Millinery: Before and After

This John Fredrick's "Charmer" labeled Panama straw hat was purchased by me last night at White Linen Night.
It cost $12, and had a lot of bumps and dents.

As the "before" and "after" pictures show, a tea kettle and a little steam, and this old hat is looking good again.

I just can't resist revitalizing a sound Panama straw. Maybe I can get a tax free business together: Panama Straw Rescue Society.


Isn't that a wild hat band? Knitted fabric. I can't figure out the era though. Any one know out there?

Reaction: It was there, in black and white....

My mornings are pretty predictable. Not what time I get up, that varies, any time between 5 am and 9 am, depending on lots of things.

What is predictable is that I always go out to our front lawn to retrieve the newspaper in my pajamas. I love it when it is still dark, and the moon is full. The grass always looks like diamonds have been madly strewn about during some magical party that I just missed. Somehow the street lamp and the moonlight combine to make rain drops and dew drops into an impressive spectacle.

I ALWAYS have to walk across the wet lawn to get the paper. The lawn is wet, because humidity/rain/sprinkler timers assure that this will always be the case. In addition, our news carrier refuses to toss the paper onto driveways. He claims the paper would get wet from condensation created by the paper in plastic resting on concrete.

Baloney.

I have no idea what makes him toss the paper dead center in the lawn. Maybe it is his way to get back at us slug-a-beds. We readers have to pay a price for our news, and will have to get our feet wet if we want to get our paper.

I don't immediately read the paper however. Instead I wake up my computer and check in on the world as told one life at a time.

It is simple splendid to read that Heidi has just felt, for the first time, the movement of her first child in her womb. That Erin is holding the fort at a Wikimania conference, which is defining how encyclopedias are managed as an real time resource. Dawn is joining with others to break negative habits via scrapbooking for 21 days. I read about others who are having visiting family, creating gardens, touring towns. Sometimes I read blogs that are political or reactive in nature, an exposition of a common man or woman.

It is very reassuring to know that lives are being lived, day by day, in peace, or even in war zones, by simple people who love life, home, and family.

From time to time I read in the paper news requests for more "Good News". Yet the urgency of war, crime, catastrophe and clamity clamors for front page attention, and thus sells the papers.

If I didn't read The Houston Chronicle, how would I know precisely how many bombs have fallen in the Middle East? Or how many people where murdered last night in my city? Or that bird flu is, or isn't, approaching. Or what the elected representatives are doing to make a difference this legislative session.

Sometimes I pray as I read. I pray for the mothers of the news makers, the mothers who must watch their children's lives be recorded in print, for the good or for the bad. How painful for those mothers to not be given a voice to share the good that they knew of this person whose failures and disgraces is now recorded, or to say yes, I gave years of my life nurturing this person, it has been recompensed well with this report.

I always read the paper. And I always finish with the comics. The Dinette Set being my favorite, with its sly jests at generations facing new technologies and mores. The comics are like coming back up for air after dunking my consciousness into troubled waters of mankind, as reported in black and white.

Around the world I go, reading of the book club meeting in Switzerland, the caning in Middle East, the rabbis and priest on cruise ships, the three and a half year old that made a dress, the way proposed to restore 401Ks for Enron victims. It is a bit like being God, in this time, this time in which the whole world is simply a finger tap away.

I am so very thankful for a means of balancing my interface with the world. I can read blogs for the micro view, and newspaper for macro view. Like focusing a camera, my world vision can move at will between macro and long range, using the natural light of blogs and the intensely flash lit record of black and white journalism.

In the end, I read the blogs and the paper to understand the reality of the times, and to stay real. I need them both. And the comics too.

(Hat pictured is a wired rimmed mushroom brimmed artificial straw braid, with original organdy hat band, and I added the prairie point leaves and another of my grandmother's buttons. The hat clamps to the sides of the head with velvet covered vee shapings extending from the wire circle underlying the short crown. The hat was acquired at a local estate sale about 4 years ago, and is most likely from the late 1940 or early 1950's. I wear it frequently) 

Millinery: A Look for Librarians

I'm a librarian, dang it, and I'll read if I want to.

~

And I am. Both a Librarian, and Reading.

