Feed on
Posts
Comments

IMG_7977
Button boots, baby! I’ve wanted a pair of button-top, French Heeled, old-style shoes for AGES. Like perhaps since my ‘Tween years, What can I say? I’ve always had an urge for Fin de siècle fashions.
IMG_7974

I rarely buy shoes, from the Internet or otherwise, so these were a bit of a splurge, but they are so very crazy cute!

Today I’ve concocted a 1905-via-2011 outfit consisting of a mid-calf, flared, brown cotton skirt,
underblouse for use under suit jackets
this top,
IMG_4129
and this jacket.

Being able to make a lot of your own clothes is a double edged sword. Not only can you make whatever you want to wear…you can wear whatever you want, even if it is kind of silly.

Hello, Bee-Bee

Well, I guess you’d guess by my rarely-changed header image that I like bees.

It’s true, I do. Especially the really furry, busy, buzzy, chubby bumble-bees. The fuzzier and bumblier, the better.

One of the first really good picture I ever took with my digital camera (please humor me in that it’s “good”) was a picture of a bumbler working over one of the zinnias in the front flower bed at my old house in the Northeast section of town:
This is my absolute favorite among the pictures I have ever taken.

From the same day/session/bee, here’s another angle, where you can see the bee’s face:
bee's face

Last week, I revisited the bee-and-zinnia theme with my newer digital camera, a Canon Powershot G9 (my old camera is a Powershot A70, which sill works, but is frustratingly slow, though it does take really nice pictures – I think its sensor is actually maybe nicer than the one in the G9, just the rest of its inner workings are a little creakier).

Without further ado, please enjoy some bees and zinnias.

IMG_7613
Here is another bee’s face…One of the reasons that I bought the G9 was that its macro capabilities were highly rated. The ratings were not undeserved, I think!

IMG_7643
This bee is much furrier than the one above and more yellow. I notice as I take more bee pictures that bees are as individual in their appearance as any other living thing. Sure, there’s a limited arrangement of colors and features you’ll see…they’re more consistent in their appearance than, say, dogs, but each bee is a distinct little critter.

IMG_7546_1
Here’s a honeybee, pollen anointing her leg joints, digging in for the edibles.

IMG_7603
This bumbler’s tattered wings makes me think she’s seen quite a few expeditionary runs.

IMG_7600
Same bee, head on. She was debonairly dusted with pollen – not too hung up on remaining pristine and tidy.

Not a bee – instead, here is a tiny green grashopper with pollen stuck to its mandibles:
There's pollen on its mandibles.

yellowbutterflywithshadows
And here’s a yellow butterfly whose body is shadowed through its wings.

Equal Opportunity

IMG_7440
Too bad they never handled Chrysler at some interval, or they’d have had the Big 3 covered. This former car dealership building stands on Truman Road. A few years ago, it housed a really cool sign shop:

IMG_0141
I guess the crap economy put the kibosh to a neon-only specialty sign shop. Too darn stinkin’ bad, too, ’cause it was really a cool little place.

IMG_0150
Gaines Furniture Outlet is still doing well, though. I really dig their building, and they were super friendly when I went in, even though all I wanted was to take a picture of the stained glass trim above the display windows:
IMG_0157
IMG_0158
IMG_0151
According to them, “at their store, everyone Gaines.”

A few months ago, one of my mom’s friends was cleaning out her sewing room and came across a bunch of oddball old sewing patterns from the early 1980s. Mostly it’s children’s or baby clothes, though there were two ladies blouses…one rather dubious 1980s “Italian” style blouse with big shoulders and a floppy collar, and the other a really cute cowgirl blouse, which I started assembling today.

But before I got going on the cowgirl blouse, I had another, much more darling project to work on. Two of our friends are expecting a baby (in fact, I do believe said baby is being born pretty much as I’m typing). I always like to make a little something for friends’ whose babies are pending, and of course this is no exception. It worked out beautifully, what with me “inheriting” a bunch of old-school baby-clothes patterns, and a friend expecting a baby.

So, here’s the pattern in question:
IMG_7909
It has about two dozen different pieces that can be recombined in countless ways to make everything you see on the pack.

What I ended up making was this outfit, but without the collar, as none of the fabric I had would co-operate.
IMG_7911
The lightweight cotton of Dress 1 wanted to shred when I turned the collar, and the flannel I used for the other two was just too bulky. So, here’s what I came up with:

IMG_7879
Lightweight cotton plaid with contrasting yoke and matching bloomers. This was in the smallest size, which basically equates to 1-3 month size.
IMG_7878
I had on hand some light blue buttons that were a perfect match for the back closure.
IMG_7874
I also had a tiny scrap of picot-edge trim which made the perfect finishing treatment for the neckline on this dress.

IMG_7891
This was cut in the medium size (3-6 month) in flannel, with long sleeves, for winter. Contrast bodice and bloomers, with lace frills at the sleeve heads and neckline.
IMG_7893
Once again I just happened to have on hand some buttons which co-ordinate perfectly. I decided to go ahead and use the pink thread to affix the buttons as I thought the contrast would be interesting.

