NOT that I think anyone is eagerly hanging around here for my every post, but I just wanted to throw out a warning that I'm on a bit of a hiatus right now...still sewing quite a bit, sometimes for the HSF, but rarely on time and too lazy to post about it. Lately I've done a woman's banyan, modified some modern shoes into mules, and worked on some UFOs, but my heart hasn't been in it as much because of a different (but related) project.
I'm trying to do some serious scholarly (read: over-eager amateur) research and writing on French women in the Illinois country, hoping to compile enough information from primary sources and consolidating tidbits from other researchers to make a short not-for-profit e-book. Most of the researching around here has focused mainly on men...trappers, merchants, farmers, soldiers, artisans...and mention of women is really just thrown in as an aside, so I have spent (wasted?) countless hours poring over whole books for just a few scraps that might be useful to me as a re-enactor. The laid-back, community-oriented, "it'll get done tomorrow after we play billiards" predominately Catholic society of French Illinois was certainly a very different culture to the orderly, Protestant-work-ethic-driven English society on the East Coast!
So that's what I'm up to, and why I might not get back to posting here for a little while, because I'm destroying my vision peering at heinous microfiche copies of already awfully scribbly French handwriting.
A 'little bit' German living and sewing in the French Illinois country
