Lining to myself.

We often think that it's the visuals that need the maintenance. A skirt hem, a worn cuff or collar. But in truth it's the invisible part of the garment that gets the most wear that requires the most tending.

One of my vintage acquaintances came to me with some thrift store finds. These mid to late 60s coats with utterly trashed linings. She set them out and showed me the damage. Popped seams, shredded armholes,fabric tears, raw seams, you name it. They were not pretty, but the good news is they didn't have to be. She only wanted the linings wearable, because she was safety pinning them just to get by and it wasn't working anymore.

The sewing you hate to do.

UUUUUUGH!

We all have them. That one swing thing/technique you just can't stand doing. It's not necessarily something that may be time consuming, or even difficult, but you just loath even the thought of starting it, let along finishing it.

Catalog Sunday

Wards Spring/Summer 1941

A filled week, and it's not over.

Happy Thursday one and all!

Despite me being unemployed, I've had a week filled with projects. Brian is an ongoing project and as we keep learning one another, I find him a charming and loving personality.

Cool Vintage Things on the Internet

This week I have a cool little article from The New Yorker called A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. It's got some great images of classic ladies and their ink as well as some nice synopsis about tattoo's history among women. That book might be worth a read.

And remember, if you have interesting cool and vintage things you find on the internet that you'd like me to share, send me an email and I'll add it to a future installment of CVTotI.

Projects come together.

Happy Monday one and all. 

Hope you had a lovely weekend. Mine started with a long walk to the pet wash so Brian could get nice and clean with his medicated shampoo. He was stellar by the way.

Catalog Sunday

This Sunday I have fab fashions from some 1940/1941 Chicago Mail Orders.

Enjoy!!

NVL's 2013 assessment

With a new year comes new goals. That's how I see it. 

That's how I see a lot of things, so there you go, I guess.

So I guess I should say that I was laid off from my job on Monday. I can't say I didn't see it coming. I've had a feeling for a while now. It was the kind of job that made feeling like you had job security very difficult. It wasn't anything I did and I know I went and worked and came home. The company had a knack for not making you care about it, at least it did for me anyway. I got a small severance and my vacation hours so I'll let that keep me for a bit as I get aggressive on where I want to be in life.

I'm coming to the realization that I'm going to have to devote more time to my own content. Like with NVL, I need to build an audience and attract freelance or an agent that way. I'm really looking for an agent, I'm bad at selling myself. But first and for most, content.

• Flush out my animation reel. I've been making animation connections as best I can, and even though I have this illustration job, animation is my first love. 

This has been on my list since mid-last year. I really need to work on it now, and now I have the time and a bit of comfort to do so.

• Put together a children's book portfolio. I've met quite a few people in the children's book illustration field over the last few weeks and I want to use that. I'm going to get back to my BFA and put together a new and more polished body of children's book work.

THIS is really why I need an agent. It's a very difficult business to get into, and I'm sick of being told my work is 'hard to market' and 'hard to sell'. I  think my style fits into game design (board and card games) and tween books and graphic novels. I'm going to focus on that.

• Complete one of the novels I've been working on. Okay, I'm not a big writer really, but I do love a story. I've been working on and off of a fantasy story since I was sixteen. I want to finally finish it. If anyone would like to read it, I'll provide details later. I could use the feedback

I've got time and I've got a 600+ page book nearly complete. I'm thinking of e-publishing it and seeing how it goes. But first, I need an editor.

With all of that I'm still going to focus more on sewing. I'm going to work more on NVL, get the updated sites up, and see if I can make this working from home thing really viable. What else can I do. I just gotta keep going. Stopping means failure, and I got too much to do and offer before I do that, even if it's all an uphill battle.

Quilt Progress

I thought you all might be interested in where I am on the quilt.

I'm starting on the squares for the 8th block. Once I finish these nine, I'll have nearly 25% of the quilt complete. Yay!

It's amazing to see the progress like this. It's so large now that I can't lay it all out on my sewing table anymore! Squeeee!!!

Have a great Monday!

Catalog Sunday

December Showcase: brooch edition

Good morning everyone. 

