Present Joys

“We thank the Lord of heaven and earth
who hath preserved us from our birth
for present joys, for blessings past,
and for the hope of heaven at last.”

Gerard Unger is seriously channeling Josef Müller-Brockmann here. Dang.

When the Mountain Goats came to Columbus in april, I gave Peter Peter Hughes (the band’s very steezy bass-player) one of my handmade bow ties. A few weeks ago, he sent me a very kind email thanking me for the gift. And now I’ve spotted some pictures of him wearing the tie at tMG shows! I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Huge thanks to my pal Valerie for finding the photos!!

A highlight from my day at the National Gallery was getting to see this Edward Hopper painting in person. I did an in-depth analysis of this painting for my color theory class.

So, after several weeks of mediocre results in shirtmaking, I’ve finally arrived at something I’m really proud of. I remade my entire draft after last week’s shirt, because I was not totally satisfied, and I think my pattern is vastly improved this week.

The fabric is Kaffe Fassett’s “shot cotton”, which I got from Sew to Speak for $9/yd. It’s extremely fine, and a great pleasure to work with. I was running out of white mercerized cotton thread, so I opted for this weird light-brown cotton thread I got at Banasch’s. It’s deadstock thread—old, and very fine quality. The effect of brown thread on yellow is nice. I used plastic brownish “horn” buttons instead of pearl.

As you can see, I made the inner collar stand out of the cool polka-dot fabric from my worst-fitting shirt to date. I think it looks really nice with the yellow… there’s a silver lining here!

I snapped this picture of the wrinkly, incomplete shirt while I still had daylight, but I am happy to report that it is 100% finished, with all its buttons attached and a hand-rolled hem. I’m going to wear it tomorrow with other flame-colored clothing in honor of Pentecost.

And one more note: I’ll be out of town for the better part of the next two weeks. This afternoon I cut out all the parts for two new shirts, but I won’t have the time to construct them until the end of the month. So “one shirt every week” will be on a hiatus until then. Stay tuned!

I just saw this band, Horse Feathers, last night. I was in the front row right next to the cello and violin. Needless to say, it was amazingly wonderful.