Rambling: Random Thoughts, Mostly Sewing

NaNoWriMo is almost over. Unless I write thirty-four thousand words in the next forty-nine minutes, I'm not going to "win", but as already burbled, I'm content with my NaNoWriMo experience this year. (Oh. Yeah. Twenty-four hours and forty-nine minutes. But still.)

We didn't eat any turkey today. This is a bad thing, because there's a lot of turkey left. I think that we're approaching the point of frozen turkey Tetrazzini casseroles.

All the yams are gone. This is sad.

Himself is continuing to hide the dark chocolate mint Lindor balls because I asked him to hide them from me because the caffeine was making me crazy. Who knew he'd obey me so thoroughly? (Edited to give proper credit: He bought me the dark chocolate mint Lindor balls in the first place, because he knows I love them. He's a very nice Himself. I understand that I get them back during the relatively-low-stress (we hope) days of Christmas vacation.)

Sushi Imperiale is still beautiful. I wore it today to belatedly celebrate the fact that we got the tree set up in the stand yesterday. Yesterday I wore Serge Noire. It was also gorgeous.

We're taking two weeks off for Christmas. I'm under the delusion that I'm going to sew. I said it exactly that way at the fabric store and people laughed. I bought the Taylor Made Designs Sew Easy Pajama Pants and and the Sewing Workshop Mixit Shirt pattern. (I'll be making the variant with sleeves.) I also have my eye on a whole bunch of HotPatterns patterns, and I'm hoping to find the HotPatterns Miss MoneyPenny Trumpet Skirt that I already altered to near-perfection.

My theory is that I stop sewing because it's too much trouble to get a pattern fitted, and that I'll keep sewing if I can just hold on until I have a tiny wardrobe of patterns perfectly fitted and traced onto that pattern cloth stuff that's easy to work with and doesn't tear all the time. The Mixit Shirt, Trumpet Skirt, and either the Wong-Sing-Johes Kimono Wrap Dress or the Deco Vibe Delicious Dresses might do the job. Or I might look pregnant in the dresses. We'll see.

Why is it so hard to find Burda Patterns? It's even harder to find Burda Plus patterns. I want them because last time I sewed, Burda Plus blouses were almost exactly right for me, without a bunch of fitting. It's almost inconceivable for shoulders, chest, and sleeves in a fitted blouse to all work right out of the envelope; with Burda Plus, they did.

My head hurts. I blame lack of caffeine.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

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: Weekend Sloth Update, or Digressions Galore

It's Last Saturday and Black Friday Weekend. I'm watching movies and shopping for perfume. War of the Roses just ended, and now Blast From the Past is on. And I finally agreed with myself that of all the perfumes I haven't bought, the one that I would most regret missing, if it went away, is Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose. So I just sent off for it. Bwahaha.

(By the way, Josephine, I just went to look at my post for that perfume and saw your comment, and I wanted to mention that I miss your blog. I hope that you're being refreshed by the blog break.)

Digression: I should be focusing on my BlogAWriMo, or whatever one might call it, but I'd have to blog slightly more than thirty-four thousand words to get there by the end of November, so, well, no. I've decided that what I'm going to get out of my NaNoWriMo Rebel experiment this year is (1) experiencing a higher blog frequency and a freer "ah, just go ahead and post it" attitude and (2) increasing my blog post length. Those are rather mechanical goals, but I think they're valuable anyway. The first ties into a life philosophy of anti-perfectionism, and the second I burbled about here.

Digression: Longer and less edited burbling is making this blog a bit more like a journal, except, of course, for the part where it's not the least bit private. That makes me curious about the practice of "journaling", and exactly how it's described and why it's recommended. So, of course, I Googled. Websites claim that journaling exercises or left brain, frees up your right brain, and improves your immune system. I'm eyeing these claims skeptically, and am tempted to make a sarcastic remark about floor polish. But I do see a mention of a specific study where a group of students was asked to write about plain old stuff, and another group was asked to write about traumatic events, and the trauma group had a higher immune function response, based on, er, some measure.

This suggests that not just writing, but writing about all my worries and deepest undisclosed thoughts, would be useful and help with my immune system and psychological state and all that. I'm not going to be posting a great deal of that on the blog, though, and I find that I'm just not that interested in writing nonfiction off the blog.

