Beangirl: The Blog

100. Always A Nice Round Figure. (Much Like Mine. Ha.)

2012-01-27T11:49:00.001-06:00

So this week I garnered my 100th follower. Amazing! And of course, I figure this is an opportunity to... shamelessly promote myself and toot my own horn for a while.

Don’t act like you’re surprised.

In honor of the 100th follower (who happens to be the lovely Karin from “Sew Here We Go Again”) I've decided to make a new page called "The Best Of Beangirl: The Blog". Um. In case a new reader might be slightly, uh, bored. With the recent fare. Er... because it's been slightly slow lately. A bit.

In fact I think most of the recent followers have actually been reading for a while (like the above-mentioned Karin) but what the heck. New page. Up there. At the top. Check it out.

Every Girl Deserves A Mink…. y.

2012-01-23T12:04:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago my mom bought the Evil Monkeys some minky fleece blankets with Valentine's hearts on them, with the idea of making them Valentine's Jackets. Well. With the idea that I would make them Valentine’s Jackets. (I was not consulted.)

Now, I'll be the first to admit that minky blankets from the discount store are a bargain-and-a-half when it comes to buying fabric. Each one of these blankets provided 60"x60" of fabric for $8.00. You can't beat that kind of pricing. I can't get a solid-colored minky for less than about $10/yard at the fabric store. And the quality seems a little higher in these blankets. Or at least, they’re a lot softer. So it's worth it if you want to sew minky.

On the other hand, you then have to sew minky. I hate sewing minky.

Seriously. We will be picking fluff out of our hair for months.

Still, I ended up with a cute little cardigan/coat for The Big One.

I managed to bribe her into wearing it by putting cat buttons on it. She'll pretty much do anything for cats.

She's a freak.

The pattern is Ottobre 4-2011 #21. The only changes I made were to use the original hemming on the blanket instead of the hemline of the pattern (it’s slightly curved) and I added cuffs to the sleeves (because I really really really didn’t want to hem the minky). This whipped up really fast (like, it took me less than 3 hours to trace and cut and sew, so a normal person could probably do it in an hour). Of course, I didn’t put the pockets in.

I decided to use the same pattern for both Evil Monkeys, which actually worked out ok because they're both a 122 in height. Of course one of them is a 98 in width while the other is a 146. So there's that. But I just cut out the 122 as-is for The Big One (it's a little loose) and now I can just widen the pattern for TLo and I don't have to trace twice. I'm thinking this might be useful in the future. Or at least for as long as they stay close to the same height.

Blurry, but happy. And fuzzily warm. What more can you ask for?

XXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXX XX

2012-01-18T09:23:00.001-06:00

While I totally support the right of people and corporations to maintain rights over their property (intellectual or otherwise), I don’t really think the average person should be punished to maintain it.

Today I was going to show you my favorite dresses from last week’s episode of Downton Abbey.

Nice, huh?

Does it really harm the makers of this show when I post a photo praising their lovely work? Apparently it does.

Think SOPA and PIPA won’t affect you? It probably will.

See? I Did Make Something.

2012-01-13T16:51:00.001-06:00

I made a Sears Catalog Model. From 1973.

She lives in a fabulous world of sunshine and rainbows and bellbottom corduroy pants. She hears the sounds of the happy birds calling her….

Actually she looks like a mannequin, don’t you think? If only she were as quiet as one. Or as obedient.

The jacket is Ottobre 4-2008 #38. I used weird pastel lime green polkadot minky. Because I have yards and yards and yards of it. For some reason.

The jacket is cute. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know that based on the photos of TLo wearing it, since she insisted on putting it on over her bulky tunic (also cute. Y’know… on it’s own…).

I did try to take some other photos. Not very successfully.

For instance, I’m pretty sure The Big One’s head isn’t really three sizes too big. (I mean, I’m willing to go with two sizes too big, but three just seems extreme…)

I can’t even think of anything to say about this. It’s just disturbing.

What are they looking at???

I give up.

In Which I Am Crabby. And Snarky. And Not Very Funny.

2012-01-09T14:14:00.001-06:00

I was going to make a post about sewing. Honest.

I made a new minky fleece jacket for TLo. It's Ottobre 4-2008 #38. It's cute. But I forgot to take pictures.

I finished (mostly) re-padding my new french friend. I didn't forget to take pictures. No way am I taking pictures. Of what is, essentially, me naked. If I was purple. And didn't have arms... or legs... or a head. You don't need to see that. Trust me.

I started fitting a new tunic from Ottobre (5-2010 #6). But then I realized that I am a freak of nature. And apparently can't be fitted. So I got irritated. And I don't have pictures.

Random funny things:

"Put a bird on it and call it art."

Fine. That's the only random funny thing I can think of right now.

But it's funny.

Is it December yet? I could use a Christmas vacation.

99 Years.

2012-01-05T16:13:00.001-06:00

Eve Arnold, 1912 – 2012

Kaleidoscopic.

2011-12-30T10:01:00.001-06:00

I made this little tabletop quilt for my mom for Christmas. I don’t think she was very impressed. Which to be honest I’m not totally surprised. It’s sort of ugly. It’s the only present I made this year, which is a good thing since it took me waaay longer than I planned. And that was doing a really sloppy job with it. I hate to think how long it would have taken if I’d actually used some precision.

You can see my truly awful hand quilting and poorly matched piecing in the photo above. In case you can’t tell, this is a very small kaleidoscope quilt à la Paula Nadlestern. I own these two books.

While I find most of her quilts visually jarring, I think her piecing concept is a little bit of design genius. Her process suits me because you “design as you go”. I find this a much more enjoyable type of piecing than “regular” quiltmaking where most of the designing is done at the beginning and then the rest is just production.

Unfortunately, you get pretty sketchy results when you scale the whole thing down to 8”x10” and don’t have hours and hours to spend searching through your piles and piles of stash for the perfect combinations. Despite, you know, what would at first glance seem like a lot of choices.

I have crazy stash.

I did rediscover just how much blue and white fabric I had purchased six years ago with the idea of making a full-size kaleidoscope/snowflake quilt. We’re talking dozens of yards. I collected the fabric and then I put it aside for a “better time” to start working. Then I got distracted by making clothes.

Once while I was shopping in the now-defunct local quilt shop one of the women there asked me why I didn’t take a machine quilting class that I’d expressed interest in.

“I don’t have time,” I said.

“Why not? What are you doing?”

“I make a lot of clothes.”

She literally “tsked” and shook her head in disgust. “Why are you wasting your time on clothes?” she asked. It was pretty funny.

Although she had a point.

Best. Song. Ever.

2011-12-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

I ♥ AV Club.

Electric Six covers "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch"

Cashing In My CDs.

2011-12-18T11:46:00.001-06:00

Ha. You didn’t think I meant money, did you? Like I have money. Psssht.

No, I have something much richer and more meaningful: used CDs. I have literally dozens of these things. My employer send me files on them and once I’ve downloaded them, they’re useless.

Totally and utterly useless.

Unless you want to make one of these:

Or one of these:

Or even these:

Hmmmm.

Hahha. I didn’t put in any photos. You noticed that, right? To be honest, I did not find one single solitary “CD craft” that I would even remotely consider making. And I didn’t really feel like poking fun at the crafts that other people did (in some bizarre way feel compelled to) make.

CD crafts. Suggestions?

En Vogue. Not.

2011-12-12T06:00:00.000-06:00

So the big kerfuffle lately is, of course, the super-hush-hush digital Vogue Archive. Which is, essentially, a digital copy of every single solitary issue of Vogue ever printed. From cover to cover. And you can subscribe to it.

Oooooo. Ahhhhhh. Ooooooooh.

Um. For $1,575. A year.

Yeeeaaaah…. I’ll just get right on that….

On the other hand, there is free access to the Vogue Encyclopedia (rather irritatingly called the “Voguelepedia” or something stupid like that). At least you can look up some basic fashion facts if you’d like. Sort of.

“But wait!” you shout. “There must be something for me! Yes, me! What about me?!”

Fine. I give you this: the Valentino Virtual Museum.

You heard me.

You have to download the app to your computer. Then you can just wander around in here, looking at dresses, watching videos… click on a dress and you get this:

Sketches. Photos. History. Zoom in. Wow.

I love this thing. I love that it’s free. I love the attitude…. I mean, come on. Their graphics quality setting button is labeled “good”, “beautiful” and “fantastic”. That’s a little bit awesome.

You’ve probably already seen this or heard about it. But if not, you should check it out. I definitely wish all the couture houses would do this. Right?

There. I’ve done my Good Fashion Deed for the week.

You’re welcome. Again.

Best. Comic. Ever.

2011-12-07T07:00:00.000-06:00

I had absolutely nothing to say today so I thought I’d just share my absolutely most favoritest ever comic strip. Ever.

It goes with me wherever I am. And now, it can go with you.

You’re welcome.

(P.S. It’s from Calvin and Hobbes. I think he stopped writing them about 20 years ago.)

I Had A Bad Feeling About This...

2011-12-03T15:08:00.001-06:00

And I wasn’t wrong. But eventually it worked out. I won't bore you with the gory, painful details. Suffice it to say, after nearly two months (you heard me, two months) and multiple phone calls to Official Agencies (don't ask) I finally –finally– got my Star Wars Purse Of Awesomeness.

On the up-side, I actually had occasion to say to a faceless Customer Service Drone -- er... Representative, "Yes. This is the Star Wars purse I was looking for."

Seriously.

While this Star Wars Purse of Awesomeness is, well, awesome, it does have a minor (minor) flaw. Namely, being a bowling-style bag it only has one inner pocket. Which is actually one more pocket than I was expecting, but not sufficient pocketness to hold, you know, My Stuff.

But I have Stuff! What to do, what to do? Make Stuff Holders, of course.

I used this tutorial from FlossieTeacakes, simply because it was the first tutorial I found online that met my stringent criteria of being roughly the appropriate shape and size and having lots of pretty pictures to look at. I'm super picky like that.

In fact, it turned out to be a reasonable tutorial and I can recommend it.

The only change I made to this first pouch was to add a little strip of ribbon for a zipper-pullifier type thing... um... you know, one of those little tabs that you can grab at the top of the zipper so as to get a little leverage on it when opening it. I don't know if it's necessary with this particular pouch, I just like those so I added it. Otherwise I made the pouch exactly as instructed (which as you well know is pretty unusual of me, the following of instructions and whatnot). The basic concept is pretty simple and I could have figured it out without the tutorial if I felt like putting in the effort, but well... right? "Effort".

You can totally take this basic pattern and do lots of different shapes and variations, which I plan on doing this weekend. I need Stuff Holders, remember? Meantime, this is the first one and it's about the right size for my small hairbrush and sundry grooming and hygiene products that I keep in my purse. My next variation will be about half this size for my Ridiculous Collection of Jump Drives and Flash Cards and then I’ll probably make another this size for Pens And Junk.

And why am I telling you all this, you ask? I'm telling you this because this is a very simple pouch pattern that makes a nicely finished product that can be adjusted in size to fit a variety of uses. It’s great for using up scraps and if you interface, it’s nice and sturdy. Aaaaand, if you made up three in various sizes using fabulous silk remnants that you got from your friend in Japan last year (er... just as an example) and tied them up in a ribbon or something, you'd have yourself a nice little holiday gift package. Now wouldn't you?

(Ok. Fine. It wasn’t two months. It was five weeks. That’s still way too long to wait for a Star Wars Purse of Awesomeness. I am only human, people.)

Sorry, Jake.

2011-11-25T15:55:00.001-06:00

I have absolutely nothing interesting to say about this.

Fortunately, it pretty much speaks for itself. Because I’m too tired from all the tryptophan to really do anything. Other than loll around and listen to music from the 70’s.

Which frankly is pretty much what I do all day anyway.

On the upside, I just bought a whole Roxy Music album that we apparently didn’t own.

I know. The horror. I really have no idea how we survived this long without it.

Famous Engineering Disasters Throughout History

2011-11-21T10:04:00.001-06:00

In 1889 the Northern-Pacific railway company proposed the building of a trestle bridge to span the Tacoma Narrows. They didn't get one. However, in 1940 the world's third-longest suspension bridge was opened spanning the Tacoma Narrows. It was an engineering marvel.

The moral of this story? Sometimes a good plan just doesn't end well.

The entire third grade is generously being treated with a field trip next week. They're all going to the annual production of The Nutcracker and to lunch at Texas Roadhouse. The permission slip instructs that they should wear "holiday dress clothes" or "good everyday clothes".

Apparently all the boys wanted to wear tuxedos. They were vetoed.

The Big One doesn't really have anything fancy to wear, because she has a bad mother. So her bad mother, in a fit of rare guilt, agreed to make her a dress out of The Big One's most favorite fabric ever: polyester black stretch panné velvet.

The Big One is, in fact, the reincarnation of Stevie Nicks. If Stevie Nicks is dead. Is Stevie Nicks still alive?

Anyway, this was the plan:

This is what she got:

And of course, this is now The Big One's most favorite dress ever. She wore it to school today for "free dress day". She was desperate to know if I could get it washed by Thursday so she can wear it again for Thanksgiving. She'll probably wear it every weekend for the next six months.

It looks like a bad cassock.

I have total and complete sympathy with the engineers of the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

E≠MC²

2011-11-18T15:02:00.001-06:00

You know what I love about neutrinos?

No, not that they defy the laws of physics as we currently define them. No, not that they are so super-fast that we question their very existence. No, not even that this existence will allow us to see into the center of the galaxy.

Psshhht. Whatever.

I like them because they make this pretty pattern.

Photograph: Cern/Science Photo Library

I am all about the pretty patterns.

The Fabric Hog. No, I’m Not Talking About Myself. Sheesh.

2011-11-10T16:34:00.001-06:00

I made TLo two more dress/top/tunic thingies. For once I was rather clever in my planning (and by "planning" I mean I actually thought about what I was going to do for more than five seconds before I started doing it). TLo really needs some winter "weekend" clothes, but she could use a few warmer school uniform items as well so... I cleverly decided to make the first tunic in a solid knit, with the theory that she could both wear it to school and on the weekend and if it fit I could use a more interesting knit for other versions.

I know. Shocking concept. I like to think outside the box like that. I am a rebel.

I was so excited to be making weekend clothes that doubled as school clothes that I got all giddy and didn't really think about how that would effect my fabric usage. I’ve really been wanting to make the girls some weekend knit clothes because I have heaps of end-bits and odd-pieces of knits in bright florals and stripes and such that I am desperate to get out of the sewing room (so as to facilitate the guilt-free purchasing of new knits, of course... I'm willing to admit that my motives aren't in any way selfless).

