Project Seaside Stripes

Lovely project for today, new covers and matching cushions for a pair of vintage deckchairs rescued by the Boy from our local junk shop.

Gorgeous stripy deckchair fabric from these lovely people, who included stripy sweeties in the package. And my goodness me, choosing colourways was difficult ... 

One false start where I thought I could staple the fabric to the frame using the Boy's seriously scary upholstery staple gun, but the trusty sewing machine was what I really needed.

Now we just need some more of this fantastic sunshine, and it'll be just like the seaside.

Blackpool Promenade, 1898 

Image uploaded to Flickr by trialsanderrors

Spring is on its way

The UK is bathed in warm sunshine today. Hopefully, this means Spring is on its way.

Circus

Wonderful Victorian poster for a rather special variety act. Love the typography, love the insouciance of the etcetera.

Lions, tigers, leopards etc., indeed!

Guilty pleasures: noble highway men and quivering lower lips

Image uploaded to Flickr by paul nine-o

Thanks to my love of free ebooks, and my recent discovery of what is possibly my spiritual ebook home – girlebooks.com, which specialises in women authors and includes many of my teenage favourites, like Anne of Green Gables,  as well as lost Victorian classics, like The Shuttle – I have found a new guilty pleasure... Georgette Heyer.

I am reading The Black Moth, her first novel , published in 1921.

Noble highwaymen, sinister Dukes, duels, wrongly outcast Earls, debts of honour, more duels, kidnapped maidens with sensitively quivering lower lips. Love it.

Deceptively simple, but absolutely captivating. I am totally losing myself in the book on the Tube, and keep having to hastily jump up when I get to my stop. Which is definitely a sign of a good read.

And with such a wealth of period detail which suggests research of an academic level.

Can’t wait to start on the Regency series.

Promenade in 3D

Wonderful New York Public Library project, bringing their archive of stereogram photos from the 1890s and 1900s to life.

You pick an original stereo image, as designed to be viewed through the special viewer, from the NYPL archive:

Then you use the Stereogranimator to create an animated gif, and you can see the 3D image in all its glory:

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

Just look at those lovelies parading on Brooklyn Bridge.

You can also make 3D analgyphs, which look like you could view them through 3D red and green specs.

See it for your self - there are over 750 images!
NYPL Labs | Stereogranimator