Sewing: SWAP 2016, and travel, and stuff.

Lamenting:
I should be writing. But I'm not. I am sewing. So I thought I'd write about it.

Blogging Digression:
Now, that makes me think about the fact that my blog doesn't know what it wants to be--perfume, writing, sewing, fashion, gardening, griping, diary, blah blah blah. And that I should really give it a purpose. And there's the other blog, where I haven't written about chicken lately.

But then I flap my hand dismissively at myself and write about the SWAP.

What's With The Section Titles:
I don't know.

The SWAP:
SWAP stands for Sewing With A Plan. Here, I'm talking about the annual SWAP contest run out of a website called Artisan's Square. The general idea is to create a wardrobe of eleven garments, following the rules of the year. This year's rules are here, but as a really quick summary, the structure of this year's SWAP is:

1 "3 pack" of Color(s) A (3 garments)
1 "3 pack" of Color(s) B (3 garments)
1 "Combo Pack" of Colors A & B (2 garments)
1 "3 pack" of Wild Cards

We can include two already-sewn items and one purchased item, so a minimum of eight items have to be sewn. The sewing period started on December 26, and ends on April 30.

Travel Digression:
My goal is a travel wardrobe. Himself likes to travel, and I'm sometimes rather iffy about it, and part of that is what I refer to as the galumphiness of traveling--lumbering along with suitcases and bags and purses and stuff stuff stuff and more stuff.

And also the absence of systems--at home, I know how everything works, but when I travel everything feels impromptu. I've started building systems--for example, I have the "magic bag". It's a little leather toiletry kit bag that contains...hang on, let me find the list...

A toothbrush, tooth pellets, dental floss, folding hairbrush, deodorant wipes, Advil, Aspirin, Excedrin, Zantac, Band-Aids, a hand salve bar, acne wipes, a coverup crayon, a shampoo bar, a lightning cable for my phone and iPad, a charger brick, a barrette for hair restraint while showering, needles and thread, a nail clipper, what we refer to as "chick supplies" for that monthly thing, a pencil, several pairs of disposable earplugs, antiseptic wipes, vitamins, a bottle opener, safety pins, Kleenex, salt, a tiny notebook, stamps, a spork, cough drops, two trash bags, a shaver with some refill blades, emergency cash, a flashlight, a "lunch skin" bag for snacks, and a pair of earbud headphones.

So I'm prepared.

I also found that whenever we're in a hotel room, I miss my slippers. So I got another pair for travel. They take up a non-trivial chunk of space, but I want 'em. They also look like sheep. What more could you want?

There are other things. Maybe I'll write about them in another post.

The SWAP Again:
But turning back to the SWAP, I want a travel wardrobe. I want very, very low-volume garments--the phrase I keep using is that I want a garment that could be "crushed into a teacup!" That may be overoptimistic, especially for the skirts, but it sounds prettier than "crushed into a quart Ziplock!"

A good uniform for traveling would be gored skirt, simple top that hangs outside the skirt to avoid that tucking annoyance, leggings, short flat-heeled boots (tall enough to make the leggings visually indistinguishable from tights), and optionally some sweater/coat/jacket thing.

An issue with this plan is a lack of visual structure--the top pattern that I'm currently fitting is loose and comfy, so I may look as if I have no waist whatsoever. I'll consider the extent of the problem after I get the shirt fitted. Maybe an obi belt?

My summary plan for the SWAP is:

Skirt/top/top in brown/cream.
Skirt/top/top in black/white.
Jacket/sweater in brown/black.
Skirt/top/top in...colors. Some kind of colors, given all the neutrals.

I'm hoping to do the whole thing out of fabrics that I already have. I have plenty of fabric for the skirts--brown and cream wool, brown and cream cotton, gray wool, some creamy yellow stuff,  some oatmeal natural and white stuff, and so on and so on. But it'll take some digging to find fabrics for really lightweight tops that fit the color plan.

Um.

OK, this post seems like background for possible future posts, as I find fabrics. And if I don't hit Publish, odds are that it will end up in my extensive heap of unpublished Draft posts.

So...Publish!

Image: Mine. No, it has nothing to do with the post. We noticed how the Space Needle reflects into the glassy things in the Chihuly garden, so I took a picture.

Rambling: Rambling

I'm overdue for a post. I was doing so well, too. For a little while, there. So I ramble.

