Calendar girls

Well, I made calendars and they've arrived and I've sold half of the stock already. My after thought was that I had a huge number of quotes and ladies from the first book which weren't used and I should have used them to supplement the book. Instead I used ones from the book, so it's more of an "instead-of" than an "also" purchase. For the next book in the series, I will do extra pictures and not the same.

The printing is really nice and I'm very pleased with them. I ordered more for the Xmas market I'm going to and since they've been produced before, they are arriving in record time rather than the usual amount of time for a new item, so I'll have plenty!

Here's a little look at what they look like inside...



The ladies in it who have seen the calendars are really delighted, so that's pretty nice. An unexpected catastrophe which occurred is that because there's a spiral binding, they can't be posted overseas as a Large Letter at cheap postage rates. I can post them cheaply in Australia, but not overseas, so that's a huge disappointment to me.

Apart from that, everything is perfect with them!

If you want one, you can order here at my new Square store.

Victorian High Tea Maid Service

Yesterday I played Victorian Maid for the first time ever, at the Very Victorian Christmas High Tea hosted by the Abbey Museum of Art and Archaeology. It was a blast and I'm looking forward to more photos. That's me second from the right in the photo below.



I wore new shoes which were hastily purchased, and they simultaneously were too narrow at the front and squeezed my toesies and were a bit too long and kept coming off at the back which made them just awful to wear. My skirt which I'd half made only 6 weeks ago was too tight to wear (too many snacks!!) so I needed to hastily make a whole other skirt.

Lovers of Victorian aprons will see that the front of these are a little low, which is a shame since the rest of it is mostly really great. The back of the apron didn't fasten the historical way, and it made the apron sit awkwardly half way up our backs rather than at the waist, where it should.

I was very naughty and didn't wear proper foundation garments, but since it was not a re-enactment event, I feel it was quite okay. It was blindingly hot and we worked 2 sessions, including serving, greeting, washing up afterwards and preparing the tables for the second session.  At the end, we had a merry game of Match The Teacups With Their Saucers before we could pack them away. Actually, that was a lot of fun too!

I will definitely make a proper apron for next year's event.