ChickenFreak's Obsessions

Sewing: Did the Buttonholes!

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:05:00 +0000

I hate buttonholes.

Those of you that don't read or talk about crafts online may not be familiar with the term UFO, or UnFinished Object. Every sewer or knitter or needlepointer or quilter other crafter that I've ever known has lots of UFOs hanging around their house, projects that were started with enthusiasm but never finished. There are infinite reasons for never-finishing, from not knowing how to do a step, to just rushing ahead to the next project. Or disliking a step, like, say, the buttonholes.

I have a shirt made from the HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt pattern hanging in the closet, a UFO from perhaps five years ago. It's been waiting all that time for the shirt hem, the sleeve hems, and the buttonholes and buttons. I don't remember why it got stalled. The collar is wrong, but I didn't know that back then, and it is at least symmetrical and without wrinkles, so "wrong" is a matter of degree. It's not the fabric, which is a beautiful blue linen that I admire every time I see it. Odds are that something shiny crossed my vision and I ran away.

Yesterday I got another HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess shirt (in lime green Brussels Washer, a linen/cotton blend) done to the same point, around 10pm. I stopped for a sandwich and, I thought, for the night. But the shirt, probably hearing fearful stories from the blue linen one, kept nagging at me.

First I stitched down the front facings, something I've been considering but thought would look funny. After pressing, it looked just fine. More nagging from the shirt, and I hemmed the bodice. I learned in the process that Brussels Washer is rather substantial, so that the front corners of the shirt (where you have two layers of fabric due to the facing, plus two more when you turn the hem down, plus two more when you turn it down again) were too fat. But I gave it a deeper hem to give the fat bit some space to relax, and topstitched and pressed it into submission, and it's wearable, if not perfect. (Edited to add: Oh. Yes. Now I see what I did wrong; you just don't hem a facing that way. Next time, I know which Outside Instructions to drag out.)

Having learned from that, I finished the edges of the sleeves with silk organza bias strips (a Hong Kong finish?), so that when I turned down that finished edge I ended up with only two layers of the main fabric, instead of four. (The thickness of silk organza doesn't really count.) That produced a much more fluid hem, and I'll remember the next time I make a version of this shirt in a substantial fabric. Of course, the white organza strip is also visible inside the sleeve when I gesture. I suppose I could buy a rainbow of single-yard pieces of China silk so that I can match colors when I do a Hong Kong finish in the future. Or I could choose to admire the crisp white line as a sign of a clean-finished interior. That's my vote today.

So nothing was left but the buttonholes. I hate buttonholes. I hung the no-doubt-still-nervous shirt up and went to bed.

And got up today, and took a bubble bath, and went out to lunch (Charcuterie plate! Fried chicken! Fruit bowl! Gluttony!) and went to the grocery and came home and played on the web and cleaned the kitchen and did laundry and folded laundry and played on the web and tidied the back room and all the while the shirt was begging, "What about meeeeeeeee?" Then I had a sandwich and played on the web.

At 7:30 I think the shirt resorted to hypnotism. I found the sewing machine manual, the fancy sensor buttonhole foot, and the card of small clear buttons left over from... huh. Probably from the blue UFO, now that I think about it. I put together a sample swatch of Brussels Washer and organza to match the shirt's facings, for testing buttonholes. I did five sample buttonholes and figured out juuuuust the right pressure to make the wad of thread from the first half of the buttonhole go under the presser foot without jamming when making the second half, but not so much that I distort the length of the buttonhole. I dug out the pattern to remember where the center front line was supposed to be. I basted a line of stitches at the exact position for the line of buttonholes. I put on the shirt. I marked the bust point and the lapel point. I measured the rest of the buttonholes. I inserted pins. I sewed the buttonholes (gasp) and cut them (bigger gasp; there's always the risk of cutting past the buttonhole and inflicting a mortal wound on the shirt) and removed the basted guide line and sewed on the buttons. (Everybody fall down now.)

See why I hate doing buttonholes?

The shirt is done. I started out to create a shirt with buttons. I created a shirt with buttons instead of a UFO. I'm not absolutely positive that I've achieved this since high school Home Ec. I'm only fairly sure it's legal.

Above is the shirt. The throw pillow that wore the notched collar in the photo of the last post was feeling left out, so they're posing together.

Bwahaha!

Sewing: Bwahaha! (That collar)

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:13:00 +0000

Remember that collar? The Hot Patterns notched collar that rated a nine-page thread on PatternReview and a very fine tutorial on Off the Cuff? The one that defeated me and destroyed a perfectly nice rayon Dolman Blouse?

Bwahaha!

At least, half a bwahaha. The good part is that with the aid of that tutorial, I got a half-decent looking version of this collar done.

The bad news is that I somehow managed to attach it to the wrong side of the shirt - a muslin mock-shirt, so there's no tragedy there. I'm just startled that I managed to get the whole thing constructed and half of it pressed before I realized that it was wrong side around.

But all the same, I proudly clothed a pillow with the result (I only cut the shirt pieces down to the middle upper arm, because the collar is all I care about) and present a photo, above. I should now be able to produce an adequate Hot Patterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt. At least, if I can remember to put the collar on the correct side.

Bwahaha!

Photo: Mine.

Rambling: SWAP 2012 (Again I talk about the sewing.)

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:07:00 +0000

NaNoWriMo is over. So I need a substitute, right? Right?

Well, there's this thing called a SWAP, or Sewing With A Plan. The Stitcher's Guild hosts an annual SWAP contest. This year's rules, as briefly as I can describe them, call for participants to:

Choose seven garment types from a list of fourteen choices. The choices include things like collared shirt, tee, pants, skirt, jacket, and so on.
Make one example each of those seven garment types.
Make another example each of four of the seven. That is, repeat the garment type, not necessarily the pattern. That makes a total of eleven garments.
All eleven garments must be sewn by the participant, but two of them can be from before the beginning of the contest.
The other nine must be sewn between 12/26/2011 and 4/30/2012.

People generally have a theme for their SWAPs, and a title, but I haven't gotten that far. Rather like typing at blinding speed for NaNoWriMo, I'm going to count any garment that, well, counts. Later, I might substitute in spiffier things. On those grounds, I've technically finished (or almost finished) four out of the eleven garments:

1 - Lazy Skirt (Skirt): I already own at least four self-sewn skirts, so I'm counting one as one of the two before-the-contest garments.

2 - Goth-Daffodil Cooking Coat (Overshirt): As a test garment/wearable muslin for the delightfully weird Liberty Shirt from Sewing Workshop, I sewed this up from black cotton printed with white daffodils. It's pretty weird to wear outdoors, so I'm calling it a cooking coat. (Fried chicken splatters, after all.) I intend to make a closure with a pig-shaped button and some chicken-and-egg ribbon. A cooking coat may be pushing the category of "overshirt"; we'll see if this one remains a part of the SWAP.

3 - Pink Girly Top (Blouse or shirt, collar optional): The Sewing Workshop Cowl Top in pink silk crepe, previously blogged. I used the pattern pretty much unchanged, except for adding triangular godet/gusset things at the hem to make more room for my hips.

4 - Red Polka Dot Girly Top (Blouse or shirt, collar optional): The Sewing Workshop Cowl Top again, in red rayon with white polka dots. This represents Version Two of my copy of the Cowl Top pattern. Who knew that sewing would require version control? But I'm finding that it really does; without versions it's only a matter of time before I cut an un-altered sleeve and try to install it into an altered armhole.

