What Are You Doing on Black Friday?

I always try not to spend any money at all on Black Friday. I try to stay home, but the truth is that both of us really like people-watching. We've never been to the mall on Black Friday, but we might go. Probably not, but maybe. I would love to have a comfy chair in the middle of Northpark Mall in Dallas (my favorite mall--big and light and airy), where I could sit and stitch and watch people all day long. I don't really like to watch them closely, like The EGE does--he likes to see what they're doing, but after a few times when I've been puzzling over someone's actions and then discovered they were doing something disgusting, I've gotten over that, mostly. What I love is to see what they're wearing, how they put themselves together that day. I skip over all the people who apparently put on whatever is lying on the floor next to the bed. They don't interest me at all.  In fact, they make me sad, all those sloppy, slovenly, depressed-looking people slouching and shuffling their way through life. All the rest do interest me, though, no matter if their style is foreign to me (Dallas matrons in pearls, for example) or not. I can get excited by torn jeans and a t-shirt if you can see there was some thought about the combination or the fit or the shoes or whatever. While I'm suspicious of White Men in Suits, a really nice shirt and tie can make me forgive them their formality. My favorites are the hippies, of course--the boho, the gypsies--but I can be happy about any really interesting outfit that shows the personality of the wearer. That's what I love: how do people's clothes reflect their personality, what they think of themselves and their place in the world? I LOVE that.

Alas, there is no real people-and-their-clothes-watching in Midland. Most of the people we see are of the slept-in-their-clothes variety: t-shirts or sweatshirts, jeans, flip-flops or tennis shoes, gimme hat. Sigh. For a town with a ton of money, there's not much imagination. Lots of people go to Dallas and Houston to shop. I'm guessing they wear what they buy there only at secret parties, disguising themselves as rednecks the rest of the time.

Anyway. That's not what I meant to write about. I know some of y'all really like the process shots, the photos of things while they're being done. I love those, too. I just don't like stopping what I'm doing to take the shots. But since it's not All About Me (well, not *always*), I'm doing my best for this project.

OK. So we had the two hideous velvet dresses, right?

I took off the horrid sequin-y things (and glued them to felt and took them to BJ as joke brooches: she can't put jewelry on any of the clothes in her shop because, she says, people will steal it. So I told her I'd make her some holiday-ish brooches perfect for being stolen. Of course, they're so tacky she'll never put them on any of the clothes, but it was fun to give them to her anyway), and then I washed the dresses ("dry clean only" is just a challenge to me). Then I have to do something about those hideous silk ruffles. See this line of stitching holding them flat?

 It's the line closer to the ruffle, not the one on the toward the velvet--the lowest line in the photo below:

 I ripped that out and then could pull the ruffle away from the hem on the velvet.

I cut the ruffle off, leaving enough of it to turn under and then stitched it by hand.

This is what it looks like from the right side. Gaw: look at all that lint~~

Now, I could have ripped out all the stitching, taken off the ruffle, and resewn the edge of the velvet on the machine. But I don't have a lot of confidence in my machine sewing skills--I've never much sewn on velvet--and I didn't want to risk screwing up the edges--they might start raveling or something. So I'm doing it this way. It will take most of the day, I'm guessing--there's the neckline, which goes down to the waist, both armholes (no sleeves), and the hem. But it's meditative, as long as I have really good light.

What are you doing today? I hope you have the day off and are doing something fun. I worked all morning yesterday--until after 1:30--to get work stuff done so I can take the rest of the weekend off. Yay, me!

OK--back to work--got a lot of hand-stitching ahead of me today. Now if only I had that chair at Northpark Mall; we could all have chairs there, sipping lattes, stitching/drawing/writing/whittling, watching the shoppers~~wouldn't that be fun?

XO