POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS

Just took this photo that shows why I named this blog Prisms and Polka dots.  These dots dance on our walls when the sun shines on my beaded sun catchers.  The different colored beads shine in different colored dots.  

You know me and research.  Here's the scoop on polka dots......

• The Lega people of Western Africa hold a manhood right of passage, where a young man painted in white dots, knocks persistently on a polka-dotted door until it opens.
• In Medieval Europe, irregular spots on fabrics reminded people of skin blemishes and diseases. Dotted patterns didn't become popular until machines could make them perfectly spaced.
• It's not certain whether the modern term 'polka dot' comes from the polka dance craze that swept through Europe in the mid-19th century.  The dance is Bohemian in origin.  Some say polka comes from the Czech pulka which means 'half,' referring to the polka dance's small steps.
• Remember dotted Swiss fabric? 
• In Spanish dots are called little moons.
• The term 'polka dots' to refer to a spotted fabric first appeared in 1857 in a Philadelphia-based women's magazine.
• Frank Sinatra's first hit in 1940, "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" captured the polka dot trend of the era.
• Polka dot clothing hit the runways of Paris in the 1940s when Christian Dior debued his New Look line featuring heavily dotted fabric.
• All of us baby boomers remember Brian Hyland's "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."
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  In 1961, Disney debuted a new polka dotted outfit for Minnie Mouse.
  
• Mister Polka-Dot was a character in a 1962 comic.  He wore a skin-tight costume covered in colorful polka dots that would swell up into deadly weapons at the push of a button.  He used a getaway car called the Flying Polka Dot.
  
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  How about the polka dots on the Wonder Bread sack.
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  There's even a Polka-Dot Wasp Moth that's native to the Caribbean Islands.
• In the original production of Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy, Ann is wearing a polka dot dress.  

  

Have to stop to think if I have any polka-dot clothes.  Yup,  have a navy blue nautical-look top with small white polka dots.  Do you have any polka dots in your closet?