It's raining this morning so I had to cut Brian's walkies short. He's just had breakfast and now is chewing on a bone. I love having a dog in the house again.

Sweaters part 2: Nip and tuck

Happy Monday.

*random cat photo*

It's still strange for me to sink in the new year. I know it will take a while to write the new date, but sometimes I keep thinking, geee, when is stuff going to start? I plan on doing a goals for the year post shortly, but this post is about sweaters.

My new dog, Brian.

Happy New Year! Finally, I'm back on line. Thank you all for tolerating my crazy cat lady type vent that I posted the other day. I was flustered, so don't think I was too crazy. It was just an odd and flustered way to start the new year, especially when I had such plans to do some work over the break.

But I digress.

Catalog Sunday

Montgomery Ward spring/summer 1937

Why I hate AT&T and why I'm disappointed in Sonic.net

Okay, this is not the normal thing I blog about, but this has given me so much trouble over the last few weeks I had to vent about it so bear with, okay?

I have DSL at home. I have it mainly because I don't have a tv, and truthfully because I wanted to stick with my ISP, Sonic.net. I love them. They are a California company, their call center is in Santa Rosa, and they give follow up calls and are all around stellar with customer service. Their high standards have kept me with them, even though I pay more. You see, I have to have a separate phone line via ATT because Sonic leases their lines to provide service. I'm spending easily $25 more a month than I have to, and have been for a good three years. I didn't mind because I knew I was paying for great service. That is until this past few weeks.

Over the last couple of months, I'm sure you all noticed the spotty posts on the blog. For some reason my phone line kept dropping, or degrading or no dial tone at all. I contacted my ISP first, to see if it was a DSL issue and it was not this time, but they said they would dispatch ATT to fix the line. If any of you still have a land line, you know ATT, the heartless bloated hydra they are will charge you if the issue is in the building, and not charge you if the problem is in their outside lines. First time it was in the building, or so they say, and the repair man even said that, 'my line should be faster,' because of the fix he did. This was in early November after a few weeks of noticeable drops in service. Faster? It was not.  It was actually worse.

The drops still kept coming, I couldn't check my mail or load a webpage at the same time. Lagging upon lagging. Nothing drives me more insane than tech that doesn't do what it's supposed to do. I called Sonic again, and this time the ATT dispatch repaired an 'outside' line.

So for a few weeks it was working. Then, in mid December, the same problems came back. Dropped connection, lagging pages. This time Sonic said there was some sort of 'static' on my connection, and my speeds were only half of what they should be. Again, AT&T was sent out, and mid December, I was operating again.

Now we hit New Years Eve. I return home to have no internet at all. Also, no dial tone on my line. What the hell? I contact Sonic again, and I had to wait until the third of January for the problem to be fixed. So I get home yesterday to find that nothing had changed! They apparently 'fixed an outside line', but I was still in the same boat. That rep called me at work saying that if there was a problem to call Sonic back. That is what I did.

And this time, for some reason, the person who talked to me said I needed to contact ATT. I explained to them that when this first started that I asked if I needed to do that and I was told that them dispatching ATT would be faster than me calling. He seemed to not care. He then said they had a new service that I had been waiting for to be offered in my area for about a year. I was ecstatic! Great, I said. Sign me up for that. Can it be done this weekend, I have Time Warner coming out on Saturday, give me a reason not to go with them.  Keep in mind, I've had issues with this DSL and phone line for over 8 weeks totaling over 20 days in zero internet connection. The guy was a dick and didn't try to customer service me at all. Just said no. I had had it at that point, and just said cancel my service and hung up.

I'm extremely disapointed. I've recommended Sonic to dozens of my friends, touted them to no end, but these last few weeks with the handling of this phone line and the tone of that rep just did it for me, and I'm sad. I love Sonic, I love their ethics and standards, but I can be treated like that from a shittier company and pay less money.

So that was part of my week. The good news is I'll save a good $25 a month extra, the bad news is Time Warner and my disappointment of Sonic. Perhaps I was stupid to think I could care about a company. I know, first world problems...sigh. Just had to vent, especially when I use my internet not just for entertainment, but communication with clients and freelance. It hurts me financially.

Okay, see you all later.