the wedding outfit fits better in size medium

Dear friends, it’s time for me to bow out of the online world and dive into various offline pursuits. I will try to keep in touch with a few blogger friends, but probably won’t be visiting most of the blogs I usually read until after the wedding.

without cardigan

We are delighted at the large number of yes RSVPs for the wedding! However, figuring out how to host approximately 75 people at our tiny bungalow has kept us very busy planning and organizing. All details must be sorted out before we leave on our trip March 1.

Meanwhile, I applied for Fall 2012 admission to an MA in Composition program that has a good track record placing teachers of English Composition at local community and four-year colleges. The application process was time consuming and rewarding. I’m very grateful to three professors for providing letters of recommendation, one of whom is familiar with the program and was able to speak to why I would be a good fit. I am trying not to get too excited while my admission status is still pending, but true to form, couldn’t resist ordering all of the books from the Fall 2011 syllabus for the first course in the sequence and diving into various online articles and scholarly journals articles dealing with the latest research in Composition Theory. It’s an emerging, dynamic field.

Not sure about the future of this blog. Sewing/style was the original focus but as it turns out Martin is far happier sewing than I am. He loves solitude. I love it too, but prefer reading while alone then engaging with others around the ideas.

I could try to go it alone carving out the life of an independent scholar like my heretofore hero Christopher Dawson. The thing is, after reading several of his texts, I want to take him out for drink in 1929 as a visitor from the future and tell him things didn’t turn out so bad. He worried the dark, secular forces of modernity would damage our humanity, that we’d lose touch with our spiritual core, our moral foundation. To the extent this played out as he feared I do not believe it had much to do with the secularization of the West. As a worry wart, I think Dawson would have fared better in a close community of intellectuals!

As for style, I never expected to grok it the way other women do and that’s fine. I have a uniform, know how to change things up when I feel like it.

In closing, I’ll post a few home tour photos I promised to show Metscan months ago.  I dream of trading houses with her in Winter so she can be in our temperate climate and we can be in her beautiful Winter home and take care of the critters. This is a real dream we hope to make happen someday.

Shall we go upstairs?

stacy lomman fans will recognize the card from her fall 2011 show

the mondrian needs ironing

the atrist who created the painting above our bed is now teaching art in rural ghana

martin's side

my side

martin's desk

the view from our room to the sewing room -- a peek at my office to the left

this is where i blog

Here is where I’ll cheat, using previous blog photos for the kitchen and dining areas.

feb 2011 roses from my friend rich

view out to the sun room - june 2011

party setup in our dining room May 2011

These talented performers put on an excellent show that day;  Kali will be back to perform at our wedding.

Back to Mette.

Here’s our boring downstairs.

utility area

martin designed and built this beautiful bathroom

we share this room with kitties

kitties like blanket time

the view from the garage to the tv room

à plus tard!

wedding outfit shot with Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 Lens

Eileen Fisher tank and cardigan

Eileen Fisher fold-over maxi

Lava Genesis Silver shoes

WendyB Cleopatra earrings

WendyB Lotus Necklace

WendyB Acorn Necklace

The dangly silver and black enamel bracelet was a Christmas gift from a dear friend.

I wrote about the watch here and the ring here.

I know the f/1.8 lens takes amazing pictures, but I still think my wedding outfit looks better in this old point and shoot shot, despite the little bit of blurriness, see what I mean?

No shape wear in these shots. I just learned about shape wear. Really. Got it now, will fix.

Actually, I’ve lost the Christmas weight and am doing far better on a low-carb diet than last year’s vegan diet, so all of these large clothes are draping a bit large on me.  Whatever.

old camera, better shot

Is this the mirror effect?

I’m kind of in love with the shoes.

sparkles are nice

The shoes have a cute little heel.

stepping up the stairs

uniform + wedding shoes

I love the shoes so much I’ve been wearing them around the house with my usual daily “uniform” just because they make me happy.

I finished making the Vogue 1243 reversible silk jacket, isn’t is lovely?

The old camera in front of the mirror better expresses the luxurious feeling of wearing this beautiful jacket.  I think. I’m a little weirded out by camera images at the moment.

For fun I’m including these two shots, one of me trying to figure out the remote control, no expression — pure candid, and the second of me trying to relax in front of the camera, close up.

i think the camera focused on the wendyb cleopatra earrings

knew this was a close shot, tried to relax and smile

Too bad this shot cut off the WendyB acorn necklace, but that’s how it goes with the tripod.

See you next time!

a soft, supple and lightweight bag I can carry anywhere

It arrived today, my beautiful Flap Knot m0851 bag.

Thank you Lisa and Mater for helping me select this beautiful item. I asked Lisa about it, she told me Mater has this bag and suggested asking her about it, which I did, and thus ensued a lively conservation in which Mater referred me to her friend and owner of the m0851 store in Vancouver which just happened to have two of these bags in stock — it’s no longer available for order online — one in black, one in tomato.

I wanted the black one, you can see Mater wearing the black one here.

This is a bag of happiness. It makes me so happy that despite not yet being comfortable with the new camera and remote, really actually very much disliking how these photos look, I’m sharing them anyway because I want to show how lovely this bag is, how nicely it snuggles my body, feels as light as a feather, and easily remolds itself from a cross body to hand carry bag by simply retying the knot.