IMG_7902
If you look closely at the Paisley print, it has little butterflies and hearts hidden in the pattern. I loved the cheery colors and the busy print. I used purple rick-rack as trim/finishing on the hem and at the neckline.
IMG_7896
I went funky with the buttons for this dress. I picked out four from my random tub-o-buttons that co-ordinated with colors in the print. Blue, green, orange, and pink.

Making up baby clothes is really a lot of fun because you can get quite whimsical with it, and nobody will think the less of you for doing so.

In the (slightly adapted) words of Mighty Maggie, “there’s a very limited amount of time where you can dress them all Chauncey.”

Surprising Developments

So…the rubber penis is gone. It’s actually been gone a few weeks; it disappeared a few days after I photographed it. I shudder to imagine the circumstances of its departure. They can only be at least as, if not grosser than how it got there in the first place.

Anyway, my world has not been unduly devoid of refreshing weirdness, and as luck would have it, I’ve had my camera handy to photograph the choicer examples.

One day at work last week, I was going upstairs mid-afternoon to heat up some water for more tea (still diggin’ the Lapsang) and I looked out the window on the landing halfway up to the second floor and saw this:
IMG_7671
Yes, boys and girls. It is a van. A porno van. With a pornstache.

I abandoned my tea-getting project and dashed outside to snap a few pictures.

IMG_7666
Head-on. I’d been concerned that the bug-screen would obscure my view of this van’s curly handlebars, but it’s just fine.
IMG_7667
Driver’s side view.

IMG_7664
Fiction is fun…so they say.

As I was pottering around photographing this van (because who would believe me if I just told them that I saw a van with a moustache?) the owners of said van came out of the burger joint next door and introduced themselves. The ‘stache van is owned by a band from Denver, Colorado who call themselves “Fiction Is Fun.” They were passing through Kansas City and were going to put on a guerrilla performance somewhere down in the Crossroads district later on in the day.


Here they are in Eugene, Oregon, busking for money to repair their van.

Slade pretty much owns over Quiet Riot.

QR basically made their fortune in America as a Slade cover band, but they lacked something crucial. Noddy Holder.


Good lord, I love the bassline of this song. It literally makes me happy.


A little better effort than on Mama Weer All Crazy, but still…I gotta say I prefer the Slade version.


Nothing at all to do with Quiet Riot. Just Slade, bein’ Slade, all plaid, loud, and rude, and dirty.


Last one for tonight.

IMG_7663 by Meetzorp
IMG_7663, a photo by Meetzorp on Flickr.

Thunderstorm incoming from the west + sunrise happening in the East = glowy abandoned church sandwich.

Enough with the gutter-based content. Today, I want to show you this


My fingernails are really shiny, sparkly silver. All day long it has been making me cheerful to see them twinkling as I have gone about my work duties and stuff.

This combination of cheap nailpolishes was a real winner:

One coat of the Sally Hanson opaque silver, two coats of the LA Colors silver glitter. It has lasted for three days of normal wear (including washing dishes and pulling weeds in the garden) which is about two days longer than I can usually reasonably expect nail polish to last.

Score two for cheap-a-roni nail polish!

Worst. Sundial. EVER!

Seriously not safe for work. This post features content of a dirty, big rubber penis I found alongside of the road. I hope you consider this fair warning.

Continue Reading »

On Saturday, I found myself among friends, hanging around behind an abandoned industrial building. Some folks were drinking beers; all of us were talking shit. Because that’s what we do. Shoot the bull, drink beer, and hang around debris-strewn alleyways behind abandoned buildings. We’re classy n’ shit.

Any old how, I wasn’t drinking beer because I haven’t been really into it lately. Too hot out, plus I really annoy myself when I’m drunk these days; so, I’m off the hooch by default.

I just couldn’t sit still, and I didn’t feel that talky, either. So, I roamed around the vicinity of our little private park and discovered a pair of abandoned boxer briefs. I poked them with a very long stick but nothing really came of that. I teased my hair up into a great big tumbleweed-y brush. Then I started playing with broken glass and discarded chewing gum (it was Big Red…it still smelled all cinnamon-y).

I made these little crystal forests out of busted up glass stuck into two wads of chewing gum that were melted down to the asphalt.

IMG_7453 IMG_7455 IMG_7456
IMG_7458 IMG_7459 IMG_7461
IMG_7462IMG_7464 IMG_7466
IMG_7467 IMG_7468 IMG_7469

realized a few days later, that my little episode of antisocial personal amusement hearkens back to an amusement I used to pursue as a little kid. When we’d be somewhere where there weren’t other kids to tear around with, and I didn’t have any emergency equipment with me (I often carried a hand-me-down purse with a book, a doll and some clothes, or some art supplies in case my parents dragged me somewhere boring) I would sometimes build teeny-tiny replicas of Bedrock City out of pebbles. I really, really liked the Flintstones when I was a kid. I’m sure 90% of the jokes flew straight over my head, but I liked the dinosaur appliances and hole-in-the-floor cars.

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »