Jeannette Marie sent me a link to a pattern auction on eBay (from seller Farfalla Design Studio check them out, they have nice stuff!) that included this gem:

This was a clipping that the seller found in the pattern! I don't think I'm going to use any of these tips at my next party. Although I might pass this around to scare people. "Just imagine 10 or 12 boys all yodeling at the same time"? No, thank you.

I like to imagine this sort of stuff was written by mostly-drunk, completely hard-boiled, oft-divorced newspapermen who were kept out WWII by bad ankles, and was hammered out on typewriters with stuck "j" keys …

Barb sent me this interesting work by Robin Lasser and Adrienne Pao … it's a series of photographs of dresses that are also tents.

This is the "Ms. Homeland Security: Illegal Entry Dress Tent," about which the artists say:

… the Illegal Entry Dress Tent, originally installed beneath the California/Mexico border, contains military blankets embroidered with the names of those who have lost their lives crossing the border. Those who seek refuge beneath the skirt are implicated with their own relationship to border issues. In this way, the dress tents address body and land politics as they interface with the nomadic nature of contemporary life.

I don't know why artists' statements don't just say "I thought this would be [cool|beautiful|moving], and look! I was right." This one could have said all three …

Afraid of hard currency? Have a strict 225-characters-per-day typing limit? Listing your patterns only to make your significant other believe you are trying to sell them, but don't actually want to give them up? Here's some handy tips to make sure your eBay auctions end without bids!

— have FIVE lots of FIFTY patterns each, but take only ONE picture. Make the sure the picture prominently features two of the same pattern, both of which are nightgowns. (No joke; take another look at the image above.)

— give no sizing information. At all.

— give dating information that is vague (1950s-1960s — well, WHICH IS IT? That's TWENTY YEARS, people!)

— if possible, give incorrect information (label a pattern LUCY DRESS!!! when it's a 1960s shift)

— affect either a manic ("OMGWTFBBQ!!!! BEST A+++ PATTERNS!!!") or completely flat ("Patterns. For sale.") affect. Normal range of expression is discouraged.

— give a list of buyer requirements that would be too onerous even for SELLING A HOUSE ("I only accept Paypal, and your payment must be timestamped between 2-3 AM GMT. Put your SSN and shoe size in the comments, IN THAT ORDER. DO NOT BID if you CANNOT FOLLOW these INSTRUCTIONS!")

Hannah sent me this UK pattern listing (click on the image to visit the listing). But think carefully: do you want to encourage this kind of eBay-havior? Or do you just want to get a grab bag of 50 patterns for £1 (plus shipping)? If the answer to the second question is "yes," I sympathize, I was almost ready to bid myself. Then I realized I don't need fifty mystery patterns, especially as I will probably never, ever, sew myself a nightgown.

Hey folks! Remember this dress? Well, Anna of Booty Vintage (large sized patterns!) offered to scan and send in her similar pattern, for people who wanted to see the back of the envelope, as well. And here it is! Wasn't that kind of her?

Here's the back. Such a lovely dress … so hard to put pockets in it … sigh.

I really love the brown version. I don't know why, but I think that shade of chocolate brown is so chic … especially when (as you can, in an illustration) match your accessories so perfectly.

I'd also like to make myself crazy by trying to work out how to do this with stripes. Thin, pencil-width stripes, arranged so that they looked solid at the gathered parts. Nutso, right? But oh, so worth it if it worked!

Theresa sent me this link to the Hey Viv! store, where you can buy yourself a brand new 50s-style crinoline, for all your swishy-skirt needs. They're about $27, not including shipping, and also come in black, pink, and red.

I'm not a big crinoline-wearer myself — I have enough trouble getting in and out of cars as it is — but I'm tempted to get one. Just for parties, I'm telling myself, although I know if I had one I'm sure I'd try to wear it every day, like a six-old-girl with brand-new patent maryjanes.

I think some of you have sent me links to other retro-undergarmenty places in the past, links I have carefully filed, never to see again. If you feel generous, leave them in the comments?

Hints for actually managing the wearing of a crinoline are welcome, too.

Julie (of the blog High Fiber Content) has nominated me for the Thinking Blogger Award! Which, whoa.

In order to claim my award, I have to link to five blogs that make me think. Which, upon reflection, was harder to do than I thought it would be: I really ONLY read blogs that make me think, because I prefer thinking to almost any other form of activity. (Except, perhaps, roller-skating.)

