taimatsu no monogatari

A while back Eve found an article about haramaki. This is a type of old-fashioned underwear worn in Japan - the name means 'belly warmer'. They have been languishing in obscurity because they have the same coolness factor as granny pants do here - but now they are experiencing a renaissance, and are being made in funky patterns and colours. They look quite fun - people are shown wearing them over jeans, like a little mini-skirt but higher, or under long tops, like another layer. I could see myself wearing one.

Here is the original article, and here is a tutorial written by someone else (though I think the result looks a bit skimpier than I'd like).

I have camouflage-pattern stretch fleece. I think I know what I'm doing with it.

Woohoo! The Steeleye Span song 'Who Told The Butcher' (second song down) has been confusing me ever since going to see them live in the summer. But some judicious Googling has finally told me what it's about, and I'm very amused :)

Today has been as good as yesterday! I had a slow start, and woke up feeling very floppy and groggy and generally headachy. I therefore wimped out of meeting The Girls for moose and juffins, and instead spodded online for a while. Criossants and ham brought restored vigour and vitality, and I embarked upon the task Robert had spent the previous day enabling - he spent yesterday moving my bookshelf (my very own lovely bookshelf which has been marooned in the yucky dining room for two years!) into the back room upstairs, into the space vacated by the small bookshelf (which is now in the bedroom on top of a chest of drawers)! He'd cleaned it and everything, and put all the books in boxes for me :) I was very happy indeed when I came in last night.

So I got to organise my books! I have almost two shelves of theology/church history/religious-topics books, which makes me feel like I have a brain, and I have my nice copies of Austen all together, and all my Trollope in one place, and all the plays and poetry together on the bottom shelf. It's lovely and wonderful and I'm very pleased. Some of the spare books are now stacked neatly in a box.

Then later I was even more useful. As Robert had moved the bookcase the dining-room was quite a bit less awful than it had been (he'd also thrown out lots of stuff), and so I could get into it and extract all my fabric which has been lying around getting covered in fluff and hair and dirt and yuck. It's in five boes total now; one box of clean fabric (stuff which was put in there when it was brand new), one box of dirty fabric which can be used for peasant costumes, one box of dirty fabric which cannot be used for peasant costumes, and two buckets of scraps divided on the same principle. It's all neat and out of the way! It's great!

Must eat tasty crispbake, going cold.

I need to make a book for LARP purposes, and while scouting around the net for help I came across various bits of info on different sorts of artists' books (books as art rather than text/only text). I got particularly interested in 'tunnel books', as I had some when I was little that I loved (but can't remember what they were now). I will probably try making one using Chinese papercut techniques. Links for my reference below:

The Owl And The Pussycat
Set of children's tunnel books
Miniature tunnel books (and others)
View of a tunnel book showing construction
Tunnel Map
Useful illustrated article on tunnel books