Peep.

Back in the day, when the husbeast was in elementary school...

Well, no. Let me start over.

According to the Navy, the husbeast is "oppositional". This is, like, official. Diagnosed by a shrink and in medical records and stuff. Officially. Not just that he's an ass pain, but he's such an ass pain, it has An Official Name. Which we kinda knew, but seriously?

I have worried, since I found out I was pregnant, about the Goober inheriting our... less... positive traits, shall we say, and the husbeast's oppositional streak was on that short mental list. (I also hoped she wouldn't get my nose and sinuses. I'm out of luck on that one, too.)

When the husbeast was just a small child, in grade school, there was an occasion (more than one, I'm sure) when the teacher went off on a rant and finished with the unfortunate phrase, "I don't want to hear a peep out of any of you." The husbeast, of course, replied "Peep!" and was summarily dragged out of the room, down to the principal's office, and paddled.

We grew up in a small town (I didn't live in it, even, but in the farm country outside it). There was only one school district. The husbeast was in the classroom that day with, shall we say, the scions of some well-known families. The story made the rounds. And again. And, even now, we will bump into someone who will tell us that they'd been telling that story over a family meal recently, and laughing so hard they were crying.

Ha ha, isn't that funny. Now. That he's fought through the public school system and the military.

So, for all the laughs (there are more stories), this wasn't really something I wanted my kid to have. (We will not discuss my own blue-collar, unionized, to-the-barricades, up the rebels attitude; that's another post.)

Last week, this happened.

Sigh.

ETA: Okay, okay! Full disclosure. This was on a homework assignment that I thought a ridiculously big deal was made over. I was required to sign it to show it hadn't been finished in the classroom. (When you were in elementary school, wasn't that standard 'punishment' for fooling around and not getting your work done? Having to do it at home?)

So I signed it. Sideways, along the margin.

In pink Crayola marker.

Maybe we have a bigger problem, here.

Blanket hog.

I think she's getting the hang of this whole housecat thing.

Seriously though, that brown blanket beneath her? When the sun isn't shining right on it, I can't tell if it's the blanket or the cat half the time.

Textiles, history, and missed cultural cues.

Today we're gonna talk about one of those mashups, a thing in history you need multiple discipline study (though not that much, hello) to really get.

Spain, wealth, and the clothing they wore in the 1500s. Seems random, but it still affects thinking today. No, really.

Okay, so we have a self portrait of El Greco. We'll start off with that.

Painted in the 1570s thereabouts. As modern people, our first thought is probably along the lines of "shit, that's dark". Which, yeah. But there's also El Greco's message. He's showing off. It's a self portrait saying "I am so badass I can paint this with only two shades of white, three of gray, and no true black paint". Any painter in that era would look at that, and first see skill.

Then there's the clothing, itself, that he's wearing. Yeah. All that black. The Spaniards started the black craze that carries on to this day. Know why? It's wasn't because it was slimming, or sophisticated. It's because it was EXPENSIVE.

In 1856, William Perkin invented the first synthetic dye. (Called mauve, but today we'd call it magenta. All those dusty pink pastel clothes from the late 1800s? Not tasteful dusty pink. Faded. Formerly magenta. The first bright, synthetic color, people went nuts. They called it the mauve decade.) Today, we take our fluorescent green tee shirts and raspberry pink yarn for granted. Before 1856, those colors were either very hard to create, or flat out impossible.

1492, Columbus discovered the Americas. By 1493, he was looting, enslaving, and murdering in the Caribbean. By 1545 Spain had discovered Potosi in what is now Bolivia, and were literally minting money- there was a Spanish royal mint right there, and they shipped back Spanish coin already finished to Spain. (This is one of the reasons Spanish ships are a favorite for salvage archaeologists to look for.) The Silver Standard - the wealth money was based on - was founded around Potosi and the unbelievable amounts of silver Spain was hauling back to the old world.

