Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

Nearly a month has gone by, and I'm sorry.  Life has been busy, as they say, and  . . .  well I had in-laws in town, my own parents two days later, and then  . . . then I got the stomach flu.  Dear lord.  That aside . . . grants and pages written aside, ambles of note always occur. I cabled a scarf sans cable needle, in a flagrant copy of the Sex in the City scarf .  And I have a hat for it too . . . it just got cold enough to don it, and honestly  . . . My black and white hounds-tooth coat in the making will look spectacular with it. My folks came to town, and my Dad went to the Green Market . . . he was awash with the people, as it was the weekend before Thanksgiving.   Mom stayed in with Ripple, as she was too tired . . . but she came too.   There was a spectacularly soothing sunset on the ride home.   Kringing came to the apartment . . .  And planes are confused from the buildings...

Fall has long come, and with it arrays and shades of golden color the sky, trees, and ground.  This week, as the temperatures dropped--a decided crispness enveloped the air--I finally got to pull out two projects I long ago finished.  Layers, wool, spun yarn crafted into fabric of its own signal a sadness that the last short sleeved days of the year are gone, yet at the same time there is a melancholy delight writer's like myself find in the cooler months.  Words and clicking keys acts as perimeters of distance between night and day, and in someways I know when the pages turn--the faster they do--my next destination and season will arise.  Though, as much as I take rhythm with the colder seasons I will say long and brutal ones, making you forget what summer weather is, take their toll, defeat you, and crack the line between a productively cold winter and a failed start as the battery froze and engine failed to start after six long months of running.   La...

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved fall, blazers, jeans, and boots. Yea, me.  Blazer, boots . . . skirts and jeans.  All fall, winter, and spring long.  Fall especially  as they stun afainst the blissful fiery backdrop . . . also known as the ghetto end of my block. Along came my pattern stash and some leftover wool from that failed coat of last year.  Fail, you say? Eh, look at the overly puffy sleeves that cave in? And fail, for sure, as I tried her one and OMG just put me in a bonnet, give me a wicker basket, and off to the prairie I go.  Last year she fit.  This year she's atrocious and big. McCalls 5188 came on que.  I plotted this one, using my tailoring guide, making notes . . . I drafted the muslin. Here I need to note that a muslin is a piece you make to find the fit.  Muslin are not clothes you wear, unless you make them from clothing fabric as a "wearable muslin." I usual...

In circa 1974, long before I was conceived  my Mom bought some mauve meets lavender crepe silk.  Well, we think it was '74, as it was before she met and married my Dad (in a whirlwind of 1975), and I came along a year later (so, yes, I was planned).  So, 1974 it is.   The silk, with the floral sidekick and two spools of matching thread, sat on my Momma's shelf for years.  As a kid I would see that white plastic bag, peek inside, hear her scream "Don't touch that!," and I'd always say "When you gonna make that?" In the summer of 2013 she asked me to help her organize a fraction of her sewing abyss.  In doing that, among the scraps of fabric that I use for muslins, the fabric neither of us know where it came from (or why someone would make or buy it) that is also muslin central for me, she relinquished and gave me her 30+ year old silk.   I greedily grinned and promptly ducked it in my suitcase, so she couldn't take it back.  I the...

Since I've been down for the long haul, well a week really, I have not done much but sleep like a comma patient, sleep some more, and oh sway from a now fading vertigo in the waking hours.  So, I haven't completed my silk lined, herringbone wool, leather elbow patch, silver metal button blazer.  Oh, I will.  Trust me.  Perhaps this weekend I'll be up for tinkering at the sewing machine and iron, pressing the last of the interfacing, sewing the taping, refining and catch stitching seam allowances . . . in some ways that sounds romantic. It is.  In my mind, at least. That being said, an ear infection in my dirty thirties came with a side of vertigo.  Yea, the prolonged recovery is mostly due to the Lupus that makes me mend so very long, but in all reality the infection and vertigo are not Lupus per se.  That aside, I've been on the sofa a bit, watching television (a bad variety, I won't lie), and knitting. Knitting.  A lowering of blood pressu...

So, I'm the type of gal to wear pearls with blue jeans.  Yes, that is true.  Really, if you've read anything on here then it shouldn't be a shock.  Thus, my saying I made a Jackie O style coat . . . well, before you raise your eyebrow and say "Hey, that ain't what you normally wear," remember the pearls and jeans.   Thus, I made a Jackie O.  And I wore it with jeans.  Faded, should be retired, jeans.  And Converse kicks.  And a wool knit tee.   Yea. I redefine classy.   That was me on an Instagram shot.  Snazzy, I know.   I mean, look at that . . . isn't she a beauty? That coat, fits like a dream.  Of course, I wore it open all day as it was almost too warm for it . . . but it being NYC and fall, well . . . yea, coat one minute, the next half naked.  Repeat all day.   My hair decided to go '90s retro and pretend my grunge days of Nirvana love were in town.  Ignore the unruly man...