Madeline Vionnet

[Returning to our survey of fashion designers. Still spinning, still knitting, blah blah blah.]

"There is something superficial and volatile about the seasonal and elusive whims of fashion which offends my sense of beauty." - Madeline Vionnet.

Something tells me, Mme. Vionnet would have gotten along fine with modern hand-knitters. She wasn't interested in changing 'fashion' every season to sell more clothing. She was interested in creating classics that would stand the test of time. She succeeded. People still copy her clothing regularly, and still look fantastic wearing it.

Born in the Loire Valley of France (our first French designer!), Mme. Vionnet went to work as a seamstress' apprentice at age eleven. From the rest of her bio, I am convinced that this act, which put her into the industry at literally the ground floor, affected not only her approach to fashion and design, but her approach to business. And let me tell you, for all that Mme. Vionnet was a kickass designer, she may have been a better businesswoman.

After working a series of gradually better jobs in the fashion industry, she opened House of Vionnet in Paris in 1912. When World War One started, she closed the house in 1914 and moved to Rome for the duration. (Exhibiting solid common sense that she showed later in her business.) Those two brief years didn't really give her a chance to dig in and change the industry forever; that came later.

Once the war was over, she was back in Paris with a couple backers, to hire some of the most famous architects and interior decorators of the day (Chanut, de Feure, Lalique) for the interior of her atelier. It became known as "The Temple of Fashion". There, Mme. Vionnet dug in and started to crank out designs that would revolutionize how clothing was made, and produced ideas that are still ripped off by fashion designers today. (Seriously. Look at this stuff. You could wear it to a cocktail party today and no one would look twice. Every year the collections contain clothing based on these ideas.)

As you can see, Mme. Vionnet was one of the hands-on designers; she didn't draw a picture and hand it off to a minion to actually make happen, like most designers work today. No. She sat at a table with a miniature, or got a full-size dressmaker's dummy, or even worked on live models. She was known as "The Queen of the Bias Cut" but I personally think of her as "The Master of Fit". Because that's what these dresses are really about. Proper fitting.





When she wasn't designing (I don't know where she found the time), Mme. Vionnet got down to business. Among other things she was the first to push for copyright and anti-copying laws, and for prosecution of the grey market knockoffs. To that end, each of her tags contained her thumb print and signature, to show that it was produced by her, in her atelier.

In the fashion history geek world, these tags are famous, and a dress with the tag intact will still sell for thousands of dollars. The top tag is for original designs; the bottom tag is for her ready-to-wear line.

Then, with her reputation established, Mme. Vionnet really got busy.
-She was the first to licence things under her name, and in 1924 allowed the production of furniture, accessories, bags, and fabrics with her name and logo on them. (In modern design houses, the bulk of their income is from these licensing deals, not the original designs. EVERYONE does this now - because Mme. Vionnet came up with the idea. Tommy Hilfiger tee shirt, anyone?)
-She was the first known fashion house to open a New York branch, in 1925. (Obviously, everyone does this now.)
-She began selling ready-to-wear in 1925, making 'one size fits all' draped styles. As with so much else, she is the first known designer to do this. She called her off-the-rack 'repeated originals'. (Again, this is where most fashion houses make money now. No one makes money off made-to-order any more. Where would they be without Mme. Vionnet to show them how to make money?)
-Her treatment of her employees was also ahead of its time, offering paid maternity leave, day care, and health care on site. She also opened a school to teach design. I believe this harks back to her own days as a seamstress' apprentice; she knew how bad that job could suck.






In 1940, with another world war approaching, and that rock-solid common sense for which she was known, Mme. Vionnet again closed her atelier, and retired, leaving a legacy of original design that would be mined for ideas for the next seventy years. And will continue to be looked to for inspiration in the future, I am sure.

If you own anything with a bias cut to it, or anything licenced with a designer's name on it, and I bet you do, ultimately, you own the work of Mme. Vionnet, goddess of cut and fit and woman of intelligence and sense. Without her I'm not sure modern fashion would exist.

ETA: Josephine Baker was a singer, dancer, and ass-kicker who liked to wear Vionnet's clothes, sometimes even to dance in. If you've never heard of her, check her out. Badass of the Week needs to do an article on her; personally I think she was one of the most kickass women of the 20th Century.

