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I'm prepping for one sewing project with visions of other ones dancing in my head and hoo boy, I'm going to regret this, probably. It's been on my to-do list to find other ways of passing the time that don't involve spending 15+ hours a day plugged in to a computer, and hand-sewing is one way to do that, but with all the luck I've had in the past sewing big puffy shirts... woof. Lately there's been a ton of bullshit stress in my life, and I've been really burned-out, so being able to get excited about sewing is at least a nicer feeling than being in the complete pits about everything else.

Does anyone have recs for historical sewing books and/or blogs? I've got The Tudor Tailor and that one American Duchess 18th century dress-sewing book to go through, but I'm having a hard time finding blogs that aren't Gowns! Gowns! Gowns! 24/7. (Though gowns are amazing eye candy, so I'll also accept blogs in that vein.) I love the history of cosmetics and hairdressing, as well as all the funky layers that go into dressmaking, but I don't really wear much women's clothing and I'm not that comfortable in Full Fancy Lady Mode, so blogs and books that cover menswear and working-class people's clothing would also be rad.

And since perfume seems to be most of what I blog about here besides fic... I'd like to recommend the indie perfume oils of Seance Perfumes. I'm trying to widen my horizon beyond BPAL, and while For Strange Women has turned out too rich for my blood I've been wearing and adoring Seance's Spirit Trumpet as I go down a book spiral on 19th century spiritualism and mourning culture. Next up to try is Whisper Sisters scents, which look fantastic (I... uh... love resins too much) but will have to wait until the next time I get paid. What are you smelling? What are you window-shopping wistfully?

Podcast-wise, I've been enjoying the infectious disease podcast This Podcast Will Kill You a whole lot -- the name had my hackles up expecting something with a more faux-inflammatory tone, but the hosts are two grad students who love bibliographies and academic research and medical history and their approach to their subject matter is right up my alley. (I'd also love medical-history reading recs, jsyk.) I've been out of the movies-and-TV loop for a few weeks now due to technical difficulties (and, I mean... burnout) but I liked Jordan Peele's Us very much and I was pleasantly surprised by the 1995 HBO original movie Citizen X about the detection and identification of Soviet-era serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. Books-wise I'm swamped with a bunch of shit but I will one day finish Northanger Abbey.
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...and of gross things that float around in the ocean for a long time, I have AMC's The Terror fandom not!BPALs. (For characters, not fic authors, or mine would just be "sweaty hairy pits, pipe tobacco, and vetiver".) I love procrastinating by researching characters' perfume choices, especially in settings that are pre-20th century perfumery, and I love coming up with more abstract scent associations for characters who realistically smell less than lovely. Disclaimer that none of these blends have been tested out in any proportion whatsoever, none of these exist for real, and all of them are weird jokes.

The Tuunbaq smelled like ambergris, white fur musk, cool blue marine accord, and something uniquely him... )

That's a whole lotta dude smells, whoo boy. Some of these are inspired by vintage 19th century perfumery but most of them are just for lols.
skazka: (Default)
I've done a truly unreasonable amount of Yuletide writing (I mean... for me, please don't expect multiple 50k works of grandeur here) and I'm hyped to read what other people have written but I also need to not stress out about reveals, reveals bugs, whether I'm actually secretly a terrible writer and should flee humanity to live in a cave, etc. Pivoting to working on non-Yuletide stuff might make me feel better, but it's hard to switch gears. I'm thinking of backing up some of my DVD-commentary-type posts about writing from Tumblr ask memes on AO3, but I need to come up with the least obnoxious/tag-floody way of doing so and that's going to take some doing. It might end up involving posting here and then just linking on the relevant AO3 pages, but who knows if that will be any less annoying. I know DVD commentary-type meta is incredibly self-indulgent, but I love to talk about writing instead of writing, and I love to read about the behind-the-scenes stuff when other people write, so who cares.

(Scents update: still waiting for Yules to show up, bought a decant of AbdesSalaam Attar's Holy Water that ideally won't evaporate on me as quickly as the last one did. I didn't realize that that perfumer sells a tincture of ambergris, and I'm tempted, but also... shit costs money. Does anyone else think of the Tales from the Crypt episode Forever Ambergris when they're perfume-spiraling?)
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Terror fandom has finally reached par with Richard II on my AO3 page for most works! I know Histories would still win out if considered with other sub-fandoms (the Henrys, Richard III, etc.) but The Terror is easy to write lots of drabbles for. I'm working on Yuletide treats in the home stretch here, but I have my wisdom teeth coming out tomorrow and I'm more than a little scared how that will go or how productive I will be in the aftermath.

Current reading:

I'm... super dissatisfied with Sarah Weinman's The Real Lolita, from the title on down -- it could be an okay book about the abduction of Horner and her later life, or a pretty good book about Nabokov's writing processes, but her way of writing about abuse is phenomenally awkward (I don't mean "awkward" as in "cringey and creepy", more like... clumsy, I guess) and I'm not pleased with other aspects either. I'm also listening to Pale Horse Rider by Mark Jacobson, a work about the conspiracy theory impresario William Cooper, which I'm finding much more satisfying if grim. Next up is Lindsey Fitzharris' The Butchering Art, which... I think I originally bookmarked for Goodsir fic purposes, or maybe for Romantic fic purposes, but my last ongoing medical-history read (Wendy Moore's The Knife Man) is just a little too full of surgical details for me to handle in audio.

BPAL's Yules have been up for a while now and a few of them are headed my way.

- Hearthflame and Incense: Crackling almond wood and the deep sweet smoke of burgundy pitch, Austrian amber resin, black copal, and frankincense.

- Vital Fluid: The breath and tears and pulse of all life; the fluid that flows through all creation, permeating space and time and spirit: olibanum, red benzoin absolute, labdanum, betel leaf, galbanum, mastic, and angelica.

- Eighth Lash: Matted fur, oakmoss, and clove.

I love the An Evening With The Spirits line, so I'm especially excited for that. I'm also looking into getting the goods to make decants/imps of my own perfume oils, so hopefully more on that topic will be coming later.

Do any of you like crystals, rocks, other cool natural phenomena, etc.? I'm looking to pick up a few, because I think they're neat, but I'm not sure where to shop and my previous hookup, Bekkathyst, doesn't have many of the things I'm looking for right now. Give me recs or tell me about your collection of neat rocks!
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