I am in love. This will be my bag for the next ten to thirty years.

martin loves this one best, because I'm smiling, but this is NOT my favorite

This photo shows the marvelousness of the bag but doesn’t flatter my face. The angle or something. And I’ve not been able to wear contacts or any makeup for weeks. Due to the extremely dry weather and pollution in the San Francisco Bay Area I developed an extreme case of dry eyes that morphed into an unsightly case of blepharitis that’s healing but can’t yet tolerate makeup.

This first photo with the new tripod and camera, sans bag, is a little better.

first tripod shot with new camera

Still not flattering of my face and neck.

Comparing the previous two shots to this next point and shoot where I’m able to compose myself in front of the mirror, do you see what I mean?

I know I look tired but still like this one best

We’re still recovering from hosting a dinner party last night, I look tired, am tired, but still like the point-and-shoot photo best because it seems the most flattering of my overall shape.

Sometimes I feel weird about sharing any photos. I don’t think that the way I appear to others is the most important thing about me.

Do you ever feel that way?

Bernini's Medusa at the San Francisco Legion of Honor

I can’t tell from Medusa’s expression whether she’s worried about those snakes or about what people will think of her hairdo.

If I had snakes for hair I would feel powerful not worried

On the recommendation of a commenter on Lisa’s thoughtful post Towards A Broad Definition of “One of Us” I got busy reading Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983) by Paul Fussell, which although hilarious and I believe more accurate than not, is neither kind nor politically correct. There’s something in it to offend everyone. In the Atlantic article Class Dismissed, Sandra Tsing Loh refers to Fussell’s book as a “naughty treat.” Don’t drink milk while reading it or you will snort it out of your nose.

matching pink -- I get it!

You can read a quick review with a list of Fussell’s different class levels here. Basically he groups everyone into Uppers, Middles and Proles (Proletariats), sometimes calling out subgroups of each when there are distinctions worth noting.

Martin said "here comes the yacht club" -- must have been the hat, a dead giveaway

Fussell’s guide helped me see that I embrace multiple American classes, having started out in one of the lower middle if not working class levels and tried over many years to raise my socioeconomic status. My story may be unusual, but I doubt I am alone in treating the US status system as a smorgasbord of cultural delights one may sample at will.

Houndstooth and plaid -- pattern mixing, I get it!

I feel free to sample because I see myself as standing outside of the system, not a member of any particular class or tribe. Fussell groups outsiders like me into a new category he calls Category X. This is how Fussell views the sartorial practices of Category X people:

When an X person, male or female, meets a member of an identifiable class, the costume, no matter what it is, conveys the message “I am freer and less terrified than you are.”

This excerpt is a good example of some of the inconsistencies in Fussell’s analysis. As written it sounds as if all the classes take this message from Category X dress but he’s really referring to how Middles react to Category X dress because he sees Middles as having the most social anxiety.

is it cool to mix a designer bag and sneakers?

Here’s Fussell again:

“One who makes birth or wealth the sole criterion of worth”: that’s a conventional dictionary definition of a snob, and the place to look for the snob is in the middle class. Worried a lot about their own taste and about whether it’s working for or against them, members of the middle class try to arrest their natural tendency to sink downward by associating themselves, if ever so tenuously, with the imagined possessors of money, power, and taste. “Correctness” and doing the right thing become obsessions, prompting middle-class people to write thank-you notes after the most ordinary dinner parties, give excessively expensive presents, and never allude to any place–Fort Smith, Arkansas, for example–that lacks known class.

A little later on that same page he says:

The desire to belong, and to belong by some mechanical act like purchasing something, is another sign of the middle class.

I recognize myself in some of this.

I thought this guy with the messenger bag looked kind of stylish

And these two ladies -- love that blue coat. Notice the variety of bags.

this woman looked beautiful to me but I worried she'd fall down in those heels

the man in the background looked elegant, the woman in the foreground gorgeous

I love this guy's coat

hijabs are stylish too

ice skating never goes out of style

you can buy it here

or at williams sonoma

If I recognize myself as having some of the Middle anxieties Fussell describes, it must mean I’m not entirely outside of the Middle tribe. I’m not fully Category X because I want to belong, to participate in the social construct of fashion.

scanning the SFMOMA cafe, the woman at the far right looked most stylish to me

And yet, as I hone in on my style uniform, purchase pieces and accessories to go with it, I wonder whether I’m falling for the same thing Timothy Parent of chinesepeoplehave[no]style? writes about Chinese people falling for in terms of conspicuously consuming for status recognition.

I was so excited about this woman's bolero jacket! Isn't it beautiful?

I asked Timothy if I could read his Harvard thesis on a theory of fashion and China’s unique fashion history in advance of the book he’s writing based on it. I feel honored and privileged that he gave it to me to read as he doesn’t give it out to anyone, but he liked my Fashion Theory post and after emailing back and forth, exchanging ideas, he decided to trust me to keep it confidential. His thesis is summarized here, but the gist of it, from my perspective, is that whereas China was historically on track developing its own uniquely Chinese fashion construct, it suffered major setbacks due to Western imperialism, Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the influence of Western fashion brands. Timothy sees Western brands influencing conspicuous consumption in the short term, but longer term, as Chinese designers gain influence and Chinese people become more selective, less imitative, a unique Chinese style will emerge.

Looking at Frida Kahlo, Frida looking back.

Am I still in the “imitative” stage in my own style quest, approaching it with some intention but not, at least not yet, the sensibility of one developing a strong personal aesthetic? Or am I approaching it with the sensibility of a Neanderthal, aping fashion aficionados in buying/wearing what they and their taste arbiters say is cool and classic?

I hope the former.

In other news, I bought a dream bag! Can’t wait to show you and share the whole whimsical story of how it happened!

