here's the thing:

No offense but my female ancestors didn’t go through centuries of oppression for me to feel bad about myself all the time

*puts on her good boots and has a nice day in town* this is for you, great-granny who died unloved in child bed

My every minute mood.

Marjorie & C. H. B.Quennell, Everyday Things in Archaic Greece (London: B. T. Batsford, 1931).

Wait, wait…. Is that seriously it? How their clothes go?

that genuinely is it

yeah hey whats up bout to put some fucking giant sheets on my body

lets bring back sheetwares

When you’re carding, spinning and weaving everything from scratch, using the big squares exactly as they come off the loom must seem like a fucking brilliant idea. 90% (or more) of pre-14th century clothing is made purely on squares (and sometimes triangles cut from squares). 

How did they get the fabric so fine it draped like that? Was that something medieval europe forgot? Or do I just have a completely misguided image of historical clothing?

*yells about textile history*

Reblogging because it’s fascinating.

The Celts made very fine clothing as well. They invented plaid after all, and the same weaves that have been found at the La Tene/Halstatt salt mines in Austria were also found as far away as western China in the tombs of the Tarim mummies.

Can we talk about 18th century and regency era muslin as well because that shit is gorgeous. It’s so fine it’s more transparent than silk chiffon and oh the tiny hems you can make with it!! I have an 18th century neckerchief and the hem is about 2mm wide. Not kidding, 2mm!!! Because it didn’t fray like our stuff does now. All we can produce nowadays is a rough, scratchy, bullshit excuse for muslin and it’s horrid.

archaeologists recently found some Bronze Age fabric woven on site and preserved in marsh in England. it’s fine to die for. they were exporting it and trading into Asia.

I’m not into fashion, but I love reading about the history and evolution of it.

sometimes i think about gay people who lived centuries ago who thought they were all alone who imagined a world where they could live openly as themselves who met in secret spoke in code defied everything and everyone just to exist and i’m like..i gotta sit down. whew i gotta sit down

reading these fragments always makes me cry

No offense but my female ancestors didn’t go through centuries of oppression for me to feel bad about myself all the time

*puts on her good boots and has a nice day in town* this is for you, great-granny who died unloved in child bed

My every minute mood.

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

My dad told me a story once about how in college, they were reading this play and there’s this one scene where a character leaves abruptly. And the teacher is talking about the symbolism of why he doesn’t stay for the end of the scene and my dad, who worked in theater crew all through high school and college just goes “he needs to leave early because he starts the next scene and needs to do a costume change first.”

Also there is the hairdresser that solved an ancient Roman translation mystery. She's like, "They said sewing needle and they meant sewing needle. There's only one way to pile braids on top of your head like that and make them stay. I've tried."

Lauren Bacall & Humphrey Bogart / To Have and Have Not  (Howard Hawks, 1944)

This movie is fire and I've been dying to rewatch it but that will start me smoking again. Every single time.

Oh. I could write this.

I’m pretty sure this describes the vast majority of EGT’s fics. (Which is why she is one of best writers around, tbh.)

Reblogging because a) I also love @earlgreytea68’s fics but b) I am having a Prufrock year and nothing in my narrative fiction armoury seems adequate to withstand it (no, not even Eliot, because look what happened to good old J.Alfred in the end). Yes, we need fic(tion) that shows us how extraordinary characters overcome the ordinary. Yes, we need fic(tion) that shows us how, in the most adverse of adverse circumstances, hope or love or courage will win through. (Because honestly, who doesn’t love a good dose of hope / love / courage and its magical healing powers?) And yes we need (yes, yes we do need) fic(tion) that shows us that difference is ok, difference can be a strength, difference can just be a difference, difference is how we are and it matters who we are even as it shouldn’t matter. But sometimes we also need fic(tion) that shows us how it’s ok to be ordinary, not extraordinary; that even if we don’t have superhuman capacities for faith, or hope, or love, it will just be what it is and that might be shit and that’s ok; that sometimes different is just different and it will press on you every day of your life and you’ll just keep going anyhow. Because THAT, that is what people do.

OH MY GOD YES THIS DOES DESCRIBE MY FICS LOLOLOLOLOL

Is this not the premise of SAGA?