Sunday in the rain at Es Artes (our edge of the Honduran hurricane)Day 6 and 7 Saturday, Sept. 25 and Sunday, Sept. 26
Most of Saturday was taken up with trying to create digital versions of various wardrobe organizational documents and a bilingual measurement sheet, and in measuring all the ES Artes students available (several were missing due to college entrance exams) because I will be supervising costumes for one of the school productions as well, once Bernarda is up and running.
Between assorted dictionaries and a nice little translation "gadget" on my new computer, I'm getting pretty good at recognizing (and hopefully recalling) all the various measurements of the body in Spanish and in metric. It's an interesting paradox that fabric is still sold by the yard here (likely because most imports come from the US, and the currency is the US dollar), but everyone I've talked to so far measures, drafts and sews in metric; while in Canada, fabric is sold by the metre, but many of us (a generational thing in part, I guess) still measure, draft and sew in imperial. Although I've always been aware of both methods, being forced to use the metric more is another good stretch out of my comfort zone...
The greatest frustration of the day came in trying to work my way through the supposedly simple Office and Word programs that are supposed to allow one to set up tables and charts and boxes and insert things from other files - in the words of Charlie Brown, "Aauuugh!" I'm giving it one more day, then it's back to the pencil and the ruler! (Both John and I enjoy the luxury of email at breakfast, though.)
After much discussion about where and how we would set up the wardrobe workspace at Es Artes (the room Sean and Mel had is now being used as a conference and classroom), Tito and Mario cleaned off and repositioned the carpentry/props table that Frank et al had built, covered the ends with layers of sheets and two shy and silent local ladies turned up to press the 70 yards of fabric that Tatiana and Mabel had taken home with them to San Salvador to wash on Friday night (no laundromat in Suchi).
The space is good, as space here goes, as it's outside but under the roof in the corner of the courtyard right next to the room where they are currently storing the donated costumes from the Stratford shipment. Tito was concerned about the rain blowing in under the roof overhang, but I tried it out all day Sunday under nearly continual heavy downpours and, despite one small intermittent leak late in the day, it was fairly successful. We've discussed moving the machines out of their dark little storage room into this corner space as well, but dampness of the floor is a concern. I observed that the side of the courtyard leading into that corner stayed much drier, so that might be an option. My biggest issue is the lack of light - when you lose the sun here, the light bulbs generally do not cut it, and they tend to be few and far between, but Tito is on it...
Managed to chart all the damas measurements and create the patterns for their (9) fustanes this afternoon; got one and a half cut out and sorted out the possible workload for the Escuela tomorrow, so on to Week 2...
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