I propose psychotherapy as the official gift for Mother’s Day and other family holidays. So fitting! So amusing!
Category: telling
Jellyfish dress (made from stash)
As explained last week, I have moved from an obsession with dressing like a jellyfish to action!
I made this comfy dress to remind me of puffy bodies, ruffles and streamers. I was pretty sure it was possible to make jellyfish shapes into flattering clothes, but it’s good to confirm that kind of thing. This is the dress that prooves my concept (to myself). The age of cnidarian wardrobe staples has begun!
Progress on the stash manifesto
The best part! This dress ate the following out of my stash:
- One fitted floral bedsheet I bought in 1999 to cover a geodesic dome at Burning Man. It didn’t fit my bed, and it had a big hole torn in the middle, but I squirrelled it away, lo these seven years.
- A length of elastic I bought in 1999, intending to make y-front underwear
- Three blue buttons from a jar Galen’s mum gave me in 2002
- Some hook and eye fasteners my gramma gave me for my birthday in 2003, as part of a sewing kit
The only thing I bought was extra thread. (I hope the scope of my stash is becoming clear to you, along with the motivations for my stash manifesto. Ripped bedsheets? Seven years? My collection is ripe, and must be harvested.)
Basic procedure
I used the same strategy I like for web design: make the smallest thing that could work, and add things as necessary. I don’t know much about sewing, so I just tried on pieces in the mirror a lot, to see how they might fit together.
The final cuts looked like this, but I worked it out a little at a time by making the biggest parts first and trying to conserve fabric.
The skirt
The puffy skirt was the clearest part of my jellyfish vision, so I started by sewing a tube using the full length of the sheet, and the width between the hole and the notches.
I gathered each end with elastic to make the tube easy to get on and off and to make sure I could still walk in the cinched skirt. In the mirror, it looked like it needed a ruffle on the bottom, so I added a ruffle on the bottom.
As soon as I tried on the ruffled prototype, I could see how this dress would be both jellyfishy and pretty cute, and there was much excited prancing around in a retro floral potato sack. Galen and Marc get bonus points for being supportive and inquisitive, even though I interrupted the business meeting they were having in the kitchen, and, as they later admitted, neither of them had any idea where I was going with this “it’s a bag/it’s a dress/it’s a man-o-war” design.
The bodice
The remaining fabric had notched corners where I had cut the elastic out of the fitted sheet. I held one notched end up to my chest as a potential bodice, just trying to be thrifty by starting at the end instead of the middle.
The notch happened to make a decent armhole, and the narrow part wrapped around to the middle of my back. That seemed like an easy solution, so after some draping and measuring in the mirror, I cut a matching notch for my other arm.
Rather than mess with facings, I cut a second identical piece and sewed the two together. I.e., I made a something that felt like a pillowcase.
The back and straps
I only attached the bodice along the front of the skirt, to leave room for the elastic to stretch over my hips when I stepped into the dress. To accomodate, I hand-sewed little hooks and eyes under the back of the bodice to keep the skirt up.
This turns out to be a ridiculous fastening strategy, and there is no way I can get it on or off by myself. (The armholes are too snug to wiggle into or out of with the buttons done up, so I can’t twist it around backwards.)
The bodice looked cool from the front, and buttoned together at center back, but the shoulders weren’t attached to anything. Adding straps seemed like the easiest solution.
I thought stubby, straight straps would look like an apron or a work dress rather than glamorously submarine, so I made the straps extra long and let them hang down from the shoulder seams.
When I looked in the mirror, it needed a sash. So I added a sash. I need to learn to tie it in a pretty bow.
If this was knitted, I’d be so uptight right now
Any seamstress could look at these photos and deduce that I have no idea how to sew. Parts of the dress ride up, buckle, wrinkle, tug, sag, etc. I think I learned a lot for next time, especially about bodices (so that’s why side seams are sloped…), and I got a jellyfish dress that fits securely and comfortably out of the experience. Verdict: success! Sewing and I might just become friends.
Dragonfruit spawn and their hedonistic ways
My dragonfruit plants should be turning about 4 years old soon. I grew them from seeds I scooped out of a fruit from Chinatown. Supposedly, they are climbing jungle cacti, and will bear dragonfruits, so I cut them a lot of slack about being tiny and idiotic. (Check out that guy in the back. That is a four year old plant that is smaller than the seed of a garden pea!)
