We’re playing unlimited loo? This party’s gonna be off the HOOK!

Oh, the glorious breakthroughs that happen when research comes to my rescue like the White Knight of Bridge-Gap. 

No, I have not yet finished writing The Scene. But at least I have figured out what in the hell the heroine’s brother is playing that is about to ruin them both, and knowing the specific game will add enough structure to the amorphous scene of “he loses” that I can actually get somewhere in putting it into words.

What I’m saying is, I just put boards under the back tires of my mudhogging truck and now have a ramp out of the mudpit. It’s still a long, dirty careful drive to get clear of the hole I dug myself into, but at least I’ve got a bit of traction now.

Anyway, reading multiple sources across multiple days was what really helped me decide on a game. I was intrigued by the sound of loo, but the first three descriptions of the game implied such small stakes that I didn’t see it as a viable option (plus it comes up as a parlor game in Jane Austen, how could it be the ruin of a professional gambler?). I needed a game where the bets could be anted up to astronomical heights, and was leaning toward brag. But when I sat down to write tonight, I couldn’t remember why I hadn’t liked loo and went to look up how to play it again. I chose a different site than I had gone to previously by accident, probably my fourth or fifth source on how to play loo, and it contained a brief differentiation between limited loo, in which the loo (the losing penalty) is the same as the buy-in, so the penalty for losing remains low, as does the total pot; and unlimited loo, wherein the loo is equal to the pot total, essentially increasing the stakes at a linear rate. In 11 hands the pot is ten times its initial size. There was the kind of ramping up of stakes and losses that I had been looking for!

I’ve now got the scene started. The parts that come next have progressed from utter vagueness to shifting outlines–still not completely defined and set into stone, but becoming clearer with every run through the scenario with this new information.

Now I am out of excuses. I will simply have to face the fact that this scene terrifies me to write because it is so important to the whole story, and just get on with it. Ignorance is a much more excusable roadblock than fear…even if it’s also one that can be conquered more easily.

If I start screaming, “Fezzik! Fezzik, I need you! He’s getting away from me! Fezzik, PLEASE!!!” will my muse show up to help with this one?

Moar Research?

I think I figured out what the problem is on my scene. It’s that the escalation takes place at, during, because of a high-stakes card game. And I know almost nothing about how games were actually played 200 years ago (or now, but especially not 200 years ago).

Sigh. Yet more research that I was not expecting to have to do. First it was the London docks (which it turns out I didn’t even need, once I tossed one of the subplot villains). Then it was women in business at the time. Then it was fashions and fabrics of the year. Then it was the Season, and how it related to the calender year of this year. Then it was regiments and battles in the Napoleonic war. Now types of card games played and specific plays for them? And all of it–all of it–for minor background texture or backstory, because I am just that much of a nerd and a stickler, and I know that if the information is out there I can’t not find it in order to makde the most realistic and plausible setting for the story.

At least this will be information that definitely comes up again in future books, unlike some of it (at least as far as I can see). Still, being that I am just so ready to be DONE with this one, I pretty much feel like a meme right now.

Crafting with Lily: Spencer Jacket Edition, Part 3 (construction round 2)

I got the itch to sew last night, and the project I went to was my spencer jacket, which has been lying in an unshaped vest-like heap for a couple months now. I didn’t get a whole lot further than where I was before–I merely added the waist band and hemmed the front. I still need to pattern the sleeves and the collar and sew them to the bodice, then complete all the finishing for those seams, which won’t be as easy as what I’ve done so far with French seams and enclosures, then add the buttons and buttonholes.

But I can see a little better how it will sit on my torso and that the fit is ecstatically perfect–pat on the back for that one, Lily! Here’s a picture of the back, where you can really see the diamond-shape of the back bodice:

The part that made this piece of construction tricky was the need for dart-equivalents. I ended up using the pleat-to-twill-tape approach for both the under-breast reduction on the waistband and the side-breast reduction on the armhole. I liked the soft effect created by the pleats, though they were not quite as small as I had hoped to make them. This fabric is very slippery and crunchy, and I got tired of fighting with it. On the right below you can see the twill tape on that section of the armhole (approximately 4 inches reduced to 2) and the very top of it protruding above the waistband (approximately 6 inches reduced to 3). On the left, obviously, is the top. You can see where it actually creates a three-dimensional effect in the fabric…and I hope this shows you why the darts were just not going to work!

