Historic Deerfield

Rob and I went up to visit my sister in Northampon MA this weekend. Rob actually had a shooting job up there, it's with a company he regularly works for, and it's way out of his normal shooting range, but they basically paid us to go visit my family and we'll never turn that down.

So while Rob was gone all day Saturday, and my Brother-in-Law was at a track meet the cross-country team he coaches, Molly took me to Historic Deerfield. HD is a group of historic houses and accompanying museum. Mostly the houses are shown by tours, where an ancient woman talks to you for an hour about things that sound just a bit off.  Molly isn't nearly as snarky as some of my other friends so we quickly found the house tours boring and only did one. 

HD does have a museum they built to house some of their collections, and they have an on-going exhibit of textiles, which they even allowed non-flash photography in. And I've been playing with my BIL's DSLR and let me tell you it takes WAY better pictures in low lighting!!! I took over 200 so I'll just include a few of my favorites here.

( A beautiful set of quilted stays )

( A lovely white muslin gown with tambour embroidery )

( A jacket that's the spitting image of the one in Costume Close-up )

( A really beautiful Robe Battante )

( And for the Embroidery Fans among us )

In total I took almost 200 pictures so if you want more details of an item or to see some lovely shoes you can go to the whole album on photobucket. 

Darn You Sock!

I just darned my first ever sock. It's perhaps not the most glamorously darned sock ever, but I feel very thrifty, industrious and proud of myself.  

My Grandmother has always been amused that I seem to be trying to revive a lot of the things she went to college for. Her "home economics" degree. For example she gave me her canning bible and canning pot for my bridal shower gift. She got such a kick out of the time Victoria and I made our own laundry detergent to save a couple bucks. So on Thursday I open my mailbox to a packet from Granny. She sent me a copy of How to Sew a Button: and other things your grandmother knew. Which I proceeded to read in the car on the way to MA. It's a very neat book, I highly recommend it. It's filled with little tips from cleaning, to cooking, to clothing care and budgeting. I probably have a leg up on some people, I skipped the chapter on how to sew a button for example. But there were lots of little tips I enjoyed, and more than that it reminded me on a ethos that's lost today. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" I'm unemployed, Rob's works slowed down, we're in a bit of our own little economic depression...

A few days ago I realized that the vast majority of my socks have holes in them. I grumbled as I didn't really feel like buying new socks...then this book shows up and I started to think about what would my grandmother have done as a kid. Well she'd darn it! and wouldn't you know there's a chapter on darning? So I darned! I'm pretty pleased with myself. I call it one small step towards running a household my Grandmother would be proud of...I've got a ways to do..but someday I'd like to picture myself running a tidy, thrifty, little house....or at least I no longer have a cold toe.