analog me

White Woman makes Salsa, visits Thrift Store.

Part I:  My trip to Montana was a mix of happy and sad right there side by side. The devastation of the flood has been followed by a summer of unusual greenery and a new course filled with some unworldly swimming holes. 

 

Part II: I came home to a garden exploding with produce, so I have been canning. I made some fabulous salsa, but I will never be able to re-create it because I accidentally followed two recipes at the same time, as the wind was blowing the cookbook page back and forth. I started with a recipe for Zesty Salsa, then moved into one for Spicy Salsa, and then finished up with the first. The canning cookbook is fanatically fascist in it's insistence that home cooks cannot fiddle with recipes, but I canned it anyway.  

Living dangerously and all that.

Part III: Boys went back to school.

Part IV: I snuck off to a thrift store and found some great buttons.

 

But the best thing about shopping at the Salvation Army, or Savers or whatever are my fellow shoppers.

As I'm checking out the petroleum product fabric choices, a guy turns to me from the shoes and says, "You buy things here, wash them well and they don't cost so much as other stores."

I replied, "Yes, it's a good place to shop." 

"I'm from Guyana. Do you know Guyana?"

I say, "Oh Guyana, sure." But I was thinking about washing shoes. Can it be done?

"You Know Guyana??"

"Yeah, South America, right?"

"You are Mexican?"

"Umm, no."

"Are you White?"

Crazy, but no one has ever looked me in the face and asked: "Are you White?" New experience and it totally threw me. I was flustered. I had a sliver of true empathy for all those people I have pissed off by saying, "where are you from?" while looking at them and trying to find a slot to place them in. "White" just sounds so thin, mild, boring, lacking. Not me.

"I am White" I pronounced. It felt weird. He still looked puzzled.

I sort of felt bad that I had completely messed with his world where, up to that moment, all white people do not know where Guyana is. I could sense the questioning could go on and on in this track, and I wanted to move on. "Excuse me," I said, "Can I get past you?" and I squeezed my cart by to look at a sewing machine cabinet. 

He recovered himself and followed me to furnishings, "You work with someone from Guyana." It was said half as a fact, half as a question.

"No, I just know where Guyana is." I didn't add that I once embarrassed myself by not having any idea where it is. He finally left, deep in a state of racial recalibration.

What a thrifting trip. His "White" question did have an affect on me, and I found two cashmere sweaters in my size!

And what do you think about those buttons? 

 

maybe some fabric should just be donated to charity.

I'm going back to Montana tomorrow with my sister Rachael. We will fly to Bozeman and meet my oldest brother Jack there then drive together to "the ranch' where my mom and stepfather live. Got that ? And my niece (David's daughter) will be there too. (Somehow, I feel that this blog is so myopically focused on one tiny corner of my tiny world that I need to introduce some more important characters to the story.)

Anyway, I should have spent the day packing and cleaning, but I seem to have a "preparing to change locations phobia," so I always spend the day before I go anywhere distracting myself doing by ridiculous things like, ah lets see. . . weeding the patio, washing rugs, freezing corn, and sewing. And not sewing for the trip, no, silly sewing.

Maybe you remember how I got rid of some excess fabric this Spring with the help of my husband's discerning eye? One fabric I snatched from the donation bag at the last minute (right there in the parking lot in front of the thrift store) was the infamous "chickens in lines" fabric. I looked more carefully and it appears to actually be infinite lines of roosters on wind-vanes. Perfect for a dress, n'est-ce pas?

 
The grey/pink rooster/wind-vane motif should be arranged in a chevron on the bodice, don't you think? And the skirt should be gathered to a waistband at the natural waist. And grown-on cap sleeves, it needs those. No pattern?  Maybe THAT should have stopped me. I'm not finished, but I will give you a sneak peek.

The back looks okay. 

But the wonky darts in front create an underbust chicken convergence that even I find disturbing.

I just got a pattern at the thrift store that is useless except for directions on how to make a gathered and boned cumberbund. And I have some pink fabric. I think that might cover up some of the weirdness. 

But not the weirdo wearing the dress.

So what do you think ? Can this look be saved, or was hubby right? Again.

The last Sorbetto

About a year ago a bought one yard of some lovely, fine cotton at a garage sale for a dollar or so. It was only 36" wide and had a couple holes from pins that had rusted right through the fabric, so I knew it was old and that it was going to be hard to find a way to use it. Sorbetto to the rescue !

For this version, I made the front smaller, gathered the top center bodice edge and sewed it to a tiny stay and then sewed bias tape folded over.  I know Sorbetto is supposed to have 60's slim vibe, but this time the vintage fabric put me in mind to make an old-fashioned top to wear with a long linen gathered skirt, like some sort of an idealized Italian peasant babe in a 1950s Cinema Neo Realismo film. You know, like Anna Magnani in Vulcano. 

(Ha ha Obviously my fashion inspirations are rather odd.)

The Late Summer Look of 2011: Post War Urban Italian Peasant

The red of the last top made me so happy, I knew I would have to offset the somber mood of black and white with the perfect red bias tape. I had three reds in my collection (imagine that), and this one said, "me, me., ME! " 

When I was finished using it I took it off the cardboard to re-wind it and found this:

Can you imagine sitting wound on that bit of cardboard for 50 years or more waiting to be let out to play ?

I figured out that I could put the rust holes inside the dart legs. He, he, a couple of holes right in the middle of my fabric cannot stop me! I do think the darts are drafted a bit oddly on this top. For smaller sizes they are the same length as the larger sizes so they come a bit too far toward the center, which I fixed by moving the dart point and making the legs shorter.

I will now reveal my super-complicated means of pattern alteration. I pin the pattern to my shoulder seam on its pattern seam. With one hand I hold the pattern to my side and with the other I take a pen and mark right on the pattern where things like dart points should be, in this case about one inch from the bust  "apex"  (Why is it so hard to just write "nipple" ?) 

Well, I'm going to go add some Neo Realismo movies to my que now so I can be up on my new fashion trend ! The westerns my husband is addicted to have zero fashion inspiration. Anyone have other suggestions for fashionable flicks?

My brother's birthday

 

I was a very late talker-- or maybe a late English speaker--because before I spoke in a way that the rest of the world could understand, I did have my own language. Only one other person could understand it. I remember talking, seeing blank stares looking down and then turning to my brother, seeing the look of understanding in his eyes, and hearing him translate. 

We were about this age.

But, the feeling that he would probably understand whatever I was trying to say never really changed. . .

Nine and a half month since we last spoke, nine months since I looked into his uncomprehending eyes and knew he was gone, nine months since I said, "Goodbye." Damn it's so hard to lose someone who knows your heart, remembers so many of the same little things like sitting on that fuzzy rug, not wanting to smile for a photographer who made you hold your hand in that strange, unnatural position. Like knowing the person sitting next to you felt the same way.

Garlic

The harvest is in.

I have now have 60  heads drying on my kitchen floor: a mix of Spanish  Roja, Lorz Italian and something else I don't remember the name of. It is real tasty. Especially as it is so fresh.

I am just realizing something.

I could never be a garlic blogger.