On "The 99% Invisible City": A Book Review

Title: The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
Authors: Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlsted
Genre: Non-Fiction

About the Book...
Cities are made up of many parts and many of those parts are often taken for granted as we go about our daily life, this book, however, takes a different approach. Broken down into six chapters, Inconspicuous, Conspicuous, Infrastructure, Architecture, Geography and Urbanism, this book offers a closer look at the little and not so little details that shape the urban world around us. 

What I Think...
This was a fascinating book! When I checked it out, it was with the intention of only wanting to flip through and read a few parts, but I ended reading through all of it.

It was very well written and managed to pack a lot of detail in without being overwhelming or expecting the reader to have background knowledge on the subjects being discussed. Most of the subtopics are only a few pages, so it's easy to sit down and read a little at a time (or if you're me, say you're going to do that, and then end up reading through a chapter). I should add, I also really enjoyed how it focused on things from an international perspective rather than looking at just US cities, which in books of this sort I always feel makes the information being shared all the more interesting.

Some of the fun things I learned while reading this included that the postal service having home delivery in the US has its roots in the Civil War when due to the high death toll, it was decided that it was better for people to be able to receive any bad news in the privacy of their own home rather than in public; Edison initially billed people for electricity based on the number of light bulbs in their home; and that in 1712, a British tax on patterned and printed wallpaper led to a trend of people buying plain paper and stenciling their own.

The illustrations that accompanied the start of each chapter, sections within the chapters, and scattered throughout were unique and well suited to the nature of the book, as well.

To Sum It All Up...
Absolutely loved this book and while I'm not a big podcast person, I will definitely be listening to some of the 99% Invisible podcasts having read this! ♥

On Owl Joins the Hundred Acre Wood Group!

The foot and eye pieces kept falling out of my sewing box, so my sewing project of last week was finishing up Owl (or as he spells it Wol)!

I made few adjustments to this pattern, choosing to change out colors, skipping the cardboard glued to the feet pieces (I just stitched two layers of felt together), and putting the underwing piece atop the main wing piece. I thought about cutting out an additional piece to put under, which in hindsight might have looked a little better for if I position the wings up. However, that can always be done later and when I think of the Shepard illustrations, I think of the ones where Owl has his wings to his side anyway.

I'm guessing this will be the last of my Hundred Acre sewing for awhile, as I have quite a few other tiny sewing projects lined up, but who knows maybe Winnie-the-Pooh or Kanga and Roo will still be putting in an appearance before the year is out!

♥ ♥ ♥

On a Watermelon Dress

I completed this dress somewhere between May and July, but was so put out with all the various issues I had making that I didn't wear it until the beginning of October when we had a brief heatwave and now it's November, so I figure it's about time to get this posted.

I've had the 1953 Advance 6320 pattern for a while (since January 2019 according to this post) and while I want to make it using the flamingo fabric in the aforementioned post, since it involves cutting the fabric crosswise rather than lengthwise (as the pattern calls for) to have the flamingos go the right direction it keeps getting put off for when I actually feel like doing math and figuring out exactly where the piecing together seams should go so they aren't too obvious. 

Having time on my hands in April, I decided it'd be a great time to test out the pattern as a lengthy shirt/short dress, which would eliminate the need for the yards and yards of fabric and allow me to use the 2 yards of cute, cheerful watermelon fabric I had bought on a whim. 

The pattern has a very full skirt. For the yardage I had after the bodice pieces were cut, I had the options of cutting the remaining fabric in half and piecing it together to get more pleats or to just work with what I had and have a longer dress with fewer pleats. I went with the later and learned that I really, really, really don't enjoy trying to figure out how to reconfigure inverted box pleats to fit a bodice. It involved much more math than I actually wanted to put into what I thought would be a good way to get my mind off what was going on. However, after what amounted to a several day struggle of pinning, unpinning and redoing measurements, I got them in the right places (and wrote down the measurements for future reference) and sewn.  

Thinking it'd be a breeze from there, I then managed to goof up the sewing on of the waist inset and ended up doing a lot more hand sewing than the pattern called for, but persevered and got it sewn on too. 

Next came the zipper...all 18 inches of it. It had to be ripped out twice and I decided on the third try that while it wasn't perfect, and does in several places catch the fabric when being pulled up and down, it would have to do with the reasoning point being I only have to use the zipper when I'm dressing and undressing. At that point, I decided I really wanted to avoid hemming anything, so I went with bias tape to make it easier on myself. I managed to cut it an inch too short somehow, so I ended up having to add a little extra, but thankfully it all worked out. 

 

 

And with that I folded it up and stuck it in the middle of one of my fabric piles and pretended it did exist until October when I stopped being irritated with and decided it actually didn't turn out too badly. 

 

♥🍉♥