Anyway, here are the five blogs that routinely make me think HARD, in alphabetical order:

Fashion Incubator. I love to read Kathleen's blog, because I like to know what goes on behind the curtain of the garment industry, and she pulls it all the way back.

I Blame the Patriarchy. Twisty is helping me try to reduce my complicity in the patriarchial system. Somewhat. I'm working on it.

Jane In Progress. Again, another blog that pulls back the curtain, this time on television. I love to see how things work with their cunning gears and wires! And Jane shows how scripts work. And jokes. And lunch. Delish.

Raw Thought (from Aaron Swartz). Is it cheating to nominate a blog with "thought" right in its title for a Thinking Blogger award?

Think Denk. I know NOTHING about classical music, and in the real 'nothing' sense, not the "I know NOTH-ink!" Hogan's Heroes Schultz sense. But when I read this blog I can sometimes see things swimming toward me out of the fog.

Thank you, Julie, for nominating me!

Dress A Day reader Erma's husband is a non-native speaker of Chinese and a linguistics professor, and he has a dress-related translation question. Does anyone know the meaning of the Chinese character bai3 ()? It's used in compounds such as qun2bai3 (), where qun2 means skirt. It was used in a sentence which translates to something like "Under the rustling of the evening breeze, the entire bai3 of the skirt was billowing".

The dictionary defines bai3 as "hem or lower part". But a native speaker told Erma's husband that bai3 refers to width — a narrow skirt has a "small bai3" and a wide skirt has a "big bai3".

Anyone have some input? I have to say, if we figure this one out, I'm going to steal that word into English and use it to refer to this concept all the time. "I only wear skirts with big bai," I'll say.

[The image is an artwork called "Memory Dress" by Yu Hong.]

This dress is actually made of awesome, is it not? It's from Jen, at MOMSPatterns — you know Jen, her ad's right there on the right (your right, my left, as I face you through the computer).

If this weren't a B32, you'd never see it here, as I would be jealously guarding the auction like some kind of medieval guardy thing, waiting for my bid to go through at the very last second. But since it's on the small side, I'm happy to share it with you. Go! And if you win it, make it IMMEDIATELY, and send me a picture, please.

Of course, if you're not on the small side, Jen has something for you too — in fact, she's running a special sale! MOMSPatterns is having a Weekend Spring Cleaning Sale and A Dress A Day readers get 1st dibs on more than 1,000 vintage sewing patterns …

The sale starts today [Thursday] and ENDS at midnight Sunday, April 29, 2007. Use coupon code 'springcleaning30' to save 30% off of ANY sized order. Don't forget that Jen ships for free to the US & Canada with the purchase of 5 or more patterns …

That panel-ly thing on the side of the skirt, up there? Actually BUTTONS ON. For extra swoosh. Man, I wish this was in my size!

Angela at Dorothea's Closet sent me this — it's not for sale, though, so put your credit cards away. She bought it to sell and had to keep it (that's one of the reasons I'd never be a good vintage store proprietor: I'd keep too much)!

Angela said her four-year-old daughter told her it looked like the dress had "buttons" — she meant "keyboard keys". (I remember when my son was four; he was obsessed with pushing buttons. We spent a lot of time in elevators that were making unscheduled stops at all floors.) And, yes, don't they look like keyboards?

Isn't this a great dress? I'm happy just knowing it exists. I'm even happier knowing it has pockets:

Pockets that LACE UP, no less!

I saw this Doo.Ri for GAP dress in an actual GAP store when I was in NYC, and I was tremendously impressed — it was even cute on the hanger, and I loved the versatility of it — you could belt it with any number of scarves and ties and whatnot, wear it as a white dress all summer, and then (when it got grimy, as it eventually would) dye it black and wear it all NEXT summer. Genius!

So I went to the GAP site to check it out and the GAP site is now a horrific swirling mess of crappy Flash animations. You can't click anywhere, you can't find anything, it's all five second movies by wannabe web auteurs. I hate hate hate it. Catch me plunking down my money at a site like that. And to add insult to animation, the dress isn't even available online!

So if you're walking by a GAP anyway (check their site for the stores that even HAVE this "Design" line, not all of them do) and feel like checking for this dress, it's probably worth it — it's only $88. Otherwise, feel free to use my irritation at the complete suck of the GAP website as an excuse not to hand them any of your money.