here is the blackwork.
more than halfway through the sampler, i get a little panicked thinking what will i do when it's done? because i want more. but, in fact, i plan to rework a few of these bands on an extra piece of aida cloth, because i want to see what they look like with a different number of strands than i originally started with. might also do some in red.
i prefer the band designs to "stuff that looks like stuff" (trees, flowers, fruits) and am thinking that, since there's a lands end catalog on the kitchen table and
ben
and i each have a linen shirt marked to purchase, that i may just try to go to town on our clothing a bit. just a bit.
so -- in my "new tudors" sims game, there are rules.
certain things have to stay as historically correct as possible, including: order of wives, method of their dismissal, and the fact that they MUST bear the historically acknowledged "legitimate" existing children of henry VIII. (this is true as well of bessie blount, the mother of henry's most acknowledged illegitimate.)
so far, the king's ability to make any woman feel like she is the only woman in the room has only lead to a baby in every crib.
the "everything goes" comes in in that, where the wives are concerned, they can bear as many OTHER children as is necessary to get them the "historically correct" ones. in other words -- when catherine of aragon gave birth to a boy, i did not force-quit the game and go back and make her labor again until the baby came up a girl. i just kept making her have more babies. in fact, at least twice, she gave birth, put the infant on the floor, marched up to bed, and was pregnant again before ever feeding or changing the new baby.
because of this, catherine of aragon actually bore henry VIII three healthy and viable male heirs before producing the infant "bloody mary".
somewhere the ghost of henry VIII is kicking himself. but only because he can't kick me.
from the sidelines, cracking the whip on catherine and henry's breeding, benjamin and i were disappointed to find that the three boys were, at all stages of their growth from children to teens, essentially identical. we had to change their hairstyles and acoutrements so that we could tell them apart.
they were henry IX ("prince nine"), prince ferdie, and prince arthur.
they were also unusually ugly little dullards. with terrible skills. sloppy. impossible to "encourage" (as per the game). really difficult!
bloody mary turned out as ugly as any of the boys, and almost identical to them as well. strange! takes the fun out of procreating with the same pair again and again.
i was of course interested to see what bessie blount could whip up. it was eerie (this is what makes the game so damn fun) how DIFFERENT she and henry were, romantically, than henry and catherine had been. with catherine, he had gone through the motions. with bessie, there was this weird warmth.
the king went to visit bessie, and unfortunately, the queen came with. dammit! but, after a whispered conference with hans holbein in the shower, the king and bessie conspired to get hans to PAINT a PORTRAIT of the queen downstairs, so she would not be too aware of the king impregnating bessie upstairs!
having produced three princes, it felt a bit insincere to have to orchestrate a situation where henry would want to get RID of catherine of aragon; she had done a great job. but, she caught him canoodling with bessie blount -- hans holbein failed us -- and it set things on a downward slope. the king had to get rid of catherine, and he did. she walked out in her pajamas and disappeared into the fog at the end of the road.
we'll call this "annullment".
that worked out fine, except for the fact that the baby is a girl, which means we have to go through the whole process again. so now, in addition to the fictional princes nine, ferdie and arthur, we have a fictional illegitimate daughter named maxine. and henry is JUST getting things rolling with anne boleyn!
by the way, not particularly enamored of the "extra" princes, i tried to immolate them. we now know that, in a housefire, adult and teenage sims will grab any baby or toddler on the premises and take them to a far away spot on the lawn outside. also, children cannot, it seems, be consumed by fire. hmm.