Puny-ness notwithstanding, my cacti friends are cool to look at. I’m sure if I put them in a more proportional pot I wouldn’t have to defend them against the teasing of houseguests, but they are so fragile that I’m afraid to exhale too forcefully when I’m near them, nevermind dig them up and move them around. (It has taken four years to get one of them to peek over the edge of the pot. If I kill any now, I don’t think I’ll have the stamina to try again.)
Ever since the seeds sprouted, my dragonfruit have exhibited permanent puberty. Every new growing phase looks like some kind of embarrassing crotch development. (Oh, what you must think of me.) Those spiny branches first emerged as a hairy patch between their first pair of leaves, for example. Now, the two largest specimens are producing little erections. Cute, huh?
Future parents of lesbians
I didn’t notice anything remarkable about these packages until I was on the way out the door to mail them this afternoon.
Galen, man of the house, addressed this one:
And this is the product of my womanly touch:
You can watch the progress towards this moment in both our family trees. Grandmothers with business diplomas, fathers who stayed home with babies, and so on. In a couple of generations, the clan will surely have morphed into swashbuckling androgynes of some sort. Hot! (… for my own fictional great-grandchildren! Um, I stand by it!)
Double-breasted wool cardigan (stash update)
This is the first knitted sweater I’ve actually finished and worn. (I made one up on trains in Europe, but, well, you know how sometimes, when people make sweaters and they don’t know what they’re doing…) Everytime I hit a section of ribbing I stalled out for a few months, so this sweater was in the works for about a year.
Those two facts, taken together, add up to a very proud little lady (formerly a bit of a whiny knitting martyr— when I wear this now, at least one of my friends is likely to blurt out some congratulation/consolation about my hard-won sweater with its miles of double-ribbing. It’s kind of embarrassing that my “hardship” is so memorable.)
It turned out about one size too small but now that it has stretched out a little, I wear it almost every day. It looks babe-a-licious with a dress, in a wholesome, scratchy wool way. All in all: success!
Stash items liberated!
- Two thirds of a bag of wool yarn from my mum. This came, I think, from the project she was planning when she finally abandoned knitting for good, in favour of sewing.
- A thrift store knitting magazine from the 1970s. It feels good to actually use one of my vintage patterns, instead of just admiring them with a wistful look on my face.
New purchases
- Six wooden buttons, had for about six dollars at Gala Fabrics aka The Den of Temptation.
Learning opportunities (ahem)
- What am I going to do with the leftover yarn? There’s enough to make half a small sweater. I could have just made a bigger sweater in the first place.
- There are no better buttonholes than E.Z.‘s one-row buttonholes. There is no need to try the technique recommended in pattern books. Next time, I’ll substitute the master buttonholes. What is up with these straggly excuses for buttonholes?
- No really, change yarn at the seam edges. I have saved so many extra inches of yarn that I don’t know what to do with the remainder, and as a bonus there are minor lumps across my tight little sweater.
I think I will have to work on the stash manifesto for a long time before I can see any change by looking at my stash closet. But the treasure I’m extracting from the craft clutter is very tangible. This makes my closet seem like a magical, bottomless cornucopia that breeds wardrobe staples. That’s ok with me.
A project I’d like to make*
I’d like to collect stories and descriptions of people’s epiphanies. How they snapped out of depression, or figured out their life’s work, or fixed their relationships, understood parenthood or life or sex or death or generally how to deal with reality. People’s answers to “What’s the secret?”
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, occasionally stoked by articles like this one, but I had assumed it would be hard to find enough stories to make a worthwhile collection. Talking to Andrea at our small-business breakfast yesterday, we both had potential contributions to this topic. More than realizing I could find enough contributions, I remembered how totally compelled I am by people solving problems and figuring things out, and dealing with basic tragedies like the fact we’re all going to die. I want to go hunting.
*I can’t believe I don’t post daydream projects more often. It’s my most common conversational topic and constant preoccupation.
Oh hi
I just realized Google has found this website. That’s a laugh. Ha ha! Welcome to Half-Baked Code Zone, population: only me, I thought.
Elephant memory
A really long time ago, Justin Hall told a story on links.net about watching his girlfriend Amy collect underwear to pack for a trip. “I have enough underwear here to make a salad,” she said.