Quick update. Okay, not so quick.

It started out quick. In my head. Really.

I think I'm gonna continue my 'great designers' series for the week. It's pretty snarly around here (more on that later), and I think everyone's having a good time looking at photos of awesome clothes. There is actually a method to the madness and I'm choosing designers as kind of a survey through the history of modern clothes, and I AM working it around to knitwear and relevance to a knitting blog. But you'll all have to look at awesome woven clothing for a while, yet. Aw. Today I think I'm gonna do Madeline Vionnet; tune in later to find out.

Otherwise, there's a BIT going on around here, other than bitching and snarling.


The Goob has rediscovered her animal alphabet and we're back to working on her reading skills; she knows about half the alphabet and the related sounds. In fact, if she doesn't know the letter, often making the sound of the letter works as a hint and she gets it then.

This is F, for Ffffflamingo. It's a cute way to learn the alphabet (I'll bet you she associates the letters with these animals for the rest of her life), and I'm not really pushing it, but she's been saying she wants to read, and pretending to write. And she's so smart my general operating principle is to pour information into the curly little head and not really worry about what sticks; it's about keeping that brain busy. If she's busy fighting imaginary pirates ("I'm gonna loot the living room!") or learning her alphabet, she's not up to naughty smart-kid behavior. Latest hilarious, over-educated three year old statement, "Polar bears live on tundra."

She has also discovered the joys of Wallace and Grommit:

"Oh no! A WEALLY BIG WABBIT!" When she talks about wabbits I think of Elmer Fudd and I about fall over, laughing.

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Last night I finally ripped out the too-tight castoff on the sock (it was a sewn castoff, and therefore a pain in the ass), and put on a new one. I kept it simple and just crocheted around the top, picking up the loose stitches. I used a much larger crochet hook, which I think is what did the trick. It ain't pretty, but it works.

In general, the sock is a little too big, but not unwearably so. The heel flap, while worked on the proper number of stitches (half the total, right?) is too big. But that's expected, 'cause I've got narrow heels. They used to match my narrow foot. So in the future I'll tinker with that, but I think everyone agrees it'd be a good idea to knit a Regular Old Sock before starting to alter it.

I'll probably cast on the mate after I hit "Publish Post".

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I did finish the first two bobbins of the blue silk stuff (need a name for this yarn) and plied them together. And I've gotta say, damn, I'm good.

When doing two-ply yarns, you spin up two bobbins of singles, then ply them together. Getting the yardage to 'match' on the two bobbins is really freakin' tricky. And THIS is how much I had left on the 'too much' bobbin when I got done. Damn near perfect. (The green cord is the leader.)

The yarn's awesome.

It was quite a photo shoot in the window (natural light), to get something close to the color. I think that's about right, above. That's 270 yards there, and I hope to get another 300 yards out of what's left of the roving. It's hovering somewhere between heavy lace weight and light sock weight.

I'll probably just knit a sample and announce what gauge it is and let people figure it out from there. I don't want to sell this, but it's ridiculous to keep it when I've already got a closet full. So this is probably going to be for sale, one of these days.

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Otherwise, on the health front, things have been crappy. All this musical medication is catching up with me and I'm moving even more slowly than usual. Then I researched my particular health issue, and, well, the outlook is pretty grim. (I'm not sure the research was a good idea. Usually knowledge is power, but I'd been in denial for ten years and I think that was working for me.) To put it mildly, the researchers are still guessing about what causes the problem and how it works, so I'm not holding my breath on an effective treatment any time soon.

HOWEVER!! (KNITTING CONTENT!) It turns out that the MAJOR thing they're absolutely sure makes the pain worse is immobility. For some reason, the less you use the injured body part, the more sensitized the nerves get and the more pain signals they send. So all this obsessive knitting and spinning and hand-sewing and beading and cooking and in-general stubbornly forcing myself to work can openers and ice cube trays?? That I've been calling physical therapy? Yeah. I always thought of it as just a way to keep my hand working. But it turns out that I've likely kept the pain issue at bay with it, too. In a big way.

