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well this is going to be a very interesting post thank you yes

August 23, 2010 in Uncategorized by Jessica | 6 comments

You know how some people do those weight-loss blogs, and post all their dirty little caloric secrets to try to keep them honest and help them lose weight? Well, here I am, officially announcing my Closet Diet! Because I keep threatening to do it but NOT doing it, so here it is. You have to try to keep me honest.

So. I am going to get rid of a bunch of stuff! Yay. Goals:

1. Wear only black and grey (and navy blue and blah blah cheat cheat).
1.a. Unless it’s handmade.
1.b. Or really awesome.
2. Own fewer shoes. Wear the ones you do own.
3. Actually, no 3. That’s all. Only wear black and wear lots of high heels. Those are my goals. Hi I miss New York. Also, look awesome, all the time, and quit buying so much stuff, and when you do buy stuff only buy it because you need it, unless it’s 1.b., and don’t buy crappy stuff, unless it’s black tshirts, in which case, yes, feel free to continue buying like 3 $8 H&M tshirts per month, because it’s all you wear, anyway. But wear them with cooler shoes.

So. I am going to achieve these goals by paring my closet down a TON. I will get rid of anything with holes, anything I will never really wear, anything too old or too stupid. I am a major packrat sometimes. I will overcome this. I will ebay what I can, give away the things I love too much to donate, donate the things I can, and THROW AWAY the 48 deodorant-stained, full-of-holes, stretched-out H&M t-shirts that for some reason I never seem to be able to part with. Actually, I’ll probably make new underpants out of my old t-shirts. (Yeah. I do this now. I AM A PIONEER WOMAN.) But I’ll throw away stuff. Just you wait!

So anyway. Those are goals. Me-Made-May really proved that I can get away with wearing awesome stuff every day (yes, thank you, I did indeed just very casually refer to my handmade sewn clothes as “awesome,” WHUT). Like I tend to think that you just, you know, SHOULD wear a tshirt and jeans and if you wear your awesome new dress to work people will be like HAY THIS IS THE BORINGNESS POLICE YOU CANNOT WEAR CUTE THINGS MORE THAN ONCE PER WEEK WOOO WOOO WOOO WOOO. (That was a siren.) (Ugh. I swear, the only thing I’m drunk on here is Work-Boredom.)

So keep an eye out for me trying to give stuff away! I get the definite feeling that I can’t sell much of my stuff on ebay (“For sale: 1 newish Gap shirt that only has a small hole, but lots of sentimental value, because I really liked it when I bought it, $200.”), but my Midwestern-and-kind-of-poor upbringing won’t let me just throw away stuff. So. If you are vaguely Jessica-sized and love used things from Old Navy, this is your lucky month!

Okay. Blah. Just wanted to get that down so I can’t back out of it.

Totally starting TONIGHT!!!

fascinating

July 30, 2010 in Uncategorized by Jessica | 2 comments

You know how sometimes you can see your heart beating in your eyeball? That’s weird.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY “SOMETIMES JESSICA BLOGS THINGS SHE SHOULD PROBABLY ONLY TWEET!”

Love,

Jessica

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

June 30, 2010 in Uncategorized by Jessica | 7 comments

GODDAMNIT I basically cannot force myself to work these last few weeks! It’s sunny outside and it’s cold in my office and I don’t have a window and I’m BORED and I’m very very very very mad at the person I’m supposed to be working for right now so I have like NO urge to do well for her and I don’t even have anything ELSE to do and if I go home I’ll just watch Dexter and lay on the floor and eat raw asparagus and beer and look at my new book but not actually read it because I can’t do ANYTHING because my brain is BROKEN. I can’t even do the fun stuff! Or the little stuff! I have been vaguely intending to get my mustache threaded for like two months. It has come to the point where it is no longer a funny joke to say “my mustache” because I officially have a giant mustache because I am TOO BORED TO GO TO THE SALON THAT IS LITERALLY ON MY WAY HOME FROM WORK – IT IS A BUILDING I WALK PAST TWICE A DAY EVERY DAY – AND GO INSIDE AND SIT IN A CHAIR FOR 10 MINUTES AND $7 AND GET IT REMOVED. I am too bored to sit in a chair. I am too bored to think of an interesting way to end this but I am also too bored to do ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS so I seem to be unable to stop typing.

Finding that photo of a mustache online and then photoshopping it onto my face was a Herculean task of will. Now that I have completed that task, my day is done. I can do no more.

UG.

me-made-may-the-1st and a very delicious experiment

May 2, 2010 in craft blog, food blog by Jessica | 4 comments

Yay! Happy Saturday, Me-Made-May the 1st! To force myself not to stray toooo far from my recent personal resolution to quit blogging about Pretty Dresses so much, I am going to only post the photos of what I wore every day, and if I must say anything about it, I will write it on the picture itself. (Other than the title and date, which I will keep in the actual text as a blatant google-lure.) So. Onward.

Ugh. Someday I swear I will learn to take a picture of myself without looking like a total douchebag.

Anyway.

TASTETEST!!

Look, I don’t know. It was sitting by the register, the packaging is very cute design…I am susceptible to such things. I like buying dumb crap, okay? I can admit it. You’re supposed to float one of these shots on top of the other. Jeckyll is “berry”-flavored and Hyde is black licorice.

There are two glasses here, you’ll notice, but Ian flat-out fucking REFUSED to try any.

That was probably a pretty good policy on his part.

It tasted like throwing up in a dorm bathroom in college. I cannot in good conscience recommend Jekyll & Hyde shots to anyone.

Also – what the eff am I wearing there? Two different sewing-projects-in progress, a shirt and a dress. They both turned out half-decent; you’ll be seeing them later this month, surely. Woot!

finally, it’s here! a post about my shoes!

April 20, 2010 in Uncategorized by Jessica | No comments

So, as I’m sure you were all just DYING to know the details of my footwear from that post about dresses a while ago, I’ll let you know!

I know, I know – it looked like a pretty impressive lineup there, right? Marc Jacobs? YSL? Louboutin? How DOES she do it?? Like this:

(but real!)

(but cute anyway!)

(but decent fakes!)

Actually, they really are decent fakes, I think. All the right logos, what I’m pretty sure is real leather. And cute, too, whether or not they’re real: a nice shape and height and all. Just good black pumps, generally. You might not even know they were fake…if you hadn’t, you know, gotten from from ebay for $50, shipped from China. Came in a Louboutin box with a couple dust bags and everything. Frankly, I wasn’t entirely certain they WERE fake. Maybe they were just stolen?

Before they arrived, I compared the ebay photo:

to some photos of the real version of these Louboutins on the Saks website:

and:

I layered them all on top of each other and got:

Oh, okay, fine. Not stolen. Fake. Anyway, close enough to fool Providence, and cute either way. So yay! I (basically) have these shoes I’ve been lusting after for so long! I’m a contented girl!

Until….

Damnit. Someone sent me a link to a SALE.

So, yes. Fine. I…I bought a pair of Louboutins. Real ones. I was literally shaking as I typed in my credit card number. They took SO LONG to arrive. And when they did? Choruses of angels. Glitterlung. (I’m getting a little misty, here.) It was like seeing the ocean for the first time: they were all I could see, they took up my entire field of vision, and I will never properly be able to express what a perfect shade of blue they were.

Oh, le sigh.

They were too small.

But at least I got to compare them to my fakes! SCIENCE!!

The cardboard the box was made of was slightly different: the fake one was sort of more heavily corrugated, which made the logo wear through on the ridges:

Not to mention that the sticker on the real box was not written in Chinese:

The dustbag was sort of adorably off, too: there were two of the fake ones, weirdly, though perhaps that was because they were also quite a bit smaller?

The cursive part of the logo, as you can see here and you will also see on the shoes themselves, is a really good replica, though the word “Paris” appears to be written in a very slightly different font? The main difference in the bags, of course, was the quality: the fabric was a nice wool felt instead of, um, plastic; the ink of the logo was thick and sturdy; the stitching on the hem was nice and tight. Obvious but emblematic.

Again, the “Paris” part being the part that was more off:

I was kind of surprised that that magical angle that I assumed would be the biggest difference – that indefinable lightness and delicateness of the arch and the heel – was not actually as markedly different as I had thought it might be.

You could tell, but…not all THAT much. The red on the soles was different, too – both texture and color. I feel weird saying this, but frankly, I kind of think I like the red on the fakes even BETTER than the shade on the real ones. It seems cleaner and clearer, and the red reads more as “Russian Red” rather than “slutty stiletto/Ferrari red.”

Though maybe that’s the whole point – the shock of that tongue’s-lick of bloody vaginal Ferrari sex down there at the secret underside of the foot.

Anyway. The real ones are being returned. Eff ‘em! The ones I REALLY want are the Pigalles, anyway! Or Anemones.

Dear Feminism: Sorry about this whole post. :(

THE ENDDDDD!!!!!!

an open letter to all of the dresses i have made

March 30, 2010 in craft blog by Jessica | 4 comments

Dear Dresses,

You all kind of suck. Here’s why, in excruciating detail:

Dear Brown Wool 9-to-5 Dress,

I am a broken doll.

I AM A BROKEN DOLL!!!

I like you, Brown Wool 9-to-5 Dress, I really do. You are comfortable, you actually fit remarkably well, I get to be proud of you for making you without having first made a muslin. I guess the only thing standing in the way of our love now, Brown Wool 9-to-5 Dress, is that I have to go join a Bridge Club and then wait for our least-liked member, the Secretary, or perhaps the Financial Manager, to die, so that I can wear you to her wake. Because there is nowhere else to wear you, you boring conservative (comfortable! well-fitting!) mess.

(Dress from Built By Wendy Dresses, my new/current favorite sewing book. This was my very first try with this dress and also with this book – no muslin. Fit just about perfectly. Will totally make this again in a less uber-boring fabric.)

Dear Apple Courderoy 9-to-5 Dress,

Oh man you turned out so fucking cute. Your zipper’s too short so you’re hard to get into and your belt is too long and the button isn’t placed properly, so I need to redo that. But damnit. You are a cute motherfucking dress. Totally wearable, too.

(I totally bought those buttons at the shitty fabric store in Spanish Harlem by my old apartment. They’re gold and have old-fashioned airplanes on them for some reason. I got those other buttons, the old-lady buttons on the old-lady dress, from there, too. I probably need a giant glass mason jar full of interesting buttons. That’s something I should really be working on right now.)

Dear Crazy Brown Paisley Uptown Girl Dress,

You’re way too small! But that’s okay, seeing as you were really just a muslin for the Blue Linen version of you. (Though not like you really WORKED in that sense – I made you bigger for the Blue Muslin version, but then you were like two sizes too big. I apparently do not understand how sewing works.) You’re also kind of ugly. But I think in an endearing way, maybe? I don’t know. I WANT to like you, Crazy Paisley Dress, I DO. Also, you are so tight in the shoulders that I almost literally cannot zip you up by myself. Boys: here is a secret. We can zip our own dresses. The only reason we ask you to do it is because we’re flirting with you. Your role there is to zip, kiss us on the neck, and tell us we look pretty. There. I am a traitor to my sex. (Or else we’re being lazy. That happens, too.) But this dress is so tight I almost sincerely literally can’t zip it. Fascinating!

(Another Built By Wendy. I’m def going to make it again, or a version of it. I really dig this book. Makes it really easy to alter these basic shapes into new things. Fabric was part of an ebay lot of “vintage” stuff, before I learned how to buy vintage fabric on ebay. Everything from this batch arrived smelly and cheap and more “old” than “vintage.”)

Dear Blue Linen Uptown Girl Dress,

Hey! Neat! I mean, you’re way too big, even after multiple alterations, and I really have no idea why you, as a pattern, do that giant weird gapey thing at the front of the neck. But you basically look all right! Nice going, Blue Dress! I’m totes going to wear you to opening night at our summer theatre this year! It’s a date!

