Saturday, July 23, 2005

More Story Writing....and a French Hood!

Had a surprise for Emily this morning, and she was thrilled to bits with it. Over the last couple of days, Gramps and Nana have been secretly making an authentic looking French Hood headdress for our little Mistress Boleyn. It was finished last night, so she got it this morning, and was over the moon. Here she is modelling it:



Needless to say it's been worn for virtually the whole day so far, and she's even made a special stand to keep it on!

More concentrated story writing this morning. This afternoon we've started watching the version of Henry VII and his six wives which has Charlotte Rampling as Anne Boleyn and Jane Asher as Jane Seymour. Someone was thrilled to see that her new hood was so similar to the ones the actresses were wearing!

To complete the look we needed (well, apart from the darn gown we can't find anywhere!) a pomander on a girdle round her wait, so Emily set about making a beaded chain on which to hang a round ball of cloves wrapped in voile.

It's late afternoon now and I've still got deadlines looming. Jon's reading to Emily from the Worst Jobs in History book by Tony Robinson and I think they're going to be playing in the garden after that. We took lots of photos yesterday; here's one of Emily playing Titania in a ballet dress we'd completely forgotten about (and which, unfortunately, is now rather too tight):



...and here's an informal one Jon took when he found the black and white function (which we didn't even know existed) on the camera - I love this one :)

6 comments:

Sarah said...

Wow, that french hood is utterly amazing. And Emily looks gorgeous in it :) There'd be a market for those, I reckon - well, I'd buy one!

Jax Blunt said...

would like to know how it was made, Big would be very interested, although she's more into Elizabeth than the generation before.

Nikki said...

Hi Sarah & Jax,
I gave my Dad this page http://costume.dm.net/headwear/fhoodmake.html for inspiration, but I'm not sure exactly how he did it. Sounded too complicated for me, I'm afraid, but I have just found this http://www.fynehats.com/free%20stuff.htm which suggests how to make one from a sun visor! :)

Kris said...

She looks fabulous in that hood! So regal. :) I think there would be a run on them by 5 and 6 year old HE girls if your dad started making them.

Kris said...

BTW - is she posing in front of a stand of sweetcorn? :)

Nikki said...

Hi Kris :)

Yes, that's the sweetcorn in our vegetable patch. It's like a jungle there at the moment!