Digression: For that matter, I'm finding that I'm not all that much interested in writing fiction off the blog. I was just looking at a thread about "why do you write?" and realized that I write fiction because I want to have written it, while I write nonfiction because I want to write it. This strongly suggests that whether I like it or not, I am a nonfiction writer.

I have trouble entirely accepting this, because I've been creating fictional scenes in my head all my life. But I rarely if ever string those scenes together to form a story. I can create situations and trigger a beginning, as I used to when I gamemastered Call of Cthulhu adventures, but I rarely create an entire story, characters and situations and plot and sequence, from beginning to end. This might just be a roadblock that I need to plow past a few times until it's flattened, but I suspect that it may be a fundamental lack of either capability or inclination.

Digression: On the other hand, I very much miss those Call of Cthulhu adventures. And Shadowrun adventures. And online roleplaying on MUDs. It may be that I want to create fiction, but in a roleplaying context, which is a context that was never all that widespread and seems to be less and less popular every day. All the new online games have little to do with roleplaying, based on my definition of the activity--any setting where a computer or a predefined set of possible events limits what the characters can do is not, IMO, roleplaying. And face-to-face roleplaying...

Actually, I don't know if face-to-face roleplaying is fading. I'm reassured to see that Chaosium,  the company that created the face-to-face Call of Cthulhu game, is still selling gaming modules and has in fact branched out into some "basic roleplaying" thingie that apparently applies the same roleplaying system to a variety of different settings. I always liked Chaosium's roleplaying system, both of the variants that I experienced; the mechanics were simple enough to get out of the way of the roleplaying itself.

I loved roleplaying. Did I mention this? It's absorbing, it's exciting. I give it credit for bringing me out of an isolated shell and into the world--something about interacting with others as a person that I wasn't, allowed me to interact with other as the person what I was. I miss it, a lot.

Himself and I and some friends have discussed getting a roleplaying group together, and now that we live in the same place all the time, the idea is more plausible. But while I love roleplaying and miss it badly, the thought of digging out the books and writing a scenario and restarting my gamemastering career gives me qualms. I tell myself that I'm too old and that I'll make a fool of myself. I tell myself that adults might write novels, but they don't create character sheets and throw dice. But, really, either you're too old for Let's Pretend by around age twelve, or you never get too old--I'm not all that much older, mentally, than I was in my late teens and twenties.

It is Last Saturday. I could buy myself a shiny new Call of Cthulhu module, for inspiration. I went browsing, and I realized that what I'd really like is a combination of Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun--Cthulhu cyberpunk, essentially. I Googled that phrase and found that I'm not the only one who's this crazy; in fact, Steve Jackson Games produced a book called GURPS CthulhuPunk. Sadly, it's out of print.

Have any of you folks ever been into face-to-face roleplaying games? Are any of you still into them? I don't know what it's like to play at age thirty and beyond--does it work? Is it possible to maintain the excitement and the suspension of disbelief, or is the brain just too far past childhood?

All righty, that's my digression quota. The next idea that I have will be a new post. And Hell On Wheels is on. I didn't think I'd like it. I was wrong.

Image: By Rama. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Shopping with your inner ten-year-old

I remember someone writing, I don't remember where, about being an adult and being able to buy the riches of childhood at will. I think that that particular author was referring to chocolate turtles. Last Saturday is tomorrow, and Black Friday was today (though we did Buy Nothing Day instead), and my mind is turning toward shopping. If I were ten years old but had a credit card, what would I buy?

Silk scarves, without a doubt. Probably one giant red silk square, like the one that my grandmother once owned and tore in half to give to my mother. But I already have a gaudy plenty of inexpensive silk scarves; my inner ten-year-old is well taken care of in that area.

Ding Dongs. A whole box of them. When I was a kid, they were wrapped in that thin foil, making them even more special. Nowadays they're sometimes in silver-colored plastic. Hmph.  I loved the coating and the way it snapped a little when you bit it off; back then, that seemed like a sign of quality confectionary. I always ate the chocolate from around the edges, then bit mercilessly into the main body.

One of those dolls, those eighteen-inch historical-themed dolls. (I decline to mention the brand name.) With a bankrupting extravagance of accessories. No, they didn't exist when I was ten; I don't care. I just went looking through the website, marveling at the details and the prices. Forty-eight dollars for a doll-size picnic basket, complete with hibachi and shrimp-and-pineapple kabobs. Eaten, apparently, with root beer floats. It's really a good thing that I have an adult's respect for fiscal survival.