I will also continue the home tour next post.

Sorry to crunch so much into my posts. I was going to put a smiley face at the end of that sentence, but that’s way too middle class.

xoxo -Susan

P.S. I think xoxo is also Middle, but never mind :).

Hello, I didn’t plan to post till New Year’s Day but we have fallen in love with our new camera, a Canon Rebel 2Ti EOS 550D and wanted to share some shots.

Paula and Susan and Catherine inspired us.

There was just enough net funds in the bank account of my pathetic business to cover the excellent Costco price, so we had a Santa moment and put that sucker in the cart next to the giant bag of cat food.

tulip poplar shadows on our neighbor's house

We took a trip to Oakland to purchase some silk from Piedmont Fabrics for this cardigan.

My silk choices look very similar to the ones pictured above. I would show you but the fabric is still line drying from the preshrinking.

We couldn’t resist trying some stealth photography in Piedmont.

piedmont neighborhood in oakland

festive colors

Jeans and sneakers rule but these ladies looked festive.

Caffee Trieste - Piedmont

Martin cut a figure in his hat.

i think she's looking at the scarf, don't you?

The Mondrian scarf always gets attention.

Indoors you can see details like this.

not over exposed

And in this lighting I don’t mind Martin’s candid shots.

candid shot

Night photography is now a possibility.

a festive home in our neighborhood

This handsome person is cooking tonight.

Martin

i got this cool paisley scarf for $10 at the church thrift store

This is not a style shot. I thought I’d grabbed the large Eileen Fisher ponte pants to wear while my medium ones line dry but grabbed the medium short cropped pants instead. Nevermind. I never left the house today.

The white converse laces were looking dingy so I changed them out for the black ones that came as an alternate pair.  It gave me ideas. Different colored laces! Different colored sneakers! I feel cool just thinking about these Spring 2012 possibilities.

Warning: the remaining shots are from the old Canon point and shoot.

Remember that red charmeuse top? I realized that it says only one thing: Christmas!

Not really an every day top to wear with jeans. Disappointed!

Martin ordered this 1950s shirt pattern, redesigned that sucker six ways to Sunday until it fit perfectly, and voila!

Look at the gorgeousness.

the perfect shirt

No person in their right mind would spend the amount of time Martin did making sure that the yolk would lie on his back in a perfect horizontal line.

Bravo!

perfect horizontal line

french cuffs

I  love the French cuffs, and the pleating!

And my sweetie thinks he is not an artist.

Happy festivities everyone!

V9771 and WendyB Cleopatra earrings

Hello, I am posting earlier than Thurs December 1 as planned because I’m thrilled to be featured today at the Citizen Rosebud. Thank you Bella!

The last couple of weeks have been nuts. I’m behind on visiting blogs but plan to catch up over the next few days. I miss everyone.

My WendyB Cleopatra earrings arrived and I love them.

V9771 is nearly finished, except for hand sewing the last two inches of the hem, sewing the shoulder pads in place and pressing it out. The kids arrived Thanksgiving day right before I finished the hem so I had to put it down.  It will look better when I lose the recently acquired holiday pounds and it works better flow-wise with my Eileen Fisher ponte pants than the Eileen Fisher pencil skirt shown here. The skirt side seams don’t lie flat at the hips. (Other people who’ve tried the skirt on have complained about this too.)

I love the rose red silk charmeuse from Gorgeous Fabrics.

the red shoes may not go with the top but I like them together

No deep thoughts this month. Well, maybe a couple. I was thinking of naming this post Novel Gazing since shortly after posting the last post I realized I don’t want to write a novel. Here’s an excerpt of a comment I posted on Metscan’s post on All Saints’ Day and religion:

you can see the WendyB cleopatra earrings better in this shot

The weather got cool enough to wear scarves.

hand made coral silk scarf

Our feral kitty Gray got injured. We were able to catch him to get him medical attention, then we tried to keep him indoors but after six days he escaped. At least the wound had time to heal.

you can see the white patch where they clipped Gray's fur to treat the wound

Fall came to Northern California for about five minutes. I rushed outside and took a couple of photos.

tulip poplar tree

back garden

front garden

front garden again

Fall segued into the holidays. Continuing the home tour, here’s the front hallway.

living room to the left, kitchen to the left at the end of the hall

physics exams on coffee table waiting to be graded -- teacher out playing snooker with son

martin's creative floor lighting

My 2007 MacBook Pro and my iPod touch both died within days of each other. Since my pathetic business eked out just enough 2011 profit to replace them, we high tailed it over to the Apple Store Black Friday morning to purchase a Mac Air and an iPhone, my first iPhone ever. Since Friday I’ve been busy moving our entire music and photo library to the iCloud.

yes i did get the kate spade polka dot and pink iPhone case :)

The iCloud has to be the best thing since sliced bread. I was fooling around with the iPhone skype app when I switched over to the music library and there were 12,000 songs from our library, like presto. The streaming works great. You have to be a little patient to let songs buffer up.

The old Mac will be set out to pasture as a DVD player (Mac Air has no DVD player) and hard drive back up storage for the music library and photos.

It would be great to get rid of Windows XP but I have to keep it for QuickBooks and Quicken. And Photoshop.

The other deep thought has to do with the church. There was a temporary misunderstanding that occurred coincident with us learning about the need to apply to the Bishop for permission to remarry in the Episcopal church when either party has had more than one divorce. I don’t mean the church as building — we’re getting married at our house — but the church as officiant. The standard that has to be met is one of “reasonable expectation” that the marriage will succeed. There is a process underway and I’m sure everything will work out fine.

I can’t write publicly about the misunderstanding but I can share that it was an unpleasant experience. Thankfully it is cleared up now, and really no one was at fault. However, before it got cleared up I felt awful. I wanted to chuck those books on religion, not read them.

I have written before about my thoughts on religion. I’m not particularly religious, but I do have a relationship with the church, specifically my church community. Like any relationship, my relationship with the church is not perfect. It exists in the abstract in my mind and heart and exists in reality in each human interaction over time. Sometimes the human interactions don’t align with the romantic vision of my mind and heart. And I know I do not always live up to other people’s ideal vision of what a church community should be. When there’s a glitch, it’s a good idea to step back and consider things from a distance. I did that, and I’m glad I did. I’m still not ready to dig into those books, but I’ll get there soon.

In closing, I wish you Happy Holidays and leave you with this YouTube of a Canadian choir singing a Gerald Finzi piece we sang last week in our own choir. It’s exuberant!

colors up close

How’s everyone been since last month?

Things have been super busy here.

I won the Karina dress giveaway at Une femme d’un certain agê! So exciting. In the photo above you can see the brown in the houndstooth pattern goes nicely with the brown inner disc of my Mod Squad earrings and with the burgundy Aravon Maya shoes.

Without Cardigan

I  love the way the dress feels and moves and it seems perfect for the Playful Style I am claiming as my own.

The dress was hardly out of the package before WendyB invited me to include it in her houndstooth post. I felt honored to be in such excellent houndstooth company.

Can I just take a brief moment to address Kim Kardashian? Kim: please give Wendy Brandes a holla, she’s got some great ideas for redesigning your unwanted engagement ring!

with cardigan -- this outfit will be worn in London and Paris!

Thank you so much Susan Blakey for hosting the giveaway of this beautiful Karina Dress. I can’t wait to give it a whirl in London and Paris!

the dress is the new highlight of my tiny clothing collection

I have a confession to make. I haven’t been sewing. Well, I sewed one thing, Vogue 9771 in muslin. I can’t begin to tell you how much I love this pattern. It’s so much better than my failed Grecian top, Vogue 8669. The drape is absolutely perfect. Who knew about cutting on the bias?

Vouge 9771

V9771 in leftover crapola polyester charmeuse from Miss R's dress

I have another confession to make: my daughter Miss R’s V1207 dress did not work out well. That was my first sewing project after about 20 years of not sewing, and because I hadn’t previously worked with better fabrics, I was duped into buying polyester charmeuse because I thought “charmeuse” in the label meant the fabric was silk! Wrong. I looked up the bolt after the fact and did see 100% polyester on the label, in tiny print, but the first time I only saw “silk charmeuse” in bigger letters and happily paid $32 for what I thought was silk. It was horrible to work with. Near the end of the project, when I was doing some finishing work, Martin had a big fire going and I got so exasperated working with the slippery thing I wanted to chuck it in the fire! That and the fact that due to her full-time school schedule and full-time job, Miss R could only come once for a fitting of the bodice itself, not the fitting of the seam attaching the bodice to the skirt, so instead of driving to San Francisco to get that final measurement (I’d have taken it earlier but it’s not a standard one, a few inches above the waistline — I didn’t realize I needed it until late in the project), I guessed, and was off by 1/2 inch. Horrors! The day I brought the finished dress to the city Miss R tried it on, and not having worn something fitted like that in recent memory (if ever) not to mention it being 1/2 inch too tight along that seam, she raised her arms up high to test the dress for ease of movement, and suddenly the sound of ripping seams was heard in the land, those really difficult seams in the sleeves where a zillion junctures came together to form the signature Cynthia Steffe sleeve architecture of that design. I was able to fix everything but the dress was still too tight and it was hot! A polyester lined polyester dress is hot. She never wore it, but was so grateful for all of the time I spent trying to make her something beautiful.

It has taken me months to speak of it and this is the reason why the above pictured muslin will never be worn even though the fit is so dreamy and dressy. That fabric is evil.

I plan to remake V9771 in this beautiful, real silk charmeuse at Gorgeous Fabrics.

rose charmeuse from gorgeous fabrics

I see that it’s on sale — will purchase right after posting!

The reason I’ve only accomplished sewing one muslin in a month is that I’ve been working on a piece of fiction. I got inspired in doing some analysis of dramatic structure as a beta reader of a completed novel by a very talented writer, Lisa Golden. In doing the analysis I looked for “mythic” elements gleaned from Christopher Vogler’s book The Writer’s Journey, which applies the principles of the Hero’s Journey outline developed by Joseph Campbell. The blogger and screenwriter Alexandra Sokoloff does a brilliant job of identifying elements of the hero’s journey in her analysis of Polanksi’s film Chinatown. Martin and I blew an afternoon walking through clips of the film and her analysis and it was really interesting! The idea of putting characters on a journey has been on my mind for some time. More recently, and especially as a result of engaging in Lisa’s work, I felt motivated to flesh out my characters and put some storyboard structure in place.

All I can tell you at this point is that I like the characters and like the process of trying to figure out and write the scenes. The story features a fictional scholar interested in the role of religion in Western culture, a hero figure loosely based on the British historian Christopher Dawson, a heroine, his wife, an art historian who believes the story of Western culture is rooted in the arts, not religion, an incredible story of an unexpected inheritance of a valuable painting, and an evil doer who makes Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw seem like a really nice guy. There will be elements of Gothic style, including ruined castles in Scotland and lots of bad weather.

