tagged by clare!

the lovely clare tagged me in the 8-questions to answer chain letter thing yesterday. im pretty sure i know how this works. if i dont answer and forward it to 100 friends by midnight, the ghost of a 12 year old girl who was killed by a train will sneek through my window and suck my soul out of my nose and eat my eyeballs and i will never find true love, but if i DO, i will win the lottery, someone i care about will reveal something totally important to me in 5 hours and my clothes wont shrink in the dryer or something like that.
so, here goes!
1. Have you ever had a sewing-related injury? Give gory details! If not, any irrational fears?! if i had a nickle for every time i have slipped my finger into the moving needle on my sewing machine, or sliced into my own leg with a rotary cutter, i would have at least $10. the rotary cutters are the worst, they just bleed and bleed and bleeeeeeed! i also have burnt myself with the iron about a billion times. i seriously have some sort of non-sexual (i swear) iron fetish or something where i HAVE to iron every pattern piece, inch of fabric, bias tape-- everything!

2. What would be in your perfect picnic basket?
a bunch of cheeses, but none from cows (allergies), fruits and berries, this really good peach and chicken salad my sister makes and a bottle of wine. but i would like with my basket, tyler, my doggies, a big hat and a croquet set

3. If you had to spend 3 consecutive days on the same train, who would you want with you and why?
definitly tyler! we are equal assholes and can have a good time anywhere we go. plus a train sounds like it would be awesome to go on!

4. What garment/accessory do you wear the most?
easily, my crinoline. i wear it probably 2-3 times a week! i love it soooo much! i got it super cheap on etsy from this fine woman and it has been one of my best vintage purchases so far!

5. What’s your “desert island” book/movie and why could you read/watch it over and over?
the book i choose is easily the little prince. i am *obsessed* with this book. i even have a tattoo on my arm of the little buckaroo!

my pasty-ness keeps it lookin' new!

my movie would be metropolis. there is nothing about that movie that isn't absolutely amazing. last year tyler and i saw it with a live orchestra, it was amazing!

6. Which pattern/vintage style have you been thinking about lately?

tap shorts. they are all i want to wear- if not a skirt or dress! this morning actually i finished up these pretty little shorts for my etsy shop!

from one old pillowcase!

7. What’s your sewing threshold? As in, what will you let go, what must you absolutely fix?
anything that still has life in it. right now i am putting a 1930s/1940s evening gown together again. all of the thread dried out and the dress fell to pieces, but the pieces are still fine so its going to be brought back to life! thats also why i use almost exclusively old linens to sew from. as i see it, there are enough beautiful fabrics and materials in the world already, so why not use those up before we make new ones?

8. What are your favourite / least favourite words? These can be connected to sewing or not!
i call people 'buster' and 'buckaroo' a lot... tyler is always greeted as 'handsome' and my sister and i make that weird noise master pain makes in 'kung pow' all the time... you know, the one that goes, "meeeeeggggghhhhheeeeeeerrreeeeeee!"

ok, so girl from the ring, back the fuck off! im passing this on to:

molly at molly's sewing and garage sale adventures
debi at my happy sewing place
vivian at vivian von dimples
tilly at tilly and the buttons
and
sarah at rhinestones and telephones

so ladies, if you ever want to go on a date or kiss a boy or win the lottery or get both socks out of the dryer ever again, answer 4 of those questions and these 4 below!

1. What wouldn’t you be caught dead in?
2. What is your favorite holiday?
3. How do you relax?
4. What is one place that you really want to visit that you haven’t been to before?

2 stomach pumps please

So Tyler and I had the worst wine of all time this weekend. I emailed the company and thought I would share here too... Mostly because the email couldn't include as many photos as I wanted. So here it is, the fully loaded letter to the winery:
- - - - - - - - - - - -
To Whom It May Concern,
This weekend, my boyfriend and I opened up a bottle we were given of your "vintage 1977 merlot" by his Grandfather. Though it was a thoughtful gift, perhaps next time you could sell him a turd in a box instead? I would prefer that. Why you ask? Well, let me tell you about our horrible wine experience turned experiment.

We first noticed the off-color of the wine. Last I checked, Merlot was a nice deep red wine. This bottle however, was the deepest of reds on bottom and the clearest white wine color on top. Oh, and also there were chunks. Chunks floating around in the wine.
When opening the bottle, we noticed the cork was dark, moist and sunken down, leaving a nice, rancid smelling residue.

The cork came out in two large chunks, and about a million smaller pieces.

The first glass we pored was honey colored and smelled like spoiled hazelnut death. Always the adventurer, my boyfriend Tyler reluctantly took the first sip and- BAM! Immediate regret. I, not quite as brave, just dipped the tip of my tongue in the glass and immediately began dry heaving.
Oh. My. God. It was terrible.
Thinking maybe it just settled (you know, because most wines do that?) we shook it up and poured another-slightly darker, honey colored glass of wine. Guess what?! This one was somehow even worse. I didn't even have to taste it before I started gagging! The smell was more than enough to keep someone from wanting to drink that wine... But we did it anyway. You only live once right?

Bad idea. More heaving. Lots and lots of heaving. Then, curious as to what was causing the gritty residue we both noticed was lingering in our mouths and sticking to the sides of the glasses...

we taped a coffee filter to a pint glass and filtered a nice drink.

By now this had gone from refreshing beverage to science experiment. All we were missing were lab coats. We set up a second filtered glass to see what was going on at the bottom of the bottle and holy crap, it was once again even worse!

Oh my god, you should be ashamed at what we found. There was enough of what we can only assume was residue from the cork committing suicide, that the filters were brown and cloggy. It looked like we made coffee out of dirt and waste!

Oh, and we solved the mystery of the grit. THERE WERE HUGE CHUNKS OF ROTTEN CORK(?) IN THERE! I drank that dammit! You better hope we don't end up with any worms or the plague or some rare and terrible virus or illness from that! Ugh, it makes me want to throw up just thinking about how bad this was.

Barf and barf.
So here is my suggestion- stop making such awful wine! Blech! This stuff was nasty! I'm no wine expert- more like a wine-o, but regardless I have drank more than my fair share of wines in my day and I cannot think of any person who would want to ingest this god-awful product you made. I hope for your sake that this was just a one- time- deal and there aren't more bottle of this out there. Times are tough man, not everyone can go out using up all their coffee filters to see what dangers are lurking in their wine bottles!
And also, since this was ingested into mine and Tyler's bodies:

Please pay for our stomach pumping, because that is not something I think my body will be happy about processing. Oh, and I would also like 2 coffee filters. We certainly will not be drinking another bottle of your sabotaged wine any time soon. Better luck next time.

Regards,
Christine Baker

P.S.
Maybe you just forgot what merlot should look like? Don't worry, we had another bottle on hand. You guess which is which!