Puffed sleeves. The starter drug that eventually leads to ruffles. I already had this blouse cut out but was not feeling entirely optimistic about it. It's actually the second time I've made this pattern. The first time was in university and it stayed pinned to the pattern pieces and unsewn for years and years before I finally got around to finishing it. I remember thinking it was "really hard" and that I didn't like the final blouse. Looking back on the whole thing I think my biggest mistake was the fabric I'd picked: a slinky polyester that was impossible to work with and that had no structure on its own. I remember wearing the blouse on a very few occassions before finally chucking it onto the scrap fabric pile.

This time the blouse turned out much, much nicer. The fabric is also from the Quilter's Line (I bought six or so different patterns with the intention of making skirts and blouses out of all of them--this is number two). The print is a marbled pattern that reminded me of Abi and end papers and bookbinding and that I immediately knew I had to have it. At this point the front is pinned shut. I need to find the perfect buttons. Do I want to match the green? Or maybe find little orange buttons?

I've scaled up in size since I first used the pattern. I made a few guesstimates and hoped for the best. Now that I know I like the general shape, and now that I know it's actually an easy blouse to make, I'm going to retrace the pattern shapes to fit my new shape. I'm excited. The blouse was one evening to cut and one to sew. The buttons will take me another evening (once I've found them) making the whole pattern very very accessible and tangible for my poor brain that's currently being tugged in a million different directions.

I've been spending a few spare brain cells on searching for other blouse patterns as well. I've been underwhelmed by a lot, charmed by a few and generally overwhelmed by trying to decide what to commit fabric to.

Quote of the day

Tannen calls women's "rapport-talk" and men's "report-talk." ... Also in agreement with Tannen's conclusions are Herring's findings that women contributed most to "personal" discussions, and men contributed most to talk about "issues" on an electronic academic bulletin board. In addition, women's speech is described as "personal" and men's as "authoritative."

(from: Breaking out of binaries)

The quote conjurs up four different things:

1. It reminds me of a line from Criminal Minds. Penelope always calls to talk with Derek with her findings. Always. Except in one episode she talks to Emily instead. (I believe it was 3:08, "Lucky" where Penelope gets shot.) Derek, confused, asks Emily why Penelope called her. The response was something to the effect of, "When women talk to you about their problems they don't want you to solve them."
2. In Getting to Yes Fisher and Ury advise negotiators to, "describe a problem in terms of its impact on you [rather] than in terms of what [the other person] did or why...a statement about how you feel is difficult to challenge. You convey the same information without provoking defensive reaction that will prevent them from taking it in."
3. The broad strokes of "feminist epistemology" ask researchers to recognize the value of "subjective and experiential knowledge."
4. In university Laura found the ultimate way to shut up me up when I was rambling on about a problem: "Emma, I validate your feelings."

Penelope and I are definitely rapport-talk communicators. Which one are you?