Um.

Rambling requires a topic. I don't seem to have a topic. I'm thinking about ice cream. And the fact that St. Cupcake in Portland has stopped selling cupcakes. Well, mostly stopped. As I read it, one of their other stores will eventually serve a very (very) limited selection of cupcakes.

On the other hand, Blue Star Donuts is good. Really good.

On the other other hand, I'm supposed to be reducing sugar and carbs again.

To continue with joyfully destroying one's health at Portland restaurants, Tilt has astoundingly good bacon. I don't think they serve it as bacon; I seem to recall that it came in a sandwich and was so perfect that I extracted it from the sandwich for maximum bacon focus. There's also the praline bacon at Screen Door. And the maple bacon donut at Blue Star, which I think is better than the maple bacon donut at Voodoo Doughnut.

Also, the charcuterie at Gruner. And the charcuterie at Little Bird. And the marrow bones at Little Bird.

I'm sure that Portland has green food. I don't eat much of it. Except for the sliced fried okra at Bollywood Theater. And the strawberry balsamic ice cream at Salt & Straw next door contains fruit. That's health food, right?

Um.

I feel fat.

That is all.

Image: By Steve Morgan. Wikimedia Commons

Fashion Goes Geeky: Travel Wardrobe Engineering

We just got back from a two-week two-climate trip, without convenient laundry facilities at either location. Hauling all that luggage led to a lot of Never Again thoughts, combined with bonus This Time I Really Mean It thoughts. It's time for the travel wardrobe. Really. I'm serious. Stop looking at me like that. (Edited to offer clarification: The Never Again was about the luggage. The size and weight. The failure to create a nice nimble wardrobe that could be carried in a nice nimble suitcase. Not about the traveling. I mention this to remove ambiguity.)

Now, when many websites and books talk about travel wardrobes, they focus on making stylish outfits, and ensuring variety in your clothes, and dealing with wrinkles. That's not the issue here. I'm talking about (1) carrying fewer clothes, while remaining (2) not-stinky. I love perfume, but I want it to be optional. As I see it, that's all about Sweat Layer Management.

Does that term already tell you what I mean? The Sweat Layers of an outfit are the garment(s) that shield other garment(s), and the world in general, from bodily substances. Including, but not limited to, sweat. When traveling, those are the garments that you have to pack enough of to change every day, and haul home again, in our case in that plastic bag that hotels provide for, but we never use for, their extortionately-priced laundry services. We call it the Toxic Bag, as in, "I'm out of underwear! Did you wash the Toxic Bag?"

Now, there are alternatives to hauling these garments back and forth, such as the one expressed by Christina Yang on Gray's Anatomy as "I don't do laundry, I just buy new underwear." The cost of a checked bag these days makes that sound more plausible than it did at first thought. But I'm not ready for that step. I want smaller and lighter suitcases, not disposable clothes.

And anyway, many apparently outer layer garments act as a Sweat Layer whether they like it or not. Shirts, for example; until antiperspirant commercials stop being fiction, a shirt worn next to your underarm is a Sweat Layer garment, even if it doesn't end up in the Toxic Bag. But it also has to serve for fashion, warmth, and not-being-naked. Those extra functions probably make it bulkier in the suitcase than it would be if it were strictly doing the Sweat Layer job. So why not split the jobs? Make the Sweat Layer as low-bulk as possible, or, if you're tolerant of hotel sink laundry, as washable as possible. And then float the outer layer above it, staying nice and clean and re-wearable.

So if I'm going to a cold place for a week I can pack seven heavy flannel shirts, or I can pack seven short-sleeved low-scoop-neck silk undershirts and two flannel shirts. (In theory, it could be one flannel shirt, but I like to keep the Tomato Sauce Risk Factor in mind.) Or seven undershirts, two little cotton or silk blouses, and a warm sweater that I can wear in transit. (The sweater would be black. Tomato Sauce.)

The problem is finding the undershirts. That's why this started out to be a sewing post, but, really, there's not much sewing about it. There are garments that I want, and I might have to sew them to get them or I might not. I want those undershirts, with a neck lower and the sleeves shorter than any sleeved garment that I ever wear, so that the shirt is invisible. I have yet to find them.

