Last resort

I'm thinking about making myself a bathing suit. There's some really ugly, how-do-you-expect-me-to-swim-and-get-a-decent-tan-in-this crap out there. All I've seen are crazy get-ups that would fly right off your body if you dove into a pool or wave, or Olympic swimmer-type costumes not meant for regular humans.



But this notion has cornered me into a realm of the sewing world not meant for the faint-hearted. Fabrics with two- and four-way stretch. The inevitable visit to Spandex House. The reality that making this thing myself instead of buying something off a rack probably heightens the possibility of it flying off my body at an inappropriate moment.



But the patterns I've come across give me hope. Older patterns are so much cooler than their modern counterparts.



Well, hello. And I can use the leftover fabric to make a matching jacket, headscarf, and sarong. Won't I look jaunty by the water. I'm just kidding. I'll probably just make a jacket. And a headscarf.



Did you know Brooke Shields and Diana Ross used to shill bathing suit patterns?

Neither did I! And look at Diana, she has a ruffle on her butt!

Mad hatter

***Warning: this post is going to be unbelievably yawn-inspiring for some of you. Read at your own risk!***

I went a little nuts making hats recently. This one was inspired by a bad, stupid sunburn I got from a beach trip a couple weeks ago. I won't be fooled again!





I used a pattern from this book (Thanks, Lotta) and some excellent 80s Marimekko fabric (Thanks, Frank) that's subtly speckled, as if the colors were spray painted on (so subtle I don't think you can even tell what the heck I'm talking about from these pics).

I also made more of Judy Danz's reversible chemo hats. Can you dig it. Here's one made from vintage Liberty fabric with some more of the Kaffe Fasset fabric on the flip side.





Here's a stripey blue one with some cool blue Kaffe Fasset fabric on the flip side.





This one has green flowers and navy blue on the flip. And how about that crazy fabric-and-knitwear designing, Buddha-and-batik loving Kaffe?



This one has some more of his fabric on one side, and some turquoise stuff on the inside. If you ask me, none of these Fasset prints should have gone out of print. I love them. But you know the crazy fabric business. Fabric lines zip by hither and thither and then poof! Gone!



Well, I did say I went a little nuts hat-wise. I started out making just one hat for a friend going through chemo, and then decided to make one for her daughter, too, so they could wear them together if they liked. I'll donate the others somewhere...the Beth Israel Cancer Center in Union Square probably.

And yes, I am a big fan of Pernod. This particular bottle of Pernod turned out to be a big fan of these hats, too, generously offering to model them. Thank you, bottle of Pernod.



I will never be sun burnt again. I will also probably bump into a few lampposts on the way to the beach and plow over some seagulls accidentally when I get there but I will not end up sun burnt.

A lively visit down South

News flash! New Orleans is a crazy city!



You can tell from this pic that I am a bit suspicious of this whole drinking-on-the-street thing and expect to be surrounded by cops any moment, the way I would be in NYC.

I went down to meet up with P, who was there for the annual convention Tales of the Cocktail, a week of events like seminars, parties, competitions, and general debauchery for people who are serious about cocktails. And guess what? There are a lot of people who are very serious about that very subject, and from what I could tell, they were all very happy to see each other.

Here are a couple OTHER things that caught my attention. I guess sometimes it's convenient to park one's crutches as one would one's bicycle?



And here's an outfit you could buy for your kid in the 40s for Mardi Gras; it came in the little box that's pictured with it, cost a buck fifty, and included this fly little dress and shrug, a mask, and tiara. Dang!



This and tons of other impressive costumes and parade paraphernalia are at the very much worth visiting permanent Mardi Gras exhibit at the Louisiana State Museum.

Incidentally, it's relatively cheap to fly to New Orleans from NYC, and you can get cushy accommodations for cheap — for obvious reasons, New Orleans wants and needs your tourism dollars. Don't hesitate to get your butt down there if you're at all inclined, ya hear?

A very smart young lady and some silly pigeons

My talented and funny friend Lisa's talented and funny daughter Siena graduated from fifth grade this year with flying colors, and Friday night was the throwdown party to celebrate that fact. I decided to draw her a card, pictured here. But what to draw?

Well, it turns out there's a building SOMEWHERE in New York called the Siena, spelled exactly the way Siena spells her name. And when I went to look at it so I could draw it accurately, eight pigeons immediately snapped to and spelled out how they felt about Siena's spectacular report card. Then I looked closer at the building and noticed that the tenant on the top floor was either very excited about Siena's latest milestone too, or was just enthusiastic about fifth grade graduates in general. Whatever the case, I felt very lucky that events conspired in such a way and that I was able to capture at least some of the excitement.