Marbles.  I never knew how to play marbles, but I wanted the gorgeous glass anyway. Another thing that's gotten far more exciting since I was a child; just look at these things.

And red Keds.

What about you?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Books: My prime nonfiction choices, Part I

Last night, being unimpressed with my latest batch of library books, I picked up The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant, a book that I've discussed before. It's a nonfiction book about fashion, not a topic that normally interests me. It goes deeper than fashion, or it goes to the depth of fashion, whichever way you might think about it. But all the same, I don't care that much about fashion, and I love this book, and I concluded that that's because Linda Grant is an extraordinarily good writer. She's not the showy kind of good writer, the kind where you're always noticing specific phrases. Instead, she's the kind that makes every word communicate, seamlessly, so that you're not consciously aware of the words. Reading the book, I feel almost a sense of motion, traveling down the path of the thoughts at a moderately fast clip, so that I'm never bored or wanting to get to the end of the passage or the page. And that metaphor doesn't work altogether, because I'm not just passively traveling; as I read, I feel as if I'm somehow involved in making the journey happen.

That made me think about my favorite nonfiction books, and my favorite nonfiction writers. I started making a list. I'm narrowing the criteria--I'm not including memoirs or biographical works, or primarily comedic books, or what I'd call "nonfiction novels" where the book is different from a novel primarily because it happens to be true. So, for example, American Fried by Calvin Trillin, one of my very favorite books, isn't in the competition because the author is the main character in most of the pieces and therefore it has a little too much memoir, and also because it's so very, very funny. But I still recommend it. Go read it. Then read the other two in the Tummy Trilogy. Then read everything else Calvin Trillin ever wrote.

OK, moving on to my favorites among books that fit the criteria:

The Essential Earthman,  One Man's Garden, and Henry Mitchell On Gardening. Henry Mitchell is the best garden writer. Period. He was a journalist, and I find that that's something of a pattern among my favorite authors. He wrote a gardening column for the Washington Post from 1973 to his death in 1993, and the books are drawn from those columns.

I'm at a loss to describe his writing. It combines solid information with philosophy, but something about that statement suggests the cute and pseudo-profound, and that is as far from Mr. Mitchell as I can imagine. I learned most of my gardening knowledge from these books, the information settling into my mind so quietly that I can't remember the time when I didn't know it. But I re-read the books for the philosophy and the sheer pleasure of the words. Deborah Needleman, in an essay on Henry Mitchell, said "He provides a sense of comfort, much like the feeling you get from a cookbook when you have no intention of making any of the dishes. He had scores of devoted readers with little or no interest in gardening."

I've never read his fourth book, the one that isn't focused on gardening; I suspect that I'm reluctant to reach the point where I've read all of his writing and there is no more.

Why We Buy, by Paco Underhill. I'm annoyed with myself; I can't find my copy of this book. I'm not interested in retailing or marketing, so it's a prime example of an engaging book about a topic that doesn't interest me all that much. I am interested in psychology, so that's part of the explanation. Psychology and anthropology, maybe. The appeal is, I think, mostly the author's instinct for stories and nuggets of information that will fascinate, combined with engaging writing. 

Oh, dear. And I see that he has another book out. The second book, The Call of the Mall, didn't appeal to me nearly as much as the first one. But now there's one called What Women Want, and I'm tempted, though the reviews are lukewarm.

Nassau Street and Fun and Profit in Stamp Collecting, by Herman Herst. Henry Mitchell is the best garden writer; Herman Herst may well be the best writer about stamp collecting, though my reading in that area is much less extensive. Mr. Herst dealt stamps from 1933 through 1973, putting him right in the middle of the most exciting events of philatelic history--or were they so exciting because he brought them to life by writing about them? It's hard to say. He also qualifies as a journalist by my standards, contributing columns to "virtually every stamp publication in the country," continuing well after his retirement.

Mr. Herst's writing is less philosophical and more consciously instructive than Mr. Mitchell's. His books are full of stories and advice--in fact, each chapter of Fun and Profit is titled with a piece of advice, such as "Cheap stamps never become rare." I haven't collected stamps since junior high, but I was delighted when I recently found that Nassau Street was available for purchase; I suspect that I would enjoy these books just as much even if I'd never collected. They're full of stories, psychology, and anthropology; that, too, seems to be a pattern in my favorite books; it describes The Thoughtful Dresser as well.