I had to pick through all the many many many cute knit patterns I have (curse you, Ottobre Design!). And so of course I chose this pattern because I thought it would be flattering on TLo... which it is. It’s the right proportion in the body, the right length of skirt and the extra-wide collar lets her wear a turtleneck despite her no-neck situation (sadly, she takes after her mother in this).

Ottobre Design 6-2011 #18

All good so far. Famous last words because, Lo! Due to the shape of the skirt, in size 122 length/146 width the pattern takes one-and-a-half yards of knit. With a lot of waste. Of all those piles of odd-ball knits, I hardly had anything that was long enough for this. Instead of using up half-yards and odd bits, I ended up creating even more.

Doh!

Anyway, here's the first version:

Here's TLo "posing":

And here she is doing… the merengue! Ole!

I made a cute second version in a black mini-floral knit with a slightly less-puffy sleeve, but I didn't get a photo of it yet. They're both a little big in the shoulder, but I figure that's better than too small. In person this is very cute on TLo, so we're going with a "win" on this one. Despite the fabric-hogginess of it all.

Because I’ll probably have to buy some more solid knits in longer lengths.

You know. To make a few more versions for school.

What?

Don’t judge me!

This Is Not The Handbag You Are Looking For…

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-06:00

Because it’s MINE.

Mine mine mine mine mine mine.

I rock.

Since Angie A. Beat Me To It…

2011-11-06T08:05:00.001-06:00

…and already snagged AC/DC, I’m going with “Shake Rattle And Roll”. I always did have sort of a soft spot for that psychotic pedophile anyway. No wait. That was Jerry Lee Lewis.

I love Bill Haley.

This is an awesome clip, apparently from a Mexican movie. Check out the clothes, Daddy-O!

Last night we had a 5.6 earthquake, apparently centered directly between me and Angie A. The house was a-rockin’ people. (Oooo, could have gone with Stevie Ray Vaughn on that one too…)

Angie agrees that it was probably caused by my blasphemously trash-talking Daniel Craig earlier that evening.

Fine. She hasn’t agreed with me on that yet. But I’m confident she will.

Just in case, I take back all the mean things I said about Daniel Craig and I promise to never, ever think bad thoughts about him again.

Well.

You know.

Some bad thoughts, of a certain sort, might slip through.

I am not a nun, people.

Skirts. Yep. Skirts.

2011-11-01T12:02:00.001-05:00

I made TLo a couple of skirts last week. I used a pattern I've used at least three or four times in the past four years or so.

Ottobre 4-2006 #27

You'd think, wouldn't you, that if I've made this skirt at least four or five times that I'd have something interesting to say about it... right? Something enlightening or dramatic or at least just witty.

I'm having trouble coming up with anything.

So here's what I have to say about this skirt: I made this in about 2 hours. Including tracing. Which means a normal person (like you... yes, you!) could make this in about... 25 minutes.

That's pretty awesome.

Here's the school-appropriate version I made first:

It’s khaki twill. And khaki twill. With khaki topstitching. You’re seeing a theme here, right?

Here's the weekend-appropriate version I made next:

It’s green and green-and-floral twill. I forgot to sew ribbon around the bottom of this one (which I had to skip on the first one anyway because I simply couldn't find any that matched... er... in my closet. That was about as much effort as I wanted to put into that.) I'll maybe get some ribbon this weekend and add it around the hemline, it's a nice little detail.

This is what a zombie baby looks like after a night of wild binging on Halloween candy.

I tried to get a picture of the other one, but when I turned the light on she hissed and flung her arms over her arms and ran skulking into the closet to hide. Awesome.

Cookies For Halloween. Waaaay Better Than Candy.

2011-10-31T17:10:00.001-05:00

Trick…

…or Treat.

Decisions, decisions….. I’d have to go with… trick.

And treat. I’m greedy.

Ok, mostly that was for Angie A’s benefit. I was just going to email it to her. But I figured, “Why not share the wealth?” I’m super-generous like that.

No. Really. I am.

Ok, fine. Here’s something else:

TLo was beside herself with pride about her Hermione Granger costume (she once asked me with deep concern if I would let her go to Hogwarts when her letter came--- I’m all like, “Yep. Sure. Off you go! Have fun!!”)

Unfortunately, Mean Kids suck. She was very unhappy at the end of school today because “everyone” said her costume was “the worst one”. Although you could take that with a pretty good chunk of sodium chloride. It’s entirely possible only one kid (who shall remain nameless) said that. He’s like that. They’ve gotten into serious and heated ideological Harry Potter debates before.

And then there’s the other one. Apparently the consensus on Facebook is that The Big One is wearing a “devilrina” costume. You know. A devil? And a ballerina? That’s totally normal, right?

Well, at least it’s highly appropriate.

Next time I’ll show you pictures of the two little skirts I made for TLo. Honest.

More Uniformity. It’s Still So… Uniform.

2011-10-26T15:15:00.001-05:00

So, should I be disturbed that my post about a random celebrity I've never met (or am likely to meet) has engendered more commentary, email and excitable conversation than... anything I actually contributed to the world? I mean, contributed other than bringing the amazing hawtness of Jason Isaacs to your attention. I didn't make Jason Isaacs. I didn't offer any useful addition to the world at large or even the small cosmos of our little sewing circle (again, other than perhaps my bringing the amazing hawtness of Jason Isaacs to your attention... which I supposed is worth something...).

-sigh- Sadly, I feel this might be the story of my life. The generating of random useless pieces of entertainment is my contribution to the world.

Jonas Salk I am not.

Saying that, I have now heard three or four interesting stories about meeting super-hot celebrities-- some random and fleeting, some... not so random or fleeting. This is pretty cool (for me). But... useful? Contributing to the Greater Good? Hmmm.

To make myself feel better, I'm posting up pictures of the latest addition to TLo's school uniform.

Ottobre 1-2007 #19. I made this in Angelina Ballerina fabric for The Big One when she was four. It was keeeyute-cute. It suddenly sprang back to mind this past week as a more interesting option than a plain A-line jumper. I had to grade it up in width, as TLo is now a 116/122 in length but a 134/146 in width and this pattern only goes up to 128. Still that wasn't very tricky, I just added some width to everything down the center front and back based on the difference between the body measurements for a 128 and a 146. Easy-peasy.

No, the big problem was the ruffles. This pattern calls for a full back in fashion fabric and then attaching the ruffles to that. Which when I made it in light-weight cotton wasn't a problem. However, not so good when using bottom-weight twill. I was worried the dress would weigh forty pounds and possibly I'd get a phone call from school saying my child was stuck on her back like an overturned turtle, arms and legs waving frantically in the air because of her ridiculously overbalanced dress. I had visions of all the other kids solemnly stepping over her on the playground or a swarm of crazed seven-year-olds howling in panic about "that kid who's stuck on her back under the jungle gym".

Obviously the solution was to make the ruffles in something light-weight. Except it had to match the base fabric exactly, lest I get a nasty phone call from the school informing me my child's uniform was not uniform. (OK fine, I've never once received such a call but still... I don't want to chance it.)

Here’s an over-exposed image to show you the ruffles better:

I have thirty-three pieces of light brown, dark brown and navy blue fabric. Not one of them matches another one. Not. One. Much cursing was to be heard. And I just downright refuse to buy one more piece of light brown, dark brown or navy blue fabric until I get rid of some of that other stuff. Even I have fabric-buying limits.

Stop laughing.

Despite the fact that I didn't think red-headed TLo would really rock a black dress, blacks are slightly easier to match. I finally managed to match up a black twill with a black knit close enough to get by. In the photos it looks like the knit is much darker, but that's a trick of the lighting. It's not nearly so noticeable in person.

I also used a black-and-white cotton print to do the pockets and the little decorative bar on the front of the bodice. Despite the above avowal of trying to avoid a distraught phone call from school about non-uniform uniforms, I feel compelled to include a small detail of pattern or color in these dumb things.

Yes. I'm a rebel like that.

One note if you're going to make this yourself, something I realized the last time I made this and forgot about this time: the straps are crazy long. I put TLo's buttons about 4-5 inches up the length of the straps and they really need to come up another 2 inches at least. In fact, I had to pin up the straps this morning before she went to school because they were just not snug enough. It's almost as if Ottobre designed the straps to use adjustable overall buckles and then forgot and did buttons-and-buttonholes instead. Which if you want to do overall buckles would be handy. If I make this again (I probably will, it's just too cute not to), I think I'll do that.

I like to avoid buttonholes whenever possible.

A Cookie For A Cookie… it’s like Hammurabi. You know… Hammurabi.

2011-10-18T19:18:00.001-05:00

So y’know how sometimes you think to yourself, “Self, that there actor is interesting. And sort of… interesting. In an… interesting sort of way…” And then you don’t ever really think about that particular actor much ever again?

Did you watch Masterpiece Mystery this past week? They’re running BBC’s “Case Histories”. You should check it out. ‘Cause seriously:

Lucius Malfoy?

Michael Caffee?

That scary guy from The Patriot?

I mean, fine. Jason Isaacs is a good lookin’ dude. But…. evil villains… not really my type.

(Government-sanctioned psychopathic killers? Totally my type.

But I digress.

You’re welcome.)

Annnnyway…. Jason Isaacs. Case Histories. The good guy.

I want one for Christmas.

We leave cookies for Santa. I think Santa should, y’know, reciprocate.

Angie A: I See Your Bet And Raise You…

2011-10-11T23:01:00.001-05:00

I had these shoes in my cart. Almost. I went to do something else and when I came back… they were out of my size! Seriously. My head hurt. I had to lie down.

It was traumatic.

So I had to buy these instead. They were half price.

Had to.

It was also worth it to watch TLo and The Big One gleefully tottering around the living room in them this evening. I don’t know why, but they liked these. A lot.

Hmmmmm…. more trouble…..

I Hate Linen.

2011-10-05T22:34:00.001-05:00

No, really. I hate it.

In case you suffered from the misapprehension that I haven’t sewn anything in the past three months, I can assure you I have. At least one thing.

This thing, to be precise:

No wait. There’s more:

These, in case you were wondering, are photos of the linen jumper I made for TLo’s school uniform. Which I took after I washed it. For the fourth time.

Yes. You heard me. I’ve only washed this garment four times. And I’ll probably have to throw it in the trash.

I even piped the flippin’ pockets, people.

(It’s extra-wrinkly because it’s still wet from the washer. Also, I took a picture of my toes. Neato.)

This is what I used to make the Evil Self-Destructionator 2000: Ottobre 3/2011 #18. Cotton gingham. Outrageously poor-quality linen.

This is what a child looks like, frolicking and blithely making a mess, when she is blissfully aware that her dress has not self-destructed.

I’m not even going to bother to show you what a child in our house looks like when her dress self-destructs.

World. World, World, World….

2011-10-02T14:53:00.001-05:00

World, you fail me.

Not only did you not make me a Tintin purse, but you have also failed to make me these shoes. In a Tintin version, of course.

I’m disappointed, world. Deeply disappointed.

Note to self: find a pair of cheap red leather wedges. Post haste.

Note to other people: Awesome ideas for making comic book purses. Especially the leather-and-tshirt-print idea. Thanks!!

An Open Letter To The World

2011-09-22T22:30:00.001-05:00

Dear World,

I need a purse made out of comic books.

Preferably Tintin comic books.

Go forth, world. Make it happen.

Why are you still here, world? Shouldn’t you be making my Tintin purse happen?

Go FORTH, I say!!

UnHero.

2011-09-16T16:18:00.001-05:00

I don’t have heroes. I’m pretty firm on that. Always have been. When I was a little kid I used to get in trouble at school because I always put “none” on papers when they asked, “Who is your hero?” And then usually proceeded to argue about why I wasn’t going to put an answer. One teacher actually told me to just “make something up”. (Apparently it is beyond the scope of third grade teachers to deal with extremely cynical eight-year-olds…. finally at one point I just started putting down “President Carter”, despite having not one clue of any particular action on Mr. Carter’s part that might merit this judgment. Which is sort of ironic actually. If forced to pick a hero today, I’d probably say “President Carter”.)

Still, heroes or no, I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge people who have had a deep, fundamental influence on my thought-processes, whether directly or indirectly:

fashion-plate (cosmetic study x) ~ 1969-1970

Richard Hamilton

24 February 1922 ~ 13 September 2011

Polyvorousness. Apparently, It’s Contagious.

2011-09-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

You know. Like zombies.

So TLo, that Kate Spade Bloodhound From Hell, suddenly figured out that I was “doing something” with Polyvore that looked like something she should be doing.

-sigh-

So I made an account for her and The Big One to play with (because no way do I want people thinking I put together these grade-school collections).

Um.

Of course, that discounted the fact that the grade-schoolers have better fashion sense than I do. I give you Example A:

black cat by t-lo-and-the-big-one

Yes. That’s a Paul & Joe cocktail dress with 7 For All Mankind skinny jeans. And stacked peeptoes. And a Marc by Marc Jacobs clutch. This would be The Big One’s contribution to the fashion world.

And then there's Example B, courtesy of TLo:

"gryphondore" by t-lo-and-the-big-one

Now granted, TLo’s choices were all pretty low-rent. Except for the $1000 Zanotti stilettos. Which she pretty much insisted were the shoe of choice for this outfit.

And now they know about Polyvore.

What was I thinking?

It just goes to show, it never pays to try and be a “nice mom”. Never. Ever.

Ever.

Sometimes It’s Just Love At First Sight.

2011-09-10T10:52:00.001-05:00

And then it gets better.

These are my new shoes.

Yes. Meri Mekko fuchsia-and-red “Unikko" Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star low-tops. With white or fuchsia laces.

The instant I saw them online, I knew that they would be mine. Oh yes. Mine.

And then they arrived in the mail.

In this.

I’m leaving instructions in my will that I want to be buried with these items when I die.

When alien robot archeologists dig me up in 3000 years, they will decide I was a princess because I was buried with such splendid grave goods.

Oo… S’funny, In’t It?

2011-09-08T20:57:00.001-05:00

The Husband found this video last week. It’s gone slightly viral. If you’re, y’know, from Yorkshire.

Since I’m not getting far along with fitting a custom shell to pad out my new french friend (because I’m trying to study to pass a FLIPPIN’ USELESS TEST at the end of the month)… er… I figured you could get a dose of a funny accent.

Yes. People from Yorkshire are inherently funny. Because of their accents.

It’s a known fact.

Polyvore. It’s Still Fashion-and-collage P0rn.