This explains, I think, why most doctors (the ones without their heads up their asses) have been treating me with a gradually increasing degree of respect, as the years go by. I didn't know it, but their "let's see your range of motion" question, the one I always get, isn't so much about the orthopedic problem. It's a direct indicator of how bad the pain problem is, AND how much I've been doing about it. So the fact that I've got almost all of my range of motion in my right hand tells them that I'm fighting the problem every step of the way. This new guy? I did my usual range of motion (with comparison to my left hand) and he said "oh. Okay then." and immediately got a lot more sympathetic and cooperative.

All this, ultimately, is due to knitting. Apparently, I knit today so I can knit tomorrow. But if I've gotta be fucked up, I think it's kind of cool that knitting counts as a treatment.

Mariano Fortuny.

[Still got nothin'. Continuing the 'great fashion designers in history' topic.]

Mariano Fortuny came along a generation or so after Worth, and by then the concept of a fashion designer as a Brand Name was established. So his rise to fame and fortune is a bit more mundane, but ah, the genius. The genius is there.

Fortuny was born in Spain, into a family of artists. Mostly painters. After his father died, Fortuny's family moved to Paris, and then Venice. In both places he studied art of all kinds, architecture, and engineering. He's kind of the Renaissance Man of fashion history, in the sense that he knew a little bit about everything.

In Venice, in 1906, Fortuny opened his business; it went beyond fashion and supplied fabric for home decoration (which was also a new concept of the day).




When he wasn't designing revolutionary women's clothing, known as some of the first flattering AND comfortable fashion of the day, he tinkered. He overhauled fabric printing methods, looms, and in particular was known for stenciling velvet with metallic inks in ways no one else could recreate (and no one else has, to this day). They're still using his manufacturing methods, to this day. In fact, his fashion house still uses the original equipment to produce decorating fabrics.

In his spare time, he fooled around with modernizing stage lighting for theaters, and invented the world's first dimmer switch.

But what he's really known for, most famously, is the Delphos Gown:




As you see, they were made of pleated silk. I think some of the photos show the glass beads along the seams and at the hems, which weighted the fabric and made the dresses drape beautifully. If ever I were to aspire to a great piece of fashion history, this is what I'd likely buy. But my pockets aren't deep enough. That aqua one there at the bottom? It's on sale right now at Vintage Textile for fifteen grand.

Almost a century later, and people are still shelling out fifteen grand for one of his dresses. Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is STYLE.

Oh, and no one's ever figured out how he did those pleats in the gowns, either.

Charles Frederick Worth

[My hands are killing me from yesterday's spin-a-thon and I got nothin'. Random topic!]

Charles Frederick Worth (usually just referred to as "Worth" because he's that fuckin' awesome) started life as a modest English dude.

Then he moved to Paris and became the world's first true fashion designer in the modern sense of the word. (Okay. There were apprenticeships in London and Paris before he hit the big time, but the raw talent is just amazing.) He opened his first atelier in Paris in 1858. This was right at the dawn of the Arts and Crafts movement, and I suspect Worth (who would have been in London at the same time as some of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement) soaked up the concept of Anything Can Be Art, because boy howdy did he apply it once he got his own bankroll.

The concept of owning clothing as a brand name, or BY someone? A little black dress by Chanel, Gucci shoes, Prada bag? That CONCEPT was almost single-handedly created by Worth. His stuff has a certain pizzaz that echoes across a century and a half, and even in archaic, Edwardian-era stuff, he can trigger the "I want to wear THAT" urge.



Or your response may be more like mine... "HOLY CRAP I WANNA KNIT SOMETHING LIKE THAT."

Worth and his atelier survived several wars, and after he passed away in 1895, House of Worth carried on, kicking fashion's ass and generally redefining the concept of what we wear.




In 1952, Worth's great-grandson retired. House of Worth merged with another fashion house, and the world was a drab, poorly dressed place once again.

So, when I start looking at design and clothing and fit and planning of garments, this stuff lurks in the back of my head. I'll never achieve this level of creativity, but I can aspire. We all need goals, right?

Tsk tsk tsk.

What do you get when you combine Mother's Day (hello, self-indulgence for one damn day), an all day Eureka marathon, and a complete disregard for personal health and common sense?