Panty salad. Lodged in my brain forever, alongside all the names Rebecca and I have come up with for our fictional lingerie store over the years. Pantymonium, All Tomorrow’s Panties, the usual. I get more excited about the scope of our inventory than the name. We would fit everybody! We would cover a huge footprint on the matrix of fashion and comfort! We would host events. Etc etc.
But on laundry days I make panty salad, not pantymonium, out of all my “lay flat to dry” items.
Also it turns out it wasn’t even an Adam that we know
It would almost be worth having a white wedding to wear this
One more fashion photo.
What is it about women with antlers? Lily Fawn ‘s stage get-up inspired a lot of knitted hat sketches in my notebook. I think I could make some stubby felted prongs that would stand up, if I got around to it.
Jellyfish couture
Many months ago, I borrowed a video about jellyfish from the library. Lucky me, it was one of those upper echelon nature documentaries produced by a specialized research centre with a high budget and a celebrity narrator, in this case Leonard Nemoy.
Dr. Spock narrated in a mesmerizing hypno-voice throughout, and at the exact point in the film where the photography jumped from average jellyfish to mind-bending footage of rare aliens of the deep, our hypnotist narrator compared one especially ruffly, colour-changing, pulsating specimen to an elegant woman, trailing her veils and skirts across the room.
Since then I’ve been percolating on how, exactly, I am going to dress like an elegant jellyfish. Many-layered underskirts? Ruffly legwarmers? Tutus trailing ribbons? Could I knit something? Around Christmas I settled on a ball-shaped skirt, such as you’d see made out of feathers and sequins in the 1920s. Skirts that puff out, then cinch back in. Dresses made from piles of ruffles.
Imagine, then, my delight at finding these diverse, jelly-like creations in the recent catwalk photos at Style.com. (Imagine my delight at finding catwalk photo galleries in general: endless, silly desktop wallpaper.)
Balenciaga
Jean Paul Gaultier
Kenzo
Martin Grant
Alexander McQueen
Pearl of Civilization, private collection
I’ve just finished sewing my own jellyfish dress— out of materials from the Closet of Stash no less. The dress is my surprise contribution to Rock Club tonight (the theme is complicated this time, and involves bringing some kind of art to go with our song). Once it has been officially unveiled I’ll post photos here.
I am very excited. Jellyfish dress!
I am such a lightweight radical
Yesterday was a steady stream of culture-clash encounters with, I don’t know, The Patriarchy. The Lookist, Erotophobic Mainstream. It embarrasses me to feel like a radical, because I’m not a proper, educated, active radical. I’m not in the habit of thinking about politics or explaining my point of view; I stay home and work on projects of my own devising so much that it is easy to think I am average and mainstream. But apparently life gets a lot more mainstream than me.
- First email of the day was a band newsletter that referred to a fictional “big dude in a pseudo-latex french maid outfit” as “Ewww.” All the dudes I’ve seen in french maid outfits have been pretty hot.
- Later email from a friend declared “there is nothing more horrifying than the image of thousands of miniature Lily Tomllins running amok.” I think Lily Tomlin is awesome. I shouldn’t refer to Quinn as The Patriarchy, but I don’t see why else Lily Tomlin could be so horrifying.
- Vicar’s boss wouldn’t let him play Deerhoof in the retail store. Not even The Runner’s Four, which I consider a mainstream rock album. Except, oh right, Deerhoof.
- As a perfect bookend, I spent half of Chet’s set at Logan’s sitting on a couch comparing worldviews with JR. This involved lengthy shouted statements about the possibility of excellent pornography, my eagerness to find new and scarier boundaries, and a whole lot of talk about the beauty of polyamory done well and the genius of The Ethical Slut. (And lots of shouts from JR about oppression breeding art, freedom from animal instincts, and his disappearing sex drive. It was fun! We did agree on the freeing power of intentional celibacy, but I don’t know if I made that clear.)
This was a lot of clashes in one day, for me. I wonder if I just had more contact with the world outside my multipurpose room, or if I was primed to dismantle Unjust Privilege after spending Thursday reading radical and activist blogs. It is not possible to know.
