Historical Harlequin Happy

Oh it's the theme that never ends... it just goes on and on my friend... I think I'm finished building stuff and set it out for sale, but people keep suggesting things and I can't help myself oh it's the theme that...

Fooolish fooolish me. *giggles* I thought for a moment that I might set all of my finished harlequin stuff out and be done with it. And then folks started mentioning things, and it all sounded so good, ooo yes I do want to make that... and it's just been building up and building up. My amount of posts is definitely not proportionate to the work that I've been doing. I've been laying low, release wise, while some of the transaction issues get worked out, and it's been a good day and a half since my last failed delivery. So I've decided that despite the fact I have a couple more things in the works, I'm just going to set out some pieces now.

There is a veritable slew of yummy things to share, and the first... are these yummy gloves.

These look great on both men and women, with lots of room to spare in the same tradition as the Cavalier gloves. You can still thank Krimson Gray for that original glove texture, but whaddya know, I managed to match the seams myself this time! I was able to bleach out the glove texture and do a half and half that cups around the thumb in a most delicious way, and lengthen it as well as you can see in these:

I really liked the texture alone too much to not make it an option, I know some people aren't into the enormous and scunchy (hard to believe, right?). Both of these gloves have the same cuff though, just different sizes, and the cuff is split in the center for a nice little detail. Naturally it's flexi, and definitely goes with the set.

But with these, there's still something missing. I mean, wearing these things together makes a fabulous outfit, but there's a spot missing... like... lower down...

ZOMG BOOTS! With a delicately upturned toe, sculpted body and a modest heel, you can wear them without the body of them for a neato pair of shoes. These are naturally unisex, and have that wonderful scunchy look I know you love so much. But I thought I would also try something new. I've never, ever made a pair of women's heels before. It was time to change this!
The thing I love most about these is that sleek smooth fit, and that delicious line down the calf to the sculpted heel. I know that it could be much higher, much crazier... but I'm a tall lady IRL and I'm not a big fan of falling over. These look especially good in just the shoe alone, which is sleek and feminine and great to wear with flared cuff pants.

If anyone is wondering, the little "elf toe" comes from a fashion that started in the latter half of the 14th century. Back then, wealth was all about excess... extra food, extra servants, and especially, extra fabric. This extra fabric was most often seen in huge flowing sleeves, ridiculously long hats (called liripipes), and... in shoes. If you can have a ridiculous amount of material in your shoes, and make it rather obvious that you don't have to walk around in them much, you most definitely must be rich! This ridiculous amount of fabric was very often shown in the form of an absurdly elongated toe:

Haha, you thought I was done ;) These are fabulously unpractical shoes, inspired and demanded by and from Selos Dae, who did a drawing of my harlequin outfit and wanted ridiculous shoes to match. I did my best to realize them for her :) These are available in black, the natural leather color shown, and the harlequin texture so you can match if you like. These are incredibly oversized, and are guaranteed to get you some attention.

So where did the little version come from, from these enormous points? Well, some of the shoes got so amazingly long, (sometimes reaching as far as 4 ft), that they started stringing chains from the tip of the shoe to bands around their knees so they could actually walk. This created a curled tip at the end, that poorer folks tried to emulate. As the fad died down to more reasonable levels in the 15th century, the curl remained while the length did not, and so that vision of a curled toe is immortalized in our visions of historical jesters.


Speaking of jesters in court... there is one more thing I would like to release today. It's obviously been quite a busy period for me and now you can see that I haven't just been diddling!

This is, of course, a jester's staple. A jester's wand always had a carved head on it, or some sort of effigy of the jester himself. It would be "dressed" similarly, and he would use it to speak for him if he wanted to say something controversial. He would say that it might be his "stupid side" or his "foolish side", or the puppet that didn't know any better. Sometimes he would be so skilled with ventriloquism, it could almost be believable! This wand/puppet/lifesaver was called a "marotte". Honoring this tradition and origin of this, I've had it scripted by the incredibly useful and kind Ethan Schuman to be able to speak for you! As the picture says, anything you type after "/5" will speak from the marotte, and so you don't have to worry about having your head cut off. It will also jingle with a much lighter version of the Harlequin Cap's jingle if you tap its head.

Isn't that exactly what you needed?