Yeah, baby. I've been spinning all day and am on the second bobbin. At one point I did the what-you-should-never-do thing I tell everyone else, and went and took painkillers and went back to spinning. The bottom photo is pretty darn accurate for color; I took it in really nice, diffuse sunlight after a thunderstorm. Pretty, isn't it? Can't decide if I'm keeping it.

For a break I knit the sample for Frog in a Blender, for when I put it on my Etsy shop (probably tomorrow). I realize that doesn't count as much of a break.

It's been a good day. But let's not dwell on my stupidity! Let's comment on some comments!

-For all of your concerned about whether I burned myself with flying sugar, back in the dawn of my pastry-making hobby, rest assured. It flew off in such small threads that by the time it hit me, it was like getting hit with cotton candy. Sekhmet, who was sitting about five feet away, keeping me company in the kitchen, was also hit. We both just kinda stared at each other. Since then the cat's quit hanging around in the kitchen. No idea why.

-Roxie wanted to know the difference between a tweed and a heather. Really, it's pretty arbitrary, but it's got to do with how wide a range of colors there are in the roving/top/batt/whatever. Tweeds usually have a wider range of colors; that screaming red in my blue top? Hello, tweed. Heathers usually contain related colors, or shades/tones of a single color. How to spin them to best advantage? Beats me. I'm still figuring it out. Mostly I spin everything worsted and keep the plying simple.

-I intend to do some kind of crochet slip-stitch cast off sort of thingie for the Dreamsicle sock. I've done that before on lace and so feel most comfortable with it and am not in the mood for another botched bind off.

-Where the hell do I LEARN all this stuff? Um. I read a lot. My only excuse. Well, and I'm told my brain works oddly and shuffles together information from places it shouldn't. Pour in information, turn crank, see what falls out my mouth!

-I don't mean to sound as if I'm complaining about the Goob's girlie streak. I'm entertained as all hell. But the DNA is showing - she's playing 'dolls' with a bunch of cars. "Wook, mumma, it's a baby car. We need to take care of it." She DOES have dolls. She just prefers the cars. Bwahahaha. As for clothing, unless her bum is hanging out (or... other... parts), I don't intend to interfere. Ever. And the hair? Go for it. It grows out. Shave it, color it, spike it with wallpaper paste. I'll help. (Everybody's gotta rebel. Beats the hell outta drugs, unprotected sex, or drinking and driving.)

-Still looking into indigo vats. NOT the super-traditional ones that run on human urine... I don't dislike the neighbors THAT much. But I've read of several types that use different kinds of fermentation (yeast, bran), or yes, the chemically-activated ones where you remove the oxygen with the wonders of modern chemistry. Those seem like cheating, though. Maybe after we move, I'll do a vat to kind of introduce myself to the new neighborhood!

-Horse recipes in the French cookbook... none I've seen yet, and since it was written for the American audience (Imperial measurements), I don't expect to see them. I do know horse fat is considered THE frying medium for the original French Fries (actually Belgian Pommes Frites). No, I don't intend to eat pets. At least not until I'm A LOT hungrier than I am. (Never say never, but almost never.)

And now... well, the cat is snoring, the Goober is talking to Baby Twactow [tractor], and, geez, I think the husbeast is snoring too. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.

Yeah. Time to do some spinning.

Ooooo. Shiny.

I have begun spinning the new blue tweedy stuff. It is 30/70, tussah silk and merino wool from Paradise Fibers. (I prefer Kendig Cottage for fiber, but since the two-pounds-of-carbon-fiber fiasco, I am leery of large amounts of unknown fibers, and Kendig Cottage only sells this stuff in 8oz clumps. Now that I know I love it, I'm all over the 8oz clumps.)

I confess I've pulled out a few of the really, insanely red streaks, but otherwise I'm spinning it as-is, going for worsted-spun two ply. Laceweight, I'm hoping. Arianne suggested that what I want for my other project is probably a heather, not a tweed. I think she's right, so I'm in the market for some blue heather and will spin this up into laceweight for practice.

I've been spinning like a fiend since this morning, desperate to see what some finished yarn will look like, but alas, I must take a break. Interestingly, after about three hours of spinning (with a few breaks), it's not my hands that are giving out. It's my back. Ow. Damn. Aging is a bitch.

