Present Joys

I haven’t tumblred in quite a while! This is partially because I didn’t want to disturb the Meryl Streep photograph at the top of my website. But also because it’s been a crazy past few weeks. First, I counseled for a week at church camp in Geneva, Ohio. I have included a photo of me with actual children as photographic evidence of this. If you look closely, you can see the smoke from a campfire behind me. Camp was superlative. If possible, I will tell you more about it later.

Upon my return home, I found my house with no electricity. We spent a whole week without power! It was too hot inside my house to enjoy playing accordion or knit. I ended up reading pretty much all day long. I got all the way through Christ of the Covenants and made a good dent in The English Hymn: Its Development and Use in Worship, a fascinating survey of English hymnody written in 1915.

So I have only just got back to normal life (read: accordion, freelance work, sewing). And this includes tumblring. Tomorrow I will post a shirtmaking update! I also need to recap a recent concert. But mostly I just wanted to say hello, tumblr. I hope you’re doing well.

Meryl Streep, 1981

Last week, I made a special father’s day shirt for my dad, who is a very serious guitar player! I cut this shirt from a new pattern based on my existing pattern, one of my dad’s existing shirts, and some direct measurements. He wanted a very easy-fitting shirt. The fit isn’t perfect (I should say there are minor “lateral balance problems”), but it’s cool and he was happy with it. Overall a success! And it’s always good to remember why I have a policy of not making clothes for other people—too stressful!

I made one other shirt for myself this week, in a blue-green soft chambray. The fabric is the same as the orange stuff I used a few weeks ago, however, the cut is much better and truer. I gave this shirt a more “normal” collar shape, that is, not spearpoint-shaped. I pleated the sleeves into the cuffs. The most exciting thing about this shirt is the color; it’s this wild blue-green. The warp is a cool, purple-blue and the weft is a warm green-blue; combined, they make a very intriguing robin’s-egg color. How will I ever be able to accessorize this?!

I ran out of pearl shirt buttons after I finished my dad’s guitar shirt. I’m planning a trip to Cincinnati in a few weeks, where I’ll be able to get some more deadstock pearl shirt buttons at Banasch’s. Until then, anything I make will have to do without buttons until then!

The campy-listening thing, I think, is false. I don’t think that there is any such thing, actually. This happens with age, that at some point you might have told yourself and others that you listened to the Backstreet Boys because it was funny. But in fact, you were enjoying it; it’s just a different kind of enjoyment for you. But I don’t think that ironic-distance appreciation is actually a different or lesser appreciation. I think most of that irony is an attempt to say, ‘These aren’t exactly my kind of people, and I don’t picture myself sounding like that, but I still like it.’ I don’t believe in ironic appreciation. I think if you like something, the core of it is you like it.