Right now I have out, and over due:

"The Life of David" by Robert Pinsky (finished last night, very interesting study)
"In the Stacks:Short Stories about Libraries and Librarians" by Michael Cart (one of my profs)
"Publishing a Blog with Blogger" by Elizabeth Castro (I still have questions! I want a class!)
"Cheaper than Therapy: Joy, Healing & Life Lessons in Fiber" edited by Annie Modesitt (she with the knitted millinery, great short stories from knitters)
"The Images of Librarians in Cinema, 1917-1999" by Ray Tevis and Brenda Tevis (some quotes are hilarious!)

"No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days" by Chris Batty (this could happen....)

"Military Anecdotes" edited by Max Hastings (yes, MILITARY, not MILLINERY)
"The Dance of Anger" by Harriet Goldhor Lerner (why do women authors mostly have three names?)
" Dance of the Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives" by Ted Sargent (a theme! Dancing and military stuff!)

I discovered in the Cinema book that librarians are always signified by glasses, bun, "shush", and big white collars. I had missed the big white collars. Gotta work on that.

Millinery: It's not easy being green...and white

There is a woman in Japan who makes kits for cat millinery.

Seriously.

I especially like her chick hat for cats, but it might be accidently thought of as being a duck hat. Being a graduate of Oregon State University (Go Beavers!) I feel it would be pointless to show anything that might be construed as promoting the University of Oregon ducks (GO BEAVERS!)

But if you really want to see the rest of the collection, including a bunny hat, leopard, Ann of Green Gables, and that chick/duck hat (GO BEAVERS!) just click here and scroll down a bit when you get there.

Just be sure YOUR cat isn't in the room when you do this...you wouldn't want to spoil the surprise of what Fluffy's getting for Christmas!

Millinery: Summer fun

Speaking of Lilly Dache...it was said that she was once interviewed wearing a hat while in the bath tub. She was never seen without a hat.

In the 1950-1960's, going swimming was no reason to go without a fetching design on your pretty little head.


Swim caps were yet another way to express yourself, and wildly at that.

I remember wearing a yellow swim cap as I swam in the Pacific Ocean, and my friend wearing a red cap. Our mothers sat reading and chatting on shore and didn't want to lose sight of us, so they made us wear the yellow and red caps, keeping us easy to spot in the frothy white surf.

Lazy life guarding, but it worked.

Putting the cap on always hurt, and the taking it off was even worse. Lots of times the cap went askew, blasted loose by a vigorous wave break, the chin strap doing its part to keep the cap from being lost to a water grave.

I envied the rubber flower caps that were sported by the fashionable ladies. It was always tempting to pull the petals to see how far they would stretch. No one ever did much serious swimming in those hats. But they sure were cute.

ebay seems to have a steady supply of these creations. I wish I had thought to get one when I was a younger woman. But then again, when I was a younger woman ebay simple wasn't, and now that I am older, I prefer as little attention as possible when I don my swim suit and head into the water.

On the other hand, if I did wear one of those fancy swim caps, maybe I wouldn't need to try to hold my tummy in any more. What's a tummy and jiggly thighs, compared to the spectacle of a rubber flower garden blooming on my head?

Millinery: Panama Straw

These first two pictures are a close up of the Sally Victor Panama straw. The concentric circles are called "vueltas", and the more vueltas, the finer the hat.

Victor stopped making hats in the 1960's, so this hat is at least 40 years old. It is still supple and has a satiny sheen.

The style of the center knot can tell experts exactly what Ecuadorian village wove the hat.
It can take days or weeks or even months for a weaver to create a Panama straw body (unshaped hat). The third picture is another Panama straw that I trimmed. This one has a typical ridge over the crown, and is slightly less fine.














The poppies on this hat are vintage, and from Germany, by way of Ebay. There are two prairie point ribbon leaves, and the turkey feathers are from a turkey my dad shot (he's still at it...) up in Northern California.

Millinery: Ecuador, Sally, and me = Favorite Hat

I absolutely ADORE Panama straw hats. Click here to go to a page which will explain why these hats are so deserving to be cherished.
This hat frame was my first encounter with Panama straw.
I found it in an antique/junque shop, the crown battered in, and with an interior label of "Sally Victor". It had a plain straw colored ribbon hat band as its only trim. Price was set at a mere $12.

