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Dressew is a sewing supply store, here in Vancouver, that is sort of a combination of Alladin’s Cave and a TARDIS. It is situated on East Hastings, on the block east of the Scientology Centre – you know, right before it starts to get really dodgy.
One enters the store and is greeted by a smell that I always imagine to be a sort of universal ‘grandma’s attic’ smell. Probably from the years and years worth of musty fabrics which pile high onto shelves that reach up to the ceiling. Seriously, some of the material in there looks as if it hasn’t budged since 1963. It’s two levels of all the sewing supplies you could ever want. And lots of it stuff you would NEVER want! EEE! Well, except for black raw silk, which is what I went for today and which they were out of, much to my chagrin. Dang it. They DID have buckram, though, which I am pretty pleased about – I have been in before looking for it and was told they were out. Hmm. In retrospect, I think that the crotchety old lady (almost all the ladies who work there are crotchety and old) told me that they had sold out, just because she didn’t want to be bothered to find the bolt and cut me some. Anyway, today’s trip resulted in victory! I only bought half a meter because I I have never used buckram and I want to experiment with just a little to begin with. My goal is to fashion a sturdy little cocktail hat base. On with the experiment!
I will always remember my first panic attack.
I was at a family dinner with my mom, my sister and my then stepfather (he made the unfortunate mistake one day of making my mother choose between him and our family’s beloved cats), and at least a dozen others out on a farm in rural Ontario. I can’t remember what the occasion was and being from a family of one half French Canadian heritage, there probably wasn’t any except that it was the weekend and that was as good an excuse as any to get together, eat way too much an then try to round up all the kids from their After Dinner Hiding Spots to do the dishes. At this particular gathering, it was during an intense, pre-dinner game of ‘Operation’ that the realization I had forgotten to program the VCR to record that night’s episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation hit me. It hit me with the force of 10 Photon Torpedoes being fired simultaneously from a Romulan Bird of Prey, suddenly de-cloaking and catching me with my shields down. I ran over to my mother and in a slow and very serious voice explained, “You need to drive me home right away or I am going to miss Star Trek”. Obviously she would understand the urgency of the situation, and immediately go start the car. After all, it was an hour drive, and there was exactly 72 minutes before the show started, and Heaven forbid I miss a single second of the theme music that I had already planned would one day be played at my wedding (which actually ended up being ‘Dirty Old Man’, by Faithless and is a whole other story).
Well I was wrong.
She looked at me and replied, “Just ask them to switch the channel and watch it here.”
ACK! She didn’t get it!
“But I need to record it!” I had every episode of the first season and a half (that night’s episode was ‘Time Squared’) on neatly labeled VHS tapes and I couldn’t miss one, not now, not after have a whole season and a half already. “And besides, I can’t watch it here, the tv is too fuzzy!”
“Record it when it repeats, then” She looked away. This was going nowhere! Record it out of order? WHAT? That was an unacceptable notion.
Yes, Virginia, there was a time before YouTube, TiVo, and P2P.
I started hyperventilating. This couldn’t be happening, not to me. I couldn’t be facing the possibility that I might miss an episode! I had NEVER missed an episode! I was a natural born Trekkie. Raised on the original series, I was addicted to TNG before I even watched the pilot, ‘Encounter at Farpoint’, and to miss recording an episode was not only unacceptable, it was down right blasphemous!
The panic continued. The feeling of anxiety mixed with extreme paranoia and the sensation that the world as I knew it was about to end was too much. I felt faint. Outwardly I threw a tantrum, which for a 14 year old girl to do is quite a sight to see, but inwardly, I was sure that the calamity of the situation would be enough to make my heart come to a full stop quicker than the Enterprise coming out of Warp 10 at the edge of the Neutral Zone.
Yes, my love of all things Trek goes back far and it goes back deep. My then Drama teacher and now good friend Pam still remembers the time I organized ‘A trip through the Enterprise’ for our sensory journey project. Blindfolded students were led through a sensory simulation of the NCC-1701-D including being beamed aboard, the automatic doors, being under photon torpedo attack and pulling out at maximum warp. It was very rad. Despite outing myself as the big nerd everyone suspected me to be, it was a total hit and I do believe I got an A.
So there are just a few anecdotes to illustrate how much I love Star Trek and why tonight’s release, of JJ Abrams take on this enduring franchise is a really, REALLY big deal for me…
Live long and prosper.
GETTING THERE
I should have rented the GPS.
I just got back from an amazing weekend in Seattle, where I attended a fantastic workshop in felt and straw hat blocking lead by Wayne Wichern, of San Francisco. Given the shoddy mapquest directions I was attempting to follow, it’s amazing that I didn’t end up in San Fran proper, actually. After spending HOURS trying to make my way to my friend Shawn’s place, in Bothell, I pulled into a random convenience store and tried to get the cashier to point out on my mapquest map, where we were. He didn’t seem to speak much english and I started becoming rather frustrated in his direction, with my situation in general.
