New Victorian day and evening gowns!

La Vie Champetre (Country Life) is now available! In bluebell, lavender and mint, this Victorian day gown with Irish lace detailing comes with a matching straw hat and lace parasol.

As a new release, the gown is 50% off this week, just 125L!


AUGUST BALL GOWN
Our specially priced 100L Victorian Summer ball gown, "Aout" (August) is now available in the entryway:

Matching ball gown shoes are also available for just 10L!

Be sure to check out all our other 100L ball gowns on the third floor, too.

Back again... again.

As some of you already know, I've had a lot of ups and downs with my health over the last year and a half, which has forced me to prioritize my time in SL and on the computer.

Thus the dearth of posts for the last four months.

I'm intending to give the blog a go once again, as I've had a couple people comment that they like being able to catch up on Montagne Noire news outside of SL... too often inworld group notices are missed, or never delivered, or offline email notices go into spam folders and are never seen again.

So please do keep an eye on this blog -- I encourage you to follow it if you're a Google or Blogger user. I intend to continue writing not just about Montagne Noire news, but also about issues in Second Life, when the mood strikes. ;)

Thanks all for your patience, and for reading. Cheers!

Easter Egg Hunt item preview - no foolin'!

So here's the scoop: Starting tonight at midnight (Friday, April 1), ten damask eggs will be hidden throughout the three floors of our Caledon Oxbridge Village main store through the end of the month.

Each egg will contain a 10L clothing/accessory item, all of which coordinate into two outfits!

These items also coordinate with our specially priced 100L Avril (April) ball gown!

A personal note: April is a special month for me because it's my birthday month and the one year anniversary of my mastectomy surgery.

In appreciation of the support of my patrons and friends in SL during the past year, I'm celebrating my recovery from breast cancer with this special event. I hope you'll stop in and join in on the fun!

Breast Cancer Awareness gown featured

Miss Dymphne has graciously featured my 100L Breast Cancer ball gown on her new blog, Dymphne's Album, here and here.

Thank you Miss Dymphne! You are absolutely lovely.

Montagne Noire Easter Hunt starts April 1!

It's my birthday month and the one year anniversary of my mastectomy surgery, so I'm celebrating my recovery with this special event at the main store in Caledon Oxbridge Village.

Photos of the gift items will be forthcoming soon!

Getting back in the groove

March 2011 marks a year since I was diagnosed with breast cancer in RL. It's been a long haul, but my prognosis is excellent.

As you can see from the date of my last post on this blog, I had to stop posting last summer when I started chemotherapy. Treatment was a real struggle; I ended up going into the hospital twice, and eventually we decided to stop chemo treatment early, because it was making me so ill.

After some recuperation, I jumped head first into radiation treatment and that took a lot out of me too.

Throughout the last few months I've kept a low profile on SL, mostly focusing on maintaining the creative and business side of Montagne Noire. When I've felt well enough to sit in the computer chair for long periods of time, I've released some new outfits; when sitting was too tiring, I had to limit myself to addressing customer service issues.

So one of the things that fell by the wayside during the last few months was this blog. I simply couldn't justify the effort and time for it... but now I'm intending to make a re-commitment to it. While this blog has but a small following, I think it's an important exercise for me as a RL writer.

One of the lingering effects of treatment has been trouble with words... Word Amnesia would be a good term for it. There's a neurological condition the oncologists call "chemo brain" which affects different patients in different ways; it just so happens that it's affecting my ability to spell correctly and conjure the correct words for people, places and objects. What it hasn't affected fortunately is my ability to create clothing. That must go on in a different part of my brain.

My posts will likely be brief in nature, mostly announcing new releases, sales etc., as I did before. So please stay tuned!

Montagne Noire Merchantile in Deadwood

The newly reset Deadwood western RP sim has a great little merchants section within Fort Laramie, the starting point of your journey to Deadwood (in real life about 400 miles, I think).

When the sim owners rebuilt the sim recently, one of the things that was important to them was to get as authentic a look as they could get from their merchant "outfitters," those businesses that in the real life Old West set up adjacent to such places at Fort Laramie to provide prospectors and travelers with the supplies they needed to survive their long journey. So you won't find any flashy or modern looking vendors here.

I finally updated my little outfitter display with vendors that resemble dry goods crates (an idea encouraged by the sim owners). I narrowed the clothing selection to what I thought would be the best fit, so to speak, for role play in Deadwood.

Stop by and see what you think -- and check out the amazing reset of the Deadwood sim at SURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Phoenix%20Pass/116/170/767. Its focus on authenticity and providing visitors with actual historical background about the real town without a doubt make it the best western RP sim in SL. The role play is a blast too!