I had just begun what I call "Millinery School" (one class, community college) and had just learned that straw would re-shape if subjected to steam. I carefully checked to be sure none of the straw was broken. It was flawless.

I rushed home, snipped off the sweat band and label, and the exterior hat band. I steamed the hat up, and plopped it on my head to make it fit just right. My ribbon collection at the time was meager, and certainly did not contain the appropriate petersham or millinery belting type ribbon that will accept pressing and a swirl stretch to accommodate the curve of the hat crown.

Oh well, I just went ahead and used some woven cotton trim for the internal sweat band. Sally's label was tucked into my scraps.

We were far enough into the class that I had already scouted out ribbonry books from Houston Public Library, and I was itching to try out some of the techniques that we had learned in class. I had so much fun trimming this hat! I even used some of my grandmother's buttons.

I couldn't wait to show Kate Pernia, my revered instructor.

The next class session we covered famous milliners. Like Elsa Schiaparelli ; Lily Dache ; Mr. John ; and (***gasp***)
Sally Victor

Surely I had committed millinery murder.
Kate granted me pardon and absolution, and added assurance that Sally would be very happy to see her hat treated so well. And it is. It is treasured for the work of the Ecuadorian weaver, for Sally's original shaping, for my grandmother's buttons, and for the joy of collaboration.

Some folks have got it, other folks don't

Tiggie poses. And he does it well. He always knows how to arrange himself, and deliver a look and an attitude (maybe that should be "cat-titude")

Here he is, looking like a "Cats in Libraries: READ!" poster.

I didn't do ANYTHING to make this picture happen, except I saw him, grabbed my camera, took the picture, and done.
Baby cat Hart, on the other hand, is hopeless.
Tiggie tries to coach him, but it just doesn't work.

I mean really, have some self respect. Pin up/kitty cheesecake is really kind of embarassing. Especially when you are a boy cat!
Oh well. Not everyone can make the cover of Kitty GQ.

We love you anyway Hart.

And you DO look wonderful in the Hat Room!

Millinery: This is a stick up!

I absolutely love stick ups! At least I do when they occur in millinery, as opposed to when they occur in banks and convenience stores.

Stick ups are eye catching details on hats that hover above the hat's crown, the top part of a hat. They seemed expected in comedic character's hats, with the most iconic being a daisy shape on a stick above a flower pot shaped hat.

The story behind this particular late 1950's era stick up however is not so much one of comedy but rather one of pathos
This hat belonged to my next door neighbor, Mrs. Reba Daniels (may she rest in peace...) She was a heavy shapeless older widow when I first met her in 1984. Her home was a tiny two bedroom one bath affair in a small post WWII subdivision.

Our properties were divided by a 4 ft. high white picket fence. Naturally from time to time we would both be outside at the same time and spoke to each other just enough to be neighborly.

I remember our first conversation, which occurred shortly after we moved into our property. "We" at that time included my husband, our 5 year old daughter and 4 year old son, one brittany spaniel, one long haired tabby, and four caged rabbits.

Mrs. D. set her jaw, and looked up at me. She asked if we had a dog. I said yes. She said she didn't like dogs. She then asked if we had a cat. Again I said yes. She said she didn't like cats. She glanced at the far end of our yard, and asked if we had rabbits. I could hardly deny the four cages with four large white bunnies in repose. Yes, we had rabbits. She looked me in the eye and informed me she didn't like rabbits.

Then she asked if we had children.
Yes, we had children. Two. A girl and a boy.

I still remember the long look she gave me as she pressed her lips together, sealing in the obvious observation. I smiled and bid her good day, leaving her to her tired yard with dying grass and weed choked flower beds.

Little by little over the years I learned more about my neighbor. She had been a nurse, and raised a son. "Come met my baby boy" she once called over the fence, her arm wrapped around the waist of a bemused 60 year old man. Her face was glowing as he smiled at her, and helped her with some routine household maintenance.

Another time she noted my profusion of roses and wild flowers in bloom. "I always dreamed of the kind of garden I would have once I retired from nursing" she shared. "But when I finally did retire, I had arthritis in my knees and hands so bad, I couldn't do a thing". She looked at her one struggling ragged robin rose, shook her head, and worked her way slowly up the three steps leading to her kitchen door.

