Extreme Costuming - Updates

Recent updates and additions to the site:

It's a GOOD insane!

7/2/08 - Good times, good times.  A small update this time, to add links to Reconstructing History's patterns on the "Women's Clothes in 1580's London" page.  I trust her patterns, her shipping time is speedy, the customer service is phenomenal, and her patterns are worth every penny. 

I've also added a new Elizabethan Gallery for post-2007 clothes, since I'm making more stuff.

4/08 - It's a new year, and we're updated!  I know you've been waiting a long time, but thanks to minion Brian, the pattern shop is almost ready to go (just a few small accounting things to do), and should be on-line within the next month or so. 

No really, I swear.

In the meantime, feast your senses on some updates to the web site:  My Frog Needlecase is now in the Reproductions section, as well as on the newly re-vamped Embroidery gallery. I've added a third Elizabethan gallery, which will be filled up as I update and expand my wardrobe.   I've added a completely new (as in never before seen) article:  A Dozen Doublets for the Design Deficient (image-heavy), an article from my blog about Raising the (artistic) Bar in the SCA, and a couple of Academy pieces, including a letter from the Dean.

I'd like also to welcome Kass from Reconstructing History to my Links page - if you're interested in accurate period clothing, check her patterns out!  Authentilicious!

Finally, I've made some long-overdue updates to my apprentegé's pages - I've updated their resumes, added new pictures, and generally pimped them out better - check out Lisette la Roux and Brian de Moray.  I'm English, and I have French minions.  I approve.  :)


10/24/07 - Finally, another update!  Still no patterns for sale, but Laurie Cavanaugh of Acanthus Leaf Designs has designed a gorgeous medallion (with sharp pointy bits!) for the Attack Laurel Academy - proclaim with extreme prejudice (and pointy bits!) your alleigance to the nastiest bunch of SOBs ever to roam an arts and Sciences competition!

Now is also a good time to get Christmas/12th Night gifts for all the attack laurels and sewer apprentices on your list! The Attack Laurel Campus Bookshop has fun t-shirts, mugs, and accessories for the evil person on your list who deserves more than a lump of coal (which they're only going to turn into a diamond, anyway). 

I have two new essays in the Articles section; "The Elizabethan Seam:  Sewing effectively, strongly, elegantly" that details the hand-sewing method I used for the embroidered jacket, and I have uploaded my essay on "Negotiating the Slippery Slope" about avoiding research pitfalls.  I also have pictures of my latest project - a sweet bag and pincushion - on the Embroidery page.  I put a couple of new pictures in the galleries here and there, but I actually don't remember where, since I started this update over four months ago.

Added to the Maidstone jacket page is an update on my work with Plimoth Plantation's jacket project - they contacted me about my jacket, and they were not only kind enough to ask me to come up and show my jacket, they have included it in the powerpoint presentation on their project as an example of the kind of time expected on a project of this scale.  You can read all about it (and if you go far back enough, about me) in their blog The Embroiderers' Story.  Check it out!

Finally, the guestbook is officially dead - I tried to keep it open as long as possible, but I was starting to feel insecure about the fact that so many, many people thought I needed Vi*gra and Ci*lis.  The "Your Questions Answered!" page is now a FAQ, and I'll be happy to continue answering questions in my blog or by e-mail.  It's easy - just follow the instructions on the Contact Me! page.
 
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4/8/07 - This is an interim update, mostly to get the Attack Laurel Campus Book Shop open for business, so for all of you that wanted a T-shirt, now's your chance.  In other news, I'm still working on the pattern shop, but significant progress has been made, and in between building a house and participating in Jamestown's 400th Anniversary events, we'll be putting the shop into working order sometime in June.

I am working on a couple of new articles (as always!), and they will be up after the end of April.

I've updated some pictures in the galleries, but it's been so long since the last one (the last couple of months have all been Attack Laurel stuff), that I don't remember which ones.  There's definitely a new picture or two in the Elizabethan Gallery II.  I'm thinking of removing the Your Questions Answered page in favour of answering questions in my blog, and putting in a simple FAQ instead - the individual questions are so individual that I can't really keep up.  If you have a strong opinion about this, let me know.

It's only come up a couple of times, but please remember that the Attack Laurel emblems are copyrighted, and not free for general use.  I'm flattered and delighted that everyone likes it so much, but please show your support for artist's rights on the Intarweb by not copying it indiscriminately, and especially not selling/distributing it in any way without contacting me for permission first.  Thanks!

The guestbook has been seriously grabbed by spammers, but is still getting good comments, so I'm keeping it on an approval basis rather than doing away with it completely.  Don't stop commenting - I love to know what people think! 

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1/09/07 - Happy New Year!  As a present, the Dean of the Attack Laurel Academy has uploaded a new class, Maiming 101:  Hurting people with harmless objects available at any event.  Read it and weep!  Also, the Guestbook is now on an approval basis, since I've been having spam problems.  Don't worry; I check it frequently, and everything gets read!

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12/06/-6 - A few small updates.  Two new articles are in the works; they're not quite finished, but will be up soon.  I've added more recent pictures to How to Wear the Coif, and will continue to update and refine that page as new ideas and information occur.  I've added a new page to the galleries that showcases accessories I've made, and added a coif to the Embroidery page and my grey wool hand-made gloves to the Hand Sewn page.

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10/31/06 - Lots and lots of lovely new stuff!  The galleries are changed and new pictures/pages have been added as I've working hard to pull together enough good pictures to really specialize the pages.  When you trundle over there (which I hope you do), you'll find that I've taken out the "extreme" gallery and consolidated the Elizabethan galleries into two pages, not three.  There is now a page for my embroidery works, and a page for garments that are entirely hand-sewn, in addition to the separate Reproductions gallery.  It's been a chunk of work, but I'm really pleased by the look.  I've thrown in thumbnails here and there to facilitate page loading (and minimize empty space), but as always, this is an image-heavy site, so be warned. 

