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cimorene1.
The fashion highlight slash teachable moment of the last few weeks was when my Thai classmate asked the Bangladeshi one why she doesn't wear jewels dangling from her nose/ear/face daily. There were other related questions but this one stuck with me the most, possibly mainly because the lady in question tried to answer by miming the amount of stuff that would be dangling in her face if she had worn it. ("Wedding! Wedding! Only wedding." "Why?")
I pointed out that although our Thai classmate also owns some large and elaborate jewelry, as do many of the rest of us, she doesn't wear it out every day with jeans and a t-shirt either, and she ceded the point reluctantly with a wistful protest, "But it's so pretty." Well, this is true.
2.
It's Father's Day in Finland today. American Father's day was in July and when I talked to my dad on the phone I told him that I thought of writing him a haiku in Finnish for the occasion (he's a poet so there's a lot of poems-for-occasions going around in our family), but my Finnish hadn't got very far and also I wanted to say "poet", which in Finnish is 5 syllables by itself (runoilija). I had to ask Wax how to say it; at the time I'd only been learning Finnish a couple of months. But now I was able to write one completely on my own (although Finnish word length was still a bit of a stumbling block)! And I was even able to make it a science fiction haiku (he's been into those lately)!
("Darling Daddy, chair faster than time machine.") (Finnish doesn't have definitive pronouns, so it could be a specific time machine or a general time machine; context doesn't specify.) (My dad's power wheelchair has the ability to jump curbs and zoom around really fast, possibly not actually faster than a time machine, if one exists, but assuming that one doesn't I guess it is still faster. My sister and I both enjoy standing on the back of it and riding around. In San Francisco this summer she banged her knee on the frame twice and I did it once. It's not a completely hazard-free hobby.)
3.
I know that Red Dwarf is crack and has about as much concern for continuity as Gene Roddenberry or Arthur Conan Doyle, which is to say, less than none unless continuity looks like it would be useful for a good joke. But still, even on second watch-through, it is quite hard to deal with 7x02 "Stoke Me a Clipper" when Rimmer leaves, because it lends a (perhaps ludicrously out of place?) bittersweet note to latter seasons to know that Original Rimmer is still gone, even though Resurrected Rimmer is right there (ludicrous because everything else is already rather sad/bleak/bitter-along-with-the-fun-bits by definition, written right into the basic premise and everything). There's badfic where Original Rimmer comes back and he and Lister have a variety of action-packed, tear-streaked, porny love stories in consequence, but aside from any other potential drawbacks to them, they also leave me feeling badly for Resurrected Rimmer. (Except for that one where it actually was Original Rimmer who had traveled back in time after 600 years of immortal badassery to go undercover as himself and he wasn't really resurrected at all.)
4.
I've mentioned my Ideal Dress before, the dress I have exalted above all others and always wanted since childhood. (It's the green flapper dress that Cyd Charisse wears in the Broadway Melody dance number of Singin in the Rain.)
Well,waxjism and I still haven't got around to making a formal replacement-for-the-nonexistent-wedding portrait of the two of us that we didn't have taken when we eloped three years ago. (Wax has a suit that would work alright, but I don't have anything I could wear for it, not even a white blouse that fits to stick under a waistcoat in a pinch.)
(NB towaxjism and people who hate descriptions of clothes: skip this paragraph) I mean, I have my old bridesmaid dresses: a black satin evening gown from Amanda's wedding, a black twill dress such as a sexetary might wear to a 1940s funeral from Aubry's, and a Grecianesque number in eggplant-colored chiffon from pierydys's; I also have the raspberry chiffon cocktail dress I wore to Marre's wedding, and my favorite dress has served at both hollsh and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
guinevere33's weddings, but the straps literally broke OFF both times and it's waiting to have a third set sewn on. And basically, black glitter lace over nude and black twill and black satin and red-wine-ish chiffon are all way less apropos for one's OWN pseudo-wedding portrait than they are for somebody else's. I don't want it to look like a PROM portrait.
So sometimes I toy with the idea of using this as an excuse to get (let's be real: make) myself something like this dress. (I've never really had anything close, except for the sequin-trimmed green satin leotard I performed a tap recital in at age six... I've only ever even owned two pieces of green formal wear, an ill-advised forest velour overall at age 10 and the metallic dark green party dress I wore tobexless's wedding.) So even a piece of only semi-dressy stuff in a shade from the emerald/malachite-green family would be a hugely exciting event in my wardrobe. On the other hand, as much as I love that particular shade of light-malachite-emerald-with-a-dash-of-kelly green, sequins aren't really me. For that matter, formal wear isn't really me.
That's why after we became obsessed with knitting and uh, spent our first 50 euros on cashmerino silk-blend yarn, it occurred to me to maybe interpret my Ideal Dress in the form of a dressy pullover sweater, like maybe a tunic-length one with a cable design echoing the shapes of the sequin embellishments. Obviously we can make a silk-blend pullover for Wax too, but the design is complicated by her refusal to have favorites of anything. She doesn't even have a favorite TYPE of shade of green, let alone an Ideal Dress. She'd be quite happy to go out dressed as a bag lady whose entire wardrobe had fallen into a random selection of different green dyes.
The last few days I've been pondering the linked diamond designs on the Cyd dress and the 30's-inspired design of Keira Knightley's Atonement dress, which would look better on me, and is just as beautiful, although it doesn't have the same nostalgia attached. (The neckline of the latter is certainly easier to interpret onto a long-sleeved sweater.)
