bits & bobs of shiny

side note: if you want to read some killer late 19th century weird fiction by a queer writer: run, do not walk, to Vernon Lee's Hauntings. Lee's queerness falls right in that valley where modern identity categories fail due to the complexity of gendered experience, and it doesn't seem useful to retroactively pronounce One Definitive Label for her life and experience-- she used a male pseudonym and embraced gender-nonconformity by the standards of her era, both in physical presentation and in her career; she had powerful romantic relationships and long term collaborations with women; she had a complex relationship to physical intimacy; she lived a generally offbeat independent life as a scholar and international traveler -- but holy fuck her supernatural fiction is a first-class treat and has a lot of queer valences. Curious phenomena surround a charismatic orphan girl as Italy's pagan Classical past perseveres into its heavily Catholic present; a visiting academic becomes enthralled to a long-dead Renaissance femme fatale; a super-normie-looking married couple manifest troubling echoes of their ancestral forebears in the presence of the artist hired to paint their portrait; an uptight classical musician is tormented by a long-dead CASTRATO SEX GHOST who exerts preternatural force to seduce or to kill through the power of his otherworldly voice. It fucking rules. And you can read that shit for free. Please do.

So my sister wants to start sewing more, because

“Where did u get all this”

Linen; https://www.graylinelinen.com/

I don’t know a lot about sewing, but I want to make or have my mom make some linen pants & shirts for when I’m watering, because it gets to 105 here and we have mosquitos so I need to be covered. What type of linen do I buy? Also, linen pajama shorts, yes/no?

Medium weight is what I’d go with.

Renaissance Fabrics is good for all sorts of things

For wools, I cannot recommend Woolsome enough! They’re a bit more expensive then the above links, but they have a spectacular range of colours and weights, as well as diamond pattern and herringbone weaves. They also have a range of linens, though not as extensive.

Tiedtohistory.com has sheer voile linen

Bernadette Banner did a quality test on all the linen she could buy online. This video is the result.

I absolutely adore how normal Clark's parents looked so normal. I realize the ideal of them is a strong farmer and his wife and that might be a beautiful older woman and her sturdy handsome husband. Nothing wrong with that. But Martha and Jonathan Kent in this movie were the kind of older couple I'd see at the grocery store in my own small-town. The kind of people at the community hall and auction grounds picking up hay bales for the cattle.