Seasonal Sewing

Do you get an itch for the long, light-filled days of summer sewing when the view outside your window gets snowy?

I do.

It is February 2nd. Groundhog Day. Winter in this hemisphere, and winter means winter sewing--usually. Corduroy pants, maybe, skirts that can be worn with tights, jackets, long-sleeved t-shirts. Or we dig out our knitting needles to make something warm with wool.

This is the practical stuff to make when the thermometer doesn't often hover above freezing. And I love making it. When I've just successfully sewn a zipper fly on a pair of pants, I feel like I belong to some secret club. Maybe someday I'll join the bound buttonhole and welt pocket secret clubs, too. The tailoring secret club. The drafting a jeans pattern club.

But something sneaks up on me, too, no matter how gratifying a zipper fly is--an itch for the airy clothes. So I troll through my photos, looking at the clothes I made last summer, and that is my balm until the warm breezes arrive.

Below are two pieces I designed for myself in August--a denim jumper and a sleeveless blouse made from a very soft, drapey quilting cotton.




Peace out.

YouTube videos

Have you seen these videos on YouTube? I think they're fun.

• The communications students at University of Quebec at Montreal lip syncing to the Black Eyed Peas (and the making of)
• The songs done by the California couple/band Pomplamoose (and this cover of Book of Love by the girl, Nataly Dawn)
• The Vlogbrothers' Gift of Gary Busey video

Peace out.

Books I've Been Reading

Here are some more YA books I've read and enjoyed lately:

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (the authors of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist)

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (due out in April 2010--an advanced reader copy) by John Green and David Levithan

Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson

Let it Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle

The Mysterious Benedict Society (the first in a series) by Trenton Lee Stewart

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

Some of them, such as Love is the Higher Power, deal with difficult topics (in this case September 11). All of them, though, particularly Love is the Higher Power, focus on the uplifting.

Speaking of which, I loved this post by Meg Cabot, the author of The Princess Diaries series. She writes in favor of the good-old escapist read.

Another Look at YA

I heart essays and books of essays. Lately I've been into these two books, full of essays by adults about the books they read as kids and teenagers.

• Everything I Need to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell--This fun anthology is filled with essays by grown women writers about the Judy Blume books that shaped them growing up. Contributors include Meg Cabot and Stephanie Lessing. Most of the essays are that mix of comic and tragic that pretty much adolescent experience seems to embody. Even though I've read relatively few Judy Blume novels, this book still had me rapt, and I felt like I had read Judy Blume's full body of work by the end. This anthology is an excellent illustration of the power of books to reach out across divides and give lonely, confused, or curious readers something to run with.

• Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stop Reading by Lizzie Skurnick--This got its start as a column on Jezebel.com. The book is filled with book reports on a range young adult novels--some I'd heard of (Judy Blume, of course, is included) and some I hadn't. I haven't read much of it, but I have skimmed the whole thing, and it looks great. I love thinking about why the books we love matter so much.

Both of these books steer far away from a dry, academic tone. I know that literary analysis, even that with a light, conversational tone, isn't for everyone. To me, though, nothing makes YA novels better than a little analysis. And this is just the way to do it--to make it fun.

A Love Letter to The Enchanted April

Dear Enchanted April,

I think the stars aligned for us to meet. First, I saw a flier for your play version, and the description sounded so lovely that your title remained on the surface of my mind. I never saw the play, but when I was in a bookstore that month, walking by the clearance wall, what book should be prominently displayed, half-off, but you? It didn't matter to me that you were filled with typos because the sale edition was published by one of those online companies that scans in out-of-copyright books and spits them out without proofreading. It only mattered that I found you.

You embody everything that is good about literature. You are filled with gut-busting comedy. Your main character, Lotty, is my existential hero. You make such prudent observations about people. Your character's lives are all transformed for the better.

I am so thankful that Elizabeth von Arnim wrote you, and that Mike Newell directed a film version of you in the '90s that finally came out on DVD this year. But truth be told, it's the book version of you that I like the best. The actors are great in the movie, but they just don't sound as wonderful as they do in my imagination, when I read your words.

Thank you so much for taking me to the coast of Italy for a month in the 1920s, just by reading your pages. You make me believe in change.

Love,
SewBissy

So Very Cheesy

It's time for some cheese. So far I've only acknowledged the stuff out there that avoids, for the most part, being corny. (The Singles Ward not included.) So I'd like to take a break now and acknowledge those works out there that are perhaps not high quality, but oh-so-good anyway.

