Adventures of a Stinkier Sort

Kimono T-shirts and other Ebay Stinkishness

Here's the second set up for the benefit of MUD and her munchkins.

 STINK IN LOVE

Wishing all the readers from Planet Mom the happiest of days.

A most amiable little miss

For those of you folk that follow the ebay boutique world, you may already be aware of the WELOVEMUD launch formed by several of the designers in support of Michele, of Mudpies and Pigtails, who, along with her three children, suddenly and unexpectedly lost her husband and their father a couple of weeks back.

If this is news to you, you can check out the launch blog, or just head straight to the auction wars to exercise your happy bidding fingers.

My first contribution can be found here.

Our girl Stink was less than willing to brave the chill rains of the North East, (cause or no cause) and so we list this first set modeled on a most amiable of little misses, Ramses.

Since rain is forecast for the whole weekend, I am busily stitching a third piece to our second set - a  little t-shirt (cleverly cut - if I do say so myself) that will, we can hope, coax our Stink from the farmhouse and out into the bleak drizzle and cold so I can get some shots of her in an outfit clearly designed for warmer weather (I may lose my mother of the year award for this one).

Stay tuned.

 

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.

Loose ends, lost months, and other renovations

I thought that renovating the ol' blog might help rejuvenate my muse and encourage putting finger to key.  It's not, however, progressing quite as well as all that.

Having cast the absentee ballot in blogdom for some time now, I have quite forgotten how to do it.

Never fear, I will ferret it out.

While I snuffle and snort in effort and aggravation, you may, if you'd like, catch up with the Family Stink through the next several posts entitled: Open During Construction.

Will wonders never cease or big girl blogishness

On Saturday, the littlest progeny of the family Stink had a birthday party to attend.

While we were there I received a call on my cell from the oldest.

It went like this:

"Hello?"

"Hey!  I was wondering if you knew where I might find those really sharp scissors in your studio?  You know, the ones you cut fabric with?"

Me without thinking, and pleased that I actually know where something is in my studio: "Sure, in the "sharp drawer" in the apothecary chest."

The big girl, sort of breathless with excitement:  "Great! Thanks!"

click.

I had a odd sort of queasiness at the sound of that click.

Once, when our girl was a very little stink, she asked me where things went when they were flushed down the toilet.  I answered her factually.

It wasn't until several minutes later that I pondered the origins of this sort of question, and by then of course, there was nothing to do but drip dry.

This feeling was sort of like that.

This is what I found when I got back and headed into the studio:

This is the big girl making a skirt.

She did not use a pattern.

She used the parchment paper that I use to draft, the pencils that I pattern with, the pens that I mark with, and the seam ripper that I ... well, I rip with.

And here's the kicker...

She used one of my denim pencil skirts as a base to draft from.

Our children are watching us, even when we don't think they are.  They are watching, and learning, and maybe even loving our skirts, even if they never say a word.

As a post script, it was shoes that our gal Stink decided to flush; this would prove to be just the beginning of her rather unfortunate shoe flushing stage.

Blogging the big girl.

This is my "big girl". 

She is seventeen years, 3months, and 2 weeks old today.

She is reading my blog for the first time.

She didn't know it existed until this day

I pride myself on having a rather strong stomach, but upon realizing she was going to read it through, I felt alarmingly nauseated.  I had to leave the room while she read most of it.  I didn't go far of course; I skulked about the adjoining rooms, trying to appear busy and productive and important in a mom sort of way.  I was really biting my fingers and doing a sort of jiggy pace across the floor holding the same piece of laundry, dust cloth, mug of tea...

Occasionally, she did this:

and laughed out loud.  In her laughter, I remember how I used to be cool.  Long before lactation and frustration and even graduation (that would be mine, from college, not hers, from high school,  impending this summer); back then, I was the neatest thing since sliced bread.  She was a clever, precocious 4 to my 20, when I met her; I was older than her cousins, but younger than her mom, and as she grew, that made me super hip and completely worthy of worship in areas ranging from fashion and hair to friendship and parental units.