2011-09-03T11:15:00.001-05:00

Last year my parents had a dinner party with a bunch of old friends. Somewhere along the line the conversation turned to shopping for purses at which point one gentleman (who shall remain nameless to protect the goofy) stated, “Well, you know: you just can’t buy a purse for under $1800.”

Apparently the look on my father’s face was spectacular. My mother had to reassure him several times in the next few days that yes, she could in fact buy a purse for less than $1800. She’s never spent more than $400 on a purse in her life.

I’ve never spent more than $40 on a purse in my life. I’m not much of a purse person. I kinda knew that already, but I really figured it out this week because of Angie A.

Yes, Angie A. That villainous purveyor of tempting time-sucks wickedly reminded me that I just don’t do enough Polyvoring anymore.

Oh no, don’t let the sweet dresses and kind-hearted posts fool you. She is pure evil.

I will say that Polyvoring can be pretty instructive. I always knew I had a hard time finding a purse I liked at the stores, but I figured I was just not trying that hard (because there’s nothing I hate more than shopping… except perhaps rugby. And cricket. And basically all sports.)

But no, not so! It’s NOT because I’m a lazy shopper. Because at Polyvore there are literally thousands of purses to peruse. And I pretty much don’t like any of them. So I’ve learned something. Polyvore: it’s informative.

And Polyvoring can be pretty amusing. As in, having proudly made the following set I rather disappointedly realized that it was basically what I wore to work that day (if I’d owned those exact pieces instead of pieces pretty much just like them).

Exactly like my work outfit… with the glaring exception of the $2500 Gucci purse. Not so much wearing that to work today. Or ever. It costs more than my car.

Which maybe explains why I can’t find a purse I like. You know you just can’t buy a purse for under $1800.

“Red Flag”. Really? That Was So Not Very Helpful.

2011-08-31T19:59:00.001-05:00

Elle C just commented in the last post to ask if we’re ok. She is a super-sweetie. We are not, as it happens, on fire. Which is always a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

Possum Kingdom is a ways away from us, which is where they’re continuing to have the Big Fires. We’ve had a few more small ones today (which isn’t surprising, the surprise is that we haven’t had more before now). We’re under a red flag warning, but we’ve been under that since… um… May. So that’s not really telling us anything. At all.

On the other hand, my eagle-eye view on the overpass at 5:00 pm showed the entire sky for miles and miles was filled with a haze of smoke and right now (7:30 pm) everything on the ground is hazy and smells like the world’s biggest bonfire-night. So I’m not sure if that’s blowing in from PK or if something else is burning that we just haven’t heard about yet. Here in town we’re most likely not going to feel the worst of any fires, unless something really catastrophic happens or we just happen to be unlucky and have a local house fire.

Anyway, we’re all good. Well. The Evil Monkeys are on their second week of school. Apparently they formed some sort of evil plan between them to the effect that they think their bedtime should now be 10 pm. They are sadly mistaken in this belief but as they persist in trying to stick to this devil’s pact they are, shall we say, a wee bit crabby.

I’m contemplating making them run around the backyard in the smoke for a little while. Surely a little smoke-induced asthma will make them, uh, sleepy. Right?

What?

R.I.P.

2011-08-26T18:59:00.001-05:00

It’s official.

The vintage look is dead.

In lieu of flowers, please send a charitable donation to a fashion victim of your choice. Preferably, uh, me. I like knit tops. And whimsical shoes. And red stuff.

I Bought A New Friend.

2011-08-22T21:10:00.001-05:00

Her name is Fifi. She’s French. La. Dee. Dah.

Actually, I don’t like her much. I mean, look at her. She’s a size 4.

Sheesh. Some people have all the luck.

Of course, I’ll probably like her better after a few weeks of my corruptive influence, after which she’ll end up looking Just. Like. Me. That’s my plan anyway. I’m all about corrupting bi-atches with hourglass figures who are a foot taller than me. They will go from a size 4 to a size, uh, Not 4. (You might think I’d at least be happy that I have size 4 shoulders… I’m not. This just means the rest of me looks that much more Not 4 in comparison.)

Hmmph. Stupid size 4 French friend and her 24” waist…

‘Course, I didn’t pay much for her. I guess you get what you pay for in store-bought friends.

I’ll keep you updated on the ongoing corruption. It requires quite a bit of effort from me, so y’know… it’ll be slow going. I don’t like effort.

This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain On… uh… TV.

2011-08-18T09:37:00.001-05:00

Seriously?

This made me laugh out loud at work. Which isn't really a good thing. Because then people want to know what I'm doing when I'm (theoretically) supposed to be working. Because my job isn’t that funny. Normally.

They're so annoying, wanting me to do actual work and whatnot. Sheesh.

But this made me laugh. Because really? I think it's totally hilarious that a crass, mass-market-posing-as-exclusivity, "let's all pretend to be living in the Hamptons even though we really live in Indianapolis" clothing store has the nerve to claim to be offended by a crass, manipulated-and-edited-but-posing-as-real, "let's all run around like stereotypical idiots" TV show.

It's like a $500-a-night "escort" who's offended at being compared to a $10-an-hour meth ho. I'm sorry. You're both still prostitutes. I think getting into the issue of "classiness" or a lack thereof is just semantics.

The best part? This headline has been posted under "Also In The News" on BBC News for over twenty-four hours now. Apparently, “Also In The News” is BBC code for “This Is Totally Ridiculous But We Thought You Could Use A Laugh Today… And Maybe Tomorrow Too”.

I was just telling Angie A. that watching reality TV is like binging on birthday cake: sure it's fun for a little while, but then you get all queasy and sick. On the other hand, last night she recommended something called "Dance Moms" that really sounds too good to pass up and also last night my sister recommended something called "Family Restaurant" that, just based on my sister's impersonations of the participants, sounds like something I may have to watch.

I take it back. It's not like birthday cake. It's like crack.

Just Say No.

Knock, Knock, Knock-off, Moth… er… You Know The Rest.

2011-08-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

I have Beyoncé the Giant Metal Chicken stuck in my head today.

---

So check this out: “Beyoncé” is in Microsoft’s Spell Check.

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The mind boggles.

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I’m trying to think up other famous people with ~~made-up~~ unusual names so I can Spell Check them too.

Um…. Condoleeza Rice was the only one I could think of. She’s in there.

That is awesome! Yep. I think you’ve really made it when you can be generically Spell Checked. (I can’t. My life sucks.)

Anyway to continue with our story: I was going to knock off this top from Modcloth. Honest.

I figured I could use my custom-drafted knit top pattern with the smocked neckline, keep the neckline unsmocked, cut a binding the full length of the unsmocked neckline, make a nice little twisted-binding, run a pretty ribbon or tie through it and gather it up to the desired neckline length. Easy-peasy.

And I could have done that, of course. But I didn't.

Because I forgot that I was going to do that and I went ahead and gathered the neckline and then cut the binding strip to the finished length. At which point I was highly tired of the whole thing and just wanted to get it over with already, so I just went with what I had. I finished the neckline, tacked a silk tie to the front and called it skippy.

Hence, my version isn't quite so fun as the original. And also not sleeveless. Um. If you didn’t notice.

On the other hand, it has a silk bow on the front. That can't be a bad thing. The bow looks better in person. Trust me.

Of course, the first day I wore it to work my co-worker's immediate response was, "Oh that's cute. And you can always change out that bow for a black one!"

Which I took to mean, "That top should have a black bow."

---

However, today the garment-and-shoe combination seen above elicited (from the same coworker) a heartfelt, "Well look at that nifty outfit you have going on there!" and a ten minute conversation about where I got the jeans, so... meh. What can you do? I guess it's working.

I'm going with that.

Yes. I’m That Bored.

2011-08-08T15:11:00.000-05:00

I’ve made two tops that actually fit and started a jumper for TLo’s school uniform. But I still can’t get my camera to work properly. Although admittedly, I haven’t really been trying that hard…

Still. Here’s how bored I am, since I don’t have anything to show you from the sewing room:

Yep. I made a double-sided meal planner/grocery list. I reformatted my meal-planning sheet and based the list part off an existing list I apparently got from MelanieMauer.com, although I have no idea what I was doing there in the first place. Literally. No idea.

Anyway, meals listed on one side, groceries needed on the other. Most Frequently Purchased items on the list and then a few spaces for extras as needed. Fold it in half and laminate. Voila! Dry-erase magical goodness for the grocery store. Or in my case, I use a fine point Sharpie and just wipe it clean with rubbing alcohol when I get home. That way it doesn’t smear all over you. You know, while you’re shopping in the 112 degree heat. That you’ve had for 73 consecutive days. Yeah. That heat.

Or you can print on both sides, cut it in half and have double-sided disposables. I actually have both, dry-erase and in a pad.

Because I have padding compound at work.

So I make notepads. Lots and lots of notepads.

Did I mention I was bored?

Yep.

I was going to make a link to download the planner. But of course, that would mean that you have to buy what I buy. My co-workers seemed to think having bamboo shoots and coconut milk on my “frequently bought” list was weird.

I have no idea what those people eat. We wouldn’t make it through the week without bamboo shoots and coconut milk.

Ok fine. If you want a blank one you can download it here: The I’m-Bored-What’s-For-Dinner Planner.

But it’s not nearly as much fun if you have to write everything in yourself.

I’m just saying.

Mine.

2011-08-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

I Am Wacky, Booooy.

2011-08-03T14:53:00.001-05:00

I am SO SUPER PROUD OF MYSELF.

Out of the top five "Wackiest American Roadside Attractions", I've seen four. Some of them multiple times.

I ROCK.

No, seriously. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

Don’t ask.

I also can’t believe that the list doesn’t include the World’s Largest Prairie Chicken which is just a hop, skip and a jump away from that ball of twine. I’ve seen that a fair number of times too. Like about a bazillion.

It’s big. It’s a prairie chicken. ‘Nuff said.

I can’t get my flippin’ camera to work, so you get to read about the Top Ten Wackiest American Roadside Attractions (and my fabulous part therein) instead of seeing the cute new top I knocked off from Modcloth. I’ll try to work on the camera tonight. On a positive note, I did find my tripod. Apparently my dad had it. He claims it’s his but I’m pretty sure it’s mine.

It’s mine now, at any rate.

Datenight Redux.

2011-08-01T16:08:00.001-05:00

Whoo hoo! I have a date tonight!!

Oh yeah. The Husband will be there too.

Whatever.

DATENIGHT! WHOOT!

Boxing Clever

2011-07-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

So last winter I printed out a bunch of decorative papers with the idea of covering my really ugly pattern storage boxes. Because they’re banker boxes. And really ugly. And I have access to a 60” color printer. Two, actually.

Unfortunately, in winter it was too cold to spray-glue. (It’s a verb. Yes, it is. No, really. Deal with it.) I decided to wait until spring.

Uh. Except, we didn’t actually have a spring and I forgot about it. I also might possibly have lost my spray glue. (That one is a noun…. also, I think “She has totally lost. her. spray glue.” is a fabulous idiom that we should all start using immediately. Yes. We should.)

Here’s an ugly banker box.

I downloaded some free vector files, changed the colors, tiled them into 60” strips, printed them out and wrapped the boxes.

Here are the finished boxes.

Here are the labels, which I printed on my printer at home and glued on to the box lids. Yes, “spray-glued”. They’ll probably fall off next week, at which time I’ll think of some other method for attaching them. Maybe.

All you need to complete this project:

five banker boxes and lids
free vector files in assorted patterns
graphics editing software to tile the patterns and edit the colors
a 60” color plotter
spray glue
a bazillion patterns in file-folders. Or 9”x12” envelopes. Or both.

It couldn’t be easier.

Ready, Steady… You’re Old!

2011-07-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

I had this on vinyl.

You know… vinyl? That plastic stuff they used to put music on? Seriously… plastic stuff. And you put it on this round spinny thing and it made music. Then we all danced around the cave waving dinosaur bones and marveling at the miracle of fire.

Yes. Back when there were dinosaurs.

….Top of the POPS? Good. Grief. Seriously? Just let them sing, for Pete’s sake. Sorry. This was the only video I could find…. Top of the flippin’ Pops…. mutter mumble… mutter… stupid tv…. grumble… ruining Billy Idol…. mutter… totally ridiculous… mumble…. lip-syncing… grumble… mutter….

Magnetic Reasoning.

2011-07-15T16:51:00.001-05:00

Right.

Because that so is in line with what I learned in third grade science. With a cheap set of magnets. That positive energy attracts positive energy.

Statements like this are why upbeat, positive people irritate the crap out of me. Repel me, if you will.

Hey wait…. maybe opposites don’t attract. Stupid third grade science. I just can’t rely on you for anything.

Rhymes with “Melusional”

2011-07-11T16:00:00.000-05:00

This is the first page of my Pinterest “Clothes” board. (I called it Clothes Pin 1… get it? Clothes pin? Comic genius, people.)

I just randomly pin these things over months, so there’s not really any rhyme or reason to it. But this page looks pretty nice, right? Like, you’d think the person who pinned this stuff was pretty stylish, right?

Yeah. This was last month at the Taco Fiesta Birthday Party:

You heard me. Taco Fiesta Birthday Party. It’s a thing.

There’s a name for that disorder where what you see in your head is totally different from what actually happens in reality, right?

I don’t want to know what it is. I’m just sayin’, there’s a name.

Like Colors Through The Hourglass, These Are The Days Of… no, wait…

2011-07-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

Have you checked out The Color Of…? It’s some experimental software that Paul Overton featured on DudeCraft earlier this week. Gotta love it. They’re taking a bunch of photos pulled from Flickr based on your text parameter and then superimposing them to get an aggregate pixel color. Um. You put in a word, it finds pictures associated with that word and averages the colors. Then you get a pretty picture.

Now, one flaw so far is that this only uses Flickr for it’s photo sampling and presumably only uses tags to pull the images…. so you have a pretty limited range of images in your mélange. I could not, for instance, do “Beangirl” as it only pulled up six images when I tried that (none of them mine, since I don’t use Flickr).

Here are some others I tried though:

I find them surprisingly evocative. For instance, the “Fargo” images had just one single landscape in the sampling and included several vintage cars and neon signs and people, and yet the end result looks strikingly like… well… Fargo. Coincidental, but amusing.

I think this will be very interesting with added options to broaden the search parameters to get a wider sampling of images. Or, uh, not so interesting. Uh, to normal people. I’m easily amused by playing with random color. Whatever. It’s my blog. I can play with the pretty colors if I want to.

Nyah.

Say what?

