1. Sewed a dress.
2. Sewed another dress.
3. Discovered websites that sell vintage patterns(also called “heroin”).
4. Bought three more patterns and some fabric for more sewing.
5. Learned how to dance like a hippy at the Gallivan Center concert.
6. Saw my high school music teacher leading the marching band in the West Jordan July 4th parade.
7. Watched the West Jordan City fireworks.
8. Washed and waxed my car.
9. Went to the Western Stampede demolition derby.10. Washed my car again because it got rained on at the derby.
11. Ate some nachos.Nachos rule!
Friday Unrelated Information
1. The Tour de France starts tomorrow.
2. The Tour de France knitalong starts tomorrow, if you’re a knitting blogger and want to enter. (Although I’m really not clear on this concept: How, exactly, does the polka dot King of the Mountains jersey translate to knitting? Does one knit a jersey? Does one knit while climbing a hill? What?)
3. The West Jordan Western Stampede Demolition Derby is tomorrow at 7:00. Hot damn!
4. There’s a new cria baby at the alpaca ranch. His name is Zoom Zoom because he’s fast!
Business Speak That Must Go
I’m not working for the rest of the week, but that required a lot of slogging through Microsoft promotional materials Monday and Tuesday. Which made me realize that some of the accepted business phraseology is (maybe like a lot of business marketing) incredibly stupid. For example:
“Take it to the next level.” What, exactly, does this mean outside of a video game? And do you really want to compare improving your business to Super Mario Brothers?
“Full service.” To my knowledge, this only applies to filling stations before about 1970. “Full service” does not accurately describe any sort of services a business may offer, either.
“Grow your business.” your business This is the one I hate most. You can increaserevenue; you can expand your business offerings; you can even create more profits. But business is not a plant. You can’t grow it.
I just had to vent. I’m going to enjoy not thinking about any sort of business for a few days, and instead think about fabric and demolition derbies.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Be Glad It’s Not A Dress Edition
I’m not shy about wearing really loud prints or really big prints, but this fabric made me question myself: It’s a print of Mexican loteria cards that I loved online, but that just screamed “fortune teller” in person. But I had ordered enough to make a dress, so I thought I’d better make a dress. I was so relieved when I saw the bodice wasn’t working and I could make it into a skirt.
Because it doesn’t scream “fortune teller” at all as a skirt. Not at all. (I wore it yesterday and caught someone reading my skirt during a meeting.)
Other things I’m glad are not a dress:
A pillow, finally finished. It’s for the living room but it got its picture taken in the kitchen, where the light is better. The back is knitted, but it needs a button, so I’m not showing it off.
Another thing I’m glad isn’t a dress– no, wait, this is going to be a dress:
It will be another big full skirted 50’s dress with a square neck, so I can pretend I’m in “Roman Holiday.” Except the print is of Venice. Venetian Holiday!
Fashion Quote!
We find our clothes, our clothes find us: they save us from being lost. At home in dress, we enjoy its touch, its crispness, smoothness, softness, texture, its feel on the skin it fits: these pleasures serving the larger pleasure of being at last, or hoping we are, our more glamorous and more potent self. In dressing we enter an inheritance, which may include a new self, which we feel to be a ‘true’ self, revealed or rather realized by the donning of these good clothes.
From Men in Black by John Harvey (U of Chicago Press, 1996)
I found this on the trusty Dress a Day blog and was struck by the first line. My hobby doesn’t just keep me from talking to the houseplants and serve as a substitute for a social life; it’s profound, too.
Unrelated Information Again!
Yesterday’s post got me thinking that maybe I have some traits that could be a little, um, addictive. That may explain why I finished a dress last week, have one cut out to sew this weekend, and found fabric for the next one last night. And why I’ve made 7 tops, 2 other dresses, and one failed pair of pants in the last four months. It’s a good thing I’ve never tried cocaine.
Here’s an article from the NY Times about liking your mom. Well, duh—it’s your mom!