When she laughs like this, it is everything I can do not to be near her.  Since it is my words that have put her into such gales, I even go so far as to walk casually into the room and see what she's reading.  I play a game with myself, trying to guess which post she has read that has brought forth the giggle, the scoff, the belly laugh.  I think I know her this well.

Sometimes, I am right.  I totally pegged her on the Winter Prep post.  (She hates the cold you see, hates the drafts and the shrink wrapped windows, so I figure it out when she gets there.)  I got her right on the "Men of the House of Stink" post too.  Given.

But more often than not, she surprises me.

She comments all grown-up and professional-like on my camera; asks about photo editing programs and tangents briefly about her MAC envy (she has aspirations that involve film and production stuff).

She is thoughtful and quiet at times.  She touches the screen edge when she reads of our Missie.  She speaks briefly on the tree parable, asks about Cortez and seems genuinely struck by my notice of and even search for, new 'fridge poetry.

   

She tells me how she will, upon arrival on campus next fall, head to the grocer to pick up snow cream staples so she'll never be caught empty.  (I may have to drive up every other day or so, just to make sure she hasn't run out.)

She reminds me that I never made good on a post promise made in my "Hibernation" post.  (I will, in the next post, I promise...again.)

She closes out the blog and goes about her studying (documenting the difference between the use of "like" and "as if") which I, shamefully, was not much help with.  I go about my day, somewhere between here and there feeling less anxious about her reactions, and more thoughtful of them and of her.

Hours later, I find her reading the blog again.

She has long since stopped asking for my advice on clothing, hairstyle, and even, for the most part, relationships.  She is surprised, shocked and astounded even, when I introduce her to an awesome new radio station out of Philly, and even more surprised to hear me listening to it.  I'm not sure anymore, where she stands politically, but I'm fairly certain it's not with me.  I tell myself that this is a natural and necessary process.  That our children must, eventually, begin to chafe under us, or they'd never have the motivation to step out on their own.  To achieve their own dreams.  To blaze their own trail.

None the less, there she is - reading my blog... again.

She asks me if I will blog about her.

Maybe I'm still a little bit cool.

Maybe.  Just a little.

Hakuna Matata

Good news! 

Our gal, having been on a horse's dose of antibiotics for nearly 62 hours, was suddenly and quite obviously feeling better this morning.  This is to say that if her leaping willy-nilly from her bed and sprinting into the dining room didn't give away her improvement, her willingness to take a ribbing from her older brother with rather uncharacteristic good humor made her much anticipated return to somewhat well-human form quite clear.

We will excuse, for the moment the still present "strawberry tongue" of scarlet fever and address only the 'do that prompted the aforementioned rib as the boy asked with what can only be described as droll, hysterical sarcasm,

"So, um... what's with the Lion King?"

It's raining, It's pouring

It rained this morning.

Now, it's not as if I want the troops alerted, or a state of emergency declared.  Precipitation, is not, in and of itself, even blog worthy news; it is only eventful because of the geographic location of this particular shower.

This morning, it rained in the closet.

 

Yes, friends, this is the closet in the dressing room and that line of water droplets - that would be the meteorological phenomenon witnessed just this morning in the House of Stink.

You may have some romantic notion about the sound of the rain.  You may even have an audio recording of this particular sort of concert au naturale in the stereo system beside your bed.  Perhaps you cherish the soporific quality of this particular blend of sounds.  Perhaps it lulls you to sleep.

I - I do not feel quite the same way.  My husband, even less so.  This is his closet, you see.  Gaze, if you can, on the sad casualties of the storm.

Last night, before tragedy struck, this was a happy, matching pair of shoes.   In the unkind light of dawn, the unfortunate left was found, broken and discolored, drowned in the gale.

The leather sponge, once suave and debonair, left floating in a carpet puddle.

And this mournful looking procession:

a sad reminder that while sheep weather the rains rather well, their wool?  Not so much.

We find odd console in the knowledge that the plastic wrap that insulates the windows held firm, keeping the 20 degree temperatures outside.  Otherwise, we might have had a blizzard.

You give me fever

What do these things have in common? O'hara, letter, in the library with the revolver and our Miss Stink a miserable little figure in the rages of Scarlet Fever. :(