Contents:
It's the end of an era for a fashion label that's been catering for the fuller figured woman for 25 years.
Two of Marr's three other New Zealand stores are closing too, but the label will continue to be sold online. We're buying more and more online. I've got to recognise that and get creative with it," Marr says. In the late s she was a young mother with little education and working as a store detective. She was a size 24 and made all of her own clothes. Women were coming to me while I was a store detective loving what I was wearing. They wanted my look. I went and researched the market and realised that my look wasn't what was happening.
Sewing and making things was a normal part of life for Marr who was brought up by creative parents.
I often think it marked the moment of my calling by targeting a cell in my brain, setting into motion a steady division of more cells that would reinforce my destiny. My father used to marvel at my sheer preoccupation with pounding nails into his wooden saw horses, a wonder which manifested in various displays of frustration when his circular saw blade would ping and spark every time it hit one of my embedded nails.
The saw horse, you understand, is a particular creature in the world of the carpenter. It has slightly splayed legs, vertical and four in number, and a flat spine, horizontal in disposition and fastened at the withers by joints held together with glue and nails. There are many varieties of saw horses—some are bulky, but most, symmetrical; some are thick because they are built of the standard two-inch by four-inch lumber.
When I came along he decided to name me after Doris Day because she was one of the first American celebrities he admired; she had a beautiful singing voice, he would say. It sounded like maybe one was in machine. We called them sewer rats because they were always wet and greasy. This machine seemed to work fine sewing on the binding. He had seen Connie Francis playing the accordion on the Lawrence Welk Show after which she was discovered.
Nowadays they are chic plastique—sissy horses, I call them. The legs were one-by-five and three-eighths boards, and the spine was two inch by six inch. I drove two nails into their ends for bridles: This amused my father because he was an immigrant, and cowboys were something of a novelty to him. He used to draw pictures of Gene Autry with a rectangular pencil that could be sharpened only with a pocket knife, the same pocket knife that he used to remove splinters from my fingers.
Yes, with remarkable precision. The spines of the saw horses had, as part of their function, many cross-cuts that resulted from the circular saw cutting into them, usually unintentionally. This explained why the horses looked scored from as far back as I can remember, as though lashed by whips.
I do not trust carpenters who have immaculate horses, because it means that they are more concerned with the appearance of being a craftsman than with the craft itself. Years after the saw horses should have been put down, when they were grey and porous, wobbly and no longer able to hold the nails in place, so that they began to loosen from their joints, I cut the spines out and made a fire out of the rest.
A section of a saw horse with cross-cuts and empty nail holes sits on the window sill by my desk. On top of it are free arrangements of the stones I gather from different places for different reasons but this is another story ; it is one of my most treasured possessions. One thousand years from now, someone will conjecture that it must be a pagan shrine.
My father was born in a region of Romania called Bucovina, in the village of Stanesti de Jos. He was one of five children, and he used to say they were so poor that they had but one soup dish, that the youngest brother, Vasile, who died before I was born, would blow his nose into the soup so that no one would eat after him. Their father had left them years before for Canada, eventually sending for them when my own father was sixteen. The voyage by boat took six months, and they eventually settled in Windsor. Nobody liked him; he was a chronic smoker, so he had a gurgly breath and wheezed instead of laughed.
Every time we got together he would provoke an argument.
She would growl and clasp her hands together when she saw us. The unfortunate effect was that we were terrified of that noise.
The Carpenters Daughter have a great range of plus size clothing for curvy women. Order online or from one our retail stores. Items 1 - 15 of The Carpenters Daughter have a great range of trendy plus size clothing for curvy women. Order online or from one our retail stores for the.
She made scatter rugs out of old nylon stockings on a loom that looked like an instrument of torture. One time she asked my baby brother if he wanted some toast, and when he said yes, she opened a drawer and handed him a dried piece of toast. But my father always reminded us that she was his mother, and, therefore, we must respect her. Until my baby brother was born I was the middle child, with all the particular attributes of the second born. He and my mother would sing it together in harmony: When I came along he decided to name me after Doris Day because she was one of the first American celebrities he admired; she had a beautiful singing voice, he would say.
My older sister was accorded a violin because my father always dreamed of playing one himself. In fact, he used to admire violins in shop windows and eventually bought one when he had saved enough money. He went on to collect a number of violins after that, though we used to giggle when he played them. Still, he played them with such love and passion that it was clear he had a natural talent for the instrument.
When my sister resisted taking any more lessons, she took up the piano like my mother. My mother was also the child of immigrants and could not afford a piano when she was young, but she took lessons anyway and used to practice on a sheet of paper with the keys drawn in pencil. She, too, had a natural proclivity for music and could play beautifully.
I used to envy my sister when she practiced and wished I could study piano, as well, but my father had other ideas: He had seen Connie Francis playing the accordion on the Lawrence Welk Show after which she was discovered. I remember strapping on that weird contraption for the first time and thinking that it, like the loom, was an instrument of torture.