Also at the right end of the waistband you can see the first buttonhole worked in embroidery thread and opened with a thread-ripper. This is the first time I’ve made buttonholes that way instead of by opening a hole or a slit in the fabric and binding it close with saddle stitches. I decided to try it this way as I knew the holes would be visible and wanted them to look as neat as possible. 

I am really excited to see what this jacket looks like finished! I don’t know when I’ll be up for tackling sleeve patterning and in-setting, though…sleeves are always a PITA, and I think this fabric will be especially obnoxious to work with in that regard.

Unintended Influences: Why Reading Academic History Is Also Important

I have been surprised by a theme that developed within the Christmas novel(la) I am currently finishing.  When I thought of the story, I thought it was about finding that perfect acceptance of true love and the gifts that such an exchange brings to two people.  I thought it was about a son who had always felt second-best and a ward who had always felt unwanted finding in one another the place where they belong. The trappings that started them on that path were superficial circumstances.  However, I have found that those circumstances have become one of the repeated themes for the hero’s journey to a proposal, and those circumstances are directly influenced by an academic book I read on the subject of primogeniture.

I’ve mentioned the book before–Primogeniture and Entail Law in England–but I didn’t grasp even though how differently that book made me view the relationship a hero might have with his father, if he is the heir to an entailed property or title.  Often in romance the hero’s father is dead (it’s so much more exciting for him to hold the title than be the heir!) but my hero is the heir to a man with many years left to him…many, many years in which to run the estate further into the ground than he already has.  The father has no control over the son, because he can’t disinherit him, so no threats he could actually carry out will have enough weight to matter.  And the hero can do nothing to escape his inheritance or to stop his father from destroying his future other than what he can convince his father to do willingly.

Realizing how that entail dynamic has become so integral to the story makes me think I should read more books like this. They make me think about aspects of the culture and laws that I might never have considered, even having seen those dynamics in fiction.

Crafting with Lily: Spencer Jacket Edition, Part 2 (construction round 1)

My jacket is currently an unshaped vest. I cut the body pieces in fabric and tipsy-sewed them Saturday night after getting home from an evening out. It was all French seams, which are super easy if you are not concerned about making them tiny (which I wasn’t because this is a jacket, not a shirt, so I won’t feel them either way), six of them in all. The pattern fit as well as I expected/hoped.

Then I went to dart the front.

That’s when the fun started. The fabric I am using is a really crisp fake taffeta covered in a crisp gauze. Even cut on the bias, this is a crunchy, hard-angle fabric. The pattern?  Meant for softer materials that drape and cuve on the bias. The dart gave me Madonna-point nipples, which are untenable with no decorative trim or piping to cover them up.

I was seriously starting to question the feasibility of the fabric when it hit me: gathering or pleating accomplishes the same thing as a dart in the front of a bodice (AKA, small waist measure, big-enough-to-fit-over-the-breasts chest measure a mere couple inches higher up). I often use the under-boob gather in sundress bodices, and I am an absolute MASTER at pleating (case in point: reducing a tube of silk with a 5-yard circumference down to a sub-1-yard waist. Pleating doesn’t scare me…marsupials scare me).

I pinned a sample pleat in place and tried it on. The effect was definitely softer, definitely the way to get to where I needed to go. I will be adding a dart, as well, not to the front edge but from the side of the breast to the underarm.

I am debating whether to sew down the pleats before I set the waistband on or place them directly onto the waistband. Probably I need to set them before I finish the bottom of the jacket with the banding, as their positioning will affect how the front seams come together which will affect the length of the waistband. Maybe I will add a section of twill tape backing to the front and sew the pleats/gathers to that rather than to themselves…yes, that sounds like just the ticket. I knew you would help me figure out what to do.