My goal in writing the novel is to amuse someone on a long flight.

On the personal fitness front, I’m ever so slowly creeping towards size 12. I ordered the Karina dress in 14, and I think that was correct although it feels a little roomy so maybe the 12 would have worked. It’s a funny thing about sizes. I ordered my basic Eileen Fisher pieces again in size medium as I’m swimming in the large pencil skirt and ponte pants, but though the smaller ponte pants pictured here fit great, the medium pencil skirt is a teensy bit too tight. I’m keeping it anyway.

size medium ponte pants -- totally chopped off haircut!

In the spirit of saving the best for last, I’m pleased to announce that after seven years of living together and having received the blessings of our four adult children, Martin and I got engaged over the weekend!

mabe pearl ring -- fits beautifully on my hand

Miss R has pushed her own date out to July 2013, so we won’t conflict with her getting married Spring 2012. We’re getting married after our trip, the second Sunday after Easter. It will be a house wedding, with our Associate Rector Gia officiating, and wine & appetizers following. There will be some soprano and mezzo solos and duets!

As the ring was modestly priced, Martin wanted to splurge a little more and so he ordered me the WendyB Cleopatra earrings. So exciting.

Wendy Brandes Cleopatra Earrings

I can’t wait to wear them. They’ll look good with everything.

In closing here’s some house photos. Metscan asked for a photo tour of my home in a comment on my last post. There’s too many photos involved in touring the whole house in one post, but to get started, I’ll show the front of the house, and gradually walk through the rest of house in subsequent posts.

front of house -- bumper sticker from LPC says "That Behavior is Not Very Attractive"

We’re planning to tent in the driveway so we can set up wedding chairs for the ceremony, then people can wander around the front and back gardens and the house, and we won’t have to like stop, fold up all the chairs, put them away. We’ll just leave them there.

the wisteria is a bit woolly

front gate

old boot scraper

front garden

front porch

murano glass fixtures martin found in an antique store when we were in venice italy

welcome to the spanish inquisition -- we found the door knocker in florence italy

See you next month!

V8634 in double knit cotton, modified to fit like a dream

Hostess inspired me to throw a dinner party Sunday featuring Waldorf salad. It sent me back in time to 1967 and my nine year old self opening my bedroom door the tiniest little bit to spy on my parents and their friends enjoying a cocktail party in the living room. I’m not sure if they had Waldorf salad but there were other retro goodies.

Waldorf Salad -- Cooks Illustrated version

I wore my newly made V8634 in a purple double knit cotton. It’s the fifth time I’ve made the pattern, with multiple revisions. It fits like a dream and is now my favorite top. I can also forsee it being made into a little black dress.

Yes, I know Duchesse says it’s a pearl sin for women of a certain age to wear debutante pearls, but I followed Lisa’s advice and paired my simple 6mm pearl strand (purchased in Paris 2005) with these very pretty Tanya Lochridge Jewelry earrings Lisa tweeted a link to for an overall 1960s girlie look that goes well with a retro salad, don’t you think?

you can't really see the earrings

Here they are up close.

#0477 Flourite and Swarovski Crystal Sterling Silver Cube Earrings

Here’s the whole outfit I wore, including my insanely comfortable New Balance Aravon shoes I found via Barking Dog Shoes (a site I found via Lisa).

The pencil skirt is Eileen Fisher.

bare legs work well in Northern CA Indian Summer

better mirror (in front hallway), worse picture

Here’s the shoes up close.

it's rare to find shoes in EE width -- that's why these are going to london and paris!

That’s right, I said London and Paris!

I wasn’t going to say anything because I always feel guilty about luxury spending, but I got a hold of myself. Why not share our exciting plans?

Being essentially retired earlier than expected I rely on a portfolio for income. It’s set a bit aggressively to last a long time hence my very conservative annual withdrawal amount each year goes up and down with the markets. Guess which direction income is headed this year?

However, Martin is on teaching leave Spring semester 2012 and it could be ten years or never that he gets another long leave so this is our big chance to travel when we want and to stay on vacation longer than we ordinarily do.

We’re staying in this apartment in London in the Bayswater neighborhood March 1 for a week and staying in this Montmartre apartment in Paris the following two weeks. (Thank you Materfamilias for the excellent ParisAddress tip!)

If the markets don’t rebound the trip will be financed from our home equity line. I say that in the interest of full disclosure since my old blog started out as a money blog after all and I like to model responsible financial behavior. It’s not a good idea in general to use one’s home as an ATM machine but if necessary we’re going to do it this once for good reasons and have already got a plan for how to pay it back with careful budgeting 2012 and beyond.

Normally, when the markets head South we cut out expenses like vacations and wait for better economic conditions.

If I get into the question of why I don’t work or start a business the post will get too long. I might write more about it another time, but in short the business model for my financial consulting business didn’t work well. People want to pay for outcomes, not process; if you provide a service, you should generally make your clients feel like life is better after the transaction, not send them home with a myriad of complex decisions to make and work to do. Now I understand why money managers have high minimums — that way they’re paid reasonably enough from portfolio fees they don’t need to rely on income from one-on-one consulting time. I still have a few clients, but am not trying to grow the business. As for jobs, given my experience and the situation with my hands, there are no quick and easy solutions. Fortunately my financial circumstances allow for experimentation. I’ve got thoughts about a future business, but this time I’m not rushing into anything. Too much heartache!

