teaching tip

Make your students do Show and Tell. Seriously. It is the best thing ever.

So you think you can dance? (jane Austen edition)

Just a few pictures while I work out how much (if any) I can ethically blog about our weekend among the dancers





I can probably safely mention that 1) I walked home in that getup on Saturday night, though Dorian removed his hat 2) my calves are still aching and 3) as good as the festival was the most fun part of the whole four days was very definitely hanging out with local bloggers - first meeting Hil on Friday afternoon and then breakfast with the Ampersand Duck and Crazybrave / PDP households this morning, followed by a tour of Ms Duck's studio and a visit to the National Portrait Gallery. Delicious, hilarious, interesting, and most importantly, sane! Thanks, Canberrans.

dress done, plus Wednesday night stupid

I made the dress.



It's not turned out too bad, I think, considering how very very bad it could have been. Because I'd had a couple of glasses of wine when I cut it out I made rather a bad mistake in cutting the back of the skirt and had to patch in another panel, which fortunately isn't that noticeable (at least, I can't notice in when I've got the thing on.) Dogpossum's advice to make it a wee bit on the small side to allow for ease when it gets warm really helped - as, I must say, did all of the comments telling me not to go the long sleeves & high neck. Oh, and I did have other help too.



Dorian said the finished dress looked like something Mary Crawford would wear. I'm taking that very much as a compliment (although one of the RJA students last year said M.C. was a 'skank'.) And I'm assuming he didn't mean Mary Bennet, or, god help us, Mary Musgrove. It feels weird to wear because the waist seam is about an inch below the armpits. I'll get some photos on the weekend. Afterwards it will make an excellent dishevelled madwoman nightgown for watering the front yard in at 6am on Sunday mornings.


Now, on to the bonus Wednesday Night Stupid:





This was in the local paper. It's an ad brochure for a housing estate.

I'm going to write to them.

more wedding pictures

I see that Dorian has put up a selection of wedding photos on FB. I have no idea how the permissions thing works there and you mightn't be able to see them if you're not one of his seven hundred thousand friends. But here's the link, anyhow (this is assuming you're still interested. My own interest is much decreased, which is a great relief, because it was thoroughly overpowering towards the end there.)

Ampersand Duck's picture of the back of my legs standing on a confetti-strewn lawn is the one I like best, and not only because she magically managed to photograph it in such a way that you can't see how insanely crooked that hemline is. I haven't commented on her post or Meredith's or Pav's or Tim's, nor have i said 'thank you' for the wonderful comments you all wrote on Sunday's post, because to be truthful I am still feeling extremely emotional about the whole thing, I hadn't expected that at all, and it's exhausting. I need to just be reserved about it for a little while now. By the time I feel less all-over-the-shop, I expect, the rest of the world will have moved on as is right and proper. Don't think that if I don't say anything much now it's because I don't appreciate your great kindnesses.

Next research project: operation Do You Understand Muslins, Sir?

Forty-two essays, one book review, and seven days from today, I'm going to a Jane Austen shindig in our nation's capital. (My exquisite husband will be accompanying me: he's going to pretend he's read those novels, he says.) The shindig is extensive and elaborate and mainly, indeed, entirely appears to revolve around getting dressed up and pretending you are Lizzy. I don't know how much of four days' worth of dancing, embroidering, card playing, swordfighting etc I'll be able to cope with. But as long as I can manage a couple of days that's probably enough: the main purpose of the visit is to meet and get to know some Austen / costume enthusiasts, and to invite them to be interviewed about how they see the relationship between the re-enactor suite of activities, and the novel-reader set of experiences. Stephanie's work on medievalism and Gothic in Australian culture amply demonstrates that there's a great deal more to this kind of reworking than the eccentricities that meet the eye.

In the spirit of disposing of the last few lingering shreds in my soul of cool and scholarly disdain for the reading practices of the hoi polloi, I am going to do two things quite frightening to me: dress up in Jane Austen clothes, and attempt to dance. In other words, I'm joining in, and I hope this will cure me once and for all of using words like freaks in my conversation to describe Regency re-enactors. (I managed not to call them freaks or weirdos on the ethics application, though, so I'm getting better.) I'm uncertain which to be more scared about, the dancing or the gowning, and that's good thing because it means I can alternately fixate on whichever is temporarily less anxiety-inducing.

