New Castle Christmas
Dec. 15th, 2019 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mandie_rwNot the best weather for it...but we braved the mists and brought the umbrellas and had a fun(?) time of it anyway.
A very small "us" this time, too; just Robin and Tom and Yours Truly. (And I think Tom's uninvited to future events for unrepentant schmoopiness with his lady friend.) There was a definite decline in attendance from the other times we've been to this event, which was a bit of a bummer, but whatcha gonna do. At least that meant parking wasn't a problem?
We toodled out of the house later than I'd planned, but considering the weather, nobody was very eager to get out of bed. Tom is mostly capable of dressing himself now...except that he forgot he needed suspenders before vest. I volunteered him to drive on the way down - the real perk to having a pants-clad person with you when you're in a hoop. ;)
He's so helpful.
There's a bridge from Jersey into Delaware here...somewhere.
If the weather had been better I would have worn the candy-stripe plaid silk dress; it's old and I've worn it a good few times, but it feels extra super Christmas-y! Wool seemed like a better choice for the weather, though...and I figured I might as well wear the hoop-skirt I made to go with the rational dress bodice, right? Good choice! Wool is always a good choice. I stayed dry and warm until the sun started going down and the wind picked up...and except for my hem, which I kept treading on and dragging through puddles...
I have a definite tendency towards making my skirts short, and that includes 1860s. Not too short (usually), but definitely on the shorter side. So I deliberately added a couple of inches to my usual skirt length when I was cutting the panels for this one.
I suppose it would be a fine length for an indoor-only skirt, but...it's not an indoor-only skirt! Fashionable but not practical when walking around a puddley, uneven-bricked-and-cobblestoned historic district. That'll teach me. Long skirts are stupid. I'm going to hem it up a bit before wearing it again - probably hacking the hem guard off and re-binding it will do nicely.
I bullied/puppy-dog-eyed my two companions into going to a choir concert/christmas carol sing-a-long at the Methodist church, as it was the only thing on the schedule I actively wanted to do. I love singing and I really love singing Christmas carols! Unfortunately it was a little heavy on the "concert" part...it ran a solid hour-thirty and then some. Bit much. And Tom didn't care for it since he wasn't brought up as a churchgoer so he doesn't know any of the carols and so was bored out of his gourd, although was too nice to say that in so many words.
Although the funny part of the concert was that within the first twenty minutes of the concert, everyone within a five-pew radius of us had cleared out (except for the very elderly gentleman with an oxygen tank who probably couldn't get up and was therefore stuck with us). Guess we smelled that bad? We weren't THAT wet...
After the endless choir concert we wandered over to Jessop's Tavern, home of the enormous shepherd's pie, although none of us got said pie this time. Although I think I'd be happy with anything in their beef gravy (pot roast this time). *drools* And I got spiced wine, because I love that and when better to get it than Christmastime? And then our server stopped checking on us and we were marooned there for at least half an hour longer than we really needed to be! We'd halfway planned on dessert but were afraid we'd be stuck there for even longer if we'd added anything else to our bills, so nixed that.
I wanted to see the tree lighting at 5, and we had about an hour to kill before then, so we wandered around a bit and took pictures, and then decided that two out of three present didn't care at all for tree lightings, and I figured that since the choir concert had been my suggestion, I should stop suggesting things. Plus it was just about dark and the tree lighting is the last event of the day, so off we went to our respective homes.
I love New Castle as an historic downtown and it's still one of my favorite local Christmas events - it's all Authentic Ye Oldey Architecture! has a church green! it's charming! - but somehow the difference between three and four people coming to an event felt vast this time. Four is a legitimate group; three is a "...so why are you guys dressed up?" I was enjoying myself while I was there, but looking back it all falls a bit flat. This might be one event I shouldn't have recapped! Oh well, too late now.
AND YOU CAN SEE MY GODDAMN HOOP RIDGES UGH. I've never noticed that in any of my other dresses and I am inordinately irritated by it!
Flickr album
Not sure what's up next on the sewing docket...probably helping my mini-me build her own outfit to wear at the Indian King Tavern. I've picked a fabric or two that I'm willing to sacrifice for a bedgown, and it's time to re-home the off-white linen blend petticoat anyway. Bedgowns are dull but I plan on machine sewing the long seams so it won't be dull for long!
