A Writing Day

The plan was to research constantly during these first weeks and then settle in to write about what I had learned.  But I had so much fun yesterday at the Fries Museum that I ended up spending the entire day writing the first chapter of my novel.  The Museum is not that big and not that extensive for the period I have in mind -- mid 1800s -- but they had on exhibit a lovely selection of women's clothing for the time period and it allowed me to let my heroine Antje get dressed for her wedding.  I could do a lot of plot set up while she was putting on those undergarments and gold helmet. 

I had a great time finding out more about my characters as I wrote about them.   They are pretty well fleshed out in my mind but as I'm writing, they take off and do the most unexpectd things.   For instance, I found out I really like Antje's mother and I had always thought she was a rather weak character.  Imagine my surprise when she said and did things today that were really rather admirable.  Good for her!!

I was also surprised to find out that Antje loved to sew on the machine her father had given her for Christmas --  I didn't know until yesterday that she could even have access to one so it was only while I was writing that I discovered her talent.  It explains why her dress is so intricate even though she lives in a tiny country village.  This is the sewing machine I found in the museum:

It's exactly like Antje's sewing machine!  And looks a lot like an antique machine I once owned.

Here's what the fashionable women of the day were wearing:

The headress is my favorite part.  There were two muslin and lace caps worn close to the head to keep the hair covered.  Those were held in place with a gold helmet.  The gold was very fine and very thin and sat close to the head.  Over the gold helmet the woman would place a finely-meshed hood, intricately trimmed with lace and embroidery.  It was held to the gold helmet with two gold or silver clips.  The only other jewelry was a brooch worn at the neck.  I saw dozens of drawings and paintings and even photos of Frysk women from 1850-1900 and they all looked pretty much like this, unless they were royalty.  The royals felt confident with clothes cut down to here and cut up to there and they had no need for gold helmets.  None of my ancestors were royal and neither are the characters in my book so black dresses and golden helmets it is.

The  women wore a "filler" to pouf out the bottom of their skirts and a corset to pouf up their tops.  Made me think of Scarlett O'Hara.  "Tighter!  tighter!"

Sorry about the quality of these photos.  The items are all in cases and have lights shining on them and lights shining in from the windows everywhere.  I also had to be a little surreptitious about taking the photos.  Although there was no outright ban on photos and even though there were no guards around, I kept expecting a curator to pop out and scold me so I wasn't as careful as I might have been about setting up the photos.