I can see that writing this post is going to end up being expensive; I hadn't realized that there are several more Herman Herst books than I was aware of. And some are in print.

Much Depends On Dinner and The Rituals Of Dinner, by Margaret Visser. Stories. Psychology. Anthropology. Here we are again. In Much Depends On Dinner, Ms. Visser takes the ingredients of an ordinary meal--chicken, salt, butter, corn, and so on--and follows their roles in human customs and history. The Rituals of Dinner has a similar approach, but it follows dining customs rather than food. I've blogged about these before; I still love them. To my dismay, I don't love Ms. Visser's other books as well; I'll be trying them again, but these two are the ones that I'd urge you to make the time to read.

Googling tells me that Ms. Visser is a "broadcaster". Does that qualify her for the journalist pattern? Hmm.

The Fear of Cooking, by Bob Scher. This is a delightful combination of cookbook and therapy for kitchen phobia. As written, it takes the non-cook through facing their fears and cooking, but it's fun to read whether or not you ever turn on a stove. (Quote: "I mean, here's a whole duck, say, and it's cold and guppy and slimy, with pieces of skin flopping around.") I think that the journalist pattern here fails, unless it helps that the author is, among other things, a documentary filmmaker.

All of the Miss Manners books, by Judith Martin. I feel a little odd including books that are written in question-and-answer format (interleaved with essays), but I don't care. Judith Martin is funny and intelligent and an extraordinarily good writer, and her expertise isn't just in etiquette, but in human problem solving. Psychology. Anthropology. Stories. She's also (ta da!) a journalist.

The Forest for the Trees, by Betsy Lerner. A book of advice for writers--not advice on when to use an adverb, and how to avoid passive voice, but about, to quote her, "what makes writers tick." I'm interested in the topic, but I also just really like Betsy Lerner's writing. I bought this, I bought Food and Loathing (a memoir-like book, so it doesn't qualify for this list), and I'll probably continue to buy any book that she writes.

There are, without a doubt, many more. That's why I'm pre-titling this Part I, though I don't yet have a list for Part II.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: More Magazines

No, not the same batch a third time. This was a box of back issues of Threads, given to a friend who thought that another friend might have other friends who might want them. If you see what I mean. I hope that they don't end up causing her too much annoyance.

But they're gone! Yay! And just in time, because I like Threads. I selected and kept a dozen, which is plenty for a paging-through-Threads fix, but the boxfull was calling to me all the same.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Television: Thanksgiving Episodes

I love television. I read books and I watch movies, but I also watch a lot of television. Days off, like Thanksgiving weekend, are an opportunity to keep the TV on through all my waking hours. I'm not so much watching it all that time, but it's still on.

So right now, Himself and I are lounging, puttering with our computers, and watching some of our favorite Thanksgiving-themed TV.

Buffy: It is a sham, but it's a sham with yams. It's a yam sham.

Willow: You're not gonna jokey-rhyme your way out of this.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Pangs"

We already watched Pangs, an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, yesterday while getting the living room in shape. This is what I call a "payoff episode", an episode of a TV series where the ongoing character and plot threads come together and we get to see the things we always wanted to see, or things that we would have wanted if we'd ever thought of them.

For example, we get extra Spike. First watching wistfully-lit scenes of murder and torture, and mourning the fact that he can't join in. Then interacting with the Scooby gang to a previously unprecedented degree, because for once that interaction can't be cut off with a fight. ("...Spike had a little trip to the vet, and now he doesn't chase the other puppies any more.")

And there's a lot of Anya--I love Anya, and this is one of her best episodes. She's changing roles, from vengeance demon to Xander's girlfriend and member of the Scooby gang, but her demon past still influences her view of the world. ("To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual sacrifice. With pie.") There's Angel running around on the fringes, and Buffy's desperate determination to have a perfect Thanksgiving. And that's before we've actually touched the core plot, the ancient spirit determined to avenge past wrongs, and the gang's conflict over the right or wrong of killing him.

