Songwriters who write about song writing are only slightly less irritating than writers who write about writing so I guess I have to despise myself for blogging about blogging. I think there’s a special hell reserved for those guilty of verbing a verb. Is that the line drawn between craft and idea-ation? A master carpenter couldn’t carpenter about carpentry and so -somehow- carpentry seems more honest and closer to the earth than me. As I said, I think there’s a special hell reserved for those guilty of verbing a verb and there’s a line drawn between those who express their experiences and those who live them utterly. I’m envious of the latter. In summary, I’m blogging about blogging mostly because people complain if bloggers don’t talk enough about themselves and I guess I’m in the mood to unload.

My mother is pissing me off -would somebody please explain just why it is that I am not taking meds because -heaven help us all- she’s gotten a computer and an email address. Yes, it’s another mother-run-amok, assailing her offspring with gentle bytes of joy. Mothers should be required to get disclaimer signatures reading: Have Email, Will Run Amok. So yes, I’ve been subjected to -I forgot to mention some jerk also sold her a scanner- the unleashing of the vast stores of timeless pictures and poetry. Oh joy, here’s a picture of me when I was 10, when I weighed more than I do now, why do people insist that childhood is a time of joy and abandon? It’s not that we don’t get along, we just don’t know each other, she split when I was five. All I remember as a child is that I idolized her. While it’s true that my dad gave me my first sewing lesson, I only started sewing because she sewed and I wanted to be just like her. Now sometimes I’m afraid I will and that I will end up old, alone and living in a trailer park too. With email, I’m more accessible and I’m not comfortable with the implications inherent to proximity.

I pissed off some people on a message board today and I didn’t mean to. I feel really awful about that. I was trying to be helpful. There’s no way to explain autism when I’m so articulate. In spite of my best efforts I can be described in similar terms as Harvard’s beleagured president -as in, I only open my mouth to switch feet. If you’re reading this, can we start over? I intended no malice.

Sometimes I’ve regretted not taking advantage of the bail-out that Congress passed as compensation for lowering tariffs, the latter substantively altering the balance of manufacturing in the US. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I couldn’t conceive that it’d be possible that I could leave this business but since then, I’ve thought that I should have taken advantage of the career retraining that was available to displaced garment workers but I didn’t and I sometimes wish I had. That was a really long sentence. Happily, it seems that my future career options have not been exhausted as a friend suggests that he thinks it’d be worth the effort and expense to pay for the schooling and licensing for me to become a licensed electrician! In exchange, I’d work for him for X amount of time and under X conditions. Let me tell you, this is one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten. Who knew my childhood electronics fetish would come to this? You think I’m being sarcastic but the jokes on you, I love doing this stuff. I do all my own work (you should see where I live). And by the way, the guy making the offer scored points in my book not because he complained that I’m so “industrial” to actually have a copy of the NEC (National Electric Code) like most guys do, he complained because my copy was one issue out of date. This is a guy who is not intimidated by a woman who can handle tools. I think it’d be fun to be an electrician. Then I’d have to deal with my fear of capacitors and -previously- refrigeration. For those who don’t read comments, you don’t know I’ve been working on the fridge and you know nothing of bad-toaster karma. If you’re not reading comments, you’re either sane or missing half the content of this blog, it depends on your perspective.

And lastly, yes, I have heard that one Tommy Hilfiger is slated to wreak havoc upon hapless millions commencing June 9th. And never fear -dear, loving fans- I will try to meet your expectations. It’s a given -you and I both know that I will hate the show. The only question is how much and how entertaining I can be in yet another tirade cum autistic melt-down. Speaking of melt-downs, Kyle at confused nations offers a comparatively lovely, flattering yet subdued response to the news of Tommy’s show: (scroll down after the jump)

I hate you, Tommy. Tommy Hilfiger, you are the most pompous douchebag to ever walk this earth. I swear to God, if I had the chance, I would box you up with Nermal the Cat and ship you off to Abu Dhabi, where even your fashion sense could not save you from years of fundamentalist hatred. You and Ralph Lauren and the Polo guy riding the horse: you should all be trampled, maimed, defecated upon, and otherwise removed from any society that involves me.

Better to dispense with formality and just file all of my soon to come weekly reviews under “Rants”. As ever, I will endeavor to meet or exceed the expectations of all those who’ve ever described me as inimitable and iconoclastic.

I’m working on the last segment of the vintage pattern postings. I’ve done some pattern engineering that I hope to demonstrate down the road. There’s a complicated four way seam coming together at the bodice-skirt side seams -you know, where all points must match exactly- and I think the solution is a reasonable one. There’s only one problem with it. The pattern maker has a lot of extra work so if your pattern maker is lazy and doesn’t make the change, the sewers will be spending too much time on it with resultant problems. I realize you probably haven’t done this exercise but the problem is a common one and scarcely unique to this project. It’s always better that the work take the pattern maker longer to do it than it would comensurately for the stitchers to manage the difficulty because there’s only one patternmaker and a lot more stitchers. Extra work by one person at the outset saves a lot of people a lot of work later and your quality results will be more consistent. Anyway, I want to finish this up and then move onto another project. My next project will be pleating. I want to demonstrate two things. One is a new style of pleating, there are entirely different design lines possible with pleating (think origami-math) and the second is this handy-dandy chemical formula I discovered (discovered, did not invent) to do permanent pleats at home or in a small shop.

I’m reading _A Pattern Language_ a book someone was generous enough to buy for me off of my Amazon wish list. This book is one of the most wondeful books I’ve ever attempted to read. I wish I could tell you what it was about but I can’t. I think that says a lot about the book. If a book defies description to the extent you have to really think about it and fight for the meaning of it, it’s got to be a very powerful book. It attempts to define the most successful habituation practices common to all cultures, climes and countries. Supposedly it’s about architecture. I do not imply offense to architects -and I think they’d agree with me- but the book is much wiser than that.