2011-07-06T16:00:00.001-05:00

Edina (“ee-DINE-ah”)

Wayzata (“why-ZET-uh”)

Nicollet (“nick-oh-LET”)

Wabasha (“WAH-bah-shaw”)

Chickasha (“CHICK-a-shay”)

Bowie (“BOO-ee”)

Montague (“MON-tayg”)

Mexia (“muh-HAY-uh”)

Bexar (“BAY’r”)

Waiuku (“why-OO-[k]”)

Papatoetoe (“papa-TOH-ee” … that’s just one toey)

Whangerei (“[wh]FANG-uh-RAY” uh, sort of... I can't actually pronounce Whangerei)

These are all places I have lived near (or in).

I am of the belief that people intentionally pronounce their local place names in a totally ridiculous manner so as to highlight and pick off the people around them who aren’t local. Sort of a tag-and-shoot kind of thing.

Just sayin’.

Are you from someplace unpronounceable? Let us in on it. It’ll help us blend in.

They May Take Our Lives, But They'll Never Take… Our Freedom!

2011-07-03T16:00:00.000-05:00

I’m afraid I have a hard time taking anyone painted blue very seriously. Even Mel Gibson. No, especially Mel Gibson. No, especially especially Mel Gibson with a Scottish accent. And a kilt. Jeez, who approved that movie anyway?

Well, it's that time of year again folks. Yep. The Fourth of July. Independence Day. The day we celebrate throwing down the shackles of monarchial tyranny; we cheer casting off the chains of colonialist oppression; we raise our fists in triumph at our utter escape from having to eat things like marmite and kidney pie and kippers.

Unfortunately, this year I won't be celebrating this glorious freedom from fish-and-chips and lorries with a massive, crazily-expensive display of fireworks. Because of course this year we're in a drought. A bad drought. A really really bad drought. Everything around us is so dry that just thinking about matches or lighters or sparks is illegal. The grass in my backyard is so dry that yesterday I was afraid I might start it on fire with the lasers coming out of my eyes. Fortunately, I remembered that the lasers that come out of my eyes only have power to burn the Evil Monkeys and the Husband.

Still. No fireworks. Rather uncharacteristically I was sort of looking forward to them this year… mostly as an opportunity to get the Evil Monkeys out of the house for two hours since the Husband will in fact be working that night. And the Monkeys and I will be home together all day. And by 4 or 5 pm they'll be higher than a kite on the mounds of cheap, nasty candy they scavenged that morning at the Fourth of July parade. Because of course the only reason you go to a parade in our town is to be pelted by candy thrown by minor government officials and Shriners.

Damn. Now I'll have to interact with them and stuff. Sheesh. What next? Food and clothing? Shelter? The teaching of skills so as to become self-sufficient, productive human beings? Good grief.

Happy flippin' Independence Day. Don't mind me. I'll just be the person buried under a pile of crazed, sugar-ridden Evil Monkeys. Good thing I have lasers in my eyes.

I Like Pi. Or Tau-Chicka-Bow-Wow. Take Your Pick.

2011-07-01T09:42:00.001-05:00

Right. So due to the seasonal outbreak of math-geek fist-fighting, name-calling and general rowdiness, I'm sure you're all well aware (because I mean really, who isn't?) that this past Tuesday was once again Tau Day.

You were aware of this, right?

What. Do you live under a rock?

Tau? Pi doubled? You know... tau.

See, March 14 is Pi Day. June 28 is Tau Day. Get it? 3.14? 6.28?

Damn, those mathematicians are clever.

Anyway, I've decided that from now on all our holidays should be numerical puns. Unfortunately, this means they all have to revolve around math.

---

I got nuthin'.

Still. Geeks fist-fighting over whether to use 3.14 or 6.28. That's pretty funny, right? Because it's just so super-hard to add "x2" to an equation. When you're, y'know… an astrophysicist.

I think we should all start a movement to use 1.57 instead. Um. That means we have to change the calendar so there's a January 57th. Let's see.... "Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have thirty-one, excepting February... and January, which has 57."

I'm good with that.

The Placket Racket.

2011-06-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

I realized today that I never posted a photo of my first version of Ottobre 1-2009 #35. Uh. So here one is.

It’s very wrinkly because I took this photo at 9 pm after a long day of 112 degree heat. That’s 44 degrees if you’re wanting to be all metric and whatever.

Yep.

(crickets chirping)

mmhmm....

(coyote baying in the far-off distance)

right…..

(more crickets)

Oh! Here's a photo of the placket that I utterly refused to make twice:

It's not that it didn't come out super-cute. I just didn't think it was worth ~~the utter horror and despair~~, I mean the small amount of added effort for something a kid will wear for about six weeks.

Case in point: in the three months since I made this for TLo, she's grown again and I'll definitely have to take out the elastic on the sleeves. At least the rest of it still fits pretty well. Hopefully it will make it through to the end of summer.

It Just Keeps Getting Weirder.

2011-06-27T08:37:00.001-05:00

Dear Gentle Readers. I now have proof—proof, mind you-- of The Weirdness Of The World. The following is the first draft of a post I was maybe going to put up today (but had decided was sort of silly):

Right. So apparently due to his being a nurse, the Husband feels compelled to gossip like an old woman… er… I mean, have interesting conversations with his co-workers. Somehow last night the topic of Celebrity Free Passes came up (I guess they were discussing the movie "Hall Pass") and the Husband mentioned that he had "lost out" to (my celebrity boyfriends yes they are mine all mine no really oh just shut up who asked you anyway) Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Which, when I heard this, I basically responded with much high-pitched derisive laughter and finger pointing and possibly the words, "Oh honey, you don't even make the list, it's a CELEBRITY free pass, you are not a celebrity and also I already have sex with you on a fairly routine basis you goof ball bahahahahahahahhahaha" etc etc etc.

Um. Right. Possibly TMI.

Ask me if I care. Go on, ask. I am in a MOOD today people. Don't push me.

Annnywho, The Husband scowled at me over his hamburger and then this happened: he started listing his Celebrity Free Pass list.

At which point I became deeply, deeply disturbed. Because really? Those are some scary-ass women. Like, people whom I wouldn't even want to be in the same room with, let alone anything else. Rachel Wiesz springs to mind. That woman gives me the heebie-jeebies. I have no idea why. She just does. And

That’s as far as I got.

This is what happened yesterday:

W.T.F.??

edit: in the interest of clarity, I should maybe note that I usually write my posts two-three days in advance… in this case, I wrote on Friday.

Over The Moon.

2011-06-22T06:00:00.000-05:00

In response to my (seemingly endless supply of) posts regarding my new movie-star boyfriend Daniel Craig, Jacquie wrote,

“Weirdly coincidentally I just came back from lunch with a friend who has been on her honeymoon in Italy and had found herself sitting at the next table to Daniel Craig in a restaurant -and it was the males she was with who got all celebrity struck. She did say he was even more attractive in the flesh. Is that possible?”

I mean, really. Really? Proof yet again that I am never in the right place at the right time.

But how wonderful does her girlfriend’s honeymoon sound? Newly married? Italy? Going to places frequented by the Rich and Famous (and Totally Hot)? That is excellent.

Here’s where I went on my honeymoon: Pukekohe. From Papakura. Rather surprisingly, there was a stunning lack of rich or famous or totally hot (uh… which we won’t mention to the Husband lest he get, you know, a complex). Anyway, Honeymoon. Pukekohe. Seriously.

This is hilariously funny. Everyone from New Zealand is sniggering right now. Heavily. It’s like saying you went on honeymoon from Chicago to Skokie or Minneapolis to Burnsville or, I don’t know, Jersey City to Newark…. if any of those towns in question had about 10,000 people in them. And a significantly large selection of tractors for sale. Also, you know, more than three stores selling sheep food.

OK, fine. Sheep don’t actually eat food you buy at a store. Whatever. You get the point.

It’s a good thing I’m so low-maintenance.

Rave On.

2011-06-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

‘K, so I was looking for something totally different but accidentally found The World’s Funniest YouTube Video (As Pertaining To The Word “Rave”).

I think the fact that it’s in Swedish makes it funnier somehow. I’m not sure why… it just does. (Which is odd since, as my dad is fond of saying, “Nobody likes a Swede.” I’m maybe going to have to revise that opinion to exclude these two. Also, of course, Alexander Skarsgård.

Although he basically looks like, you know, virtually every guy I went to high school with. This is not a plus, trust me. Big In Japan may or may not concur.)

If Only Life Were Like The Interwebs…

2011-06-18T07:00:00.000-05:00

So the other day I posted “Date Night”. Pure drivel really, but having the distinct advantage of showcasing multiple pictures of Daniel Craig in various states of dress, undress and dustiness (I am not one hundred percent sure why this man gets hotter as he gets dustier, but there you go).

A few hours later, I happened to meander over to The Slapdash Sewist. She has a substantial blog list, if you never noticed. And when I glanced over to it? My eye beheld this thing of beauty:

Um. Doesn’t that totally look like I went on Date Night with Daniel Craig?

That is awesome.

I have resolved to henceforth live my life only as it might look if viewed through blog caps on the internet. Next week? I make a gourmet dinner for 17 for under $3.50.

Date Night

2011-06-16T10:20:00.001-05:00

Last month? X-men First Class.

This month? The Hangover.

Next month? Cowboys and Aliens!

The Husband said in a huff, "You only want to see that because it has Daniel Craig in it."

To which I wittily replied, "Well, DUH."

But in fact: Cowboys! Aliens! Harrison-Freakin'-Ford!

What’s not to like?

And of course Daniel Craig.

Eeni Meeni Chilli Beeni… The Spirits Are About To Speak.

2011-06-13T13:04:00.001-05:00

Well, I finally found a use for that one giant button I had leftover.

Probably this seems like no big deal to the casual observer. But it was really bugging me having it sitting in my button box all lonely and pathetic looking. Every time I came across it, it fairly cried out for someone to take pity on it and put it on something. Like it had it’s own spirit or personality or something. “Heeeeeelp me…. I neeeeed to beeee on a shiiiiiirt……” I felt distinctly guilty every time I picked it up and put it back in the box.

Apparently TLo had a similar psychic attachment to it. Yesterday the very first thing she said to my dad when she saw him was, “Look Granddad! Mama put this big button on my shirt. Look! A big button!”

Ok, then.

Perhaps the Great Button Spirit will rest in peace now.

Who Are You… Who who, who who? I Really Want To Know.

2011-06-08T09:01:00.001-05:00

OK, that is the first and only time I will be quoting The Who on this blog (or anywhere else). I am not a Who fan.

I just saw this article on my ISP's homepage (which I don't normally look at). "Oregon Woman Develops Foreign Accent After Surgery".

I've heard of Foreign Accent Syndrome before. Usually it happens to people in comas or with major head trauma or whatnot. This woman merely had all her teeth replaced. (Ha, “merely”.)

Here’s the syndrome I want to develop: Foreign Body Syndrome.

I want to have dental work and then wake up suddenly being Salma Hayek.

It could happen.

Tragically Hip

2011-06-06T11:20:00.001-05:00

So seriously. Unhappy Hipsters posted my submission… and used my DEAD WEBSITE AS THE LINK.

Blogger traffic FAIL.

Blatant Promotional Activity. Not For Me, Of Course. For Someone Else.

2011-06-02T17:00:00.001-05:00

So you probably already know that I love Ottobre Design Magazine. I mean, not only do they provide excellent design and drafting, very helpful production instructions and totally adorable photo shoots, but they are also (as far as I can tell) Just Plain Nice People. As an example: I had occasion to write to them a few months ago regarding a suggestion for their blog and got a very personable response from Tuula the next day. Seriously, the very next day. Just. Plain. Nice. This totally appeals to my Minnesota Niceness.

Now I know I’m hardly the first person to say exactly these things about the good people at Ottobre and I certainly doubt I’ll be the last. But I thought I’d also let you know of a lovely thing that happened just now whilst I was madly avoiding work by shopping--- er… I mean idly perusing the interwebs in my spare moments:

I just started a subscription to Ottobre Woman (I’ve been getting the kids’ magazine for about 4 years) because I dropped BWOF/BS and thought the OW designs seemed more practical (in that I might actually make and wear them). As the start of my subscription I got the latest issue, 2-2011, which is nice but has an uncomfortably large (from my perspective) number of sleeveless garments in it. Thus, I’m in the middle of working out how to add sleeves to a sleeves garment.

“But I want to make some sleeved shirts nooooooow”, whined the voice in my head. Fine. Whiney-crabbypants in my head is irritating, so I decided to go through the back issues and see what I could see. What I saw was issue 5-2010 and I liked what I saw. Into the shopping cart it went. I figured at €7.80 it was a bargain…. if you compare it to my $88/year BS subscription, from which I made one garment last year. For a child.

But here’s the good part: when I clicked on “Place Order”? I spy with my little eye a checkbox offering me free shipping on back-issues. Simply because I already have an existing subscription. Seriously? Free shipping? Even international? AMAZING!

Fine. It’s not that exciting. But I just think it’s one of those little things that makes their customer service oh-so very nice. And I’m passing the info on to you. Buy some back-issues. Make some pretty clothes. Live it up! Free shipping, people.

I love those crazy Finns.

Karma Police… They’ll Get You

2011-05-29T14:30:00.001-05:00

So here’s what happens when you complain about it being 108 degrees outside: it’s 111 degrees for three days in a row. And your air conditioner breaks. At the beginning of a three-day weekend.

Is it possible for people to literally melt? I think it’s possible.

(Don’t worry – because I know you were so worried – we have someplace else to stay. As for your smug “I told you so”– hmph. Whatever.)

School’s Out For Summer

2011-05-27T19:18:00.001-05:00

Today was the much-anticipated last day of school. The Evil Monkeys have been beside themselves waiting to have some summer fun. I’m slightly more, shall we say, ambivalent.

As of RIGHT NOW (7:17 pm) it is:

When’s the first day of summer again? Because if the last day of school is ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT DEGREES AT SEVEN P.M., I really really don’t want to be here when it’s actually summer.

On the upside, I think I just sweated off five extra pounds simply having dinner on the poolside patio at my parents’ country club. Which totally makes up for having to, y’know, have dinner on a poolside patio at a country club. When it’s ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT DEGREES OUTSIDE.

Sheesh.

‘Course, it snowed last night at my sister’s place. I guess it could be worse. Maybe.

What’s your weather like today?

A Royal Meeting Of The Minds.

2011-05-24T13:46:00.001-05:00

So this photo has popped up on multiple news pages that have randomly floated across my desktop today. I’m getting a little tired of it, actually:

Here’s what’s probably going on in this photo:

And then there’s what goes on in my mind:

I get bored easily.

Fashionist

2011-05-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been suffering from Virtual Ennui. It's a terrible condition whereby the afflicted wanders aimlessly and fruitlessly around the interwebs looking for something to provide interest... something, anything... anything at all....