In this version, I shortened the hem a fraction to make it shorter than any likely jackets or cardigans, shortened the sleeves to wrist length, sewed everything but the cowl in French seams, pre-hemmed the pieces before assembly (a little weird, but it solved the rippling hem problem that I had on the pink one), and topstitched the cowl instead of hand-hemming it. I abandoned the triangular thingies; they went in just fine in the silk crepe for the first top, but I failed three times in the wobbly rayon of the second one, so I finally ripped them out and did normal side seams. Therefore, I'll be tucking this shirt in.

In Version Three I'll modify the main bodice pieces to make more hip room. I may also make hem templates to avoid the pre-hemming weirdness while still avoiding the ripply weirdness. I'm debating whether to remove some fabric from higher in the bodice, but I'm pretty sure that that would be just silly--this shirt wants to be loose and roomy. I also really want to find a way to do a completely clean finish, like a French seam, on the cowl seam, but so far I'm not sure how.

My construction skills are already improving; this version is greatly improved from the pink one. Unfortunately, I don't look so good in it. That is, I really like the head-and-shoulders view in the mirror; it's just what I wanted. But the shoulders-to-waist view makes me look a little, er, substantial. It appears that polka dots call for a few distracting details like a collar and buttons, rather than just an expanse of flowing fabric. So I'll be wearing this blouse under a cardigan or jacket and will make future Cowl Tops from solids.

So, how about garments five to eleven? Some of them are planned.

5 - Yet Another Black Shirt (Button Shirt With Collar): The cooking jacket was OK, but the shoulders were too wide, giving it a dropped sleeve when it's not meant to. I used the "narrow shoulders" alteration in Sandra Betzina's Fast Fit book to change the pattern and I (gulp) went ahead and cut it out in black linen without testing it in muslin. I may regret this, but that linen's been hanging around for at least ten years, so I'm declaring it to be fully depreciated. Or whatever you call it for sewing stash.

6 - Weird Skirt (Skirt): I'm realizing that my taste for weird extends to sewing patterns as well as perfume. The Liberty Shirt is weird. And when I decluttered much of my pattern collection a few years ago, I kept all the Issey Miyake and Folkwear. Vogue 1082, the skirt that I'm tentatively planning to make for garment 6, is subtly weird, with lots of cool architectural seams.

Now, going full-fledged weird with this particular skirt requires absolute perfection in topstitching. I don't have that talent yet, so I'll be making it up out of some quiet matte-finish solid, and skipping the topstitching. There's a narrow slightly pegged version and a much fuller version; I'll be starting with the weirder narrow version. For a later project, the fuller version looks good, too--plenty of walking room with not a bit of excess fabric further up where it's not needed.

What to make it in? That question highlights a conflict between sewing and decluttering. See, it's common to make a test garment or "muslin" of a pattern in cheap ugly fabric. The fabric might be actual muslin or some length of textile ugliness that you bought while visiting a fabric store with impaired judgement. That's not the decluttering conflict--muslins are made to be thrown away.

But next comes the "wearable muslin". Once a muslin is done, you may want to retest the altered pattern in, say, seven-dollar-a-yard bargain rayon bought on sale before you cut into the fifty-dollar-a-yard Silk of Majesty and Grandeur. If you succeed, you're ready to move on to the expensive fabric, but you also have a garment that is, by definition, a compromise. Unless you're fifty miles away from the nearest laundering facilities, how many compromise garments do you want in the house? As they start to stack up, will you actually wear them?

I have three different fabrics that are perfectly suitable for Vogue 1082, but I don't actually like any of them, at least not for a skirt. I also have a lovely nubbly black wool that I want for the skirt in the end, but I'm afraid to ruin it. It's a thicket.

7 - Standard Shirt (Button Shirt With Collar): I want a shirt that I can make up several times in different shirting fabrics, but I can't seem to perfect a set-in sleeve in any of the candidates tried so far. Burda 7429 has dropped sleeves and appears to have a fairly fitted bodice, and might be just what I want while I'm avoiding the set-in sleeves. I haven't so much as unfolded the pattern yet, though, so we'll see.

8 - My Kingdom For a Dress! (Dress): I've been fighting with two different princess-seamed dresses, but I don't know if I'm going to win either battle. First was the Hot Patterns Wong-Singh-Jones Kimono Wrap Dress. After my first attempt at a bodice-and-sleeves muslin, I realized that I'd have to lengthen the bodice, modify the sleeve to account for a larger upper arm, possibly remove some ease from the sleeve cap or completely redraft the sleeve to be properly asymmetrical, and modify the shoulders to account for narrow shoulders. That's before I get even as far as my waist.

I got discouraged and tried the Petite Plus Princess Dress, because it's intended for people who are round for their height, like me. It turns out that the size that the measurement chart recommends for me is too large everywhere, so I'll need to start over with a smaller size, tracing all five pieces again--and if I guess wrong on the size, possibly again. Once I trace that smaller size, I'm pretty sure I'll still have to do a low bust adjustment and narrow the shoulders.

I'm going back to Wong-Singh-Jones; if I have to put this much work into a pattern, I prefer its shoulder princess seams to the armhole princess seam of the Petite Plus dress. But, sheesh. What's worse is that this is probably not an abnormal amount of work for fitting a pattern.

But, hmm. I dug into the pattern box to have another look at those two patterns and ran across Stretch & Sew 526, a pattern so old that I don't see even a mention on PatternReview. I remember making a perfectly satisfactory loose cotton summer dress from this. It has barely dropped sleeves, getting me out of the set-in sleeves drama, but still with the shape of a normal sleeve. I don't like the empire waist, but in digging through the envelope I see I already altered that away. I suspect that the scoop neck version doesn't even require a real button closure. Unfortunately, the dress is packed away with the summer clothes, so I can't try it on.

9: Again, again! (Dress): If I put that much work into a dress pattern, I'm making it at least twice.

10: Cloaklike object (Overcoat or Raincoat; it seems clear in the rules discussion that a cloak counts for this type): I don't know what kind--the Folkwear Kinsale Cloak, maybe? Or some much smaller elbow- or hip-length thing like Vogue 8605? Vogue 1476, a freaky draping cloak/coat that one of the reviewers says has been in the catalog for twenty years?

Oh. Never mind. Forget all that. Look at Vogue 2232. Architectural. Weird. Look at the version that appeared in Threads 91, as depicted in this post from Now Sewing. Want.

Number 11? I just don't know. The rules do say that if you wear pants, you should include them in your SWAP, and I do wear jeans and occasionally shorts. So that's what this ought to be. But.

And by the way, is it wrong to want a dressmaker's dummy just so that I can photograph my garments on it for blogging and pattern reviews? Probably.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Sewing: Color?! Reprise, and Polka Dots

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:09:00 +0000

The above depicts most of my fabric purchases since the sewing restart. Maybe aliens have stolen my brain?

The below shows the pink silk cowlneck blouse, my first wearable garment since the sewing restart. You may observe that while I'm willing to admit that I don't actually have feathers and a beak, I'm not yet prepared to show my actual face on the Internet.

Why is that?

I've mentioned before that somewhere in my brain is the conviction that I'm wildly unattractive. The conviction that if I demonstrate that I've put any effort whatsoever toward my appearance, small children will point and laugh. I've used the phrase "pig in an Easter bonnet" in reference to the idea. I'm not sure where all that came from--though I have theories--but it's definitely in there.

I suspect that that's part of why my initial entrance into the world of girly was through perfume. Perfume's appeal does not depend, in any way, on me. Whether I'm beautiful or hideously ugly, perfume will smell the way it smells. I don't categorize it as an ornament, and therefore to wear it, I don't have to feel that I'm worth ornamenting. It's the opposite extreme from makeup, which to me is all ornament, a statement that communicates my belief that I can be made worth looking at. That brings us back to point-and-laugh.

Clothes are somewhere in the middle. Everyone has to wear clothes, so unlike perfume, the mere fact that I'm wearing some doesn't indicate that I have the unmitigated gall to have any faith in my appearance. Even fine, expensive clothes, as long as they're boring, can communicate not respect for my appearance, but respect for those who have to look at me. Now, I combine my belief that I'm ugly with a rebellious anger at the world that (according to the crazy part of my brain) thinks I'm ugly, so I don't actually do the fine expensive clothes, but they don't make me fear point-and-laugh. In my mind, people seeing me in those expensive clothes would respond with something along the lines of, "Well, at least she made some effort, but sheesh. Couldn't she just stay home?"

But, see that stuff in the photo? The stuff that, if your monitor color is like mine, looks like it's pink with white polka dots? It's actually red with white polka dots. Bright red. Fire-engine red. Red. A woman wearing fire-engine red with polka dots is ornamenting herself. I bought that fabric, and I intend to make it up using the same pattern that I used for the pink blouse, and I intend to wear it. In public.

This is a change. I must say that it's not a change that comes from a new place of peace and happiness in my mind; in fact, it's coming out at a time when, as I keep saying, I'm doing a whole lot of worrying. And maybe that's the motivation; maybe I'm finally ready to tell those worries that they can clamor all they want, and I can't ensure that they won't come true, but I'm going to focus on joy in my life anyway. Maybe I've hit just the right level of fed up, with my brain and with anyone who might happen to turn out to behave in accordance with my brain's prediction of how the world will behave.

I'm going to wear polka dots. And that, I hope, is just the beginning.

Perfume: January Clip Show

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:24:00 +0000

So, several days ago I wore L'Artisan Tea for Two, as I recall because I was late getting ready to go to lunch and it was up near the front and so I sprayed it on, even though I thought I wasn't in the mood for something so sweet and foody. And it was perfect - not sweet and foody, but smoky and comforting, like wearing something with the warmth and squashiness of wool but the skin-softness of... well... not-wool, because I always find wool scratchy.

A day or two later I had plenty of time to choose my fragrance, and I chose Chanel Cuir de Russie, because I was absolutely positive that that was what I had wanted when I put on the Tea for Two. And, no, Cuir de Russie was entirely wrong. On that day it felt sour and thin and not at all comforting; cold slick leather upholstery in a cold car when all you want to do is go inside.

The next day I put on Tea for Two and it was, again, perfect.

And today I put on Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose, because I was wearing that new pink silk blouse for the first time and I wanted something feminine. I though that it might not work for winter, but, no, I found that it had the same deep squashy comforting feel that Tea for Two had, but with an added feminine vibe--a sort of "optional feminine"; I think that a man could wear this too, in spite of the tuberose.

It appears that I don't know my January tastes as well as I might have thought. So I went through the blog to see what I was loving this time last year and the year before. Trends that I didn't expect include:

I seem to have a January craving for smoke. Last year I was longing for Heeley Cardinal and snapping irritably at Serge Noire for failing to satisfy. This year Tea for Two is doing the job; I must try to remember for next year.
In January 2010 I predicted that Cuir de Russie would be one of "the scents at the core of my wardrobe, the ones that make me smell like me". In January 2011 I didn't wear it once. So this year's lack of enthusiasm may not be a fluke.
In 2010 I was less than thrilled with Un Lys; in 2011 I was delighted with Parfums de Nicolai Number One. I've always considered these two perfumes to be functionally redundant, though I long to own them both all the same. Maybe January is an excuse for buying Number One?
I called Parfumerie Generale Cuir d'Iris "lovely" and "very satisfying", and I mention the sweetness in the drydown. I'm tempted to send off for some, though I said similar things about Iris Taizo. I suspect that these two are functionally redundant.
I surprised myself by being delighted with Balmain Ivoire, a scent that I never would have thought of as belonging to winter. I should wear it tomorrow.
I praised Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose, in a post that was more focused on crispy poultry skin.
I enthused about biehl parfumkunstwerke hb01, a perfume with orange blossom and all sorts of fruit that I shouldn't like in January. what's with that?
I enjoyed Cadjmere, and Daim Blond, and Aomassai, and Fendi Theorema, and Feminite du Bois. At least not everything is a surprise.
And I wore Orange Star twice in a row.

So what does it mean? I'm not sure, but I'll be pulling out some of the bottles that the above says that I loved, to see if there's a January trend. And I may need a decant of that parfumkunstwerke thing.

Image: By Petritap. Wikimedia Commons.

Sewing: Color?!

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:07:00 +0000

I just finished sewing a pink silk blouse. This is not like me.

I've mentioned more than once that I have limited interest in, and talent with, clothes. But as I consider resuming this sewing thing, I find my interest in the topic growing.

Maybe part of my issue with clothes has been the fact that they weren't controlled by me. Instead, ready-to-wear clothes are controlled by companies that decide what I should wear this year, and how much I should pay for it, and whether a round person like me is worthy of wearing something decent-looking. My reaction to all of that sort of thing tends to be "Bleah," followed by, "Nothing's falling apart yet - I'm keeping my money."

I normally wear jeans with tee shirts or polos, or black skirts and black shoes and black coats and black hats topped with a very limited variety of plain shirts. Occasionally I'll branch from black to dark brown or dark blue or dark green.

But when you look at my stash of sewing fabrics, they show a very different taste. I do have black and navy blue wool crepe, but I also have a cut of cotton in gaudy peony-like flowers in several colors, and one of georgette in light blue with huge polka dots in darker blue. And a lime green and purple brocade. And now I've made that pink silk blouse, and tomorrow when the sale starts at the fabric shop I have my eye on a white lawn with nicely silly orange flowers.

And I'm thinking about garments with brightly colored and patterned linings and facings and cuffs and piping and other gaudy sparks. If I keep sewing, I may be hard to recognize in a year or so.

Image: By Asbestos. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Still More Sewing

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 08:54:00 +0000

The sewing continues, with limited success. I babble on in mind-numbing detail:

I cut the HotPatterns Classix Nouveau Dolman Blouse, previously discussed and altered within an inch of its life, out of a drapey rayon blend, and made up the main bodice, and pressedpressedpressed the shoulder-and-sleeve seams so that I could see how they draped, and tried on the result. I was delighted--the fitting issues that I saw in crispish muslin went away in the drapey stuff. It looked good. It hung well. I looked like a grownup, rather than my usual persona of a severely aging college student. And it was still comfy.

That was before....The Collar. The notched collar found in the HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt is somewhat famous. That is, infamous. There's a long tutorial here, with ten photos, on how to get the bleeping thing to assemble correctly. And a nine-page thread on PatternReview, with even more photos.

