Warm winds wind around the curtains of Yelapa.

In our household, this usually occurred on Sunday afternoons. We still had on our Sunday frocks, and Grandma would “lay the table.” It was a small oak table with leaves that she would pull out, drape with crisp Irish linen, embellish with flowers from the garden ( I loved the forget-me-nots ), the silver teapot ( doesn’t tea always taste better brewed in silver? ) and the Chelsea pattern fine china teacups. In this way, we were “trained” .

The centerpiece would be the tiered cake stand on which would rest the magnificent Victoria Sponge.
To the untrained eye, it looks rather ordinary…..until you sink your delicate lips into it, then try not having a second, or third as I did last Sunday. ( I still on occasion beg my lovely Mother to make me a Victoria Sponge. Then for penance, I run to her house and reward myself! )

A little history on this cake

…..well, the name gives it away!

Queen Victoria

The Duchess of Bedford

The Victoria in question is of course Queen Victoria of Great Britain, who reigned from 1838 to 1901. Anna, the Duchess of Bedford is credited with making afternoon tea a regular occurrence…they all had sweet tooth issues! She was one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, and would find that, in the late afternoon, would have that sinking feeling (feel hungry! ) Being the beauty and socialite that she was, everyone followed suit and afternoon tea become a ritual, crowned as it were by a Victoria Sponge.

Note to Reader : Do not confuse “Afternoon Tea” with “High Tea”….I will blog on that subject another time!

While inhaling this edible treat last Sunday, La Soeur Anglaise began to muse on that wonderful phrase “Let them eat cake” and voila! all sorts of visions and thoughts came tumbling from her naughty mind… « qu’ils mangent de la brioche »……

The myth is that, upon being informed that the citizens of France had no bread to eat, Marie Antoinette exclaimed “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or “let them eat cake.” After reading historical references, I nobly come to her rescue to say that, truth is, she almost certainly didn’t utter these words ( when the quote was written – attributed to ‘a great princess’ – Antoinette was a child of 9 yrs romping through the woods of Austria ) and that her many detractors claimed she had said it in order to make her look insensitive to the peasants’ plight and undermine her role as Queen. As usual, we women become the scapegoats of men’s politics. Someone put words in her mouth instead of cake!

Although I do love brioche……
I am going to keep my cake and eat my Victoria Sponge !
Bon Appetit!

Nautilus-inspired office space by Because We Can as posted on boingboing.net, June 13.

I first came upon the steampunk aesthetic when one of our friends had his iPhone steampunked in 2008. I was immediately smitten with the idea of combining the past and the future, where Steam/Industrial Science meets romance/Marie Antoinette (more coming on her….next blog!)…the juxtaposition of goggles and pearls, leather and lace, all meeting in smoky 19th century London, where Victorian English aristocrat meets the wench in corsets and bustles.

Steampunk has oozed into all cultural areas. Music, film (remember Wild Wild West?), home decor, and fashion have experienced this imagined future while bringing along fantasies of the past (think Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain).

Examples of steampunk street fashion:

A Kuro Lolita in Harajuku, Tokyo.
Photo by Jesslee Cuizon.

A Black Lolita and an Aristocrat.
Photo by iriseyes.

Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum exemplify the movement with their name ModVic (Modern Victorian Home Restoration). Check out their site for ideas.

We have done our own interpretation with our new/old black cotton lace window dressing, so Steamy Victorian !

To other laceophiles out there who might be reading this blog, you’ll love the article by Rosie Swash and Imogen Fox that appeared in the Guardian on 19th of October (see link below).

Image #10 of the slideshow is particularly appropriate to me at the moment … madly swathing ghosts on my castle grounds in tattered lace as halloween celebrations loom.

Someone once told me that if you are looking for old lace, then you must go to ancient fishing villages, as that is where the netting began!

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
~Kahlil Gibran