Tieing up time with ties

Take a note, this is not a canto.  I plan to post my latest projects, eventually steampunk, doctor who, and all the goodness will be up here.  For right now though, I am working on a tie made of skirts.  Now normally people tie the sides together, and that's all good and well, but it feels there's so much more to be done with the idea.  So for fun, i am making a skirt (not for myself of course) to mimic a Knife pleat by overlaping ties and making a skirt out of them.  The overlap will also allow for discrete zipper location and hidden pockets(maybe with zippers?).

In order to demonstrate what this process will begin to look like, I have bought a few cheap ties to sew together, in order to make a small mock up.

This process should be relatively simple and provide a cute garment, but the main problem will be finding bulk ties of the same material and colour.  At the moment I'm looking into Chinese wholesaler who sell bulk of 50 ties.

And then it hit me!

I realized half way through this project I was doing what I warn against: Making something and not knowing anything of the application and nuances of application. I decided I would make the skirt what i thought best, the skirt will fall, so as to appear as a regular skirt but be shorter, by nature of the ties not being sewn all the way down.

Estimated build materials:
30-40 ties of the same colour and texture 
1 yard of lining
1/2 yard of pocket material

Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions! 


Many thanks to Amy Fortenberry and Melanie Harris for putting up with my pestering and being such great teachers of tailoring and sewing.

Canto IX: At the gates

In front a Rubicon with writing

 Acquaintance of mine spoke with me a few nights ago, describing her plans for a wild summer trip.  How she would meet people who were on the site, Dailybooth. The word expound is given wheels and given verb form to say that we originally met through this site. When discussing my failure to immerse into the site and the site's network of user, a passing comment shot out.  One intended to be weightless and fleeting: she called me lazy.  My circle of self overlaps many domains on a Ven-Diagram, including, but not limited to: bumbling, verbose, handsome, and critical.   Laziness wasn't a circle within my consideration.  Perhaps the comment was well suited though.

Has my lack of metric success and general unimpressive life been from a lack of metrics or from a lack of application?  

Snot All Boogers

A cheery fellow on a cross once advised his compatriots to always see the silver lining. Hours seep from my life, minutes pouring, while I most closer to a terminal velocity. Yet my cloud has a radiant inner cloud used to make it easier to wear with other items of clothing.  The tumultuous herd of feline quadrupeds which some refer to as emotions have grown unruly and now a particularly sassy Mainecoon has taken the charge, affection.

In matters of discourse [1]

Politics are an expansive bog with enough nesting ground for extremist and everything between the two most extreme group, that is, with the two dimensional bogs of course. Issues of office rarely ensnare my attention.  While voting is a necessary responsibility, to become entrenched in the mud of minutia seems beyond practical.  A particularly humorous anecdote is a foolhardy belief in one language by a country.  Much like State's right, the reasoning of the argument is different from the application.  However, unlike with state's rights, both the application and the theory of the one language argument are bordering on moronic.  

Usually one language's well-armed escort team are those of a lesser education who feel that American English (to call it English is an insult to the English and the Americans at the same time) should be spoken by all inhabitants of this homogeneous melting pot. In essence language becomes the banner for Nativisim and any new languages are clearly encroaching elasticities.   However, a clever counter stumbled up to me the other day.  

Hint: As an aside, it is worth mentioning that most minority groups are vehement about their solidarity.  One which has always had my fear and respect is the deaf community.  

Deaf Americans are unable to speak American English due to disability and while this may be the home of the free, land robbing, and brave, they are to always be seen as equals. 

Simply bastardized/summarized: ASL counters the one language argument.

[1]- a reference to the Greek saying: "In matters of taste there can be no dispute"

Also, I've decided to include the start of my terrible story.

                There’s a certain air and quality to the light produced in any low cost service industry open past two A.M. with a moderate dress code.   All in all though, she was kind of cute, maybe it was the light, perhaps the hour of morning, whatever the forces, she seemed positively cute.  Not ravishing, or gorgeous but simply well seated in the valley of cute, which boarded the “meh” plains to the south, and the rocky “gorgeous but crazy” mountain range to the north. 

                She was simply cute with her curly hair and black fish nets. 

“You know it’s really not so bad once you give it a try.” she enthused.