I only work Monday and Tuesday next week, then have some vacation. I’ll be sewing (of course) and enjoying being outside. Just like this kitten.
Cure For A Book Hangover
I’ve been thinking about how much sewing I’ve been doing lately, and I tried to remember what I used to do with my time before. And I remembered that I used to read. Growing up, I would read to the exclusion of everything else, read instead of playing with my brother, read at night until I would hear my mother shout-whisper “Go to bed!” from across the hall. I remembered all that, and I couldn’t remember the last new book I had read from start to finish.
So I picked up some Cormac McCarthy, thinking I should start with something good, and he’s so good he’s made me despair of having any goals. But The Crossing is as bleak and sad as it is well-written. I would read a paragraph and have to pause to absorb both how astonishing the prose was and how god-awfully depressing the events were. At that rate, I realized it would take me years to read it. And it was a library book.
So on Monday I returned The Crossing and picked out the exact opposite: a science fiction book about crystal miners in outer space, and (cringe) a Judith Krantz book. Something also made me get a Dashiell Hammett detective novel. By Wednesday morning, I had read both the outer space crystal book and the Judith Krantz. I had stayed up nearly all night both nights, not because I liked the books, oh no, but because I am incapable of not seeing what happens next. (That sentence explains a lot of my personal life over the years.) (And that is also why I will happily re-read books–I’m able to put them down.)
Anyway, due to lack of sleep and the literary equivalent of sugar-coated speed, I felt like I had a book hangover. I was dubious about reading anything more than the cooking time on the linguine box last night, but I peeked at the first page of the detective novel. (The Dain Curse), which begins, “It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick wall.” I kept reading. I didn’t hate myself for not being able to stop and sleep. I didn’t hate Hammett for lacking things like characterization, or vocabulary, or a point, becaus he had all those things. (Along with about twelve bodies, three suspects, and a pretty young morphine addict.) It was delightful. I went to bed happy–and yes, I finished it.
More Fun Online
This was posted on the Dress a Day blog this week, and I agree with it completely. (Dress a Day is really great–not only do you get vintage patterns and lots of talk about sewing, she uses words like “aleatory”.)
My take is that people who wear clothes on airplanes that are better suited to washing a series of strangers’ cars at $5/pop have essentially given up all hope that they will ever be the recipient of happy chance. They’ve decided serendipity is not for them, so they’ve forsaken the notion that perhaps one day they may need to make a good first impression on a stranger. (They’ve also decided that they don’t ever need to be upgraded to business class, never mind first.)
Last night I saw clothes that said “I model for Frederick’s of Hollywood, Lamé Division” and clothes that said “my favorite Saturday morning cartoon and a bowl of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs are what I REALLY need right now. ” None of those clothes said “Take me seriously, please.”
I’m not against comfort — but there’s a line between ‘comfortable’ and ‘raggedy-ass lazy’ and the airport is not the place to cross that line. An airplane is a confined space, and, like any confined space, demands MORE civility and regard for others, not less.
Tuesday Project Roundup: 1950’s Housewife Edition
The loudly striped orange fabric from last Tuesday’s roundup turned into this dress. It didn’t get any quieter, either. I used a reproduction pattern from 1952 and nearly five yards of fabric. The skirt is a full bias circle, meaning if I twirled in it, it would flare out into a perfect circle. (Not that I’ve tried it or anything.) It reminds me of Lucy on vacation with Ricky in Florida, or of what a housewife would wear for her Wednesday errands.
And here’s a little cardigan I finished a couple of weeks ago. It’s like something the housewife would change into when the errands were done and dinner was ready and “the Mister” was due to arrive home any minute. And while that scenario made my skin crawl a little, I like the cardigan.
Monday Unrelated Information
1. This was me this morning. Spots and everything.
2. Ray Bradbury writes a story a week. Why don’t I do that? I stay up late enough to write a story a night.
3. Tomorrow: A project roundup, including some knitting I never photographed and some dresses. (Yet it took me ten minutes to find something to wear this morning. Why?! I’ve been making things to wear for three months now.)