Adventures of a Stinkier Sort

more ODC: the wedding

Late last year, the niece of a relative saw photographs that I had taken at a family wedding and asked if I would take her wedding as well.  Despite my repeated and embarrassingly louder protests and continued reminders that I am NOT a professional photographer, in the end, I found myself with sweaty palms and fancy new big girl lenses focused (with high ISO, no less) on the cusp of an unseasonably warm mid winter's eve.

Here are a few of the shots:

                                                                                   the secret Thanks Meredith and family for inviting me into your night.

Life in the age of Viking (Husqueverna)

The big girl wore her skirt to college orientation two weeks ago.

The skirt she used to draft hers from is one of my favorites.  It's a vintage styled pencil skirt of darkest stretch denim.  It's forgiving in both cut and fabric.  It has the ability, as a good skirt should, to make me think of myself as sort of Audrey Hepburnish in it even when I feel like Shamu .  She took that skirt and made it hipper, younger.  She lowered the waistband, shortened the zipper, added some pockets and bleach.She used a lighter denim with far less stretch.I watched her rip out the first set of pockets because she didn't like their placement, but she left in the less than straight top-stitching at the hem because she liked its character."A denim skirt is an ambitious first project", I cautioned.She knew exactly what she wanted and dove right in.She was so anxious to wear it that she made the ill fated decision to ignore the not quite perfect tension in the stitching of the side seams and head off to school.I'm not sure what she changed into when the seam split sometime mid-day - perhaps something from her trunk, maybe even her brother's lacrosse shorts."I don't get it!?", she said later that evening, " A seam is a seam, right?  What happened?"So I told her about double seaming stress areas.  I told her about serge finishes and even more importantly, we talked about stretch fabrics.Because ambition is good, acceptance of imperfection is even better, but a little give here and there, well, that can't be overlooked.  No matter how well designed, no matter how thoughtfully drafted, areas of stress occur.  It's sort of scary when your child asks to use the "really sharp scissors"; and it's even harder to let them go running off with pulling seamage.  Eventually though, I guess we just have to let them dive in, to find out on their own the importance of the preemptive double seam, and the value of a little forgiveness.