Rubbing his stubble he surmised.  “I suppose, I’ve just never been of the inclination.”  At that point his head turn to allow his eyes to saunter over by the coffee pot across the nigh vacant donut shop. The eyes return for a momentarily glance at the cute girl.  

For that instant he could see her for what she was.  Perky eyes sat atop dark gray bags, a sullen slack jaw accompanied an air of unkemptness.   The quirky locks spiraled to simply misshapen, poorly kept hair.  The transformation was gone, just as soon as it had appeared.  The cute girl had returned in front of him with dimples and stretched smile.    

“Well I must be getting off, it’s been an absolute delight.  I look forward to hearing your music!” He had seen what his gut had told from the start.  Just another Solips.  He supposed it was better than some of the worst character he had encountered.  As he strolled out the shop, he hummed a tune.  She was a pianist and composer.  He had once been a composer, quite a good composer too.  Then things had changed, but as sure as the bar would change the girl’s heart would stop beating once he left due to an unknown and until then dormant hereditary heart valve problem.   Liszt’s flowing notes danced in his head as he poured into the street and the girl’s head slammed on the table.                                                                                  

Canto VIII: A decent descent

Less of a descent, more of a downward waltz.

Recently my life has jolted into gear much like the car of a teenager on his driving test.  Never before has the need to do something impressive been more impressed up on me.  My many hobbies are entertaining and each consumes time at their own pace, but ultimately their utility is being drawn under my scrutiny.  For instance, these posts serve the purpose of helping developing my articulate nature, but blogging as a hobby survives my dominating scrutiny mainly because it is a place within  social media.  Other hobbies have been less lucrative, but ultimately a general use of time and a desire to prioritize my life has been greatly impressed by moving into drive.

And the pursuit of…..

Rarely before has such a title titled my state of mind.  A plethora of skills and possible determination are waiting to be tapped, but unfortunately our dear purpose of life is missing.  While Avenue Q and Candide have already spoken thoroughly on this issue, she persists.  My writings never linger long on this doldrums, as it is just that.  New people have to adjust the fact that fun and myself are not acquaintances. Enjoyment, humor, and entertainment are all acquaintances, but fun is quite like love.   Mehaps my person has become lost in cities of words and shrouded by syntactical differences.

Canto VII: A skipped chapter.

A warm Christmas Eve

A transition has stared as my physical view of the world has shifted 200 miles from my previous resting point. A fat man's annual exploits and the birth of a zealots leader presses upon my chronological events, hoping to impress purpose on another day some semblance of purpose.  My technological fetishes combined with my pension for literature rended forth a further moniker for my domicile, Kubla Khan.
     Another mundane day in Kubla Khan tomorrow.  My quadruped companion will aid me through the doldrums, but without a connection to a network of information my attention is left to wander and kick rocks aimlessly.

A decree concerned with neither states nor territories

   Funny story.  Maloy walks into comic book shop and goes to party and makes friends.  Embellishment and cryptic wording would litter the story were there any need. Alas, things were that simple.  People just accepted me, not to say it is unthinkable, but twas surprising.  However, my trials are not such that they seem to be the culmination of my developed prowess but rather a comfortable fit.  Friends should be comfortable.

      Is comfortable productive though? A necessary nagging thought often nips at my mental heels and makes me question anything enjoyable.  For what is life if it not measured by the yardstick of productivity.  My fears aside a new network is nice.  Some comfort, some ease, etc.  

Working wearily for the weekend

Not a day of work has started, yet I am a tad trepid.  Work provides a new series of uncertainties.  My attempts have been set in motion to assuage my fears and push through.  However, I rest in a lull before the result.

Canto VI: Dancing with change to a sordid salsa

Because sitting on cushions is so last month

The terms we used to label speed, force, resistance, and density are all abstract numbers we've assigned to observations.  Perhaps the acceleration of gravity is not 9.81 meters per second, but instead four krackens.  Epistemology is the study of knowledge and our dashing protagonist could spend hours upon hours detailing Descartes' proof.  Science is abstract, we agree to terminology, what comprises a meter, and then make further observations with these terms.  The bedrock of science is the idea of abstract terms people have come to agree upon.

A meter does not introduce itself as a meter, or proclaim itself to be "so metric."  Firstly because meters are a measurement of space and therefore are not capable of speech unless some narrative liberty is taken.  Secondly, as a metric member it is understood by the very nature of its definition what defines a meter.  Unfortunately those who proclaim to be "nerds" due to their fact they've read four books or are quite fond of Simpsons, differ form our friend the meter.