I wish I could say I offered to help her with her garden, but at that time in my own life it was all I could do to just keep up with our laundry, cooking and cleaning and car pooling.

The day finally came when Mrs. Daniel's son came to help her move. The little house was now just too much for her to manage. She was going into a retirement home. What few possessions she owned were to be stripped to the barest minimum, and the rest sold as best as they could be at a garage sale.

I walked across our drive way and on to hers, where a few card tables held the knickknacks and household items that she would no longer require. None of them looked like much to me. Inside the garage was a clothing rack with shapeless polyester church dresses, some crumpled low heeled shoes, and a hat.

This hat.

It was a deep shade of fuchsia, made of rich plush french velvet, which is nothing like the polyester velvets of today. The veil was knotted back with the ends tabbed in fuchsia satin, and each tab had a diamond spark in the center. And the stick up...dime sized diamonds that seemed to be watching both the hat and the surroundings with an energy as mesmerizing as a spotlight.

I gently picked it up, amazed at its saucy exuberance, and amused at the witty gesture the stick up produced. I had never seen anything like it. Noticing a mirror, I placed the hat upon my 1980's page boy styled hair and instantly was transformation from "Mom-and-Housewife" in jeans and tee shirt to flirty "Art Gallery and Cocktail Party Going Sister".

Mrs. Daniels stumped over to me.

"I made that hat", she said slowly, like someone recalling a dream. "I took a class, and made that hat. I used to make hats. That was a long time ago."

I wish I had asked her where she wore that hat. Was it made to match a long ago discarded suit or dress? Did she ever wear the veil untied, covering her face with a fuchsia blush, perhaps to conceal the rosy glow that was brought on by sipping a glass of champagne or red wine?

I will never know. Instead I went home and dug a few dollars from my purse, made my purchase, and returned home with the hat, a few memories, and a mystery.

Millinery: Sometimes it's in the blood

Occasionally I get asked how I became a milliner. "How" is a lot of things, such as practice, practice, practice making lots of hats before I became comfortable referring to myself as such. Taking a millinery class at Houston Community College was probably the biggest "how" in the process.

But I also think it was just something in my genes.

The photography above is of the Brosnan family of Springfield Massachusetts, taken some time around 1915. Garbed in the classic Edwardian splendor of a white lawn dress, waist corseted, and a longstem rose tucked into her ribbon waist band, the girl at the far left was my great aunt Florence. She grew up to become a milliner.

Pictured below is one of the two hats that I own which she created in the 1960. It actually was a collaborative effort; my dad shot the pheasant from which the feathers were plucked. Now there's a family project for you!

My grandmother Madeline is seen in the center of the photograph.

And for you trivia fans, the inventor/patent holder of the paperclip was Cornelius J. Brosnan, my great grandfather, the gentleman in the far left of the photo.

Millinery: Singing in the Rain

While the western United States sizzles, we here in Texas are getting lots of rain. I love rain, and I love the song "Singing in the Rain".

Now how many of you remember the scene where Gene Kelly dances in a deluge, splashing and tapping down a street, singing and swinging an umbrella.

Ever noticed what shops he goes by?

Take a look...and I wonder who's creations are on display in the window of the LaMallie Millinery Shop.

No wonder he's dancing. I'd be dancing too, in the rain even, if there was a cute little millinery shop like that on the main street of my town!

Millinery: Veils

Historically, veils were just another design element associated with hats, as common as today's trimmings of flowers, feathers, and ribbons.

In the 1940's veils were so ordinary that Norman Rockwell included a veiled woman in his painting
"Waiting for the Veterinarian"

I've photo-copied the picture in full, and below is a close up of the lady in the upper left hand corner.

She is apparently visiting the vet with her black standard poodle, which is seated obediently by her side. A trip to the vet, just another mundane errand to run. "Let's see," I imagine her saying, "Where did I put my veiled torque?"

Personally, I am both fascinated and puzzled by veils. Fascinated because veils were worn with such aplomb by the likes of Katherine Hepburn, and other fashion icon as contemporary as Madonna. Puzzled, because I am never sure when to wear one.

Currently wearing a veil at any time other than down the aisle on one's wedding day causes children to stare, and men to rush over to strike up conversation.

Explanations are demanded, and I really can't come up with a good one, except I like how veils look on a hat, and am slightly less sure of how I feel about how they look on me.

