You must all be wondering why I’ve disappeared from the face of the earth. I had very good intentions, I promise you, to get back into action right away, but life has a way of getting in the middle.

I’ve been having severe headaches that turn out are a result of a strained neck. I have been taking things easy (although still going to work), and three times a week I go get some currents, heat and excercises that seem to be doing the trick. The doctor wanted me to take some horrid muscle relaxant medicine, but when I read the leaflet and saw that taking it can affect my ability to generate new memories, well, that kind of did it for me. No way I was going to take that. The doctor seemed not to understand my reluctance (doctors do not like despondent patients), and when I mentioned that I was not happy with the anti-inflamatory medicine either (it was making me nauseous) he said it probably was because I was overweight. Well, that was the last straw, that guy is not going to see my face ever again. Not that I’m not overweight, which I am, but it has no possible connection with the anti-inflamatory medicine making me sick.

So, this is it for me now. I look forward to writing some interesting things for you soon so please keep on checking the blog!

Ah, almost forgot. Talking about headaches, just try to imagine the kind of headache that wearing this hat would have given the wearer. That must have been heavy, even if the foundation were wire, the massive amount of fabric must have made it heavier than a brick… ouch! Funny enough they call it “medium sized”.

I just love the amount of information that is out there if you are lucky to find it.

The latest treasure I have found is the “Women Working, 1800-1930” open collection from the Harvard University Library.

Here is the description, from the website:

Women Working, 1800 – 1930, focuses on women’s role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University’s library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images including:

• 7,500 pages of manuscripts
• 3,500 books and pamphlets
• 1,200 photographs

Of course I had to search for Millinery, and I found out that they have 2 digitized issues of the Delineator, some interesting books about the milinery trade, wages of women in the trade, and my two favorites from the collection:

The millinery department, written by Charlotte Rankin Aiken and dated 1918 and Millinery, written by Natalie Kneeland and dated 1925.

The millinery department is a book explaining how a millinery department is set up, how it should be run, and goes into lots of details about the different kinds of hats, materials, finishes, trimmings, and more. It’s lots of fun to read, I just browsed through it and found it very amusing. Take this good advice for example: “The power of the line is almost inconceivable. Faces seem to grow shorter or longer, fuller or thiner, noses appear to raise or to lower their tips, and even eyes seem to grow slanting or straight, large or small, under the influence of the shape of the hat.”

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