Very Inspiring Blogger Award...Thank You!

"The Choll", who publishes under the witty moniker the Thread-Headed Snippet, recently awarded me The Very Inspiring Blogger Award, for which I thank her most kindly. Inspiring others is a big deal, you know, and what I've fondly hoped someone would take away from the essays here -- that is, tries, experiments -- in costuming. It appears to have actually happened: I've inspired someone. A happy thing.

Now, award rules, per almost tradition at this point, are to exhume and share seven random things about myself , and pass on the award to 15 others. Gracious mercy. As usual, I'm behind-hand in writing, so most of the blogs I turn to religiously for research and inspiration have already received the award, but I have a few to share. I've picked them, this time, for two reasons: either I don't know them in person but reading their posts comforts me like the company of an old friend, or their authors' attention to sharing and teaching is particularly deep. Both characteristics inspire.

First, the Inspirers: That's More Important

CW Griffith likes embroidery. She has taken the time to video how-tos, even rarer. She experiments, she plays. A kindred spirit.

Time Traveling in Costume. Val blogs, evangelizes costuming, gives presentations. Her work on Amelia Bloomer shows her commitment to setting costuming into its historical context, but also bringing it outside the realms of reenactment and costuming-for-costumers to the larger world.

Sent From My iRon. When I am blue, I turn to reading Mrs. C's blog. A punner bred, she opened Maid on Marion a year or two ago, has a feature on an NZ talk show, and is busier than a one-armed paper hanger. Another born teacher, and a delightful presence. Besides, her weather is upside down, so always exotic.

I Want To Nibble On Your Brains. Laurel is not for everyone; she's iconoclastic, emphatic, adult. She dotes on her neighborhood vultures, which is a good thing for the earth, but again, not to everyone's sense of smell. Her sense of humor inclines towards...look at the blog title. She was among the early adopters of Deep Research, and her site, Extreme Costuming, among the first I revered, back along the mid-2000s, and still do.

The Costume Historian. A professional, and focuses largely up to 1750. Know thy roots.

Second, Random Data

Oh dear, really? Well, it's easier for a private person to chat about herself if she imagines she is talking to a friend.

1. As you've guessed, I value privacy. If we're all open books, we lose our mystery, and frankly, some of our perceived value. Are we interesting at every moment? Should we be? On the other hand, if none of us recorded our lives, social history would be the poorer. As a former social historian in training in Emory University's doctoral program in American History, from which I bailed with a Masters because I missed teams of people working together more than I loved the stacks, I am obsessed with the minutae of living. So long as it's not today's minutae.
2. Twin boys live here, two sons we love to within an inch of our lives. Sometimes they are loud, sometimes their little-boy voices aren't reedy, but wild in a way that makes my hair stand on end, and despite their innate sweetness and even gentleness, I am wrung out at most days' ends,  but as an older parent, that's just part of the deal. Most of the time they make live very worth living, indeed.
3. Noah just bit Christopher. Noah is in time out. He has been asked to think about the option I have of biting him, and whether or not I will do it. I am not sure he is worried enough.
4. My Great Aunt Margaret used to eat the bottoms off of her three sisters' chocolate bunnies, bite by bite, secretly, back when girls wore giant bows, black stockings, and polished the chimneys of the oil lamps weekly. She would stick the bunnies' diminishing remainders back in the Easter grass. Usually it came to the point where just their ears were left, before her sisters discovered the thefts. I wonder if they bit her back?
5. Noah is now whining and wondering when he's coming out of Coventry. Christopher is reading Curious George to himself, whispering the words. There is nothing softer and lovelier to the ear of those who love them than a child whispering words to themselves. It is peace embodied. Actually, it is, in more ways than one. It means no one is currently biting anyone else.
6. Noah is now panting so I will pay attention to him. I warned him that if he keeps hyperpventilating, he will faint. I do not like drama, selfishness, and what they call Acting Out in children. I still subscribe to parents as arbiters, and children as apprentices. Loved but disciplined. You are welcome to disagree, but I am not changing my mind about this traditional power structure. The panting has stopped, and he has forgotten about it.
7. We went to Cincinnati yesterday, and stepped inside the old Union Station, where the ceiling is an enormous half dome of yellow and silver, an Art Deco dream. It houses museums now, a brilliant idea, and it's full of life. Then we had dinner at the Hofbrauehaus, and it's owned by the Munich concern and brews its own beer and the Hefeweizen is just right and I've been waiting a decade to drink a beer and have a Weisswurst, poached, in Cincinnati, just 1.5 hours away, and we finally did it and it was Bliss. It might as well be, because it took Eternity to get Curte to visit Cincinnati, yes, only 1.5 hours away. You see, it's north of the Mason-Dixon line. Oh, I love my husband, deeply; he is darling, his eyes and voice are just the quintessence of Kentucky, and his gentle nature is a constant happy theme in our lives, but he has this thing about the Mason-Dixon line. Um, why did he marry someone bred on the Other Side? As he said yesterday, and I quote, "People have an amazing ability to reconcile things that don't make sense together." Hmmh.

There we go. Noah is out of time out, it's almost lunchtime, and it's time to read with them and go for a hike. Spring break, anyone?

Oh, and by the way, biting is not a daily occurrence around here, thanks be. Neither was Noah inclined to bite into his chocolate bunny. He hung on to it, hugging it, until I explained it was getting ready to melt. He was hard to convince --