I’m pretty sure everyone on earth has had the feeling of déjà vu, and attributed various meanings to it. Akira O’Connor and Christopher Moulin’s “Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of déjà vu” on The Conversation explains the mechanism of déjà vu as a sort of memory fact checking. Even more interesting to me is the description of déjà vu’s opposite: jamais vu. Jamais vu is when suddenly that which is known, familiar, and even common to you is somehow strange. The article sets up that jamais vu is even rarer than déjà vu, but then goes on to explain how it can be induced.
Funnily enough, I have noticed and remember several instances where I have experienced jamais vu. Is this because I have recently learned about it and, like with anything, having noticed a new thing I now see it everywhere I hadn’t noticed it before?
The described method of inducing jamais vu by writing out a word over and over again is especially memory inducing for me as I have a lot of experience with writing lines over and over again.
WWII propaganda poster from the British Board of Trade. 1939-1945
I wore myself out this weekend juggling a few fixes and projects all revolving around keeping the household running smoothly. One of those projects, long on my list, was to redye my black clothes. I am so pleased with the results that I had to think this over with y’all.
I haven’t bought new clothes in years. Oh, I’ve bought new-to-me clothes, but no newly manufactured clothes. Picking up used clothes at a thrift store or wearing a simple knit long sleeve top from a discount department store for ten or twenty years will inevitably require some mending and upkeep. There is nothing that shows its age more than black. Nobody really knows what other colors were supposed to be when new, right? But everyone knows when black is faded.
So, in addition to darning little cat claw holes and repairing popped stitches, I did a black load. Now my cotton blend knit tops are as dark as my synthetic skirts. I feel like a fancy lady.
I’ve seen a lot of challenges online where people try to not buy any clothes for a month, a year, or what not. Well why not a challenge to find that thing in your wardrobe that you loved so much so long ago but never wear any more. Find it, and then figure out what you can do to make it wearable again. Its a good feeling. I promise.
A few years ago I was inspired to overhaul my closet. I wanted to alter things that, with a little change, could be made more wearable. I wanted to weed out things that stood in the way of me finding the pieces I like to wear. And, I wanted to make sure I had a ready supply of outfits that made me feel powerful, playful, and attractive. I wanted my daily attire to delight me, to become a special part of my day instead of simply a necessary one.
And then I was introduced to Disneybounding by the various YouTubers I was watching. Disneybounding, to my understanding, is creating an outfit that evokes your favorite Disney character without overstepping Disney’s regulations on adult costumes, or even wearing something that looks like a costume. Relatedly, historybounding involves dressing to evoke a fashion period from the past, either by dressing in vintage or reproduction styles or by creating an outfit that resembles them.
The best part of everyday cosplay is that it includes completely normal everyday clothing. I just needed to obtain some key items for my wardrobe to make sure I had pieces to put together an outfit I thought evoked the character I had in mind. For instance, I already had a red and green striped shirt so all I felt I really need to evoke Freddy Kruger were some brown gloves. I obtained some snazzy black and white wingtip-esque t-strap shoes as the final pieces for a Joker outfit. Otherwise, creating the outfits just challenged me to think about the pieces in my closet a little differently – like I was pulling markers from a box to color in a character.
Portraits of Eminent Scotch Characters
1784–1819, Drawn and etched by John Kay. Le chat, la balette et le petit lapin (The Cat, the Weasel, and the Rabbit) (1756). Martin Marvie (French, 1713 – 1813) Cat. ca. 1780. British, Staffordshire Cat and Butterfly (1788). Min Zhen (Chinese, 1730-after 1788)A Concert Of Cats, Owls, A Magpie, And A Monkey In A Barn. Cornelis Saftleven (Dutch, 1607-1681)Three Men With a Woman Holding A Cat. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (Italian, 1538-1600)A Glaring Of Cats Making Music And Singing (circa 1700). Flemish School
Do I need to introduce why I may have picked up a ‘mini’ sized reprinting of the fall 1900 Sears, Roebuck and Co. Consumers Guide, or why I am prone to acquiring similar aged magazines and catalogs? My inclination isn’t necessarily part of the nostalgic yet enlightened ‘vintage stye, not vintage values’ movement and argument (thought it is one I wholly support) as much as a type of historical voyeurism. I like to look at the pictures.
In any case. I was paging through this little catalog, wondering if I should get reader glasses because of the miniaturized print (the book is about 5×7 in), enjoying the product drawings, when I noticed that among the fabulously technically drawn shoes and chandeliers (a skill I remember from my earliest art education when graphic artists were still schooled in the ways of product drawings and sign painting), were photo-realistic fashion models…at least where their faces were concerned. What happened below their heads was some of the most ridiculous cut and paste manipulations I have seen.
how thin the neck to fit that coat collarpigeon breast, wasp waste, and bustlejauntily angled head
I’ve looked at loads of 1900s post cards, cartoons, and fashion plates, so, at first, I wasn’t even paying attention to the exaggerated wasp wastes that connected pigeon breast and bustle. Clearly the ideal 1900s lady was a bird wolpertinger of the most terrifying! What first captured my disbelief were the coat collars, or specifically, how long a woman’s neck must have been to ensure her head showed up above the coat collar pictured. And then, the bird like illusion of woman was only more emphasized when her head cocked strangely to one side without affecting the length or rigidness of her neck and the collar that held it hostage!
I hope you enjoy the little ogle at absurdity as much as I did.
I have been having some big dreams about decor DIYs that will just make everything in my house a little extra better. A lot of the ideas are actually for small projects, many small projects that all require fabric or pattern. So, I found myself perusing Spoonflower for fabric and wallpapers. In the search for my favorite variety of floral, something I have always thought of as Jacobean (above), I realized that all of my vocabulary is wrong. Or at least the modern application of the vocabulary by designers uploading patterns to Spoonflower is completely different than mine. I am not a textile historian, so I could never argue that my descriptive word choice is the right one, which is what led me down this particular rabbit hole.
Turns out I didn’t really have the wrong word. Patterns popular in Jacobean design were influenced by both Flemish tapestries and Indian palampores. The designs were flowing and floral, with acanthus leaves arranged all over, delicate flowering trees inspired by palampores, and birds, animals, and the tree of life taken from crewel embroidery.
Yet Jacobean is not what people reliably label the floral, acanthus leaf, or all over tree of life patterns.
Of course, tree of life designs now come in many different varieties, and rarely show up as the all over pattern from the ‘Tabriz Tree of Life Deer Person Rug’ example above. So then I noticed, while searching, that many of the designs I was looking for were labeled as chintz.
My initial ideas of chintz was a big, ‘blousy,’ floral with large cabbage roses in a kind of pastel on pastel print that I remembered from grandma couches in the early 80s. It turns out that chintz is the name for any printed cotton fabric with a glazed finish and bright multicolored patterns. The patterns were eventually applied to many other textiles, like wall paper and ceramic, so now chintz is simply an all over floral. This would include my Jacobean floral ideal, but it also gave me a lot more to wade through. Then I wondered…what is calico? I thought calico was an all over floral print…
And, it is, at least in the U.S. where the printed cotton became known as calico instead of just the plain woven unbleached cotton that is called calico in the UK. Calico, like the palampores that inspired Jacobean patterns and the chintz that took Europe by storm in the 1600s, originated in India. The calico pattern is also ensconced within the overarching concept of chintz.
But paisley is not chintz, mostly. Sometimes when the paisley teardrop is included in a rambling floral design like the ‘Paisley” on the right, it is chintz? But mostly, paisley is the one floral print exception that is viewed separately from chintz. Paisley is of Persian origin, and the teardrop shaped designs were also imported from India into the UK where the pattern was given the name paisley after the town of Paisley where it was produced.
And, here is where I want to wriggle back out of the rabbit hole. I found that yes, Jacobean floral, calico, and sometimes paisley are all chintz, but chintz is not necessarily always either Jacobean floral, calico or paisley. Whether this statement is wholly accurate doesn’t really matter either, because platforms that allow tag and metadata creation by up-loaders are always going to suffer from the popular understanding of a term, if there is any real understanding.
I can’t say I am quite up to speed on the current ways the internet is built and consumed. For a long time I have cleaved to an RSS feedreader as a way to ingest news and information from multiple sources in one place. When Google phased out it’s Reader in 2013 (wiki), I had the impression that feedreaders, and the RSS feeds that populated them, were on the way out. However, with many news outlets moving primarily online and blogs never really seeming to die out as a method of online communication, I am starting to wonder if the RSS feed, and, connectedly, the feedreader aren’t more prevalent now than they were nine years ago.
There are a couple of best of round ups on feedreaders from the last two years on Wired and The Blogging Wizard, but the feedreader I have stuck to since Google, and use today, is The Old Reader. It was created to capture everything about Google Reader that Google Reader users really liked, and since then, it has grown and developed further.
So, lately I’ve been thinking about, and talking about, the restrictive bubble of information that each one of us gets based on the media outlets we prefer and the way online algorithms tailor the content we see on the internet. This is my bubble: posts I’ve shared on The Old Reader while ingesting feeds from multiple sources. I’ve linked it as a social media account in the side bar as well. If you happen to be interested in some of the news I am reading, then that is where you can find it: from scholarly examinations of current events, DIY trends, copyright news, and library issues, the feed will feature the best of the best as determined by me in my daily reading.
One thing I know all too well is that RSS feeds don’t always integrate into website statistics. They can be a frustration to website owners and developers when trying to track a site’s impact, so if you like what you find in my shared feeds, check out the sources. I highly recommend all the original sources as well!
We cancelled regular cable services a little while ago, and while we subscribe to some streaming channels and services, we have been getting a lot of entertainment from YouTube. I want to do a round up of all the fabulous channels and creators I have been enjoying, and the Crafsman will definitely be on it. This video is too beautiful not to share right away (that is, as soon as I’ve seen it), and perhaps every single year to come. It’s still January. Lunar new year has not yet passed. Happy New Year!
Let’s get this out of the way, the idea that individuals can save the earth by recycling and buying ‘sustainable’ products is, at least in part, a myth. Without corporations changing their processes and methods our individual efforts will not do enough to make a difference to future generations. That aside, I think it is good if people try and make a difference in their individual impact on the world by thinking through the items they choose to consume and from what companies they purchase those items.
We would never consider ourselves evangelists of sustainable living at my house. But we have been trying to examine our consumption of goods produced in our highly consumptive, industrial, and exploitative goods system. Our examination hit on many points, not all of which were strictly about waste. We started paying attention to ingredient labels on lotions, soaps, and shampoo to reduce the amount of petroleum products we were using and putting on our bodies. This was a natural extension of our long standing attempt to avoid preservative laden food at the supermarket. Of course, we made some changes there as well, like giving up on pre-shredded cheese (self shredded cheese melts and tastes so much better!).
We gave up traditional cable a little while ago and currently have only a slim selection of streaming channels, most of them very specialized. For the most part a lot of our non-movie watching is on YouTube, and this I love so much I had to share:
I’ve gushed over music maps before, and I adore hearing the groovy sounds and comparing how different countries did the same decade in time. Radiooooo gives you both. If you want to rock to 1970 Ethiopian music, 1920 Russian music, or listen to the original soundtrack to the Titanic, Radiooooo has you covered. No, this is not a paid advertisement. This is love.
The interwebs makes it easy to believe that there is a general interconnectedness of all things. So, when I adopted the handy term NOS from RetroRenovation for some of my ebay searches, of course I thought it was a term that lots of people know. In case it is not, let me clarify. I am not searching for Nitrous Oxide Systems, National Occupational Standards, or promotional material from the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting. I am looking for New Old Stock.
For a mid century house like mine, finding a seller with a stash of house accessories obtained by a closed down factory store is gold! NOS is the best way to obtain those temporary, delicate, things like plastic light switch covers, garishly patterned drawer liners, and plastic ruffled shelf tape. Oh, there are plenty of NOS listings for bathroom tile and drawer pulls – things that could survive being used and reused. But there is magic in those things meant to be used up and thrown away.
First off, even if hair tape is still a thing, it is a thing I never imagined existed. I love that it was produced by 3M. 3M is all over the place at my library.
Unused note cards might be the best thing ever!
And these would be the icing on a retro-styling tea party!
I did some online shopping and got an awesome new purse in the mail the other day. But there’s a mystery! All the packaging on the purse was in Chinese. The label plaque on the front says: MEDE DE ITALY – CIANMI VEASRGE GOUTUAH….Via dei Cesa 16 Milano. Google translate says the first part is Dutch, meaning “Also the Italy.” Google translate says the next bit it actually Chinese, but offers no translation. Finally, Via Dei Cesa 16 Milano is actually Italian. It maps to a Via Antonio Cesari, 16.
There is no doorway for number 16 on Via Antonio Cesari, but there is some graphiti on the wall which reads: Muri Puliti Popolo Muto – machine translated as “walls clean dumb people.” …Or, could it be, dumb people clean walls? There is a police station at Via Antonio Cesari, 20.
GYROJETS – You’re Never Nothing (art by yours truly) is now available on Amazon.com Music. You can listen to the album on bandcamp, but if you’re any kind of somebody you’re going to buy the CD.
Sasquatch is almost everyone’s favorite cryptozoological marvel. That’s because he possesses qualities other elusive creatures cannot match. Let’s look at three of them. 1. All natural. Sasquatch is the original nature boy. He lives in the wild and eats nuts and berries (mostly). He has resisted the attractions of urban living. You never see him in restaurants. Fashion holds no appeal for Sasquatch. Not even the practical utility of t-shirts have seduced the hairy beast. His commitment to natural living is an example and an inspiration to all of us who feel that nature has been pushed too far from the center of
I did some online shopping and got an awesome new purse in the mail the other day. But there’s a mystery! All the packaging on the purse was in Chinese. The label plaque on the front says: MEDE DE ITALY – CIANMI VEASRGE GOUTUAH….Via dei Cesa 16 Milano. Google translate says the first part is Dutch, meaning “Also the Italy.” Google translate says the next bit it actually Chinese, but offers no translation. Finally, Via Dei Cesa 16 Milano is actually Italian. It maps to a Via Antonio Cesari, 16.