(I luuuuuuuv this fabric! It makes me want to buy ALL my fabric from the not-cheap-ass store! It feels NICE when you touch it! Fabric.com, originally intended for one of my shirtwaist dress patterns, but they’re too scary and intimidating to use such nice fabric on, yet. And the underskirt is the very definition of cheap-ass: it’s made of, like, used plastic grocery bags and toothfloss, and unravels like the dickens. However, it DOES feature an amazing gold print that says shit like “Criscione loves the rodeo!” and “Criscione loves pizza!” and “Criscione loves to travel!” next to little cartoon drawings of cowboys and pizza slices and Eiffel Towers, respectively. I guess it has something to do with this? But I think it’s cuter if you have no fucking idea what it’s supposed to be about. [And, frankly, I really still don't.] I got it on the $1.99 floor of the cheap-ass fabric store near my house. Also, I wasn’t actually trying to mimic the pose in the illustration – I’m holding the back of the dress pinched together so that it doesn’t look as baggy as it really is.)

Dear DVF Dress,

YES.

(I got this pattern for .99 cents on ebay! I’m pretty convinced this was a fantastic deal – vintage designer patterns go for $50 not infrequently. This came out VERY vintage-looking, admittedly, and it won’t be easy to alter. But still. Now I can say I own TWO DVFs! Also, this is adorable:

Dear Low-Waisted Crazy-Darted Lobster Dress,

What the fuck? Why did I think you were a good idea, Crazy Lobster Dress? You are made of sweatshirt material, and you have blue lobsters on you. When and where and why on earth would this be an appropriate thing to wear? You just don’t make any damn sense, Crazy Lobster Dress.

(But I kind of love you!)

(Not hemmed yet in this photo. Pattern via an ebay lot, fabric via fabric.com – I was under the impression that it was just quilting cotton when I bought it, not sweatshirt material. …Not like that would have made the purchase any more reasonable, I guess.)

Dear Low-Waisted Crazy-Darted Less-Insanely-Printed Dress,

You are pretty! But sort of Mormon-y. I was going for 1962 office girl, but think I accidentally ended up with 1982 office mom, instead.

(Also not hemmed yet in this photo. Scratchy as hell. Should have lined it. Will I wear the dress? Yeah, maybe, if the hemming works out okay. Will I ever make this pattern again? Probably not. I don’t think the low waist is a particularly good idea.)

Dear Slutty BurdaStyle Dress,

Oh my god, Slutty BurdaStyle Dress, you were such a fucking pain in the ass. You’re cute and all, but god, you look so much easier than you were. You were like 4 sizes too big! Very, very big, was how big you were. Then I did all sorts of crazy wrong things to you before I figured out that I just needed to make you way, way smaller. Then I accidentally made you a little slutty, because maybe I made you TOO small? Now I have to stand with my ankles crossed and not breath if I want to look skinny in you. Sometimes life gives us a hard row to hoe, Slutty BurdaStyle Dress.

(Get it, Slutty BurdaStyle Dress? “Ho.” It’s a play on words.)

(From BurdaStyle, for free, made with what was basically a bunch of misshapen scraps of fabric from other projects, so at least I got what I paid for? It’s worth trying again. I think it’s a good IDEA, at least. Will I ever wear it out of the house? Probably not. I don’t know. Maybe? I own Spanx.)

Dear Horrible Print Booby Dress I’ll Never Wear,

Oh my god, why on earth did I think this was a good fabric choice? This was some of my New York City fabric, I think, wasn’t it, Shena? (Why did you let me do this??) Ugh – why do your instructions think I should tie you in the back? All it does is make me look like a big psychadelic teepee. Also, why do you want everyone to look at my boobs! Quit making them look at my boobs so much! Is it revenge? Are you taking out your anger because I accidentally forgot to cut the front of you on the fold, so now there’s that weird seam running up the front of you that, for some unknown reason, leans way, way over to one side, so that it’s not even at least unobtrusively going up the middle? Because I’m sorry about that, I am, but – I mean, come on. Be honest with yourself. It’s not like anyone’s ever going to NOTICE it in all that print up in there! It’s not like anyone can even bear to look for that long! God, I’m getting a headache just thinking about you.