So, I've gotta find something else to poke at... Botched the bindoff of the first dreamsicle sock last night (too tight), so I dunno what I'll do. Play computer games maybe. Or dig through the stack of unfinished sweaters that are supposed to be my goal this year. There's a thought.

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The Goob has moved from simply drawing faces, to giving them arms and legs.

Love it. Can't get enough. The cuteness makes me squee. This is a portrait of me, incidentally.

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And the husbeast sends along some husbeast humor for all of you.

Classical Era Greek and Roman Statuary.

Which sounds like a title for a fairly significant research paper, but let's be serious for a minute.

I've been at the art history books again (still slogging through "30,000 Years of Art", which may take me thirty thousand years to read), and in the midst of my bitchings about how even the unbiased books are biased toward western civilization, I actually learned something. Imagine that!

For many years, decades, really, I've looked at statues like this.

And I've wondered why, if the Greeks were supposedly such awesome sculptors, their technique sucked so badly. See that block of marble, between the statue's right hand and his hip? What the hell's up with that? That's essentially holding his arm on. Probably a third (maybe more, I doubt I've done an exhaustive survey) of existing marble statues from the era have little blocks like that, in different places, holding the thing together. Here's another.

This time the block is between her leg and the towel/toga thing she's holding, but it's still holding the statue together. My thinking went something like 'if they're such bloody geniuses, why didn't they plan their statues better??' And for many years, all my life I've been aware of classical statues, I've had rather a bad attitude toward the Greeks and figured the art history people were just freaking out for no reason, sort of like their reaction to Andy Warhol.

And I blew it off.

Then, this week, I'm reading my new, western-biased art history book, and it's full of this freaking statuary, planned really badly with little blocks all over, and it starts talking about how most Greek statues weren't marble. They were bronze.

If they were bronze, why in hell are we looking at all this marble, you may well ask yourself. I did.

Well. Turns out most of the marble statuary we've got isn't really Greek. It's ROMAN. The Romans copied the hell out of Greek statues, and stuck them everywhere. In their houses, in their gardens, in public buildings, as monuments, as decorations, as anything you can think of. And the Romans were copying BRONZE statues, with MARBLE. Well duh. There's the problem right there.

Think about it. Bronze is a METAL. Marble's a ROCK. Different tensile strengths, different failure rates, different, well, everything. OF COURSE the marble copies of the bronzes are gonna need extra mass to hold them together. In fact, given that information, the Romans were actually pretty clever in how they 'left in' marble. It's an easy solution to a complex problem.

Here, this gives a better idea.

Marble on the left, bronze on the right. You can see clearly how and why they left all that clumsy stuff in there.

Finally, it makes sense.

Imagine copying this in marble.

This is Zeus. It's assumed he had a lightning bolt - probably gold and therefore long ago looted - in his right hand, about to be thrown like a javelin. He's in bronze, of course. If you tried to copy him in marble, his arms would fall off. It'd never happen.

Most of the ancient Greek bronzes are gone, and we only know them from their Roman copies. Art history types label a lot of Roman-manufacture copies as Greek statues, and it's extremely confusing - I had to do some careful reading of captions and details to know just where these statues came from. (Most are off Wikipedia Commons.) Long ago, the bronzes were smelted down for the value of their metal, while the marble lingered, often being used as rubble fill for buildings, or other depressing ends for such great craftsmanship. We have recovered enough Greek bronzes, though - often from shipwrecks, when Roman ships were taking looted art to Rome after they'd conquered Greece - to have a pretty good picture of how it all worked.

Maybe the Greek sculptors weren't as lame as I first thought.

Maybe you learned something today.

Hope it wasn't too painful.

Poop.

I ordered a blue tweed. I wanted an oceaney kind of thing.

Who in hell puts red in a blue tweed??

So now I'm debating between picking out the red when I draft it, or coughing up seriously big bucks for a blue tweed from Louet, or dyeing some myself. Haven't decided what yet, but I'm leaning toward coughing up dough. It'll probably take me until next payday to finish the Frog anyway.

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Otherwise, not a lot going on. The Goob has discovered the fun of finger puppets.

This is her using a fake, deep voice, saying "Hi, I'm a lion. Rawr."

She has also rediscovered her shoes from her last birthday.


We've officially hit girly phase. CODE PINK! CODE PINK!

I'm a witch.

In the traditional sense. They were always cranky women with white hair, using a combination of what we now call psychology, botany, and chemistry (then called 'magic') to cook up all kinds of wondrous - and sometimes freaky - things in their kitchens. That's me to a T, wouldn't you say? (They were also the village healers and midwives. I've had EMT training and I bet I could deliver a baby if I had to.)

Of course they used secret code to transmit their knowledge, going for off-the-wall, romanticized (creepiziced?) ingredient names. And while I've regularly used eye of newt (mushrooms), and the wing of bat (holly leaves) is out in the yard, I've got some goodies on the hob today.


How about dust of mummy and sacrificial blood? Bwahahahahahaha. (This may become a Knitty article. If not, I'll post a full explanation here, when possible. For now, imagine me stirring a pot and chanting Rolling Stone lyrics, preferably "Honky-Tonk Woman".)

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Finally washed the first half of the Frog in a Blender yarn, and took decent photos.

Working on the second half, now. 'Cause the new wool is due today or tomorrow and of course I wanna dive right in on it. (Purple Trainwreck? Never heard of it.)

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Caught the Goob in her natural habitat today.

That dress is a five and it barely fits her. I remember when we bought it, it almost dragged on the floor. Now her knees show. And speaking of pink, that's the first thing I ever let her pick out in the way of clothing. Not only is it pink, it's got flowers all over it. Her choice, not my fault. haha.

At the moment the Goob is cruising my cook books and telling me they're "pretty". I sense a galley slave in the future.

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My office looks like this.



I fear I may need to clean it soon.

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Am considering brewing an indigo vat. Anyone know how bad they smell? I'm not that fond of my neighbors. [Insert evil laugh.] Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. I met a gin-soaked bar room queen in Memphis...

And then....

Scientists have figured out how to add titanium to spider silk.

Article here.

Super-strong, unbreakable lace-weight yarn! SIGN ME UP, BABY!

Stuff and nonsense.

I'll let you decide which is which. A jumble of topics running through my head.


-250 yards of Froggy goodness.

There's a better photo of it, in a skein, but it's on the camera and I'm feeling rather inert at the moment. I need to hurry up and finish the other half of frogginess, because when I sold the Summer Berries yarn I bought more raw wool to spin, and it'll be here this week. I got silk/merino blend. It'll be interesting to see how it spins up.


-Lately I've been wondering how much fun I could have had if I'd bitched out everyone who ever did a negative review of one of my Knitty articles on their blog. I probably wouldn't ever write for Knitty again. And wouldn't have time to do anything else. The history of knitting article was particularly popular - some people didn't like hearing that Arabs invented their hobby. (Oh geez.)


-There are debates that rage, both in real life and on the internet, about children watching TV and how educational it REALLY is. Well. The other day I gave the Goob a ribbon flower for her hair. She's calling it 'the marigold barrette'. I don't ever in my life remember telling this kid about marigolds, and no one around here grows them. The other day she was telling me about monitor lizards (one of her favorite shows is an animal show on PBS), and I KNOW the hub and I never taught her anything about monitor lizards because WE don't know anything about monitor lizards (dey're weally big, an' have gween scales). I guess it depends on the kid, but this one's going to be watching documentaries on DaVinci and building clocks soon.


-The new anti-inflammatory is officially an epic fail. I'm back on the old one until I can get into the doc to change it around AGAIN. In a way it's kind of good to know I need the medication I'm taking, but damn.


-Is it wrong to feed your kid pizza two nights in a row, if she loves pizza? It's all the food groups, isn't it?


-The French book is cool. Apparently all those fancy restaurants in France exist because they were founded by chefs who cooked for the aristocracy; after the Revolution swept through, the aristos were executed, and the cooks and assistants found themselves unemployed. So they went with the more democratic restaurant idea and have never looked back. Am now deep into the varieties of French cheese and how they make them; this will be darn useful the next time I try to make a French recipe and they don't have the exact cheese I need at the American grocery stores I have to shop at. (There are similar chapters on all their other types of food, so I have hopes of eventually understanding the GIST of the recipes, instead of just seeing an incomprehensible list of ingredients. Beef cheek? What?)


