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July 25, 2006
Can I get you a refill, honey?
Last weekend I asked Josh if we could open a diner-themed diner named Diner Diner. All the waitresses could wear different uniforms, crisp and colorful, and call you "sweetie." The pies would be fantastic.
Simplicity #4171. Despite the pockets, pieced collar, inset sleeves and buttonholes, this came together much more willingly than the yellow dress. Hopefully there will not turn out to be some kind of inverse trouble to make/fun to wear ratio going on here, because I'm really looking forward to taking this for a spin tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll just go get you your check.
Posted by hilatron at 10:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 24, 2006
Bad Timing
What I need to be doing right now is making stockings. I need to have been making stockings for several months now, in fact; I should have a ton already in stock, a press kit ready and sent out to magazines by now, samples to take to stores.
I don't have any of this. I haven't done a thing, and there are about five million things I'd rather do, and have been doing: make more dresses, make a skirt, make a blouse, experiment with resizing some tiny vintage patterns I have, reorganize the studio, make aprons, declutter the house, cook some lemon curd, bake an angel-food cake to go with it, go swimming, anything anything except think about Christmas stockings.
This is what always happens. I don't even dislike making stockings, but because I am supposed to be doing it the appeal has vanished. Whatever I'm doing, something else seems more fun.
I will buckle down eventually, and it will be okay, but it will be the hectic and crazy kind of okay that leaves me overworked, understocked, and completely sick of fake fur by the beginning of December, swearing that next year, NEXT YEAR, will be different: I will start early, I will pace myself, I will plan everything out so that there doesn't have to be all this scrambling. Hah.
Posted by hilatron at 12:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 17, 2006
Paragon of Grace
I do not identify as a klutz, really, but I am kinda goofy and find myself performing slightly dumb and/or humiliating maneuvers fairly often. (Any kind of door, portal or fastening is bound to give me trouble - I can never figure out how to just get out of a car like normal people, for example. All the different handles and switches and levers! So difficult!)
Just now, a series of unlikely events led to me smashing my eye area into the handle of one of my desk drawers. (See, the handles, they're out to get me.) I realize that my chances of developing a black eye are slim, but just in case, I want to be prepared - given my lifestyle, I'm unlikely to have another shiner to talk about ever, so I need a good backstory. The "someone looked at me wrong" or "you should see the other guy" type responses are funny and classic, sure, but let's face it - they've been done. I'd like something new and fresh and as ridiculous as possible. Any thoughts?
In other stupid injury news, I have done something terrible and achy to my left hip. I suspect this may have happened at the ArtBeat fashion show/dance party on Saturday, which makes things all the more embarassing because I am a kind of crappy, self-conscious dancer, and as a result don't actually, um, move around all that much while "dancing." I have a standing injury, is more like it. Maybe a swaying injury. That's just sad.
Posted by hilatron at 04:48 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 16, 2006
Sternest Meanings
webuser: Hello! I am very fond of robots.
sternest: Favoredly tomfoolish boner.
webuser: Today I plan to make a dress.
sternest: Okay adept maladroitness.
webuser: That's very nice, but can you make a sentence rather than just a string of words?
sternest: relax, buddy
webuser: That's cute.
sternest: Cutest hat.
From here.
Posted by hilatron at 04:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 13, 2006
Red Rock Cliffs
Sunrise in Zion 1
Originally uploaded by braineater.
We flew into Vegas and then drove to Utah. It gets hot on the East Coast, but not like this: in New England and New York, it's sneaky. It doesn't seem too bad but then you notice that you're sweating just sitting there, because there is almost always humid to go with the hot and it slides around you, pressing slyly up against your skin, making you damp and cranky. In Vegas it's right up front. We are used to wind that at least feels cool on sticky skin; in Vegas the wind just throws the hot at you harder, taking whatever moisture you produce right along with it on its way to the next victim.
We did pretty well about vacation, I think. Or I guess I should say I did: I have a wee tendency to overplan, and I'm sure it was very comical in the days leading up to vacation to see me frantically researching the hotel, the national parks, the weather, the wildlife, and every casino in Vegas because! there was! so much! relaxing! to do! Must be prepared! So I arrived breathless, lists in hand, to get on with the very serious business of Vacationing.
However, all that slipped away pretty quickly. First we noticed how nice it was, out in the desert, cooler than hot hot Vegas (only 100 degrees!). Then we realized that the pool was the best thing ever, that our room was lovely, that you really can look at red rock cliffs all day and still be agog, that three nights and four days didn't have to seem so short if we just stopped trying to do so many things. All our day trips and how many casinos can we see in one days and maybe we can fit in some shoppings suddenly didn't seem very appealing.
So we touristed all week instead: poked at souvenirs, swam, ate another breakfast burrito, swam, got sneered at by the summer-job teenagers, swam, hiked, swam, went to the spa, went on the driving tour of Bryce Canyon, ate some more, swam. It was so nice I don't think either of us got that ticking-clock how-much-vacation-remains feeling until maybe the last day, when we had to pack and move out of the room and entertain ourselves until it was time to leave for the plane. That's pretty good I think.
The overnight flight back seemed to be full of cranky people; maybe they all had to come back from vacation too. We flew out at night after a day of incredibly bright, hot sun and a week where we saw maybe three clouds. We landed early on a Saturday morning to hot, gray, rain; the whole Northeast smelled mildewed and musty and tired and old. The nice plane people wouldn't let us turn around and go back, so we returned reluctantly to our real lives, which seem to consist of 95% water. Have there been more than two sunny days in a row in New England since, I don't know, March? I can't remember.
Josh and I have never been on a real vacation together, a trip for the sake of a trip, not to visit family for (nice in their own way, but always too hectic) holidays or a "take a week off so we can move! Yay!" non-vacation. We have resolved to do it more often, somehow. The next one might be the Vegas trip we opted out of this time, expanded to a long weekend so we don't have to cram too many things into one day.
I have pretty much come down from the dreamy what's-the-hurry-man? vacation state, but I still have the inadvertent tan (waterproof and sweatproof my sunscreen may be, but not Utah-sunproof), a pretty rock (there are stores that just sell rocks all over the place out there, totally for the rubes, but I went for it anyway - it's a really pretty rock), and the re-realization that swimming is the best thing ever. I had kind of lost that for the last several years. Now, however, I'm back on the bandwagon. There is a public pool near my house, and while it's not quite as nice as floating in solitude under the stars at night (clap clap! Big and bright! clap clap! Deep in the heart of Utah!), it's better than no pool at all. I don't know what I'm going to do in the winter, but there's gotta be something.
Posted by hilatron at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2006
For the completist
So I saddled up and did the hem band:
My apologies for the model-less picture. I like to see clothes on people, not hangers or dress forms, but it is incredibly humid and hot out today and what little I had by way of photogenic...ity? came oozing out my pores long ago.
Of course, hem band; I just had a touch of Frustrating Project Fatigue. After some experimentation, I went with a self sash. A polka-dot belt was tempting, but there was something not quite right about the look.
This problematic dress pattern should have been redrafted in a manner similar to this little beauty. See how the arm bands and the band across the bodice are separate pieces? That would allow you to sew the bands to the dress properly, without that slapdash slipstitch nonsense.
All that said, this dress is a lot more fun to wear than it was to make. There is something about certain garments that reminds me of armour or ceremonial garb or something - the bottom of the skirt measures sixteen feet around (as I learned to my dismay while hemming). You feel kind of protected wearing that much yardage at once. It is swishy in a way that is not messing around. It encourages twirling and hip-swaying, sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were also bullet-proof.
Vacation updates to follow!
Posted by hilatron at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack