yay shopping

I just placed my first order with Reconstructing History, after mulling it over for the better part of a week and then changing my mind at the last minute, like always. My folks gave me a much larger than expected gift certificate there for my birthday, so I went a bit hog-wild. I like the company a great deal; I found it because while searching for patterns and explanations while I was trying to make my first garb, articles the company owner Kass McGann had written kept turning up. Midway through my "research" (if you can call an online-only enterprise that) the site got redesigned and a lot of the links were broken, so I had to dig through the site to re-locate them. (I spent years, you realize, just looking online to figure out what to make. I've been planning on Pennsic for about ten years, and finally started being serious over two years ago now. So I don't know when she launched the ecommerce part of her site.) So I got very familiar with her site, and her research, and her articles, and also the things she had for sale. She adds new stuff with astonishing frequency.
Then I found that she had a Livejournal. Oh my, now that is fascinating. kass_rants is where, well, Kass rants, and they're usually very informative. (Like the one about how ready-to-wear clothing is to blame for many of society's ills-- she makes a good case!) Apparently she used to work in finance before she got sick of working for other people.
She's passionate but open-eyed about what she does, and I like that a lot. So I've taken the plunge and bought a bunch of her patterns and historical notes, as well as some notions (and some of the brand-new handmade brass pins she's selling as of yesterday). I shall certainly let you know how these work out for me. I have pretty high expectations: she gets very good reviews everywhere, and the best reviews come from those who, like me, are relatively inexperienced at sewing, and especially at following modern patterns. (I find modern patterns baffling.) So I really do have high hopes.

One of the patterns I dearly wanted, but did not buy, was the one for the 1720s frock coat. I know it's a man's garment, and there's a woman's version, but I didn't buy either. Because I know that I would need to use expensive fabric and expensive notions (trims, buttons, etc) to make it, and it would take forever; I need to do some cheaper, faster, easier things first to get my confidence up. But someday... I want a coat like that. Because I think it would be awesome to have a coat like that. What gorgeous lines. I want to be the kind of person that has nice things like that and wears them everywhere.

Does it make me a dork to want to wear historic clothing in modern settings? I'm sort of doing steampunk wrong, I know, but I can't resist the idea.

I'm being restrained and not posting this on a particular day

marriedtothesea.com

That just made me laugh really hard.

Especially in an election year, when you can just play Mad Libs and make up your own speeches-- there's just a blank called "catchphrase" (I mean, the noun and verb are optional, right?) and you can choose from either "9-11!" "Terrorists!" or "POW!" and have essentially the same speech as the teleprompter. (Did "economy" even make it in there? No? Christ, what is the deal with these people?)

I'm just going to start pronouncing it "Pow!" like the sound effect, incidentally.

This is pretty much all the politics y'all will be getting from me this season. I hope, anyway. It's never good when I get stupid and start arguing politics. I'm bad at it, yo.

(no subject)

This isn't really political either but someone off-handedly wrote "OH SARAH PALIN NO" in an entry somewhere on my flist today or yesterday, and ever since then I've been wanting a t-shirt that says that. (Succinct explanation of the meme, which has nothing to do with politics, here.)

Oy. Can you tell I'm hoeing out the house today? "Cleaning" is too genteel a word. I went down into the basement. A few weeks back I hoed out all the cans and plastic bottles and took them back for about $8 worth of deposit (you figure out how many were there!) but I didn't do the glass, since that was just too complicated. And also I sometimes re-use glass bottles for mead. So I left them.
I just went down and put all the bottles into six and twelve pack boxes we had carefully saved for them.
...
By my admittedly terrible math, there's about $12 down there. I'll let you know whether I was right once I've been to the store.

In completely other news (still procrastinating!), is it terribly, terribly wrong of me to want to combine Natalie Dee with Subversive Cross Stitch?


Oooog, maybe I shouldn't have treated us to a beer with lunch to make me feel better about cleaning the house. Now neither of us wants to keep working. I guess we're old now, because we both just want to fall asleep now.

While cleaning, Z discovered an issue of American Cowboy that I was given by someone at work because they didn't actually want it. He's reading the fashion section and marveling at how non-reprehensible he finds it. The model in the fashion spread is wearing $33 jeans. Wow!

chita chita chita

( mild cat dorkery, the terror of Suburbia )

At the moment I am being surveyed by a pair of glowing eyes above a just-visible white chin bib, from the dark doorway of the next room over. Hi, honey. You're terrifying. Thank God you're not any bigger.

I got my order from Dharma Trading Co. today. Jarringly, the return label was some dude's name. I wonder how big the company is? The box was tiny, considering I'd ordered about twelve yards of fabric all told. But sure enough, it was all there, no mistakes in the order. I've prewashed it all, and dried most of it in the dryer but briefly. I know I should wash it on hot and dry it on hot, just to get any shrinking or damage out of the way now, but I just don't wash that way.
It's all a bit sheerer than I thought it would be, even the sheer fabric I ordered thinking it would be sheer. The 5mm habotai is sheerer than the chiffon! So my plans to make that into a lightweight chemise are... made a bit more daring. I suppose I could make a nifty modern garment by dyeing it, then self-lining it with a different color? It might be cool. You could probably still see my nipples. It had better be worn under something, for sure.
The silk twill is very lightweight too-- I had thought it might be a bit more substantial. It will make a gorgeous lightweight circle skirt, I think. I'd hoped for a little more weight, but it will do.
Though I'm considering... I might do some Regency stuff. And that semi-sheer shit would be freaking ideal for some of the almost-scandalous chemise dresses that lot of degenerates went in for. I may be getting more. Though linen would be more period.
It seems backward to me that silk is so incredibly much more affordable to me than linen. I have some linen now. I'm terrified to cut it. I got some cheap at Pennsic, in hideous colors, and I'm even scared to cut that. This silk was like $3/yd. The cheapest linen I can find online is at least $8/yd, and the nice stuff I actually want is more like $15. Boo. I can't experiment with that.

I meant to post a tailoring-type question-- is it better to sew fabric with thread made of the same fiber? Linen with linen, cotton with cotton, wool with wool, silk with silk? Or does it matter? I've been using polyester, and really, it's just thread, but you know, I got some heavy linen thread at Pennsic and I just... like to touch it... I'm so weird. I know. I'll stop talking just now.

Anyhoo. Apropos of nothing, Z just sent me this link. The Breyers-Miggs Quick Personality Test. I looked at it, and blanked out for a second. "But," I said finally, "but... I fit in EVERY square! What does that mean?" He looked at me. I looked at him. "Shit," I wailed. "I'm like this about everything!"
(Z, for the record, is a CC. I have a cat, and I drink coffee more often, but I think dogs rule, and I love a good cup of tea. Shit, it's just like my goddamn sexual orientation all over again. Sorry, Mom, I hope you're not still reading this. Though it's not like I don't talk about it all the damn time. I fail at subtlety.)

(This reminds me of the time Z did a Punnit square of us. Z is a Geeky Spaz. I am a Spazzy Nerd. We have a one in four chance of producing Spazzy Spaz offspring, which is just too cruel to risk bringing into the world. Likelihood that we'll dare to risk this is low.)