Yesterday my brother-in-law died.

 

 

I received an awesome present from Mme. Kupferfeuer for my birthday – some more of the dragonfly fabric I liked so much!

I definitely want to do some rococo with it; with hips and all.

Next step: fabric for a jupe. After extended discussion with my sewing companions, I went for off-white and beige, with black accents.

I won’t make it to Gala Nocturna this year, but I’ll still make an outfit honouring the dress code Beauty and the Beast…

And also maybe a simple hat?

I have this big bergère lying around which could be used with the gown (no need to carry a parasol, plus adding to that “pastoral feeling“):

 
Antoinette-Elisabeth-Marie d’Aguesseau, painted by Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun

 

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1785

 

Catherine Hume of Ninewells by Archibald Skirving

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are silly, but we loved them anyway in the umteenth remake of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, from 2011.

And who did not love the fighting, scheming, lovely Lady de Winter ?

I want to channel her for a Rococo airship pirate dress :) maybe with a hint of riding outfit.

Now what did I do (or will I do) for the English countryside around 1800?

1. White day dress
2. Blue day dress
3. Striped open gown
4. Plum spencer 
5. Stays and bonnets

 

Plus some nice shawls, this might last me about three days in Austenland.

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Recently I learned not to trust the presentations of historical garments displayed in museums. So I needed to find another, maybe more reliable source of inspiration, and voila – damesalamode for the 18th century.

And they have the 19th century, too.

But I am currently stuck in the 1700s. Such gorgeous stuff.

Who played it better:

this band at a Fest Noz

or

Faun?

Addendum to my latest folk wear musings: during a stay in Bretagne I saw some awesome folk wear (this and this are but some examples, find more pictures and videos here). Especially attention-grabbing are the tall cylindric head pieces of the Bigoudènes:

 

A new item on my study list is the wikipedia entry on Breton folk wear.

During my bike tour in Bretagne, France, in 2008 I attended a Fest Noz and heard a traditional music style, the kan ha diskan (call and response singing, while people are dancing).

I had no idea what the songs were about, but I was hooked :)
Unfortunately I did not look up the the name of the artists I heard back then, but it might have been the adorable frères Morvan (hear them here).

I wanted to do a twist on folk wear typical of the region where I come from: this amazing blog entry describes the original in great detail.

For the WGT 2010 I made the version below, but after reading about all the work that goes into making an original I think I have to try again.

The first thing to add is petticoats, a lot of them, to achieve a better silhouette of the skirt part.

Additionally I’ll have to think about what to wear instead of the little shrug on the picture. I am not sure if I want to create an original blouse (long sleeves, very wide at the shoulders).

 

A few days ago the Standard contained a few pieces on cultures and traditions, and it also mentioned a very typical Austrian thing, namely our folk wear, Trachten. Besides covering the – often kitschy, but rarely awesome – modern take on Trachten, by designers such as Susanne Bisovsky (awesome!), there also was some historical context to be found about how Trachten were instrumentalised by Nazis for their brainwashing propaganda purposes.

Some more interesting articles, and I also found some source material on how traditional folk wear has been stylised as embodiment of Nazi ideals (back to agrarian roots, blood, soil, one tribe). Apparently great effort was taken to bring back Trachten, whose usage often had declined at the time because of their being too impractical for daily use, and their being replaced by more modern garb due to “urbanisation”. Thus, Trachten were “modernised” during this dark period in particular to appeal to younger people (e.g. waisted and with more cleavage).

Trachten are still often associated with right-wing sympathising. Time to take them back, modify them yet again, and give a middle finger to Nazis.

 

My sister died a week ago… Rest peacefully, Elli.

Neck corsets ftw! There is a pattern one can download, and I intend to make at least 7 of them :)

While weeding out my stash the other day, a Rococo jupe happened.Out of a strange graphic fabric.

Yay?

Now I just need to figure out what to wear with that. Maybe a black jacket and LEDs.

 

Would be nice to wear at the Amphi festival, I think.

Still tripping… I want a Rococo redingote – nothing too serious, mind you, just half as serious as the Goth Anglaise.

