Eyelets, Rule of Three

Can you tell where I started?

Phase Wrappers

Preventative conservation project time: making phase wrappers for my antique books and magazines. Archival folder board from Gaylord, acid-free bookbinding glue from Blick, and the world's largest roll of velcro dots from Amazon.

Wrapper unfolds flat, without disturbing the book within.

Overlapping leaves protect the book or magazine on all sides.

Et voila!

Honestly, the measuring took longest.

Now to finish cutting acid-free tissue paper for the inserts--the inks on some of the magazines' colored plates are damaging the adjacent pages, so adding thin barrier will help protect them.

Hair Times

Just a little experiment* looking into the time actually required to dress one's hair in a basic style. To start, I picked three styles that I'm familiar with and which feel fairly practical.  The side bands over rats require a little fussing to look symmetric (a mirror helps), but they still go fairly quickly. 

Method: Each week, I dressed my hair in one the following styles.  I allowed the first two days to be 'warm-ups' to get the technique in my muscle memory; on the last five, I timed how long it took me to put my hair up. I started with my hair combed, a center part, and any product (pomatum or oil) already brushed in. The final time includes any additional parting, smoothing, braiding, and twisting, up until the last pin was placed. For the braids, I used a standard three-strand flat plait; the single braid was tied with thread, while the side braids and pair of back braids were plaited to the end and pinned up without being tied off. [I have a separate research project and experiment going on how braids were fastened before hair elastics.]

Two-braid coil (bun) of the back hair, with side hair in twists

Back	Side	Total
2:57	0:42	3:39
2:47	0:45	3:32
3:16	0:33	3:49
--	--	3:29
2:47	1:05	3:52

Two-braid coil, with rolls over braids on the side

Back	Side	Total
3:20	3:06	6:26
2:53	2:58	5:51
3:05	2:58	6:03
3:32	2:36	6:08
2:49	2:52	5:41

Single-braid coil, with wide side bands over rats

Back	Side	Total
2:15	1:41	3:56
2:47	0:57	3:44
2:40	1:03	3:43
2:08	1:24	3:32
2:30	0:54	3:24

Averages for different components

Type	Average time
Coil of two braids, no tie	3:03
Coil of one braid, tied with string	2:28
Side twists	0:46
Side twists into braids	2:54
Side bands	1:12

While I do have very long hair, and put up in historic styles often, I still don't have the same amount of practice as someone who has been dressing her hair thus everyday since she was a teen. It's quite likely that someone actually living in the 1850s-early 1860s would be faster still. On the other hand, the largest time sink of the styles was the braiding--which I have been doing since childhood--and so perhaps the duration isn't far off.

For the record, I did all of these styles, fully putting up my 28" long hair, with four to six 3" steel pins--two to secure the back coil, one more to attach each side to the coil, and sometimes an extra pin or two for added security.

*Ok, I maybe get frustrated with the myth that period hairstyles are too time-and-resource-intensive for ordinary use, and that some/most/all women just left their hair loose. Everything I've read suggests that dressing one's hair neatly was a social expectation of all classes, and my own personal experience is that wearing long hair down is impractical for any sort of work or movement, as well as situations like 'wind'.

HFF 3.4: Love & Romance

The Challenge: Love & Romance--Sickeningly sweet, heart-shaped, a dish you love, or something associated with the 19th century Romantic movement. The most tenuous the connection to Valentine's Day, the better.

The Receipt: Champagne is customary for Valentine's Day. So, I made champagne biscuits and champagne water ices from The Italian confectioner; or, Complete economy of desserts. I tried two receipts, because I was expecting catastrophic failure on at least one, and wanted a back up. [The biscuits don't contain actual champagne, as in the beverage. The ices, however...]

The Date/Year and Region: British (published in London, but ostensibly Italian), 1827

How Did You Make It:

For the biscuits, I attempted a quarter-scale of the receipt: 6 oz powdered sugar, 8 oz flour, 4 eggs, 4 oz butter, and ~.5 oz caraway seeds. It was fairly easy to make up--I beat the eggs thoroughly in the powdered sugar, added the butter (melted), and then stirred in the flour and caraway seeds.  I ended up with a light batter, which I baked in modern cupcake molds, as I miscalculated having the papers I needed to bake the biscuits.

I baked them at 400F for 9 minutes. The resulting biscuits are light, and resemble a cake in texture. The quarter-batch made 22 biscuits (cupcake-sized, but about 1/3-1/2 the height of a full cupcake).

For the ices, I made a half-batch, with 3 lemons, 1/4 cup sugar, and half a bottle champagne. Not having lump sugar,  I rubbed the lemons through granulated sugar (it was not particularly effective, but the sugar did take on some lemon-flavor, in addition to getting everywhere). I then juiced the lemons, mixed the juice with the champagne and sugar, and froze using the 'I don't have proper ice-cream-freezer' method (ie, put the bowl in the freezer, and stir it every 20 minutes until it solidifies). When the mixture was almost solid, I put it into all the small molds I have and let it set over-night.

