I was thinking the other day that it might be nice to have some kind of regular checking in here on the V-Pants that would keep you in the know of what kind of Shoely Activity I’ve been engaging in. It’s always something, you know: looking at new designs and styles, checking out the seasonal sales, finding something I couldn’t possibly live without, being totally disheartened by the raunchy clods I see some folks walking around in, selling or giving away lots of stuff, and so on, and so forth. So let’s get to it:

MY CURRENT WEEK IN SHOES.

I’m selling a lot of pairs on ebay right now: including four belonging to Beck, I have 21 pairs that are on the chopping block. Most of them were ebay or other online purchases, which sort of precludes, perhaps, that most of them do not fit. They were all found on sale at least, but only on the irregular occasions does that actually result in me wearing them regardless; so I bit the bullet and started them off at super cheap even though it hurt a little. Would I keep a few if I could ostensibly trade them for a size that fits? Oh totally. Unfortunately ebay and flickr and my current googling skills have left me with No Dice, so I’ll just have to keep looking while I chuck these out the front door.

In other Shoes News, I have found several pairs that I am currently lusting after:

First! Robert Clergerie’s “Dormit” wedge.

I love this Clergerie man, anyway, but the graphic upper coupled with the terraced wedge just about make me start drooling. And if you take inventory of not only the shoes I’m getting rid of, but also the ones I’m hanging on to? You will see quite plainly that I am a Total Sucker for platforms and wedges, ankle straps, open- or peep-toed vamps and a healthy dollop of funky. I actually got a notice in the mail that I was obligated by law to love this style. I can only seem to find them for sale at Zapp’s, where they call it both the “Domit” and “Dormit” stylenames. Uh, hello? Hello, Zappo’s? These things are SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. Not like six hundred Hungarian Forints, or even six hundred Swedish Kronor, we’re talking u.s. dollar-i-doos. That is a LOT of dough for something that you can’t even call by its right name.

I also have discovered that I am helplessly in shoe-love with Angelo Figus. Can you imagine what this fellow is doing to my shoe-dreams?!

I am helplessly cooing and squinting into kissy-faces and tapping my pigeon-toed feets. Omfg.

And last but certainly not least, my newest perennial favorite, Ms. Chie Mihara:

These are all from Gimme Shoes, in case you want to gimme any of them. I promise I would wear them with handmade fancy dresses and make you from-scratch lemon bars, unless you’re vegan, in which case I would make you some delicious guacamole and take you to a nice vegan bakery where you could pick out some butterless concoction upon which to snack. See? Win-win! I’ll wait for your reply in the comments, xox.

I totally dig getting up way early in the morning.

Now, I’ve only done this for the last two days, so my opinions might change, but getting out of bed before six in the morning, today and yesterday, has totally allowed me to have an amazingly different kind of day. I got out of bed, and had a cup of tea or coffee and then boom! into the sewing room. I pinned things; I sewed seams and even pressed them; I adjusted the waistband for fit for crying out loud. I mean, productivity! it was amazing! And I actually got stuff done, and then was at work (work!) right on time! and I didn’t even forego showers or teeth-brushing! It was like, pow! All of a sudden, I had this swath of color in my morning that hadn’t been there before. Now, granted, I found myself alarmingly SLEEPY at like 8:30 last night, but I held out a bit (thank you, birthday cake!) and wasn’t even in bed all that too much later than normal, like 10:15 or so. And after yesterday morning and last night and this morning, I’m totally almost done with the knockoff skirt. Which I’m naming the Tristis skirt, after the latin name for an American Goldfinch, because it’s all yellow and white and silvery grey and black, and also because I dig on the goldfinches what come to sup at our feeder.

I’m planning on working on it some tonight, and then tomorrow morning, and I am really quite confident that I’ll be able to wear it to work by Monday. No wait, this Monday! More photos to follow, accompanied by excellent choice/s in footwear (even though I’m not sure what top I’ll wear with it).

I can’t look at anything comprised of more than two colors without visualizing it in a majestic BEADED iteration: motel signs, paperclips, my sewing machine, the cats, whatever. I want a glittering royal blue bowl of neon orange beaded cheez puffs as a Thanksgiving Centerpiece; I want a  beaded multi-color portrait of the sign for the Towne Manor Motel in Akron, Ohio; I want beaded arm cuffs of all my tattoos to wear instead of a long-sleeved jacket when it gets chilly. I’m going a little nuts with it–but going nuts is one of my favorite things to do, anyway.