That’s when a voice piped up behind me “Well, maybe I can help…”
I turned around to face my potential benefactor. The voice belonged to someone who can only be described as a blond Kevin Smith (with longer hair). Never one to turn down an offer of help, even if it did come from someone with enough mustard stains on his shirt to dress an entire hotdog, I replied, “Really?”
“Yeah, sure, I have GPS in my truck. I just need to buy some smokes and a lotto ticket and you can follow behind me to your friends house. It’s not far from here.”
I thought to myself – ‘You mean, the dungeon where you lock up unsuspecting and lost Canadian girls is not far from here…’ “OKAY!” I chirped.
I followed this unassumingly tech savvy guy out to his white pick-up truck (of course it was) and sure enough, there was his laptop set up with GPS. He punched in my destination address and moments later, after finally introducing himself as ‘Joe’, I was following him to Shawn and Bethany’s.
Getting lost on my way there was the first of many such instances over the weekend. My driving misadventures taught me that GPS is invaluable and worth whatever it is the car rental company is charging, and if one must print out maps, googlemaps seems to be far more accurate than mapquest. Still, driving around Seattle was nothing short of a Fright of the Navigator!
The Workshop!
The whole purpose of my trip was to learn how to block felt over a wooden hat block. Hat making, as Wayne puts it, is relatively low tech. You have a felt or straw hat body, you apply steam to it, you stretch it over the block and allow it to dry. Simple? In theory. I knew that it would involve the aforementioned steps, but what I was not aware of, was how much physical work it takes to stretch the felt over the block – all the while wrestling with the hood or capeline to try and anchor it into place but tacking it in and stringing it up. One uses one’s whole body in the process, it’s really quite exhausting! But, the results can be worth it, as I found out when I lifted my beautiful Bordeaux coloured, velour felt cloche from the amazing Italian block which Wayne so kindly brought for me from his studio in San Francisco. I had emailed him about this particular block after spying it in the background of one of the photos of his atelier on his website. I never thought that he would bring it all that way for me and when I saw it on the table, shortly after arriving to class, my heart leaped! I was beyond delighted! How thoughtful of him! What an absolute gem of a fellow to so generously share his knowledge of this once common trade. Millinery is a craft that is not as abundantly found as it once was a few short decades ago. It’s very difficult to get good training in and equally challenging to find the precious hat blocks that milliners use to form their creations. If anyone reading this knows of a former milliner in their family or you suspect that there may be some old hat blocks kicking around your grandparents attic, PLEASE let me know – I will gladly dust them off and get them back into their intended use!
The workshop was extremely fun and I was so lucky to have been able to participate as one of the 8 students. I am very much looking forward to seeing Wayne and everyone again – perhaps at the upcoming Hatcamp, which will also be held in Seattle this year! Please check out my flickr site for photos of the weekend and I will post photos of my finished and trimmed hats soon – I am still putting finishing touches on them! Thank you Wayne and thank you Pam. 
I got off work at 7pm tonight. I knew that if I power walked home when I got off the bus, didn’t spend tooo much time spoon feeding Crazy (it’s her latest thing, she won’t eat unless I feed her) and if I powerwalked/jogged to the beach, that there was a small to medium chance I would catch the last few rays of my first beach sunset of the season. I knew that if, despite being totally bagged, I could somehow manage to resist the lure of the comfort of my sofa and the melodic trance I knew would be pouring out of my speakers courtesy CBC Radio 2, that I would make it down to the beach in time to witness what would mark (for me) the official start of the summer season and that my beloved Beach Club gatherings would be only a short few weeks away. Well, for hardcore members, at any rate. 
I skipped home, opened the door, picked up Crazy and gave her a hug, grabbed some cheese and crackers, threw on my sweats and sneakers and promptly skipped back out again. I cut through the Safeway parking lot in an attempt to shave off 20 seconds, but was foiled by a french man stopping to tell me that I had pretty hair and ask did I always style it that way or was there a special occasion? I felt like saying ‘Get out of my way, you are blocking my route!’, but this girl does not get those sorts of compliments everyday, and on a day when I felt like my lid could get work as Helena Bonham Carter’s stunt hair, I could not help but blush a little and reply “Why, thank you! No, no special occasion except the beach, au revoir!”. And away I trotted, double time.
As I walked gingerly down Balsam, I suddenly caught the smell of the salt water in the air and I knew I was only moments away from this….
I have spent the past number of hours on the sofa with my MacBook slowly burning a hole in my lap whilst I flit around the back end of my new Wordpress account, exploring here and clicking there… It has been a fun romp and along the way, whilst taking a wee break, I was delighted to come across a blog by another fellow Canadian hat enthusiast – a “Hat Revivalist”, in fact! Superb stuff! Well, my own blog will be a mish mash of sorts, a smattering of various hat ramblings, cool interviews, musings and such, I hope you enjoy it.
Many thanks to my old friend and collaborator, Jef Harris for kicking me in the butt to finally get this blog business on the go. It’s about 10 years overdue, but in any case, onwards tally HO!
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