Just the miniest of minutiae

Today has been a truly beautiful day. A cold front blew in and gave us a very pleasant seventy something degrees on a bright and sunny afternoon. The early morning was chilly enough for a sweater. Those of you with four seasons can't understand what it is like when we actually get weather like this in Austin, Texas while still in September. It makes people giddy, gives us all a new lease on life, it's special. We usually don't have early falls. Sometimes summer bleeds into late October or early November. I wonder what sort of person I would be if I could count on four seasons through the year. This cooler weather puts me in a great mood. I wake up with tons of energy and get so much done during the day, makes all the difference.

I have been trying like mad to conquer the knitting block I have once and for all. I discovered that my Abuelita taught me the Combined style. It is not English or Continental or even a combination of the two. It's a somewhat fast and economical way to knit and is the style most used in Mexico and Latin America. However it is difficult to apply this style to patterns. I ran into trouble knitting in the round a few years ago and after hours of trying I gave up. Now that I know what the problem is there are all sorts of websites dedicated to knitting in the Combined (Combination) style. I must learn to read and follow a pattern so that I can knit awesome vintage sweaters.

Mexican clothes



I love traditional Mexican embroidered shirts, skirts and dresses. I was given a white cotton dress covered with embroidered blue flowers when I was a little girl. I remember thinking it was so pretty. My mother still has it. This is a photo of me in it.

Being a Hispanic teen, living in a border town in the 80s, it was a bad thing if you wore any traditional Mexican clothing. I know because one day I wore an embroidered Puebla style shirt my freshman year. It was a pretty, off white, gauze shirt with flowers embroidered on it. It was one of the first weeks of public school. Having worn uniforms for eight years I was new to the whole you can wear anything concept. 

Rude awakening! I got stared at, laughed at to my face and I didn't understand why. My new school friend, a real sweetie, politely asked me why was I wearing a Mexican shirt when I was a Mexican-American. She explained this was clothing reserved for Anglo grandmothers and "gringo" tourists.  True, the women in my family in Mexico never wore these clothes. The men did wear guyaberas all the time. But I didn't feel these were novelty clothes reserved as souvenirs. They were pretty and skillfully done and had a history and were timeless. She said because we are already Hispanic it wasn't cool.

The whole day was truly bad, bad, bad. A few of the teachers complimented my shirt. I braved the day, I had worse, and I loved my shirt. My Grandmother ( who isn't  of Mexican decent but Native American) didn't like me wearing it.  She didn't like me wearing turquoise or moccasins either. She found those things ridiculous. So, my Grandmother took the shirt from me in a very subtle way. She took me to the mall to buy me new clothes then just asked for it when I got home. I parted with it out of guilt. She had spent so much money on my new wardrobe just to get the shirt out of my hands.

My senior year of high school I became a huge fan of vintage Mexican skirts that I would wear with black shirts, black flats and long dangling earrings. If this was a fashion faux pas at the time, I didn't know it. I was leaving town in a few months and really didn't care. It was a look I took to college.

I still love embroidered Mexican shirts and vintage Mexican skirts. but, sadly I no longer own any skirts. I wore them until they faded and fell apart or didn't fit. They are really pricey these days. Anyway I wear my Mexican shirts quite often, maybe too often. I used to purchase them in Mexico but now I get them in San Antonio. Every now and then my Mom will pick up one for me when she visits my Abuelita.




My Favorite Mexican Dress

 These clothes might punctuate, highlight and underline who I am for some people. I love my culture and I'm not embarrassed of it, but I can understand the struggles with assimilation others have had. I don't feel Mexican clothing is reserved for any one group of people but out there for anyone who finds them pretty.  I  have a real love for the work that goes into making what I feel are works of art. I hardly have the skill to embroider a shirt as detailed as the ones I own. The older I get the more drawn I am to them and the more pieces fill my closet. They have always felt very comfortable and comforting to me.  However, the big lesson in assimilation cannot be ignored. My Grandmother still hates it when I wear the turquoise and the moccasins. She shed her heritage long ago except in the stories she would tell me of growing up in Eagle Pass. I can respect her struggle with fitting in and I try not to wear them too much around her.



Timeless

In my constant search for traditional Mexican shirts I came upon these cool websites: Frida's Fashions and The Mexican Indinginous Textile Project.  Anyone who likes these clothes as much as I do is an instant friend.

