I didn't expect this, either.

Sweet Daughter woke up from her nap and projectile vomiting ensued. The bedding is soaked, there is vomit on the rug and in my shoes. Poor kid.

Update: The Festivus Vomitus is occurring about every half hour. I must say the red Gatorade has added a rather nice touch to the Christmas color scheme. Maybe I'll actually be awake when Santa shows up this year.

Not what I expected on Christmas Eve

Sweet Daughter woke up this morning, her dial set at “11”. The service at the small country church we attend doesn’t even start until SD’s bedtime, and I figured it was going to be a long day. The Christmas tree nearly went to meet its maker several times this morning as a result of sheer exuberance (“But Momma, it’s Christmas EVE!!"), and so I figured that I’d take her to McDonald’s for a bite of lunch, and a chance to burn off some energy in the play area.

We were the only ones here for a while, and I sat in a puddle of sunshine, listening to Xmas music on the computer while sewing on a banyan and sipping on a milkshake courtesy of the manager (a mistake on somebody else’s order), while she ran around like a demented monkey. Well, sans the poo flinging. Now there are two more kids for her to play with and if all goes to plan, she’ll be worn out enough to nap for bit when we get home. Who knew that Christmas Eve at McDonalds could be so pleasant?

And now, I'll leave you with this bit of foolishness.

What caliber for Barbie?

Sweet Daughter and I were going through her toys today, culling out the ones she’s outgrown, or has no interest in. “My Little Pony”? Not so much. Dress-up dolls? Nope. “Get rid of them, Momma.” She likes to build things. Make crafts. Give her dirt and something to dig with, or some paper, markers, glue and scissors and she’s good for an hour or two.

So when we came to the Barbie Styling Head, it was a no brainer. “Toss it!” SD said. So I did. Then I had an epiphany. “SD”, I asked. “Would you like to see what happens if we pretend Barbie is a bad guy and we shoot it?”

Shorter Half about choked on his soda, “Are we going to JFK Barbie? If only we had a 6.5 Carcano!”

SD’s reaction was to slowly get an ear-to-ear grin. And then we told her we’d let her use the 10/22 on a rest. And she could go first, since it was her toy. I think she’s still grinning.

I’m starting to think we’re not like other families…

More on the Norway National Guard courtesy of Shorter Half

Shorter Half has been really, really busy at work. So busy that he hasn't kept up with his blogs when he gets home. So when he sent me an e-mail with some potential blogfodder, I said "Um, I already posted that. Last week."

What I didn't know was the rest of what he included. (And yes, this is a typical communication from him.)

Number 3 Company, Norwegian Royal Guards, in Gibraltar. No. 3 Company is the drill and band company, but they all still have to meet the same standards of a crack light infantry unit that is personally responsible for the defense of Oslo, but also the day-to-day protection of the King. (A-yup, unlike most European “Guards” units, these “Guards” are still legally and factually the King’s personal bodyguards.)

The Royal Guards are formally called “His Majesty The King's Guard”, and are a battalion sized formation that are a direct and personal command of the King of Norway – regardless of what the Norwegian parliament or Prime Minister may say, and regardless of the fact that the Norwegian King is largely just a figurehead of a constitutional monarch (while the King has HUGE personal powers on paper, they have been almost exclusively read to mean the King rubberstamps whatever the elected government does), these guys answer only to him. If he told them to invade China tomorrow, off they would go, even if all alone – as long as the King took over paying their costs out of his own pocket. (This is WAY more direct control than, say Elizabeth II, has over “her” personal regiments and Guardsmen. . . )

During WWII, the battalion was single-handedly responsible for keeping Norway in the war on the Allied side. On the first day of the Invasion of Norway in April 1940, the Germans sent a crack paratrooper unit, EXTREMELY heavily armed (almost every man had an MP40 submachinegun, except the guys carrying the 10 or so belt-fed MG34 General Purpose Machine Guns, and every man DID have a sidearm and a slew of grenades.), and extensively trained for exactly this particular mission, to capture the Royal Family and Cabinet in 1940. One company of Guardsmen, with bolt action rifles and limited ammo, only two Colt M-29 water cooled machine guns (basically, the 103 lbs water cooled Browning .30, only firing the same ammo as the German MG34), and a bunch of “militia” (the local rifle club, armed with the obsolete rifles the US abandoned), stopped them butt-cold, losing only three wounded in a 90 minute firefight. Total German losses before the commander gave up and retreated are unknown, but they left two dead behind.

