sewing update

now i’m making trousers for dachelle (with plans for a pair of very short sailor pants style shorts), spent some time altering some old trousers of mine for corinne (with plans to help her figure out how to make them for herself), have done a bit of alteration for doris and still have multiple projects on the go for lotte.
i have pair of denim pants on the go for me, but i hate altering my own pants. and it’s denim: too much work. i think i have an idea for a dress for me, but i’m still ruminating.

dachelle will colour my hair for me, corinne has been very good about lifts places, and doris provided an excellent afternoon tea. dachelle’s past life as a cook has been a bit of a score as well.
this seamstress gig ain’t so bad.

lotte’s projects have changed. i’ve had a shitty time with the sleeves on the jacket of the suit, so i’m ditching it. or else making it sleeveless.
she has a pair of maroon trousers, a blue gingham tie-waiste, buttonup, sleeveless shirt, a blue collared, sleeved blouse done, and i’ve got a black and white striped shirt in progress, with plans for a pair of black sailor pants style trousers. those i’ll make a bit quirky. lotte’s not really into full on vintage, so i’ll make them sailor suit themed, but actually kind of quirky. make the buttons out of alignment and different sizes (rather than a row down from each hip). i’ll use a lighter, softer fabric so they’re comfy. high waisted of course. though actually all these ‘high waisted’ trousers are actually normal waiste height. just feel high with today’s fashions…

we also have plans for a pair of late 30s/40s overalls, high waisted, in a bright colour. orange or blue or turquoise, or red. in that order of preference. with a little contrasting colour blouse underneath. this is a very lotte outfit, which i know she’ll adore. i’ll match it with a bright headscarf.

for the black and white ball outfit i need to make a red beret to bring colour up around her face as she doesn’t look so good in black and white. i’m also planning a red necklace of some sort. savers here i come.

there’s also a blue blouse to buy to go with the blue plaid skirt i found in tasmania. i might also make up some white frilly knickers for that outfit (tres swinger).

and sorted!

what will i wear at mlx? oh, i don’t know. clothes i hope. who cares.

lotte reckons we should make it into a sauna

ok, so i’d be going nuts if i wasn’t numb. another three years under howard. with free rein in the senate.
oh man.

i guess it’s time to jump ship, really. things will get worse. very doom and gloom, but really. i’m ashamed to be australian at the moment, re everything from refugees to iraq.
on rrr this morning the spin people made the comment that it suggests that we’re living in a more conservative country now. i wonder if this means we’ll start getting more politically active on the left. get into some demonstrating. i’m about ready to get into the rallying thing.

if i finish this thesis (i will, i will) i will quite happily go overseas to work…

i’m working on this lecture for tuesday. still. but it seems under control. now i have to do the powerpoint thing, which will no doubt take heaps of time.

the garden is nice. we have planted a bunch of native shrubs in the front yard, to get a bit more privacy. the squeeze has dug over the back garden patches and planted some seeds (bit late, really). he’s also very proud of having recently ‘plumbed’ his greenhouse. he’s added a line from his irrigation system which he’s run through his greenhouse and is watering the seeds in there with fine drip attachments. it’s all very technical and i know he likes this part far more than the other gardening bits. i gave him the irrigation system and the greenhouse (which is plastic, portable and pretty ace. lotte reckons we should make it into a sauna) as birthday/xmas presents and they were a great success. i’m not sure how i’ll top them, so i’d better get thinking…

toilet wipes. what ??

ok, so i’ve just seen my first australian ad for moist toilet wipes.like, literally, toilet wipes. i’d discovered these things in the uk.
gross.
they really puzzled me when i was in the uk. i couldn’t figure out where the toilet paper was. and then, later, i figured out that you were supposed to use these wipe things. gross.
not to mention environmental terrorism.

so now, here they are. in australia. fucking unethical. and gross.

sewing

i’ve been working on some outfits for lotte to wear during mlx this year. i’m going for a vintage 30s theme. some of it is historically accurate, some is sort of 30s themed, but more loosely interpreted.

lotte has the perfect figure for early 30s stuff, pre 1935. long legs, slim build, tall. but that earlier stuff isn’t too practical for dancing. she also prefers trousers, and while women were wearing trouser then, it really wasn’t until later (with the beginning of the war and women’s mobilisation in the conflict in various capacities) that trousers became common-place.

so i’ve had to compromise and go for later 30s stuff, for the most part.

i am keen to do some nice earlier 30s stuff, though. i’m also very interested in some deco-styled garments, late 20s stuff. but that’s not really the clothing of swingers…
hm. we’ll see.

meanwhile, that picture up there is of my prelim plans for lotte’s outfit for the ball.
my movable type is totally rooted at the moment.i cannot upload images at all. not even on fsp, i don’t think. if anyone can help me out with that, i’ll love them forever…

, which is black and white themed. and difficult to work with. bit naff and over-done if you ask me. i reckon black and white cinema would be way excellenter, and give people something to really work with, as they did in 2002.

i just read a paper called ‘the anti-political populism of cultural studies’

by todd gitlin (in cultural studies in question, edited by marjorie ferguson and peter golding, 1997). i’m not really sure how i feel about it.
i mean, i’ve had troubles with the work done by quite a few people in cultural studies programs in the unis i’ve been at – they just seemed depoliticised in a worrying way. especially to me, whose always done feminist work where i’ve really tried to make my research practical, have some sort of political use-value.

and gitlin is echoing all that, but he seems fairly tough. and he’s really getting into the cultural studies people of today. his key point is that they shouldn’t pretend that they’re doing ‘politics’ just because they’re doing popular/populist stuff. that doing ‘politics’ is actually a bit more complicated (and he places ‘politics’ right over there in the activist camp, doing things like rallying and protesting and writing pamphlets and so on).

i’m a bit torn…

he’s very critical of things like radway and modleski’s work on women’s romance novel reading, and pretty much says that we shouldn’t treat that as political activism.

