No Time To Post

I've been binge watching Fringe  before Netflix stops showing it on September eleventh.  I will be watching episodes from the final season today.

The Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of

Built by artist Theo Jansen.

Grow Old With Me, The Best Is Yet To Come

"Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulation and possessions, the shell of the ego."
-Anne Marrow Lindbergh, age 49

 "We are brainwashed about what age you're supposed to marry, what age you're supposed to have a kid, what age you're supposed to do this or that. Oh my God! Who died and left those people in charge?"
-Cyndi Lauper, age 63

"Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
-Dorothy L. Sayers, age 63

 "Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.It's a different stage of life, and if you are going to pretend it's youth, you are going to miss it. You are going to miss the surprises, the possibilities and the evolution that we are just beginning to know about because there are no role models and there are no guide posts and there are no signs."
-Betty Friedan, age 72

" ...old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do. You can't stop the plane, you can't stop the storm, you can't stop time. So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely."
-Golda Meir, age 74

"Mark my words, the time goes fast. And those are the only things that matter. The things that you really had fun with."
-Lily Tomlin, age 76

And The Answer Is!

Stephen Bannon, who is Donald Trump’s campaign CEO, is a leader in the alt (alternative)- right movement. Hiring Bannon is Trump's answer to the question he has been asking African American and Hispanic voters for almost two week now, "What do you have to lose?"

Perhaps the most potent element of alt-right activism is the effort to build a sense of a specific white identity, and to claim that this identity is under attack.

“Anti-white animus in society at large is palpable,” says [alt-right leader Richard] Spencer. Demands for diversity in the workplace mean “less white males in particular”. More openly extreme alt-right accounts on Twitter talk about immigration in terms of “white genocide”.

This sense of injured white identity is what defines the alt-right, according to Dan Cassino, a Fairleigh Dickinson University political scientist and the author of a new book on Fox News and American politics. “The founding myth of the alt-right is that the disadvantaged groups in American politics are actually running things through a combination of fraud and intimidation. By doing this, they’re actually oppressing white men.”
- THEGUARDIAN.COM

Read complete article here.

I Am Learning To Sew- Project 33

I bought an old curtain which used to hang either in a boy's bedroom or in a man's den at a garage sale last week. I wasn't sure how I would use it but then I noticed these TV pillows in the family room and thought they could use a make over.

Throw pillows before.

Throw pillows after.

I think they turned out great and will not bore you with how frustrating making them turned out to be. I will tell you that zippers can be difficult.

You Will Find The Americans Much Like The Greeks Found The Romans

great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle,
with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt.
-Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of Britain (1957 to 1963)

Ryan Lochte is everything the world hates about Americans article here.

Welcome To htraE

(Also known as Bizarro World.)

WEST BEND, Wisconsin—Donald Trump asked African-Americans to vote for him in a room filled with about a thousand white people on Tuesday night.

"I’m asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today, who want a different and much better future,” the GOP presidential candidate said at a rally in Washington County, one of the whitest counties in the state.*
-Justin Glawe in his The Daily Beast article.

*Nearly 90 percent of Wisconsin's African American population lives in the following six counties, all of which are located in Southeastern or Southern Wisconsin:  Milwaukee, Dane, Racine, Kenosha, Rock, and Waukesha.
-Wisconsin Department of Health and Services.

I'm Sew Very Happy

My copy of More Fabric Savvy arrived a few days ago and I spend an hour this afternoon perusing it.  Each fabric discussed takes up two facing pages and gives you information about the fabric, what to make with it, sewing tips, which thread, needle, and presser foot to use, cutting layout directions, and other useful information.

Did you know silk and linens are washable but  many care labels on store bought garments say "Dry Clean Only?  Why?  Because neither the linen, the silk or the interfacing  used were prewashed before being made into the garment.

Did you know that  clothes made from Rayon should be machine-washed in cold water on gentle cycle because too much agitation distorts the fabric?

Did you know Rayon is made from wood pulp?

Did you know matte rayon jersey garments should be stored flat instead of on hangers because matte rayon jersey garments stretch when hung?

Did you know you shouldn't over-pack Linen in a washing machine because it absorbs twice its weight in water?

Did you know you should use liquid fabric softeners and not dryer sheets on garments made from microfibers?  Dryer sheets leave oil spots.

Did you know wool jersey wasn't used for women's wear until Coco Chanel started using it.  Before her wool jersey was only used to make men's underwear.

I did not know any of this before reading the book but I do now.

Book Room

If you want to call Deadwood a Western, you might as well call The House of Mirth chick lit.
-Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

  I agree,  Deadwood is brutal, profane, violent and beautifully written.

The Neon Lights Were Bright

There is a facebook page called Save the Signs which posts old photos of neon signs in the United States.  Since it started out as Save The Signs On Colfax, a great number of the photos are about Denver.  The above photo was taken in 1974 and shows the signage for Hertz Rent A Car, the YMCA, and the old Centre Theater in downtown Denver.  The Hertz and the Centre Theater are now gone but the YMCA is still there.  When I first saw this photo it took my breath away because I found I wasn't just looking at the photo, I was in it.  I had walked down that street (East 16th Avenue.) in the winter of 1974 and could feel the freezing cold air on my face, hear the sound of snow and ice crunching under my feet, and smell of snow and automobile exhaust in my nose.  A flash to the past.