Excuses

Of course I've got excuses for not sewing. Mainly a lackadaisical summer attitude. And job interviews (and I even accepted one! woot!), and reading Harry Potter, and some historical books and novels (elizabethan and florentine. ;-)) And I just got The Honest Courtesan by Rosenthal, about Veronica Franco and her writings.

So, while I'm not technically costuming, I do feel like I've been doing legitimate research. Right, that's it....

Mostly I'm just lazy. Anywho, I did the teeny tiniest bit of sewing to "ease" myself back in. Hopefully this will lead to a whirlwind of more activity.

See my flemish diary for my new caul. Not very exciting, but at least its something after this almost-month-long hiatus.

And, because I liked this, and hope it will inspire my current peasant project, I thought I'd share:

"A fair and happy milkmaid is a country wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art, that one look of hers is able to put all face-physic out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellencies stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue; for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silkworm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long abed, spoil both her complexion and conditions. Nature hath taught her too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul. She rises therefore with the chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. In milking a cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment on her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made hay-cock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune...Lastly, her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell them; only a Fridays' dream is all her superstition: that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding sheet."

I confess that I couldn't tell from the book I got this (called 1603, by Christopher Lee) whether the passage was from Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale," or Overbury's "Characters." Either way, it is prettily written, and I think is a nice balance of true and romanticized peasants.