With your kind encouragement, Gentle Reader, I present to you the occasional series . . . weird things from my search history! A sampling of things I’ve done and researched the Finishing School series.
Tasks . . .
- Made an outline (failure)
- Made a mind map (success!)
- Drawn a massive dirigible schematic plan
- (Which made me get my Brambly Hedge books out of storage, great house plans in there)
- Clipped printed and sketched characters
- Noted additional world facts and thoughts
- Formulated more complete series arc

Theodore Wendel – Lady with Parasol by Stream
Look up . . .
- Oil Paintings from 1814, any with blue dresses in them?
- Deadly plants that grow in England
- Events in 1852 London
- London Protocol (Treaty of 1852)
- Fashion in 1852
- Queen Victoria’s children and pregnancies
- Wicker Hassocks
- Evolution of Exams in Schools
- History of Wedgewood Pottery
- Internal schematics of early steamers
- Etymology of the slang term peepers.
- Serving tea & tea services
- Introduction of military elements into lady’s dresses in the 1850s (used English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century)
- Portraits in 1852

Working on some action poses with the Finishing School ladies from ace-artemis-fanartist (of course)
- Opening of the season in London (family return just after Christmas, being associating in March, larger events begin in May) thank you What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew
- A meal for mid March. (Things a Lady Would Like to Know March 16: Vermicelli Soup, Leg of Mutton and Current Jelly Sauce, Potatoes and Broccoli, Bakewell pudding)
- Ways to tie a narrow cravat
- Etymology of the word whizz
- Expense and toxicity of oil paints before 1900
- When did England officially abolish slavery? 1833
- How to spell turbot
- Location of British coalfields in the 19th century
- History of drinking straws
- Names of the parts of a piccolo
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Quote of the Day:
“A book is to me like a hat or coat – a very uncomfortable thing until the newness has been worn off.”
~ Charles B. Fairbanks