1750-1840

Certain things are easier in the eighteenth century than the nineteenth:

• packing
• unpacking
• peeing

I was booked for an eighteenth-century* gig this weekend at the Boone Home. It went fairly well and the band, Jim and Kim Lansford, were fabulous. Hearing Kim sing murder ballads brought the hair on my arms to goosebumps each time.

I was bizarrely productive as well. I finished binding the edge of a mosquito net, hand sewed four poke sacks, finished knitting another purse in pink and black, and completely hand-stitched and assembled the flag sewing box from Barbara Brackman's book.**

I was also able to buy copious quantities (well, 8 skeins at any rate) of Brown Sheep yarn at $3.00 a skein. At this tiny event there were three yarn vendors. Folks at eighteenth-century events don't seem to knit much, but they do a lot of finger weaving.

It turns out they're not terribly picky about fiber content either. In that way they're similar to nineteenth-century reenactors.

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*Hyphenate "eighteenth-century" when it's before a noun; don't hyphenate afterwards: e.g., "This eighteenth-century quilt was actually made in the twentieth century."

**I gave it away right away without taking a photo. It was cute though. Trust me.