The collar on the Dolman Blouse is very similar, and the pattern offers roughly four lines of text, and no diagrams, as guidance for assembly. Unsurprisingly (though of course I was surprised; if I'd seen this coming I would have made a more complete muslin muslin), mine failed, and took the whole "wearable muslin" with it. Ripping out won't help; I was encouraged when _half_ of it went together not too badly, and I trimmed things, thus eliminating any opportunity to restart. While I may eventually master the collar, the only hope for this specific half-made blouse is a recut faced neckline. On PatternReview, I begged for guidance on adding a facing, and when I get that guidance I'll remove the collar, thus stripping even more of the original design out of the pattern. Bwaha.

So. Meanwhile. Grumble. I traced and did a muslin of the Sewing Workshop Cowl Top. It worked surprisingly well without alterations - the main flaw was insufficient material to skim over my hips. Instead of changing the front and back, I instead added a triangular piece of fabric (A gusset? Do I mean gusset?) going down from the underarm seams, and that worked just fine. I have fair to middling hopes that the wearable muslin of this one will actually be wearable. But not enough hope to use silk, even though I bought the silk in my stash so long ago that I have no memory of what it cost. I'll be buying a really cheap piece of something.

Oh, and I started working on a dress pattern, the HotPatterns Wong-Singh-Jones Kimono Wrap Dress. I got as far as doing the bodice and sleeves in muslin, and it failed miserably. The sleeves are almost symmetrical, which is generally held, I believe, to be a bad thing in a set-in sleeve.

Grumble. It's past time for a wearable garment. The Cowl Top had better work, that's all I have to say.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Holiday rambling, and sewing again

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:45:00 +0000

Yikes. It's been almost two weeks since I posted. I caught a cold. Is that an excuse? And I'm stressed. That usual worry fifteen hours a day, sleep eight hours, eat one hour, thing. Except the cold means that I'm sleeping lightly and have the opportunity to get in more worrying then. Somebody in charge of worrying should really pay me overtime. I seem to remember holiday vacation last year as being pretty worry-free; how'd I manage that?

So we had Christmas. It was good. Himself roasted a duck. There's crispy duck skin left in the fridge. Yum.

In addition to the sneezing and hacking and wheezing, I've been sewing. Well, I've been altering one measly pattern; no appreciable sewing has yet occurred. I started with the HotPatterns Classix Nouveau Dolman Blouse. I increased the length of the bodice and sleeves, removed the big pleats on front and back, and blended three different sizes going from shoulders to waist to hips and cut it out from muslin and based it together and tried it on. And I have no idea whether I like it or not. There's a folds-of-fabric thing going on that might look good in an actual drapey fabric, or might just end up looking like I'm wearing melted plastic. It is comfortable; at least it's got that going for it. I suspect that whoever drafted it would take a look at my changes and wonder why I bothered to use their pattern at all. Like those movies that are named after the really good book, but don't actually resemble it.

After all this focus on a blouse, it occurs to me that I should be working on dress patterns. Why? Because the local garment fabric store (Fabric of Vision, that is, as opposed to Quiltz, which is the quilting fabric store) is having a sale in January where your discount is based on the length of the cut of fabric. More yards, more discount, up to forty percent off for four yards. Bwahaha. And a blouse doesn't use all that much yardage.

Himself said that somebody said that Buffy should be watched starting with Season 3. I don't agree, but I thought I'd start my traditional holiday BuffyFest with Season 3 instead of the first season as usual, just to see. The end of the graduation episode ("Fire bad. Tree pretty.") is on right now.

Is it deeply and fundamentally wrong that my favorite relationship in Buffy, my very very favorite, is the one between Faith and The Mayor? In fact, it's one of my favorite fictional relationships, period. Does anyone else also really love watching those two? How often do you see two fictional character derive so much pure, unconflicted enjoyment from one another's company? Sure, I can wish that they could have somehow met in another universe when they weren't evil, but would they still get along so well without the evil?

A dress pattern. I need a dress pattern, altered and ready to go. Quick.

Image: By Dmeranda. Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: More Chanel Sniffs, and some Lutens

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:23:00 +0000

I ran by Nordstrom's one last time, to sniff more of those Les Exclusifs testers.

28 La Pausa: For the first few minutes, this was sunlit-bright, feminine without being girly, tangy without being citrusy; very nice, though not really exciting. Half an hour later, it was... celery. I've forgotten which note it is that I read so often as celery--ah, yes! It's cedar; I realized it when I read "pencil shavings" in the one-sentence review in BitterGrace notes. Half an hour after that, it shifted from celery to a friendly well-behaved iris, one of those moderately complex, slightly mysterious scents that I don't fall immediately in love with, but that I can imagine becoming addicted to. I think this is worth a modest decant, to help me make up my mind.

31 Rue de Cambon: I didn't like this one bit at first. I got a very rough, furniture-polish or cough-syrup-without-the-fruit opening. Later it grew much sweeter, leathery, providing much of the pleasure of a gourmand without actually including any edible-seeming notes that I could point to. It's dark and dense from beginning to end, while 28 La Pausa is bright and transparent all the way through. If I were the sort to buy perfume on impulse, I suspect I'd be ordering a (small) bottle of this right now.

One thing that I'm realizing from all this Chanel sniffing is that I'm developing a dangerously modern nose--I keep judging these fragrances from the top notes, and being surprised when they utterly transform within half an hour. Oh! And that reminds me:

Serge Lutens Jeaux de Peau: I tried this one at The Perfume House. I keep being surprised that Serge Lutens' top notes sometimes seem to last for hours before the heart of the scent, much less the base, is revealed. The beginning of this scent was entertainingly yummy, but it was a little too gooey to make me happy--it mostly just made me laugh. I'd largely dismissed it, until I smelled it two or three hours later and found that it had settled down to something more grainy and dry, not in the sense of less sweet, but in the sense that the smooth-frosting "gooey" vibe was gone. I love sweet and grainy, so I'm rethinking this one.

Serge Lutens Vitriol d'oeillet: Cranky and medicinal. I like medicinal. I need to try this again, but that's all I have to say; all that sweet buttered toast on my other hand distracted me from paying this proper attention.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: Quick Chanel Sniffs

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:46:00 +0000

We're spending a few days at a hotel that's two minutes' walk from the downtown Portland Nordstrom's, which has a surprisingly good perfume department. It isn't, sadly, good enough to have many niche fragrances, except for Bond No. 9, and I have Issues with Bond No. 9. So when I drifted through, I spent my time sniffing Chanels.

No. 5 EDT: My main experience with No. 5 is my miniscule gift-set bottle of the parfum, which I perceive as strongly structured, smooth, and glowingly aldehydic for hours. The EDT, in contrast, dried down to something soft, powdery, and a little bit fruity, in less than an hour. I had expected the parfum and the EDT to be essentially the same thing, with different notes emphasized. But no; I'm perceiving them as fundamentally different.

No. 5 Eau Premiere, probably EDT: To my surprise, it's No. 5 Eau Premiere, smelled for the first time yesterday, that I see as a very closely-tied variant of the parfum. It started with a great deal of citrus, a bit more than I altogether approve of, but it dries down to the same firm architecture and glow that I get from the parfum. It still has, to me, a classic "old-lady" vibe, and I approve; nothing with No. 5's name should ever be mistaken for, say, a teen beach scent.

No. 19 Poudre, probably EDT: I love No. 19. (At least, I love the parfum.) I disapprove of flankers. So I was planning on hating this. But I found that I quite liked the top notes; they did have a family resemblance to No. 19, without doing anything to make me use the word "travesty". As it developed, it was oddly variable from sniff to sniff. Sometimes it had a good streak of green in the powder, making it a green comfort scent that I could like. Sometimes it was all retiring powdery boredom. I don't love it, but if I pretend that it doesn't carry the No. 19 name, I like its greener moments.