-Every summer I dress the Goob in sun dresses, not so much for the girlie factor, but because they're the coolest thing the kid can wear (other than going naked, which is frowned upon around here). This summer she's gotten enthusiastic about it and is demanding dresses to wear - and wants the pinkest, frilliest ones in the closet. I fear another trip to the outlet store is in the future, one to pick up pink frills.


-Speaking of pink. I've also got a pink phone. When I was a teen I dyed my hair pink. Always loved the color, no idea why. I like the clear, bright pastels. (Terby just rolled her eyes and muttered 'no kidding'.) I'm not forcing the Goob into pink, partly because it's cliched and partly because I think it'll make her sick of it. Personally I think she looks best in lavender and blued purples. But I let her choose colors and styles when we're in the store, and inevitably she goes for pink and frills.

Le French Cuisine

For a very long time, I've had a love-hate relationship with French cuisine. Some of it is very, very good. The pastries are amazing. And yet, it's horrendously complicated, and so insanely diverse that it's hard to keep it all straight. Particularly when you add in all the peasant food, which is really the good stuff.

So, for many years, I've kept an eye out for French cookbooks and have bought a few (I torture myself with Cordon Bleu publications), but nothing really fit the bill. Then yesterday, I found this.

It was on sale, and I was in a book-buying mood, and it was French, and I figured what the hell.

Turns out to be exactly what I needed; not a book of French recipes, but a book ABOUT French food. All that stuff I always wanted to know about wine, and liqueurs, and cheeses, and breads? All in there. (Also stuff on meats and sausages. I'm never eating anduille again, but I won't ruin it for the rest of you.)

At three hundred plus pages of densely written information, it's going to get me a while to get through. And while there are very few recipes, there are a great many descriptions of different dishes, making it possible to recreate them.

The first time I tried to make French buttercream, I poured boiling sugar syrup into my running mixer. It hit the whisk attachment as it went past, and flung sugar everywhere. At first I couldn't see, until I realized I had little cotton-candy strings of sugar hanging from my eyelashes. Years later, when we moved, I found strings of sugar syrup bonded to the back wall of the pantry.

It took three days to get the sugar syrup out of Sekhmet's fur. She was pissed.

This new round of experimentation should be interesting. I'll make sure to document it for everyone. Especially anything disastrous. We're moving in three months. Who cares what sticks to the walls?

Yin and Yang.

As has been mentioned before, I have a decided lean toward Eastern Philosophy. It's not something where I woke up one morning and thought "I think I'm gonna follow Eastern philosophies from now on". More it was decades of reading and thinking and seeking and finally running across some Eastern religions and philosophies, and going "HEY. That's what I've always thought."

So I don't really consider myself Taoist, but, dang, if you read up on it, it's like I wrote the less-wise bits of them. Especially the parts about Piglet and Pooh.

Balance is one of the biggies for me. I've always thought that the universe, the world, and an individual's life, are balanced, or will be if you let them. That means accepting the negative as well as the positive, and realizing that one leads to the other. The Taoists have a symbol for that. I'm sure you've all seen it, so I got an image with some concepts written in it.

Yin and Yang. Dark and light. Evil and good. Jackassery and common sense. Chocolate and peanut butter. You get the idea.

So, this week, well, the week, she has sucked, as the French would say. (I'm reading a book on French cuisine. You've been warned.) Yesterday's brouhaha was... heck, it wasn't even the tip of an iceberg. It was like a snowflake on the tip of a giant iceberg of shit that I've been dealing with, only about 25% of which has been bitched about around here, for legal reasons. (You know it's a good time when the term 'for legal reasons' is thrown around.) At other times of my life, when things really sucked, I started doing good stuff on purpose, just random anything positive, to try and get something moving around and sort of trigger good stuff, 'cause obviously wallowing in pits of negativity isn't gonna fix anything. Usually. I was still in the wallowing point today, though.

By this morning, I'd about had it with the outside world in general, and in particular was wondering how to crash the internet (I know it's not possible; let me dream). As I was hunched over the computer, shoveling shit and muttering to myself, the husbeast came in and handed me the mail.

