Wine, Cheese, and CDVs Party

Harriet Lane

Today was AMAZING! Vince picked me up early and we went to watch Eric's Volleyball tournament for a little. Then we had lunch at Simmons' Bakery. Yum! Afterwards we headed over the the Amos Herr House for a tour. They have a special clothing collection on exhibit this month so I was really excited about seeing that. They have some amazing things in their collection. Really cool: a Hair Remembrance Album. It was about the size of a pattern in its cover and the cover was done in Berlinwork with a triangular pattern stitched around the edges. Inside the pages were (originally) white and on each page there were two rows of hair, about three coils in a row. The hair was braided and coiled into a circle. The circle was tied off with a silk ribbon - each coil had a different color ribbon in the colors pink, royal blue, light blue, and white. Inside the coil were the person's initials and the year (the years were 1860-66). Below the coil the creator had written the person's full name. Such as, Elizabeth Ellen Gray's Hair. It was soooo neat! I really want to make a repro of it. Too bad I couldn't get pictures. They also had a neat bonnet there from the 1860s - it had a buckram foundation with either wires or canes that the fabric was gathered onto like a corded bonnet. The fabric was a sheer periwinkle grey color silk and there were two rows of gathered trim across the crown about 1/2" wide and also a row along the front of the crown. It was decorated with wax flowers. Oh, how I wish I could have taken a picture! They also had a wedding dress - a silk day dress of grey-blue silk that had three pleats on each side of the bodice front and three pleats on each side of the CB. The skirt was box pleated and the bodice had a waistband with piping along the bottom. The coat sleeves had piping at the armhole, down the back seam, and around the wrist. The bodice had black beaded trim - about 1/4" wide around the front in a simple pattern, and the bodice contained black buttons down the front (decorative, not functional). The skirt had more fullness in the back than the front. I think it was dated 1866 - just post war. But it looked very period correct for the civil war era. I loved it. That's a lot of description above but it will help me to remember the articles in the future. ; )

Tonight we were at a Wine, Cheese, and CDVs party at the Grove's house. They have a huge cdv collection and we barely skimmed the surface tonight. : ) I love cdvs! I spent so much time looking through their collection even though I've already seen almost everything before. There are always new things to learn. I had fun talking to the other reenactors there, too. One lady who attended discovered that she had the same French cdv as Tom but she had a front view while he had a back view. It's one of my favorite cdvs that he has, too, so it was really great to see what the front of the dress looked like. The dress had a lot of fullness at the back and a slight train and the girl is posed with her back to the camera and her head turned to the side with her arm around a bust that is positioned on a pillar.

Afterwards Vince and I picked up Eric and went for Ice Cream at Scoop's. Eric suggested that we hide from Vince when he went to get the car so we did and it was very immature and hilarious. It was dark so Eric would say, "Quick, run that way" and I would suggest we run in the other direction and then we would run and bump into eachother...and that happened a couple of times. Ha. It was pathetic and funny at the same time. : ) It's fun to act immature occasionally.