The Carew-Pole nightcap  and the Wadham Shift pages are done, with short essays and notes. 

There are new articles in the articles section, and if you go to the start page for the articles, they're now nicely laid out for you to pick and choose which ones interest you.  Some of the older articles, including the pins article and the women's clothing article now have pictures.

I also have a short autobiography page - as soon as I think of relevant things to put on it, I'll update that.

The Attack Laurel Academy Dean has promised a new class lecture on hurting people with everyday objects, and again, we hope to have the Academy shirts available for sale soon, but please be patient with us as I'm not so hot technologically, and the Dean is so freakin' "authentic", she refuses to use any technology invented after 1604.

8/28/06 - There are some new questions and answers on the Q&A page, including one from the Dean of the Academy (be careful - she doesn't pull her punches!).  I'm still working on the Attack Laurel Store - there'll be three designs to choose from, including one for you beleaguered apprentices out there (I'd never forget my Sewer Apprentices - and I think you'll like the new logo and motto, which you can now see on the "Apprentice Abuse" page).

Otherwise, still working on things.  I suppose that's what "work in progress" means, eh?

8/22/06 - I'm back from Pennsic, fixed up with a new computer at work, and ready to take on new updates!  The link to the Maidstone jacket is fixed, and I'm working on the last of the pictures for that page.  Plans are under way for an Attack Laurels T-shirt/sweatshirt, and some new articles should be coming soon, including updates to the Q&A page (the Attack Laurel Academy Dean is on the loose!).  Thank you to everyone at Pennsic who told me they'd seen and enjoyed my site - it means so much to me - and a big hello to everyone who found the site through the article on SCAToday.net!

7/06 - Big update!  Network Solutions has completely re-vamped its templates, and to take advantage of a better site layout, I've updated the look to one of the new ones.  This means some alterations to the navigation; the sub-menus are now only visible when you roll over the main menu buttons.  Hopefully it won't take people too long to get used to it.  Hopefully it won't take me too long to get used to it - there are a few html bugs they clearly haven't worked out yet, and I'm this close to screaming at the moment.

I've moved the Guestbook, Updates, and a couple of other things to the Home sub-menu; there's also a new page in that sub-menu where I'll answer questions left in the Guestbook.  I decided to do a Q&A page because I'm terrible at e-mail. 

The articles are now all under one roof, rather than divided.  This is one of the advantages to the new layout - the number of pages I can put in a sub-menu is no longer as limited. 

There's a new section called "Reproductions" - this is for the projects that are reproduced closely from an extant garment or picture, and will include all sorts of history about the item as well as what went into creating the reproduction.  It's more of a history lesson approach to costume, and I think it will be fun and interesting.  Some of the extreme gallery descriptions will be moved to there, and the galleries will become a little more streamlined over time (hopefully - as always, this is a work in progress).

6/15/06 - Thank you, Gen, again for your patient scanning - there's an update to the Attack Laurel Diary on the "Blackmail" page.  Also, Bob wants me to point out that there's a better photo of the fryssed hair now up on the "Two Elizabethan Hairstyles" page.  Thanks to Bob for taking really lovely pictures at University.

6/12/06 - The pictures from University are up on the Elizabethan Jacket page.

6/5/06 - Welcome to June!  There are now pictures to go with the "How to Wear a Coif" article, and the "Two Elizabethan Hairstyles" article, thanks to Gen (thank you, Gen!).

5/23/06:  Tournaments Illuminated failed me, so I created a second Articles page and uploaded the "How to wear an Elizabethan coif" article.  Pictures coming soon; I just have to get them scanned.

5/15/06:  Added more pictures to the Elizabethan and Extreme galleries, and created a separate page for the new Elizabethan jacket, which will be updated with more text as I have time. 

5/9/06:  Updated "Apprentice Abuse" and added another page to the Attack Laurel Academy.

5/2/06:  Added "Gardiner's" to the articles section - it's a basic info thing about Gardiner's company, and a checklist of clothing for men and women.  I don't know how useful it is to anyone outside of Gardiner's, but it's fun, and there are a couple of amusing pictures.

4/27/06:  More pictures!  Lots and lots of lovely pictures!  All over the galleries!  Check them out!  And be sure to thank Gen!  Also, I'm in the process of setting up pages for the accomplishments of my apprentices.  I plan to get photos to illustrate some of the articles within the next few months so we'll have some visual aids and more pretty pictures.

...I loves me some pictures.

4/25/06: Gen sent me some lovely new pics, so I've uploaded a couple to the "Elizabethan II" page. 

...and added one to the "Hall of Shame", not because it's horrific, but because it's simply not good enough.

4/13/06:  Phew!  I uploaded a bunch of new pics to the "extreme" gallery, plus a couple in "other projects", and one more in the first Elizabethan gallery.  They're blurry, because I took them myself with a crappy camera, but I wanted some more pics of my stuff (I have to justify the "extreme" moniker somehow).  Hopefully, I'll be getting some more beautiful pics soon.  In the meantime, check them out - they're not too awful.

4/11/06:  Uploaded Women's Clothes in 1580s London to articles.

3/7/2006:  Added "Apprentice Abuse" page to the Attack Laurel Academy, created the ALA logo (barbed wire laurel wreath).  Added "How to Make an Elizabethan Corset (pt.I)" to the Articles.  Added "other projects" page to the Galleries, plus some more pictures in the "Elizabethan" folder.

3/1/2006:  Added new articles to "Le Monde".