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Off-Label Uses for Bicycles

ErinLeave a comment


stella houndstooth check fabric

I'm heading home today, and while I can't wait to be home, I love traveling. It's not just the possibility of finding new and amazing fabric stores, and seeing friends I haven't seen in a while, or even just the appreciation that yes, the light IS different in different places, even though it's all coming from the same sun. What I like about traveling is that it seems to reboot my brain a bit. I have a lot of good ideas while traveling, including the idea to buy this fabric, which I can't wait to make into a skirt. (With brown piped pockets, of course.)

I also love hotels. (Well, I don't love the one I'm in right now, because even though the room is HUGE and there was really nice soap, I have the heat set to 85 degrees and the vent is still spitting out a tepid exhale. But hotels in general, I love.) There's something about the anonymous and low-key surroundings of a hotel room (combined, usually, with an unaccustomed late-day ingestion of caffeine) that flips a switch in my head, which means that about five times a night, JUST as I'm about to drop off to sleep, the thermostat in my brain turns on the fan and I HAVE to wake up and write something down. Luckily, the hotels provide little pads and pens for just this purpose! Also, I can write in the dark.

Of course, the things I write down tend to be highly metaphorical (one day I will have described everything existing in terms everything else existing, and will then be stuck in the bell tower of my own personal tower of Babel, looking down at the disarray below), like the title of this post. But it makes sense to me! And that's what matters, right? That, and having the idea to make this fabric into a skirt.

0 thoughts on “Off-Label Uses for Bicycles”

  1. Is the off-label use running your sewing machine by bicyle power, post-peak-oil? (I think there’s a pic of someone doing something like this on whipup.net – only I think it was running a blender to make margaritas.)My (incomplete) metaphor about the light being different in different places: the light in the Midwest is like that in an oil painting, in the Southwest it’s like a serigraph, and the West Coast (and possibly East Coast) it’s like a watercolor. File where you will.

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  2. I wasn’t terribly excited about the fabric until I clicked on it and learned that it is corduroy! It’s perfect for a skirt. So, what might an “off-label” use for a bicycle be? Clothing rack or towel bar if you happen to live in a tiny apartment in a big city, I suppose.

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  5. Well, If it is corduroy, than a long skirt with a brown velveteen or satin top might do it. But I tremble to think of a short yellow and brown checked skirt.I love your adventurous spirit.Marcia.

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  6. I was very struck by the quality of the light in northern Finland in winter. During the day, the sun just barely rises, then skims along the horizon for a while, then sinks. The result is a beautiful, if slightly eerie, blue light.

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  9. i just returned from three days at a convention in boston where costuming and masquerading are a big component of the programming. the off shoot of this being that there are dozens of merchants selling wonderful fabric and ribbons and trim — all in a hotel! i, too, love, Love, LOVE, hotels… and always sleep great in them. additionally, i wound up buying two hats and may have found someone with unusual fabric and excellent seamstress skills to make the vests (waistcoats) i use as my signature style, and which have started to deteriorate from years of use — and are difficult to replace with anything of quality. i showed your site to anyone there with a computer who would listen!

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