at all and I was really confused by the bored looking dancers who were pretty out of time with eachother, Author & Punisher didn't really do much for me either.
Da Octopus were amazing though, I had been really looking forward to seeing them since I missed out on them at The Bram Stoker International Film Festival last year due to having to leave early, and they didn't disappoint! Although an hour of solid dancing didn't really help my body!
Seriously though, I'm not the only person who sees this right?
Also we ran into 3̤̱͕͢ ̱̣͕̜̀͟͜T̹̜̗͈̠̼̀Ę̶̻E̵̢̤̩T̢̡͕̦̥̦͍̟̳̩ͅH̰̼̺͎ in the chill area and so hugging and photographs happened!
Savant also weren't really our thing, so since we were kinda broken so we said our goodbyes and went back to the hotel.
Last weekend was Newcastle Film and Comic Con in the Metro Radio Arena and Kev and I went along.
We both paid to have a photo with Eve Myles who was Gwen in Torchwood and the voice of Merrill in Dragon Age (who I romanced in Dragon Age 2!), she said she loved my dress and that I smell nice. :D
We also sat in on her panel later on which was pretty funny, she has a really brilliant sense of humor!
I also paid for a photo with James Masters in the jacket he wore when he was in Torchwood. My mother finds him super attractive, he seemed like a nice person but I was way more interested in the jacket, it's so well made! The brief second or two while the photo was taken was just not enough jacket time for me!
The following day I got a photo with William Russel who played Ian Chesterton, one of the very first companions in Dr Who. We also sat in on the panel he did with Louise Jameson (Leela) and Bonnie Langford (Mel) earlier in the day which was also a very enjoyable panel as they were all companions in different eras of the show.
I also had my photo taken with Louise Jameson who was the fourth Doctor's companion Leela, and she made a big fuss of how much she liked my dress :)
The outfit is inspired by the theme of "horns, masks and very high heels" although I couldn't wear the heels on the uneven ground where we shot these, I also ended up taking hem off at Antichirst as Electrowertz doesn't have the most even of floors either.
I was also inspired by Greek mythology via one of Dracula's brides in the Francis Ford Coppola version of Dracula.
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