Gala Nocturna - The Swan Princess

Well, of course I did not sew the dress from my last post without the prospect of an occasion to wear it! Just like the last two years, we went to the Gala Nocturna, a dark-romantic costume ball in Belgium. This year, it not only moved to a new venue, but also to a new city: After having taken place in a baroque church in Antwerp for several years, the Gala had moved last year to a beautiful 19th century hall and an adjacent orangery in the Antwerp Zoo and this year to the Concert Noble in Brussels - an 18th century ballroom and therefore probably the most 'conventional' venue for the Gala so far.
But conventional does by no means mean it was boring: several grand halls in Louis XIV style, connected by brocade-curtain adorned doorways, stuccoed ceilings, antique portrait paintings on the walls and the grand ballroom sported the largest crystal chandeliers I have ever seen. In short, everything you would imagine for a fairytale ballroom.

Only too bad I'm not into fairytales - but we'll set that aside for the moment.

The motto this year was The Swan Princess, mostly inspired by Swan Lake, and so most female and some of the male guests showed up adorned in gazillions of white and/or black feathers, many ballerinas and some rather creative dark swans could be spotted as well. Last year ("La belle et la bête"), everyone had horns, this year everyone had wings.

When we arrived, the historical dance lesson had already started and we joined in for one or two dances, until I got a little bored and a slightly annoyed, since people kept randomly entering the dance lesson without knowing the steps that had been taught before - chaos ensued, and off to the absinthe bar we went!
I was rather glad that the bars were a lot better organized than during the last years - one absinthe bar and two regular bars, both with incredibly fast and efficient staff. A direly needed improvement! The main bars served several themed longdrinks of which I only tried the White Swan, Prosecco with elder syrup, Not exactly exotic as a combination but nevertheless a nice addition to the drinks list.

Apart from the dance lesson, the program also featured an opening dance of the swan princess and the evil sorcerer - ballet, of course and a swan buffet, "for true swans only". We kept on making jokes what that might mean beforehand and we were right: It was a buffet featuring grasshoppers, maggots, worms, and other niceties of that sort. I did not bother to queue for the buffet, but I was told that the grasshoppers were deliciously crispy and comparable to chips.

What else happened? We chatted with friends and strangers, had a look at the little market that was set up between the entrance and the ballroom (not much temptation there, except maybe for the stall with gorgeous copper jewelry) and had our picture taken in the picture corner:

Don't we look elegant?  I think this is the prettiest picture I have of us two so far! I'm wearing my Victorian Oriental gown, my dashing partner is wearing a frock coat I found for him at a theatre sale last year. I really need to make a cravat for his outfit though...

Oh, and we danced! Someone took a video of the dancefloor, beautifully capturing the general splendour of the room, and you can see us waltzing by several times, looking very professional. If you're in Germany, you will probably not be able to see the video (Hallo GEMA!), but there's another version of it here on Facebook

All in all, I think the word "nice" applied best to the Gala Nocturna this year. I did have a good time, but I missed all the little surprises that made the last 2 years so special: the walking acts, the living statues, the spontaneous sword-fight shows...
The organisation has definitely improved since last year and I did not have the feeling of spending half of the evening in a queue. You still needed to exchange your money for drink tokens before buying anything at the bar, which is probably a lot easier for the bar personnel, but the fact that you weren't able to change leftover tokens back to "real" money at the end of the night was slightly annoying. Although, at least this year it was clearly communicated that they wouldn't be taken back anymore: I remember standing next to a poor girl 2 years ago, who still had 50€ in tokens at the end of the evening and Viona at the cashier station simply refused to exchange them again.

Also, the motto and the venue this year weren't quite my cup of tea. As I said, too much cliché  fairytale, too one-dimensional (hey, lets take a goth dress and glue some feathers on!), not historical enough. I guess this is owed to the Gala having grown rather big by now: a motto like this is just easier to relate to for a wider audience than "The Pope's daughter". Still, next year I'd like a proper historically inspired motto again, please!

But I'm not really complaining, my expectations got fulfilled: I got to wear my pretty new dress, met friends, danced until my feet hurt and got a little drunk on absinthe and prosecco. Let's see what the 2016 edition holds, after all it will be the 10-year-anniversary!

