Better late then never, they say. Well, these are certainly late - the jewelry pieces I'd made before Steamcon, finally listed in my dbvictoria Artfire shop!
Of course I need to write about this. Garnet is my absolute favorite stone, much preferred over my own peridot. I've got a well-known preference for all things garnet or burgundy colored. My ribbon drawer gives me away, I think:
The word garnet has two possible sources, either from the old English word "gernet," meaning dark red, or the Latin "granatus," or seed, in reference to a pomegranate seed. Mineralogically, they are from the silicate family. The most common are a dark burgundy red in color, but there are varieties that are more orange in hue, and green garnet, or tsavorite, is growing in popularity.
Many powers are attributed to the garnet. In medieval times, garnets were worn or carried for protection while traveling, and were also believed to be charms against poison, wounds and bad dreams, and to promote good health.
Okay, so they're not really new, as I've posted a picture of most of them here awhile back, when I was prepping for Steamcon, but I've finally gotten good sets of pictures for them all and gotten them listed in dbvictoria on Artfire.
This weekend, I departed greatly from my favorite genres and made myself my first ever Regency gown. The husband just acquired a gentleman's suit from this era, so I needed something to match his splendor. Regency is one of my favorite eras for men's clothing, and one of my least favorite for women's. Men get gorgeous cutaway jackets and tight pants and women get empire waistlines. Trying on this gown, my thought was that my top portion looked like an overstuffed sausage, and the bottom half looked like I was trying to disguise the fact that I was ~6 months pregnant. (I'm not, by the way, but that's what any Empire waistline dress ends up looking like on a body, no matter that body's shape.)
They're very simple dresses to assemble. The only part that was a chore was tacking down the Venice lace I used:
You need to sew down both edges, and that meant somewhere between an hour and an hour and half of sew one inch, turn the needle, sew another inch, turn the needle, ... oh just shoot me now!
I haven't finished the fastener on the robe yet, but here's the 99.5% completed dress:
After I got the gown finished, we put up our Christmas tree. My color preferences have prevailed over the years, and there is an abundance of burgundy and silver on our tree:
There's a few surprises hidden away though.
Here's Drexel, an ornament the then boyfriend/now husband and I acquired for our very first Christmas together, 15 years ago:
