bespoke « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

bespoke

bespoke / cycling / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Dec 20

My jacket pocket will look so great

I used my evening wisely. I made some more pocket squares.

Made, he said. Again, I didn’t plant, grow, weave or dye the material. I just bought it and fixed the edges and now I have a rainbow of colors.

Also, I am proud to show you these pocket squares, which are professionally manufactured. They were lovely Christmas gifts. Check these out:

And that one has an entirely different pattern on the back. So it’s essentially a reversible square.

My mother-in-law is incredibly thoughtful like that.

So I’m taken care of on pocket decoration. I have a color for every season and seven more pieces of fabric coming from some far, far off land.

We never really think of that much anymore. Everything is from somewhere else, or it could be. And things are made and shipped in such bulk that even the exotic items have lost some cachet. But at one point, having something shipped from another continent may as well have been the moon. People would probably marvel at the market. Probably because they had no idea where that place even was. Of course people made more things of their own, back then, he said pretentiously. And there were a lot fewer pocket squares. Now, you just get an Amazon email. It’ll get there eventually. You know, when it does. Whenever.

And it was an oversight on my part. Had I realized it had to travel so far I wouldn’t have paid $2.88 plus $.25 shipping for it.

Maybe I should think about silk for the next go-round. Silk! Remember reading about the luxury of silk in the old days? Truly, we live in amazing times, he said while watching a football game in Texas that they beamed to space, perhaps more than once, to get into my living room, where I spent the evening ironing fabric to make pocket squares.

I spent the afternoon on my bicycle.

That’s a painful, and painfully slow ride around Central Park, in Manhattan, and the fictional, futuristic parts of the city. At one point you’re riding on transparent bridges over the city and there are flying taxi cabs and I prefer the realistic courses, myself. But it was fun and slow and demanding. After one more ride tomorrow I will have hit all of those goals I set for myself last month.

Today I realized I had already set a goal for next year. My quads are already protesting.

bespoke / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Dec 20

My left breast pockets are natty

This evening I spent a bit of time making new pocket squares. Making is the wrong word. It’s not as if I acquired the cotton seeds and cultivated the crop, spun out the fabric, dyed it and so on.

I found some DIY instructions online, is all. It was on a manly site. A how to site, without the patriarchal and chauvinistic overtones. The point, essentially, was a jacket without a pocket square is naked, indeed. And a splash of color is, in fact, the accent you’re looking for.

And now I make my own pocket squares. Here’s today’s batch:

It’s quite simple and straightforward, really. Really straightforward. It’s “Why did I have to look that up? A few seconds of reasoning would have demonstrated that, ‘Hey, these are squares.'”

Really, you just have to clean up the edges. The rest is in how you decide to fold the squares.

So that adds 12 to the collection. I have 17 more to make, pastels mostly — hooray spring! — and about seven more own the way. If you had those to the other six or seven I have, that’s a lot.

The problem becomes which one to wear. Tomorrow, I think, a dark blue will work. Simple, understated, matches the cufflinks.

bespoke / hobby / IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Oct 20

Colors of the season

On Monday I sanded two pieces of wood. They are very long pieces of wood. And I worked out all of the splinters with 60- and 100-grit paper. Which means I only have to take eight pieces of wood, large pieces of wood, through grist 150, 220 and 400, so I can finally stop sanding wood.

But! Progress! That funny feeling of progress! Vibrating through the entirety of the upper body! There’s just no bettering that. Or is it just the remnants from the orbital sander? Probably it’s that.

But progress!

Also, I’m experimenting with making pocket squares. Measure twice, cut and trim your way with bad scissors into something resembling a square shape for all of eternity! You could sew these, but I don’t have a sewing machine. I found some nice hem tape, though, and you iron it into place to save the day. Also, I had to learn the hard way that hem tape is double-sided and you have to remove the covering first. If you don’t learn something, you don’t leave any room to laugh at yourself. Anyway, I’m now a costume designer, or something:

You’ll notice I’m not wearing any of those today. Today’s pocket square is a nice orange, autumnal number:

I took this picture right after a student called me by someone else’s name. There was a question mark on the end of it. He thought I was his professor. I am not. Imagine there’s another guy around here that has to look like this.

Anyway, autumn! It was a beautiful day and I indulged in taking seven whole minutes outside in it.

I am a party animal. A wild man, in my mask and pocket square, which clashes with my lapel pin. But the leaves are impressive.

This is just one lively maple, don’t you think?

A version of this shot might wind up elsewhere on the website.

This little guy is sitting in the window sill above the kitchen sink.

That’ll give you something to contemplate when you’re washing dishes.