picnic lunch.

i had a funny conversation today with someone about how i can do a lot of things well enough to get by, but that i’m not actually that great at anything. my interests splay out sloppily all over the map, never fully germinating, and eventually just withering and dying once i’ve moved on to something else. sewing was one of those things. for a few minutes (roughly 3 years ago), i thought that maybe i could make my millions by becoming an handmade mogul. i made all these ridiculous bunnies out of vintage cashmere sweaters (see wide eyed example at left) and sold them (under the name “manta ray business solutions”)  at a table at a little craft fair called picnic.

well, my career in plush manufacture never exactly took off, but picnic turned out to be the single kick ass-est craft fair that ever held a hot glue gun. forget your grammy’s seashell picture frames and scary dried apple head dolls, this craft fair stars STUFF THAT YOU ACTUALLY WANT! and it’s coming soon to a hobo park near you, THIS SATURDAY.

august 28th (once again, that’s THIS SATURDAY, as in tomorrow), from 11-6 you can browse and buy everything from recycled rubber clutches to first place chump ribbons (i so heart strong arm bindery, and you’d better too). basically, it’s top notch design made by hand. but they’ve all managed somehow to back away from the puffy paint and candle making supplies, and made accessible, affordable, and beautiful art that you can take home with you. even more reasons worth getting a rowdy boner for picnic this year:

1. you can knock out your holiday shopping early, and never worry about about getting your friends and loved ones something they already have. (i mean, who doesn’t love a squirrel playing the drums?) [people who are dead inside, that’s who.]

2. there’s food. delicous food.

3. there’s music. delicious music. a whole bunch of your very favorite local bands (and a few out of state invaders) will play you gently through your shopping experience, including & especially the big finish by longtime portland superstars phantom buffalo.

4. beloved broke207 favorites like kate sullivan jones (a sweet disorder), emblem studio, and boom chick-a-boom will be there selling their shit, and they deserve our undying love and support. and cash. definitely bring cash.

in short, picnic is the best thing ever. and if you’re within a 100 mile radius of portland, maine on saturday the 28th (that’s tomorrow folks), you need to get your ass to lincoln park with a wad of cash and a big giant tote bag. support local artists. buy, own, and love awesome stuff. have something better to do with your saturday than just getting high and watching chitty chitty bang bang on VHS (you can do that after).

oh, and did i mention that admission is FREE?

weekend pickthrough- nonfunctional edition.

i get exactly 10 days of vacation/sick time every year. i allow myself 1 full week off from work, and the remainder are reserved for emergencies and obligations (spluh). usually i take this week sometime in july or august, but this year, on account of the puppy and the lost deposit debacle, my vacay had to be downgraded from 9 days in a cabin on MDI to 4 days at a motor lodge in moosehead.  and it’s not happening until september. and i’m dying. slowly. day by day.

ok, maybe not dying so much as withering. i have a very bad habit of overextending myself, and sometimes even if there are still responsibilities to be met (namely a long overdue graphic design project and a post of the observer), i just hit the wall and become completely nonfunctional. unfortunately, my wall-hitting has just fallen short of my vacation, and i spent the weekend sitting like a lump on my couch in a stupor. i know, my weekend pickthroughs are getting picked through later and later. i know, i haven’t scored myself a hot deal in weeks. i know, the more projects i try to take on, the worse job i do at everything.

so here it is. 3 days late, and barely breathing.

try liquefying your vegetables and pouring them in the humidifier. recipes for the really modern woman.

do i really have a future in toll booth collection? this random generator seems to think so.

man, if the streetcar was still running in portland (like it did in 1916), i wouldn’t be late for work every day (probably).

fuck that ghost! (a superior flow chart of super superiority)

what’s in this hipster’s bag? or for that matter, would you just look at this fucking hipster?

does the auburn mall really count as a dead mall? tragic. why oh why did porteous have to go?!

and while we’re sitting here on the couch, here’s a small collection of fashion blogs that have recently tickled my fancy:

young fat and fabulous– apparently she won the MTV twitter-vj slot (i am the jealous-ist), but i like her because she’s thrifty, curvy, and sassy as shit.

this bitch has the time, skill, and energy (and apparent access to a very thrifty thrift-store) to make a dress a day. maybe me and my remedial sewing skills need to start a spin off site called “a hot mess a day”?

portland local cutie pie sweet william catalogs her daily wardrobe.

