Anticipation, Anticipayaytion Is Making Me Late. It's Keeping Me Waaaaiiiiting....
So, you got Carly Simon in your head now? Good! (Yes, Carly, these are the good old days!) So much anticipation at chez moi today! Voici:
The new sewing machine I've been itching to own for months now! Look at how pretty and pristine the box is! I know I'm a freak, but I'm prolonging the excitement for a just little while longer. Besides who can sew when you've got some blocking to do!
Voila!
The flower basket shawl is done! Knitting purists, please avert your eyes. Yes, those are bamboo skewers threaded through the eyelets along the top, and thumbtacks pinning the edges in place. This, my friends, is called rasquache blocking. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, rasquache means make-do, from whatever it is that you have on hand. In Caramelo, Lala calls it "homemade half-ass."
I like Amala Mesa-Bains' take on it: "The capacity to hold life together with bits of string, old coffee cans, and broken mirrors in a dazzling gesture of aesthetic bravado is at the heart of rasquachismo."
Ha! Who knew? It's aesthetic bravado, people, not the inability or the good sense to wait to buy blocking wires and rust-free pins.
6 Comments:
Your shawl is gorgeous! I must see a modeled photo, with the dress. Cool about the sewing machine. I can't sew at all, but I still want one. (Steeks! I could do steeks!)
There is a word like rasquache in Brazilian Portuguese too -- it's jeitinho. To dar um jeito means "to manage [to do something]" but a jeitinho implies a little more resourcefulness and panache than that. It's always been one of my favorite words -- there's really nothing like it in English.
Oooooh, lovely! Turned out great, even with the thumbtacks.
Can't wait to see what you make with that there machine!
Great job on the shawl... I agree with Laura, we've got to see a photo with the dress! You really finished that up quickly. What did you think of the pattern? I own a copy of Caramelo but haven't read it yet. Too much to read, as usual... but I love her House on Mango Street.
FBS looks great! I can't believe how quickly you finished it--v. impressive.
I'm liking this concept of rasquachismo. Being able to justify my perpetual hlaf-assedness about things with a fancy foreign word makes evrything better...
Ok, now 3 people are requesting so you must model that shawl, girlie, with the dress of course!
!Que bonita, O!
Uh, still waiting for those pics.
Also, I tagged you for another meme, chica. Questions on my blog.
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