This was considered a critical mission by the German command – grab the Royal Family and Cabinet, and they could force an immediate surrender and effective annexation of Norway in a day or two. Instead, they occupied Norway. . . but without any support from the official government. (King Hakon VII flat out told the parliament that if they surrendered to Germany, he would abdicate. . . as he could not, even by silence, acquiesce in the surrender of Norway. Instead, the parliament voted to give ALL formal control over Norwegian government over to the King’s Council until parliament could have a regular meeting.) Meanwhile, the Norwegian Government in Exile functioned superbly throughout the war, and the people of Norway kept their morale up, even under occupation and the puppet government of Quisling.

The battalion fought in the line for the remainder of the Norwegian Campaign, and their German adversaries respectfully named them, "Die Schwarzen Teufel" ("The Black Devils” -- they apparently fought in their black regimentals, not standard field uniforms. . . given their pre-war ceremonial duties, they may not have even been issued field uniforms!), much as they named the Marines “Devil Dogs” in WWI, Scots in WWI “The Ladies From Hell”, and British paras “The Red Devils” in North Africa.

It's a start

"Casting an unmistakable and perhaps permanent pockmark on the face of the Obama administration, a federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a major component of the new health care reform law is unconstitutional."

A busy weekend

Sweet Daughter and I went to Williamsburg this weekend to do some clothing fittings. Both for me to fit, and to be fit. I helped Al with reworking machine-sewn smock. I did a fitting muslin for another banyan, worked on converting a set of trousers to a pair of breeches, and picked up the materials and got fit for a waistcoat and riding jacket for a very ambitious project that I hope to have done in time for Military Through the Ages at Jamestown in March. I have a horrible head cold, so I wasn’t in the best shape. Luckily, the group of people that had assembled were all phenomenally helpful with taking SD swimming and otherwise keeping her entertained, and helping out in general. Thanks to Ruth, my wig for said riding habit outfit is mostly done, too. Much socializing took place which included wonderful food and drink. All that, and hotel I stayed at didn’t accost me with timeshare salesmen when I walked in. And the best part? It’s the same one I stayed at last October. They said they’d get rid of them, and they did.

Now, if I can get the sinuses to unclog, the general congestion to go away, and the hacking cough to stop, I might actually be able to get to work on some of this stuff.

Prayers for "Darkhorse"

Please add these Marines and their families to your prayer lists if you are so moved. These particular Marines have had it worse than most units by far.

Shorter Half sent me the following:
The young Marines in 3/5 Marines ("Darkhorse") have been taking a beating -- the psychological impact of losing so many, so fast (they only arrived in-country this October) is enormously high. The toll on their families may be even worse -- even the families of unwounded Marines have to be experiencing feelings of inevitability, that it's only a matter of time before they get the knock on the door.

I verified this with Snopes, first. The total number is actually higher than when the original request hit the Internet -- at least 19 KIA and over 50 WIA from October to now. (KIA figures are as of 6 Dec, the WIA figures are as of the end of November.) That's a lot for one battalion in two months.

The originial e-mail:

We are asking everyone to say a prayer for "Darkhorse" 3rd Battalion 5th Marines and their families. They are fighting it out in Afghanistan & they have lost 9 marines in 4 days. IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEE the message spread if more could pass it on.

Semper Fi, God Bless America and God Bless the United States Marine Corps...
Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever

Claire FitzGerald, Chaplain
Marine Corps League, Dept. of Washington

Question about drop-legs holsters

Pros and cons, please. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t go all mall-ninja fanboi on me. I ask because after much careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that there are only two comfortable places for me to carry. Shoulder rig and drop leg. And this is why:

This is my Dad, circa 1947, give or take a year, when he was in his early thirties. See the short waist? See the long legs? Well, I inherited all that from him, plus some rather abrupt curves in vicinity of my hips from my Mom. There just isn’t any way for me to comfortably carry on a belt without something digging in, or sticking out. (And, oh do I wish I could!) And drawing? My elbows just about rest on my hips to begin with. In my aging, decrapitated state, I’d dislocate something if I had to draw in hurry. And no, purse carry won’t work for me, as I occasionally put it down -- like when I’m eating in a restaurant. That loss of control is a no-go for me.

So if anybody (Bueller?) has any pointers, I'd love to hear therm.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Norway National Guard Show

Back when I was doing the marchy-marchy, bangy-bangy thing with cannon and musket, my favorite part (besides the "blammo") was the drill and ceremony.



Who knew The Ecstasy of Gold and When Johnny Comes Marching Home worked so well together?

Happy Saint Barbara’s Day

My living history experience began (crap, has it been 18 years??) as a Royal Artillery gunner on a Rev War reproduction 3-lb. field piece. Today is the feast day of St. Barbara, patron saint of those who deal with things that go “blammo”. I no longer have the youth, vigor and figure that allowed me to masquerade as a young man and serve on a gun, but I do miss it.

St. Barbara was removed from the Calendar of Saints in 1969, but I have a St. Barbara’s medallion that lives in my range bag. Some time, when I’ve got enough people to help me drink it, I’d like to try the punch outlined here.

