More Vintage

I made the center one in 1996, I still have the pattern; funny thing is, the one I made is on the right on my pattern envelope.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/124424130/misses-two-piece-dress-pattern-womens?ref=shop_home_active

http://www.etsy.com/listing/150034462/easy-to-sew-dress-long-knee-short-mini?ref=shop_home_active

I still have this one (or one very much like it--I think there's more detail on the back) , made myself one, Mum latched onto it and I made her another, in lavender cambric--both went in Katrina.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/118580694/misses-easy-to-sew-big-shirt-shirt-tail?ref=shop_home_active

I have a whole lot of these 50s and 60s patterns, but they belonged to my grandmother.  Some years ago I got rid of a boatload of patterns...almost wish I hadn't, but glad I did.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/150744606/vintage-butterick-4174-sewing-pattern?ref=shop_home_active

And the long version of this...was my Nebraska Centennial dress in a blue calico. Mum made prairie sunbonnet to go with it. (watch out, for some reason this site takes forever to load)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/153353724/1960s-empire-waist-dress-pattern?ref=shop_home_active

I made a short one and a long one of this pattern. Somewhere...there are pictures...


I made the one on the right for this one.

Just to bore you...there'll be more...this is fun. LOL

Slice of nostalgia

You know those vintage pattern sites?  Well, here are some patterns I actually had and made things from:

http://momspatterns.com/inc/sdetail/112150

http://momspatterns.com/inc/sdetail/98494

http://momspatterns.com/inc/sdetail/105643

Something like this...if not this very one. http://momspatterns.com/inc/sdetail/108106

I've seen more out on vintage sites.  Funny thing is...none of that was hippie or boho or killer...it was just what we wore.

Might be temporary....

I just did a very freeing thing. I deactivated my Facebook account. Sometime ago, I basically stopped watching the news, it riled me up, made me worry about things over which I have no control, and generally put me in a bad mood. Well, lately, Facebook has been doing the same thing.  And, you know, why should my entire life be on FB? I don't need to know how many migraines someone has, or what they had for dinner, and in some case, I really don't want to know that someone whom I've known and admired for a long time is a raving right-wing loony.

I might go back at some point, might not, and I'll miss certain things...maybe...

On writing

I've always considered myself a fairly decent writer. I've always gotten good grades for and compliments on my writing. But lately I question whether I've retained any of that skill. I read certain people's blogs and think, "I can't write like that." "Look at that, it would take me so much effort to produce something even half that good." Of course, I have to step back and remind myself the person in question might very well have slaved over that piece for days and not just pulled it from thin air.

Often I over-think my writing. I'm a perfectionist, and am anal about word-crafting (blog posts not withstanding), so I write, read, edit, read, edit...ad infinitum, and as a result never get much of anywhere anymore. When I was in college, I had deadlines, of course, so only a certain amount of that cycle could take place; my work was probably the better for it. In my fiction, of course, that read-edit cycle (is that the Krebs Cycle of literature, I wonder?) takes place because so much time elapses between work sessions that I have to remember just what the heck I wrote last time. I end up with some interesting continuity errors otherwise.

I'm no particular fan of Stephen King's, horror is not my thing (I've read Eyes of the Dragon and it was fairly good, but has a bit too many references to boogers for my taste); but I've been thinking about this particular post lately. There are a couple of items on the list with which I disagree, more from a personal standpoint than in theory. For instance:

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

I see what he's trying to say there, but if you find yourself repeating the same word over and over, sometimes you just want a slightly different way to say it. I don't use a thesaurus to find a fancy way to say it, but to verify that a given word will have the same connotation I think it does. On the other hand, perhaps what he's trying to say is, "If you're repeating that word over and over, perhaps it's not the word that's the problem."  Hmm. 

I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they 'don't have time to read.' this is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

I am always a bit baffled by this, too. I suppose the best excuse would be that if you haven't read something in your own genre, one could hardly accuse you of plagiarism if you happen to write pretty much what someone else has already written. Of course, convincing the court of this might be tricky. Reading not only spawns ideas (not ideas to steal, but new scenarios, or different ways of tackling a character or metaphysics in your fictional world, for instance), but also gives you a sense of what good—and bad—writing is. 

This ties in with number 12:

Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It's not just a question of how-to, you see; it's also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing. 

In this I believe he's right. Which brings me back to my original question: have I retained my writing skills? Yes, but it's like my drawing, it will only come out with exercise.

A little doodle

Awhile back, April 22, to be exact, I was bored out of my gourd in staff meeting--a weekly ritual the Air Force must perform, even though I'm sure it leads to the death by boredom of more than a few every year...so was doodling and came up with this

and colored it with pencils I had at work. It stayed in my agenda for a while, then I pasted it in my daily art journal (which isn't so daily, but I digress...), and it stayed there for a while longer.

Then, Jennibellie sent me a little packet of embellishments which I have dubbed Jennibellishments...and there were these tiny little flowers to punch out (upper left)...and that started the whole page.

Mixed media: colored pencil sketch, Caran d'Ache Neocolor II, pattern paper, Jennibellishments, brads, glitter glue, K & company dragonfly die cut, homemade "washi" tape, gold metallic Sharpie®, Uni-ball Vision Needle pen 

Art Journal: Stars tell us the past. Listen.

6 x 8,25" Mixed media. Dictionary page, acrylic, die cuts from Jennibellie, Tim Holtz "Curious Possibility" stamps, Caran d'Ache Neocolor II, Uni-ball Vision Needle pen.