Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

A package from Zazzle arrived this morning, surprising me. I decided to log into the website and see if I had ordered something, before assuming it was from a gift exchange and putting it aside until Groundhog Day.

I had in fact ordered two t-shirts with Sandra Boynton cartoons, "udderfly" and "manatee-shirt."
I just tried on my Boynton-cartoon udderfly t-shirt and the manatee-shirt, and they both fit, without much extra room -- I decided I already have more than enough t-shirts that fit me loosely. Having tried them on, I'm going to run them through the wash before wearing them; I might have had trouble resisting the urge to wear them immediately if I had ordered them in August instead of November.

The slightly odd thing is, yes this is in a way a gift from past-me, but I ordered these shirts only a couple of weeks ago.

This afternoon was the gift-opening/reveal for the Scintillation Groundhog Day gift exchange.

lydy made me a wool hat, which is a wonderful shade of purple and big enough for me: most excellent.

Grace (who is not on DW as far as I know) was very pleased with the gift I sent her, three kinds of washi tape. I hadn't really known what washi tape was until she said it was one of the things she would like, but I looked around on Etsy and found some nice designs from a Canadian seller. (The mail, and customs, were iffy enough when I was shopping that I didn't want to send something from the US to Ontario.) I got an automated email a few weeks ago asking me to rate my purchase, which I can now do.

A couple of photos of my new peacock-embroidered hoodie. They're better photos of the garment than of me.

( Read more... )

I got this from UnusualFrequency, on Etsy -- which I mentioned when i got the first one, but Liz had to shut the shop down for a while in between.

I got email this afternoon inviting me to join/connect with someone on some kind of business social network. I almost deleted it unread, but my phone displayed the first line, saying it was from "Martin Rosen, of The Sock Man." That suggested that maybe he was still in business--I'd tried to go to his website a couple of times earlier in the pandemic, and it didn't respond, and it's a shop in Greenwich Village that does a significant amount of walk-in business.

I'm not interested in the business network thing, but I am going to be ordering some more socks.

Blick Art Supplies is currently pushing fiber crafts supplies. I took a look and saw that they have a variety of bandanas, both patterned--tie dye, paisley, and batik--and plain undyed cotton. I have ordered 16, some plain and some patterned, figuring that's enough for two people who do the laundry about once a week. Some of the patterns turn out to be back-ordered, but six undyed bandanas and four colorful ones will be heading our way. I decided not to pay for faster shipping, so cattitude and I will have to make do with other things -- we have a couple of silk winter scarves -- or work harder on social distancing. (If I want to go for a walk and not run into people, maybe don't go out at the nicest part of the day.)

Here's a link for the tie-dyed bandanas. Those are $3.99 each, for a 22-inch square. The undyed cotton comes in two sizes, and the smaller ones are $2.99 each.

Almost 30 years ago, the fanzine convention Corflu was in El Paso, Texas.

El Paso is right across the border from Juarez, Mexico. There was a group outing before the con really started, and I bought a blue-and-purple striped cotton poncho, partly as a souvenir and partly because I thought it would be useful.

Back in New York, I quickly discovered that many of the days that were cool enough for me to want the poncho, but warm enough that the poncho would be enough, were windy. (There are disadvantages to living that close to the Hudson River.) So I put it aside, but kept it, putting it on one shelf or another.

Then I found myself wearing a wrist brace almost 24/7. Somewhere in the last thirty years, my thermoregulation got wonky, such that I can go from too hot to too cold, and back again, within ten minutes. (I'm not having hot flashes. I tend to blame it on the MS, because almost anything with no other identifiable cause might be an MS symptom.) I'd been coping with that by putting on a light sweater or sweatshirt as needed, removing it again, etc. but the brace interferes with it.

So, the poncho. It's very easy to put on and remove, and I don't need to worry about wind inside the apartment. I hadn't expected it to suddenly be practical in my life, and I'm glad I kept it.

I think this was either on my Dreamwidth reading page, or comments to a post there: someone posted about a source of dresses, with pockets, with some room for customization (including length). I remember looking at a black dress, and the image noted how tall the model was. It's not Svaha, I was just looking at that.

We went to the farmers market in Central Square yesterday. The season for Vanessa grapes is over, much later than I'd expected, so I bought a quart of Marquis grapes to try, and two Roxbury russet apples for the same reason. We also came home with beets, an acorn squash, a few little Diva cucumbers, and butternut squash ravioli. (Two of the cucumbers were part of last night's dinner.)

Then we went to Toscanini's for ice cream. The list of flavors included sour cream, which seemed odd, but I figured it was worth asking for a taste. I tried it and said something like "mmm" while considering the taste. The server said I seemed uncertain, and I said that the uncertainty was whether to get just sour cream, or some of that and some raspberry. Also that I was mentally comparing it with the sweet cream flavor.

The sour cream ice cream, like the sweet cream, is very simple; it's tangier, but not as sour as lemon. I got a hot fudge sundae with half sour cream and half raspberry, then indulged myself further and got a pint of each to bring home with me. (A pint for take-out costs slightly more than a small hot fudge sundae, and is of course significantly more ice cream; it's getting two and a sundae that feels self-indulgent.

When I was paying for the ice cream, the cashier looked at my t-shirt, one of the series of prints Freddie Baer did for the Tiptree Award, and asked what it was for. So I gave her name, and a very brief explanation of the Tiptree. He asked if he could write that down, because he's a visual artist and likes science fiction. I happily spelled Freddie's name and gave him tiptree.org for information about the award. I have several of those shirts, and mostly think of them in terms of having cool illustrations, rather than remembering that they promote the award as well as raising funds for it.

When we got home, cattitude and I did some more unpacking, of a box that he thinks we'd meant to send to the storage unit. Along with more hangers than we're ever going to use, there were four pairs of shoes, three of which are going to the charity shop because they don't fit; a t-shirt I hadn't worn in years because I thought it didn't fit (and maybe for a while it didn't); and some random socks and such that I threw away because I wasn't going to wear them. That box was stacked on top of another larger one that says it also contains clothes; if we unpack that, we'll have cleared a significant amount of bedroom floor space and be able to get at another bookcase.

Today I took the bus out to Burlington, to the LL Bean store there. I wanted a new winter coat, and I wanted to try things on for size, and see how many pockets they had. That was a very successful trip: I got a long coat, two flannel shirts, and a pair of jeans. (Some of their men's jeans fit me as well as any women's pants I've found, and they're made of heavier denim and have better pockets.)

I decided recently that I wanted to be measured for a bra, mostly because I haven't been in a couple of years and body shapes do change. The Macy's web page told me mainly that it doesn't play well with Firefox; Nordstrom's explicitly said they provide this service. OK, Nordstrom's it is. (They're about a block from each other within the same mall in Bellevue.)

( a bit about body shape, but mostly about clothing sizes and my trouble finding clothes )

Coats, and other clothing stuff

My body shape has changed over the last couple of years, which means that a bunch of clothing that used to fit doesn't.

( cut for length and for clothing/body size stuff )