Greetings from sunny Staten Island! Well, to be honest it's actually rainy Staten Island. Georg and I are up here for a few days with his folks. It's a relaxing vacation so far (although we are going into the city tomorrow to see our friends Arthur, Kevin and Nellorat, and also for dinner at Craft, Tom Colicchio's restaurant, and some shopping).
We definitely needed some time to relax after the past few days. I just about went crazy with sewing projects earlier in the week. Somehow I convinced myself, two days before we left, that I simply could not wear my polka dotted dress into Manhattan. No no, having worn it on Christmas day and to Jason's party, it couldn't be worn again so soon. Regardless of the fact that no one in the state of New York has ever seen the polka dotted dress (much less the undeniable fact that no one in the state of New York cares the tiniest bit about the outfits of some tourist from North Carolina), I had to have something new.
So I set about making the fur sleeves and collar for that pink velvet outfit. Which I think I'm going to start calling "the Ethel dress" after its original owner. Anyway, I didn't have a pattern for the sleeves and collar, just the photos I had taken of Ethel's original fur sleeves, now in the possession of the proprietor of Untidy Museum. So I had to try out various patterns in scrap fabric. Usually one would use a thin muslin for this purpose, but I thought that would be a bad choice since it wouldn't hang at all like fur. So I used fleece instead. Which had its own problems (notably much more stretch than faux fur) but at least it had bulk, so I could get a more accurate sense of the fit. And better yet, I had a big piece of it in a nasty color that I probably wouldn't ever have used on a real garment.
(Have I mentioned that last weekend I cleaned out my fabric trunk? That's why I had that piece of fleece on-hand. I got tired of not knowing what was in the trunk, and not being able to get anything new into it, because it was stuffed full of old odds and ends. I pulled out four grocery bags full of scraps to be tossed, and better yet found a bunch of nice fabrics that I'd forgotten all about. I don't know which is more sad: the fabrics that I remember why I bought them, what outfit I had planned to make but never got around to, or the ones that I have no memory of, no idea why I have them.)
Working out the pattern pieces took more time than I had hoped: well over a full day. This was partly because I wasn't happy with the sleeve shape and ended up trying out 4 different sleeves before I settled on one that worked, and partly because I let myself get interrupted with phone conversations and a friend dropping by. It was really nice to talk to her, she's into vintage sewing too so we had a lot to talk about. But still, I should learn how to say "no" when I have something that has to get done under a deadline. I don't think I'll make that a New Year's resolution, because I never keep those. And this is something I really would like to improve in myself.
Cutting the fur was also a challenge, because I had miscalculated when I bought it. I thought I was going to have tons of leftover fur, enough to make a hat and who knows what else. But the key fact I forgot was that when I measured the pattern pieces on the fleece, the fleece was folded over in two! So I actually had half as much fur as I thought I did. I'm actually a bit amazed that I managed to get everything cut. It took a lot of careful rearranging of pieces (including one near disaster when I came this close to cutting a cuff with the grain running in the wrong direction, I was literally holding the scissors to the fur when I realized my mistake) but I managed to get everything I needed. At $40 a yard, it would have been heartbreaking if I hadn't! I'm just grateful to the woman at the fabric store who convinced me to get 5/8 of a yard instead of 1/2. I think wasting a $20 piece of fabric when four inches more would have been enough, as I almost did, must be the definition of "penny wise, pound foolish."
Between the Ethel dress and another craft project, I ended up staying up almost all night Jan. 1 getting my sewing done. I used to do that kind of thing all the time. Like I'd plan to make a baby outfit for a shower gift, but I wouldn't start until the night before, and would end up sewing all night and into the morning, barely finishing in time for the shower. Now that I think about it, that baby outfit was a particular nightmare: I messed up a seam about an hour before the party, stabbed myself in the hand with the seam ripper, and had to finish the outfit while trying not to bleed on it. I used to think that last minute sewing was fun and spontaneous, but the appeal has worn off as time goes on. For one thing, the stupid mistakes (like sewing the wrong sides of the fabric together) increase in direct proportion to my level of tiredness. And the most detailed work (for instance the hand sewing and top stitching) tends to happen at the end, when stress and exhaustion are at a peak.
