Stimpzilla's Renaissance Dress Blog

It's late enough on Thursday evening but the great sleeves at last are done! So it's only two days more than we had thought to get them done. But other progress has been made on H.R.H. Queen Mary's gown. The trim is on the bodice, the tabs are sewn, the arm holes are complete, and many pearls have been sewn. We are pleased. Tomorrow we will have the back lacing complete, more trim sewn on, rings for the inner sleeves and then, we will finish the pearling over the weekend. We can only hope that our good queen will be pleased.

We will try to take photographs soon, if the weather permits as there has been some rumbling about seeing pictures, so we would like to provide them.

We have spent the weekend working on H.R.H. Queen Mary's gown.In particular we have worked on preparing the great sleeves to be sewn together. We now have pined and ready to sew 15 yards of gold lace trim. We have also pinked 4,000 marks for the lining of the sleeves. We are truly blind now, but pleased with our results.

Both sets of undersleeves have been completed, and the underskirt is done.

We expect to have the great sleeves finished tomorrow, and move onto the bodice which has barely begun. But we have the tabs for the skirting ready, the trim for the top of the bodice, and the trim somewhat prepared.

On another note...Our dear friend and lover Lord James who has been personally making a dagger for us has shown us some of the work. It is truly wonderful! Damascus steel for the blade, black mother of pearl and horn for the handle, and naturally diamonds. A girl must have diamonds!

And tomorrow we also will be ordering more fabrics for Lady Rachel's wedding gown.

To our noble and most virtuous Queen, in the most humble of manners, we must thank you for offering such words, and offer our thanks for their kindness. We offer to you our most everlasting joy towards your Grace, for your concern towards us.

More silk has come from the East for your gown. We submit that your Grace shall be pleased with it's quality.

As to your request for a Flemish painter, we think your Grace shall be most pleased by the young Flemish painter Ambrosius Francken. He is from Antwerp, but we know through court gossip that he shall soon be here. Though it is not painting that brings him. There is a small matter of a debt collection, and unusual as the monies are owed Fracken, by a certain well know Lord for a painting. We know him from our home in Hungary and can speak well of his work. We believe he would be most honored to paint your glorious presence.

Your obliged and affectionate servant in all manners of tailoring
Stimpzilla

Don't even ask....

First there was no electricity all weekend due to the hurricane feeder bands. It took 2.5 hours yesterday to muck out the refrigerator. If anyone is interested in some bad meat, rotten eggs and fetid milk, we can provide it! We were without electricity for several days.

Then last night, the computer was a bit squirley. so we decided to reseat the ram. The computer stopped working. Oh yes! So we spent hours and hours, with only bad results. We began again in the morning, still nothing. We hooked up the alternate computer and that did not work.

So we drove to the computer store late this afternoon. We were going to build a new computer, but found that one can obtain a computer, for very little money, already put together. So why bother building one? We drove home, now starving half to death. Turned the new computer on and still nothing.

It seems the monitor had gone bad. We hooked our new computer up to our neighbors computer and everything was fine. So back to the computer store we went, and purchased a new LCD monitor.

So tomorrow we will install all the new parts to the new computer to make it run faster and hope that everything works out.

We did manage to put over 450 pearls on Queen Mary's gown this weekend, despite the lack of proper lighting. And now we are waiting for the 40 some odd yards of gold trim for her gown to arrive from across the seas. And we are also anticipating the arrival of the rest of the silks for her gown before week's end.

We were hoping to finish a couple more gowns this week but we may be off schedule. We shall see how well tomorrow goes with all sorts of technical odds and ends. Perhaps it will all work out. If it does not we will simply work through the weekend!

I hope we will all take a moment to honor another Hungarian, and wish her well. Zsa Zsa Gabor has suffered a stroke today. The Doctors expect a full recovery, but a few good thoughts might be helpful.

On another note, we are proud to see how very brave the people of London are after today's events. And our heart goes out to the families of the dead and wounded. I have sat here for a while now trying to put into words, how I feel about this but I can not really write more. I have no wish to turn this into a political site. But one thing is clear to me, that God, as I understand him, would not be pleased, that humans, his creations, would kill each other in His name. The One God, should he exist, from what I have read, can smite as many people as he wants to. He doesn't need humans to do his dirty work for him. So maybe everyone should stop killing in His name, and see what God himself decides.