Running with Scissors (and fabric): Sunday in the Park with Jay

Had another session working on the shoulder cape yesterday. After spending far too much time picking apart seams I had put in the last time I worked on it, I finally made some progress and I now have a finished cape with a tidy hand sewn hem ready to be trimmed. HSF #20 ends tomorrow, so I have a lot more hand sewing to be done tonight to finish it in time. Wish me luck!

But the weather was sunny when we woke up today, so I thought it would still be possible to go to Sunday in the Park. So I get up and start settling on my long hair piece to wear under the snood I have and just about the time I get it perfect, Jay says: "Uh... I figured we'd go out to breakfast before we started getting ready." So I decide "the hell with it" and throw on jeans and a tshirt (black, of course) and we go to Waffle House, where my snood is nowhere near close to the oddest thing people are wearing.

We're talking over coffee and I mention that I hope I can get all the trim on the cape by tomorrow and Jay says: "Well.. we could always skip Sunday in the Park..." and I think " Hell no, I've been working on costumes for a month for this!" and look at him closely. "Do YOU want to skip Sunday in the Park?" I ask neutrally.

"Well...the aviators scarf I ordered never arrived, I'm afraid the outfit looks too WWII and I know you don't like the khaki camp shirt I was planning on wearing under my bomber jacket....." (We won't talk about the three conversations we had over the course of the past month in which I suggested that we could make his outfit look less WWII and more steampunky by putting a waistcoat and high collared shirt with a cravat under the jacket and he balked at the idea.)

So we finish breakfast and go home and I drag some stuff out of the LARP box. A battered white linen shirt I made years ago that's loosely modeled on a Romantic era men's shirt: floofy sleeves and a high collar, a burgundy silk cravat from another shirt that I made and lost to an ex (I still mourn that shirt!) and a black man's vintage U front dress waistcoat.

The shirt is on its last legs, it has a long tear in one sleeve and another under the arm where the fabric has given out. But hey... it's going to be under a waistcoat and a jacket. But it looks as good as I suspected it would and better still, he likes it. So we're back on track for going to Sunday in the Park (thankfully!)

I remember enough about wearing a corset to put my boots on first, but corset lacing is a two person job and Jay remembers nothing about what the woman showed him at Dragon Con when I bought the corset. But we manage to get me in the corset and I resolved to 1) not to think about the mess that the lacing looked like in back and 2) find some youtube videos or some tutorial on corset lacing and put Jay thru some dry runs before our next event.

So we're dressed and off... finally. We had a good time wandering around Oakland Cemetery and seeing the local artisans. Maybe 20% of the people there were dressed in costume so it wasn't too odd that we were in costume, but I still lost count of the number of times that we got stopped by people wanting pictures. (and that's my personal benchmark for a decent costume :) )

But it was good to get home and out of the corset. My boots were surprisingly comfortable, even at the end of the afternoon. Jay wasn't so lucky, but at least we know where his boots rub and can be proactive for the future.

The big takeways were:
1) we absolutely need to do a "dress rehearsal" before a costuming event to make sure all of the little pieces parts are taken care of. I thought I was completely ready and didn't realize that my reticule didn't have a handle till I pulled it out to put my iphone in it this morning.
2) I need to find someway to streamline juggling a reticule, a parasol and a fan
3) I totally need a Victorian looking pair of sunglasses!