Dancing is particularly hard for me because I have severe left-right confusion and can't follow spoken directions; nor can I imitate the movements of somebody who is facing me. Yes, I AM aware that this makes me Mr Collins. And thanks to Lost In Austen, this means that whenever I go the wrong way or tread on somebody's feet I'll be picturing Mr C. sniffing his fingers.

Not much can be done about that now, but, ladies (and gentlemen if you are interested in these things) you could help me decide what to do about the gown. Here's the pattern I've got:



I need to decide whether to do the long sleeves or the short, and the high neck or the low.

For an evening dress it should really be short sleeves / low neck. But vanity whispers in my ear that this is the combo that makes you look more like 'the fat girls with short noses that so disturbed [Austen] at the 1st. Ball' than is strictly necessary. There is also the 'expensively & nakedly dress'd' judgment Austen intimidatingly passed on some poor woman of her acquaintance. But neither do I specially want to dress up as a Mormon wife. I also wonder how much trimming and of what kind to put on the dress. Too much is Mrs Elton angling most awfully for compliments. Not enough is, well, Anne De Bourgh. If only Trinny and Susannah were here to decide for me. The fabric I've got is the most plausible Regency-esque stuff I could find for $5/m. It's a sort of Wedgwood blue silk with matt/satin stripes. (I intended to do white - 'a woman can never be too fine while she is all in white', [Edmund Bertram, whose ideas about clothes are certainly not as impeccable as Henry Tilney's] - but I couldn't find any white material that looked sufficiently unmodern). I got a bit of soft old gold rumpled silk that could be a sash and some teal ribbons that could go around the hem. Both would be overkill, so it's one or the other. Opinions sought, especially with links to pictures.

slight headache today

Thanks for all the well wishes, it was a wonderful day and we loved it. I'm exhausted today (and I've now got to write the rest of tomorrow's lecture) so i won't catch up on reading / answering email for a day or two more, sorry about that.

Here's a photo. First of several probably.



Any bloggers who happened to be present, you have our blessing to post whatever you like as long as there aren't any identifiable children in the pictures. I have some nice pictures of you and I'll post them if (& only if) you tell me it's okay.

update: Dorian and I



and moi with only broidesmaid who showed up before all the guests went home (he obvs overslept, and forgot to wash his face as well)

Hi blog

Sorry dear blog for not posting for more than two weeks. As you know our wedding is on this Saturday and I still have quite a few things to do like finishing my dress which I am totally bored with making and generally agonising over. There have been several other things like we FINALLY had the asbestos roof removed and a new corrugated iron one put on instead. Also, I've had a lot of work work to do (got a lecture to write for Monday, for eg). So I prob won't be back until the middle of next week, altho I would like to try to fit in a bit of weddingday liveblogging if I can manage it. The night before last we fitted out my study as a bloggers' lounge (desk and bookshelves out, slightly scary cane lounge suite found on nature strip in). There has been a fair amount of furniture-moving going on, as you might expect if you've ever been to our place and thought about how you would fit ninety people in there.

If you're coming to this wedding here are some dot points for your consideration:

* the weather bureau seem determined that it's going to be a coolish day with maybe a few showers in the morning. Boo to that. But yeah, it could rain, and the ceremony is outside, so be prepared.

* On the other hand, last Saturday we had a practice in the back yard and I got sunburnt. So be prepared for that too possibly.

* There's just the normal amount of car parking in our street. The train is recommended, and the station is five minutes walk away from the house.

* People have asked about wedding presents. Firstly these are unnecessary. Secondly if you want to buy us a third-world chicken from Oxfam that would be lovely. Thirdly I have always coveted one of these. Fourthly, the front yard still has a lot of room for plants in it (west-facing, clay, not getting a lot of water.)

Since I probably won't be back on the internets before next week I will also note that I've got an article in this coming Saturday's Age which will explain in abundant detail why it's a very good thing that we don't have a ute nor any other vehicle capable of fitting very much scavenged stuff into the back. Enjoy.