No. 22 EDT: Nordstrom's had Les Exclusifs testers! They told me that actually buying a bottle required a special order, but all the same, what are the odds of finding the testers? So I tried No. 22. (Why only one? All other sampling skin was already covered, that's why.) It wasn't at all what I expected--based on Luca Turin's review (I love his review of this one), I expected it to be sweet. It's not sweet, and I'm not getting the incense, and I'm not getting the white flowers. All I seem to be getting is a note that I perceive as one of the background notes in Chanel No. 5 parfum. This is a puzzlement; I'll need to try it again, with a nose not recently contaminated by any other perfume.

The dangerous result of this experiment is that I now plan to buy a .25 oz No. 5 parfum, and a 1 oz No. 5 EDT, in the not too distant future. I've mentioned my fear that I'll learn to love No. 5 after it's been reformulated out of existence; now that I am growing fond of it, I'm feeling all the more urgent.

Image: By Eric Pouhier. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Chanel Coco

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:51:00 +0000

There are perfumes that I want to like. Chanel Coco. Chanel No. 5. Guerlain Mitsouko and Shalimar and Jicky--really, all of the older classic Guerlains. Walking away from the classics, I also want to love Tauer L'Air du Desert Marocain, Parfumerie Generale Bois de Copaiba, Frederic Malle Une Fleur de Cassie... the list could go on.

I've found the right time to wear these: When I'm grumpy or stressed or expecting a bad day. See, I don't want to wear my favorites at those times, and weigh them down with negative associations. And I don't want to wear no perfume, because any perfume I don't hate is still better than no perfume. And it's not as if I hate those perfumes, I just don't love them. So if I learn to hate them, so be it. If I learn to love them, spiffy.

So today I wore Coco. I've mentioned that my main issue with it seems to be association with someone that I can't remember but apparently didn't like. I'm guessing that enough wearings will wipe that out. The other issue is that tiny tiny bit of fruitiness that I get behind the spices. The fruit that offends me isn't orange--I see that in notes lists, but I don't smell it, and it wouldn't bother me. At least one review mentions peach, and I think that's it. I like peach, but for me all of Coco's other notes belong to winter--oranges are a winter fruit to me--and that bit of fresh stone fruit clashes with them.

I suspect that I'd like Coco better if I'd never smelled Coco Mademoiselle. Just the sight of the Coco Mademoiselle bottle, with all that pink juice in it, makes me recoil. I can smell the pink in the perfume as well. And there's just enough Coco in Coco Mademoiselle to reverse-contaminate the parent in my memory's nose--when I smell Coco I get a memory of the pink. But I'll keep wearing it now and then; I'm confident that I'll grow fond of it in time.

I wore No. 5 the other day, pure parfum from that set of tiny (1/8 oz?) bottles that Chanel comes out with at Christmas, one I bought about five years ago. That was more successful; I like the otherworldly, don't-mess-with-me mood of No. 5. I can't pick out a single real-world note; I know that there are flowers in there, but they don't present themselves as flowers. It is, in fact, weird--the likely most famous perfume in the world is weird. I like that.

Image: By David Scelfo. Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: The Under Twenty Project

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:29:00 +0000

I was bad. I bought stuff. I blame Black Friday and Cyber Monday and my current state of "meh."

As previously mentioned, I ordered a bottle of Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose. It came, and I still love it. And I love the bottle. And everybody who was there when I rudely opened the bottle at lunch in the restaurant claimed to like the scent as well, though they might have just been humoring a fanatic. ("Giles, don't make cave slayer unhappy.")

Last night I went online shopping, and I kept finding perfumes with positive reviews available at less than twenty dollars. When I reconsidered my cart, I realized that there were fewer than I thought, because two of the candidates were sample size, and that doesn't count, based on the rules that I made up. The rules are that the product must:

Be a fragrance, rather than, say, a lotion or soap or spray deodorant or hair spray. (I swear, I saw at least one perfumed hair spray.) But any strength is OK.
Contain at least half an ounce.
Be available from a retailer, rather than an individual.
Be an original manufacturer's bottle, not a decant.
Cost less than twenty dollars. Achieving this price with a non-product-specific discount doesn't count.

I might make a series out of this. I'm not requiring myself to actually burn the price of the bottle; if it's available as a sample as well as an under-twenty bottle I'm allowed to buy just the sample, I decree. But I confess that bottles of Balenciaga Rumba and Madame Rochas are on their way. Unsniffed.

I was bad.

Image: By Jorge Barrios. Wikimedia Commons.

Ramble: Soap Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:10:00 +0000

I just took a bubble bath. I'd used up my previous fancy bar of soap, so I cracked open the box around a new bar of Pacifica Tuscan Blood Orange soap. The soap itself was, as usual tightly wrapped in shrinkwrapped plastic, and, as usual, it resisted my efforts to open it with my fingernail. I would normally find something to stab it with. But this time, I found myself vaguely staring at it, and my brain said, "Oh, never mind."

There's something wrong with my brain this week. And part of last week. Rather suddenly, it's doing an awful lot of "Oh, never mind." There are frequent and growing intervals of just-don't-care. And I don't know why. I don't know if I'm depressed. I don't know if it's the lack of sunlight as winter deepens; that never seemed to happen to me before. I don't know if it's stress. I am worried about several things, but I'm always worried; I'm worried fifteen hours a day, with eight hours off for sleeping and some momentary distractions here and there. I've been that way since... OK, I don't remember not being that way, so that's not it, or that's not it alone, so what...

Oh, never mind.

Image: By Roberta F. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: That Fume Scout Thing

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:54:00 +0000

So, I've created my little small list of links to information about brick-and-mortar perfume shopping. It's on this permanent page, and I figure I'll add a quick link post here when I update it.

Got more links? Send 'em! Please! Got your own lists of links? Send, them too! We may get a bit circular, but I never mind clicking a few times in the hope of new information.

Image: By Ed Uthman. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: In case you missed it (Basenotes thread about feminine perfume packaging)

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:29:00 +0000

I enjoyed this thread:

Stereotypical "Feminine" Bottles, Packaging: Irritating? Offensive? Humiliating?

and thought you folks might too, if you haven't already run across it.

Image: By tanakawho. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Random Thoughts, Mostly Sewing

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:22:00 +0000

NaNoWriMo is almost over. Unless I write thirty-four thousand words in the next forty-nine minutes, I'm not going to "win", but as already burbled, I'm content with my NaNoWriMo experience this year. (Oh. Yeah. Twenty-four hours and forty-nine minutes. But still.)

We didn't eat any turkey today. This is a bad thing, because there's a lot of turkey left. I think that we're approaching the point of frozen turkey Tetrazzini casseroles.

All the yams are gone. This is sad.

Himself is continuing to hide the dark chocolate mint Lindor balls because I asked him to hide them from me because the caffeine was making me crazy. Who knew he'd obey me so thoroughly? (Edited to give proper credit: He bought me the dark chocolate mint Lindor balls in the first place, because he knows I love them. He's a very nice Himself. I understand that I get them back during the relatively-low-stress (we hope) days of Christmas vacation.)

Sushi Imperiale is still beautiful. I wore it today to belatedly celebrate the fact that we got the tree set up in the stand yesterday. Yesterday I wore Serge Noire. It was also gorgeous.