Why worry about proclaiming yourself part of a group.  To achieve social acceptance? Sprock that rubbish.  To worry about the opinions of other is an errant well reserved for those foolish enough to undertake it.  Not once have I been encumbered by the task of proving myself as  "nerdy."  Perhaps in my past certain feats were undertaken for the sole purpose of performing them, but these experiences were often committed for the ability to just have a new experience.

"Hipsterism is a religion to which you got to be devout.[1]"

Another pop talking point emerges from a dank coffee shop fox-hole and begins to recite a prayer while squeezing his automatic weapon in our direction.  A torrent of words pour fourth and this subject emerges.  Hipsterism as a whole is meant to refer to those who take a stance of counter-culture.  The pejorative label is meant to categorize that one person you knew in high school who actually said to your face "I like this band because no one else likes them." Now in practice rarely do we find such people, but the term nestles in well with it's brethren the classic "bro" and it's every companion the "sorostitute."

To anyone who may have ever considered having a thought my soap box becomes tiresome as you've already heard this rhetoric before.   Labels fail because they're inefficient.  They are a heuristic and suffer the ignorance and utility of their parent label.   Heruistics are wildly useful in quick decision making but fail to fully describe a situation.

If you don't mind being wrong, continue to use labels.  

Correlation of the congealing causation

Fedex has an interesting policy. No left turns are allowed on delivery routes.  Correlation is not causation. Are left turns really entirely detrimental to plotting a course. This last thought is one which rides with me whenever the displeasure of driving in my sleepy town is saddled upon me, as it often is.  Left turns aren't necessarily always more efficient than rights.  Sometimes arms close in and cross because of cold rather than discomfort on occasion.

The difference in causation and correlation is the life and failing of so many people.  The most interesting applications are the ones were we assume causation.

[1] Mc Frontalot's Indier than thou

Canto V: Departing or entering the land of the Lotus Eaters

“Would that this desk were a time desk, 

so that I could correct my past mistakes” [1]

My undergraduate degree will be obtained in less than a month. Humor riddles me and a sense of nostalgia ensnares my person.   Yesterday was so long ago and my freshman year of college feels to be clearly in the past.  For a time when my obsessions were cardboards and a girl who lived three hours away.  Now my vices are intangible, undefined expectations of self and goals half planned.  To look back and to think of the older colleague, their jaded post-graduation lives, with monotony and self-created progress is quite a sickening thing, especially  when one realizes you are now the object of loathing.

College has been an interesting beast for me.  My person has been mercurial. 

“skinheads! perfect!" [2]

In the past great energies were exerted to only see the positive dimensions of people, not because life is all rainbows and unicorns using said rainbows of poor industrial engineering layout for transportation, but because people have skill and abilities. So seeing the best in people helps them, but it helps you use them to help yourself. This concept is much along the line of forced optimism, a subject similar to necro-equine beating.

There are leagues of painful words transversed to describe this habit for many reasons. The most pressing reason would be that my desires are quite often to present people with the collection of absurdity and stupidity they are and ask if they were aware of the amalgamation of asinine beliefs they have become.  However, to present people with these thoughts is to assail them with logic, an affront most do not endure with kind thoughts of their attacker.

Simply put, I try to be nice.  Many of my friends now know when I used to be more vitriolic with my syntax and it is nice to have people realize I could easily tear people apart.  It far harder to be nice to people and see the best in them than it is to build the perfect one-liner which makes them hate themselves. 

"if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, 

Muhammad must go to the mountain"

Yes, yes, our lovable narrator and protagonist has used this reference before! Now the issue is different, but yet the phrase still so deliciously applicable.  Our comedic joke has many colleagues, several associates, and a hefty number of thinly connected friends.  Humor makes her nest with ever relationship as another twig.  Each relationship requires my initiation. Perhaps my requirements outweighs my colleagues, but irregardless of the raisin it is violating to know few would speak to you without your initiation.  However, knowing the motivation of people from the mere initiation of a dialogue is interesting.  

[1] TV Show- Community

[2] TV Show- Black Books

Canto IV: There Ain't no rest for the...Maloy?

 "Oh these times they are a changing."