This pattern arrived already. Since it’s for the 1790ies I will wear a false rump instead of the (bigger) pocket hoops.

I dug up an old design which incorporates BSG uniforms of the reimagined series (commander or admiral).

Har har :)

In 2008 Truly Victorian released a pattern for a late bustle coat. Needless to say I love it and had to have it. No idea yet how the final product will look like, but one can never go wrong with sombre colours and trimmings on the trimmings.

Note to everybody: this pattern (unlike the other TV patterns) has NO side part, only BACK and SIDE BACK ( I mention this because I spent one hour running through the flat looking for the supposedly missing pattern piece).

On page 187 of Harper’s Bazar (Stella Blum, Dover Publications) a nice example for a winter coat can be seen:

Mine will be less elaborately trimmed though.

Progress:

• I made a mock-up which looks promising.
• Decided on the final version (short back laying on top of the bustle, front longer). Lifts some weight off the bustle.
• Bought a piece of black fake fur for trimming the seams.
• Played the pattern tetris on a piece of nice black woollen fabric.
• Found warm lining.

Viona did this wonderful knee-length ivory dress. I want to do one in leather and black, with spikes and worn with my New Rocks.

Some lab wear, or: where there is steampunk, there is a top hat. Mine is brown.

Then there’s a white blouse (originally planned for EGA) and a brown leather underbust corset I ordered some time ago. I loved the colours and planned the skirt to match the two shades of brown.
The original corset had shoulder straps which was awesome. But it also was shaped for rather hipless women, so I hacked off quite a bit and reattached the leather trim to create a shorter underbust which at last fits me to some extend.

How about a nice skirt? a nice fishtail from Burda 12 from 2006 came to the rescue (thank you for the tip, BlackAngel)!

It got some trimmings around the seams.

And of course my Neosens boots

Interpol – Pioneer to the falls

Some mix and match for Ms. Loveless: a red blouse I bought for EGA, with a black TV underskirt and this cute early bustle overskirt (TV303), finished with a leather TV corselet – it’s a lot of period mixing, but I honestly don’t care.

I shortened the corselet in the back to accomodate the bustle.

From damseldress.com I bought a fabulous corset whose fabric reminds me of Neovictorian vests – gorgeous tones of burgundy and gold.

First I thought of making a natural form skirt to go with the corset, like the TV Hermione overskirt, or something simpler, like a fishtail with lace bustle. However, I made a walking skirt instead (I already made one in black, it is nice to make and looks great while dancing).

And I finally found inspiration for a blouse/top that goes underneath the corset.

For the steampunk touch, a monocle and cyberloxx will be added to the outfit.

 

Puscifer – Man over board

Since a fabric order had unexpected results, I decided to make something of the 1700s out of 5 meters of this happy fabric

and will top it of with a tricorne and a looking glass.

Shaping and unterthings

A black chemise is worn beneath.

From the fabric remains I made a slightly pirate-y version of the Renaissance stays. And I made a false rump.

Dress

First I thought about an Anglaise, but wouldn’t a skirt and jacket look more business? Unfortunately I didn’t have enough fabric to make both pieces, and with a tattoo jacket and a black skirt too much tattoo fabric would remain. So in the end I did made an Anglaise, with a black jupe.

Rump: done, bodice: done, skirt: done. Which means the thing is more or less done, yay. But the jupe might get a layer of ruffles at the bottom, I think. And I wanted to make a row of nautical knots along the vertical Anglaise seams. But I will be too lazy to do that, so I will only make a choker inspired by this belt -for the record: the knot is called Trossenstek. Two colours might look nice.

Tricorne

The hat base (black thick wool) for the tricorne arrived, and I started adding trims. After finishing the hat, I decided the diameter is too large, and I started over by leaving only a 10cm brim to the hat. White feathers have been bought from Atelier Renato.

Wore it to the 2014 summer picnic, had lots of fun in this outfit!