DIYikes.

i like to think that i’m pretty handy. i can cook, sew, take on minor home repairs, write a kick ass resume, open jars, list all my US presidents in order in under 20 seconds… i’m completely capable of doing a myriad of assorted tasks, both in and out of the home. taking into account these skills and combining with my cheap/broke factor, one might assume that i’m a DIY junky. surprisingly, one would be wrong. very wrong.

i’d like to make something abundantly clear here today: DIY projects are only a good deal/idea if  you actually have the skill to execute them on the same level as a professional. sure, it might be slightly cheaper in the moment, but  is a few bucks worth the heartbreak and shame (and often additional cost of having the mistake professionally fixed) that often come with a botched DIY job? i think not:

1. prom dresses. prom dresses these days are stupid expensive, so it may seem like a perfectly reasonable idea to cut a few corners and make one yourself. your daughter may even be excited about the prospect of designing her own gown. DON’T DO IT. unless you’re a tailor (in which case be my guest), formal wear sewing is exceedingly difficult to do in a way that doesn’t scream “my mom doesn’t sew that well!”. even if you are a tailor, for the love of god, give your teen limited input on the creation. teenagers have bad taste, and are often trying to slut things up with glitter and inappropriate cutouts.  but seriously, just save yourself a lot of time (you’ll be up all night the night before the prom guaranteed) and heartbreak, and take your child to the g-d mall. someday you’ll both be glad that she wasn’t humiliated by your sub-par sewing skills, and that she didn’t attend the prom looking like a day shift stripper or solid gold dancer.

2. salon services. hey, did you know that you have to be licensed to work in the beauty industry? i wonder why that is? the excessive amount of home beauty systems available at the drug store would lead us to believe that we as unlicensed individuals are capable of doing everything from hair coloring to bikini waxing at home as well as any paid professional. why would we waste the money? well, if you don’t mind having orange highlights or a mangled moustache area, be my guest.  the quality of salon products is higher, and surprise! they know how to do it right. i speak from experience! i personally have given myself (on multiple occasions) something that looked like bloody crotch hickeys trying to wax my own bikini area. i have also had big brown splotchy patches of hair for several months when i got drunk in college and decided to become a blonde. admittedly, factoring out the alcohol will help, but not that much. also on the list of at-home personal care “must avoids”: anything you would usually have done at a plastic surgeon’s office (injectibles!), self tanner, and of course, home vajazzling.

3. home repair. that’s right, you are devaluing your home with every single hatchet jobbed home improvement project you attempt. once again, home repair professionals are also licensed for a reason. they’re also expensive for a reason: quality home improvement is both difficult and time consuming. if you’ve never laid tile before, chances aret that it’s more difficult to get those lines nice and flush than you might think (especially if you’re using an assortment of bargain basement tiles). we got a great deal on our condo partially because it was filled to the roof with badly installed (and completely inappropriate) tile, lazy paint jobs, and highly questionable electrical configurations (lucky for us, the boyfriend’s dad is a LICENSED electrician).

4. gifts. oooh. nothing guarantees a fast track ticket to the goodwill like a crappy home made gift. i’m not talking about adorably lopsided hand turkeys and xmas ornaments from children, we love those! nor am i talking about beautifully hand knit sweaters, stunning quilts, or incredible baked goods from friends and family that have the skills. the key word here is SKILLS. if you are not the creative type, please don’t think that you can just whip something up with stencils and craft paint that someone is going to cherish for a lifetime. more likely than not, it’s going to cause an awkward moment or two before they hide it in the back of their cupboard just long enough for it to be socially acceptable form them throw it away. some classic non-nos:

wine glasses with crap poorly painted on them.
smelly candles with seashells trapped in them (or worse).
anything that involved you glue gunning something to something else.

