50's Style Ultimate Kitschen Apron

 

Here's a length of extra skirting that is similar to something I featured in my blog before.  Check out the wonderful stripey waistline piece that extends a bit into the ties.  It is long enough in back to make a bow.  This apron features a convenient left-hand pocket, banked to the inside, because if you've really got a pocket full of snow peas from the garden, you don't want them tumbling out when you bend and stretch.  Its an old physics trick that I learned from trial and error.

When I was a child, my grandmothers were big on aprons.  One grandmother wore an apron as the top layer of her clothes whenever she was at home.  She wore full aprons of the top and bottom kind, usually, and would take them off when going to the store.  They were handy for popping grease as she fried morning bacon and made gravy.  They had big huge pockets for holding lots of clothespins for hanging laundry on the line to dry in the outdoor sun.

My other grandmother wore aprons also.  She wore frilly aprons for serving lovely vanilla sugar cookies.  These cookies were usually pressed out by a granddaughter and sprinkled with white sugar, then served with coffee or milk.  

Both of my grandmothers sewed.  My maternal grandmother, Bigmom, had a dry cleaners and tailoring service.  She had the most amazing interesting things she made from fabric scraps.  She had woolen quilts made from pant-legs of the mens wool suit pants that had been cut off.  She had raggedy towels sewn together in layers to make pads the size of a fat quarter.  These were little footstool or ottoman pads, or to step out onto from the bathtub, or for wiping feet inside the back door, or for babydoll blankets.  When my daughter was a little baby, this grandmother is the one who made me promise not to use disposable diapers, saying they were gross and miserable for babies.  When she passed away, I inherited a wonderful twin sateen quilt top that she had made in pastel blocks in mint, pink, dreamsicle orange, baby blue and lemon yellow.  In her aprons, she looked like Lucy Ricardo... perky and frilly.

My grandmothers' aprons are my inspiration for making fun aprons.  I've taken quite a few to the stomp grounds for kitchen use there.  This style of mixed calicos and pinch-pleats is new.  In old times, our corn dance was performed with the women wearing aprons of simple thin 60-thread or 100-thread count plain white cotton.  These aprons were scant and tailored, and they reminded me of when I was a little girl and my mother would put a bowl of  starch (and sometimes the whites to be starched and ironed) in the fridge.  (Starch and bluing.  Do people even know what that is today?)

There is something practical about an apron.  You drag in from a tough mind-numbingly cerebral day at the office sitting in a chair for eight hours.  You're hungry for something delicious, but still in a black or navy colored suit.  If you cook in it, you'll have more work ahead at laundry time, making sure there isn't any gravy on the tummy.  So, throw on an apron to break the serious mood.  Voila!  You're Samantha, making perfect barbeque sauce from scratch and whipping up something divine in quick time.  Remember... when you are too tired to fix dinner, a magic apron will give you the strength and energy to cook up some strength and energy.

I'm listing a few new things in my online shops, so this apron will be showing up in one of my etsy storefronts for $18 or you can email me if its the perfect match for your cooking and entertaining adventures.

Geocaching

Here I am, spilling the beans.  See, there's a secret hobby.  It is called "geocaching."  Here's how you do it:
1.  Get a GPS receiver.  (That's a global positioning satellite receiver.)  Best is a Garmin.  But you could use the Tom-Tom in your vehicle that you use for finding addresses, if it is portable.  Check your cellphone.  If it is like my Droid Eris, it has GPS built-in and you can download a cool little application used to input latitude and longitude coordinates.
2.  Visit www.geocaching.com and register.  Answer some questions (such as your address), and you can search for geocaches in your town, or some place you plan to visit on vacation.  There you will find that on Earth, there are over 800,000 hidden geocaches.  Some will be tiny little microcapsules hidden in hollowed-out tree-knots, and others will be huge geological features, such as a certain geological uplift around Tahlequah.

Voila!  Usually, a geocache will be a hidden ammo box containing a jumble of fun souvenirs ranging from carabiners to compasses, Happy Meal toys to school supplies.  Always, (except, ie geological uplifts) you'll find a log to sign, proving you found it.  Put it back exactly as you found it, and make note of what you take-- always leaving something of equal or greater value in the cache for the next adventurer.

Why do we like to geocache?  Its an adenturous way to get exercise, visit some place interesting, and log a "smiley".  At geocaching. com you can log your find and it will keep track of your game.  Some people program their phone or computer to alert them at the first posting of a new cache, and make it a game to speed around being the first person to visit the cache.  That way, they get the best "first to find" prize.  Just different people create and hide the caches.  Friedrick and I have hidden a few.

That's the background for this cartoon which Friedrick made for me.  To get it, let me add that our Tom-Tom has a feature where the driver can set different voices, such as Homer Simpson or Mr. T, for giving the verbal directions to a location.  Ours happens to be Wardley, a Jamaican voice.  And when you pass up your turn, he alerts you by saying, "What kind of idiot business is this?  Jah no say he want me to tell you again.  Turn round the vehicle."

What's secret about it?
The reason you have probably never heard of geocaching is that it is a secret hobby.  It is secret, so "muggles" or those who don't know about geocaching, won't pilfer the caches and take the treasures.  Occasionally a muggle will happen upon a cache and take it or just the contents.  There are caretakers for each cache, and sometimes trusted muggles are clued-in about a cache so as to help protect it.