A passage to india - My Victorian Oriental Mashup Bustle Gown

The idea of an orient-inspired historical gown has been lurking in the back of my mind for quite a while now - during all my holidays in south-east asia I've seen so many lovely fabrics in vibrant colours and exotic patterns, traditional costumes and headdresses and embroideries, I really wanted to create something using this as an inspiration.

And a project like that wouldn't even be inauthentic: there have been several waves of orientalism during the 18th and 19th century, the late 18th century Robe à la Turque being one of the resulting fashion trends. I however preferred to go more towards the late bustle era, because

1) I've made several 18th century style dresses now: a Chemise dress, a regular Robe à l'Anglaise, a zone-front Anglaise, and a Robe à la Francaise...time for a new time period!
2) I wish I could insert more profoundly researched reasoning about victorian orientalism and imperialism here, but: I like bustles -

• Bustles have lots of draping
• Indian Sarees are drapey, too!
• Embroidered sarees are gorgeous!
• Indian vintage sarees are dead cheap on ebay
• Therefore: saree bustle, here I come!

While looking for inspiration, I also came across the Duchess of Devonshire's Diamond Jubilee costume ball in 1897: The british high society assembled and dressed up as characters from history, literature, art and mythology, everything documented by photographers (so basically, just like today). Most costumes were exclusively made by haute couture designers like the House of Worth and some of them have survived until today. Especially the mythologically inspired dressed caught my eye: the hostess herself dressed up as Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, the green embroidered dress reminds me a little of peacocks.
A nice collection of portraits from the ball can be found in this blog, including some analysis about the costumes.


So, anyway, I went on ebay and ordered 2 sarees, a red one and a plainer black one, and then I started working!

One of my sarees, before I cut it up - gorgeously embroidered!

Step 1: new underwear!
Of course I have dozens of victorian corsets, but none of them are really suitable for underwear, and I also needed a bustle.
While making the corset, I discovered one of the advantages of living in a large city now: I can spontaneously go to the store and buy a corset clasp, without having to order online, imagine that!

I found the lobster bustle pattern on American Duchess, while the corset pattern is probably my 5th Laughing Moon Silverado corset - it just fits comfortably and results in a nice silhouette. I made it from 2 layers of floral and herringbone coutil and a mix of spiral steel and flat steel boning - business as usual and nothing special.

Finished - lobster bustle and corset

Step 2: Foundation skirt
The black saree that I ordered as well got cut up first and I made a basic foundation skirt from it. The nice thing about working with sarees: they're already hemmed and this one even has some sort of facing on the hem, so it doesn't get damaged as easily. Amazing stuff for a lazy seamstress!

I actually intended to also make an additional cotton petticoat to go under it - but the flu and a family emergency got the better of me, so I didn't have enough time in the end.

Step 3: Drapery
This is where my lovely red saree went: The Truly Victorian 374 pattern for an asymmetrical overskirt was just perfect, since it allowed me to make full use of the beautifully embroidered border of the saree. It came together easily and nicely and I was glad that the saree silk was so light: in the back, lots of fabric had to go into little pleats, which would have been quite annoying with a heavy fabric!

I used the Pallu, the pretty embroidered front part for the front part of the drapery - I love how all of the pleats are falling, the TV sewing pattern is really amazing!

Step 4: Bodice
This was the part that I was a little afraid of: I had to modify the bodice pattern a little, since I wanted it to be closed in the back instead of the front. Also, I wanted it to fit perfectly over the corset to show off my corsetted waist :) . But once again I had the luck of fitting into the sewing pattern almost without any modifications, only for the sleeves I should have taken a little more width. They are designed to be off-the-shoulder, but for comfort it would have been nice to have them more closely fitting.

All in all, the bodice is made from 4 layers: Saree fabric, fusible interfacing, interfacing and lining, plus 12 steel bones to make sure the fabric lies smoothly.
Once the bodice itself was finished, I hemmed what was left of the red saree, folded it up and hand-stitched it to the bodice. I had originally planned for a more sophisticated drapery here, but in the end I stuck more closely to how actual sarees are worn - and I quite like it!

 

This was the first project where I used piping - gives it a so much cleaner look!

I finished it just in time for this year's Gala Nocturna (and by "just in time", this time I don't even mean "had to hand-stitch the rest on the train", but "the evening before", I guess my planning is getting better)) - but I'll write extensively about our trip to Brussels in the next blog post!

