random updates, let’s all get excited

– My completed Meringue skirt and cropped trouser muslin have gone missing.  I folded them up, sat them on my open ironing board, and they were never seen again.  This is actually the Twilight Zone, I realize.  I tried my hand at pattern drafting for the first time [cue the titters and guffaws] but I’d like to keep some semblance of order round here and post the other projects first.  Let’s all light our Santa Burdita (Sainte Colette?) candles tonight, team, and hopefully the bottoms will show up.

– I’ve come to the conclusion that everything in my stash is either too good to cut or too ugly to use.  I’m not sure if I can consider this progress.

– I ran into Oona and Maddie of Madalynne in an elevator, last week.  I ended up babbling senselessly at Oona while full-on staring at Maddie because I was trying to construct a compliment to her without the use of the word underpants.  “Love your blog!”  “Used your bodice block tutorial yesterday!” while both true, did not make it out of my mouth.  Social situations, I win all of them.

– I finally visited New York Elegant Fabrics the other day.  It is vaaast.  The way that they showcase their brocades is faaancy.  Their fabrics are priced higher than B&J.  Seriously, Liberty Tana lawn costs ten bucks more at NYEF than it does at B&J.  This gets filed squarely under “Bitches. . .So Cray.”

– There are totally Garment District store review blogs out there, but I kind of want to write one where I channel the voices of Michael K from D-Listed and Job from Banshee.  There would be many GIFs.  This would be an excellent use of everyone’s time, yes?

– I’m trying to shy away from grand pronouncements (because they are the first step to failure), but I have made a list of the only five garments and six accessories I would buy this year, were I to exercise some sort of restraint.  Not fasting, per se, but an extension of the resolution to buy fewer, better things and to sew more.  This whole business reeks of disaster.  I like it.

I have class in the morning, so I have no idea why I’m writing this.  Linear mapping, yay!

procrastination station

I am totally renting the machine this weekend.  Glory!  I have to call G Street and get them to be a bit more specific about deposits and pick-up windows, but all should go well.  Now, the only question is whether I head out to the one by Chick-fil-A or the one in the same city as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave (we don’t talk about Zelda here).  Chick-fil-A is owned by an abhorrent git, but I hear they have good waffle fries.  F. Scott Fitzgerald is probably the reason why I will commit my life to spinsterhood and prose.  Oh, decisions.

I have traced and cut out a pattern.  Here it is in blurry, romantic, dormitory evening glow, in case you were wondering:

Also, here be a visual aid for the knitting situation, in case you find yourself caring (I don’t):

If my geometry is correct, it takes more yarn to add the same amount of circumference to whole the farther out you get, so volume is not an accurate measurement if we’re trying to compare the amounts of yarn (I guess weight would do it, yeah?).   Also, yes those are my flannel sheets.  The elegance, man.  I can’t wait to send out internship applications and wait for prospective employers to land on this here goldmine of genius.

I’m off to sleep early so that I can get up before dawn to study for my Arabic exam and pretend to work on my paper.  Tell me, reader, were your college/university years the best of your life?  I’m hoping that that’s a really sad lie as I’d love to have leisure time and sleep reenter my life’s equation at some point.  I dream big, obviously.

snips

1. ​Today was the last day of my internship.  I get (got?) paid in fabric, which is just as awesome as it sounds.  I’m sitting here making moony-eyes with a Carolina Herrera silk organza that has a herringbone-ish raffia pattern (I know!).  I can’t decide if I want to have its babies or attempt to mainline it.  Either way, I don’t think it’s going to end well.  

I’m having this grand to-show-or-not-to-show debate with myself.  I love (love) seeing other people’s fabrics, but when I get stuff that’s not dirt cheap, it feels awkward.  You know?  You don’t know?  You think I’m agonizing over something completely inconsequential?  I agree.

2. Tomorrow, I’m heading out with my mum and aunt and shepherding them around the Garment District.  I’ve vowed to purchase no more than two cuts of fabric.  We’re going to 10+ stores.  Commence paper-bag breathing.  Have you ever shown someone you love around your favorite places?  Both of them sew (to varying degrees of success) and I really hope that they like my wee district.  Hell, I’ll be glad if they like it more than they like Jo-Ann.  (Though you have to drag me out of Jo-Ann.)

3. I should be transcribing one my interviews with a fabulous professor who is an author, blogger, and fellow cat-person.  Holla!  (I reserve all of my hollas for cats and fellow Singhs, obvs.)​  Instead, I am lying on my heating pad and scribbling this off.  Brilliant.

4. I had a beautiful day.  Then the torrential rainfall came.  The aforementioned CH organza got a bit wet and part of it caught a case of the uglies (the raffia came a bit undone—wah!), I ducked into Chipotle to wrap it up like a baby and grab some dinner.  Of course, the Chipotle bag got wet on the street and the burrito fell out.  Onto the wet NYC sidewalk.  Other of course, I totally came home, baked it, and ate it.  Now I shall go to sleep wondering if I baked off the hepatitis it undoubtedly got from the sidewalk.  There was totally foil on it.  That makes it better, right?​

​5. The need for more personal projects and self-taken photos is obvious.  How easily I’ve slipped into naked consumerist territory because I’m too mortified to post my wadder-heavy round-up.

6. Drunk on fabric and last-day love, I slipped and fell while going into my building.  As a professional slipper and faller, ain’t no thing.  However, I was totally surprised by how many women stopped to look in on me.  I landed in a cross-legged sitting position with nary a bruise.  I stayed down because the worst thing you can do is rush back up again on a wet surface.  Trust.  It’s a recipe for a second fall.  One woman stayed to converse with me.  I tried to shoo her away but she was a Concerned Citizen (capital-Cs) and insisted that I get up and try to walk on it.  A second woman who didn’t even see me fall freaked the eff OUT.  I think she thought I was pregnant and fell hard enough to eject a fetus.  (Um, no.  No on both counts.)  Would I stop and look in on someone who fell?  I wonder.  A cute guy let me know I dropped my burrito and almost picked it up for me.  Who says New Yorkers aren’t nice?

Off to sleep, as I have to get up at dawn’s first blush.  Goody!​  This is totally not a sewing blog anymore.  Was it ever?