Add to all that the difficulty level of working with faux fur -- it's way thick, it shifts all over the place, and it sheds an astounding volume of little hairs from every cut edge -- and you can begin to imagine how sewed out I was by Friday morning. To reduce my stress, at Georg's suggestion I did all the machine sewing at home and waited until I got here to do the hand sewing. I was a little concerned about bringing my sewing kit on the plane, what with the latest security paranoia, but I guess nobody cares about scissors, pins and needles in checked luggage. The collar is a little crooked, but good enough for government work, and the sleeves turned out just how I wanted. It's a beautiful fur, faux sable I guess, with ridges about as wide as my hand. The sleeves and collar are supposed to snap onto the Ethel dress, but I went ahead and sewed them in. It was a lot easier to do, and it's not like I have another sleeveless jacket that can use these sleeves. I don't know if faux fur needs to be dry cleaned separately, as real fur would, but if so I can always pull the stitching out when the time comes.
So what with all the pre-trip stress, I didn't get much done that wasn't related to sewing. I managed to forget only a few things (ironically including the address of the fabric store I wanted to go to and a list of all my "to do" patterns and how much fabric they need). It could have been worse actually: my original plan was to make a pattern I just recently got, a very cute vintage Dior design, in red and ivory wool. I bought the fabric, but reading the pattern, full of couture details like bound buttonholes and piping on the collar and cuffs, convinced me that no way on earth was I going to get it done in two days. So I guess there are some limits to my sewing madness. This way I can work on the Dior dress when I get back, with enough leisure to do a good job with the details, and wear it on my birthday at the end of the month.
So what else is new besides sewing. Well, after a week or two of uncharacteristic optimism, I'm worried about Lina again. She's developed a bad habit of losing her balance and suddenly falling. It's like her legs go out from under her, and she ends up lying there with all four limbs splayed out. And it's difficult for her to get up afterwards. She used to fall like that sometimes before, but only occasionally. Now it seems to happen all the time; she fell four times in the two days before we left. The last time, she couldn't put any weight on her bad leg after she got up. She had to hop on three legs to her bed and lie down. I confess it really scares me.
She seems most likely to fall when she's excited. Like if I'm taking her outside to go to the bathroom, if I take more than a few seconds to get my shoes and coat on, she gets riled up and starts scampering towards the door, and as soon as she hits the dining room linoleum she's on the floor. (I'm trying to figure out how to get dressed to take her out without her realizing what I'm doing, so she doesn't have time to get so excited.) I'm trying not to worry too much while I'm away, since after all there's nothing I can do about it from here. Besides, I'm hoping that five days in a kennel, with a non-slippery floor and nothing to get worked up about, will help her build up some stability in her leg again. If she's still falling when we get back, I'll call her surgeon.
I'm reading Noel and Cole, the biography of Noel Coward and Cole Porter that I got from the library. I'm enjoying it, although not as much as I had expected. It's pretty slim on the personal information, more of a professional biography. Actually it's really a "musical biography" if that makes sense. Detailed descriptions of all major songs by each composer. Unfortunately I can't read music and don't know anything about musical terminology. So most of this is over my head, especially if I haven't heard the song.
Georg likened it to "dancing about architecture" but I don't think that's it. For one thing, I don't agree with that expression. Because language is a primary means of communication, but dancing isn't. So dancing about architecture is nothing like writing about music. It's just that the author is using specialized terminology to discuss a field with which I'm unfamiliar. I'd have the same problem if he were writing about highway construction or hedge fund management. Except worse, because I don't care about those topics, but I am interested in the music of Porter and Coward. I read on the back flap that the author is a music professor and composer, which explains the focus of his book.
There is enough personal data to confirm, as I had suspected, that the Cole Porter biopic Night and Day is almost total fiction. It's actually pretty funny to compare the movie with reality. According to the book, Porter described himself in the script as "some man I barely know." I am enjoying the book for the most part, but it's maddening to read off-hand remarks that allude to personality issues, love affairs, clashes with friends, etc., but no detail on any of it. I think when I get back I'll see if the library has any biographies of Porter and Coward that address their lives in more depth, not just their work.
I may not finish Noel and Cole before turning to one of the other books I have with me: The Singing Detective by Dennis Potter, which turns out to be a script rather than a novel as I had assumed (and can someone explain to me why it was filed in nonfiction at the library? I thought it had been checked out until I checked the card catalog again), and Quicksilver which Georg's brother Rob gave me for Christmas. I thought he was nearly psychic until he reminded me that I had been reading Cryptonomicon when he visited us in October. So he's just really thoughtful.
Now I'm going to ask Rob to get me online on this computer so I can post this, and also see if I can find the address of that fabric store (B&J) that I wanted to go to. And hey, we have to decide where to have lunch tomorrow in Manhattan! The obvious choice would be a good kosher deli, but I better ask Georg if he has a favorite lunch spot he's been missing.
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