Oh what a night

P and I spent an evening at the new Standard hotel in the meatpacking district this week. I was curious about the building as it stands over the newly open highline park and OK, from an architectural perspective at least, its not as super ugly and out of place as, say, the purplish Hotel Gansevoort on Hudson, which would look better in Miami or at the other end of a wrecking ball. Not that there aren't a lot of disconcerting things in that neighborhood these days already, especially for an old broad like myself who, I guess, relates more to the now-absent racks of hanging cow carcasses by day and streetwalkin' trannies by night than $400 haircuts and "Jeffrey."



But strangely, I felt right at home crashing for free in one of the Standard's deluxe rooms. (We were there as part of a press event for an intriguing new sleep product.) Here's the mysterious P getting to know the door hardware of our room.



It was a foggy night after a thoroughly rainy day and from our window it looked as if the top half of the Empire State Building disappeared.



But it was back the next morning. Phew!



I highly recommend taking advantage of anything that helps shake up your everyday perspective. It was fun being a tourist in my hometown, if only for a tiny blip of time.

What to do when you get tired of staring at your Vermeers

Perhaps you already saw one of the few articles published recently about the bowling alley in the basement of the Frick mansion.



But if you haven't, check it owt! This is exactly what I've always suspected are hidden in these grand old museums and former homes. I've long wondered why we can't see the art AND the private rooms the old timey rich folks. (I know, because in most cases they've been turned into the museums' offices. Bor-rang.)

In the case of the Frick game room, according to the Times, which has a great panorama of the lanes, the public isn't allowed in because there's only a single narrow staircase leading down to it and blah blah safety, fire hazard yak yak. I guess I'm going to have to befriend a Frick employee who will then feel a terrible stab of betrayal when they realize my interest in them was only about gaining entry to the ancient bowling alley but by then I'll realize I'm really fond of the Frick employee actually and will have to win their trust and affection back before the end of the movie.



I wonder what nutty rooms that grumpy old assassination-inspirin' industrialist had in Eagle Rock, his summer estate. We'll never know, sadly, as this wee 'lil manse was razed 40 years ago.

Talk about stopping traffic

My sister lives in a beautiful place where an everyday occurrence might include having to pause while some colorful plumage makes its way across the street.

Sure, as P reminded me, there are peacocks strutting around New York City, too. Up at St. John the Divine, to be specific.

But it's not the same, man. It's not the same!

I wonder what the peacock was thinking as he/she walked away. I'm soooo over people staring at me. Or crap, I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning.

Stretching class

Two cat posts in a row. Interesting. Well, all the time spent at my desk lately writing has allowed me to observe cat behavior in my apartment more closely.



I had no idea Olive and Beatrix were taking advantage of the new stretching book I bought recently. I'm sorry the image is so dark, it's due to some serious stealth photography. I'm impressed by Olive holding her stretch for longer than several long minutes. Good for you, Olive. Beatrix was resting on the book after practicing some ambitious stretches of her own.

Have you ever heard of Stretching by Bob and Jean Anderson? It's been out since the 70s and has great, clear line drawings by Jean that show you exactly what ya gotta do. Here's an image I got from Amazon; most of the pages are more spare than this, just the drawings and no text, which I love.

Prolific cat

Beatrix was exhausted after working hard on the rewrite of her new play. (She's highly competitive and is clearly competing with me, silly cat.)

Crazy humans

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo

Frank sent me this video yesterday and I was like, wow, yeah, look at those crazy guys. But I think my dull reaction is because I've been knocked flat with a nasty cold all week. I've had a passionate interest in nothing other than tea and my tissue box. But I must be getting better, because I woke up this morning and thought WAIT A MINUTE. WERE THOSE GUYS...well, just watch the video. You'll see what I mean. (And yes, this is real. No joke. Real.)

Also, I forgot to mention, the reading of my new play went great. I lucked out and got a great cast, thanks in no small part to Sonya's slick handiwork (thank you, S!). The very next day, the wonderful actress who read the lead for me, Birgit Huppuch, won an Obie. How cool is that? Congrats, Birgit!

A really cool pile of trash

Aw, man. I wish I had been in L.A. when this show was up so I could have seen it. Now that's some creative sewing.

A day in the park

I've been busy. Busy, I tell you!



I finished a first draft of my new play a little while ago and then dove into a bunch of sewing projects while I bided my time until its first reading, which is bang! coming up this week. Hooray! Hearing talented actors read aloud, for the first time, something I've been working on for the past few years is a trippy, giddy, frightening, and all sorts of other hard-to-describe feelings, thing. YIKES, in other words. My writing has always been the most important thing in the world to me, so big and onerous that no sewing machine, fabric, nor innumerable colored pencils could quash my passion for it. (Passion being a word defined as 1. the state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces, 2. an outbreak of anger, and 3. suffering as well as 4. ardor and 5. enthusiasm, don'tcha know.)