My dad recalls his 1890's born aunt, (who later held a degree from Columbia and a Masters from USC) as frequently wearing day hats with veils. She appeared, as he put it, mysterious.

Here are two veiled hats I've created, that I actually do wear frequently. They are just the thing to make me feel elegant, and casual at the same time on a hot humid day. And if someone thinks I look mysterious in them, well then, so much the better.

Lake Houston-Summer

This is the part of Lake Houston that is about a football field from my house. Lake Houston is a man-made lake, and goes for many miles down towards the gulf. It is really neat to walk to, as there are paths all around the lake, winding through woods and meadows.

I have seen fireflies in the loblolly pines at night, and deer, and several kinds of snakes (eeekkkk!)

The water is a muddy blue, as the soil is clay around this area. That real southern "muddy water" motif, along with cicada sounds in the trees, warmth, humidity, and cypress knees poking up around the water edge makes it all seem "another world" to this southern California native. Sometime I just can't believe I am so lucky to have all this just a short walk from my front door.

I've swam in the water, just to say I did. You can almost walk all the way across up to shoulder level. People do catch fish, and B. and I bought flies to go fly fishing, someday.

I thought I would post this as a beginning of a four season study.

 

Reaction: Pew research on bloggers

A few highlights from the newly published Pew Research on bloggers entitled:

Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers

According to Alexander Halavais, an assistant professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut:

"The average blogger is a 14 year old girl writing about her cat."

The report also says there are about 12 MILLION people writing blogs. That is a lot of 14 year old girls with cats, if you ask me.

Tidbit and Tiggie approve of this trend.

They think that I am a 14 year old girl.
(What do they know...)

The study commented that the under 30 blogger writes as a means of self expression, and the over 50 to 64 year olds writes to convey practical knowledge or skills.

Hmmm...does millinery come under the heading of conveying "practical knowledge or skills"?

Duh. Of course! Everyone should know how to whip up a really cool hat using a bowl from Ikea or Marshalls.

Another interesting (to me at least...) quote:

"Of all the bloggers out there, there are only about 10,000 that have an audience beyond their friends and family," said B. L. Ochman, a business blogger who tracks online trends.

Math has always been my weak point, but....

If there are 12 million bloggers, and only 10,000 are read by non-friend and family, then the fact that I am apparently read by a few people who are not family (based on comments that are posted to my blog), would put in in the top what percent?

I really should run next door and ask my neighbor who is working on her Phd in Discrete Mathmatics to crunch those numbers for me.

But roughly I would say ***I am floored****

Now, back to the report.

Who are bloggers?

14% of bloggers are in my age bracket (50-65)
Sadly, only 2% of bloggers are over 65.
54% are under 30.

Like under 30 year old have so much important insight, and why are the over 65 (who are RETIRED for heaven sake, they should have time for this) not putting their acquired wisdom out for electronic eternity?

Interesting also that 60% are white. The other races make up the rest. The voice of the minority is being heard. I wonder what percentage of bloggers are white over 65 year olds?

95% of bloggers get their news from the internet. Read: They really care about what is happening, and seek out information several times a day. They may read a news event from several sources, staying well ahead of the curve of the local newspaper edition.

47% of blogger also read what other bloggers are saying about the news.
A public forum, at last!
Pictures rise up in my mind of colonial gents crowding the town square to hear the latest "Hear ye, hear ye!" pronounced, and then discussing the news with each other, eventually birthing a nation.

How fabulous to read reactions not filtered by news media, and television and radio personalities.

77% of all bloggers have shared something that they have created, such as artwork, song, poem, story or video.
One blogger in Texas shares her hat making.
(I'm making that last part up, it wasn't really in the report. This time.)

35% of bloggers take the time to verify facts before publishing.

13% post daily.

Bloggers are evenly split between men and women. So it isn't just a guy thing or a girl thing.

The most popular blog tool for those with a college degree is Blogspot (my personal choice)

27% of American's have college degrees
37% of bloggers have college degrees.

13% of Americans are knowledge based professional workers
38% of bloggers are knowledge based professional workers.

The Pew study was partly titled "New Storytellers". I had the rare opportunity to study story telling in graduate school. Most people think story telling is just a "Once upon a time..." narrative.

They are wrong.