Time to Complete: Mixing and baking the biscuits took about 40 minutes, with baking two batches of biscuits. The ices I mixed up about 15 minutes, with four hours of intermittent stirring to set and then freezing overnight.

Total Cost: $1.50 for the lemons, and $8 champagne. All of other ingredients were on hand.

How Successful Was It? I think they both turned out nice. The caraway still isn't my favorite flavor, but I liked the biscuits just the same. They have a nice, light texture, and make a good alternative to all the heavy cookie-like biscuits I usually make. They do, however, get hard fairly quickly, and need to be baked shortly before serving (or sealed in an airtight container promptly).

The ices mostly taste like champagne. Think 'champagne margarita'. I don't always notice the lemon, but when I do, it imparts a noticeably sour taste. Still, they molded nicer than any other ices I've made, and I didn't catch anything on fire this time.  I will make these again, using a little more sugar to counter the tart lemon, and hopefully with a proper freezer, which should clear up the slight graininess in the texture.

How Accurate Is It? The biscuits were made in modern silicon cupcake cups instead of tins with paper, and the ices didn't have a proper freezer (or lump sugar), but I think I stayed pretty true tot he original receipts.

Champagne biscuits.

Champagne ices.

I was most excited to use the 2-piece rose mold Elise gave me. It turned out very nicely, with the ice coming out of both sides easily, and staying together as a single rose. The picture doesn't do it justice.

Rose and mold.
All the little details came through in the ice,
even if my camera doesn't like them.

HFF 3.3: Soup

The Challenge: Soups, stews, broths and/or similar dishes.

The Receipt: Apple soup from Beeton's Book of Household Management

The Date/Year and Region: 1861, British (London)

How Did You Make It:  First, I had to make the "medium stock, No. 105" by putting the following items in a pot of  (2 quarts, 1/2 pint) water and letting them simmer for five hours:

10 oz ham
12 oz misc chicken pieces
1.4 lb of cheapest beef at Winco
1 cup water, 1 oz butter
1 huge white onion with 3 cloves
2 carrots
2 tiny radishes  (should have been a turnip)
Half a head of celery (all the leafy bits I don't like in my vegetable stew)
1/4 tsp whole peppercorns
1/8 mace (pounded was all I had)
1 small handful of marjoram, sage, and thyme
1 oz salt (which is a lot)

This is approximately a half-scale of the given receipt. I skipped the leek, as I have none in the garden, and couldn't find one in the store; savory herbs were also limited by what I could find in the garden between snowfalls. I made a mistake in using the radish when I should have had a turnip--I fished these out after 45 minutes, as they had turned the stock pink, causing me to notice my error. The color mellowed a lot after that. The resulting stock is less salty that modern commercial products, and has a hearty meat flavor (I couldn't say, however, whether the beef or chicken was predominating).

To make the apple soup (1/6 scale), I took 1 (5-oz) apple, peeled and cored it, and cut it into five pieces. This was boiled in 1 pint of the aforementioned stock. After the apples were soft, I strained the soup, added 1/8 tsp of white pepper, a dash of cayenne pepper, and 1 clove, and boiled it again.

Time to Complete: About 5.5 hours to make the stock, another hour or two on the soup itself. Most of this is 'wait while the pot stews/simmers' time.

Total Cost: I spent about $6 on the cheapest piece of beef I could find, and another $2 or so on onions, celery and carrots for the stock. This made considerable more stock that I ended up using on this receipt, so 3/4 of it is in the freezer for future use. Everything else, I already had on hand (thanks, in part, to a habit for freezing weird left-overs for Victorian cookery experiments).

How Successful Was It? I messed this one up. The stock is fine, but the soup had problems: I didn't cover the pan while stewing the apples, and ended up reducing the stock volume by three-quarters. The resulting soup was, therefore, much too concentrated, particularly in regards the salt and pepper content. As a result, I probably pulled it off before the apples were sufficiently stewed. While the receipt does not specify, I suspect that I was meant to stew them until they're basically falling apart, and then the sieving step is to remove the apple pulp.

In so far as I can look past the 'too much salt' issue (as the stock itself was fine), I think the savory apple + meat flavor was different, and interesting. I was skeptical about it, but apple and pork combinations can be tasty, so I could see this soup working in the future.


How Accurate Is It? I used a non-period type of apple (honeycrisp), but that's a much smaller consideration than the whole 'reducing stock too much' problem.

Attempting to stew the apples in stock. Can you spot the problems?

One very bowl of very salty soup. 

Snow Day

What better time to install the jumbo flyer and ply some yarn?

Fulla enjoys her new accessory.

Black History Month Library

This is a pretty cool resource. Includes documents about Frederick Douglass (my all-time favorite) and Harriet Tubman.

Original: Dress, 1916-1917

Woman's dress, French, 1916-1917.
LACMA

Another delicious pretty from LACMA: French couture dress, Callot Sœurs, Fall-Winter 1916-1917. I love the transitional elements at play here from the belle epoque to the looser post-WWI styles.