 

Iron Maiden – Ghost of the navigator

“I have sailed to many lands, now I make my final journey
On the bow I stand, west is where I go
Through the night I plough, still my heart, calculate and pray
As the compass swings, my will is strong, I will not be led astray”

 

 

First I was like

Then I was like

 

From angry to amused in two memes. Reasons: several. I will let you get away with two.

Many people’s inability to focus on a topic and use proper arguments during a discussion about sensitive subjects (thanks to the Viennese psycho to rant about that). Please, people, just accept that countering a statement about the bad state of specific affairs with “but it is bad/they did bad things elsewhere too!” does in no way further a discussion but reeks of kindergarten instead.
A more serious aspect, especially in online discussions where often nothing is known about other participants: is it really necessary that bringing up/questioning certain supposedly delicate topics immediately condemn a discussion to be labeled as e.g. intolerant, or belonging to a certain political spectrum?
Certain topics have indeed been instrumentalised by (political) groups, but there is no reason to keep it that way. By expending the extra effort of listening first, acquiring some context, and avoid excessive labeling we can have fact-based sophisticated discussions.

 

And then the reaction of the Catholic church to the result of a popular petition against church privileges. Unfortunately the petition failed – and from that they conclude that everything is peachy, i.e. almost all Austrians are content with what the church provides. News flash: low turnout does not necessarily equal contentment with the current circumstances, or more general, correlation does not imply causation! Maybe people simply did not participate because popular petitions as political instrument are about as powerful as very old naked mole rats: the contents of a successful petition have to be discussed by the National Counsil, and that’s it.
But then again, the church needs to spin every bit of publicity they can get to their advantage. It’s not as if their membership counts are rising.

mantis out.

I have some black/gold stripey fabric that went go into something regency-like, following this inspiration very closely:

And the fabric that remained went into a turban.

I wore it to a picnic with friends; verdict: very comfy gown.

Rewatching old Project Runway episodes. I think my favourite scene is from S1E6 from the Canadian episodes. The challenge: two looks that show opposites. One team centered their looks around corsets as central piece, and chose “classy vs. trashy” as their motivation. They made a classy evening corset-and-skirt, and – this.

Boots, black tights, short skirt, stays, long semi-transparent shirt, black emo hair and boring Halloween makeup (more on that later).
During the runway defense of their outfits, the responsible designer then babbles about how goth (or rather, her Halloween interpretation of goth, or “punk-goth-rock”, as she called it) as a look is “trashy”, and fortunately, host Iman calls her out on that.

However that stupid, uninformed statement about the goth look annoyed me a bit. It is an entirely forgettable moment on a random TV show, but I have too much time, so I will dissect this scene a bit below.

 

First, the term they chose: trashy, what does it even signify? Stupid, tasteless, crude, too loud, too insecure and overcompensating.  And when we think about what is considered a “trashy” look for women, what comes to mind first? Vagina-flashing too-tight mini dresses, lots of ugly bling, tasteless make-up, ugly sunglasses at night, maybe also redneck trailer-park trashy. Not necessarily associated with goth, it seems.
To at least try and achieve that sort of style, the designers should have shown much much muuuch more skin.

Then – for both outfits the designers made stays (which create a conical body form) instead of going for the contemporary, familiar hour-glass corset form. While I can understand their choice in terms of time management (stays are much easier to fit than hour-glass corsets), I cannot for the life of me recall any outfit aside from historical-inspired ones that features stays. And those normally are the opposite of trashy.

And even if the designers made hour-glass shapes, I have a hard time seeing a corset styled in a “trash” way. One of the characteristics of trashy is a mindset of “I don’t care”, and you definitely don’t wear a bloody corset to accompany that mindset.

And then: the styling.

Sleek hair, black eye make-up and ooooh, bad-ass daring black lipstick!  Much too tidy for what they were going for.

Designer guys, listen: the goth subculture simply is not the best representation for trashy. People from this subculture usually prefer complex music over three-minute-mainstream singalongs. They love art and literature. They are multidimensional.

That, and: please either know your fashion subcultures, or stay away from them lest you embarass yourself.

Finally! Someone summarises all the anger I felt during and after wasting 2 hours of my life in the movies.Yes: Prometheus.

Thank you for this review, Film Brain. Thank you.