On the other hand, I miss sewing. I cut out the yellow gingham and some white cotton underlining for the Anna Sui knockoff yesterday, and while it didn’t whip up into total perfection or anything? It did feel familiar and good to be in front of the sewing machine again. It’s still going to take some fudging, because I’m not sure what I’m doing and all, but progress is being made at least. I’m a pretty dedicated clothes horse these days, so I can’t spend all my time beading snack foods and neon signs.

And fyi, this ‘pin and many others will be auctioned off Friday, May 29 at the Pinhook in downtown Durham as part of Troika’s annual fundraiser.

Like this totally lovely Kline Necklace from Persimmon Jewelry. This is the kind of thing that can call out to me as sonorously as a lime green bakelite ice-block necklace, but it’s a little more subtle. The tone is there and the pitch exact, but the equalizer’s set to a more nuanced ear, if you will. I think I’ve been working under the “more is more” guise for a while now, and it’s just sort of occurred to me that subtlety could be afforded in a multiplicitous* way, like how Liza Lou does with her millions of blades of beaded grass. So I can have my millions of facets and be subtle all at the same time! I love it! And thanks for the good word, Grosgrain!

*dude, I know this is not a word, even according to the damn encyclopedic OED, but it sounds better in my Word Pony of a brain than (the admittedly rare, if not obsolete) multiplicious. I WANT IT.

The pin is coming together much better than I had hoped, and while my lower back is not happy with me having crouched over a desktop for many hours this weekend, it’s making me want to pursue this method of ornamentation in a major way. I’ve been really focused on sewing the last couple years, and while I’m getting better and I have been missing it a lot these last few weeks, there’s some aspect of my Mondo Craftiness that isn’t been satiated quite satisfactorily with the needle and thread. I think I’ve always wanted to be able to draw, and sewing just doesn’t really approach that method–which is why I’m such a nerd for rubber stamps and embroidery floss and, thanks to jumping into something completely new for me, beads. Although I stand by the goodness in my original of sewing the beads onto a fitted shell for the pin, that method was SO not working; which is okay, because I really just jumped into doing it totally blind and had no real method figured out for making beady progress or gauging the appropriateness of my method-of-sorts till I’d already invested a healthy number of hours into it. Having started off with that, though, I feel pretty good about getting into other projects of sewing bugles onto fabric. Kind of how I feel comfortable playing around with the excess in a sleeve cap, turning it into darts or tucks or pleats or whatever, because of that time I just flew by the seat of my crafty-pants and half made it up as I went along.

I tell Beck all the time that she’s got these great instincts, but I think I overlook that I have some pretty good instincts too. I just need to be more open and nurturing of them.

I know! You’re here for me to talk about shoes today! Well let’s get up on it, then.

So it’s hardly breaking news that I’m all crazy for the shoes. I scour the interwebs for ridiculous amounts of time in search of deals, images, nostalgic waxings and general opinions of typically snootier and/or funkier brands ‘n’ styles. So in honor of myself, basically, I’m going to start talk, talk, talking about some of my own experiences. Which brands are crazy expensive but actually worth it; what I’m currently stalking for real v. for pretend; whether or not you can wear four-inch sandals with tights in the winter; brand generalizations based on my having actually tried out more than one style; that sort of thing. I do write reviews of shoes I own on places like shoes-dot-com, endless/amazon, zappos, et cetera, but sometimes, in reading reviews of shoes that I don’t have and am curious about, I am less than satisfied with what other folks have had to say. It’s like I really just want myself to have written all about it already, so I’m basically just doing that. And instead of blathering on about what “that” is GOING to be, let me start blathering on WITH IT.

Have you ever seen something so perfectly embodying a modern-day Wilma Flintstone? This is a decadent pair of Marsells, an über fancy Italian brand that no doubt appeals to the upper upper crust of trust fund kids that like Fluevogs, but don’t think them expensive enough for their lifestyle. They’re hard to come by and even rarer seen out in the wild, although in that latter respect my co-workers are obliviously lucky. I picked these up at yoox, which is probably the most reliable place I can count on (and recommend) to find a pair. They were very much marked down, although still close to c-note, and while I hadn’t exactly been stalking this pair and I wasn’t sure about that beige-tinted grey color *or* the ankle-ties? I figured I could always return ‘em. Chances to score this kind of fantasmagoria aren’t too common so I went for the gusto. And good gravy, am I ever glad. These pups are stellar: they’re funky, they’re chunky, they’re pretty comfortable as far as fancy shoes go, they’re made within an inch of staying here on the planet and not ascending into Valhalla, and they’re MINE. MMMMMINE! I say they fit pretty true-to-size: a euro 40 is a good 9-9.5 ‘Merican and the width is a pretty good medium. They’re not padded, and my front ball-of-foot takes a bit more pressure than she likes if I wear them out all day, and the heel counter is pretty average (which, actually, is just a hair big for me). These are a great neutral color that doesn’t match my skintone (why I just can’t dig on that taupe-beige-nude phenom) and they’re light without being white (which … no, I just can’t wear white shoes without significant presence of other colors, like black and yellow). Plus I’m all about mixing grey into my funky color combos, and it works with pretty much every neutral shade you can throw at it. Black? it’s like a snack! Brown? let’s go to town! Taupe? it sure can cope! Uh, Navy? you know it, baby! So: yes. Grey is A-OK.