… i don’t know. on the one hand i agree with a lot of the things he has to say. and on the other, i wonder if he’s being too harsh.

either way, his concerns are very similar to the ones i have when i read the horrid wench’s blog, and when i heard her speak about her work on bogans.

i’m not in that gang. i’m with the people who still want to politicise stuff (which she doesn’t – she confesses that she has no interest in politics – stink of ‘politics’ much?). i also want to get feminist in this sort of work…

hm. dilemma. i need to find a response to this article.

not only incredibly taut, but also little.

i am feeling very tough today. yesterday i went to the gym and did my program again and managed to do the whole thing (minus 1 set of pushups – i’m working up to 3 sets of 12 but am only capable of 2 sets of 8. don’t tell max). i am SO tough. by the time i got to the stretches, i was flying on my endorphine rush (a little reward for toughing it out) and really enjoying myself.
it’s crazy, isn’t it?

then lamby had to go and bring me down to earth with
a) a little talk about how weights are bad and all you need’s your own body weight to really work out;
b) declaring that pushing yourself past your pain limit is the only way to really get the most out of your routine, and
c) flipping me around his waiste in a curb-side demonstration of the lamp post aerial, so i could not only feel his iron-hard muscley body 360 degrees in under 3 seconds, but also experience a demonstration of how effective working with your own body weight is in increasing strength.

now, i cleverly countered his point a) with my points
i) where i argued that yes, i know that about the body weight thing – that’s why i do yoga and
ii) where i declared that i like using the weights and machines and things because it’s a safe, supervised way for me to learn proper weight lifting technique, show off my ‘muscles’ and get away from the thesis. i followed with
iii), arguing that it also prevents me from doing silly things like working out til i pass out as did certain thai chi masters who have recently flipped around their favourite hamface.

i then followed up with a refute to his point b) with my points
i) that working to the point of pain seems dangerous and injury-causing, esp when you’re just a baby,
ii) that i want to enjoy going to the gym, so i’ll go back and
iii) max told me not to.

there was no response for point c) rather than to suddenly develop a counter-intuitive and somewhat disturbing enthusiasm for learning aerials as a follow. wrong, wrong, wrong, i know, but still. he’s very strong and it’s very exciting.

you might wonder what lamby and i were doing playing ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ on the side of the road after midnight on a thursday night.

well, it seems The Squeeze’s little sister had broken down on vic parade. i say ‘little’ because she really is – only up to my breast bone and she’s younger than he is. she’s also the other fittest person i know, who teaches aerobics (recent title holder for the ’13 classes in 7 days’ … title), was the ‘best of the best’ winner year before last, where she scared the pants off us with incredible aerials, and demonstrated that being little, a former gymnast and very good at scrunching your center is actually useful.

so we were waiting on the side of the road after dancing at cbd, lamby and i one-upping each other with feats of physical prowess (i got up on the trunk of his car using only my bare hands), The Squeeze presenting his little sister with a very sexy new – and very little – digital camera. just right for her little hand, and the RACV man on his way to give us a lecture about dissy’s.

this is not the first time lamby and i have waited on the side of the road with a friend while their car fussed and acted broke. i remember lamby and i working on the bows for our swingouts in carlton one night while cammy wrestled with his temperamental station wagon.
it seems that my learning to lead has sparked a degree of competitiveness in lamby, and in myself. a sort of productive, spurring-us-on-to-excellence competitiveness, rather than an eye-scratching, pushing-yourself-past-your-pain-barrier sort of competitiveness.

it’s all to our benefit, anyways, as, when i declared ‘i’ll learn how to do aerials and then i’ll throw you around, ok?’, lamby promised:’yeah, and i’ll let you’. we are agreed.

it’s lucky he’s not only incredibly taut, but also little.

back at the gym

i went and did my program yesterday and it nearly killed me. i’m still suffering from (yet another) chest cold thingy, plus i spent a week with only one incidence of exercise: a night of dancing.
and oh baby did i suffer for it yesterday. i had to do a cut-down version of my program so i wouldn’t faint.
MAN i need to do excercise regularly.
i was also feeling pretty crappy on the monday when i went dancing: all that time in the car driving round tasmania and no exercise. i was the stiffest, least creative and flexible dancer you’ve ever seen on monday night.

i am addicted to patience

with the arrival of The Squeeze’s imac a few weeks ago (that’s a neat little wireless internet-enabled palm pilot, everyone), i have discovered a new addiction.
patience.
i’m totally addicted. i can regularly win on the palm pilot. i brought a deck of cards with me to tasmania and finally figured out how to win at least a few times in every sitting (where a sitting is a few hours worth of back-episodes of angel).
i also explored patience on the little laptop – spider solitaire. oh yeah. beating that too.

i am insanely addicted. i don’t know why. and i’ve found that the more i play, the more aware of patterns and strategies i am. the better i get.

i am so hooked.

i love games. not games of chance or role-playing games. but strategy games. strategy as in scrabble which involves some sort of manipulation of the odds.

is this leading me to a gambling problem?

i don’t dare go looking for the game on my pc. it would make the already-difficult task of getting back into my thesis impossible.