Spring in Amsterdam...

It's been a while now since my last update here... I guess everyday life here has not been so exciting and I've also been rather caught up in university work. So here's a little update of random things that happened during the past weeks.

Already in mid-january, the dutch celebrated National Tulip Day and brought thousands and thousands of tulips to Dam Square outside the royal palace, free for everyone to pluck - naturally, the lines for going inside the plucking area were long, so I only took some pictures from outside:

In the meantime, spring has also arrived here in Amsterdam, and while the canals during misty winter mornings have had a certain romantic touch, especially with a thin layer of ice and maybe a snowflake or two on the bridges (part of me had hoped that we would see the canals frozen solid, but you'd need around a week of temperatures far below 0 for that to happen), I definitely prefer the longer days, stronger sun rays and budding flowers everywhere.

And we've opened the barbecue season!

At home I've started a small attempt of proving to myself that my black thumb might not be as black as I think it is and have started a little herb garden, courtesy of Ikea, with coriander, thyme, parsley, oregano, basil and lemon balm.

So far, I seem to be rather successful - only the lemon balm doesn't want to grow, but I wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. Also, I'm still not entirely sure what I should do with our little piece of garden, where so far only ferns grow since some corners of it barely get any sun.


And I finally made it to the Rijksmuseum! I've had my Museumkaart, which gives me access to most museums in the Netherlands, for a while now and never used it. And since I bike past (or rather: through) the Rijksmuseum on a daily basis, this one was first on my list. Apart from the famous Night Watch and some other Rembrandt and Van Gogh paintings, I especially liked their antique dolls' houses: collected by rich women as a hobby, some of them were so exquisite, that they would cost about as much as a real house.

Back on track!

Just before christmas, when I was actually supposed to start studying for my exams, I finally got my sewing mojo back.

Having left part of my fabric stash, most of my sewing patterns and my beloved mannequin back in Germany, I instead picked a download pattern for an easy dress from Burdastyle.....which is something I'm not going to do again so soon:
More than 60 pages of printout, 30 minutes of frantic cutting paper edges and glueing pattern pieces and cutting out the pattern, while some of the contained pattern pieces weren't even needed for this version of the dress, but only for a variation of it - for which the instructions were of course NOT contained in my download.

Lots of dead trees

Ironically, the dress I had picked was contained in the current Burdastyle magazine - since the Dutch version contains the same patterns as the German one, I could have spared myself a lot of crawling around on the floor with glue and scissors, by a 2-minute-trip to Albert Heijn around the corner.
Anyway, enough ranting, while the fabric wasn't the nicest jersey to work with, and the pattern itself isn't that spectacular, I'm happy. Comfortable work-proof cold-weather-dress.

Some days later I came across a really nice sewing blog, petit-main-sauvage, featuring a lot of simple but pretty patterns and tutorials for pattern drafting and alterations. Some of them immediately went onto my to-sew-list, for example this dress:

I bought the fabrics last year on the Dutch fabric market that is touring through Germany, and the blog mentioned above is actually a Dutch blog - a rather fitting project for my start here in Amsterdam :)
A new favorite in my wardrobe, I think!

Next on the sewing agenda: My dress for the Gala Nocturna! I have a plan A and plan B, let's see which one wins...
Now that all my boxes, patterns, costuming books, and my mannequin Ada are finally here, I'm a little more enthusiastic as well.

Non scholae, set vitae...

It's been a while since my last entry - shame on me! I've had several posts in the pipeline for a while, I just lacked the time and/or leisure to actually sit down and write them. The usual November depression might have had its share in that - it's gotten quite cold here in the past couple of weeks, with a nasty wind. Not very motivating.

