Old & Pretty Things to See

I have been working this weekend on my embroidered valentine (a bit late) for Joe. In the meantime, I went through more of my stuff to weed out what I want to sell/give away and keep. These are mostly keepers, a couple are up for trade (here or on flickr).

First, this autograph book from the late 1800s that my father got for me at a yard sale on the north fork of Long Island a few years back.

I love how people used to write. When did the horrible bubble writing trend begin? I wish so badly that I could master an old fashioned style of penmanship, but my handwriting has always suffered from a bad case of sloppyitis. My second grade teacher would leave the room and come back in with a stethoscope around her neck and speak in a German accent, calling herself "Doctor Handwriting." She claimed to be Amy's (our regular teacher) identical twin sister. We all totally fell for it by the way. Doctor Handwriting taught us how to write our letters in upper case, lower case and cursive. When your writing looked good she would scribble, "You have a case of beautifulitis" on the top of your paper. More often than not my comment included the word sloppyitis no matter how hard I tried. Some things never change unfortunately.

The newspaper clipping below is carefully tucked into the book. I love it because it advertises a sale for clothing on 14th St. off of 5th Ave. When I grew up a few blocks south of there in the seventies my mother used to walk me up to 14th St. for cheap clothes too. Now Union Square is a trendy strip in NYC, completely overrun with so many tourists and NYU students that I can barely push my stroller up the street en route to visit my mother. The cheapy stores have been replaced by Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Diesel, and a few other stores that I'm actually not so unhappy to see (Anthropolgie is a few blocks up at 17th).

Some of the features include long ostrich feathers for $2.79, hot water bottles for .39 cents, coutil corsets for .50 cents, women's lace petticoats .65 cents, and spring suitings ("Natty wool, finish dress fabrics that look like all wool and are in similar designs of checks and plaids- black and white, tan-and-white, and other blendings- 27 inches wide instead of 14.") These suitings are priced at 7 3/4. I can't figure out if that means $7.75 or if they had 3/4 of a cent back then.

The following patterns are up for grabs. I'll swap with anyone who wants, or give them to anyone who feels they must have them:
A cute dress for anyone who can actually go bra less.
Anyone brave enough to make a cowgirl shirt?
Cute things I will never ever make for myself.

The following patterns have been collected over the years when I dreamed of having a little girl. I don't think I will, but one never knows for sure.



These are for me to make eventually:
My dream shirt!
Can you see me and Lucy and Ethel in this one?
Not sure how this would actually look on me. It could end up looking like a grown woman stuffing herself into a little girl's dress. Maybe I could skip the ruffled hem.

Next on my to-do list is buying fabric for the wrap dress with embroidered trim that I'm making (posted a couple of posts below). At first I thought it could be cool to go to the African fabric store a few blocks away on Livingston St. and use some lovely African pattern with a white or black yoke on the dress. My friend Sarah lived in Ghana for a year and came back with so many beautiful dresses that she had made over there. They are all cut just like forties dresses with covered buttons and everything, but they are made in the coolest local fabrics. One is a tan background with weird Coke cans all over it. Now I'm not so sure I want to use any type of patterned fabric for this dress. I might just use a solid colored cotton and focus on embroidering the yoke and sewing ric rack on the edges like in the picture on the pattern cover.

Finally, here are a couple of photos of the neighborhood taken this week. I started posting my neighborhood pics in a Ft. Greene flickr group recently and on Friday I came home to an e-mail from someone at the Brooklyn Paper asking if they could buy one of my photos for the next week's issue. I was really flattered. It turned out that the woman who e-mailed me was on a deadline and I didn't get back to her in time, but she said she'd like to keep looking at my photos to use on in the future. Woo hoo!

Fulton and S. Oxford. I was trying to get a shot juxtaposing the old signs on the corner with the giant condo skyscraper going up in the background. You can't really see the skyscraper in progress, but it's a nice shot anyhow.

These two are out of Harlan's bedroom window. Snow and sleet were upon us.

I have to throw in these pictures of Harlan eating a waffle: