Inconvenience of Modern Fashions

[bama_belle]

jenna,

morbid and creepy yes... but I'm actually trying to work on one of these... it's been very strange.. collecting my stray hairs....

don't ask for details.

[jenna]

A friend and fellow re-enactor did put one together recently and what she did was wash it all again after she had collected quite a bit of hair. So it was very very clean. Her husband snitched a swatch of it this past season when he had to leave in the middle of a senario for work, so they listed him as awall, and he came back dressed as a civilian the next day with his wife's hair as a mustach! It was most hystarical.

Jenna

[bama_belle]

Jenna, that's hilarious. It sounds like something my husband would do.

My friends all think I'm nuts about my hair anyway. It has always been at least shoulder length, but since we've become reenactors, I've been letting it grow. I'm determined to continue to let it grow as long as it will.

Will it aid in better period hair styles? I don't know, but if it gets too long and annoying, I can always have it cut and made into a hair piece, can't I?

[jenna]

I thought it to be pretty funny as well. But they used lots of false hair. Lots of it. And if you saw a woman with short hair, it was usually due to an illness or a not so nice incedent with the curling iron. They would cut their hair off at times of high feavers.

They also used their strands of hair for hair art or hair jewlery. Pretty creepy stuff. Often they would use the hair of their deceased beloved ones in shadow boxes as a tribute to that person. Or, like a shadow box out at Old World Wisconsin, the sister created it in honor of her own dear sister entering the convent, and the shodow box showed her life change from regular every day woman to sister of God.

Jenna

[bama_belle]

The whole, "hair of a deceased loved one" thing I just don't think I could do.. but then, we save the first hair cut our children, don't we? Strange what we think as normal and at the same time something so similar seems creepy, huh?

I recently bought my husband a vintage compass and made a leather chain for it, but after watching Josey Wales recently, he suggested I make one of my hair. That's how the whole thing got started for me.

It's going to be interesting, seeing how it turns out.

As for having short hair.. I just can't imagine it. Mine has been long all my life.