Cthulhu’s own Christmas Tree

Once upon a time, the R. family used to go select and cut down a fresh Christmas tree each December. Somewhere, there are pictures of Sweet Daughter at 3 months old sitting in her car carrier next to our intended victim harvest.

The first year she became mobile, all I had time to do was cut it down, put it up where it wasn’t accessible and throw a single strand of lights around the top 2 feet of it. We no longer had the leisure time to go hunt down and harvest the tree, and then actually get it home and decorated. So I came up with the great idea of getting a pre-lit artificial one. We’d save time! We’d save money in the long run! Shorter Half wouldn’t be allergic to the fake one! No needles to vacuum up for the next 6 months! The risk of fire would go way down! We couldn’t forget to water it! We could get one with those new-fangled LED lights and save money on our electric bill!

So I did my research, and waited for them to go on sale. I selected a lovely tree. It had realistic artificial tips. It was pre-lit in a rainbow of colors. It had those dam#ed LED lights. I got it home, put it up and found out the lights didn’t twinkle, they seethed. There was something about the blue ones (and to some extent the green and purple ones) that sucked the very soul from my body. Looking directly at them was like being in the presence of my dementor. Even the red and gold ones seemed bitter. Nothing warm and cozy and joyous about this tree – you could almost hear it hiss at you as you walked by. If Cthulhu had a Christmas tree, this was it.

So while Shorter Half is marching in a Christmas Parade tomorrow with his WWII unit, Sweet Daughter and I will be looking for a reasonably inexpensive, bright, warm and twinkly pre-lit tree. And Cthulhu’s tree can sit in storage and seethe. The only question now is all white, or multi-color?

Stuck in neutral

I had a lovely Thanksgiving. Four days of (relative) relaxation on a 150 acre farm just outside of Annapolis. (And if anyone is interested in buying it, let me know and I'll arrange for an introduction. It's on the mainland side of the Bay Bridge. Includes a 200-year-old recently renovated farm house and several new outbuildings. One of a kind property on the water.) I don’t know what it is, but since my return to the real world, I just can’t motivate to blog or anything else. Maybe it’s the short days – although I can’t complain – my office faces south and has a huge window. More likely it’s the cold. I HATE the cold. I had to spend 13 years and two weeks (not that I’m counting, or anything) in Minnesota, and I did not acclimate well. Christmas is only 3 weeks away, and my house looks like it threw up on itself, and that’s without having pulled out the decorations yet. Next weekend Sweet Daughter and I are heading to Williamsburg to meet up with a handful of people both for me to do some fittings, and to get a muslin fit (for me!) for my riding habit.

I’m thinking a hot buttered rum and turning in early tonight might not be a bad idea.

Could you repeat that, please?

So, I’m running around this morning packing for a trip to visit family this weekend when I hear Shorter Half in another part of the house yelp “What??”

Apparently he was listening to the radio which was prattling on about the TSA. He stepped out of the room for a moment only to return to a voice saying “… after you finish checking the body cavity you can return the legs to their tucked position.”

I really, really hope they were talking about turkey at that point.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Family Fun

It being up near 60 degrees this afternoon, we decided to go outside and shoot the pellet guns.

There was a lot of this:

And then this:

With the Big, Bad Wolf properly perforated, it was time to move onto a more traditional target.

SD was not happy with her results. It didn't matter to her that she hit the center line, because she didn't hit the center of the target. She aimed for the center, but hit high, not once, but twice, and was quite frustrated. And when she hit outside of the circle, she insisted it wasn't her fault, she wasn't aiming there!


Here SD is earnestly explaining that she was aiming at the center and so the shot that hit outside the black must have been caused by a problem with the pistol. We explained that the pistol is a tool, and doesn't arbitrarily do that. She wasn't buying it.



You can see that SD is utterly dejected by her inability to hit dead center of the target. To try to illustrate how well she did, Shorter Half and I each took a shot at the target behind her head. Well, not while she was standing there, of course. But to show her that we can't always hit the center either. She refused to be consoled, even when we told her Miss Breda would have been impressed.

She was frustrated, and not having fun, so we decided to switch it up and gave her the option of firing my pellet rifle using a rest.

She liked it. A lot.

Still a bit high, but the important thing is that she had a good time, and stopped only because she was getting cold and it was getting dark.

Fun was had by all, and plans have been made to do it again tomorrow.

Monkey see, monkey do

Sweet Daughter has strep throat, but was finally feeling well enough tonight to eat something other than ice cream. She wanted pizza from a local restaurant, but I told her we couldn’t eat in as she was still technically contagious, but we could phone the order in, run in and pick it up and eat it at home. But she had to promise not to touch anything. So far, so good.

