These are a few of my favorite things ...

As most of you have probably figured out, I am a person of random enthusiasms. Get stuck talking to me for a few minutes at a party or in an elevator and I will try to convince you of how great roller-skating is, or that liverwurst sandwiches with spinach and mustard on wholegrain bread are underrated, or how you should really try my new stupidly-expensive-but-actually-worth-it favorite lip balm.

So I thought today would be a great day for a random post about stuff I like (but sadly, even though I live in Chicago, I can't actually GIVE you all the stuff I like, the way Oprah would). Stuff such as Pearson Coffee Nips, which I can't actually eat more than once or twice a year anymore because they really do a number on your teeth:



I know, they are total grandma candy, and weird because I don't actually like to drink liquid coffee in any form, but, oh, the deliciousness. Mmmm.

I also really like Veronica Mars. Seriously, if you have never watched this show, block out a week or two and sit yourself down on the couch. I've been rewatching (as I walk on my treadmill, another favorite thing) and I have been bowled over (again) by what a great show this is. (Also: LoVe 4eva!)

And has everyone here read Josephine Tey? I recently grabbed one of her books off the shelf -- Brat Farrar, my favorite -- to keep me from getting a cold (did you guys know this works? A favorite mystery novel, taken with either a hot bath or a bowl of popcorn, will usually pull me back from the brink if I feel like I'm coming down with something), and wondered if people even read Josephine Tey any more. And they should.

I also really like — and sometimes people are shocked to hear this — Wikipedia. I've worked on reference books professionally, and I know what kinds of shenanigans can go on with them, but I find that by and large, Wikipedians do a great job giving you the gist about anything you may care to look up. And if you can't trust an article unless you know that it was written by underpaid and overstressed professional reference book editors, well, you can always skim down to the bottom of any article and look for the source links, and then go read THEM. That alone is worth the (free) price of admission! (Disclosure: I'm on an advisory board for Wikimedia Foundation, but they don't pay me anything.) If you have used Wikipedia this past year, please seriously consider donating to the Wikimedia foundation's fundraiser:


I could go on and on -- I haven't even gotten to how fun it is to carry around a toy sonic screwdriver, or even expounded on the whole liverwurst thing -- but I'm sure you all have work to do or other blogs to read. (Speaking of which, I did a top-ten list of blogs for Blogs.com this morning ... it was kind of a stream of consciousness list and was, by necessity, inadequate. Ten?? I need a "Top 350" list to represent all the blogs I really love ... Anyway, if you were on my list, you can pick up your fancy-shmancy blog badge here.)

So, happy Stuff I Like Thursday! Let me know if you end up having liverwurst for lunch.

Miscellanea

A few things I wanted to post about, but haven't had time to work up into full-fledged posts:

Chez Cemetarian has the Butterick "Walk-Away" dress listed right now! It's B32, but even if that's not your size, click on the image above and go read up on the info she's tracked down about it.

This article from the LA Times talks about the rise in popularity of the dress. (Registration required; try bugmenot.com if you're not registered.) Best stat? "Market research firm NPD Group ... recently reported that sales of dresses soared to $5 billion in the 12 months that ended April 30. Dress sales were up 30%, while sales for all women's apparel rose just 5%." Not that I'm taking any of the credit, mind you. (Thanks to Stacy for the link!)

I blogged about what I'm reading for the new site Writers Read -- my entry is here.

And I don't usually post email folks send me (unless they ask me to), but lately I've been hearing from more and more men that they read this blog. They always say this sheepishly, as if they are the ONLY GUY IN THE WORLD to ever hit this URL. So, because I don't want them to feel alone, here's a recent email I received (posted with permission) from Joshua Ferguson:

Okay, so I’ll make it clear that I don’t really care about fashion.

First I’m a guy and as such I prefer function to fashion. I like cords, cargo pants and clothes that bring out the green/blue of my eyes and I prefer them all at the same time. That’s pretty much as deep as I go. If I can’t wear it with Vans shoes (unless in a formal setting) then it doesn’t need to be worn unless it has a specific function (read: hiking boots, gortex, et cetera).