The Rehash:

Brand: Marsell
Style name: ???
Season/year: who knows. they’re ‘current’ again at yoox, but they’re at least a couple years old.
Availability: yoox, luisaviaroma, ebay
Fit: tts, avg. width
Overall pros: excellent personality & styling, good heel height, made immaculately
Overall cons: super expensive, hard to find, no real padding
My score, 1 (low) to 10 (high): solid 8.

That, in essence, is what I want to provide for random google searchers who really wanna know, if they can, how a certain style of shoe fits and whether or not you can find it online anywhere. It’s limited of course by my terribly fickle tastes and also my extraordinary cheap tendencies, however much it might be enabled because of my amazing sense of style coupled with galavanting around on my Word Pony. Minor caveats, particularly if you’re like a representative of net-a-porter or zappos couture or something, is that I will totally write up a review of whatever you want if you send me a pair. Hell, if you just lend me some Barbara Buis or Max Kibardins I’ll even cater to stupidly arbitrary word counts and find rhyming schemes that work with specific words, up to and including “interuterine.” (Which I mention only because of that time Rose and Dorothy wrote a song about Miami.)

Till next time, y’all! Wear shoes that’d make me proud.

And it was right on, 100%. I’ve been thinking on overstimulatedness for two solid weeks now, how that pummels me into feeling too barraged to move much less cut out fabric and sew it up. I’ve got so much stuff that is great stuff, I mean just terrific, but there is a LOT of it, and I too easily feel like I’m carrying it all around with me and then it has ABBA-heavy dance parties when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. And I think that, with a more atmospheric-point-of-view, that’s what I really wanted to address (if not chip away at) with my new year’s resolutions. But in a sense, I’ve always got some kind of sore throat, so to speak. I watch television or bake cupcakes or drink beers and prowl ebay for marc jacobs heels under $70, and the end result is that my desire to Do Stuff gets overhauled by, perhaps, my more latent desire/s to not Do Stuff. Or at the very least it’s surpassed by my Doing other Stuff that has far less tangible results. Although … I do have like half a dozen pairs of MJs.

Which is to say, that the “sew more” thing I barely touched upon in the Offical Resolutions post? can be further broken down a little somethin’ like this.

1. Finish things. I have got to start doing a better job of this. There are some projects that I start out real excited and happy, but something unforeseen sneaks into the works and then I stuff it onto a shelf and completely forget about it. Now, I don’t only do this, I mean I have actually finished things, but too often I worry that I’ve picked out an unsuitable fabric or cut out the wrong (or unadjusted) size and instead of working on it, I scrap it. And instead of actually scrapping it, I just accumulate it in a defunct zone. So for ought-nine? I wanna get some stuff Done.
2. Sew with my other machines. So I have two whole sewing machines, a Babylock serger and an older Bernina, that I have not even touched except to move them out of my way. I’m still cranking out some time with Bettes, my plastic-fantastic singer purchase from mal-wart, but if I’m going to be doing hardcore awesome projects with kickass fabrics? Maybe I need to upgrade to a machine that’s worthy. Or at least more worthy–I mean, they’re sitting right in front of me.
3. Try new things. Yes yes, you hear this one all the time, and I do try new things even without positing it in a banter of making new year’s resolutions. But really: bound buttonholes are, like, so my style. I just need to crank some out to make sure. Also I wanna: make some non-pajama pants, sew with silk, sew up a vintage pattern, use some of my excellent button stash, finish up tweaks on a muslin and then actually SEW it, and sew a coat or a jacket. And, though I may change my mind on that last thing, I don’t think the cape will count.
4. Buy less cheap stuff. Sometimes there are prints, be they floral or abstract or vintage-y or wacked out or what have you, that I simply cannot pass up. I will accept that in myself, more or less, but for real: I have a lot of solid color, totally boring cheap stuff–and that’s no good. If it’s cheap? there has to be merit otherwise. And if it’s a solid color kind of thing? go for the good stuff, because it’ll make me happier in the long run. It sucks to have a finished garment start looking shoddy after a couple months because you cheaped out on the fabric. (Now, with this example in particular, I’m fine with owning up to having used a cheap-o fabric; the only reason I got something wearable out of that project was because I’m so stubborn ’cause the pattern was not for me, and that was my first time sewing a knit, and so on.)
5. Blog more about it. It’s nice to keep track of stuff I’ve done, especially if I don’t have to sit down staring at a blank piece of paper trying to rack my brain for things I have accomplished in, well, for example the last year. I totally did things in 2008, but you wouldn’t know the half of it if you only looked at VP. So for oh-nine, I want to be better at keeping track of things: including regularity and pictures. I will attempt to lure myself into accountability to myself, but not by being such a hardass (though that’s going to be a super challenge). Uhm, we’ll see how it goes.