Found

I came across a photo of my old apartment. I still have everything except the old television, flokati rug (not seen) and lamp base. The shade sits on a new vintage lamp. The television set was an old tube set that still worked. The original tubes were long gone and they had been replaced with something that sort of fit and sort of didn't. As a result the set heated up fast. You could have defrosted and cooked a frozen pizza on it in 40 minutes. Not very safe. I looked into getting the tubes replaced but that was no longer possible. The set was put on Craigslist and went to a church in Dallas. The guy drove all the way from Dallas just to pick up this set. It supposedly is a permanent fixture in a room used for meetings.

Roberto Carlos

Give anything enough time, as esoteric as it might seem to you, it will appear on youtube.com. This was my favorite 45, a Roberto Carlos B-side. I loved it as a toddler and then it faded from my life only to return when I was thirteen. I was inspired to look for it when I came upon this post on Bohemian Raphsody.
I couldn't find it a few years ago.

Our River

Whirlingturban

I discovered Whirlingturban in 2003. The dreamiest dresses can be found at Whirlingturban. In fact I have one very similar to the dress in this photo. It is truly well constructed, the sort of dress you can even heirloom. What I love about my dress is I always feel like I have walked out of a glamorous Hollywood film circa 1946 every time I wear it.

I was the vintage dress queen in the late 1980s early 1990s. My supplier was a warehouse in Del Rio that would somehow procure clothing by the barrels and unload piles of delicious vintage clothing, sometimes with tags still on them, onto  a smooth concrete floor that was rarely seen.  People would walk all over these mounds and mounds of clothing, find a spot, then proceed to dig for several hours. Everything was sold by the pound and on the weekends that was ten cents, twenty five during the week. My friends and I had a blast finding dead stock sheaths with yellowed Neiman Marcus tags still on them and pristine shirt dresses from the 1950's. We really didn't know how lucky we were to find vintage clothing so cheap, clean and in really great condition. 

I came to Austin with a wonderful collection of vintage dresses and accumulated more in town from low priced vintage stores. Dressed to Kill was an awesome store on The Drag that would often hold an attic sale and sell gorgeous things for $1 a piece. I procured gorgeous cocktail dresses in mint condition from these sales.

One day in 1997 I decided to unload my collection and made quite a bit of money. It didn't take long to regret it. I comforted myself with the idea that I'd slowly build a new collection of vintage dresses. However, vintage dresses were not available like they had been and when I happened to find one they were always falling apart. Whirlingturban provides several different vintage styles made from quality fabrics that are so authentic looking you'd think they were dead stock.  What really makes a vintage dress is the construction, they had a tailored fit, darts, nice metal zippers and made to make you look great. Whirlingturban is more than impressive in their creations and totally fill my vintage dress void.

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Television Sitcom Character

The books children read

I happened upon this website on series books for children while searching for series books I read when I was a kid. The Sacred Heart Academy (later Sacred Heart School when the nuns left) library was a  random collection of books that began in the late 1800s. A rather larger portion of their holdings seemed to be dedicated to series books that were already vintage when I began checking them out. While I read Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary and all the Little House books,  I also read these old books, mostly because I thought the covers were interesting.

I didn't get through all of Tom Swift (I dropped of after they introduce Koku) but I read all of the Vicki Barr Flight Stewardess books and Cherry Ames, Sue Barton, Nancy Drew etc...One thing that impresses me now is that this school library even had the UK series books featured on the website.

The school underwent several major overhauls and last I heard these old books were boxed up and stored in a room for several years before finally being tossed (along with several rotating aluminum Christmas trees). They were considered outdated and I guess they are to some extent. I remember how they made modeling, nursing and stewardess jobs seem really awesome. Times changed fast before I arrived on earth, thank goodness. When I was reading Tom Swift there were no home computers or cell phones. I could still relate to many of the stories in a world with typewriters and  mimeograph machines still around.

I have to say my favorite books were not part of a series but a genre of teen pulp books that were scattered around the shelves. I remember Gang Girl by Wenzell Brown and D for Delinquent by Bud Clifton the most. I didn't think anyone really knew what was in the books after I read such titles as  My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul  Zindel. Somehow they  found their way into a Catholic school library in a small town and managed to remain without any controversy. I'd like to think our librarian was just open minded but more than likely no one had really checked out anything from that library for several years.

Del Rio News Herald 1981