I phoned the order in, threw on my shoulder rig, reminded SD to put shoes and socks on, and I put on my barn coat. I checked in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t printing, and SD asked what I was doing. I explained and ask if she noticed anything. I then grabed my purse and my keys and turned to find SD asking me if I could see the note paper under her jacket. She had carefully placed a folded up piece of note paper under her jacket in the same vicinity that I carry my pistol. Darned if she didn’t keep it tucked away the whole trip to pick up the pizza and back without dropping it or calling attention to it, taking it out only after we got back in the house.

4,400 more

We're up to 6.270 stitches

Sweet Daughter came home from school early yesterday with a temperature of 103 and change. She slept all afternoon while I worked from home, and then work up promptly at 4:00 this morning. That meant I did, too. We kept her home and she was reasonably chipper, but started complaining of a sore throat around lunch time. Yay. That probably means a trip to the pediatrician tomorrow (just in case it's strep) which means she'll be exposed to even more germs.

And this is why I have so much leave on the books.

Waistcoat and breeches alterations

The breeches and waistcoat have been altered. So has the fingerprint on my needle-pushing finger, I think.

The waistcoat and breeches began looking something like this:

Note the 1750’s cut to the waistcoat, and the, um, baggy fit. Ditto for the baggy breeches.

Now, I understand that it is nigh unto impossible to buy something ready-made that is going to fit in the proper 18th-century manner. Men’s smallclothes (the waistcoat and breeches) were form fitting without being restrictive. Well, except for the seat of the breeches. Breeches were snug from the crotch to the kneeband, with the seat cut full so that one could actually sit in comfort.

Anyhow – the waistcoat was too big for the owner, so the back and sides were pinned to fit, and a new armseye drawn in. the tails in the back of the waistcoat were shortened, and squared off, instead of being flared. The front of the waistcoat was cut away at an angle, and shortened a bit. The cut-off bits of the waistcoat tails were made into new pocket flaps. There was a narrow band of fabric sewn over the neckline which was removed, and the resulting raw edges turned in. This was all done by hand, in part, to keep the cotton lining (hawk, spit!) from drooping as is often found when a garment is bag-lined. (This is basically when a garment and lining are assembled separately, then placed right sides together, edges matched up, and sewn around the outside, leaving a space to turn it all right-side-out again. This kind of lining tends to sag, especially if the outer fabric and lining are made of two different types of fabric. So as I opened up all the seams took them in, and re-sewed the lining to the seam-lines.

Side view - front has been shortened, and angled. Back has been shortened and squared off.

Front - enlarged armseyes and altered neckline.

Original pocket flap on top, new and improved version on the bottom.



The breeches … well they’re better than they were, I hope. These were also impossibly large, so I pinned the inseam until they were a bit snugger. I didn’t pin too far up, IYKWIM, but later, when I transferred the marks to the inside of the breeches, I extrapolated my sewing line up through the crotch. I took 98% of the stitching out where the kneebands were attached at the bottom of the leg, leaving the end with the buttonhole still attached. I ripped out the inseam seam, and then re-sewed it using my penciled-in line as a guide. Then I ripped out the stitching “gathers” over the kneecap. I understand that you need some extra ease over the knee area so you can bend your knee. What I don’t understand is why the gathers were over the knee on one leg, and behind the knee on the other. (Shakes head sadly) I tried to iron the wrinkles out of the fabric, and then I ran two rows of gathering stitches around the bottom of each leg opening, about ¼” and 3/4” away from the cut edge. I then drew up the slack in the gathering stitches as far as I could without actually putting gathers into the fabric. This is called “easing”. I effectively had the diameter of the leg opening as small as if it had been gathered without the unsightly wrinkles. I briefly considered hand-sewing the kneebands back on. I looked at the sheer volume of visible machine stitching on those breeches and laughed at myself. I figure that people are more likely to notice the hand stitching on the waistcoat than the breeches anyway, so I shortened the kneebands (since I had the legs were now narrower) and machine-sewed them on.

New stitching line drawn in.

The "gathers" at the bottom of the leg opening.

Leg opening with the extra fullness eased in. Those are wrinkles you see - not gathers.











What 1,870 stitches looks like

Sorry, it's just knitting, nothing gruesome.

Not much, is it?

But this gives me something to work on when my needle-pushing finger is too mangled to push a needle.

Compare and contrast

Another reason I'm glad I don't live in Californina -- asking a kid to remove an American flag from his bike "for his own safety".  The idea has me so livid I just sputter when I try to articulate it. It is infurating on countless levels.

Compare with what Sweet Daughter brought home from school yesterday:

I'm sure she wasn't the only kid in her class that got to say that her Daddy and both grandfathers were veterans (although I bet she's the only one with a grandfather who fought in WWII). I don't think telling a kid to take his American flag off his bike would go over very well here.

H/T to Alan and my Blogfather.