Fall being a time for parties, a week earlier we attended the annual cocktail party of my women’s group (the one event during the year in which spouses and significant others are included) from the Episcopal Church of St Matthew. I wore this little number and people said I looked maaarvelous and seemed to especially like my new very short hair cut.

the red background is the same color as the red square in the scarf to the right of the necklace

Etzy Rich Red Dichroic earrings

Necklace – Wendy Brandes Lotus Sapphire

Hand made Italian silk scarf

Eileen Fisher Silk Jersey Tee recommended by Pseu

V8565 pants in silk jersey

Vaneli Genie shoes

Here’s the shoes and scarf and earrings up close.

can you see the red patch in the scarf?

Back to the Waldorf salad party.

We enjoyed sitting around and chatting with friends in our living room. It would have been wonderful to light a fire but it was still too warm and anyway we ration fire days out of concern for the environment. We probably have 3 or 4 fires a year.

fireside chats

Our 1926 bungalow sends me way back in time to the 1930s. I imagine the family living here at the time listening to FDR’s fireside chats on an old radio with a fire blazing. It’s one of the oldest houses on the street, with an iron boot kick just inside the front gate to scrape mud off your riding boots before entering the house.

Don’t our fire place andirons remind you of the Disney Fantasia magic brooms?

magic brooms or fireplace andirons?

The garage seems to have been built for horses, not cars (photos another time).

venetian looking sconces above the fire place with rawhide stitching -- so california

Fast forward to 1967, our house in Huntington, Long Island, New York, and nine year old me peering out through the crack to watch the party goers in the living room. The women wore their hair teased up high. Lots of bleached blondes, including my mother. I had a good view of her, perched at the foot of my bed. She would laugh, recrossing her legs, pulling at her necklace. Sometimes there was music. I remember hearing Petula Clark – Downtown.

I loved it when there were parties because of leftovers like these.

chocolate banana pudding

cool whip jello with fruit

Blogging has lightened these time travel experiences.

When I started writing the memoir posts on the old blog, I had no idea the act of writing my untold, unvalidated story would help put it into perspective such that the memories would stay at rest. Now my mind revisits past scenes with distance and I see other elements of the picture. My mother’s laugh, the music. The whipped jello and chocolate banana pudding.

I forget where I saw a reference to Stephanie Coontz, I think Pseu’s blog, but it got me interested in her work and I just finished reading A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. It’s too late in the post for a book review, maybe next time, but what really struck me was the prevalence of depression and anger in that generation of American women.

In closing, Mom did recently write a newsy note, and I was glad. In my fantasy life she would call and agree to talk, to grapple with the past and the rebuilding of our relationship. To let me re-post that post as a way of honoring my experience. In reality, she can speak only of the weather and her busy work life. The old pre-blogging me would not be satisfied, wouldn’t settle for anything less than being fully restored pals.

The new me is glad for Peace in the Land. Sometimes that’s as good as it gets.

My daughter got engaged last week!

So exciting, but I can’t write much about it. (My kids are privacy freaks.)

In celebration of this momentous event I leave you with some garden photos.

martin's begonias bloomed

purple dahlia

Bougainvillea

unknown home depot plant at the front door stairs

I’ll see you next month!

the mondrian made its debut

The handmade mondrian scarf made its San Francisco debut when my friend Rich I’ve known for about forty years recently visited from New York. I actually wore jeans that day but we’ve had a patch of warm and humid weather making it too hot to try on jeans in my South facing bathroom. I did wear the Chucks. As it happens, so did Rich. His were a lighter charcoal color. Rich liked the mondrian scarf.

Martin likes my Chucks so much he bought a pair for himself. His are cream colored, so we wouldn’t be twins. I wonder though, does wearing them with white gym socks spoil the style effect? Or is it ok, as long as you’re a guy?

This photo shows the exact outfit I wore for a day of shopping, lunch at the fabulous Gather and going to the movies in Berkeley with Martin on Labor Day.

a day in berkeley

The style in both of these photos feels very much like the real me, though I still can’t figure out exactly what makes it work. It just feels right.

This past weekend, at the conclusion of our annual choir retreat, there was a protocol forum of sorts in which several of us suggested ways we might put a better choir foot forward. Like, it’s visually more unifying if we all stand to sing at once holding our formal black music folders instead of looking like a bunch of confused choristers standing up in no particular order, some holding the folders, others holding plastic black binders or the white sheet music. Visual unity lends gravitas to the musical offering.

This and 9/11 themes were in mind as we drove home from church on Sunday. A neighbor had put out a beautifully woven flag, the only one we saw. I walked over to thank them for the gesture, and they appreciated being appreciated for remembering. Then I followed Susan’s facebook link to WendyB’s amazing post on 9/11 which had a link to the previous day’s post that linked to this Esquire article on the falling man, and it got me thinking about visible signs.

We need visible signs, of our shared experience and culture, and signs of our broad diversity. The black folders, the flag, the mondrian scarf. The image of the falling man as a cenotaph.

Style has an important role in making a social connection, highlighting individual differences while at the same time placing the individual in a broader cultural and historical context. There is artistry and craftsmanship at work, bridging tradition and individual expression. Take a man’s hat, which appears to be a general agreement to top oneself off for public viewing. It’s not for covering nakedness; hats are removed inside buildings, churches and homes.

An Indiana Jones hat is a specific kind of hat. Martin chose this one.

Indiana Jones hat

The hat might go on any number of heads, but on Martin’s head, angled just so as he leaves for work in the morning, it’s one of a kind, topping him off in a unique way and at the same time connecting him to every other hat wearer in history cutting a figure.