Now, I'm not what you'd call a big follower of fashion. I don't subscribe to any fashion magazines and I'm clearly not fashionable myself. But when you have Virtual Ennui, what can you do? There's only one solution: Vogue.com. This is always good for a dose of Pretty Shoes For Everyone (If You Have $1200), a shot of Glamorous Famous People You've Never Heard Of and a very healthy serving of WTF Is She Wearing soup. They also have the weekly "10 Best Dressed" in which you get to vote for the Best Dressed. Vote, people. OMG is that not the best?

So I open up several pages of 10 Best Dressed and TLo, using her amazing Fashion Finding superpowers, instantly comes barreling in from the other side of the house like a Prada bloodhound on crack. (No really. She just knows. She has Fashion Radar. It's kinda creepy.) Needless to say, when she discovered that you can VOTE (she's just as aware of how awesome this is as anyone), she of course had to pick her favorites.

And here's where it gets really scary. Every single one she picked was the overall favorite of the general readership. Every. Single. Time. She's 9 for 9 so far.

I can see where having a seven-year-old who's more fashionable than I am can only lead to Bad Things in the next decade.

I was going to say, "At least I have The Big One, who's unlikely to ever out-fashion me." Except that this week is "Free Dress" week at school. She just flounced in wearing her black ruffle-miniskirt, black t-shirt, black knee-highs and black maryjanes, looking for all the world like a beatnik French schoolgirl, and announced "I am too wearing this. It's my fashion."

Help.

When Vampire Babies Attack!

2011-05-20T15:37:00.001-05:00

TLo has never lost a tooth that The Big One didn’t knock out. Seriously. Right now she looks like Vampire Girl.

Anywho…

Lest you labor under the false impression that I haven't sewn anything the past month or two:

I made this.

I also made several other summer tops/dresses for TLo. Really. I just continue to suffer from a complete and utter lack of interest in discussing them. Or photographing them.

I will tell you that on this one, I started with this pattern (Ottobre 1-2009 #35)

and then altered the front so as to not have to suffer through making a totally superfluous (i.e. too fiddly for me to deal with more than once) front placket.

I did do the front placket on the first version I made of this. Honest. But it was so totally annoying that I decided to just pare it down to the little placket version you see now. To make the closures, I used salvaged buttons and some purple hair elastics. Which is pretty cool. Admit it.

Oh, and I converted the gathers to pleats. I just prefer pleats.

In Which I Learn The Same Life Lesson For The Fifth Time In A Row

2011-05-17T11:12:00.001-05:00

Actually, the same two life lessons. I'm a little slow on the uptake.

The first lesson is "I just should not be allowed to take my own picture. Ever." Unless I really am:

a) perpetually out of focus and poorly lit

b) An asylum escapee with no chin

c) Astonishingly irritated with everything and everyone, super-duper crabby and looking like a wrinkly old bat

Ok fine. Item C isn't totally outside the bounds of possibility. But still.

The second lesson is one that I just can't seem to wrap my head around no matter how much I remind myself. Namely "I should always wait a day or two before I decide whether or not a garment really is as disastrous as I think it is". Because on Sunday when I finished the neckline on this tunic I was seriously disturbed by the fit, the finish and the general look of it. Distraught, practically. But today when I tried it on to show you all just how disastrous it was, I discovered that it's not nearly as bad as I remembered. It’s not great, but just possibly not the first sign of the apocalypse.

So I guess I'll finish the sleeves after all.

Oh, this is what the fabric actually looks like, it's really royal blue not black. The hem band on the inside is a lavender linen with weird white roses painted on it.

edit: The one advantage to photos, even these horrid ones, is that I get a better sense of how something fits… or rather, how something looks like it fits. In this case, would you say that this is too big starting, oh, pretty much at the armscye and working down? I’m inclined to say it could be taken in just a tiny smidge. Which is totally fascinating, since I made a way smaller size at the hip than my measurements call for. Um. Like you’ve never heard that before, right? What is the deal with that??

edit the seconde: Re: the camera being up high—in fact, it was sitting at pretty much the same height as my husband’s head or in other words where he would hold the camera were I to allow him to attempt taking my photo. He’s short(ish) for a guy so it’s not especially high relative to how people on the street might see me.

I am very, very short.

I’m thinking of investing in a tripod. I used to own a tripod but I have absolutely not one clue what’s happened to it. Probably wherever my film camera is (you know, those things people used to take pictures with?).

Pssssst. Hey. Buddy. C’mere…

2011-05-11T21:39:00.000-05:00

Just thought I’d point out that I added a new page to the “FAQ” and “About Beangirl” list: “The Cast Of Characters”.

In case you were wondering who everyone is. I sort of was. Now I know.

And in related news: Facebook “share” button (as seen below). Good? Bad? You like it? (ha ha.) I can’t decide.

No, I am not stalling on writing about sewing.

Am NOT.

Who asked you, anyway?

Garçons de Beastie

2011-05-10T16:58:00.001-05:00

"Got To Do It Like This, Like Chachi And Joanie
'Cuz She's The Cheese And I'm The Macaroni."

Seriously. That is some excellent song writing there.*

One of the problems with being a so-called GenX'r (bleh), is that our iPod is only about 50% kid-friendly. If that. (Of course, the definition of "kid friendly" can be somewhat fluid as well... for instance, despite an absolute lack of any significantly offensive lyrics, The Husband is of the opinion that "Firework", or for that matter any Katy Perry song, is not Kid Appropriate. Or, indeed, Human Appropriate.)

So when the Husband decided to buy the latest Beastie Boys single.... well, you know: BLOCKED.

Or rather, it should be blocked. Instead what we do is wait for an inappropriate song to come on and then make a sort of mad, arms-flailing, cartoon-slow-motion-craziness dash across the room for the remote, so as to click it forward a song Before It's Too Late. Because with over 4500 songs on the 'Pod, I just can't be bothered to go through each and every one and label it "Ok For Kids".

I'm a bad mom, right?

New Beastie Boys movie/video is here: VIDEO. Totally inappropriate if you are A) easily offended by language, B) easily offended by mindless vandalism/illegal actions/general stupidity or C) easily offended by bodily fluids. Totally hilarious if you are A) a 40 year old man. Mildly entertaining for everyone else.

Just thought I'd share.

I couldn't be bothered to write about the blouse I'm working on.

*In the interest of not being totally and pointlessly offensive to a large portion of the general readership, I won't quote the rest of the lyrics from "Get It Together"... although it is an excellent song. If you're going retro with the tunes and you don't have "Ill Communication" you could do worse. Just saying. Also, slightly depressed that an album I bought when it came out is “going retro”. But there you have it.

Oooo, Now I Get To TALK About My Favorite Subject…. Me.

2011-05-06T20:27:00.000-05:00

Ok, so Tanit-Isis (rather bravely) posted up her participation in a new meme regarding one of my very favoritest topics: dialect. I love this! Not only do you get to hear people talk in different dialects and accents, but you also get to hear the (hopefully) charming voices of some heretofore aurally mysterious bloggers. Coolio!

Basically this all adds up to you, yes YOU, being subjected… er… I mean, allowed to listen to my rambling insanity. As opposed to just reading it. Lucky lucky YOU! Right?

(Warning: I talk really fast. This is me talking slowly. Just saying.)

(Also, yes I know my glasses are jacked up. I can’t get new glasses until next week when our new insurance kicks in. Meantime, I’m Crazy Glasses Girl. Really. No need to tell me. Again.)

The words are:

Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught

And these are the questions:

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

I really hope everyone joins in on this one! C’mon! You know you want to. Copy and paste. Get out that video camera. You can do it! Go team!

Wow. Too much caffeine today.

edit: ‘K, so Big In Japan at least should know that I’m pretty much always that excited to talk about something… er… anything, as long as I’m talking. I’m whatcha might call A Talker. Big shocker, I know.

edit revisited: so yesterday we had a slight sprinkle of rain while it was sunny and my mother announces, “Hey, it’s a sunshower!” out of the blue. I have never heard this before but she insisted this was a totally normal thing for her to say. Weirdness. And re: T.P.ing a house… that is a pretty normal North American thing to do, usually by high-school students. The trick to clean up (in case you ever need to): light one end of the toilet paper with a lighter and the whole streamer should go up in a puff of ash. Not recommended in extreme drought, but otherwise pretty safe. And waaaay easier than picking it all up.

I Swear, Diet Sunkist Almost Came Out My Nose

2011-05-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

You know how sometimes you’re just aimlessly surfin’ the webs and something strikes you? I mean, not literally jumps out of the screen and smacks you in the face (that would be a little too “Poltergeist” for me), but makes you just sit up and LAUGH?

Case in point:

This photo came up in BBC News’ “A Day In Pictures” segment.

And I quote:

“There were 5,000 police officers on duty, with more than 900 along the wedding route. Most were in uniform, but some were in plain clothes, mixing with the crowd.”

Plain clothes in London has gotten significantly weirder than I expected.

We Don’t Even Own A Bike. No. Just Kidding. We Do.

2011-05-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Guess what I did on my day off?

No really. Go on. Guess!

Seriously. You can’t guess, can you?

In Which I Remember That My Hair Sucks.

2011-04-28T10:32:00.001-05:00

So I thought I’d take pictures of the second knit top I made using the same block as before (which, by the way, is not the horrible tunic pattern I was struggling with- this block is very easy to work with since I custom-fit it last year… all I had to do this year was remove about 4” from the hip to account for the 4” I, uh, lost from my hips).

Now granted, I chose to take my pictures in the morning while my hair was still wet. But still, I’m realizing (for about the one-thousandth time in my life) that hair is an evil, terrible, horrifying thing and human beings should all (yea! verily! all!) be bald. Because my hair sucks.

Anyway, here’s the second version I made of the knit top.

Wonder Wo-maaaan!

This is a combination of knits I also got from Golden D’Or (I think). They’re nicer quality than the last shirt. I was a little worried it was going to be too Patchwork-Patti (I just made that up-- you like it, admit it) but I think the end result was ok. I got multiple compliments on it, although that’s always a little suspect around here since we do not live in what anyone could call a Fashion Haven.

And for further proof of just how much trouble it is to get a photo, here is what else happened in the one and a half minutes I spent trying to get a decent picture. There was this:

not one person in this photo has combed their hair

and this:

“Hey, I’m taking a pict---“

Lovely. I look like I have no neck. I seriously did not want to post such an unflattering picture, but it was just too funny. I wish I could have gotten a simultaneous shot of the Husband’s befuddled expression.

Regardless, this is way too many people in my personal space at 7:15 am.

Meanwhile, SHOE-OFF!

I Told You So.

2011-04-25T20:16:00.001-05:00

I have been sewing.

custom block knit top, possibly modeled by Wonder Woman wannabe

I just haven’t been photoing.

Possibly because I usually get this:

oops! timer.

Or this:

This Person Has Absolutely No Sense Of Humor

Or possibly this:

what do you mean, "camera settings"?

Oonaballona, rather annoyingly, usually gets something like this:

oh my!

Or this:

no, you don’t say!

Except she looks cute and adorable in hers.

I did get a perfectly reasonable shot of the cute shoes I was wearing.

even if they were hawked by the Olsen Twins

vital statistics, somewhat randomly-

pattern: custom drafted knit shirt block (as first seen here)

alteration: reduced original side seams at hip by 4”, “twisted” neck binding, elbow-length sleeves

fabric: cheap mystery knit from Golden D’Or

And Now For A Few Things In The Random W.T.F. Category

2011-04-21T20:33:00.001-05:00

1) Today we are all excited because my boss declared to one of the co-owners, “We’re always closed on Good Friday.”

We have never, no not ever been closed on Good Friday. Trust me.

After a hasty conferral, we all (other co-owners included) decided to just not tell him that he has apparently succumbed to a crack addiction. So we all have tomorrow off. This has made me inordinately happy. I should probably investigate further why a simple day off has produced this slightly disturbing level of happiness, but for now I’m just going to revel in the unexpected holiday.

Did I mention that tomorrow is the Husband’s day off? And that the kids were supposed to have an Inclement Weather day but they used it up in the blizzard this year, so they have to go to school?

Maybe my happiness isn’t so inordinate.

2) I was just on Facebook (bleh) and this ad popped up in that annoying side-bar-smorgasbord of ads:

It only takes one year to complete. I think that’s pretty impressive. However, I think they might make the “social work for possessed demon-spawn children” part a little more clear in the text as it could be sort of a surprise for someone expecting to become, you know, just a normal social worker.

3) This week my DVR recorded exactly 60 seconds of “Glee”. I clicked on “Glee”. I watched as the screen froze. I looked at the recording status bar as it stopped on “60sec” and then…. I just turned off the TV. No voluble cursing or shaking of fists in anger. No jumping up to see if it was online yet. Just… meh. Ok. Whatever.

Oh Glee, Glee, Glee…. it seems our romance has run it’s course. No no… don’t say anything. Just let me remember you the way you were.

It’s, like, all burny and stuff.

2011-04-20T11:24:00.001-05:00

Guess what we want for Earth Day?

If you guessed, “Water falling from the sky” you were correct.

Even the six-year-old got excited today when it looked like it might rain. “Looked” being the operative word, as the forecast is actually only 20% chance of precipitation. But lots of chance for lightening strikes.

Anyone know any rain dances? I’m totally willing to dance around in my front yard wearing nothing but body paint if it will bring back my dead lawn.

Um. Ok, maybe I don’t want a lawn quite that much…. on the other hand, my neighbors might pitch in for a sprinkler system just to keep me inside the house. Hmmmm….

edit: re: BigInJapan’s comment

this is the Red River where I used to live (as seen last week):

this is the Red River where I live now (as seen 5 years ago, but it pretty much always looks like this):

where is the balance, indeed? Red Rivers. You are a pain.

Sometimes Life Reflects Art.

2011-04-14T15:47:00.001-05:00

Not really in a good way.

Actually, this won’t happen until the middle of my vacation day.

The Best Laid Plans Of… uh…. Me.

2011-04-10T09:21:00.001-05:00

Last week I splurged and bout five pieces of fabric from Chez Ami. I'm making TLo's summer wardrobe (in theory) and the first pair of capri leggings I made from some Chez Ami ribbing were so nice and sewed up so well that I just had to fill in her wardrobe gaps with some more. But despite having a "normal" income again now that the Husband has you know, a job, I still couldn't really rationalize buying more than five pieces to complete the gaps. So I had to really agonize over what I chose.

Here's what I got:

turquoise ribbing

hot pink ribbing

stripey knit

floral poplin

brown interlock

All well and good.