This movie has so, so much bad; this review needs not one, but two parts to list all the annoyances, plotholes and utter irrationalities of this ohNOIAMGETTINGANGRYAGAINMUSTSMASHCROISSANTSHAPEDSPACESHIP.

 

And don’t get me wrong, I am quite fine with fiction and suspension of disbelief. I loved Fassbender’s acting. I don’t mind the movie’s in-your-face religulous symbolism; the belief in ancient astronauts is a funny idea and offers interesting possibilities to explore in a movie. I also don’t mind that it’s not an exact prequel of the Alien movies.

What I cannot abide however are bad storytelling, horrible scripting, non-existent character development and utterly stupid dialogues. Putting together a ludicrously expensive mission to outer space based on mysterious star maps and – the BELIEF of Shaw? Getting to an unknown planet, instantly landing and hopping over into an alien building of extraordinary size, taking of your helmet because the air is breathable in there, etc.etc. – come ON script! You establish that these are top-notch scientists, then let them act as such. But NO, instead the scientists play with strange Giger-ish snakes – they really deserved to be eaten by that thing. And NO ONE on the ship thinks it necessary to stay on the bridge and lend assistance to the two crew members who are trapped in the alien building overnight – did no one bother to come up with emergency protocols? The list goes on and on…
Why do the scientists hate each other so much? Why is Vickers even on this ship? Why does what’s-his-face tell nobody that he contracted a bad case of worm-eye? How do medical staples and overdosing pain meds magically heal the effects of a caesarian section? What’s up with the robot?

I saw in another review that the script had two versions from two writers. I did not read it, but the original is said to make more sense. I also read that the script rewrite took one year to finish. Wow. And the outcome is – this. *ANGRY*

And what angers me so much is that it’s all such an utter waste… a well-established franchise, brilliant, brilliant visuals, some interesting ideas to build a story on – and they go and deliver such a, let’s face it: waste of resources.
This movie doesn’t bother to explain so many questions because its makers count on raking in more money with sequels, but honestly I can’t be bothered. For a daily fix of pretty pictures of space, go to NASA ;)

At my workplace, a while ago the wonders of Apache Maven for supporting our software build processes were discovered. Soon we also had set up a local Sonatype Nexus repository with a growing number of artifacts.

Together with Eclipse and its m2eclipse plugin, everything was nice and dandy, except for the fact that the frakin local repo was not browseable with m2eclipse, and the artifacts were not found when trying to add a dependency with m2e (which kind of obsoletes the use of a nice GUI ).

The solution to this is simple, the way to the solution was annoying because my google-fu sucked in this particular case. So what’s the gist, physicist?

The problem:

When you use Eclipse with m2e, there’s a view for adding and browsing maven repos.

Normally, you can use the tree view to click your way down to versions of artifacts. If the repository is b0rked, you cannot do that.

The other problem: when you have a maven project and want to add dependencies, you can use the Add dependency dialog which offers a search function.

If a repository is b0rked, you will not find the artifacts within.

Now why is a repository b0rked (at least for m2e)?

What happens:

This blog entry helped me find the starting point: m2e logs to $WORKSPACE/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.m2e.logback.configuration/0.log. When you try to access a repository, you’ll see something like in the log
NexusIndexManager – Unable to update index for ait-nexus|http://1.2.3.4:8081/nexus/content/groups/public/java.io.IOException: Server returned status code 404: Not Found

Unfortunately the log did not tell me what exactly it did not find. But that one was easy to trace: fire up tcpdump and capture some packets.

sudo tcpdump -A -i eth0 -vvv -s 200 ‘dst port 8081’ -f

Then you see that this is the resource being looked for:

GET /nexus/content/groups/public/.index/nexus-maven-repository-index.gz HTTP/1.1

So m2e tries to access some kind of index file, which simply did not exist on our local Nexus. Now what?

 

The solution:

Here’s how you configure Nexus to recreate the index periodically – basically you just configure a Scheduled Task.

Then your Nexus will start generating those nice nexus-maven-repository-index.properties files that kids these days are crazy about .