In short, Spain was rolling in it. And they wanted to show off. Before Worth came along, 1890ish, the value of clothing was not affected by who made it. It was based entirely on the market value of what it was made out of. Expensive show-offy clothes were made with expensive fabrics. And those fabrics? Often black.

Dyeing fabric black was a two-pot process. Right there it doubled the labor involved, which means more time, which means more cost. The best black was done with indigo, from India, and then logwood from South America. You needed access to most of the world just to get the dyes.

Lace? All made by hand. Very time consuming, very expensive. Linen was most common, but for Really White lace to go with your Really Black tunic, you needed cotton. From India. Chlorine bleach wasn't invented until a century later, so there was a great deal of fussing around with chalk and sugar and laying it out in the sun to fade white. The starch involved to get things to stand up like that was also time-consuming and therefore fussy and expensive.

And then, the gold.

It's gold. Sure, some of this you could fake with yellow dye, and I'm sure they did. But gold thread was made by twisting gold - REAL GOLD - foil around usually yellow silk thread. The silk knots on the sleeves, up there in the pic of the grumpy lady? Yarn or cord made from multiple plys of real gold thread. NOT CHEAP.

So, we go to galleries, or hit history books, and we see these pictures of people wearing black and it doesn't register and we move on to something more interesting and just don't get it.

The black, worn by those Puritan fuckers? The Calvinists? Not meant to be modest and minimalist. It's "look how important we are. God loves us so much we're rich." Not the message modern people get, from the view of a hundred and fifty years of modern industrial chemistry. We just see black. Not the wealth, and certainly not the exploitation of a continent that paid for it.

This is the painting commissioned by Elizabeth the First (occasionally Great) to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Yep. She dressed like the Spanish, the ones she'd just defeated, to show off how important and rich she was. In black. And the globe, there, under her hand? That's South America showing. (Their cartography sucked back then, what can I say.) Rampant colonialism and greed, all celebrated in sophisticated, slimming black.

Ugh. I'm gonna go find my pink sweatshirt.

And then, actual knitting content.

I was joking the other day that I crawled out of the Pit of Despair using garter stitch scarves for rope. It's almost true. Since it's cold and flu season I'm still at it, cranking out the simple stuff. I really want to get back to the crazy stranded color stuff (see "Projects of Infamy" in the sidebar), but it seems like a really bad idea to try it when full up on cold medicine and a head full of snot.

Garter stitch it is!

I just finished a simple Batkus (inc every 4th row 'til you've used up half the yarn by weight, dec every 4th row) in Socks That Rock "Holiday Hen".

There's no fool like an old fool; I was worried about it being too short. Then I washed it and it doubled in length and now goes around my neck twice with leftovers. Right.

I've been wearing scarves around the house a lot, even to bed. A few years back, my physical therapist suggested it. Since all the angry nerves in my arm run through my neck, maybe keeping them warm would help. It does seem to help minor aches, and the only side effect is looking like Amelia Earhart. Several gimpy friends have also had good luck with it. I figure it's worth a try, not like you'll die of a scarf overdose.

Which means, KNIT MORE SCARVES!!

Last year, sometime, I was talking to my friend who runs Yarn Hollow, over on Twitter. (@YarnHollow). I asked her if she'd start putting a color scheme I liked, Grateful Thread, on some kind of fiber other than bamboo. Which I hate. Next thing I knew, she had dyed it up for me on BFL superwash, and sent it as a gift!

Of course I spun it right up.

I returned to it a couple days ago, looking for another simple knit for the season. I'd been looking at directional short-row scarves, and the yarn caught my eye, and suddenly, I knew.

The Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf. (Free!) It's gonna need the holy hell blocked out of it, to lay flat and straight, but it's perfect for the color progression. I can't stop knitting it, to see how the next color blends in. Gift fiber that turns out perfectly. Nothing's better.

I'm going to go knit some more, and gloat, and feel smug. Pardon me.

