third sewing update

Today I'm blogging about a garment that I'd mostly finished a few weeks back, but which today got the finished touches that needed to be handsewn, including the buttons. I did the hand-sewing at the German Stammtisch. Tonight was special as it was Grit's last Stammtisch with us all. She's the German-as-a-foreign-language teacher who organized the Stammtisch to begin with, and she's gotten a job teaching at Cornell, starting this summer. Many of you will get to meet her and her boyfriend (with whom Jeremi did an internship in Jena) as they'll becoming to the wedding. She's also having a going-away party on Friday, and I'll be sure to blog about that.

Now back to the garment - Jeremi's pants. I decided to photograph them on the kitchen floor, and as soon as I laid them out the cat was in heaven, rolling all over them. She tends to do this whenever you put any fabric on the floor, be it a rug or a towel or a newly sewn piece of clothing. And so those Aeris-lovers out there should also get their fill with this one.
Then I wanted to turn them over to show the nice back pocket with the button, but she didn't want to get off the button so I could photograph it. I had to distract her with my foot. (Note that it's not a weird waistband - rather it's just the cuffs showing as I folded the pants as I laid them down.) On a completely unrelated note, I noticed something funny on the way to Stammtisch. Often here when someone famous has lived in a building they'll put a plaque on it, saying who it was and when they lived there. Hans Christian Anderson lived for a short time in a flat on the market square, for instance. More often they're not people you've heard of, but were famous academics of their time. There's a building on the way to the cafe where the German Stammtisch is held that has an uncommon number of these plaques, as can be seen here.
I guess because there are so many names I never paid so much attention. How else to explain it, as I've passed this point literally hundreds of times before, never once noticing the name at the bottom right...
That's right, William Marshall. It seems there was a professor of zoology who had the same name as my father who was living there at one time. Not that it's such an uncommon name, but it's certainly uncommon in Germany. It seems that he was a contributor to Brehms Tierleben or Brehm's Life of Animals, a series of books which was wildly popular during the second half of the 19th century, describing animal life in all its forms. There, now you've learnt something for the day.