seriously, people hate this shit.

in summation, put that sawzall down, scoop up your dignity, and put that money back into the economy where it belongs by supporting yourself some trained professionals and local businesses. there are a million different ways to save money, but trust me, using your own unskilled labor isn’t one of them.

from the annals of sleep dep.

i’m a crazy person.  i have a bad habit of wanting things to be perfect and being willing to completely sacrifice reason in my pursuit. case and point, no sleep. spent last night attempting to manufacture the best mermaid costumes ever for a friend’s upcoming dance show. sure, i could have left them plain and called it done, but that’s not my style.  instead i pushed on (hand painting scale detail onto each pair of custom mermaid pants) into the wee hours of the morn. 2 episodes of criminal minds (go nerdly!), the money pit, the house bunny, sense and sensibility, and one hour of very unsatisfying couch sleep later… i still have to rush home to finish the project by 7. but i THINK it will look nice. hope is out the window. hope can’t save me now.

anyway, i’m fucking delirious right now, and you would be too if you just spent the last 14 hours making glitter fishpants. so i apologize for not making much sense. also, i’m sorry that it’s been a low couple of days here for content. i’m hoping to bang out a couple of posts tonight on the ole lappy while i’m watching dress rehearsal. although i might also just nod off into a puddle of my own sleep drool. either way, i’ll be back soon with actual real posts about something. anything! oh, and i’ve got 2 giveaways coming up- so you’ll want to think about that.

the mysterious disappearance of home economics.

while watching superbad a couple of years ago, i found myself wondering during the tiramisu scene: what kind of rich-ass fantasy school still has home ec? seriously, with school budgets being slashed to bits all over town, is there a public school in america that has offered the course in the last 10 years? i think that the majority of people out there in the universe might respond with something like: who gives a shit? and my response would be: i do. i mean, kind of.

it’s not that i think that we should have held on tight to the literal apron strings and cut the history/math/science (even art) department instead. home ec and wood shop were already rapidly withering dinosaurs back in the 90s when i went high school. the prioritization of home ec out of the school system is one thing, but the prioritization of life skills our of our upbringing is entirely another.  the happy homemaker home ec of 1964  is dead, but i propose a mandatory basic living curriculum to be taught at all public high schools that would prepare our youth to be semi-functional adults once they finally get tossed out of the nest.

1. pay your damn bills: from APRs, to FICO scores (with a healthy side of checkbook balancing). maybe a prophylactic measure like this could keep the next generation from being as deep in the financial shit as much as this one?

2. feed yourself: the college transition into the top ramen lifestyle happens so very swiftly. thank sweet jesus that we’re not longer encouraged to trap veg-all in jello, but a little basic cooking, nutritional counseling, and some grocery store field trips (extra credit for coupon clipping) are certainly in order.

3. sew on your own damn buttons: on multiple occasions, i’ve had both grown men & women ask me to sew on a button for them (at which point i look them dead in the eyes and give them my best “bitch please”). nobody learns how to sew anymore, which makes even the most remedial of stitching tasks seem mysterious and terrifying.  both practical and creative, sewing can also be (shouts allegiance to wardrobe refashion) a big time money saver, or even (hails to the gods of etsy) money maker.  plus, it will assure that your current or future children never have to wear a sucky store-bought halloween costume.

4. fix that shit: toilet snaking, nail hole spackling, draino 101. i’m not talking big time home improvement here, but a greater appreciation of proper handy-manning at an earlier age might have assured that i was hanging my artwork up properly, instead of banging pushpins into the walls of my first apartment with a rock.

5. clean up after your ass: i’m definitely not a supporter of daily bed making, but i’ve seen people in their 30s wiping down their counters with windex or using a lint roller as an alternative to owning a vacuum cleaner. somewhere in there, we need to learn how to do dishes without a dishwasher, remove shower curtain mildew, and put our toys away when we’re done.

it’s time to storm the school board! (who’s with me?)