Honu, you CAT.

Sadly for all us blue-streak cussin' machines, we have reached the point where the kid actually listens and will occasionally slip and say something profane. (Like we didn't see that coming.) I'm waiting to get a call from the school that she slipped and fell at recess and yelled "MOTHER FUCKER". I promise I'll try not to giggle.

So no HONU YOU FUCKER posts. Or shouting at the top of my voice.

For many reasons, mostly the above. But, well. For a tortie, Honu's pretty darn biddable. Usually. When it suits her. We're still trying to teach her to play with the humans, and it's going slowly. When it's cold out, she likes to lay on me, which is good. And she likes to pounce stuff. And carries little toy mousies around in her mouth like kills, which is adorable even though it shouldn't be.

However.

The little shit has a taste for spinning fiber, and has made off with several chunks. Including some from Fiber Optic, which is NOT EASY TO GET HOLD OF. (If you click that link, I am not responsible for what happens to your credit cards. Oh, hell, just go HERE and weep at the awesome. Start with the 'show your work' thread.) She pulled an entire batt out of my spinning basket a few months ago, dragged it up and down the hall, killing it the whole way, and left it snarled in a matted mess around her scratching post. Dead as can be, all right. It took half an hour on hands and knees to get the silk fibers up, that she'd ground into the carpet.

The pictures were lost in the Great Phone Crash of 2013, but I might have something....

There we go. This was posted to Twitter over the summer, with the caption "oh my fucking god I'm going to kill my cat". The purple is merino with sparkle, and the turquoise is silk. That woulda made nice yarn. Honu made it trash. FUCKER.

I got a project bag with a drawstring top and kept my fiber in it. She learned how to open the goddamn bag. This is my reward for not declawing her.

She also likes yarn, and will BITE it. Once I was winding off some yarn from bobbin to niddy-noddy, and she burst out of nowhere, chomped down, and took off. Amazingly, the yarn survived the treatment, and so did the cat.

Usually Honu's really good about "NO". She understands the word, and knows there are things she shouldn't do. But, being a cat, at tortie cat, well, occasionally she throws that to the wind, and all hell breaks loose.

So, yeah. Honu, you CAT. I've gotta have SOMETHING to yell.

Properly camouflaged.

The whole chronic pain wrist thing has been going just swimmingly. (I'm sure there will be great rantings in future months, I'm having Doctor Issues.) One of the better treatments for it is an NSAID patch; you stick it to your skin and anti-inflammatories soak in RIGHT THERE without bothering the rest of your system.

You may have noticed, however, that wrists are kinda bendy. Flexible. Like a little miracle, really, if you watch it under real-time X-ray. Which is really cool, and useful, but keeping pain patches stuck to them is a tad iffy. Enter the self-stick medical adhesive tape. Stick on a patch, wrap the tape around, and you're good to go. Works a treat.

The one minor drawback, more a mild irritation really, is that there seems to be some strange portion of humanity who thinks that any bandage on a wrist means that person tried to slit their veins. (Because, as we know, there are no wrist injuries in the multiverse other than self-inflicted.) (Okay, yes, you could say this one is sorta self-inflicted, but I inflicted it with a motorcycle, not quite the same thing.) The husbeast has been along on some of these encounters, and is mostly annoyed with a dash of boggled. We've both been dealing with the nonsense for fifteen years, but intensively for the last four since I started wearing the pain patches a lot.

This is all just a setup so you get the joke. Really.

The husbeast was at the local farm store a couple weeks ago, and in the horsies aisle he found rolls of self-stick medical adhesive, meant for horse's legs. They were printed with different patters. I'm always buying the stuff, so he picked up two bags; one of pink and black zebra stripes, and one in standard camo. He came home and presented them to me. I looked at the patterns and said "The camo's to hide the bandage and keep people from noticing, isn't it." He laughed. Because of course it was.

Right.

It is SO unobtrusive.

(But it makes me smile.)

The state of, um, stuff.

I disappeared for five months. Well, not really, just from the blog, I wasn't really invisible or anything. For the first couple months I was licking my figurative wounds. Then I was soldiering through a bunch of death anniversaries. Now, I think I'm finally digging out of the Pit of Despair.

For me, joking about depression is like spitting in the eye of a bully. I'm sort of on a crusade to de-stigmatize several things, depression included. (Also chronic illness, RANT FOR ANOTHER DAY.) No, it's not to be ignored. Yes, it should be talked about openly. Yes, a lot of people need whopped in the head about the idea that a brain chemistry fuckup needs treatment as much as a broken arm would. Many people have names for their depression, I've heard some refer to it in variations of a black dog. For me, it's the Pit of Despair because it reminds me of that bridge scene in "Holy Grail" and anything that's even mildly amusing is a win.

So there.

ANYWAY. What I've been doing. Sadly, we're lacking photo documentation of the summer; I dropped my phone right before Samhain and Broke It Good. All data lost. Bugger. Doesn't matter much, all I really did was sit on the back porch, spin, and watch movies on my net book.

At the Goober's school, they do 'dress up like a book character' instead of full on Halloween. Which they call a harvest festival. The Goob and I got together and dressed her up as Agatha Heterodyne.

I made the skirt, we cobbled together the rest. Yes, she's wearing a trilobite pin at her throat, and those are goggles on her head.

Nobody at the school knew who she was. I mean, okay, not EVERYBODY reads web comics, but in a whole school full of adults who are hopefully at least a bit computer literate, NOBODY?? Seriously. I let the Goob take one of the on-paper books of Girl Genius with her. It didn't help much. She came home disgusted.

Next year, she wants to be Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls. I can work this.

Then came Thanksgiving, and having to make the kid a pilgrim outfit. I sewed the hat and apron, the rest is just black clothes. This led to something of a rant, in which I called the pilgrims a bunch of fascist zealots, which sadly, the Goob did not repeat at school. (I continue to be horrified by the misinformation these kids are getting as "history".)

One of the Thanksgiving assignments was to disguise a turkey. I don't even know. The kid wanted Iron Man, so I hit the scrapbooking store (congratulate me on not spending a thousand dollars), got the papers we needed, and this happened:

Please note the drawn-in goatee and speck of blue foil for the arc reactor.

Honu's doing well. Getting the hang of the lap cat thing.

Although, unfortunately, she seems to have that catly thing for yarn and string, which can be something of a problem:

She also bats at the cursor on my computer screen when it moves, and goes after the stylus when I'm using the tablet. Hoo boy.

My local yarn store, Natural Stitches, started selling gradient fiber for spinning. Unfortunately I lost all the pictures I took while spinning it, but I still have the scarf.

Fiber is "Flame" gradient in BFL from Frabjous Fibers, the pattern is "Volna" from Grumperina, with the fiddly bits on the side left off. I have another gradient in bright rainbow unicorn fart colors I intend to do this same exact thing with.

A couple years ago, my physical therapist told me to start wearing scarves to keep my neck warm. It makes sense, all the pissed off nerves from the RSD run down my neck and into my arm. This winter I started taking it seriously, and you know, I think it works. Not like a morphine lollipop works, but on the other hand, the only side effect is looking dashing.

With that in mind, I lost my head on the scarves knitting, and started Lucy Neatby's "Bubbles" scarf.

Unfortunately I got the flu at Christmas (a tradition I am seriously unamused by) and when the 102 fever hit, I thought probably working on double knitting with an improvised pattern might be inadvisable. I knit a Batkus instead, with Socks That Rock "Holiday Hen". Natural Stitches started stocking StR and I'm gonna go broke now.

Really all I've done is huddle in and knit. I spent a lot of time thinking, both of what to do with the blog, and what to do in general. One of the reasons I haven't blogged is, I feel like I've said everything already. I've joked about getting a tee shirt that says "I wrote a blog post about that". But then I read all my usual geeky stuff and want to post about El Dorado (since we don't know their true name), or political history, or different fibers, and I guess there's still more to say.

If not I can babble something or other.

That's about it from here. The current spin is taking forever:

Mostly because I want lots of yardage and so am spinning it very fine. I'll love it when it's done, but at the moment I'm two thirds of the way through and really kinda bored.

For Christmas, the husbeast got me a beer stein I haven't even been able to use because I've been on antibiotics forever:

He has a keggerator in his man cave. It's quite the sight - the tap is a mermaid (I keep meaning to sneak down there and paint her hair brown like mine), and above it is a picture of the first ship he served on. Very Sailor On Dry Land. I made a joke last autumn that I should have a beer stein since we had a keg, and at Christmas, this happened. Isn't it pretty? It's apparently Art Deco, which amuses me all to hell. Stoneware, salt glaze, tin lid. NEEDS BEER.

New goals? Well, during my 'dig in and knit' brooding, I realized most of my regrets in life are about missed opportunities. I need to take advantage of them more, and I'm working toward that. Short term, I'd be really happy to finish this spin and have some beer in my Art Deco steinie.

Golden Globes Red Carpet!

Well, kiddies, it's the new year, and that means AWARDS SEASON. First up is, obviously, the Globes. We don't care who wins what. It's about the clothes!

Now. I know some don't like the concentration on looks, and they're PEOPLE, not faces, but this is Hollywood. It is a professional event. They have had months to prepare for this. This is not the same as taking a photo of them out for coffee and ragging on their tee shirt. (Personally I think that should be illegal.) Honestly, I don't really even care who's wearing it, I just wanna see CLOTHES.

The only person I'm likely to rag on, as a human being, is Jane Fonda. If she shows up. I'll quit bitching when she's shot for treason. RANT FOR ANOTHER DAY!

So.

CLOTHES!!  WHEE!

(For now, while waiting, I'm watching Leverage. If you've never watched it, you should. It's hilarious. I want to be Sophie Deveraux when I grow up. Heck, I pretend I'm her, now, when I'm talking someone into something.)

(Also, I have a kitty on my lap. Honu's adjusting well, but she's still getting the hang of cuddling.)

Watching E, so I'm gonna have those knuckleheads taking up my bandwidth.

I'll do my best to add pictures where I can find them.

The red carpet goes out to the street and the cars are driving along it. Okay. Wut.

They're pushing a Twitter hash tag.

Zooey Whatsit, in beige. She says it's comfortable. DeLaurenta.Sparkly. Can't decide if that top is flattering or not. She has flowers on her manicure. She matches. Purse, hair flowers (YAY RIBBONWORK!) and dress. I just don't know.

Aubrey Plaza, in a fairly regular dress, BUT IT FITS. Color works on her.

Hayden Paniterre in Tom Ford. Black and white, FITS. The hair looks like she just got out of a swimming pool. But the dress is flattering.

Sarah Hyland, really cute peach orange dress. Pretty. Plain but fitted decently in front, sheer and beaded on the back. "It's from Paris!" She says the hair is inspired by the Valentino runway, but she looks more like Heidi.

The manicure cam may be fucking awesome.

(Oh man, I just had to bump the cat off me so I could type without my shoulders screaming. Damn it, not the way to train her.)

What's with the slicked down hair on women?? It's flattering on maybe 2% of them, everyone else looks like they need a shower.

Margot Robbie looks freaking fabulous. And she did her hair. She must have the undergarments from hell, but the dress is perfect. This is what I'm talking about when I bitch about fit.

Kelly Osbourne going on about her own dress. HONEY, YOU ARE A HOSTESS. IT'S ABOUT THE OTHER PEOPLE.

(Hitting pause to wash the kid's hair and get pizza.)

Ryan Seacrest. Who IS he? I mean, what does he do?