A very small "us" this time, too; just Robin and Tom and Yours Truly. (And I think Tom's uninvited to future events for unrepentant schmoopiness with his lady friend.) There was a definite decline in attendance from the other times we've been to this event, which was a bit of a bummer, but whatcha gonna do. At least that meant parking wasn't a problem?
We toodled out of the house later than I'd planned, but considering the weather, nobody was very eager to get out of bed. Tom is mostly capable of dressing himself now...except that he forgot he needed suspenders before vest. I volunteered him to drive on the way down - the real perk to having a pants-clad person with you when you're in a hoop. ;)
He's so helpful.
There's a bridge from Jersey into Delaware here...somewhere.
If the weather had been better I would have worn the candy-stripe plaid silk dress; it's old and I've worn it a good few times, but it feels extra super Christmas-y! Wool seemed like a better choice for the weather, though...and I figured I might as well wear the hoop-skirt I made to go with the rational dress bodice, right? Good choice! Wool is always a good choice. I stayed dry and warm until the sun started going down and the wind picked up...and except for my hem, which I kept treading on and dragging through puddles...
I have a definite tendency towards making my skirts short, and that includes 1860s. Not too short (usually), but definitely on the shorter side. So I deliberately added a couple of inches to my usual skirt length when I was cutting the panels for this one.
I suppose it would be a fine length for an indoor-only skirt, but...it's not an indoor-only skirt! Fashionable but not practical when walking around a puddley, uneven-bricked-and-cobblestoned historic district. That'll teach me. Long skirts are stupid. I'm going to hem it up a bit before wearing it again - probably hacking the hem guard off and re-binding it will do nicely.
I bullied/puppy-dog-eyed my two companions into going to a choir concert/christmas carol sing-a-long at the Methodist church, as it was the only thing on the schedule I actively wanted to do. I love singing and I really love singing Christmas carols! Unfortunately it was a little heavy on the "concert" part...it ran a solid hour-thirty and then some. Bit much. And Tom didn't care for it since he wasn't brought up as a churchgoer so he doesn't know any of the carols and so was bored out of his gourd, although was too nice to say that in so many words.
Although the funny part of the concert was that within the first twenty minutes of the concert, everyone within a five-pew radius of us had cleared out (except for the very elderly gentleman with an oxygen tank who probably couldn't get up and was therefore stuck with us). Guess we smelled that bad? We weren't THAT wet...
After the endless choir concert we wandered over to Jessop's Tavern, home of the enormous shepherd's pie, although none of us got said pie this time. Although I think I'd be happy with anything in their beef gravy (pot roast this time). *drools* And I got spiced wine, because I love that and when better to get it than Christmastime? And then our server stopped checking on us and we were marooned there for at least half an hour longer than we really needed to be! We'd halfway planned on dessert but were afraid we'd be stuck there for even longer if we'd added anything else to our bills, so nixed that.
I wanted to see the tree lighting at 5, and we had about an hour to kill before then, so we wandered around a bit and took pictures, and then decided that two out of three present didn't care at all for tree lightings, and I figured that since the choir concert had been my suggestion, I should stop suggesting things. Plus it was just about dark and the tree lighting is the last event of the day, so off we went to our respective homes.
I love New Castle as an historic downtown and it's still one of my favorite local Christmas events - it's all Authentic Ye Oldey Architecture! has a church green! it's charming! - but somehow the difference between three and four people coming to an event felt vast this time. Four is a legitimate group; three is a "...so why are you guys dressed up?" I was enjoying myself while I was there, but looking back it all falls a bit flat. This might be one event I shouldn't have recapped! Oh well, too late now.
AND YOU CAN SEE MY GODDAMN HOOP RIDGES UGH. I've never noticed that in any of my other dresses and I am inordinately irritated by it!
Flickr album
Not sure what's up next on the sewing docket...probably helping my mini-me build her own outfit to wear at the Indian King Tavern. I've picked a fabric or two that I'm willing to sacrifice for a bedgown, and it's time to re-home the off-white linen blend petticoat anyway. Bedgowns are dull but I plan on machine sewing the long seams so it won't be dull for long!
no subject
Date: 2019-12-17 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-21 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-21 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-18 12:50 am (UTC)Have you considered some kind of dress-elevator system to hold up the skirt?
no subject
Date: 2019-12-21 04:37 pm (UTC)Possibly? I still think it's probably easiest to hack and re-bind...although technically I'm just ignoring it for now, which is definitely the easiest! xD