Here's what was on the top of the pile of knits when I went to put the new fabric away:

brown interlock, again

I hate everything.

IAAT. Don’t You Just Love Obscure Acronyms?

2011-04-06T16:49:00.001-05:00

After the many trials and tribulations of being awarded and awarding memes, I suddenly came to a conclusion. I'm going to start my own award.

You heard me. These things have to start somewhere, right? Why not me? And I mean, I figure I can operate under the time-honored tradition of believing that what is highly annoying in others is totally fabulous in oneself. Ergo, another meme with which to blatantly promote oneself whilst simultaneously irritating the crap out of everyone else. Awesomeness.

Except, I don't really care if other people are stylish or crafty or beautiful. I care about their deep-seated personality quirks. I also have little sense of personal confidentiality. I'm a "I am what I am" kind of person. I like to treat others as if they are too. Frankly, my first thought for this meme was not, "Can you crochet an antimacassar?" but more something like, "Who's on your Celebrity Free Pass list?" See? I have no personal boundaries.

Angie A is laughing now, because she already knows who's on my free pass list. Like I said, I have no sense of personal boundaries (and I feel perfectly comfortable boring someone else with my own delusional fantasy life).

So here's my brand-spankin' new blog award:

The recipients of this award are asked to answer the following questions, link to whoever awarded them and then pass it on to five, no six people (who they think will actually be willing to answer these totally intrusive and possibly inappropriate questions). Feel free to snag the badge too, right?

Questions:

1) What size shoe do you wear? If you wear a size 7, can I borrow your shoes?

2) 30's or 60's?

3) Have you ever kissed someone you shouldn't have?

4) Have you ever been poisoned? Was it by the girlfriend of the person you kissed?? That is awesomely "Knot's Landing".

5) Who's on your "Celebrity Free Pass" list (top 5)?

Here, I'll answer too. Lest you think I can dish but can't take.

1) 7. No, you can’t.

2) 60’s.

3) Yes.

4) No. But I would so totally love to be that Knot’s Landingly awesome. Wouldn’t you?

5) hmmm… this changes pretty routinely. Today it’s A] Henry Cavill (quit laughing, Angie A) B] Robert Downey Jr (I can hear you sniggering, Miss A) C] Daniel Craig (shush, you) D] Karl Urban (hush up there, missy) and, uh, E] Simon Pegg. (Don’t ask. I have no idea.)

And I now hereby and forthwith pass along this new award to:

Angie A. at Quality Time

Big In Japan at Big In Japan

Laura at Edgy June Cleaver

Heather at Li’l Miss Muffet

Tanit-Isis at Tanit-Isis Sews

Oonaballoona at Oonaballoona From Kalkatroona

Why? Because they're sassy. Which should be enough of a reason. But I also completely and whole-heartedly believe they ARE. All. That.

Plus, they might actually answer the questions. Possibly.

Dress. Again.

2011-04-03T13:37:00.001-05:00

So for about six weeks I’ve been planning TLo’s “Spring Dress” which is what she wears to the Easter Party at the Country Club the day before Easter (since we don’t celebrate Easter per se, this is basically the only time the Evil Monkeys have an opportunity to wear fancy dresses—it’s quite the highlight in their sad, dreary little lives).

You’ll note I said for the day before Easter. Right? You heard that part, right? Because, as most of you are probably aware (owning calendars and all), Easter is not until the TWENTY-FOURTH OF APRIL.

So last week my mother informs me, sort of round-aboutedly, that the Evil Monkeys are invited to a Tea Party. At some kind of Mini-Junior-Deb thing. On the next Saturday. And they MUST. WEAR. FANCY. DRESSES. Or else.

Son of a--

So I had to quick quick quick make a decision about TLo’s new dress— how to use the fabric… what pattern to choose… how to finish it on the inside… what FLIPPIN’ SIZE TO CUT.

Argh.

I achieved three out of four.

ONE: How to use the fabric?

Gynormous Poppy Print + Totally Fab Lightweight Turquoise Denim (of the exact shade of one of the blues in the poppies, no less)

TWO: What pattern to choose?

Ottobre 3-2008 #18. I’ve been eyeing this pattern since it came out. It’s the SHIZZLE. ( I figured I’d use a clichéd phrase from 2008 as well.)

THREE: How to finish the inside?

Now if there’s one thing I know how to make using five gajillion different methods, it’s a little girl’s sleeveless-bodice-button-or-zip-in-the-back-with-full-gathered-skirt dress. Seriously. I might have to slave and struggle to make a polo shirt. I might have to have a special tutor to make a pair of pants. But a little girl’s dress? I can do those in my sleep. (Which just goes to prove that even the slowest of wits can learn to do something proficiently through sheer volume of repetition.)

In fact, I know so many ways of doing this type of garment that it actually requires some serious thought to determine which method I want to use and how I’m going to achieve my goals. This thought process includes picking a level of finishedness for the inside (it’s a word) and then working backwards to figure out what sequence of construction I have to do. It’s more complicated than it might at first glance seem.

I’m still kickass at this.

In the end, I decided that I wanted the entire dress to be fully finished on the inside. I’ll admit that this was in part spurred by a closer look at the inside of The Big One’s RTW Easter-Mini-Junior-Deb dress from Strasburg. It was pretty poorly constructed all things considered and they’d gone to the low depths of not even fully lining the bodice, let alone the entire dress. Cheeeeap, cheap cheap. I can so totally do better with my Kick Ass self. Fully lined with completely finished interior it is. Nyah!

To do that, you cut a corresponding lining (in this case, from white lawn) to the shell pieces. You clean finish the bodice (using the method whereby you pull the lining through the shoulders, I’m not doing a tutorial on that there are lots of them out there). Then attach the skirts to the shell and the lining.

You then attach the zipper to the shell (an invisible zipper) and sew the center back seam of the shell and then of the lining up to where the zipper would be.

And then you just bag out the lining as you would a jacket. Only, you know, with a dress. By sewing the two hems together, right side facing. The shell gets pulled through the hole of the lining where the zipper is.

Then tack down the lining to the zipper with hand stitches (leaving a gap at the bottom for the zipper to have some breathing room).

Voila! Fully finished interior.

It also has the added benefit of being nicely weighty and giving you a perfect hem.

Piece. O’. Cake. Easy. Peasy. A thing of beauty.

FOUR: What flippin’ size to cut?

And this, Gentle Reader, is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

I’ve come to the conclusion that TLo expands her chest whenever I try to take her measurements. You know how sometimes horses blow themselves up with air when they’re being saddled so the saddle will be loose? Like that. Stinkin’ little monster.

She wore it to the Mini-Junior-Deb Saturday Tea anyway. She didn’t have much choice.

Apparently it was like being in The Sound of Music or something. The hills were, to all intents and purposes, alive with music.

Next week: How to take in the bodice of a perfectly finished dress, without taking it apart or changing the width of the skirt.

No really. It will happen.

Or else.

Dress.

2011-03-31T22:20:00.001-05:00

I Need A Wall Like That.

2011-03-26T17:04:00.001-05:00

I am on my fourth tracing. Some day, I will actually finish this STUPID TUNIC.

It. Will. Happen.

Even if I have to resort to some form of supernatural power.

Preferably not involving Mexican radio. I have a low Mexican radio tolerance.

Sarcasm. My Other Hobby.

2011-03-19T15:07:00.001-05:00

Howdy Ho, children! It's Saint Patrick's Day!

2011-03-17T10:00:00.001-05:00

No wait. That's Mr. Hanky. Maybe it's Mr. Hanky on Saint Patrick's Day.

We did our SPD celebrations last Saturday night at what was, to quote The Husband, "The World's Smallest Saint Patrick's Day Celebration, EVER." Having grown up and lived in a place that takes it's Irish roots pretty seriously (rumor has it that Saint Paul, MN was at one point the number two contributing US donor to the IRA, second only to Boston... that's right. They gave more money than New York, people. That's alotta of money. Jeez. WTH?), let's just say I'm used to a little more... shenanigans in my SPD celebrations. This one consisted of about 300 people, mostly really drunk college girls dressed for trouble and really drunk college boys who were absolutely thrilled at the trouble they were finding. Whoo. Hoo. Let the good times roll.

Otherwise, we got to hear the Killdares play, who always rock. I mean, they have a bagpipe player who, again in the immortal words of The Husband, "Plays to the audience like he's in K.I.S.S. or something. Cooool." Actually, it is pretty cool.

This SPD I'm on my own. No soda bread. No cabbage. No Dreaded Corned Beef. Everyone (but me) went up to OKC to go to the zoo (it's spring break for the Evil Monkeys and The Husband has today off so I sort of subtly suggested they all Get. Out. Of. Town. -ahem- It was subtle.)

Anyway, Happy Saint Patrick's Day, people! Try not to throw up too much green beer. (Wait. Does that only happen in Saint Paul... and, uh... Boston... and, uh... New York?)

Always Be Prepared. No wait. That’s the Boy Scouts.

2011-03-13T13:49:00.001-05:00

Do you have an Emergency Preparedness Kit? I do not.

Now, you might think this is a new thought in my mind based on the recent devastating earthquake activity along the western Pacific rim. But it's not. Emergency Preparedness is something that has been in my mind for a very very long time. I know I should have water and food and plastic sheeting and rope stashed away in my garage. I don't. I know that we should keep shoes suitable for walking over debris in our storm closet and spare clothes in a plastic bag and emergency medication. I don't.

(Ok, fine. I keep the shoes in the closet. I am not allowing my children to walk for blocks over broken glass and splintered wood in bare feet. We have a lot of tornados here. Usually at night. Having to walk through broken glass and splintered wood isn't remotely beyond possibility.)

A few days ago a reporter commented on how well-trained Japanese children are for a vast variety of types of natural disasters, beginning at a very young age. It made me think of the types of disaster training I received as a child. And the types I didn't.

I spent my junior and senior high school years in North Dakota during the early- to mid-80's. It was the height of the Cold War and, while it seems almost unbelievable now, nuclear tensions were high. The running joke was that if North Dakota were to secede from the Union, we would be the largest nuclear superpower in the world. We had a big target on our backs that said, "Russians: shoot here." And we knew it. Because we were reminded all the time.

The other running joke was, "Well, it's a good thing we live 150 miles from Grand Forks AFB. That's totally in the blast zone. We'll die instantly. Those poor bastards in the Twin Cities are screwed." Neato. That is so what you want to be thinking when you're 14. And by the way, we knew where the blast zone and the primary radiation zone and the secondary radiation zone and the tertiary radiation zone was, because they told us in school. With graphics and charts. And statistics and stuff. Double-neato.

No "duck and cover" for us. We were "You'll have less than two minutes. Hope that you're not gonna know what hit you."

Why do I mention this? Not sure. Other than I’m amazed at how things have changed in the past thirty years. I'm definitely amazed at our ability now to bring such vivid and instantaneous pictures of horrifying destruction into our homes. And I've come to the conclusion that natural disasters are heart-breaking beyond belief, but there's something steadying in knowing that they are beyond our control and that having to tell 14-year-olds they should hope to get incinerated is not. Now, if I could just think of a way to control the uncontrollable....

I'm still not putting food and water in my garage. I'll probably be sorry some day.

What's in your kit?

Boo!

2011-03-09T20:54:00.001-06:00

So apparently the most interesting thing about me to date is an apartment I once lived in twenty years ago. I'm not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.

Anyway, to appease the masses, here's what happened:

I attended a small private art college. One year, I agreed to become a Resident Assistant in one of the student housing apartment buildings owned by said college. The building I was assigned to was a two-up/two-down apartment building, built circa 1900 -- in other words, absolutely typically of the neighborhood in general. Basically I had to oversee 10 upperclassman students who mostly kept themselves to themselves and pretty much expected nothing of me in return except to buy them expensive snacks with the activity money we got every quarter from the school. (Well, I don't know that they expected that, exactly. I was required to spend the money and since none of them wanted to do any activities I figured they could all have snacks, operating under the theory that everyone likes snacks, especially when they're free.)

Now, as was our wont, my roommate and I did not own any living room furniture. The bedrooms were furnished with, you know, beds and stuff. The dining room housed the studio stuff. The living room? It's sole occupants were an answering machine, a small pile of misshapen pillows and an exercise bike. Needless to say, we spent a minimal amount of time in this room.

Strangely enough, every time I rode the exercise bike (not a very frequent occurrence), I got the distinct impression that someone was watching me from one corner of the ceiling. It was a pretty persistent feeling and also pretty strong.

Also, all our aluminum mixing bowls and foil kept going missing.

One day I went upstairs to discuss something with one of the girls in the apartment above us (her roommate's boyfriend had beaten the crap out of her roommate after finding out she'd used all his heroin and this girl was understandably pissed off with them both-- and yes, that's the kind of thing an RA had to mediate at our school.) We were walking through the living room towards the roommate's bedroom when she made a strange detour towards the middle of the room and said, "Oh, I don't walk in that spot."

"Um?" I stood and looked at the spot on the floor she was staring at.

"It's a bad spot."

I wanted to scoff, except... it was a bad spot. It also happened to correspond exactly to the spot in my living room ceiling where I felt something watching me.

Turns out not only did she think it was "a bad spot" but her third roommate (not the junkie) thought so too. Also, the guys in the apartment next door admitted that they thought one of their rooms was "not quite right". The guys in the lower apartment admitted they thought their back room was haunted, but they hadn’t wanted to say anything.

They also kept having to replace their missing can opener.

Oh. I forgot to mention that we all had really really really strange dreams. That part we only figured out at the end of the year when we got together for our End Of The Year Expensive Snack Party.

There's more, but this is already pretty long and boring. Mostly, it was a perfectly normal place to live. Other than the aluminum going missing all the time. And the strange manifestation of a single insect sitting perfectly still in the middle of the room every time I woke from a particularly vivid dream. Frankly, the most annoying part about it was, you know, the insects. As you know, Beangirl doesn't do vermin.

Also, to answer another question: my mother makes peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, so that’s where I learned about them. I have absolutely no idea where she learned about them. They are, however, tasty. But you have to use sweetened peanut butter and non-kosher dills or it’s a disaster. Kosher dills have garlic in them. It’s not a good thing. Not with peanut butter, anyway.

EDIT: Ooooo, so you should go read Oonabaloona’s ghost story. It’s quite a bit freakier than mine. And as for the “spot” it really was just sort of a… spot. A place. A presence in that particular locale. It was a little freaky. Also, I have no flippin’ clue what was up with the aluminum. It was very mysterious.

AWARD: your name here

2011-03-05T17:00:00.000-06:00

The disgustingly lanky Tanit-Isis recently named yours truly as one of her nominated recipients of the Stylish Blogger Award. To which I say, “Thanks!”