Anyways, I was helping the girlfriend look for a dress to wear to her upcoming cosmetology graduation (something in a retro black/white polka-dot 50s style) that we could actually afford. I ran a Google Boolean search for [cute “black and white” “polka dot” god damn dress] and voila somehow I hit your site and landed squarely in the archives of October 2006 looking at a Chess Dress from way back when. It was awesome.

Awesome enough for me to read the description which was amusing enough for me to read more of the site. Finally I bookmarked it and have found myself reading about patterns and eyelets and whathaveyou and yet I don’t feel the need to renounce my manhood.

Truth be told I grew up around this stuff because my grandmother was a seamstress who worked for Chic Lingerie in Los Angeles but still. I find your site to be well written, fun and informative even if I have no intention of ever sewing another stitch in my life (it’s just not cost-effective to design my own clothes I reckon).

So, with all that said I end with a simple thank you. I have been amused and my scowl was turned upside down for the time being.

Cheers and keep it up as you would regardless of this email.

I have to say I enjoy the emails from people who say "I hate dresses, but I like your site," because that lets me know I'm not just preaching to the choir (note to choir: I love you guys, too). It's the same thing as when people come up to me and say "I thought a talk by a dictionary editor would be SO BORING, but I really enjoyed listening to you!" Hearts and minds, people, hearts and minds. Someday this will be a big ol' dictionary-usin', dress-wearin' world, and I can retire, my work done.

Are you reading FI? You should be reading FI.

La Bella Donna recently pointed out to me that I haven't linked to Fashion Incubator, which astonished me, but I checked, and she was right, I haven't! But I'm doing it with a vengeance now, because I read that site all the time, and I think everyone else should, too .... well, anyone who's interested in clothing production, because FI (run by the incredibly knowledgeable Kathleen) talks about how commercial, retail clothes really get made.

There's this huge gap in the fashion press that FI fills in. Usually you hear about the Designer-with-a-capital-D, who dreams up the clothes, and maybe there's an arty, floaty sketch or two ... and then there's a picture of the actual item (on a clothes-hanger model, of course). Sometimes, MAYBE, there will be a mention of some handwork being done; embroidery, or pleating, or whatnot, but otherwise, there's just a big void: nothing about the patternmaking, the construction sewing, the fabric sourcing ... you could just as easily assume the Brownies showed up overnight and sewed everything up for a bowl of milk. And that's the amount of attention paid to high-end stuff; lower-end stuff's production gets NO attention, unless someone finds out it's done in a sweatshop somewhere overseas.

But if you read Fashion Incubator, you learn all the gritty details. What makes a good commercial pattern? How do you source fabric? How do you find the people you need to work with, and how do you judge their work? How do you get your clothes into stores, and when? Fashion is, after all, a business, and FI is the trade blog of the production side of that business.

Personally, I *love* trade magazines, and I always have. When I had a not-so-great job working in a dry cleaners in high school, the best part was reading American Drycleaner magazine. (The next best part was folding starched men's dress shirts ... you see, there was this special machine ... but I digress.) It was like Christmas when our mail carrier misdelivered a copy of a welding journal to our old apartment. Heck, I used to read Folio, which is the trade magazine of magazine publishing, just for the oh-so-meta frisson of it! So as soon as my next Google Adsense check comes in (thanks for clicking on those ads, by the way!) I'm buying Kathleen's book (I'm going to buy it from the link on FI, but I'm linking here to Amazon so you can read the great reviews it got). I'm never going to be a fashion designer -- I'm not suited for it -- so reading her book will just be pure geeky pleasure.

Oh, and the picture above? It's from a series where she shows how welt pockets are done in industrial sewing and gives instruction on how you can make a jig to do something similar (if not exactly the same) yourself. Awesome.