Kiss My Knits!

I am going to the Browncoat Ball in October. It’s a weekend-long event for fans of the late great science fiction TV show Firefly. The centerpiece is a fancy dress ball. Costumes and outfits appropriate to the Firefly show are encouraged. For ladies, appropriate dress usually consists of something incredibly frilly, often with a hoop skirt, or something Asian.

I’ve never gone to a Con. I’d like to, it just hasn’t been in the cards. But this event is about two miles from my house, and I’m a respected member of the fan community. I’ll be teaching a Jayne hat knitting class and I’m helping out on the steering committee. I’m definitely going.

Because I haven’t gone to a Con, it follows that I haven’t dressed up for one, either. Even for this event, I wasn’t inclined to spend money on an outfit that I would wear exactly once. But in July, that changed.

I have never been what you would call a fashionista. If it fits and it’s comfortable, I’m good. But in July, while I was at the Sleepy Poet Antique Mall to pick up a couple of vintage magazines, I saw a dress in one of the booths that stopped me in my tracks. Seriously. I stopped dead. It was a beautiful aqua silk sheath with embroidered black butterflies. Perfect for the Browncoat Ball. It was like the heavens had opened up and the angels had sung. Artist’s rendition below.

“That’s on special today! Ten percent off!” said a woman beside the booth. She was short and solid, with a brassy attitude. In older days you would have called her “a dame with moxie.”

“I’m less worried about how much off of the dress and more about how much I’d have to take off of me to fit into it,” I responded, “but it’s beautiful.”

She smiled and told me its story. She herself had made it, back when she was young and poor but had to go to a fancy function while living in San Francisco in the 50’s. “No way was I going to pay a hundred dollars for a dress, so I went down to Chinatown and got this silk and made it myself.”

Because I was a crafter myself, I told her I had been admiring how well-constructed it was, and how much I liked the details like the bows along the slit leg. She turned it inside out and you could see how proud she was of the lace edging along the inside. It was a detail that nobody was going to see, but since it had been her own dress, she was able to enjoy it.

We chatted for a while, but my family was with me and my daughter was eager to go swimming at the YMCA, our next stop. The entire way to the pool, I talked about the dress. Clothing never takes hold of me like that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After we were done swimming, I went back tried it on. And by “tried it on” I mean tried fruitlessly to squeeze into it. I figured I’d have to lose a good 25 pounds to get into it. And the ball was in 16 weeks.

I bought it anyway.

It’s a recipe for disaster to buy clothing thinking, “well, I don’t fit into it now, but I will” but I did. And I’m not sorry.

Next: what’s happened in the seven weeks since.