Now, I find Tanit-Isis (despite her disgusting lankiness) to be a charming and humorous person. She applies herself industriously to making interesting clothes for both herself and her children and she clearly doesn't take herself too seriously (always admirable in my book). She's insightful (did you read her fabulous interview with her mother?) and intelligent and pleasant (what a charmingly unusual combination in the world of academia). However, based on this latest action on her part, I can only wonder if she isn't, you know, a bit... shall we say, challenged? Because frankly I find no other explanation for someone nominating me as a stylish anything.

Case in point.

However, upon further rumination, it occurs to me that "stylish blogger" could mean several things. Perhaps my blog is stylish. Or perhaps the term refers to my stylish, uh, personality. Whatever that would be. I don't know. Of course, the main purpose of a blog award is to get people to write about themselves and then to link to other people, thus spreading the virtual contagion-- er, I mean, expanding the network. Which is well and good.

I mostly just like talking about myself.

The Stylish Blogger Recipient is supposed to disclose seven things you would not guess about themselves and then infect seven other victim-- er, nominate seven winners. Now, I've done this before with no less than ten things you wouldn't guess about me. I question whether I can think of seven more. I'm just not that inscrutable.

Let's see:

1) I only have three tattoos.
2) I once lived in a haunted house.
3) I'm afraid of dogs. And mice. And horses. And cows. And iguanas. And, basically, any animal that isn't a cat. I love cats and have no fear whatsoever of them. This is sort of perverse, since I've never once been injured by a dog, mouse, horse, cow or iguana and have suffered many a scar-inducing scratch from a cat.
4) I can pick things up with my toes. Apparently this is genetic, as TLo can do this as well. The Big One must take after her dad with her stubby little non-prehensile toes.
5) I am very afraid of heights. And small spaces. Ok, I just gave myself vertigo thinking about standing on a small walkway on top of the Sears Tower. Seriously. I think I might pass out now.
6) I don't believe in reincarnation, yet suffer under the persistent suspicion that I was once the daughter of a famous pre-Raphaelite painter. There's a long, multi-faceted story about why I believe this, but it's totally stupid.
7) One of my favorite sandwiches is peanut-butter-and-dill-pickle.

And now the seven winners are:

Little El (Uta)

21 Wale (Joy)

Sew There Tammy (Tammy)

The Surly Seamstress (Sandra)

G Marie (Gaylen)

Li’l Miss Muffett (Heather)

Everything Just Sew (Judy)

Why them? Because they all read my blog (and make comments) and they all have fewer than 100 followers. I guess we unpopular girls have to stick together. I could have added a few other bloggers meeting those criteria, but the rules said seven. I’m such a stickler for rules.

If your name is on the list, consider yourself nominated. Blather away, ladies. Enquiring minds want to know. Well, I do at any rate. And I think we all know, it’s all about me.

Sunshine On My Shoulders Makes Me Happy. I mean, “…productive”.

2011-03-02T11:42:00.001-06:00

Some people like to think of prioritization as some sort of systematic ladder or flow chart: everything has it's place relative to it's importance and once each thing is in it's place it's merely a matter of starting at the top and working your way down. I, on the other hand, operate under the "crazy old gold miner standing in a stream with a sieve" theory: I put all my projects and chores and obligations into one big pan and shake it until there's nothing left but whatever's randomly left on top. Everything else is left to fend for itself in the mud. I'd like to blithely say "this works for me", but of course that's completely ridiculous. This is not a system that "works". It's merely a system that exists. It does not lend itself to productivity of any kind (it does, however, lend itself to owning the messiest and dirtiest house on the block. There are some perks.)

Apropos of that little anecdote, over the past weeks I have in fact created several items in my lovely newly arranged studio. I have not, however, taken any photos of these items. And I do not, even more importantly, have anything particularly witty or amusing to say about them (we'll just ignore all of you who are now muttering to yourselves, "She's normally witty and amusing?"). I made TLo a ruffle-y corduroy tunic for school. I also made her a little knit jacket with a faux bow on the front. I added mod ruffles to her Ruffle-less Mod Uniform Dress. I made a muslin of a knit duster for myself. And so forth and so on. I just can't seem to be bothered taking photos or writing about it all.

Meh.

And apropos of that testimonial to ennui: Guess what I decided I'm getting for my birthday? Uh, three months early...? A sun lamp. I don't mean one of those things raisin-like women from the 1970's baked themselves to a dark, leathery brown under. I mean a full-spectrum light box, for the reduction of S.A.D., from which I suffer something fierce (as my mother said last week, “You are so SAD.” I’m just assuming she meant Seasonal Affective Disorder. Right? Right?)

I'm hoping it will help with the focusing and prioritizing and energizing and whatnot. Or at least I'll be really, really tan. And leathery. That's a look that goes with "crazy old miner" right?

If I buy this, will my kitchen suddenly be that clean? That would be super-fab.

Perhaps I’m asking too much of a box with light bulbs in it.

Mail Call!

2011-02-26T16:00:00.000-06:00

So look what I got in the mail a few days ago:

It’s an assortment of off-cuts from Japan, courtesy of Big In Japan. Some are rayon, some are cotton, some are silk. There are dragons and mums and cranes and just all sorts of traditional motifs. The Evil Monkeys and I are going to plan a wall hanging using most of these, some small purses (or similar) using the others and then the Evil Monkeys can have the remaining bits to make something else of their choosing in the future. Whew! That’s alotta projects. Aren’t we lucky?!

And in the mail I also received a lovely gift from G.Marie, in the form of two issues of BurdaStyle that I did not own. Yay! I wasn’t even sure where to start with that one, so I picked this duster:

I’ve been wanting a drapey duster pattern forever. Despite having five or six on hand, not one was exactly what I wanted. This one is! Awesome. I’m working it up now in a reeeeeally cheap heather-grey pucker-knit that I must have bought on sale at Hancock’s… there’s no other explanation for having five yards of it. Which is fortunate, because this pattern calls for three! Yikes, that’s alotta fabric, right? Even I don’t have very many lengths of fabric that would cover that. If it comes out well, I’m going to buy something prettier and make it up again.

In the meantime, I have multiple projects in the planning stages (as usual) and not a lot in the almost-finished stages (as usual). I have to make TLo a spring dress and also of course some western shirts. I have a ridiculous collection of gingham I could use (that’s ten different ginghams!):

but I’ve decided to start with these fabrics from the stash for the western shirts (I already used the bottom fabric to make this skirt):

and this fabric for the spring dress, also from the stash (no pattern chosen as of yet, but something basic to show off the gynormous print – note the seam gauge at the left side of the image):

My mom bought the Evil Monkeys each one of this sweater:

which hopefully will match both their dresses. We’ll see. (And no, we don’t normally dress them alike, but both Monkeys insisted they wanted the turquoise… we explained to The Big One that, because she gets hand-me-ups and TLo’s is three sizes bigger than hers, she would probably be wearing this sweater for the next four years. She didn’t care. We’ll see how that goes four years from now when she’s still wearing it to school. I guess you can’t say we don’t get our money’s worth out of a $50 kids’ sweater.)

And thus concludes this episode of “What I’m Pretending To Have Accomplished When In Fact I have Accomplished Very Little… Now With Added Gifts!” Maybe next time I’ll have a wall hanging or a duster or a western shirt or a spring dress to show you. We can dream.

In Which Aaron Copland Finally Gets His Revenge On Me

2011-02-23T22:38:00.001-06:00

In a surprising twist of fate, TLo has become the horse rider in the family and The Big One (initially the only one in the family to express any interest whatsoever in equine species) has pretty much given it up. It had gotten to the point that The Big One's lack of focus was holding TLo back and TLo now does riding lessons on her own. She's up to "loping" and is doing the cloverleaf and the poles by herself. Her teacher thinks she'll place if she competes in shows and she now has started training in how to saddle and care for the horses.

Which means only one thing.

Rodeowear.

You heard me.

Wear. For rodeos.

The mind boggles.

Guess what I just discovered? There is a surprising dearth of western-wear patterns for children. Especially girl children.

I do already have this out of print pattern from KwikSew, which only goes up to a size 7.

I’m pretty sure TLo the Barrel-chested Barrel Rider wears something larger than a 7. Even a KwikSew 7. I could up-grade it. Or I could take another basic shirt pattern and draft a yoke and add some pointy pockets.

-sigh-

“Pointy pockets”.

I did just buy pearl button snaps. And I have some satin to make piping.

I drew the line at fringe.

I'm betting TLo would go for this rose-print-ric-rac-and-pink-pearl-button combo. Right? It’s pretty cute (you’ll have to click over to see it close up).

Rodeowear, people.

And in case you’re wondering about Aaron Copland: I had to play “Hoedown” from Rodeo once and neglected to practice. It’s a finger-twister, people, and I mangled it but good. Copland was surely spinning in his grave. Well. If he hadn’t still been alive at the time. But regardless. I walked away from the scene of destruction no worse for wear and breathed a sigh of relief. I was Unscathed.

Karma. It’s a killer.

A Cup Half Full

2011-02-18T22:25:00.001-06:00

Tonight we had two choices at the movies: The King’s Speech or The Eagle.

I suppose the advantage to watching a Hollywood movie about a famous Roman-British historical event with an obsessive-compulsive student of Roman-British history is… if you see it in the movie theater, you won’t have to listen to screams of outrage and watch things like your popcorn being thrown at the tv screen. Even obsessive-compulsive Roman-British history students feel obliged to maintain some semblance of public courtesy in a movie theater. The same can not be said of one’s home.

On a completely unrelated note: Channing Tatum. He’s kinda hot. For a total doofus. It’s disturbing.

Unfortunately, I feel almost exactly the same way about Colin Firth.

He seyde he lovede, and was biloved no thyng

2011-02-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

As we all know, so many aspects of our lives are molded by... medieval English poetry. Right?

Saint Valentine's Day is one of them. So take an opportunity to say "I yow love" to all your loved ones, whomever they may be. Extra points if you do it wearing a wimple.

Here’s Jackie. He’s not wearing a wimple. He is wearing a red lammé jumpsuit. And moccasins.

Ahhh, the 70’s.

What You Do When You’re Supposed To Be Doing Something Else.

2011-02-07T23:00:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, there are advantages to having the job I have.

This is one.

Sadly, this is pretty much the only one. Unless you count soul-crushing despair and bone-wearying toil. I don’t, usually.

Good thing I have my full-scale scanned-and-outputted Burda patterns to comfort me. I guess.

edit: To be honest, I don’t do this very often because I usually end up having to trace off of this if I want to tissue fit. I don’t generally like to waste fabric on muslins without at least seeing if the tissue will get around my body. And it is pretty much impossible to tissue fit with copier paper (which is the weight of the paper my 36” plotters put out).

Here’s the pattern shown above. I didn’t really plan on tracing it, but since I had the pattern sheet scanned and had already made a print for the pattern I did want to trace, I figured I see if there was anything else on the sheet worth taking off. But of course, I didn’t have the magazine with me. So it was going on pure guesswork based on the pattern pieces; this pattern looked like it might interesting. Turns out it is interesting:

The pattern is BS 1-2008 #119. Sorry, the image necessarily has to link to the Russian BurdaStyle site. You know why. Burda Style. We say, “Da!” I think I’m going to have to brush up on my Russian.

Oh Joy.

2011-02-05T11:47:00.001-06:00

Some bright spark suddenly had the clever idea to put rugby on American TV all day Saturday.

I don’t like this person.

My Studio Is Drafty

2011-02-03T12:00:00.000-06:00

Drafting table. Drafty. Get it? Huh? Huh? -snort-

(Sorry for the mess, I’m still waiting for warmer weather so I can cover my banker boxes using spray glue… which means I haven’t really been jumping up to deal with the rest of the junk under the table either.)

Anyway, here's a little info on my pressing table, a.k.a. the Poor Neglected Drafting Table. For many years I used it for both drawing and sewing. Once I started spending significantly more time sewing than drawing, I decided to convert it to a pressing table. But I felt sort of guilty about it. I mean, Poor Neglected Drafting Table and I go back, way back, and it seemed sort of heartless to just throw it over like that. So I decided to make a cutting table that I could (sort of) easily convert back to a drawing table. You know, in case I suddenly had the urge to, uh, draw something. (I don't. If you think I'm barely capable of completing something in the sewing arena with the Evil Monkeys on my back, you can well imagine my trying to do something that requires concentration... like drawing. It's not gonna happen.)

The biggest feature of this project, then, was impermanence.

To that purpose, I decided that a piece of plywood 37.5" x 72" would be a totally and completely permanent fixture in any room I happened to be in. Ain't no way that kind of weight would be moving under my power. But what to do? Cut it into two pieces of plywood, of course. I can manage a 3'x3' piece of plywood moderately well. I know this, because I fairly routinely have to take the outer covers off the boards to wash them. CURSE YOU, EVIL HAIRY CAT OF, uh, EVILNESS.

But let's not jump ahead of ourselves. To make this pressing table system you will need:

a table

1/2" plywood, cut by your friendly hardware store employee to whatever shape and size is suitable, i.e. the size of your table (you might be able to substitute 1/4” masonite, if you can find any)

wool blankets, preferably of the Army Surplus variety and a minimum content of 80% wool

material for the outer cover, preferably something sturdy but with not a lot of texture (like duck or bull denim)

staple gun (and staples)

duct tape (because frankly, any project that doesn't require duct tape isn't a project I want to participate in and I'm sure you feel the same way. Right?)

First cut your blankets the size of your board plus about 4"-5" extra width all the way around. You should have two layers of wool if at all possible, so purchase accordingly. For a 3'x3' board I got two layers out of one blanket. Just.

Next, miter the corners (cut them) and then staple evenly around the entire width of the board. This is just like canvas stretching, but requiring significantly less tension. It just needs to be smooth and somewhat taut.

Once the wool layers are attached, cut your cover fabric slightly wider than the wool, but don't cut out the miters. You just want a square. Otherwise it won't be washable and will fray and will generally be a total pain in the patootie to deal with. Just sayin'. I serged the edges of mine but I'll be honest, I only did this last night and I've had this particular set of covers for over a year and washed them several times already. I just was lazy and never serged before. It's probably worth the extra five minutes of effort.

To attach the cover, I use Duct Tape: Tool Of Champions. You could staple, but again that will make it really hard to take the covers off and wash them. And you'll want to wash them a lot, trust me. I had the idea last night that you could use a huge piece of elastic and make a snugged up cover that way, but really the duct tape works perfectly fine and is easy to replace. So duct tape it is. Anyway, fold your corners into miters and tape everything down, pulling the fabric as evenly taut as possible.