• Center Stage--This movie about young dancers in a prestigious New York ballet company can be a little nauseating at times (namely the salsa dancing scene--"Your sweat is sweet!"), but the dancing is good. It's worth it for that alone. (Especially the jazz class scene and the year-end performance.) This movie came out when I was taking dance, and our teacher, after hearing many students rave about the movie, finally had to say, "Girls, I understand that the dancing is great, but that love story was awful." I guess that's just what happens when you get amazing dancers to try and act, too. Oh, and it has a soundtrack with Mandy Moore. I somehow have a weakness for Mandy Moore music. She just makes life sound fun. (While looking up the link on IMDb, I realized that a sequel, Center Stage: Turn It Up came out in 2008.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Father of the Bride (and Father of the Bride: Part II)--This is almost too good to be included on this list. I mean come on, it's Steve Martin and Diane Keaton. Still, since I have a hazy sense of embarrassment around expressing just how much I like this, I think it's eligible. This is one of those times when the sequel is as good as, if not better than, the original (although the original original, of course, is the one with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor).
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sleepless in Seattle--There's just something so comforting about Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in innocuous romantic comedies, and when they're in them together--even better. I'm looking at you, too, You've Got Mail.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• High School Musical 3: Senior Year--Why are you so good, High School Musical 3? Is it your song? Your dance? Your smiley Zac Efron? (I am forever endeared to the kid after my first exposure to him, playing an autistic boy in the TV movie Miracle Run.) I don't even enjoy the first two movies that much. This last one is just so...infectious in the best way. It makes me wish I'd gone to a singing, dancing high school.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Meg Cabot in general--This is the author of The Princess Diaries and many, many more novels for both young adults and adults. I've only read the Queen of Babble series, but I've seen the Princess movies (with Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews), and all these combine to make me a big Meg Cabot fan in general. The fact that I've included her on the list gives me pause, though--doesn't she deserve some real recognition? Chick lit gets a bad reputation, but unjustly so. Just because a book is written for a female audience, that automatically makes is seem shallow? Of course not! Here's a blog post by YA author Maureen Johnson that elaborates on this point.

This is actually just the beginning--I'm just too embarrassed to list more. I'll work up the nerve someday, though.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

I just finished this book by E. Lockhart. So good! I'd heard very good things about The Disreputable History before I read it (like this NPR recommendation by the author of Book Lust, Nancy Pearl), so I had very high expectations. When I got to the last third of the book, I started to really get what all the good reviews were talking about.

How do I even describe it? Let's start with the facts. Main character (you guessed it): Frankie Landau-Banks, a girl at an elite boarding school in northern Massachusetts. When she becomes aware of the presence of an active secret society on campus, she's first intrigued and then indignant. It's an all-male affair, one that has no room for her. That is, until she hatches a brilliant scheme.

And the brilliant scheme? That really hits its stride in the second half/last third of the book.

What I really loved about this book was its girl-power message. E. Lockhart did a wonderful job of describing what it's like to grow up girl. Wanting respect and caring/loving relationships at the same time. Feeling like you have so much to say but no one to hear you. Wanting to be seen and be a part of a world that excludes you.

This was no helpless heroine, and it also wasn't a caricature of a feminist, either. It seemed like a portrait of a real girl, one with a healthy sense of self, one caught between who the world was telling her to be and who she wanted to be.

And you know, reading this was an eye-opener. It made me realize how rare it is for a fiction book to openly discuss a girl/woman's place in society. The only examples I can think of off the top of my head are Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska by John Green. In those, it never really gets thoroughly worked out, though, because narrators are boys. Don't get me wrong--these are great books, because the narrators are acknowledging that there are three-dimensional females in their lives, but you don't get inside the heads of the females actually having these thoughts.

So here's what I'm really trying to say: As someone who's been that girl struggling to feel like she's more than society says she is, I like this book. As someone who's been that girl unable to understand why, when she does speak up, she's either viewed as a cute, harmless, nearly invisible ladybug or as a trampling, destructive, hostile elephant, never just a person something important to say, I like this book. As someone who wants girls these days to know that they're not crazy for wanting to feel empowered, I like this book.

So The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks? Highly recommended.

P.S. New Moon Girls magazine is, in my opinion, the best place for young women to find support in growing up girl. It's aimed at a slightly younger audience than this book, though.