The role of the artist/craftsperson is key. Later that day, on 9/11, I read a link shared by our music director to Karl Paulnack’s welcome address to the new students of the Boston Conservatory about why it is important to be a musician. It’s a powerful piece. We need musicians, we need artists.

The idea of style as wearable art connecting each of us to everyone else makes me feel happy.

Here’s some happiness.

the real silk jersey -- party pants!

The pants are Vogue 8565, the top Vogue 8669, both in silk jersey.

It turns out the fabric shown in this post wasn’t really silk jersey it was pima cotton! I mixed up some receipts and didn’t realize the mistake until the black silk jersey (shown above) arrived from Sarah Veblen. Now I know what real silk jersey feels like and it’s wonderful, more wonderful than pima cotton, though I do like the feeling of that cotton too. It’s just not as dressy.

I don’t care for the top. The Grecian thing at the neckline doesn’t work.

nice grecian folds then oops! big horizontal line at boobs!

too bad silk jersey is $44 per yard -- I'll never wear this top

I learned my lesson. Always test a design/fit using inexpensive fabric. I wanted to try Vogue 8634 top pictured earlier in size large in size medium, so I made it using this inexpensive blue pima cotton fabric first.

Vogue 8634 medium -- I like the shorter length

I like the way it fits, especially in the neck and shoulders, and plan to remake it in a nicer cotton double knit that will give the cowl more structure. The pima cotton cowl is too flimsy.

the top is a keeper

I want to make 12 more of this top in every color.  I’ll be making more of the pants as well, in ponte di roma and cotton double knit, at both the capri and full length hems.

For sewers, I did add a back extension to Vogue 8634 to accommodate my broad back, just like I did when I made it in the larger size.

back extension

I used the Fit for Real People raglan back extension instructions and a French curve to redraw the new curve. Here’s a close up of the new curve.

At Adobe I was familiar with approximating a new curve from a known Bezier curve, but in this sewing context I couldn’t figure out how to use the French curve to approximate a new curve to replace the old one broken up by the extension. In these situations it’s handy to have a physicist on hand. Martin explained you want to place the French curve so that it’s tangent at the beginning and ending points you’re trying to join, and voila, that’s the new curve! The idea is that you want the smoothest transition possible between the two points — the French curve controls the transition.

In other news, we’re big fan’s of Jeffrey Diduch’s blog on tailoring and if you’re geeks like us you might enjoy this post touching on the history of U. S. ready-to-wear, and this post about the film Men of the Cloth, a documentary on Italian master tailors.

In closing, it seems that blogging solves all of my problems in life. In a private discussion related to my previous post on the farm experience, my friend Anne wrote “these tape loops from somewhere deep in our past are implanted bots that dutifully and subliminally control our thoughts and behaviors in the present.” I loved the idea of bots and decided I have a farm bot and an academic snobbery bot that play off each other, the one being from childhood experience and the other, the academic one, being a convenient justification for minimalism I embraced as a young adult. That bot judges style as being frivolous. Naming the bots seems to have diminished their power.

Similarly, like the dinner guests in Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel (we watched it recently after the reference to it in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris), there was some kind of force field preventing me from spending time in the sewing room. I would sit down, and find myself suddenly transported back in time to the room in which I sewed with my mother, a dutiful not joyful business. I started saying this is 2011, not 1970 aloud to snap myself out of it.

While exiled from the sewing room, I read my usual bloggers, met some new bloggers and got some new ideas. People are enjoying themselves! It’s contagious.

Whoosh, the force field is gone and sewing projects are moving forward again.

What about you, do you find that blogging helps you get unstuck when you’re blocked?

See you next month!

my new converse allstars!

oops, head chop, but the shoes shine through!

In commenting on my previous post, several stylish readers self-identified as introverts, making me wonder about style ancestry as an alternative explanation for my minimalist aesthetic.

There certainly were confusing style inputs growing up.

I’ve written before about my paternal grandmother Dorothy’s interest in fashion, not surprising given that her Aunt (my great-great Aunt) Lilly was a professional stylist in Chicago. Grandmother Dorothy liked to dress well, as you can sort of see from her elegant coiffure here. She and Aunt Lilly sewed dresses for me when I visited during summers in the early to mid 1960s. I enjoyed the pampering when I was young, but grew to resent her fashion rules as I got older. My last recollection of her making a style remark was when she took me to O’Hare airport for a return flight. I was about eleven. A woman wearing bell-bottom pants and long hair walked by and my grandmother said “don’t ever let Grandmother catch you wearing something like that!”

I thought that woman looked cool.

On the other side of the family, my maternal grandmother Nellie Dragoo McCutcheon wore house dresses every day for housework and put on a ladies suit and hat and gloves to play the organ on Sundays at the United Presbyterian Church of Goldfield. I don’t think I ever saw her wear slacks.

Nellie had an independent life before she married my grandfather George F McCutcheon circa 1926 and became a farm wife and mother of four on the farm shown below near the Western border of Wright County Iowa. The farm, purchased by my great grandfather Andrew McCutcheon after emigrating from Scotland circa 1881, is located just outside the tiny city of Goldfield. (It’s no longer in the family.) I’ve not been able to determine exactly how Nellie met George, but she was teaching at the Hampton School in nearby Hardy in 1921 (The Humbolt Republican, 02-18-1921, page 6), so presumably they met at some kind of social event or were introduced by friends after George’s first wife died in 1925, leaving him with two young children.

Andrew McCutcheon Farm

Andrew McCutcheon Farm — 1912 Wright County (click to enlarge)

Map source: U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918.