I also want to get this site looking the way I want it to, so if you’re not reading this in a feed reader? Bear with my fickle sense/s of likes and half-organizedness.

Ought nine y’all! Hoe-lee! In light of it still being January, then, I want to talk for a sec about New Year’s Resolutions. See, I’m not real big on making them: I tend to be of the opinion that I don’t need some new page on a calendar to interest myself in doing better. I don’t hold at all tightly to vaguely romantic notions that a new year will mean the turning over of new leaves, that something as arbitrary as a chronological numeric assignation to the position of the earth and the sun and the greater cosmos will result in me, all of a sudden, saving enough money and getting in physical shape stellar enough to become an astronaut, or something. Nuts to that; let me do my own thing ’cause it’s working for me so far.

Ahem: that said, get ready for my “but.” BUT I think I’ve done a good job the last two years with sticking to my repeated resolution of wanting to sew more. In 2007 and again in 2008, I did just that. I increased my repertoire of abilities and finished projects, I devoted more time to getting better and sitting behind the machine, I became more comfortable in feeling capable at this hobby. So for 2009? Same goes: I want to sew more. Also this list of eighteen additional resolutiony things:

1. Stop buying so many damn pairs of shoes.

Now this is not to say that I will hop on the rehabilitation wagon for shoe addicts–I just need to stop buying so much stuff that’s cheap and may or may not fit me. I have superior and discerning tastes: I need to start spending that way (uhm, # of times not amount per se).

2. Start sewing with the good stuff.

For real. What is all this awesome fabric doing languishing? who am I saving it for? why do I not have a mustard yellow wool skirt or a polka-dot trench coat or a damn goldfish dress yet?! and so on.

3. Make more art.

Mail art, fabric art, photo art, cupcake art, guerilla art, wardrobe art, acrylic paint on cereal boxes art, yard art. Art art art! I’ll even try to post more to VP in terms of how this will be actualized; I want to do some collaboratory stuff with my best buddy Brian, in Chicago, and my best lady Beck. Speaking of the latter, I may cop her experimonth style and come up with a couple projects where I do some stuff every day for a calendar month. I’m toying with the following ideas: getting up at 5:00 a.m. every day; do some art every day; watch a new movie every day (though that’s an awful lot of movies).

4. Eat better.

Which is to say, more regularly. Lunch is good. Not eating for 20 hours every day, four or five days a week is a lame habit.

5. Relax, dammit.

Allison: remember this? remember sitting on your butt and having a nice beer and just vegging in front of the telly for a bit? Grab hold of that frame of mind a little more often–it’s good for you. Unclench the stress and antsy mood in favor of giving yourself a break sometimes. Like, a lot of times.

So there it is. My official list of 2009 New Year’s Resolutions. Whether or not I’ll actually stick to them remains to be seen, as well as whether or not I’ll actually post anything on the ‘Pants about it all, but, you know. One day at a time.

(Update: jesus effing christmas. I should’ve guessed that BIG BUT in a blog post’s title would unleash the spamly floodgates, but SHIT man. No more comments, for real. Sorry for the two-point-four people out there who care.)