The fashion highlight slash teachable moment of the last few weeks was when my Thai classmate asked the Bangladeshi one why she doesn't wear jewels dangling from her nose/ear/face daily. There were other related questions but this one stuck with me the most, possibly mainly because the lady in question tried to answer by miming the amount of stuff that would be dangling in her face if she had worn it. ("Wedding! Wedding! Only wedding." "Why?")
I pointed out that although our Thai classmate also owns some large and elaborate jewelry, as do many of the rest of us, she doesn't wear it out every day with jeans and a t-shirt either, and she ceded the point reluctantly with a wistful protest, "But it's so pretty." Well, this is true.
2.
It's Father's Day in Finland today. American Father's day was in July and when I talked to my dad on the phone I told him that I thought of writing him a haiku in Finnish for the occasion (he's a poet so there's a lot of poems-for-occasions going around in our family), but my Finnish hadn't got very far and also I wanted to say "poet", which in Finnish is 5 syllables by itself (runoilija). I had to ask Wax how to say it; at the time I'd only been learning Finnish a couple of months. But now I was able to write one completely on my own (although Finnish word length was still a bit of a stumbling block)! And I was even able to make it a science fiction haiku (he's been into those lately)!
Isäni kulta
Tuoli nopeampi
Kuin aikakone
("Darling Daddy, chair faster than time machine.") (Finnish doesn't have definitive pronouns, so it could be a specific time machine or a general time machine; context doesn't specify.) (My dad's power wheelchair has the ability to jump curbs and zoom around really fast, possibly not actually faster than a time machine, if one exists, but assuming that one doesn't I guess it is still faster. My sister and I both enjoy standing on the back of it and riding around. In San Francisco this summer she banged her knee on the frame twice and I did it once. It's not a completely hazard-free hobby.)
3.
I know that Red Dwarf is crack and has about as much concern for continuity as Gene Roddenberry or Arthur Conan Doyle, which is to say, less than none unless continuity looks like it would be useful for a good joke. But still, even on second watch-through, it is quite hard to deal with 7x02 "Stoke Me a Clipper" when Rimmer leaves, because it lends a (perhaps ludicrously out of place?) bittersweet note to latter seasons to know that Original Rimmer is still gone, even though Resurrected Rimmer is right there (ludicrous because everything else is already rather sad/bleak/bitter-along-with-the-fun-bits by definition, written right into the basic premise and everything). There's badfic where Original Rimmer comes back and he and Lister have a variety of action-packed, tear-streaked, porny love stories in consequence, but aside from any other potential drawbacks to them, they also leave me feeling badly for Resurrected Rimmer. (Except for that one where it actually was Original Rimmer who had traveled back in time after 600 years of immortal badassery to go undercover as himself and he wasn't really resurrected at all.)
4.
I've mentioned my Ideal Dress before, the dress I have exalted above all others and always wanted since childhood. (It's the green flapper dress that Cyd Charisse wears in the Broadway Melody dance number of Singin in the Rain.)
Well,
waxjism and I still haven't got around to making a formal replacement-for-the-nonexistent-wedding portrait of the two of us that we didn't have taken when we eloped three years ago. (Wax has a suit that would work alright, but I don't have anything I could wear for it, not even a white blouse that fits to stick under a waistcoat in a pinch.) (NB to
waxjism and people who hate descriptions of clothes: skip this paragraph) I mean, I have my old bridesmaid dresses: a black satin evening gown from Amanda's wedding, a black twill dress such as a sexetary might wear to a 1940s funeral from Aubry's, and a Grecianesque number in eggplant-colored chiffon from pierydys's; I also have the raspberry chiffon cocktail dress I wore to Marre's wedding, and my favorite dress has served at both hollsh and guinevere33's weddings, but the straps literally broke OFF both times and it's waiting to have a third set sewn on. And basically, black glitter lace over nude and black twill and black satin and red-wine-ish chiffon are all way less apropos for one's OWN pseudo-wedding portrait than they are for somebody else's. I don't want it to look like a PROM portrait. So sometimes I toy with the idea of using this as an excuse to get (let's be real: make) myself something like this dress. (I've never really had anything close, except for the sequin-trimmed green satin leotard I performed a tap recital in at age six... I've only ever even owned two pieces of green formal wear, an ill-advised forest velour overall at age 10 and the metallic dark green party dress I wore to
bexless's wedding.) So even a piece of only semi-dressy stuff in a shade from the emerald/malachite-green family would be a hugely exciting event in my wardrobe. On the other hand, as much as I love that particular shade of light-malachite-emerald-with-a-dash-of-kelly green, sequins aren't really me. For that matter, formal wear isn't really me. That's why after we became obsessed with knitting and uh, spent our first 50 euros on cashmerino silk-blend yarn, it occurred to me to maybe interpret my Ideal Dress in the form of a dressy pullover sweater, like maybe a tunic-length one with a cable design echoing the shapes of the sequin embellishments. Obviously we can make a silk-blend pullover for Wax too, but the design is complicated by her refusal to have favorites of anything. She doesn't even have a favorite TYPE of shade of green, let alone an Ideal Dress. She'd be quite happy to go out dressed as a bag lady whose entire wardrobe had fallen into a random selection of different green dyes.
The last few days I've been pondering the linked diamond designs on the Cyd dress and the 30's-inspired design of Keira Knightley's Atonement dress, which would look better on me, and is just as beautiful, although it doesn't have the same nostalgia attached. (The neckline of the latter is certainly easier to interpret onto a long-sleeved sweater.)
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Date: 13 Nov 2012 08:42 pm (UTC)