We're taking two weeks off for Christmas. I'm under the delusion that I'm going to sew. I said it exactly that way at the fabric store and people laughed. I bought the Taylor Made Designs Sew Easy Pajama Pants and and the Sewing Workshop Mixit Shirt pattern. (I'll be making the variant with sleeves.) I also have my eye on a whole bunch of HotPatterns patterns, and I'm hoping to find the HotPatterns Miss MoneyPenny Trumpet Skirt that I already altered to near-perfection.

My theory is that I stop sewing because it's too much trouble to get a pattern fitted, and that I'll keep sewing if I can just hold on until I have a tiny wardrobe of patterns perfectly fitted and traced onto that pattern cloth stuff that's easy to work with and doesn't tear all the time. The Mixit Shirt, Trumpet Skirt, and either the Wong-Sing-Johes Kimono Wrap Dress or the Deco Vibe Delicious Dresses might do the job. Or I might look pregnant in the dresses. We'll see.

Why is it so hard to find Burda Patterns? It's even harder to find Burda Plus patterns. I want them because last time I sewed, Burda Plus blouses were almost exactly right for me, without a bunch of fitting. It's almost inconceivable for shoulders, chest, and sleeves in a fitted blouse to all work right out of the envelope; with Burda Plus, they did.

My head hurts. I blame lack of caffeine.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Proposal For All Perfume Freaks: Fume Scout. Or something like that.

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:57:00 +0000

Perfume can be hard to find. Not nearly as hard as pan-fried chicken, but hard all the same. It's especially hard when you're just traveling, and you didn't do your Googling ahead of time to find out that you should go to the right-hand back corner of that little salon between the pizza place and the paint store, to the one shelf where they keep the Carons, below the shampoo and above the nail polish.

The perfume freaks who live in that town know all about that shelf, and they're certainly not interested in hiding it--the more Caron that gets sold, the higher the odds that they'll add one more shelf and start selling some Guerlains. But they don't necessarily have an accepted way to share the knowledge. OK, yes, there are the appropriate threads in Basenotes, but, really, can information like this be disseminated in too many places? Of course not. I'd sky-write it if that were an option.

So I propose that we disseminate it, all of us perfume bloggers. Under some common phrase, string, meme, whatever, so that when you've bought your plane ticket, you can Google that phrase and find out where to get the perfume. I already have a post about buying perfume in Ashland, Oregon, one that's sadly out of date. I was sitting down to start updating it, when it occurred to me that we could all do this, and then came this post.

So, what do you think? Want to join in and write your own post or page about where to find perfume in your own area, or for that matter, any area where you have knowledge? We could all crosslink madly. And what's the phrase? Ideally, it would be something that doesn't produce a lot of Google clutter when searched. I just Googled the string:

"fume scout" perfume

and got precisely one hit. But I'm sure that there are dozens of other possibilities.

Of course, the "fume" part reminds me of the way that I suggested #fumechat and then vanished into the ether, but on the other hand it looks like #fumechat is rolling along (with the active help of people who, unlike me, are not slackers), so, hey! Maybe this could, too.

Opinions?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Weekend Sloth Update, or Digressions Galore

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:43:00 +0000

It's Last Saturday and Black Friday Weekend. I'm watching movies and shopping for perfume. War of the Roses just ended, and now Blast From the Past is on. And I finally agreed with myself that of all the perfumes I haven't bought, the one that I would most regret missing, if it went away, is Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose. So I just sent off for it. Bwahaha.

(By the way, Josephine, I just went to look at my post for that perfume and saw your comment, and I wanted to mention that I miss your blog. I hope that you're being refreshed by the blog break.)

Digression: I should be focusing on my BlogAWriMo, or whatever one might call it, but I'd have to blog slightly more than thirty-four thousand words to get there by the end of November, so, well, no. I've decided that what I'm going to get out of my NaNoWriMo Rebel experiment this year is (1) experiencing a higher blog frequency and a freer "ah, just go ahead and post it" attitude and (2) increasing my blog post length. Those are rather mechanical goals, but I think they're valuable anyway. The first ties into a life philosophy of anti-perfectionism, and the second I burbled about here.

Digression: Longer and less edited burbling is making this blog a bit more like a journal, except, of course, for the part where it's not the least bit private. That makes me curious about the practice of "journaling", and exactly how it's described and why it's recommended. So, of course, I Googled. Websites claim that journaling exercises or left brain, frees up your right brain, and improves your immune system. I'm eyeing these claims skeptically, and am tempted to make a sarcastic remark about floor polish. But I do see a mention of a specific study where a group of students was asked to write about plain old stuff, and another group was asked to write about traumatic events, and the trauma group had a higher immune function response, based on, er, some measure.

This suggests that not just writing, but writing about all my worries and deepest undisclosed thoughts, would be useful and help with my immune system and psychological state and all that. I'm not going to be posting a great deal of that on the blog, though, and I find that I'm just not that interested in writing nonfiction off the blog.

Digression: For that matter, I'm finding that I'm not all that much interested in writing fiction off the blog. I was just looking at a thread about "why do you write?" and realized that I write fiction because I want to have written it, while I write nonfiction because I want to write it. This strongly suggests that whether I like it or not, I am a nonfiction writer.

I have trouble entirely accepting this, because I've been creating fictional scenes in my head all my life. But I rarely if ever string those scenes together to form a story. I can create situations and trigger a beginning, as I used to when I gamemastered Call of Cthulhu adventures, but I rarely create an entire story, characters and situations and plot and sequence, from beginning to end. This might just be a roadblock that I need to plow past a few times until it's flattened, but I suspect that it may be a fundamental lack of either capability or inclination.

Digression: On the other hand, I very much miss those Call of Cthulhu adventures. And Shadowrun adventures. And online roleplaying on MUDs. It may be that I want to create fiction, but in a roleplaying context, which is a context that was never all that widespread and seems to be less and less popular every day. All the new online games have little to do with roleplaying, based on my definition of the activity--any setting where a computer or a predefined set of possible events limits what the characters can do is not, IMO, roleplaying. And face-to-face roleplaying...

Actually, I don't know if face-to-face roleplaying is fading. I'm reassured to see that Chaosium, the company that created the face-to-face Call of Cthulhu game, is still selling gaming modules and has in fact branched out into some "basic roleplaying" thingie that apparently applies the same roleplaying system to a variety of different settings. I always liked Chaosium's roleplaying system, both of the variants that I experienced; the mechanics were simple enough to get out of the way of the roleplaying itself.

I loved roleplaying. Did I mention this? It's absorbing, it's exciting. I give it credit for bringing me out of an isolated shell and into the world--something about interacting with others as a person that I wasn't, allowed me to interact with other as the person what I was. I miss it, a lot.

Himself and I and some friends have discussed getting a roleplaying group together, and now that we live in the same place all the time, the idea is more plausible. But while I love roleplaying and miss it badly, the thought of digging out the books and writing a scenario and restarting my gamemastering career gives me qualms. I tell myself that I'm too old and that I'll make a fool of myself. I tell myself that adults might write novels, but they don't create character sheets and throw dice. But, really, either you're too old for Let's Pretend by around age twelve, or you never get too old--I'm not all that much older, mentally, than I was in my late teens and twenties.