Affordance
Instantly I am excited to write here in the mornings. I’m not finished the template design yet, but I think the two stripes are the key players. Having my new favourite colour scheme in the house makes me want to represent.
Annie Sprinkle on death
David: What are your feelings and thoughts about why there’s such a connection between sex and death, in music and art?
Annie: I think it has to do with surrendering and letting go – losing control. I think of death in a positive way, because to me death is almost like another sexual thrill. I’m actually looking forward to it. Another part of it is because sex is about the body and death is about the body, it’s not something you can control. We’re supposed to be sophisticated, intellectual, in control people, and sex is about losing control, it’s about surrender, it’s about dying in a way so….I’m all for it. (laughter)
Today
I started my weekend on Friday, and spent all of today goofing around with Rock Club, and Zoe is coming to visit tomorrow so I know that will be a write-off. I can’t separate my slacking from my fever-induced laziness. I want to be so productive, and not get stuck on predictable tasks, like whenever I have to do the part of design that involves making something pretty, or presentable. I rock the functional part, but the decorating is really hard. Yes I know they work together. I’m stuck on visual stuff on two different projects right now. Three, really. It’s painful. I’m so full of ideas, honest. I can work so hard. Honest. I don’t know how to make the pretty things come out of my head.
This has to be the year that I learn to draw. Studying colours and type and alignment helped, but if I’m aspiring to something other than boxes, I need to have less clumsy hands.
Idiotic lunch (dairy vs. other liquids cage match)
- Me: vanilla milkshake and a pot of black tea.
- Jessie: cup of soup, chocolate milkshake
- Casey: large latte and cheese sandwich
The Willow Tree Cafe in Oak Bay is not recommended.
Party in my head
Robin wants to make a porn magazine for straight women. I could get on board with that, mostly because Robin is awesome and has interesting hobbies and ideas. She volunteers with an anti-violence project and a sexual assault centre, and a sexual health clinic. That is all the shit that I should be doing, since I’ve styled myself a purveyor of sex education info. I spend more time thinking about sex as a head trip, and arty possibilities and altered states brought on by orgasms. Porn show’n‘tell discussions with Robin would be reasonable and worthwhile, I imagine, and also fun and out-of-bounds a bit.
I’m really interested in private publishing right now, and I think it would be extra interesting to make this porn magazine for personal consumption only, instead of mass production. Fame and attention is the background of practically everything on the internet; purposely private media is something I haven’t explored a lot. I’m compelled by the idea of publishing and working and producing for my friends only. That’s a very human scale with different social consequences, completely different from international online communities. I’ve been finding Rock Club a lot more intense than other websites that I make, and also more casual. Just like everyday friends. I like it.
When I imagine this porn magazine, it would involve pals bringing some item that they were hot for this week (or this month), to put in the magazine, and then we could talk about the contents while we craft the magazine. That is a real snapshot of my daydreams; Galen would laugh. EVERYTHING IS ALLOWED: THE CRAFT PROJECT AND MEDIA THEORY EXPERIMENT.
Eventually maybe we’d get the magazine figured out enough that it would be fun to publish it for real. Right now I want to call it Perv Unit. Today and yesterday I am an unstoppable daydreamer, coming up with names for porn projects and planning the tiny urban estate of my future family. (I’d like to keep peacocks in the front yard, because they are regal and completely ridiculous, and know how to kill snakes.)
Short man with Fabio hair who never does up his shirt
- playing Led Zepplin songs on an electric guitar outside the bank
- coming out of the nunnery garden doing up his pants
- riding a bicycle down Vancouver Street, peddling really fast, moving really slow
- standing around outside the tax building with one foot in a cast
This is a pretty great present.
Courtesy The Hawk and The Regional Assembly of Text
Just an Elizabeth Barrett Browning quote
“He lives most life whoever breathes most air.”
Yum.
Life Jam
Feeling a bit weird about giving a PowerPoint presentation to my friends last night, because I was mostly sincere about it. I made a PowerPoint presentation?? About entrepreneurship??
While I was hunting for pictures to use, I ran across a rich vein of future desktops. So there’s that. There’s this, I mean:
My new optical capabilities
On the way home from Idaho this summer, Galen and I stopped in Vancouver and got ramen at Kintaro, at Denman and Robson. I remember taking a photo of the business sign across the street, but the Lomo ate that picture and I had forgotten what was so great about the sign.
