A Day of Many Celebrations

Halloween is here!

Isn’t that the cutest little owl on her hat? I love owls! source

Halloween represents many different things to different people. Like many of our modern holidays, it originated in ancient history as a celebration of the changing seasons or a harvest festival. Today, some people love Halloween because of its aspect of play and make-believe. Others take the idea further, becoming someone or something they daren’t on any other day. There are religious groups that hold the day as a high holiday, while other religions revile it as primal and evil. Here in the Southwest it is the eve before El Dia de los Muertos, a reverent and lively celebration where families honor their late loved ones.

In the past, Halloween has included wonderful childhood traditions of pumpkin patches, trick-or-treating, and scary haunted houses. Some of those traditions are still alive and well, and even though the parades of small monsters through our neighborhood have trickled to only one or two children, or even none in recent years, I still buy a few big bags of candy just in case.

Whatever its history, religious meaning, or social implications, I like Halloween for all the nostalgia. I remember so many cold October nights, skipping through my neighborhood in a cheap nylon costume and plastic mask and ignoring the chill biting at my legs. Usually I would go with my two little next-door friends and one or two of the parents would follow along behind. We would walk for hours, up and down hills, giggling and shrieking, and finally get home with entire pillowcases full of candy. Good times.

Here’s a another cute owl for you!

source

Have a safe and Happy Halloween.

Katrina

Countdown to NaNoWriMo

It’s only four days away! National Novel Writing Month is when you finally take pen in hand (figuratively) and pour out that novel that’s been in your head or your heart for so many years. Start at 12:01 a.m. (if you really want to) on Nov. 1st, and keep writing until midnight on the 30th.

If you’ve always wanted to write but could not get started, use this campaign to give you the push you need. Even if you’re not interested in writing, it’s worth reading a bit about the background of the program because it really is amazing that so many people can write an entire novel in one month. The event started as a combination write-in and block party with only 21 participants in 1999. Through the magic of digital word-of-mouth, the number of participants has increased exponentially each year until there were more than 200,000 people writing in NaNoWriMo last year. A lot of camaraderie will develop builds up during a month when that many people are feverishly working on the same thing at the same time. I expect hilarity to ensue, along with sleep deprivation, inability to recognize loved ones, and glossolalia.

Of course at the completion of NaNoWriMo, you have to deal with what you’ve written, which will probably be 90% incomprehensible crap and 10% good story. But many people do go on to edit their NaNoWriMo works and get published. So that possibility is always out there. I will do it for the enjoyment of writing and the excitement of knowing there’s a huge community of people out there doing the same thing.

And, since I will be writing for six to eight hours each day, I may not be blogging quite as regularly. I hope to give you some sort of update at least three times a week. Plus my word tracking widget will show on the right side of the blog, to keep me honest. (That's if the administrators get the widget working.)

Are you a writer? Are you going to participate in NaNoWriMo? Think about it!

Katrina

Crazy About Caftans

I know those of you north of the 35th parallel are experiencing cooler weather verging on cold. In the Northeast you’ve brought out your tights and boots, and in the Midwest you’re preparing for the nightime lows with your down coats.

Here in Phoenix we still have the A/C blasting much of the time and I would honestly pay someone to cool this city down. I admit that we did finally get out of the 100s this week, and last night we had a wonderful cool breeze. Today the temperature may not even top 80, for the first time in about seven months. Still, I've been too dang hot for too long, and I’m just not in the mood for fall clothes just yet.

Instead, I’ve reignited my caftan obsession. Maybe it was my penguin pajama fabric that made me think of long robes, or maybe it's because when I grow up I want to be Anya on Project Runway with her long, breezy, elegant silk dresses. I love caftans, muu-muus, and any long, full, gracefully flowing robe-like garment. They put me in mind of ancient goddesses and 1960s party hostesses at the same time.

I wanted to find out about the history of these graceful garments, but was disappointed by my two fashion history books. A Survey of Historic Costume goes into some detail about the garments worn in ancient civilizations, but refers to all these styles as “tunic” except for a few references to words we no longer use such as chiton, peplos, and calasiris. African, Indian, and Asian clothing are all but ignored. In The Chronicle of Western Fashion, the same omission occurs but is at least explained by the title. So I was off to the infinite, unreliable mass of ever-changing information that is the Internet.

The caftan originally comes from the Middle East. We in the US tend to think of everyone in Arab countries as wearing robes, but there are many, many different types of robe-like garments with different purposes, and they vary by country. There are different forms of caftan or kaftan worn in Turkey and Morocco, for example, and other styles are popular in some areas of Southeast Asia.

The burnoose is actually a hooded cloak, not a closed garment like the caftan. It originated in the Arab countries as well.

The Indian kurta is similar to the caftan in that it is very long, loose, and collarless.

Also from India is the salwar kameez, in which the salwar is the pants and the kameez is a long shirt or knee-length tunic of silky, flowing fabric in a slightly more fitted style than the caftan.

