Tap Dance Tuesday

It's been awhile since the last instalment of Tap Dance Tuesday and since it looks as though things are going to stay busy for me until the new year, I thought I'd share this selection of five (yes five!) tap acts from the 1930's - just in case I don't get around to posting anything new in this department for awhile.  I hope this satisfies all your vintage tap dancing needs for the time being.   

Two 60's Pullovers

I don't really "do 60's" too much anymore, but I definitely used to and so my archive of knitting patterns is absolutely full of books and magazines from that era.  If memory serves, these are from an "Around the World in Knitwear" supplement to Woman's Day magazine or something along those lines (sorry, I really should've taken a few source notes when I photographed them).  At any rate - enjoy!

Collar and Cuffs Militaire

Oh my, things have been busy around here of late.  I got back to Belfast last week and immediately started a new job which has really been taking it out of me.  But please don't think I'm anything other than absolutely thrilled to be gainfully employed again.  It just means that most nights blogging is the absolute last thing on my mind.

Anyway, whilst I was in LA I took the opportunity to go through my pattern collection with a view to sharing some of them here.  I didn't have access to a scanner, so these were taken with my phone - I hope you're able to read all the relevant information.

Hello there readers!  Apologies for the lack of posts, but for the past three weeks I've been visiting friends and family here in the fair city of Los Angeles.  I'll be back in my old digs at the end of this week, and I have at least a few fun things to share with you from my LA collections.  But before too much more time passes, I thought I'd show off my Halloween ensemble.  Yet again, my clothing hoarding tendencies have come through for me in the form of a last minute costume.

Dressing up as a flapper did seem a bit of a cheat as a) this is how I might dress on any given night out and b) I think everyone has probably dressed as a flapper at some point in the past two years what with all that Gatsby business in 2013.

Nevertheless, I used to get a fair amount of teasing growing up for my rather scrawny frame and gangly limbs.  So I've finally just decided to embrace my shape and take up the Charleston (which looks so good when you're all elbows and knees anyway).

Much like this well known picture by John Held Jr:

(my mom took this shot and wanted me to pose with lipstick - a little cheesy, but it does show off the whole outfit)

Cossack Coated

What I've been up to . . . pt 2

Here is something I never ever thought I'd be doing: darning socks.  Mr B's socks no less - I think that puts me in the running for housewife of the year.

 The thing is, yes, darning is a massive pain in the arse.  I think the majority of people would rather just buy a new pair of socks than spend the time repairing something so cheap.  That said, I find there is something very satisfying about taking a hole and essentially reweaving it into a new fabric.  There is also something lovely about how truly unique the construction on each pair of socks is - something I would never have noticed had I not started doing this.  I know, how different can a pair of socks be (aside from the obvious colour and pattern differences)?  But take this Calvin Klein sock above, it's stitches are a lot tighter than say the grey Reiss pair pictured at the bottom - it makes it much harder for me to run the stitches through easily.  The fibre content is clearly different too - something not so noticeable when you put them on, but somehow very evident when you're working on smaller scale.

I'll be honest though, a very large part of the appeal of this new pursuit lays in the fact that I get to use this lovely vintage darning mushroom I bought on eBay.  Isn't it a thing of beauty?

Now, I'm not really going to suggest you all start resuscitating every single pair of your socks, but for those interested in taking up the noble art of darning, I used instructions from this book which is also excerpted over at the Colette Patterns blog.  

Tap Dance Tuesday

If memory serves, my first ever Tap Dance Tuesday post was of the Nicholas Brothers (it appears said video has been taken down, so there's no point in my linking to it).  Anyway, I was looking into other tappers from the era to share with you, but I kept feeling that I wanted to be watching these guys.  Of the several clips I could've chosen, I went with this one as I'm huge fan of the vocal stylings of Dorothy Dandridge.  This number has all the acrobatic flair you would expect of the Nicholas Bros including those mental leaps that end in the splits (as someone who has never been able to do the splits even as thirteen year old dance team-er, these fill me with both awe and horror).