Queens of the Sea #10: Striped Shirt and Vest for Mary Read

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Welcome to day ten of the Queens of the Sea series, part of the Random Magic Pirates book tour! Here is the mini-bio for today’s pirate, provided again by Lyrika:

Mary Read: The Last Woman Standing

Mary Read was an English pirate and contemporary of pirate Anne Bonny. She’d spent her early days as a soldier and innkeeper, and her character was marked by bravery and resoluteness, as this snippet of a story from her short but tumultuous life illustrates:

An occurrence soon happened that put the attachment of Mary to a severe trial. Her lover having quarrelled with one of the crew, they agreed to fight a duel on shore.

Mary was all anxiety for the fate of her lover, and she manifested a greater concern for the preservation of his life than that of her own; but she could not entertain the idea that he could refuse to fight, and so be esteemed a coward.

Accordingly she quarrelled with the man who challenged her lover, and called him to the field two hours before his appointment with her lover, engaged him with sword and pistol, and laid him dead at her feet. (From: The Pirates Own Book (1837), by Charles Ellms)

She was one of only three people standing to defend the ship she sailed on when Captain Jonathan Barnet’s crew attacked in an October 1720 battle. Mary Read, Anne Bonny and an unnamed seaman fought off the pirate hunters, while the rest of the crew remained in the hold.

The battle ended in the capture of the ship, Revenge, and all her crew; Mary and Anne were both imprisoned and Anne’s lover, Jack ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham was hanged. Anne vanished from historical records and her final fate is a mystery, but Mary died of a fever.

I like the contrast here between her tattered striped shirt and that spiffy black and silver vest – the intended implication is that the vest is, shall we say, a new acquisition.

Take my poll and let’s choose the Queens of the Queens of the Sea! They’ll both expire on the 28th, but I’m not sure when, so if they’re not closed by noon PST on the 28th, that’s when I’ll pick the winners.

The contests will be open until May 27th, 11:59 PM Pacific time. So if you haven’t entered, today and tomorrow are your last chance! Click here for the chance to win an original drawing, for those of you who can give me an address if you win, and click here for the chance to design a pirate outfit, open to everyone!

Check out the tour schedule here! And for more information about Random Magic, here’s the trailer for the book.

Also, check out the Rum + Plunder treasure hunt for more pirate prizes!


Green Dress, Khaki Jumper, White Cap and Gown and Michigan Shirt from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

Click for the doll.

I drew a handful of my own clothes for the Boutique, too. There are a couple of forgettable shirts that I won’t bore you with… Most notable, to me, is my rendition of my favorite green dress from the time, which was a beautiful light olive green which complimented my skin and hair perfectly. I wore it to death, and if I saw another dress like it, I’d jump on it even today. I don’t know what I was doing wearing that khaki jumper, though. Although I spend my free time doing a page like this, I have zero fashion sense. (Actually, perhaps that’s not so surprising, considering my penchant for eccentric, entirely unrealistic dresses.)

There’s a story behind the graduation cap and gown. I was born in Missouri, but my family moved to Kansas, then to Alabama, then to Ohio when I was in fourth grade. In my junior year of high school, my dad was transferred again, this time to Michigan. As it happened, though, I had been a particularly diligent student: I had taken summer classes and hadn’t taken homeroom classes or lunch periods all through high school, so by the end of my junior year, I was actually only three courses away from graduating. I took those three courses that summer at the local community college, and by the end of the summer I was set to graduate a year early. (Amusing anecdote-within-an-anecdote: my parents and I met with the principal to sign off the final paperwork one afternoon. “Where are you planning to go to college?” he asked me. “University of Michigan,” I said. “Oh,” he said sorrowfully, “I can’t let you graduate, then,” and he pointed to his Ohio State class ring. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with college football in America, University of Michigan and Ohio State have a long-standing, intense rivalry. As it happened, as I wasn’t really from the area and had not the slightest smidgen of interest in college football, I initially had no idea what he was talking about. For a frightening second, I took him completely seriously. Then, I considered the context, remembered there was some irrelevant connection between the two universities and laughed dutifully. My memory may or may not be reliable, but I seem to recall that my parents had a similar reaction.)

Now, at the time I was a geeky, sarcastic little thing well ready to be done with high school life, and I was hardly broken up about the prospect of missing prom, senioritis, a large picture in the yearbook and all the other useless things I hadn’t looked forwards to in the first place. I didn’t even much care about missing graduation; as a member of the school choir, I had attended the previous class’ graduation, and it wasn’t like the substance would be different just because my name would be in the program.

Ah, but that cool facade didn’t mean there wasn’t just a touch of wistfulness, though. Not much – not nearly enough to shade into anything approaching regret. (Saying I was well ready to be done with that stage of my life is technically a massive understatement.) But just enough to draw the cap and gown I wouldn’t ever wear for my paperdolls.

It all ended well, though, as I did get into the University of Michigan… Although, from the safe vantage point of having successfully graduated a decade ago, I can say that only applying for that single school may have been the dumbest, most overconfident thing I ever did in my life – I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gotten in! My mom bought me this celebratory Michigan shirt, and I did have it for a very long time, but it wasn’t so shiny in reality. I drew everything shiny at the time, even blue jeans. These days I compensate by just simply not drawing blue jeans. Life is too short for such dullness, pass the ribbons.


Women Airforce Service Pilot in Leather Jacket and Flying Suit with Goggles for Memorial Day

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Today is Memorial Day here in the states, honoring the men and women who gave their lives for our country. I happened to read a post on Metafilter about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), a little-known organization of more than a thousand civilian female pilots who flew missions in WWII, freeing up male pilots for active duty. I won’t restate the contents of the whole Metafilter post, but I do recommend you read it if you have some time. I used a couple of pictures from Blitzkrieg Baby as reference for this flight suit and leather jacket with a patch of the WASP mascot Fifinella.

Don’t forget, my contest is still going! No one’s got it yet, so please post your guess as a comment.

How many visits did my site get between (and including) April 1, 2010 and April 30, 2010?

Don’t forget the rules…
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter.
2) One guess per person per post.
3) If no one gets the exact number by 9:00 PM EST, June 2nd, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) I’ll give one hint each day the contest goes on.
– Yesterday’s hint: It’s between 10,000 and 30,000
– Today’s hint: The middle digit is 6.


Khaki Trench Coat with Green Dress and Grey Boots in honor of Different Chairs and justweather.com

Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.

So my husband’s business is called Different Chairs, and he does a lot of different things, but chief among them is web development using Django. He has been helping put together a new weather site, JustWeather.com, which just officially launched the other day. What’s so great about another weather site, you ask? Well, it shows real-time, helpful weather information, it has great animated maps that you can enlarge and it doesn’t have a lot of other information cluttering up the screen — just weather, right? Frankly, it has more weather information than most decent humans want to know, and my dear husband has been living and breathing weather for months now. (There’s a reason our new cat is named Radar. She narrowly escaped being called “Haircast.”)

So, in honor of Brian and the weather site, Sylvia and Iris can now brave weather in a cute short khaki trench coat, although you wouldn’t want to brave too much weather in a skirt like that, I guess!

The Good Queen’s undead nemesis seems to be catching up…