One of the hostesses is wearing another version of Deitrich's nude dress. I'm really tired of unlined dresses. I don't wanna know what underwear they're wearing.

WANT ACTUAL PEOPLE, NOT HOSTS. I'VE SEEN YOUR CLOTHES.

Lena Dunham in yellow. Um. Yellow's a really hard color to wear, especially for people with Euro coloring. And the cups are too small for her boobs. She says it was designed for her... Someone needs a lesson on fitting. Boobs don't belong in your arm pits. I love she's letting the tats show. You go, girl.

PIZZA! Husbeast is awesome.

Vagisil commercial. I can't even.

Now they're talking social media. THANK YOU E! FOR CATCHING UP WITH THE REST OF US.

Interesting architectural dress behind the inverview. Nice hair, too. No idea who it is.

Naomi Watts in silver Tom Ford with sheer cutouts. Still not sure if I care about sideboob or not. Pretty sure not, but the dress is more revealing than it looks at first glance.

Lupita Nyong'o in bright red, FANTASTIC with her coloring. Perfectly fitted. She looks amazing. WONDERFUL. That's how you do it!

More shots of Zooey Deschanel, which is nice, but we already saw that dress. MOAR FASHION DAMMIT.

Aaand another commercial.

Melissa Rauch, also in yellow. Why do people keep wearing yellow? It's the world's hardest color to wear. Great dress, but I think another color would've been more flattering.

Zosia Mamet in a fabulous black and... white? Pale pink? dress. Love the beading, and it's done in an optical illusion flattering way, but what's with the hair??

Elizabeth Moss, beaded dress that must way twenty pounds. Also not doing her hair. WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE. It's nice, mostly fits. She has repeatedly flipped off the mani cam. Haha.

Emilia Clarke, some kind of strapless architectural dealie, THAT FITS. Nice. DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR HAIR!!

Amy Adams in a plunging red dress. HI BOOBS. She pulls it off. She's got the presence. It's backless, and the front goes down to her waist. Yow. I wouldn't have the nerve to wear it, she's advocating good posture, I think double-sided tape and/or super glue is also helping.

Kid now old enough to have opinions. She likes beads and ruffles. Shocker.

Really not liking the hair trends.

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Tina's dress is great, very Louis XVI. She dresses up really well. I like the wrap style of Amy's, too.

They're trying WAAAY too hard to work the social media into this show. They're talking about wedding cake.

Okay, I'm not gonna rag on actors' dates. I'd flip out if someone dragged me across the red carpet. But there is some really unfortunate plastic surgery going on.

Oh my. WHO IS THIS? Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting. Badly fitted corset with lots of skirt. Not sure I like the print, but the fit is... yeah.

I've had dresses fitted before. More than once. I've done it myself. It's not hard, or expensive. Even without a stylist, why aren't they making sure this stuff doesn't smash their boobs?? These women have fabulous bodies that they work like hell to maintain. Why don't they get more serious about actual fit? I don't get it.

Halfway. I'm really tired of these hosts. Blah blah. I just wanna see clothes, damn it.

Cate Blanchett nails it in backless black lace that fits. She also did her hair. When I grow up I wanna be Galadriel. She's towering over Seacrest, which pleases me. She is just so damned elegant. WHOA! The back goes doooown! I hope that's glued, or she doesn't sit down. But it looks fabulous.

Guys wearing tuxedos. Yes. Often nice, sometimes horribly fitted, who cares, NEED DRESSES.

Bradley Cooper. Om nom nom. Y'know, on the right guy, a tuxedo reminds me of a present to be unwrapped. I'm just sayin'.

Emma Watson in simple red with a drape on the back. I think she's adorable. I always do. Wait. It's... pants? Black pants with a backless red tunic thing. She's striking a pose on the red carpet. Honestly, she'd look adorable in a grocery bag. Sort of WTF, but she enjoys pushing the envelope with fashion.