The dashiki is a long tunic which originated in Africa as a sleeveless shirt for men. When it reached the US fashion scene in the 1960s it morphed into the rectangular pullover-style shirt with sleeves. If made in an ethnic print or decorated with heavy embroidered trim, it is still recognized as an “African” garment.

The muu-muu is a Hawaiian dress, originally devised by missionaries to get the lovely ladies to cover themselves up. Without getting into a big discussion of the impact of colonialism on an entire race of people and their body image I will just say that the garment is beautiful and comfortable. It is a very full dress which floats loose around the body. The standard construction is a square or round yoke or band neckline with the entire dress and sleeves gathered into it.

It’s possible that my interest in this apparel style is not coincidental: each of these originated in a hot or humid climate, and I myself am in a hot and sometimes humid climate. I would love to wear a caftan every day!

Of course I would like to wear the very elegant ones, in silk, or bejeweled velvet, or lightweight rayon batik. Sadly, these are not well suited to my messy lifestyle. So when I decide to make up some of these lovely robes, it will probably be in an inexpensive cotton gauze or a rayon poly blend.

I have a few caftan-type patterns which I’ve never tried. I enjoy looking at them, because the pictures themselves are evocative: cool elegance, psychedelic parties, ethnic history, or simply comfort.

My collection of 70s-era caftan patterns.

Here are some I don’t own (yet). (All images are from the vintage patterns wiki) So elegant!

Note on S 6060 - I don’t really love the pattern but how about that blond guy with the 70s mustache and glasses? Cult leader?

And two beautiful Vogue styles – As usual, Vogue blows everyone else out of the water with elegant details.

Folkwear has some beautiful designs, like the Syrian Dress # 105 and the Gaza Dress, #101. Source

And there are several Hawaiian pattern companies that will have you dreaming of palm trees and hibiscus:

Basically just WOW. source

So, will I actually make some of these beautiful caftans? I hope to, in the near future!

How do you feel about caftans and muu-muus?

Katrina

The Demon Migraine - Part II

Last week I mentioned that my mother has had migraines most of her life, but I thought I had dodged that bullet.

Then, at age 28, genetics caught up to me and hit me with migraines that haven’t let up appreciably for 24 years. I’m still luckier than most – I’ve had my share of trips to the hospital and bouts that last for days, but often I can continue to function at a lower level while I have a headache, rather than spending a day and a half in bed. Still, it renders me incapable of sitting at a desk in an office or working at a job outdoors. Think of this multiplied 300 million times to get a general idea of how many people have the same challenges, worldwide.

The most common question I get, when I report that I just had a migraine, or ten in a row, is “What caused that?” It’s a perfectly good question, but one that has no clear answer. There are causes, and then there are triggers.

source (I love that "Good Health" is represented by pretty matching hues! Maybe my brain is full of clashing colors.)

The cause of migraine can be from the muscles, blood vessels, nervous system, or a combination of all. It used to be common knowledge that the pain of migraine was due to the contraction of blood vessels in the head followed by a sudden expansion. Now that’s not so certain. Neurotransmitters figure heavily in the equation, but which ones, and what are they doing? Muscle tension can be a contributor, but which muscles and why are only some people affected by it? Everyone has their own theory; my assertion is that it is an as-yet unidentified combination of linked physiological mechanisms.

The triggers are both simpler and more complex than the causes. A trigger is, very simply, any stimulus which results in a migraine headache. Food, weather, sleep, light, stress, smells, chemicals, and exercise are a few of the categories of triggers. The complexity arises from the fact that there are thousands of potential triggers in our modern environment, each person has a different subset of triggers that affect them, and sometimes it requires extraordinary measures to avoid them. Bright light, for example, is something that is almost impossible to avoid in daily life.

And then there is the question of a cure. A lot of supposed cures are floating around out there, plus a lot of actual proven cures that work for some people and not others. There is a huge research effort to find new drugs or other treatments for migraine sufferers (interestingly, most of the research seems to occur in the UK), and almost every healthcare specialty has something to contribute to the migraine question.

Tie a crocodile to your head! Your headaches will disappear!

There is also a lot of misinformation, sadly, even within the healthcare industry. Some professionals have gone so far as to tell me there is no such thing as migraine per se, it’s just a tension headache. I had a personal trainer some years back who insisted that I had to keep exercising through a migraine because it was the only way I would ever get over them. That’s taking things a little too literally, I think! A TMJ specialist told me that I would stop having headaches and I would look much prettier if I used his jaw splint. Uh, what? One neurologist yelled at me because his favorite medication didn’t work for me. Another one kicked me out of her office because I hadn’t updated her headache calendar (in fact I’d created a headache tracking spreadsheet that I was keen to demonstrate, but that didn’t happen).

I can only assume that these are well-meaning people who want to find a solution just as much as I do, but they just can’t deal with the complexity of the problem, and therefore they insist that there are very simple answers. I do not believe there is any simple answer.

Still more next week in the Demon Migraine - Part III!

Katrina