Pardon me while I create an anachronism.

[gurdymonkey]

Score! Stone Mountain and Daughter had some nice thick plain white flannel for $4.50/yard. The Japanese certainly did not have white cotton flannel in our period, but dammit, I will have WARM tabi for Estrella. They also had some wonderful Asian/Japanese cotton prints, which are a bit expensive, but I got one yard of a lavender dragonfly print that will also be cute for tabi. While I haven't found evidence one way or another for patterned tabi for women, I see them (usually indigo, sometimes other colors) on men, particularly samurai.
I virtuously did NOT buy anything else.

And I FINALLY met the new tenant downstairs when I went out this morning. He was headed for the laundry closet - I hesitate to call it a laundry room. Steve seems nice. Says he travels a lot, which is why we hadn't bumped into each other before.

Comments

[acanthusleaf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I understand. I made one of those little white coifs out of polarfleece. Looks good from a few feet away, and my ears stay warm.

Boy do I miss Stone Mountain & Daughter.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Given the presence of prints on women's clothing, similar to men's, it would strike me as very odd if there were no patterned women's tabi. While that's not a definitive, it does make sense for them to exist.

Just because it isn't in the pictures doesn't mean it didn't exist and if it makes sense within the scope of what we do know, I call it a good enough.

You're on your own with the flannel.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

It is an EVIL place, I tell you. It was so hard to resist the apple green dragonfly brocade. And the red Guatamalan ikat. And the black wool suiting with multicolored flecks......

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's a "good enough", especially as I've somehow become something of a knowledge chokepoint among SCA Nihonjin.

A couple years ago I met a young lady at Estrella whose local group was giving her crap about portraying a Japanese. She had this horrible, horrible idea about making an Elizabethan outfit out of Asian brocade. I said, "No, they didn't do things like that, but you might want to start searching on 'namban' art which is from the period when the Portuguese came to Japan in the 16th century and see if you find anything useful." What does she do? She makes a velvet kimono with chevron guards on the front and black ribbon trim all around the collar and front edge - I kid you not - and slits the tops of the sleeves - then wonders why it won't hang right. (Because Japanese sleeve seams fall about mid bicep, not at the shoulder line.) This anachronism from a alternate universe that never was is all my fault.

On the other hand, I have no problem admitting, "I cannot document 'em but my feet get cold!"

Speaking of which, I spent this afternoon letting out a modern kimono and altering the sleeves so I can wear it as an underlayer with my SCA kosode - and it feels like cheating somehow. ;-D

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

One person doing something dumb and misinterpreting information is not a reason to throw out educated guesses. Educated guesses are an important part of recreation and while they should be labelled as such in documentation, they are very different from someone deciding that she is the Japanese Scarlett O'Hara and parading around in drapes.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Of course. It's just the ol' Makiwara effect. ;-D