In the meantime, I've gone through my first exam period here and am now in the middle of the second study period. As I might have already mentioned in a previous entry, the semesters here are divided into 3 study periods of 8 weeks, 8 weeks and 4 weeks respectively. Usually we have to take 2 courses in the long periods, 1 course in the short ones. 2 courses with around 2-3 lectures per week doesn't seem like much, but since they're only 8 weeks long, the content is rather dense and usually there are lots of assignments due to be handed in, for some courses every week. Another peculiarity here is that most to all assignments have to be completed in teams, whereas the whole team will get the same grade. While most courses' final grades will be a combination of the practical work and an exam, the grade for my Service Oriented Design course was only composed of team assignments, without any exam - something that is rather frustrating when at least one member of the team is not working at all and will still get the same grade. Apart from that, with a group of 5 people there is a lot of synchronisation overhead and things often took a lot longer than if one of us had done everything alone.
My other course however, Concurrency&Multithreading, was fine. Other than SOD the course content was rather theoretical, and not having followed the lectures too attentively, I had quite a lot to study for the exam. The last time I actually had to study for a test was probably in 2008 or 2009 - took me a while to get used to it again. In the end it was no problem. Even having skipped one question, I got an 8.5 out of 10: no reason to complain here :)

This period I'm taking Software Architecture, again a rather practical course with some groupwork - but this time my group works together very well and we're actually having fun! My other course, Distributed Systems, is again more theoretical and theoretically it's a rather interesting and widespread topic...if only the lecturer weren't boring as hell! And, since my Masters Programme is offered by the VU (Vrije Universiteit) in collaboration with the UvA (Universiteit von Amsterdam), it takes place in the Science Park in Amsterdam-Oost, 45 minutes away by bike. You can imagine my lack of motivation to get up for this course at 8 on a cold December morning...

The Science Park itself however is actually quite nice. Modern and well-designed buildings, bright seating and working spaces everywhere, huge rooms with computer workplaces, fancy group workrooms that anyone can use, and most importantly: coffee is cheaper than at the VU!

Another thing that happened since my last post was the retirement lecture of Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Most people outside of computer science or related fields probably won't have heard of him: he wrote several standard text books for computer science (on Operating Systems, computer organization or networks for example...) and developed an operating system called MINIX, which was the starting point for Linus Torvalds to develop Linux (so basically, without him you wouldn't have your Android phone today). He's been working and teaching at the VU since the 1970's and announced his retirement this summer. I had already signed up for the retirement lecture in July, one rarely gets a chance to see the last lecture of such a legend.

To my great surprise, the Aula at VU where the lecture took place wasn't even completely full. I would have expected more people to come. Tanenbaum spoke for around an hour about his past >40 years at VU, where he started as one of the first three employees of the at that time not really existing computer science department. Videos were shown, memories were shared, colleagues praised him... all in all a very entertaining and humorous last lecture.

And, what was probably typically Dutch: Along with wine, champagne and orange juice, they served milk and buttermilk at the reception afterwards.

I don't think we're in Karlsruhe anymore...

We mostly spent the past weeks here getting our apartment set up: Multiple trips to IKEA for picking, buying and returning furniture (-parts), multiple trips to the hardware store and carpet/flooring shops, and many hours of my dear flatmate torturing me with possible apartment layouts, furniture arrangements and flooring options – we both aren't naturals or in any way talented at interior design, but while I myself seem to have come to terms with that and don't mind unprofessional furniture arrangements, he spent a lot of time with an interior design program trying out different options. He also seemed to be incredibly keen on laying out laminate himself in our living room and eventually he got what he wanted: 27m² of laminate are now lying downstairs, waiting to be unpacked. I do really appreciate his efforts though – we have an amazing apartment (in a quiet street just off Prinsengracht! With garden and balcony!) for an incredibly cheap price considering we are in Amsterdam and it would be a pity if we didn't furnish it nicely. Did I mention that the apartment comes with a fish pond, visiting cats, and a huge shower? I also really love that one of the tourist horse carriages, with a driver wearing a tailcoat and a top hat, drives through our street from time to time. The first time I saw it through our historically accurate window I thought I was dreaming...

Why, Mr Darcy, OF COURSE I want to come to the ball!

O hai!