      My life a bit of an absurdity at times.  However, my plight is not unique to myself.  The story of most, when told in the correct lighting and at the right pitch can grip nearly anyone.  My GMAT struggling is finally finished and not my best advances will be made to the top three or four colleges on my list.  My current plans are to have my first application filled out and finished by the end of this week.
    Most of my life preparation and plans have been made years ahead.  The motivation machinating the plans may have varied, but being well planned out was a characteristic shared in the past years by my nefarious plans.  Lies would tumble from my fingertips through keys were your dear writer to illuminate that he was un-worriedly sorting through his many options, academic and professional.  However, plans are in place, although not all the most favorable plans. 
    As I put the finishing dents in this cacophony of words, my first draft of a graduate admission paper sits waiting to be torn asunder by two proof readers.  My next goal of two graduate admission paper rests loftily over the coming week in which a looming  test bears it’s gaping maw hoping to devour me or my time.

 

 The storm's a brewing

     Much in the tradition of the comedy to this point, the temperature at the wedding was just hot.   Once in my life heat would rip away my rationality and annoy me.  However, those times have past as after my devouring of the book Rapt.  This tome forced me to reassess retention.  People experience heat and find the sweltering inconvenient and uncomfortable because they have the association of heat as uncomfortable.    Things merely are and we people are left to bully reason and properties onto those poor unfortunate things.
After finishing a series of a television show once catharsis wriggled through me.  Almost an ache emanated and that delicious sorrow swilled in my mouth.  Those moments when our emotions are almost tangible are rarer and rarer to me as the clock hand passes. Rapt left me with another sensation which was similar to that of catharsis. My world view, if only for a few days, was drastically different upon completion. 
      While catharsis might have made me more aware of my looming emotions, Rapt left me with a sense of awareness.  My focus was sharper, the day was louder, and more sound was to be had.  Understandably you have now either lumped myself with a Sham-Wow salesman or a Times Square anarchist, either way, that is what happened.

Bumping along like a Bump key

       In the television show Breaking Bad, the protagonist stresses over the idea that there is some possible string of  words to win his wife's affection.  The notion of a perfect string of words for a particular situation is something which attracts my adoration like a moth to flame.  As my energy pours into revision upon revision of my graduate admission essays the idea of a perfect string of words comes to mind. 
     The situation feels as though a lock sits before me.  As any good security buff can articulate there are several ways to circumvent the trustworthy old dead bolt.  A rather popular and most common place technique now is called the “Bump key” and the bump key involves filing down a key of the same brand and trying to hit the lock with the key in such a manner that all the pins jump up, if only for a moment.  Whereas picking, the age old tradition would dictate a delicate pressing of each individual pin and a constant torque which would cause the lock to open upon alignment. Or the simple route, just have the key?
     In the graduate admission process my gut was to jump towards being the bump, or maybe trying to assess the lock (the individuals who might read the paper).  After toiling realization has curled up beside me and allowed me to be big spoon.  My role is the key, cheating the lock will only open Pandora’s box of misery and discomfort.  Now the matter lies in presenting myself in the most promising manner possible. 

It’d take a T.A.R.D.I.S. to make me Tango

    Assume that life is dungeon and dragons game run by your casual acquaintance from one of the comic book Mecca of your city. Now our hero started his adventure as a wise wizard, almost overly studious.  However, at some point in time the wizard just failed to provide the allure.  So like any good gamer you crack open your handbook and browse the Archetypes.  Honor-bound warrior…no that doesn’t suit you. not enough thought.  Wise old wizard, well we tried that on and we’re looking for the spice of life now.  Trickster, well here’s one that’s interesting.
     Now you only play a trickster in as much as you use your wiles and charisma to overcome goals.  And for the first few obstacles you manage to do a great job.   No way your wizard could ever have talked his way in and out of the prison, rescuing sir Arthur and you think: “I could get used to this”.  Then you finally get to the final dungeon, the one that your casual acquaintance prepared several months ago when you were a wizard.  Suddenly challenges which would have proven banal or trite are terrible.  Apparently large fanged monsters don’t have much time to mince words with meat they wish to mince. 
    Sometimes my fears take the form of a misallocation of goals.   Should more of my time be allocated to developing social prowess or intellectual reserve?  Will a deep practice of academic studiousness cause me to lose my hard earned social graces or does time simply need to be spread in a more effective manner?  Time will tell, let’s just hope she doesn’t speak in riddles.