Sunday, August 6, 2017

What I Did Today


I made panties!


The pattern was so proud of me! 

I've also made a dress to go with the panties (and oh yeah- these are for Magnolia) which is finished except for the buttons and buttonholes and I can't wait to take the new buttonholer out for a test drive! 

While I sewed, I listened to a Clyde Edgerton book, Lunch At The Piccadilly.


There are probably a good many of you who have never eaten a meal of any kind at the Piccadilly but I have. The Piccadilly cafeterias replaced the Morrison's Cafeterias which were, for many years, a southern staple and an inexpensive place to go and get anything and everything from carrot salad to fish "almondine" with the most incredible tartar sauce ever made. Also bloody roast beef carved from a haunch as big as a Cadillac, jello, pecan pie, egg custard, turkey and dressing, turnip greens and collard greens. They had green beans, rutabagas, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, roasted new potatoes, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, chicken fried steak, corn bread both plain and with jalapenos and cheese, black-eyed peas, white rolls, sweet tea, lemonade, fruit punch, baked chicken paprika, fried chicken, and chicken and rice. 
It was heaven. 
There are a few Piccadilly's left but none around here and I miss them so. 
I used to take my kids there a lot when Mr. Moon was having to travel frequently for his job and it was always a treat. Always. 

But the book wasn't really about lunch at the Piccadilly. It's really about family and aging and how hard all of that can be. It's about music and religion and preaching and how one youthful act can affect someone forever. It's about love and what that is and it's about duty and caring and cornbread. Edgerton can write dialogue like nobody's business and although I found it in the "humorous fiction" genre of the library app I use to download my books, parts of it broke my heart in two. And yes, there were parts that made me laugh. 

So. I sewed and I listened to a very dear book and I can't remember having more fun in a long, long time. And while I was doing all of this, Mr. Moon was out in the garage, building a deer blind with wood and nails, big enough for Owen and Gibson both to sit in with their daddy and he reports that he couldn't have been happier or had more fun. 
Oh dear god, we are a southern cliche. 
Dare I tell you that I collected five eggs again today, one of them another Maiden Egg? And by the way, I made up the term as far as I know and I like it. 

I pretty much AM a southern cliche and I know that and I own it. There are a whole bunch of us southerners who would no more own a Confederate flag than we would own a Nazi flag. Who love our biscuits and our greens and our rivers and our swamps and whose liberal beliefs are as deep and obvious as our accents. 

It's just been a good day and I am at peace and feel the sweet feeling of productivity which comes from doing something with cloth and thread and an old sewing machine that works as well now as it did when it was made sixty years ago. I had the pleasure of cutting and pinning and the sewing and rummaging through the button box as well as the reward of ironing as I sewed, pushing the steam button and making those pieces I'd sewed lay flat and even. 
All with my own hands and I can't wait to see Maggie in this sundress and panties. Such pleasure in such a simple thing. 

And I guess that's all I have to say tonight. 

Love...Ms. Moon

18 comments:

  1. Never ate at a Picadillys, but had many a meal at the Morrison's cafeteria in Athens, GA. The fish almondine was one of my favorites. Will look for that book.

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  2. You are mighty good at that sewing machine, too. My daughter and I had a sweet chat about how I used to make all their clothes, and the year we were so poor I made pants and vests from their corduroy bedspreads.

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    1. I used to make my kids' clothes too but I never had to use a bedspread. Lord, woman! You and Scarlett O'Hara!

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  3. Oh what a happiness post. Love it. These simple things can be so soul nourishing.

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  4. Sounds like a lovely day. We used to call those panties you made bloomers and we wore grey ones under our little pleated grey sports skirts for physical education. Funny how the sight of those perfectly made red bloomers brought all that back.

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    1. Well, they are bloomers but actually, they'll just go over Maggie's diaper. I am sort of crazy-proud of them but they were really simple to make.

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  5. Now I want to see the dress that goes with the bloomers!

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  6. We still have Picadilly here, and one of my Sweetie's happiest memories of his mother was going home from college to visit her and they would go have lunch together at Picadilly. He and his brother still go sometimes.

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  7. You cracked me up a lot with this one :)

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    1. My posts are more fun when I'm in a good mood.

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  8. There's a streak of Southern psychology that says, "Stay out of other people's business." And that, to me, is a distinctly liberal streak. Do not try to legislate people's private lives. Let them do what they want. You know?

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    1. "Ain't nobody's business if I do."
      Yep. I believe this is a very Southern way of thinking.

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  9. The dress is beautiful! And I love how proud the pattern is of you :)

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