First was a note from Roxie. She's buying some wool from me, which is cool. See, I dyed up a bunch of wool, expecting some traffic through my Etsy shop after the last Knitty article, and Knitty got the web addy wrong for my shop and I never got that traffic (to my knowledge they never fixed it, either, even though I asked). The wool sat around in the shop for three months, then rotated into non-moving stock, and in fact I was gradually spinning it up for sale or personal use; that's where the Summer Berries yarn AND the Dreamsicle socks came from. Then, out of the blue, I get this message from Roxie, asking if I could custom dye her something that was ALREADY SITTING THERE! So I cut her a deal and everybody's happy.

And here's this happy reminder of a sale, and some pretty cool kismet, with a funny note. Hm.

The second thing in the mail was a box. I'd been told it was coming, but in my snarling nasty fit, I'd forgotten. Remember the Starf? The friend I knit it for makes jewellery. And when she got the Starf, she loved it, and realized I knit with beads, and the next thing I know...

Beads all over my kitchen table. These are exactly the kind I need to experiment with bead knitting, and now I don't have to go buy any. I have a box full to choose from! (Most of them are so awesomely pretty I'm gonna save 'em up for knitting after I figure out what I'm doing, though.)

I went out shopping to pick up some ribbon I need to finish a floral project. I hit a couple sales at 50% off, including one at the book store, where I found a book that was EXACTLY what I've been looking for, right there on the shelf I've ransacked twenty times before.

The computer mouse I'd been using had died (more annoyance), so I went in to buy another, and...

IT'S PINK! INNIT CUUUUTE?

The cycle's still cycling. I just need to remember it. Around, and around, and around, balancing in a self-correcting cycle, if we just sit back and let it all work itself out. Sure, there's negative shit in there, but there's positive too, and if it were all positive, it'd get really boring, wouldn't it? Though, in the future, I'd prefer the negative spread out a little more. Just sayin'.

Hopefully the rest of the issues will work themselves out so smoothly. But they'll balance, one way or another. I've just gotta remember that.

---

Finished the first bobbin of Frog in a Blender.

For those who can't remember, the joke goes like this:
What is red and green and goes around in circles at a thousand miles an hour? A frog in a blender.



Just finished the editing and spell check. THE NEW MOUSE IS AWESOME AND PINK.

Josh Bennett

I got some mail from him today. He's unhappy about my review from Vogue Knitting's Holiday 2008 issue. Specifically, sweater number twenty-one.

This was in my in-box on Ravelry this morning.


Vogue Knitting Holiday 2008
Sent at 11:27 PM Yesterday
Hello,

This is the sonofabitch moron designer from the Vogue Knitting Holiday 2008 issue. I just wanted to let you know that your comment was extemely rude and you have no concept of what happens or how a magazine works. If the editor wants unflattering ruffles on a sweater, I put them on the sweater. It is my job and I don’t need someone that obviously has a huge chip on her shoulder to criticize my work and my intelligence.

You seem to know everything about knitting, designing, and magazine publication so I am looking forward to seeing all your great contributions to the knitting world. You should publish a successful magazine or design something that is actually in fashion.

I hope that someday you realize that knitting is supposed to be about community and creativity. Reviews are great, but remember that there are people that you are calling sonofabitch moron designers and they have feelings.

Josh Bennett


To which I replied:

I assume you’re so angry because you know what I said was true. Blame it on VK and their editors if it works for you.

Always a pleasure to know the personalities behind the designs. They seem to match.



The reply I got to that was:

re: Vogue Knitting Holiday 2008
Sent at 12:02 PM Today
I am mad that you personally attacked me. I hope that your children and family never come under attack of a frustrated housewife that obviously has no talent of her own. You are the reason that people make fun of knitters and think that they are bitchy spinsters that have no social skills.

Like I said before, review the garments, don’t insult the designers.

I’ve looked at your designs and I am glad that someone is designing sweaters that look like shit and are for plus sized doughballs like yourself.



My answer:

This is all getting posted to my blog. My readers deserve to know who these designers are that I talk about.

You deserve anything I said about you, and more.


His answer:

re: Vogue Knitting Holiday 2008
Sent at 12:08 PM Today
Thank you!!!


I guess he wants to you all to know that you're plus-sized doughballs like me. I'm dropping it now. But that's my fun for the day.