I also want a magic bra that rolls up tiny and packs small and holds everything up without an underwire and without those sturdy comfy jogging bra straps that always show just a little bit beyond anything but a snug crewneck shirt. That's not likely to happen, and neither is hand-washing underwire bras in the hotel sink, and I'm certainly not going to make my bras. So I'll just have to determine my rewearing tolerance, do the math, and pack that many bras in a little pancake in the suitcase. Or pay the extortionate hotel laundry fees.

Below the waist, my strategy depends on skirts. I don't care how many layers I'm wearing, there's a little too much....closeness with divided garments, for me to be comfortable wearing them day after day without a washer/dryer. Skirts also have the advantage that they can stop just below the knee, making a narrowish skirt far less bulky than a pair of pants. (Of course, they can stop well above the knee, but I'm sticking with a mainstream modesty level here.)

So my theoretical wardrobe could consist of (ignoring the conventional underwear layer):

• Short sleeve scoop neck silk or microfiber knit undershirts (one per day)
• Lightweight tights (one per day)
• Shirts (two)
• Skirts (two)
• An optional opaque half-slip, if I object to looking the same every day. I could float a variety of gossamer-weight skirts over the opaque slip, and gauzy tops over the undershirts, getting variety with garments that, in a pinch, I could stuff in a coffee mug.
• Shoes, sweater, and coat, worn in transit.
• Gauzy silk scarves and jewelry and perfume to reduce boredom.

This all assumes that I won't be wearing heels. (For some other women it might instead mean that they're wearing only heels, but, well, yeah, very funny.) And that I'm staying in a hotel with an iron. Of course, sweat layer or no, there's a limit to how many times I can wear the outer garments, but it's a much higher limit. Extortionate hotel laundry fees might become tolerable.

For the winter, this still leaves a frozen-legs issue, which had me looking at leg warmers, but I just couldn't take the Eighties vibe. Long coat? Long boots? I can wear either in transit, after all, but do I want to wear boots my whole trip? Leggings? A long wool skirt? Get over it and embrace the leg warmers?

The summer is more problematic--while a half-slip is probably still fine, two layers above the waist, both with sleeves, would be painful. On the other hand, in the summer I might just be able to wear those short-sleeved silk undershirts as my shirt. That still leaves a shoe issue: I don't want to wear tights or hose in the heat, I don't like socks with skirts, I don't like wearing sandals in strange places, and I don't like the feeling of bare feet in most shoes. I suspect that the solution is to find a closed shoe that is friendly to bare feet. They have to exist; I just don't know where.

So it's a theoretical plan, with some products to find. We'll see what happens. Meanwhile, thoughts? Advice? Any moments in this post where you said, "Noooo!"? What are your travel packing strategies?

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Fashion: What I Wore (Last) Saturday

Bwahaha!

OK, the "fashion" title is mostly joking, but I did have some thoughts about comfortable and not-unflattering extreme-leisure wear, while I was in the Land of the Mouse, that I might be blogging in time.

Meanwhile, that is all.

Image: Mine.

Rambling: Fat and Bones and Heels

It's been three weeks since I last posted. That means that it's time for one of those "write something!" posts.

I really should have had something to say, because we went to Feast in Portland. And ate things. Many things. At Feast and at restaurants.

Marrow bones at Little Bird. Deep-fried fish bones at Raven & Rose. Roasted goat neck from the girl of The Girl and The Goat, guest-cooking at Nostrana. A lot of cupcakes from St. Cupcake. A magnificent sandwich from Expatriate. General food glory from Beast. Thin-sliced fried okra from Bollywood Cafe. And more and more. "Mint leaves with sea urchins meringues" (!) ice cream from Salt & Straw. Khao Man Gai and fried chicken skin from Nong's. Why didn't anyone tell me that they sell fried chicken skin? I really need to read menu boards more carefully.

I am fatter.

It was worth it.

I also tried to  pursue that Fashion Thing, with less success, in part because of that fatness factor. Preestablished fatness, not the newly acquired padding. I was hoping that Portland would offer more clothing choices for the pudgy, but without much luck. I did get a bra fitting, having been convinced of the value of doing so by watching all those What Not to Wear episodes, and bought some bras that, well, fit. And stocked up on hose and tights. At Avalon Antiques I bought a vintage brooch that looks rather like Cthulhu if he'd gone on a supermodel sort of diet.

And I wore heels to brunch. Girl clothes. That was interesting.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Rambling: Gluttony

St. Cupcaaaaaaaaake!