Taylor Schilling in a green nightgown.

Kerry Washingon, pregnant. Everyone should go to her for lessons on how to dress. The color is meh, but the cut of the dress is really interesting, in the best way.

Julianna Marguiles, in black with gold print or applique or something. The full skirt looks... odd.

Sophia Vergara looking like a bombshell. Va voom. The boning in that dress, holy cow. Zak Posen. A cathedral is nothing compared to the architecture in that bodice. It doesn't fit quite right, but who's noticing??

Bono and Edge. And... what is U2 doing here? Oh. Nominated for a song, their songs were in the Mandela movie. They DID do a whole lot to help South Africa. They're saying all that really good profound peace stuff. Didn't Bono get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? Edge is wearing a stocking cap with a suit. REALLY? Come on.

Cate Blanchett and Bono gushing at each other. I want to be them. Or, no, go out for a beer with them.

Leonardo DiCaprio. Feh. Blah blah. Ooh ah. Whatevs. Also, his tux doesn't fit. Teeheehee. As I was typing that, husbeast walked in the room, glanced at the TV, and said "he couldn't find a tux that fit?"

Melissa McCarthy in a really neat black dress with a beaded swish. I wish she'd wear more color. Black isn't slimming, it's just black. And boring.

Olivia Wilde in green with a kajillion beads. Another twenty pound dress, but nice. Those types of dresses drape like damn and require undergarments by Goodyear. But they look so nice. She's preggo. In a heavy beaded dress. I can't even begin to imagine. I'd have been found in the bathroom, puking.

Reese Witherspoon in THE PERFECT DRESS. Holy crap, that's perfect. When I start bitching about proper fit? THIS IS THE IDEAL. Holy mackerel.

Sandra Bullock still has no boobs. The husbeast would like the world to know this. But the dress is nice. I'm so tired of black, but at least there's some color. The pink over the black is a great optical illusion. Still not sure how I feel about the blue at the bottom, draws the eye to her feet, which isn't usually what people are going for in a dress.

Goodyear blimp. They didn't do the tires tonight, they did the foundation garments. Seriously. With these dresses.

Heidi Klum looking like Stevie Nicks.

Julia Roberts. What, the, hell. She's wearing a strapless black corset thingie over a white dress shirt. WHAAAA? I'm looking at it, and I'm still what. Dolce and Gabana. And still, what the fuck. Um. She did her hair?

Julia Louise Dreyfus, in red halter. Yep. It's a dress.

Mila Kunis in silver, really pretty. And she did her hair. She always goes for soft and sparkly combined, I love her looks.

Taylor Swift in 20s style pin curls and a red and black dress. Carolina Hererra. Fabulous. Little bow in the back, a train, which looks great but must be a pain to maneuver in. She looks like she's hunching over to keep her boobs in the dress. I don't know if that's her, or the dress.

Jennifer Lawrence is photobombing her, sneaking up the stairs making faces. Girl hugs and kisses.

Jennifer Lawrence! She's wearing a knockoff of a... Chanel or Vionnet. From the 30s? It's not a knockoff, it's vintage, right? It's supposedly Dior. She's such a hoot, her bracelet fell off, she's pretending to toss it into the crowd.

Drew Barrymore in a dress she had to have chosen for fun more than glamour. And it is fun. I can imagine her saying "I'm pregnant, it's fun, hell with it." It's adorable, it really is.

Jessica Chastain in plain black with long hair. Nice look, if eh.

Sarah Paulson. I wore a pink version of this exact dress to the band dance in 1986.

Lots of repeats and blah blah and I'm burned out. Poking through the 'net for pictures...a lot of these are from the People.com web site.

Zoe Saldana looking FABULOUS. I keep using that word. It's fitted to her, and the ribbon over her shoulders, and the pink with her skin.

So, there you go. Golden Globes red carpet, good fun. Lots of great clothes. Yay, fashion.