We had ramen at Kintaro again this weekend, and holy shit that sign across the street was something. Laund’rays laundry and tanning, for your pleasure:
At first I only twigged to the awesome name, so the note about tanning is kind of behind a tree. Still good.
This was the first time I’ve taken my new Christmas camera out of the house. I like the way I bonded with it right away, developed that sensory possessiveness where something feels wrong if it isn’t in my pocket. I’m not usually a gadget person (I actually don’t have any other portable electronics). Usually I’m bonded to some giant hunk of paper or textile when I’m out and about, but adding this camera to my body was eeeeasy. So tiny, and quick. Thanks, Mum and Dad.
power jam
costumes. costumes are a productivity tool.
this morning, on my way between breakfast and the bank, i saw a business man running full tilt down the street. a business man like from a children’s book: in a conservative, navy blue suit and tie, with dress shoes, holding an open umbrella upright above his head. running fast, with long steps making his trousers flap. his tie might have been over his shoulder, but that seems like an embellishment that i would add.
i used to want to organize some kind of annual soccer game where everyone would wear power suits. navy vs. brown (i.e., bankers vs. car salesmen), or white shirts vs. blue shirts. (i also like camping in skirts and mary janes, or just generally taking control of my office wear.)
but the connection that made me realize what an excellent, if obtuse, productivity tool was available to me in costumes was remembering, when i saw the business man running, how much better i like doing housework if i’m wearing a tiara and carrying a wine glass. the glass could be full of water or hot tea for all i care, but carrying it around makes dusting or scrubbing a fun time. an event.
i’m sure you understand right away, what it is like to do housework in a tiara and carrying a wine glass (or a martini glass), because i tried explaining all of this at the sara marreiros show tonight and everybody caught on right away. “you should get some of those slippers with the fluff on the front.” and the thing is, i had some and i ran them into the ground doing housework. we are all on the same page here.
i’ve been thinking about running stairs lately anyway, because it seems like a weird and efficient urban exercise option, and i think if i got a washable power suit i could really get into running. you can wear running shoes with a skirt suit, i think. that’s a classic commuter move. nylons would be best but i have to draw the line somewhere (and they look really weird with my furry legs).
a lot of self-employees and telecommuters make a point of getting properly dressed to work at home, because it gets them into productivity mode. i do that too (my key items are a bra and real pants). i’d like to figure out a home office costume that goes one level further, not just into productivity mode but into like, titan of industry mode. what is the word for one of those pillars of society who wield massive business powers yet are admired for their philanthropy and preferably also some type of artistic skill? genius? character? sarah’s imaginary friend? i want to get into like, gomez addams mode. mon sauvage!
contenders for my new work outfit.
- a clerical cloak of some type
- a green bookkeeping visor and crisp shirt
- power suit
- my old default: the tiara and the wine glass
- sassy underwear (possibly combined with the clerical cloak?)
- dresses with hosiery and jewellery. and footwear.
- cleanroom spacesuit.
- specialized garment, like a lab coat or a utility belt
- monochrome outfit of any kind
i think part of what is holding me back from my ultimate productivity-sauvage costume is that all the glamorous titans of yore were dudes, and the lady workers did not have cool 3-piece suits that suggest timeless power. this is an unforeseen feminist battleground.
One down
Today I bought six low-energy lightbulbs and put them in the fixtures we use the most. Kitchen mostly.
I feel virtuous and green, and also homey. Our place is a real castle lately: tidy and well-stocked, with enough places to sit. Now with environmentally sound lighting.
Soon I’ll go to rock club and see if my secret pal likes what I picked for her. Rock club is making me like my friends more. It barely comes together most times, and runs like a case study of social groups, but I like that about it. It helps me accept my friends for being human, even when they flake out or pry for attention or forget to leave room for me. We seem to be gradually adjusting the rock club setup to get the best side of most of us.
My new bookmark
I’ve tried to do this several times. Hopefully this time it will take.
If you use an index card as a bookmark, you can note down any mystery words to look up later. Most words are not mysterious enough to warrant a dictionary interruption (for me at least), but by now I really should know for certain what lugubrious means.
I bet if I make a chart, I’ll remember to use it. I’ll just trust my friends not to tease me when I leave that lying around.