We're on vacation. In Portland. Eating. Everything.

Ok, maybe not everything, but I just ate a fabulous peanut butter chocolate thing from a company named (lemme look...) Suzanne's Chocolaterie at the PSU Saturday Market. And a pint of chocolate milk from Lady-Lane Farm that competes with a long-mourned chocolate milk that was fortified with cream that we used to be able to get in the Bay Area before it vanished. And before that I ate a vanilla-with-chocolate-icing cupcake from St. Cupcake. It joined its sibling, which I ate yesterday

(Did I mention that I've been losing weight on a low-sugar lowish-carb lowish-milk diet? Yeah. That will resume post vacation.)

Of course I also ate low-carb food yesterday. Like the fish sauce wings from Pok Pok. And a charcuterie plate and gravlax and fried chicken from Irving Street Cafe. That's healthy, right?

Then there was nose gluttony. I finally bought a bottle of Parfums de Nicolai Number One at The Perfume Shoppe, after accepting that I can tell myself all I want that it's functionally redundant with Serge Lutens Un Lys; I'm still going to want it. And I ordered a small bottle of Chanel 28 La Pausa at Nordstrom's and they're going to tell me if they can get small bottle of 31 Rue de Cambon and we'll see if fiscal responsibility wins.

That is all. Right now.

Proposal For All Perfume Freaks: Fume Scout. Or something like that.

Perfume can be hard to find. Not nearly as hard as pan-fried chicken, but hard all the same. It's especially hard when you're just traveling, and you didn't do your Googling ahead of time to find out that you should go to the right-hand back corner of that little salon between the pizza place and the paint store, to the one shelf where they keep the Carons, below the shampoo and above the nail polish.

The perfume freaks who live in that town know all about that shelf, and they're certainly not interested in hiding it--the more Caron that gets sold, the higher the odds that they'll add one more shelf and start selling some Guerlains. But they don't necessarily have an accepted way to share the knowledge. OK, yes, there are the appropriate threads in Basenotes, but, really, can information like this be disseminated in too many places? Of course not. I'd sky-write it if that were an option.

So I propose that we disseminate it, all of us perfume bloggers. Under some common phrase, string, meme, whatever, so that when you've bought your plane ticket, you can Google that phrase and find out where to get the perfume. I already have a post about buying perfume in Ashland, Oregon, one that's sadly out of date. I was sitting down to start updating it, when it occurred to me that we could all do this, and then came this post.

So, what do you think? Want to join in and write your own post or page about where to find perfume in your own area, or for that matter, any area where you have knowledge? We could all crosslink madly. And what's the phrase? Ideally, it would be something that doesn't produce a lot of Google clutter when searched. I just Googled the string:

"fume scout" perfume

and got precisely one hit. But I'm sure that there are dozens of other possibilities.

Of course, the "fume" part reminds me of the way that I suggested #fumechat and then vanished into the ether, but on the other hand it looks like #fumechat is rolling along (with the active help of people who, unlike me, are not slackers), so, hey! Maybe this could, too.

Opinions?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Travelling gluttony. Oh, and perfume, too.

Last week, we went back to the Bay Area to finish off some business and touch base with our respective employers. And (who am I fooling here?) to eat. Himself will no doubt be blogging about the eating, and I'll be offering a link when he does. Updating earlier travel, Himself has posted about our second day of northern gluttony and sightseeing, in September, here.

Regarding food, I'm just going to tell you that if you're ever in San Francisco, go eat at House, my favorite restaurant in the world. We went there for lunch. Then Himself, because Himself is very nice to me, changed our dinner reservations and we went there again for dinner. (Not that Himself doesn't also adore House, he just tends to believe in variety.) If the last train out of town hadn't been leaving at midnight, I might have suggested that we wait around to get hungry again and go there a third time.

I don't like salmon or mustard or cabbage; the House salmon roll with mustard and cabbage slaw is one of my favorite plates of food in the world. I don't like chicken livers; the only thing that kept me from completely cleaning my plate of chicken livers and baby greens at dinner was the fact that I was trying to finish it and the salmon roll after also having eaten the tuna tartare, and of course after an earlier lunch of another salmon roll and the rare-tuna BLT and chocolate cream pie. Did I mention that I also usually don't like dessert? I scraped the pie plate clean.