Story telling is the communication of an event, a vision, or a signifier from one person to at least one other person. I personally believe it is story telling that keeps society and families whole. Once a society or family stops telling stories about themselves, then it is as if that society or family has no past.

The Hawaiian people use the phrase "talk story" to signify that they want to get together and talk.
Like "We need to talk story, wanna come over tonight?"

I think blogging is just another way to "talk story". And I am truly grateful that blogging is such an easy forum from which to share.

Millinery: In the Pink

Pink parasisol straw hood (did you know it takes a weaver five days to make one hood-the blank straw hat shape?)
Ribbon flowers created by me.
Finally decided to do a bias drape after fighting a wide satin pink ribbon that did nothing for the hat.
How many times did I block it?
Four.
One low crown, one high crown, (see prior post!) one inverted crown with flat brim,
and finally....

Tally ho!

A riding hat shape galloped into my creative mind's eye, as I walked between the kitchen and the hat room.

This hat and the purple "It's the Berries" hat are for sale!
I plan to propose doing a trunk show at a local shop, but that is still in the dream stage. Get 'em before the merchant jacks up the price!


 

Millinery: The Houston Hat Net

A few years back I bought my first ****seriously**** priced hat. My husband said this would be a one time event, a statement that brought out the burning desire for more hats!
I discovered a Hat Chat electronic posting board. On the board was an announcement that hat lovers in New York would be welcome to meet for lunch at such and such restaurant on such and such date and time.

I was crushed. It sounded like sooooo much fun. But soooo far away.

So I posted asking if there were any hat wearers in Houston (the 4th largest city in America, by the way....) which is just an hour from my town of Kingwood.

Lo and behold, Kate Pernia replied that indeed there were hat lovers in Houston, and that they had formed a group called The Houston Hat Net. Kate actually was the founder. She claims that she went to a society wedding and was the only person wearing a hat. What a let down!
She rounded up a few hat wearing friends and they later went out, hatted, for lunch.

The rest is history.

The Houston Hat Net has a website:

http://www.orgsites.com/tx/houstonhatnet/

and currently the site is flattering me by having my "It's the Berries" and "Traveling Hat" on the home page. Silly me, it just makes me feel ooie-gooie happy to see my hats on that website.
Thanks Marie! (she's the webmistress over there)

If you have a chance to visit Houston during one of the HHN events, put on your hat and come along.

A fine group of ladies in the finest of hats makes for a mighty fine time!

>HTML< and =....

Bless me somebody, I've added a LINKS side bar! Now you can bounce over to my favorite blogs (after reading mine first of course...) with just a click.

I'm amazed that I was successful using html enough to get them there, even if the title isn't the right font (help me, somebody, please!) and the links squish ARCHIVES.

ARCHIVES for June 1 is under MAY 2006. Go figure.

If you know how to fix this, let me know. I even used a BOOK to try to figure it out!
Otherwise, just squint, and turn up the radio, so maybe it won't be so noticeable.

Hint: Turning up the car radio works when the car is making a funny noise and you don't have the time and/or money to fix it after you learn that the noise is not car life threatening.
(This hint from daughter Laura, the Road Warrior Princess RN.)

Introducing my Grandbaby Sebastian

("Good Lord!", I hear you say. What is THAT?)

THAT.... is Sebastian.

Yup, I do have a grandbaby. Sebastian lives with his daddy, our son Jeff, in Salt Lake City.

My first grandbaby was a bearded dragon lizard. And pathetically, I was over the moon when the darn thing laid an egg.

The egg didn't hatch.

Sigh.

But then Jeff got me a grandkitty. Sebastian. An adorable kitten, he is now full grown and has lived in a variety of settings including a fraternity house, beach house, and apartments. He is a remarkably calm cat considering some of his former housing situations.








Lots of my friends have grandchildren, and they show me charming pictures of their adorable "grands" fresh from their baths, looking angelic and oh so huggable.

I am so jealous.

So here's my "grand" fresh from his bath.

Once he dried, he looked a lot better.

I think I have the cutest grandcat in the whole wide world.

(FYI: Sebastian, AKA "Meowsie" really does have to be washed in water regularly, either by a pet groomer or Jeff, as the long fur in his..., er, um, private quarters, gets unhygenic otherwise. Ewww.)