Green Geometry Dress Update and Yarn Along

After photographing my Green Geometry dress earlier this week, I realized that the buttons looked a little strange, just hanging out there in a line with nothing to set them off.  I wrote that dresses of the era would have set off the buttons with a placket (real or faux) but that I didn't have it in me to draft one.  

It suddenly occurred to me that I could get the same effect with trim, and I remembered I had some red middy braid in my stash that would work well.  I pulled it out, pinned it on, sewed it down, and Bob's your uncle!  I really love it now--it finishes the dress quite nicely.  Unfortunately, winter has decided to make a reappearance, so I had to put my woolies back on after photographing the dress!

And in knitting: progress on the 1918 pullover--I'm about 2/3rds up the back now, and I've gotten a few stripes back into the striped beret.

I finished Anne Hollander's excellent book, and it has really revolutionized my thinking about the intersection of imagery and clothing norms.  Basically, her book points how the ways in which what we see influences what we consider normal, not only in clothing, but in many other areas as well.  Her observations about the ways that nudes have been portrayed--how the basic shape of the figure reflects not only the clothing norms of the day, but the ideas about what is desirable in the human form--have given me much to think about, particularly in the language we use to talk about bodies and clothing.

I'm still pottering through The Making of Home by Judith Flanders, and continue to be fascinated.  I feel like she is doing for domestic matters what Hollander does with clothing.  My main takeaway thus far has been that the rise of technology in the home, starting from the late 1700s, has not only removed a lot of human economy from the day-to-day life of women, but has introduced an element of shame that women feel when they cannot "do it all" domestically.  (This book goes well with Ruth Schwartz Cohen's More Work For Mother, although Flanders' book has a much longer timeline, and traces many more mundane technologies than does Schwartz Cohen)  The truth is that, historically, the home was run by a lot of people, and the man was a particular contributor to the smooth running of a home.  Technologic advances not only removed the male contribution to the home, but placed an inordinate burden on the woman of the house to do it all alone.  Where once women commonly sent out the washing, or the mending, and traded tasks with those who needed the income and the work, now machines made all domestic tasks the responsibility of the woman of the home.  Women's work, previously a valued contribution to the smooth running of society, became economically unvalued because it was unpaid, and therefore invisible in the eyes of the larger culture.  So even though women do an enormous amount of work every day, keeping the house going, and often carrying on a job outside of the home (another historic norm), the domestic work is completely unvalued.

It is much more complicated than this quick summary, and these things take a long period of time to develop into the stereotypical isolated suburban housewife of the 1950s, but I find it interesting that many of the common complaints of our post-modern era are present in the changes wrought by the early Industrial Revolution, and also that stuff begets work.  More furniture begets more cleaning, more clothing begets more washing, better heating and cooking technology begets more and complicated meal preparations (and subsequent washing up, as dishes must be washed as well).  In short, better technology, lower cost consumer goods leads to more decisions, which in turn leads away from a simple life.  I don't think that we should all empty our homes and closets in order to lead simple lives, but I do think that fewer things means fewer decisions, which naturally leads to a simplicity of life.  I'm just not sure where that balance lies.

I'm hoping to get into this short history of the Cold War after I whittle down my reading stack a little--I read a review of it a week or so ago and it sounds excellent.  I'm intrigued to see how the authors manage to cover the entirety of the Cold War in 100 pages with any depth; according the review, they do, and this book should be considered a wonderful primer on the era.  As a Soviet Cold War historian, I'm always looking for good books like this.  (Although, be forewarned: shipping is more than the book cost!)

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!