(Fabric from NYC. Pattern from the shitty store in Pawtucket. One of my very few modern patterns! Ian keeps telling me I should buy more modern patterns – that I look weirdly church-y and conservative in all these dresses from the 50s, rather than Mad-Men-y as is my intention. Meh.)

Dear Other Booby Dress,

You are less awful, especially tied in the front. Though I very specifically had planned to make you less low-cut, and then I…forgot, I guess? I will wear you, though. We will have awesome good times. People will look at my boobs. It will all work out in the end.

(You might not be able to see exactly HOW boobie-tastic these dresses are in these photos, but if you look closely, you’ll see that the seam that SHOULD go UNDER my boobs is actually resting somewhere in the middle of them, because I’m being shy. In real life, I’ll probably wear these with tank tops, so that I can wear the bodice the way I’m supposed to.)

The most recent thing I’ve made is the Walkaway Dress, but I’m pretty sure it deserves its own entry. Also, my fucking forearms are sore from typing. That means this was too long an entry. Sorry! PRETTY DRESSES ZOMG!

listen i am not making this stuff up

March 2, 2010 in Uncategorized by Jessica | No comments

This isn’t even a Lady Gaga post!!!! It’s just a “very interesting observations” post!!! Because sometimes it is very interesting to observe this one person I’ve heard of who I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of before but I probably haven’t been talking about her very much and her name is Lady Something-Or-Other I Wouldn’t Know Because I Don’t Pay That Much Attention, Really.

Anyway.

The description of the plot for the program “Lady Gaga Takeover” is “Lady Gaga takes over.”

Even better?

gah, you gotta watch out for those ruggedly handsome rebels

February 5, 2010 in Uncategorized by Jessica | 1 comment

Goddamnit, I am whispering in unironic awe:

A rising star in the modeling world, Margot Radcliffe hasnt forgotten the hurt that sent her running from Rosewood, the beautiful Virginia horse farm where she was raised. Travis Maher, a ruggedly handsome rebel and gifted horse trainer with a hard-knock past, had once captured Margots heartonly to break it. But when tragedy strikes her family, Margot is forced to set aside her skyrocketing career and return to a place she never expected to see again, where the legs that everyone admires belong to Thoroughbreds, not supermodels. Now Rosewood Farms success depends on Margot, and the only person she can count on for help is the very man who so ruthlessly rejected her love all those years ago.

BEST NOVEL SUMMARY EVER, Y/Y???

I’m writing a press release for a play right now, and I am NOT BEING FUNNY when I say that that paragraph is insanely inspiring. That is FANTASTIC. Also, the woman who wrote this book is going to be at my local indie bookstore to sign copies of it tonight. I know if I go, and if I get a copy, it’ll turn out to be just some stupid romance novel about horses and shit. Plus I’ll feel silly or guilty, like I’m being some mean jerk who’s making fun of what the unwashed masses are reading these days. So I’m not going to go. It’s better this way. *Looks soulfully off into the distance as the western breeze artfully musses her hair, bites back a single diamond tear, gathers up her small son and prepares to face the future, alone, but stronger [oh wait there's a handsome fireman coming! phew!].*

I’m using a lot of block quotes lately. FASCINATING.

things are stuff, too

December 27, 2009 in Uncategorized by Jessica | No comments

I keep finding old photos that I meant to post but didn’t! Here are some:

You can’t really see, but the label on this says “salsa dish.” Like, a dish, you know? But…for salsa.

This is a “disc.”

This is another awesome meal I had one day that I wanted to brag about but forgot:

I eat well.

That is all.

dear diary,

December 4, 2009 in Uncategorized by Jessica | No comments

This vacuum looks like R2D2.

Love,

Jessica

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fascinating!

well this is going to be a very interesting post thank you yes

fascinating

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

me-made-may-the-1st and a very delicious experiment

finally, it’s here! a post about my shoes!

an open letter to all of the dresses i have made

listen i am not making this stuff up

gah, you gotta watch out for those ruggedly handsome rebels

things are stuff, too

dear diary,

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