hipper than hip

i am feeling like the most perfect birthday brat there ever was.

last night ruggy surprised me with tickets to death cab for cutie.  we found out about the concert after all the scalpers had bought up blocks of tickets, but ruggy waited patiently and on the day of, he pounced.  face value, peeps!  take that scalpers!

i wore my "new" flouncy pleated skirt.  this was a RTW dress, a dress sized for a pixie, and the zipper never even came close to fulfilling its life work.  i hacked off the bodice and voila!  new skirt.  by the by, my most recent oona does it! features a maxi denim version of this trickery.

  

the top is burdastyle's cap sleeve dress, bodice only.  well, let's face it, the bodice is all you get in this pattern.  if you've made this jammy (and a lot of peeps did, for sew weekly's kiss the cook challenge), you know there are hella fit issues.  i lowered the waistline, raised the neckline, and gathered the sleeves at the shoulder seams, which keeps them where they should be, rather than down around my elbows.  how unseemly.

and because it's made with le stretch jersey, no zipper.

do you listen to death cab?  when we arrived at the waterfront concert in brooklyn, there was a line of people snaked around ten blocks baking in the sun.  practically all of these people were under 18.  we often find ourselves in this time warp of age.  at the last peter gabriel concert we went to in jersey, everyone was of the over 60 set.  

ruggy spied a happy gentleman in a brooklyn brewery t shirt and asked him for the skinny.  what's on tap tonight?   we're thirsty.  brooklyn man grinned  (they all do; brooklyn brewery must be a very happy place to be) ipa, summer ale... lemme get you guys a wristband.  i'll just check her ID.

who, ME????  pshaw.

this little refashion comes complete with lining and taffeta flounce,  which indeed was its saving grace.  someone put a lot of work into this.  i couldn't abandon it on account of a tinkerbell sized bodice.

it's nice to be the big people at a concert like that.  the first thing we did was grab some alcohol and sit by the water, fuzzy bees getting drunk in the grass at our feet as we looked out at the manhattan skyline and shared a pork sausage sandwich.  we could hear the kiddies clamoring behind us to get close to the stage.  remember when we'd push to the front?  i chuckled. this is so much nicer.  

sixty seconds into ben gibbard's vocals, i grabbed ruggy's hand and pushed through the crowd like the teenaged fan i am.  admittedly, the proximity of hipsters did wear thin, and a few songs later we returned to a calmer spot, bouncing and smiling and occasionally turning to watch the sun set behind us.  

they were amazing.  ben gibbard didn't stop moving for two and a half hours, running back and forth to drums, keyboard and guitar, at one point banging away with the drummer, facing each other on two kits and looking like a couple of muppets.  every ten minutes, ben told the audience to turn around and look at your city NOW! like a giddy tourist.  they closed with this song, which goes from a couple of soft notes on a piano to a walloping chest thumping skyscraper of sound that makes you want to scream in joy.

the waistband of this skirt wasn't sturdy enough, having been dissected from its bodice appendage, so i threw some twill tape in there, sandwiching in some red circle-y dollar a yard trim, and then topstitched some triangles for good measure. 

egads, triangles.  do hipsters get a dress code mailed to them or something?  i lost count of the number of cut out dresses.  specifically ones with an isosceles triangle sliced out of the back of the dress, from waistband to bra closure.  these sharper edged cut out dresses make me think someone forgot a pattern piece.  they also make me think buffalo bill is lurking around waiting to make him a woman dress.

hey, what a great creepy segueway to say i'm THRILLED y'all are coming to my party!  i hope you're getting your dresses ready!