According to several references in the Correctionville Argus, Nellie’s single life before Hardy and George centered around the Pierson (Cushing, Holstein) area where she lived with (or close to) her parents and sister Lavina and taught school (The Correctionville News, 09-28-1911, Pg. 2), visited Sioux City (The Correctionville News, 11-07-1913, Pg. 8), lead the Epworth League (The Correctionville News, 04-14-1910, Pg. 2), went to Correctionville to get some dental work done (The Correctionville News, 12-12-1913, Pg. 9), and generally seemed to keep busy visiting various friends and relatives (multiple references in The Correctionville News).

I think it was an active life and that Correctionville and Sioux City must have offered more cultural stimulation than Goldfield. Nellie and I used to exchange letters when I was growing up; I often requested details about her past but she was elusive. She did say she missed her paycheck after she got married.

My mother has most of the family photographs. My favorite photo of Nellie shows her dressed very formally, circa 1910, in a dress similar to the dresses worn by these Iowa teachers in a one-room school house circa 1893. (Note the saying on the left panel above the blackboard in that photo: “To Do And To Bear is the Duty of Life.”)

In the post I was asked to remove, I explained that life as a farm wife in Goldfield during the Depression and World War II was a difficult business. There weren’t a lot of moments or financial resources available to elevate life above the mundane, and yet my grandmother did care about style. She colored her hair and gave herself permanent curls. She liked to look her best.

Nellie by the piano at the old farm house, 1957

Nellie, 1957

In summers visiting Nellie and George with my mother, I played dress up downstairs in the basement, putting on the dresses and shoes and hats of her former life. I liked that character I saw in the wardrobe mirror and remember thinking that my grandmother was a mystery. Upstairs, the women would sit in the kitchen snipping green beans in silence punctuated by an occasional remark on the weather or tomatoes ripening in the garden or a neighbor getting frail. My mother would joke about the coffee being so weak you could drink it all day long. Clocks ticked, time passed. At the end of the day, my grandfather, dressed in denim bib overalls, came home and removed his farmer cap, exposing a pale forehead atop his darkly suntanned face and neck. We ate a light supper, washed up the dishes and went to bed early. After George died in 1966, visits with Nellie got even quieter.

George, 1957

George and my father Jack, 1957

In the years 1930-1950, Goldfield was apparently not a source of style or other cultural inspiration. According to my mother, when her brother started dating a school teacher from a larger town, her enthusiasm for books and ideas swept through Goldfield, lifting everyone’s spirits and livening the social scene. When I knew her as my aunt, she taught in the Goldfield schools and was such a pleasure to be around, always welcoming and loving and interested in you and the wider world. She loved to sew, for herself and her girls. I remember them all looking very smart.

I think my mother was interested in style. She got to live in two big cities during her nursing training: Rochester Minnesota and Chicago. Photos of her from that time show styled eyebrows and lip stick. She loves shoes, and has always been very good at putting together attractive outfits with scarves and costume jewelry.

As a young girl, I was interested in dresses and hats and boots and patent leather shoes. All of the things little girls love to wear. Later, when I was old enough to make my own decisions about what to wear, I was less enthusiastic about clothes, preferring my scruffy, dirty tomboy ways. Part of the problem was lack of opportunity to play with clothes. There was precious little privacy and when I did try something new my family often made sarcastic or downright cruel comments. And financial resources were always limited. Sewing was the best option for trying new styles, yet fabric choices were limited and the pattern styles themselves lagged behind fashions available in stores. I didn’t fit in with peers wearing homemade clothes.

When we did shop we shopped at stores like Penny’s and Sears. The clothes didn’t appeal to me. What I saw on the store racks and shelves reminded me of what my mother bought for herself and though I felt her style worked well for her, it wasn’t a style I wanted for myself. It seemed dated and the polyester and nylon fabrics didn’t feel comfortable on my skin. I liked cotton.

Then one day in 1972 I was shopping for record albums in downtown Huntington, Long Island, and saw this one. I wanted that outfit. As it happens, a new Gap store had opened across the street from the album store. I wandered in and fell in love. Beautiful jeans in fabulous colors, high-quality leather belts, solid tees made of good quality cotton. Clogs.

Home free!

Well, home free until I moved to that town where some women had sophisticated style and others bought designer tennis outfits to go with their tennis bracelets from Tiffany’s! I tried to participate, with mixed success.

I like that I still resonate with the earlier aesthetic, which at the time was probably considered counterculture but which now just seems like well made stuff.

Although I don’t go around saying To Do And To Bear is the Duty of Life, I do think the farm experience had its impact in terms of shaping how adults in my family communicated values to the next generation. Style, like playing dress up, was not for responsible grown ups. Playfulness in general was suspect. My mother tried to break out of that world and discover her own style, her own spirit. It was the disastrous marriage to my father and the ensuing difficulties working and raising three children in financially constrained circumstances that changed her outlook. As a mother, she communicated the minimalist farm values of her upbringing. In this sense I grew up not physically but psychically on the farm, in that austere culture in which children were to be out of the way, preferably outside, or quiet and obedient, busy with chores, homework or other endeavors. I was not supposed to get too big for my britches or express an interest in finer things. If I wanted something nice I was told “you’d better marry a rich man.”

Given that backdrop it’s no wonder I have to remind myself to lighten up and play, or that I’m still a tomboy at heart. For example, I can’t get over my adorable new Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers! Now all I need is a backwards baseball cap.

See you soon! Next time I’ll have some new sewing to show you.