Next were the two Mad About You Thanksgiving episodes, Riding Backwards and Giblets for Murray. Riding Backwards is set entirely in the train, as Paul and Jaime (the young married main characters) ride to and from New Haven to spend Thanksgiving with her parents. There's squabbling and fake engagements and a FedExed Jell-O mold from his mother. ("What an insult!" "It was a gesture.") Giblets for Murray is the next step--they're hosting Thanksgiving for both families, and battling for control. The same mother that mailed the Jell-O mold last time, this time brings her potato casserole and, upon being told that Jaime already made potatoes, declares "so she'll freeze hers."

C.J.: They sent me two turkeys. The more photo-friendly of the two gets a Presidential pardon and a full life at a children's zoo. The runner-up gets eaten.

President Bartlet: If the Oscars were like that, I'd watch.

The West Wing, "Shibboleth"

President Josiah Bartlet: If I cook it inside the turkey, is there a chance I could kill my guests? I'm not saying that's necessarily a deal-breaker.

The West Wing, "The Indians in the Lobby"

Next? West Wing. Shibboleth includes Christian refugees from China, prayer in the schools, and turkeys in need of a pardon. The Indians in the Lobby includes two Native Americans looking for some justice, and a call from the President of the United States to the Butterball Hotline.

Then we ran out of Thanksgiving television and watched Buffy in Beer Bad. It's not unusual for our television watching to begin and end with Buffy.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Turkey Zombies

We're fatter now.

This year we had a heritage turkey from Rogue Valley Brambles. Yum.

We'd heard delicious-sounding things about this turkey. Moister breast meat. More fat, and there's no time when I don't approve of more fat in my meat. Actual turkey flavor. So last year we tried to order one in early fall, and while they didn't precisely laugh at us, we were too late. So this year we got our order in somewhere in midsummer. We drove up with the cooler to pick it up on Monday, Himself started brining it yesterday, and he roasted it today, largely based on the method described in this post on Tigers & Strawberries.

It finished roasting far sooner than we expected--we had put the turkey in, contentedly made and eaten pancakes to tide us over the anticipated turkey-roasting hours, cleared the decks in the kitchen, and were lolling with our computers when I got up for a drink and glanced at the thermometer tethered to the turkey. Our goal temperature for turning the oven off and finishing with residual heat was 140, and the thermometer read 124. Panic!

We went into a frenzy of washing and trimming and boiling and melting and smashing things, which taught us that we will spend exactly as much time cooking a meal as we have available to us. Without the rapidly browning turkey bearing down on us, it would have taken us two or three hours to make the mixed-white-and-yam mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts and the second batch of candied yams. There would have been puttering and debating and examination of multiple cookbooks and much discussion of whether the potatoes were ready to mash. We didn't actually eliminate any of these steps, we just went through them a great deal faster. ("Drain 'em! Drain 'em now!") Everything landed on the table while the turkey was still in its resting-after-cooking prime and was just ready to carve.

Again, yum. Best turkey we ever had. It had so much flavor that Himself has resolved to also start buying chickens from Brambles, to see if they're similarly superior. Sadly, we'll have to wait until May--they don't harvest chickens in the winter. No one took us up on our Thanksgiving invitation; it was sad to not be able to share our turkey, but on the other hand it allowed us to be post-dinner slobs. The first load of dishes are swooshing in the dishwasher, and we're watching classic Thanksgiving television now.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: The garden magazines are really gone!

Yeah, I know, I'm taking double credit for the things, but someone did finally take them all. Tomorrow, the back issues of Threads hit the driveway. Plus maybe a vase or two.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Robert Piguet Bandit

I know that I'm back into perfume blogging when my scent of the day is based on whether I'm interested in blogging about it. Today, I didn't have time on the way out to lunch to choose a sample, so I grabbed Robert Piguet Bandit; it's been months since I wore it and I'm having trouble making up my mind about my bottle. I wanted another wearing, and of course a blog post.

I bought Bandit based on a sample. The sample was leathery and a little furry-sweaty, a note that I described as being like a clean cat sleeping in the sun. Today's wearing confirmed that that note is altogether gone from the bottle--the bottle is leather and something spicy that reminds me of Chanel Coco, of all things. It's ladylike with good posture, not contentedly lounging.

I'll give it a few more tries, but I suspect that I'll have decluttered the bottle within a year--it no longer does anything at all that Cuir de Russie doesn't do a lot better.

Image: By Tomascastelazo. Wikimedia Commons.