It is Last Saturday. I could buy myself a shiny new Call of Cthulhu module, for inspiration. I went browsing, and I realized that what I'd really like is a combination of Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun--Cthulhu cyberpunk, essentially. I Googled that phrase and found that I'm not the only one who's this crazy; in fact, Steve Jackson Games produced a book called GURPS CthulhuPunk. Sadly, it's out of print.

Have any of you folks ever been into face-to-face roleplaying games? Are any of you still into them? I don't know what it's like to play at age thirty and beyond--does it work? Is it possible to maintain the excitement and the suspension of disbelief, or is the brain just too far past childhood?

All righty, that's my digression quota. The next idea that I have will be a new post. And Hell On Wheels is on. I didn't think I'd like it. I was wrong.

Image: By Rama. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Shopping with your inner ten-year-old

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 08:12:00 +0000

I remember someone writing, I don't remember where, about being an adult and being able to buy the riches of childhood at will. I think that that particular author was referring to chocolate turtles. Last Saturday is tomorrow, and Black Friday was today (though we did Buy Nothing Day instead), and my mind is turning toward shopping. If I were ten years old but had a credit card, what would I buy?

Silk scarves, without a doubt. Probably one giant red silk square, like the one that my grandmother once owned and tore in half to give to my mother. But I already have a gaudy plenty of inexpensive silk scarves; my inner ten-year-old is well taken care of in that area.

Ding Dongs. A whole box of them. When I was a kid, they were wrapped in that thin foil, making them even more special. Nowadays they're sometimes in silver-colored plastic. Hmph. I loved the coating and the way it snapped a little when you bit it off; back then, that seemed like a sign of quality confectionary. I always ate the chocolate from around the edges, then bit mercilessly into the main body.

One of those dolls, those eighteen-inch historical-themed dolls. (I decline to mention the brand name.) With a bankrupting extravagance of accessories. No, they didn't exist when I was ten; I don't care. I just went looking through the website, marveling at the details and the prices. Forty-eight dollars for a doll-size picnic basket, complete with hibachi and shrimp-and-pineapple kabobs. Eaten, apparently, with root beer floats. It's really a good thing that I have an adult's respect for fiscal survival.

Marbles. I never knew how to play marbles, but I wanted the gorgeous glass anyway. Another thing that's gotten far more exciting since I was a child; just look at these things.

And red Keds.

What about you?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Books: My prime nonfiction choices, Part I

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:52:00 +0000

Last night, being unimpressed with my latest batch of library books, I picked up The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant, a book that I've discussed before. It's a nonfiction book about fashion, not a topic that normally interests me. It goes deeper than fashion, or it goes to the depth of fashion, whichever way you might think about it. But all the same, I don't care that much about fashion, and I love this book, and I concluded that that's because Linda Grant is an extraordinarily good writer. She's not the showy kind of good writer, the kind where you're always noticing specific phrases. Instead, she's the kind that makes every word communicate, seamlessly, so that you're not consciously aware of the words. Reading the book, I feel almost a sense of motion, traveling down the path of the thoughts at a moderately fast clip, so that I'm never bored or wanting to get to the end of the passage or the page. And that metaphor doesn't work altogether, because I'm not just passively traveling; as I read, I feel as if I'm somehow involved in making the journey happen.

That made me think about my favorite nonfiction books, and my favorite nonfiction writers. I started making a list. I'm narrowing the criteria--I'm not including memoirs or biographical works, or primarily comedic books, or what I'd call "nonfiction novels" where the book is different from a novel primarily because it happens to be true. So, for example, American Fried by Calvin Trillin, one of my very favorite books, isn't in the competition because the author is the main character in most of the pieces and therefore it has a little too much memoir, and also because it's so very, very funny. But I still recommend it. Go read it. Then read the other two in the Tummy Trilogy. Then read everything else Calvin Trillin ever wrote.

OK, moving on to my favorites among books that fit the criteria:

The Essential Earthman, One Man's Garden, and Henry Mitchell On Gardening. Henry Mitchell is the best garden writer. Period. He was a journalist, and I find that that's something of a pattern among my favorite authors. He wrote a gardening column for the Washington Post from 1973 to his death in 1993, and the books are drawn from those columns.

I'm at a loss to describe his writing. It combines solid information with philosophy, but something about that statement suggests the cute and pseudo-profound, and that is as far from Mr. Mitchell as I can imagine. I learned most of my gardening knowledge from these books, the information settling into my mind so quietly that I can't remember the time when I didn't know it. But I re-read the books for the philosophy and the sheer pleasure of the words. Deborah Needleman, in an essay on Henry Mitchell, said "He provides a sense of comfort, much like the feeling you get from a cookbook when you have no intention of making any of the dishes. He had scores of devoted readers with little or no interest in gardening."

I've never read his fourth book, the one that isn't focused on gardening; I suspect that I'm reluctant to reach the point where I've read all of his writing and there is no more.

Why We Buy, by Paco Underhill. I'm annoyed with myself; I can't find my copy of this book. I'm not interested in retailing or marketing, so it's a prime example of an engaging book about a topic that doesn't interest me all that much. I am interested in psychology, so that's part of the explanation. Psychology and anthropology, maybe. The appeal is, I think, mostly the author's instinct for stories and nuggets of information that will fascinate, combined with engaging writing.

Oh, dear. And I see that he has another book out. The second book, The Call of the Mall, didn't appeal to me nearly as much as the first one. But now there's one called What Women Want, and I'm tempted, though the reviews are lukewarm.

Nassau Street and Fun and Profit in Stamp Collecting, by Herman Herst. Henry Mitchell is the best garden writer; Herman Herst may well be the best writer about stamp collecting, though my reading in that area is much less extensive. Mr. Herst dealt stamps from 1933 through 1973, putting him right in the middle of the most exciting events of philatelic history--or were they so exciting because he brought them to life by writing about them? It's hard to say. He also qualifies as a journalist by my standards, contributing columns to "virtually every stamp publication in the country," continuing well after his retirement.

Mr. Herst's writing is less philosophical and more consciously instructive than Mr. Mitchell's. His books are full of stories and advice--in fact, each chapter of Fun and Profit is titled with a piece of advice, such as "Cheap stamps never become rare." I haven't collected stamps since junior high, but I was delighted when I recently found that Nassau Street was available for purchase; I suspect that I would enjoy these books just as much even if I'd never collected. They're full of stories, psychology, and anthropology; that, too, seems to be a pattern in my favorite books; it describes The Thoughtful Dresser as well.

I can see that writing this post is going to end up being expensive; I hadn't realized that there are several more Herman Herst books than I was aware of. And some are in print.

Much Depends On Dinner and The Rituals Of Dinner, by Margaret Visser. Stories. Psychology. Anthropology. Here we are again. In Much Depends On Dinner, Ms. Visser takes the ingredients of an ordinary meal--chicken, salt, butter, corn, and so on--and follows their roles in human customs and history. The Rituals of Dinner has a similar approach, but it follows dining customs rather than food. I've blogged about these before; I still love them. To my dismay, I don't love Ms. Visser's other books as well; I'll be trying them again, but these two are the ones that I'd urge you to make the time to read.

Googling tells me that Ms. Visser is a "broadcaster". Does that qualify her for the journalist pattern? Hmm.

The Fear of Cooking, by Bob Scher. This is a delightful combination of cookbook and therapy for kitchen phobia. As written, it takes the non-cook through facing their fears and cooking, but it's fun to read whether or not you ever turn on a stove. (Quote: "I mean, here's a whole duck, say, and it's cold and guppy and slimy, with pieces of skin flopping around.") I think that the journalist pattern here fails, unless it helps that the author is, among other things, a documentary filmmaker.