So it was with great relief that I could distract myself from my upcoming reading with a drawing project given to me by none other than a dude with the initials DPE IV. The assignment was to draw something, anything, for an assigned date, in my case May 2, on May 2. It's for an arty datebook that will be published without a year distinction, so anyone can use it, anytime. So I drew this scene on May 2 and sent it off last night. I meant to also work in a pogo-sticking dog but ran out of time. And I was horrified to realize I left a tail off one of the cats, until P told me the running cat is obviously a tailless Manx cat, many of whom have particularly round heads. Well, of course.

Some bad-ass hats

I woke up from a nap this weekend to a message on my cell phone: "Hi, Jocelyn? You won! Your hat won the contest. Please call—." I thought I was still dreaming and was all like, "Dreams are so fun sometimes." But then I remembered I did actually make some hats and enter them in a contest. Last week, the ever-creative and industrious Nina invited me, Emily, and Laura over to make some chapeaus for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The combination of a good cause combined with a use for my mountains of scrap fabric inspired me to knock out three of them before I even got to Nina's. O.K., enough talk. On to the images!

This is the one that won. It's a reversible head topper with long ties, made using this ingenious free pattern (thank you, Judy Danz!). It's really easy to make, and it's cozy and cool and inspires people to vote for it and give unsuspecting sewers prize money. Here's one side, with the other side's ties facing up; the other side of the ties match the flowered fabric, of cawse.



The extremely cute Emily finished her hat before everyone else and graciously became the model of the evening. Which was a great thing, because a couple of them hats didn't fit on my big head, don'tcha know.



Here it is in reverse.





I also made a plaid hat with a bow in the back for those who enjoy a more androgynous look.





I can't really explain the purple polka-dotted one. There must be someone out there who would enjoy it. Right? It's soft and won't fly off your head in a windstorm thanks to those burgundy ties.



Emily gives this hat more distinction than it might deserve, I think. Damn, you're good, Emily.



Then, while I was at Nina's, I sewed some ribbon with hearts and silver rick rack, etc., onto a black hat...it turned out O.K.



While Emily, Laura and Nina made their own jaw-dropping head toppers. Here's Emily in her own design.



Now that's more like it. Beeyootiful.



Nina's and Laura's were no less impressive, but I shall stop foisting pictures at you now. Nina, post yours and Laura's on your awesome blog! The organization that hosted the contest is called NYCreates, and the hats all went to the super cool Heavenly Hats foundation. If you sew and have a yen for it, make a hat! It's way faster and more satisfying than many other wacko sewing projects, in my humble opinion.

The kid likes to draw

Here are two of Hazy's drawings from her recent visit. The first is of a dragon named Scaly and Deby, a cat (I lovvve that cat). The other, of bears swimming at the beach, shows a frightened woman (in yellow) who drops her bags and screams when she sees...



BEARS!!! BEARS AT THE BEACH!!!



I don't know, lady, those bears don't look so scary to me. Why don't you relax, maybe the bear in the water will lend you his goggles and you'll make a new friend or two. Dang.

Huh?

Check out this fabric. It's a Japanese import, "Rakugaki Sketchbook," designed by Megumi Sakakibara...but look, it's like a page from a sketchbook, seriously, just like, a bunch of partially drawn rabbits and trees and...whoa.

Also, I'm a little dizzy from the Pulitzer announcements this year. Usually I just yawn and roll my eyes. But this time, one of my favorite writers grabbed the award for fiction. Whutt? Elizabeth Strout is a great writer, and I'm proud to say I've shown up at several of her readings to stare googly-eyed at her and tell her what a genius she is in person (fortunately she has not yet met my eye with a weary "are you stalking me?" gaze), always a kind of awkward and yet totally satisfying thing to do. If you haven't read her *award-winning* novel Olive Kitteridge, or Amy and Isabelle, or even the essay she wrote in The Friend Who Got Away, a great collection of essays about the oh-so-interesting subject of women's friendships that have gone awry, then hotfoot it to the bookstore or the library or start clicketty-clacking on your computer to find her stuff online, O.K.? O.K.

Lynn Nottage, an awesome playwright and my fellow MTC fellow, also won, for her play Ruined that's up at MTC right now. Congratu-hallelujah-lations, Lynn! And can I just point out that the finalists for both drama and fiction were all women? This contributes to my dizziness, O.K.? Reading the list was like a weird optical illusion or something. Since when are women so thoroughly represented, unless it's like, Pulitzer Prizes for Women year, or something? I'm just sayin.