People Have Too Much Time… I Oughta Know

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

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…

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.