The goal is to have a perfectly smooth, very taut cover on the top and no bumps on the bottom (so the board sits flatly on the table). This can take some practice and (in my case, at least) much swearing and cursing. But persevere, because you'll be happy once it's done.

Once everything is taped up, voila! Removable pressing table!

I couldn't work without this thing. Despite the slight gap in the middle, it’s highly useful. It presses like a dream and provides tons of cutting and laying-out space. However, I should note that this is not a cheap sewing accessory. The Alvin Workmaster 6' drafting table retails for $550. I got mine for significantly less (12 years ago), but $550 is the SRP. Even at a discount, you're still looking at several hundred dollars. Of course, you can use this system on any sturdy table (it has to be sturdy, however, because those plywood things are hea-vy). Beyond the table expense, the 80% wool army blankets are pretty pricey as well. Or they were when I bought them. It used to be army blankets were dirt cheap, but either they're a lot more popular now or they're a lot harder to come by. Regardless, they're not inexpensive when you need two or three. Plus you have the cost of the plywood and of the cover fabric, which is probably the cheapest part of the whole thing. Well, besides the duct tape, of course.

It is, however, TOTALLY WORTH IT. Totally.

Snowpocalypse 2011!

2011-02-01T12:03:00.001-06:00

Ok, fine. I stole that from The Colbert Report and The Onion. It’s still funny. We have a “snow day” here today, which probably would be more accurately called a “snow-on-top-of-inches-of-ice day”. The news reports that all non-essential personnel at the city offices, the local state offices and the Air Force Base are to stay home today. Everyone is asked to stay off the roads unless it’s essential, i.e. an emergency. There’s a good inch of base ice under the four inches of snow we got last night.

So of course, my boss decided that we should all go in today.

I stayed home.

So now while I ignore the Evil Monkeys whining about “going outsiiiiide”, I thought I’d post a photo of them in their jammies. I made these before Christmas but never got around to taking pictures. The Evil Monkeys love these nightgowns. L-O-V-E love. I like the graphic prints, which TLo picked out (mostly) by herself. TLo has quite the visual sense.

The pattern is McCall’s M6189.

Total bedhead. And I think The Big One has taken it into her bedhead that she can fly. I’m not sure. There seems little other explanation for this.

I also made these again using licensed flannels:

The pants and arms are bound with knit interlock, so they’re stretchy. Because I bought small pieces of the flannel (do you know how much flippin’ Disney fabric costs, even on sale??) I had to piece in a sort of odd way. But the Evil Monkeys love these too and should be able to wear them into spring. They’re cuter on than they are on the floor. So a winner. (Sorry for the wrinkles, I don’t generally iron our jammies. Well, let’s be honest. I don’t generally iron anything. So jammies are certainly at the bottom of the list.)

I altered the sleeve pattern to be more like a cap sleeve and obviously I made the pants into shorts instead of, you know, pants. Besides slicing the pattern into pieced backs I think I followed the instructions for the most part because they were utterly basic, but I used a variety of bindings. They called for bias tape and I only used that on the first nightgown (The Big One’s in black). On TLo’s nightgown I used some lavender-colored FOE from the stash and on the nightie sets I used the white interlock on both. I found, after doing The Big One’s first, that the bias tape didn’t really pull in the surplice fronts enough and they flopped around. Using the FOE on TLo’s, I was able to stretch it so that the top snugs in a little and doesn’t flop. Nice!

Great. The Evil Monkeys are now Dressed To Go Outside. That took about twenty minutes to accomplish. So, about 10 times the actual length of time they’re likely to be outside. Any bets on when they’ll be back in complaining it’s too cold---?

Well. If you had “twenty-five seconds”, you won.

People Have Too Much Time… I Oughta Know

2011-01-28T12:34:00.001-06:00

If you live in the United States of America, today is National Fun At Work Day.

I don't think my boss got that memo.

It's also, in case you were wondering, National Handwriting Analysis Week, National Nurse-Anesthetist Week and, rather bizarrely, National Thank A Plug-In Developer Day. Uh. Right. That's at the top of my list.

I have a great love of strangely-rhymed lyrics. (Yes, this is totally apropos of nothing in the previous paragraph. Apparently it's also National Non Sequitur Week. Fine. I made that up. But it should be, don't you think? I like peanut-butter sandwiches.)

This is one of my all-time favorite lyrical rhymes, from the inimitable Rickie Lee Jones:

"Downstairs at Danny's All-Star joint
They got a juke box that goes doyt-doyt..."

"Doyt-doyt"? Totally, sister. I hear ya.

Ok, so that is a classic. But then, there's this:

"Hey Judy, get Trudy
You said to call you up
If I was feeling moody.
Hey little Donna
I still want to.
You said to ring you up
When I was in Toronto."

Seriously. Anyone who can rhyme "Donna" and "want to" and "Toronto"... that's just genius. Also, y'know, Canadian… but still—genius.

Thank you, Plug-In Developer!

Next week is National Catholic School Week, National Meat Week and National Intimate Apparel Week. Really? Why didn't they just go with "National Fetish Week" and get it over with? Yuck.

Pantsy: Some Blatant Advertising

2011-01-25T15:00:00.000-06:00

OK. So I don't think it will surprise any of you to hear that I'm not really all about the advertising. I don't like it. I don't promote it. I don't partake of it on other blogs. ADVERTIZING IS EVIL!

Er…

However, I will forgo this dogmatic attitude towards advertising to provide (what I hope is) useful information.

Now just a little back-story: around 2006-2007 everyone was going all bajiggity on Pattern Review about pants fitting. There was a mad slash-and-burn attitude in the air towards pattern adjusting and it seemed like everyone, just everyone, was doing all sort of tortuous and complicated adjustments in the search for The Perfectly Fitted Pair of Pants.

Enter the very first ETA Dallas Expo (circa 2007). This was started by Peggy Sagers of Silhouette Patterns. She had a pants fitting course.

I don't even make pants. But when the pants-fitting course came up it was on a day I could get away from work, I had never had an opportunity to meet other garment sewists in person, the workshop was an hour's drive from my house and I thought to myself, "Self, maybe you don't make pants because they're so hard to fit." Right, like I'm passing up that combo.

People. Eye-opening. After reading and observing all this Pants Trauma online, Ms. Sagers' instruction was... astonishing. So simple. So logical. So... achievable.

Because of my solitary excursion into the periphery of ETA five years ago, I still get newsletter emails from Silhouette Patterns. Peggy has started an online video series (to promote her DVD series, as far as I can tell). I'll state right up front that I haven't watched them yet and they seem to have obligatory ads, but last week she did a pants fitting demonstration.

If you learn a quarter of what she taught in her ETA workshop, it would be worth watching.

This week's upcoming demo is going to be T-shirts. I believe the one before the pants fitting was
blouses.

I learned a lot at that workshop. Mostly, I learned that "hard to fit" is not why I don't make pants. Not at all. The truth is, I don't make pants because I don’t like making pants. That's a valuable lesson. I hope my sharing this link helps you learn something valuable too.

(I was joking about the advertizing thing. In case you plan on sending me hate mail about how wonderful your advertizing is and how very very wrong I am to denegrate it in this way.)

This Just In…

2011-01-23T05:00:00.000-06:00

Get it? It’s a bulletin board. A bulletin… “Just in”… get it?

I am so funny.

This is actually my old bulletin board (as seen in this photo).

All I did was cover it with some genuine Marimekko Unikko fabric that I purchased (at genuine exorbitant cost) from… uh… somewhere or other. Actually I think from FinnStyle.com. My original plan for it was to make it into a shower curtain. Or rather, a part of a shower curtain. Don’t ask. It was a long and complicated design idea involving three fabrics, clear plastic, jumbo curtain rings and a blowtorch and that’s why I never did it. The clear plastic was kicking my butt. Meantime, it’s been sitting in my stash for three years.

I heart Marimekko. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ apartment. It basically looked like this:

My grandparents were all about the Danish Modern. Danskware, Bertoia chairs and teak featured heavily in the formative years of my childhood. Also Marimekko. Remember in the early 70’s when imported Scandinavian fabric stretched on canvas stretchers and hung on the wall was the height of home decorating? I do.

As a child, it took me several years to realize that when people spoke disparagingly of “grandma furniture”, what they probably meant was this:

and not this:

(Which probably explains my bewilderment at the disparaging tone, as well.)

Look! There I am in their apartment, all bohemian and whatnot. Well. As bohemian as you can be with saddle shoes on. Note the lovely rosewood credenza-and-mirror, circa 1970. Ok, fine. It’s a little hard to see in black-and-white. It was 1970. Kodachrome was expensive.

Annnnnnnyway, I attached the fabric whole-piece with thumbtacks (seven, to be precise, because seven was all I could find). I hang things on it with quilting pins (you know, the huge pins that you can’t possibly use for garment sewing), so they don’t really cause much damage to the fabric (should I ever get over my fear of clear plastic and decide to make a shower curtain). Easy-peasy. Make one in an hour! It will only cost you about $90. Pssht. You can’t afford not to, right?

(Good grief. Who has an ninety-dollar bulletin board??)

So that’s the bulletin board story. I totally plan on dragging out this studio revamp. And no, not because I haven’t sewn anything. Because I haven’t photographed anything.

Yes, there is too a difference.

Hmmmph.

Schrunchable

2011-01-20T10:46:00.001-06:00

cut rectangular strip

press, right side facing

chain piece, cut apart

press, wrong side facing

insert hair elastic

serge with rolled hem

quilting cotton

RPL knit

corduroy

dupioni

more quilting cotton

Scrunchies!

Many, many schrunchies.

I Robot

2011-01-16T15:30:00.001-06:00

We keep our iPod set to "shuffle". We have 3974 songs on it. According to iTunes, this is 11.2 days worth of music. We have 6 albums that feature, in some way, Chris Cornell (3 Soundgarden albums, 2 Audioslave albums and 2 Chris Cornell albums). This totals 94 songs.

And yet we hear Chris Cornell on average, I kid you not, every fifth song.

Even I am aware that 3974 divided by 94 does not equal 5.

Our iPod is obsessed with Chris Cornell. I fully expect it to subscribe to a fan club any day.

Cubes of Doom

2011-01-14T16:23:00.001-06:00

Trena very kindly pointed out that she was culprit... er, I mean, the interested blog reader looking for this tutorial on berets posted by the lovely Neighbourhood.gal. Despite the beret trauma inflicted on me as a child, I have to admit that this is pretty dang cute. It's a nice tutorial too, so hop on over and check it out if you're looking for beret patterns.

Whew. Mystery solved. Now I can sleep at night.

But that leaves me with the need to find something else to write about... oh dear.

Let's draw out the studio remodel a bit, shall we?

Storage Cubes: Brilliant Design Concept or Build-Your-Own Nightmare?

I did purchase two new storage cubes to facilitate the rearranging and creating of new storage space:

I wish I could say that this is all of my stash, but I have this much (or, um, maybe a bit more) in the closet.

The taller stack of cubes next to the closet doors are the new purchase, which went on sale at Lowe's on the very day I had my epiphany about remodeling. I decided I needed two. And when I got there, they only had two left. Yay, verily. It was a sign. So, despite not really having the extra cash, I dug out my Christmas Visa gift card and home I came with two spankin' new storage cubes. This meant that I could remove the dreaded Fabric Cover on the old storage cube.

It had been a necessity because that corner gets some sun and the fabric was suffering. But, like Mushy, I prefer to see my fabric out in the open (I mean, gazing adoringly at it is mostly the only reason I even own it in the first place). So I moved the fabric to the (mostly) sunless wall and therefore had a whole big storage cube free for... uh... for… hmm..... for what exactly? Good question.

I decided it was the perfect place for Notions. And that's what's there now.

I'm still in the process of covering and labeling cigar boxes and collecting prettier containers and whatnot, but that will take some time because I don't have lots of funds right now to blow on totally unnecessary junk. Plus, I want things I really like, not just whatever I find right then and there.

I’ve discovered that despite never seeming to have the tool or notion I need, I have a lot of notions and tools. That ArtBin is full of stuff like scissors and marking tools and needles and such. And all these boxes have stuff in them too. Plus there are more things that I don’t use often in the closet. Sheesh.

By the way, my walls aren’t fluorescent mustard yellow and I didn’t repaint the walls. Our entire house is painted this color, which is actually quite a lovely shade of soft gold. Being yellow, however, it reacts dramatically to lighting changes and also photographs unpredictably. It’s roughly this color:

And yes, I did ban the Evil Monkeys from the studio Forever and Ever In Perpetuity Never To Return For As Long As-- um. Right. Well, I bought them a new industrial-strength (read "cheap-ass junk from Walmart") rug for their bedroom (so as to protect their existing cream-colored carpet) and did a storage-and-table-rearranging number on their room as well. They have the biggest of the bedrooms by far and now have lots of room to play and draw and watch DVDs and listen to music and, uh, sleep and stuff. It's pretty slick in there, if I do say so myself. Plus, now all we have to do is shove some food in through the door every once in a while and they never have to come out.

Which would be fine if we could ever get them in there in the first place.

Usually, It’s Just Better Not To Know

2011-01-13T09:00:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved to write stories. These stories were typically sad, sorry affairs about her inability to make anything useful. Sometimes they were about the things she did manage to make, usually not well. Sometimes they were simply about songs she had stuck in her sorry little head.

Despite all this, the little girl was terribly full of herself and kept a secret tracking device on her stories, so as to be able to see which stories people liked reading the most. Coincidentally, the secret tracking device allowed her to see what people searched for when reading her stories. Usually it was "patterns" or "uniforms" or "music", because she usually wrote about patterns and uniforms and music.

To the best of her knowledge she had never (no, not ever) written about... berets.

And yet.

The little girl was more than a smidgen puzzled by this. Had she written about her grandfather's lifelong penchant for hats, and berets in particular? Had she written about her grandmother's insistence that she wear a pompommed wool beret for Saturday Boutique Shopping every week when she was seven? Had she written about how five years ago her mother had purchased eleven (eleven) authentic red French berets towards the (rather hopeless) purpose of making everyone in the family wear one for the Family Christmas Photo? Um. No. She hadn't.

Seriously? If this is you and you came back, I so want to know what you were looking for. Honest. Because if there's one thing in this world I hate, it's a beret (you wouldn't be expected to know that, I'm just saying). And so it's funny to me that you were looking for berets on my blog. And intriguing.

Honest. This has just been puzzling me for six hours now. Curse you, Stat Counters, and your mysterious tantalizing tidbits!