  

Settling in from an administration point of view is also yet to be completed: I don't know if it is because things here just don't work as well as they do in Germany, or if it is because we are expats: Everything. Seems. To. Take. Ages.
I already mentioned the famous BSN in an earlier post, which is a tax/social security/citizen identy number. In order to get it you need a valid rental contract – which might take some time to get considering the housing market in Amsterdam. Then you need to get an appointment at the Gemeente for getting a BSN. Students like me can just show up, hand in their documents, and get their BSN within one week by mail. My Significant Other however spent 45 minutes on the phone talking to various clerks in various offices, just to get an appointment for handing in his documents some time in mid-November. It remains questionable how long he will have to wait after this appointment.
Without a BSN, it is not possible to open a bank account – or so I was told. In the end I did not need it at the bank, but it did take more than 10 days until I got the letter that I could pick up my PIN, which had not been sent to the bank branch where I had opened the account, but to a completely different branch further away. Ugh!
This bank account was necessary for signing up for gas and electricity, for getting a mobile phone contract, and most importantly for signing up for internet! Our internet connection will already be enabled „within 3 to 6 weeks“, possibly on November 3rd. How the hell am I supposed to procrastinate without internet?!


University is quite demanding as well – yes, I do have 2 days off every week at the moment, but trust me, I'm still not getting bored, since my courses are laid out in a way that we theoretically have to work around 40h every week. In practice, I had assignments due every thursday evening and every 2 weeks on friday, and since all of them were team assignments a lot of evenings during the week and most part of my „days off“ was spent coordinating and working with my teammates. I am still not sure whether or not to like the amount of teamwork we have to do here. One of my courses' grade is solely based on those group assignments, so it definitely sort of sucks to have others partly responsible for your grade. And there were definitely times when I had the feeling that I could have done the work faster and better on my own (ironically, that was for my Multithreading course – talk about synchronization overhead!). Then again: We can divide the work so I don't have to do the parts that I don't like (I'm completely fine with writing long text, but please don't have me do any diagrams!). And it does give me the opportunity to learn more about group dynamics, motivating others, etc. pp., all things which I might need when I'm grown up and want to manage projects. Haha.
At the moment I'm preparing, or rather: should be preparing, for the exam in said Multithreading course. The Dutch university system is a little different from the one we know in Germany (or at least: the one youknow; I've never attended a regular German university!): there are 2 semesters per year, both of them divided into 3 periods of 8, 8 and 4 weeks length. Typically students take 2 courses in the long periods, and 1 course in the short period, exams are at the end of each period. There is no real break between the periods and none between the semesters: only July and August are „free“, and 2 weeks around christmas and New Years.
Now, don't dare calling me a lazy student again!

The Amsterdam Girl Geek Dinner - Definitely Does Compute

One thing I had been looking forward to a lot about moving to Amsterdam was the fact that here exist several networking events for women in technical companies/technical professions, i.e. mostly in IT. A lot of them seem to be organised via Twitter or Meetup (a platform whose benefits I'm only just now starting to discover! Ah, the possibilities!) So far I've discovered the PythonLadies, the RailsGirls, the PHPWomen and, less technology-specific: Girls in Tech and the Girl Geek Dinner.

Considering that Karlsruhe, where I've lived before, is also considered a somewhat big technology and innovation hub, it's a little sad to see how few girls' networking events take place there: virtually none. I guess it's just a different culture here. Or there really aren't enough women in tech back home.

So, as soon as the date for the September edition of the Girl Geek Dinner here was announced, I just had to sign up! The Girl Geek Dinners are a world wide organisation who promote women in technology. In Germany they seem to be a bit underdeveloped, unfortunately, thats why I only came across the organisation when I moved here.
The dinners usually feature one or several speakers for varied topics, usually women, and a buffet style dinner. Men are allowed to attend as well, but only as long as they're invited by a woman - every woman can invite one man, like this women will never be outnumbered by men.

The topic for September's  GGD in Amsterdam was "Start-ups" and was hosted in the beautiful premises of Rockstart on Herengracht. The evening started out with drinks and socializing and me being a little shy, but I soon got into conversation with some other first-time attendees. And there were really only women! No men! And all of those women were working in technology!

The talks were rather impressive as well - especially since at least 2 speakers were a lot younger than me. At 22, I was still way too clueless to be even remotely thinking about founding a company (and I probably still am).
Oh, and of course there was food! Catering was provided by VanChefs, one of the presenting startups: Light salad, lentils, garlic bread, veggies.....and dessert cream with macarons! I would love to post some pictures, but my phone battery died at some point, but can assure that it looked and tasted delicious :-)

All in all I met a lot of intelligent, interesting and inspiring women at the GGD - I'm already looking forward to the next event in december and might even bring my significant other :)