Ahhh. House. Go. Eat. Have the salmon roll and, if it's available, have the panko-crusted tuna roll. Beyond that, you're on your own recognizance.

OK, apparently I'm going to talk about food after all. I have a question. We ate at Picadilly Catering, where, by the way, they had very fine fried chicken of a school different from mine (battered and seasoned; I go with a dusting of flour and no seasoning other than salt), prepared with a skill greater than mine.

But the question is about the cake - they had layer cake with a very, very thin coating of frosting, and I realized that to me, the modest amount of frosting was exactly right, and somehow familiar. Why familiar? Are there regions of the US where a very modest amount of frosting is more popular than the huge sugar-bomb globs that seem more common nowadays? (Sugar-bomb globs that are partially responsible for the fact that I don't usually like dessert.) How much frosting do they use in Tennessee? I spent much of my childhood there, but I just can't remember.

Anyway. Where was I? Ah. Yes. Bay Area. In other words, Barney's territory. We went there, and Himself kindly settled into one of the "guy" chairs for the duration. I expected to rush in and rush out, but instead I had a lovely conversation with a man whose name starts with 'Mar', and if he ever happens to read this I apologize; I've never been able to remember the names even of people that I meet day after day, and I'd have lost the 'Mar' if he hadn't commented that our names have the same first syllable.

He kindly gave me samples of Parfums Del Rae Bois de Paradis and Mythique, and guided me to skin-testing Carthusia Corallim and Nasomatto Pardon. Corallim was lovely, but too bright for me to appreciate as summer's winding down; I'll be trying it again in the spring when what's now a slightly-too-fruity vibe will, I suspect, be just the right amount of fruit and bergamot nicely muted with the woody notes.

Pardon, on the other hand, was perfect for the season. It had a sandy, dry texture that reminded me of Serge Lutens Serge Noire, even though the notes had very little resemblance. I suspect that it will be more wearable than Serge Noire, a scent that's glorious in full heat or full cold, but that feels "sticky" to me when the temperature isn't right for it. In that day's in-between weather, Pardon was woody, rich but not too rich, sweet but not too sweet, and complex enough that I can't really speak to the notes yet. On my arm, it puffed clouds of scent up to my nose a little too aggressively, but the memory of it is haunting me, and I suspect that in the long run I'm going to end up buying it and making it a back-of-the-neck "waft" scent. Of course, I won't buy it without sampling it again. Really. That Would Be Wrong.

I just dabbed on the Mythique, and I'm enjoying it too. The first minute or so was a bit of a jumble - I don't know if this was a result of dabbing rather than spraying, or if I just don't like the very first top notes. But five minutes in, I'm already liking it - a nice smooth, dusty, powdery thing, without annoying girly sweetness. The reviews refer to fruitiness and flowers other than iris root, and I'm not getting that at all; I'll have to try this again, maybe decanting my sample into a sprayer, and produce a proper review. (At least, as proper as my reviews get.)

And the Chanel boutique had the small bottles of Les Exclusifs. I acquired their only small bottle of Cuir de Russie with unseemly haste. With my usual protectiveness of the associations of scents that I've committed to, I'm saving the first wearing for this weekend.

Yum.

Image: By the27thmaine. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: Gluttony in the North

A little bit north. Specifically, Portland. Himself did the extensive writeup of Day One in Trolleys and Buses and Food Carts, Oh, My!, complete with a lovely photo of the Perfume House.  He also found the Perfume House's address, called for the hours, planned the transit route, and sat patiently in the lobby while I burbled and flitted around. Have I mentioned that I'm very fond of Himself?

All I have to add in my current not-too-eloquent state is that the Perfume House is definitely worth visiting, and the perfume department at the Portland Nordstrom's is infinitely better than the one at the Nordstrom's in Palo Alto. I came home with Trumper Extract of West Indian Limes and Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey. And the Perfume House is ordering a bottle of Sutra Ylang for me.

Bwaha.

(And of course we got maple bacon doughnuts. Mmmmmm.)

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Link: Himself on Portland

Himself is a far better travel blogger than I am. Below, I present his posts on our Portland trip, in chronological order:

Portland Sucks!
Dinner in the City
Sleeping Around, Getting Around
A Day Filled With Bacon
Portland Day 3: Mass Transit Mania
Lions and Tigers and Hash, Oh, My!

Image: By Cacophony. Wikimedia Commons.