All of the Miss Manners books, by Judith Martin. I feel a little odd including books that are written in question-and-answer format (interleaved with essays), but I don't care. Judith Martin is funny and intelligent and an extraordinarily good writer, and her expertise isn't just in etiquette, but in human problem solving. Psychology. Anthropology. Stories. She's also (ta da!) a journalist.

The Forest for the Trees, by Betsy Lerner. A book of advice for writers--not advice on when to use an adverb, and how to avoid passive voice, but about, to quote her, "what makes writers tick." I'm interested in the topic, but I also just really like Betsy Lerner's writing. I bought this, I bought Food and Loathing (a memoir-like book, so it doesn't qualify for this list), and I'll probably continue to buy any book that she writes.

There are, without a doubt, many more. That's why I'm pre-titling this Part I, though I don't yet have a list for Part II.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: More Magazines

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:32:00 +0000

No, not the same batch a third time. This was a box of back issues of Threads, given to a friend who thought that another friend might have other friends who might want them. If you see what I mean. I hope that they don't end up causing her too much annoyance.

But they're gone! Yay! And just in time, because I like Threads. I selected and kept a dozen, which is plenty for a paging-through-Threads fix, but the boxfull was calling to me all the same.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Television: Thanksgiving Episodes

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:44:00 +0000

I love television. I read books and I watch movies, but I also watch a lot of television. Days off, like Thanksgiving weekend, are an opportunity to keep the TV on through all my waking hours. I'm not so much watching it all that time, but it's still on.

So right now, Himself and I are lounging, puttering with our computers, and watching some of our favorite Thanksgiving-themed TV.

Buffy: It is a sham, but it's a sham with yams. It's a yam sham.

Willow: You're not gonna jokey-rhyme your way out of this.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Pangs"

We already watched Pangs, an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, yesterday while getting the living room in shape. This is what I call a "payoff episode", an episode of a TV series where the ongoing character and plot threads come together and we get to see the things we always wanted to see, or things that we would have wanted if we'd ever thought of them.

For example, we get extra Spike. First watching wistfully-lit scenes of murder and torture, and mourning the fact that he can't join in. Then interacting with the Scooby gang to a previously unprecedented degree, because for once that interaction can't be cut off with a fight. ("...Spike had a little trip to the vet, and now he doesn't chase the other puppies any more.")

And there's a lot of Anya--I love Anya, and this is one of her best episodes. She's changing roles, from vengeance demon to Xander's girlfriend and member of the Scooby gang, but her demon past still influences her view of the world. ("To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual sacrifice. With pie.") There's Angel running around on the fringes, and Buffy's desperate determination to have a perfect Thanksgiving. And that's before we've actually touched the core plot, the ancient spirit determined to avenge past wrongs, and the gang's conflict over the right or wrong of killing him.

Next were the two Mad About You Thanksgiving episodes, Riding Backwards and Giblets for Murray. Riding Backwards is set entirely in the train, as Paul and Jaime (the young married main characters) ride to and from New Haven to spend Thanksgiving with her parents. There's squabbling and fake engagements and a FedExed Jell-O mold from his mother. ("What an insult!" "It was a gesture.") Giblets for Murray is the next step--they're hosting Thanksgiving for both families, and battling for control. The same mother that mailed the Jell-O mold last time, this time brings her potato casserole and, upon being told that Jaime already made potatoes, declares "so she'll freeze hers."

C.J.: They sent me two turkeys. The more photo-friendly of the two gets a Presidential pardon and a full life at a children's zoo. The runner-up gets eaten.

President Bartlet: If the Oscars were like that, I'd watch.

The West Wing, "Shibboleth"

President Josiah Bartlet: If I cook it inside the turkey, is there a chance I could kill my guests? I'm not saying that's necessarily a deal-breaker.

The West Wing, "The Indians in the Lobby"

Next? West Wing. Shibboleth includes Christian refugees from China, prayer in the schools, and turkeys in need of a pardon. The Indians in the Lobby includes two Native Americans looking for some justice, and a call from the President of the United States to the Butterball Hotline.

Then we ran out of Thanksgiving television and watched Buffy in Beer Bad. It's not unusual for our television watching to begin and end with Buffy.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Turkey Zombies

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:30:00 +0000

We're fatter now.

This year we had a heritage turkey from Rogue Valley Brambles. Yum.

We'd heard delicious-sounding things about this turkey. Moister breast meat. More fat, and there's no time when I don't approve of more fat in my meat. Actual turkey flavor. So last year we tried to order one in early fall, and while they didn't precisely laugh at us, we were too late. So this year we got our order in somewhere in midsummer. We drove up with the cooler to pick it up on Monday, Himself started brining it yesterday, and he roasted it today, largely based on the method described in this post on Tigers & Strawberries.

It finished roasting far sooner than we expected--we had put the turkey in, contentedly made and eaten pancakes to tide us over the anticipated turkey-roasting hours, cleared the decks in the kitchen, and were lolling with our computers when I got up for a drink and glanced at the thermometer tethered to the turkey. Our goal temperature for turning the oven off and finishing with residual heat was 140, and the thermometer read 124. Panic!

We went into a frenzy of washing and trimming and boiling and melting and smashing things, which taught us that we will spend exactly as much time cooking a meal as we have available to us. Without the rapidly browning turkey bearing down on us, it would have taken us two or three hours to make the mixed-white-and-yam mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts and the second batch of candied yams. There would have been puttering and debating and examination of multiple cookbooks and much discussion of whether the potatoes were ready to mash. We didn't actually eliminate any of these steps, we just went through them a great deal faster. ("Drain 'em! Drain 'em now!") Everything landed on the table while the turkey was still in its resting-after-cooking prime and was just ready to carve.

Again, yum. Best turkey we ever had. It had so much flavor that Himself has resolved to also start buying chickens from Brambles, to see if they're similarly superior. Sadly, we'll have to wait until May--they don't harvest chickens in the winter. No one took us up on our Thanksgiving invitation; it was sad to not be able to share our turkey, but on the other hand it allowed us to be post-dinner slobs. The first load of dishes are swooshing in the dishwasher, and we're watching classic Thanksgiving television now.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: The garden magazines are really gone!

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:25:00 +0000

Yeah, I know, I'm taking double credit for the things, but someone did finally take them all. Tomorrow, the back issues of Threads hit the driveway. Plus maybe a vase or two.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Robert Piguet Bandit

noreply@blogger.com (ChickenFreak) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:11:00 +0000

I know that I'm back into perfume blogging when my scent of the day is based on whether I'm interested in blogging about it. Today, I didn't have time on the way out to lunch to choose a sample, so I grabbed Robert Piguet Bandit; it's been months since I wore it and I'm having trouble making up my mind about my bottle. I wanted another wearing, and of course a blog post.

I bought Bandit based on a sample. The sample was leathery and a little furry-sweaty, a note that I described as being like a clean cat sleeping in the sun. Today's wearing confirmed that that note is altogether gone from the bottle--the bottle is leather and something spicy that reminds me of Chanel Coco, of all things. It's ladylike with good posture, not contentedly lounging.

I'll give it a few more tries, but I suspect that I'll have decluttered the bottle within a year--it no longer does anything at all that Cuir de Russie doesn't do a lot better.

Image: By Tomascastelazo. Wikimedia Commons.