I’m all about a structured shirtdress, and this tweed is awesome. It’s very coat-like in this more substantial fabric, with lots of buttons, a double-breasted front closure, button-closeable-flapped patch pockets, self-fabric belt and shoulder epaulettes really copping the ingredients of a traditional trench coat. And it is described as a “coat dress,” so even the manufacturer says you can wear it as either, but … whatever. In that respect I can look at wrapdresses as bathrobes, right? It’s way cooler as a 100% dress than as a coat, says me. If you look at the biggest possible view, you can see the multiple gores of the skirt, the waistline seam, and the armscye princess bodice seams which will all make fitting this thing way easier. I mean, you won’t be wearing a pair of pants and a blouse underneath this thing, so you definitely don’t want traditional trench coat ease in this thing. Pattern possibilities: New Look 6815 if you give it a seam at the waist and fudge the skirt into a multiple-gored one and add a bit to the center-front pieces to get the overlap down pat. (Of course, the back has a shaped upper yoke and a center pleat running the length of the bodice which is chopped up into four pieces itself, but … I just don’t feel like playing around in photoshop that much just now. Maybe (read: probably) later.)

So here’s a sewing conundrum: the sweater dress. Not only is it a conundrum in the difficulty of caring for, finding a good pattern and fabric for, and then aren’t sweater knits sort of a pain to sew anyway? I’ve also got to decide between BCBG’s shawl collar-midriff band combo and the inimitable DvF’s three-quarter-length sleeved keyhole mandarin collar wrap option. My brain is facing a meltdown, I tell ya.

Teeny blog-snack, just to remind myself I’m not a complete slug. And also that I should probably stop by the store sometime soon to replenish my stash of baseball-watchin’ junk foods.
What I got done over the weekend: fabric prep (preshrinking) for the cape and lining, including a head-scratching hour or so trying to fit all the pattern pieces onto a little over two yards of 30″ wide fabric for the latter. I tapered the flare at the hem (104″ is a lot, so I trimmed off about 10″ total) and cut off about 2.5″ in length, ’cause I didn’t want it to cover my whole butt, anyway. The length of the finished cape per the pattern envelope was right under 30″, the width of my lining fabric, so I knew I’d be able to shave a bit so that I could squeeze the pattern pieces on lined up with the cross grain instead of the selvage. I’m not sure how exactly I want to sew the lining to the cape, but I don’t think I wanna stitch ‘em together and then turn it out, which is what the pattern directions tell me to do. I want a longer turned-under cape hem, not for the wool & lining to be all even-steven. So…it’ll still take me a bit to work out the details, though I’m happy with cutting out a medium after tissue fitting and, I mean, it’s a cape so there’s not a lot of fitting finesse I’ll have to tinker with.The shoulder seams look pretty good already, I think.
Plus there’s a high of eighty degrees today with lots of sun, and Chicago isn’t supposed to be all that cold so I don’t feel obligated to finish it before we leave later this week. Bonus! I do, however, have to think about what I wanna have for Chicago and whether or not any work toward its construction is required of me. Shoes? Nah, I got enough of them. That silver twill skirt? I have one more gore of lining to sew on, and then I’ll tack down the high waistline facing and hem the sucker and then I’m all done. Chunky red coral necklace? Well, I’d have to get a design figured out and then do it all up, so … maybe, maybe not.

Next time: prepare for more fabric! because I need to get my witchy skirt done up by Hallowe’en, and also ’cause I just bought some teal/kelly green wool jersey and some ice-blue velvet. UHM. Yeah. They would look great together, though.

September? ‘Sridiculous! I’m such a wank-off. So I’ve been thinking about candy a lot lately, perhaps because the autumnal equinox and its incurrent chill in the air has me daydreaming about hallowe’en and—what else?—bucketfuls of bite-sized, chocolate-covered goodness. It’s much more appealing than huge slabs of chocolate-covered goodness because, hey, it’s only just one little bitsy bite. Mmm! tasty! and now you’re done! I need to think about sewing, and blogging (and cleaning, saving money, spending time with loved ones, planting flowers, and life in general) in much the same way. Just a little bit here! mmm! lookit how lovely such a petite incarnation can be! Because eventually, you eat pounds and pounds of candy; sew up entire garments; blog yourself into some kind of analytic significance; save enough money to buy bitchin’ pairs of Marséll shoes and all that other stuff. So: watch for my random thoughts which may not be so lucky as to be piled into Casseroles of Verbosity. (Which are awesome besides! who doesn’t love potatoes?!)

Today’s bitty thought: I’ve got to preshrink my navy melton so as to really get thinking about making my cape. Subtext to today’s bitty thought: I’m totally going to make a cape! I’ve got two yards of a nice navy wool melton, ditto for some fancy silk-blend brocade for to line it, and a pattern and everything. I think I may just dunk a bedsheet in the bathtub and do a london shrink, or I might toss it in the washer and then let it air dry? What I do know, however, is that it’s cool and cloudy and windy enough today to make me wish I had a toasty wool cape to wear right this instant.