Spinning, knitting, dyeing and ridiculous-looking dogs
Last chance to post something brilliant and witty, poignantly powerful, incisively insightful in 2008 and…nope. I got nothing. The bubkes of beautiful blissful boredom.
But have a happy and safe new year!
Can I interest you in a little something in the xkcd department?
to be back home with my healthy dogs and warm, messy little house. It would be absolutely perfect if Nick was off work too, but he’s been able to stop by and he’ll be home this evening.
I missed all the fluffy snow, but I heard we’ll be getting some more in soon, and I’m excited about that. I want to go snowshoeing from our front door step. It’s good to have a goal.
I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and staying warm and happy!
Again.
And very slowly, since the roads are icy, and then it will be foggy, and then rainy.
I hate leaving Nick and the girls behind, but hopefully Tahoe and I can sneak in some dog beach time while we’re there.
One small sewing project done, another fairly identical project almost done, except for pressing and top stitching, one for my cousin and one for my stepsister. This one’s for my cousin:
Using Chickpea Studio’s “Making Baby Things with 3 Yards of Flannel” post as a guide, I made a swaddle cloth (roughly 36″ x 36″), a changing pad (24″ x 18″ and the terry cloth side is what you see there), two burp clothes, kind of long and wide, and four terry cloth and flannel backed squares, small washcloth sized as slobber clothes.
They’ve decided to be surprised by the gender. The color looks really blue here, and the terry cloth is blue, but the flannel side is very purpley-yellow-green, not quite as bluey as shown, so it’s somewhat neutral. It’s a Marcus Brothers fabric, but they don’t print the design names on their selvage so I’ve got no clue as to what it’s called to get a link to a truer color pic.
Erica’s is in Michael Miller’s Carnival Bloom, brown flannel with brown terry cloth, which seems kind of perfect for “sophisticated baby” stuff.
The baby quilt is going to have to wait after I finish other stuff. I tried to sew all the layers together all in one go and it ended up all wickety whack. I did just use a basting stitch, so, easy enough to rip, and I do have a walking foot so I’ll try it out…later. I’ll probably be taking it all down with me anyway.
Boy, it’s cold here. I pulled my backpack out of the car and the water bottles inside were frozen solid. And the snow is lovely and white and crunchy. I want to stay home.
From failblog. With the perfect silly title of PengWIN.
Mom totally loved penguins; she would have got such a kick out of this vid.
I know that it is important to have scientific data, gathered with the proper protocols and controls and whatnot, instead of just basing your proposals for the sexy glamorous wolf studies you really want to do on anecdotal evidence, but dang, don’t the faces of the dogs in this article just break your heart?
Anybody with more than one dog could tell you that they feel jealousy and that the other dog’s presence will change their behavior. No need to be a big ol’ meanie tease with the treats there. We already knew that dogs can perceive amounts, why on earth is it a surprise that an animal would decline to continue a behavior which no longer yields a reward? (Which seems to me a much simpler set of behavior.) They don’t do this stuff for free, y’know.
“Unconditional love?” Bah, Libelula waves a paw at this ridiculous notion.
I’ve actually got lots of drafts, but I never seem to have enough time to really wrap up everything I’d like to say re: the election and results, so that’s part of the radio silence. I can’t not say something, right?
But I think I’ll save it all for another day.
But I am thankful for the promise, the idea of a change in policies. The last eight years there have been things done in my name as an American that I am frankly ashamed of and have huge difficulty reconciling within our collective identity. I know that these things aren’t new (concentration camps, secret prisons, black ops, torture, war and fear profiteering) but it has been so baldfaced and shamelessly done, with so little apparent outrage when exposed, that it has been very dispiriting.
So I am thankful and hopeful for the new period in our history which will be here before we know it if the fleet footed passage of this past year is any gauge.
I am however, in the parlance of my people, “massively bummed” about the California election results, but not surprised.
These are pumpkins I carved for my my Grammy’s windowsill, my two favorite designs ripped straight from yeswecarve.com. I did the stencils for them myself, and it shows— Obama has kind of a tricky profile (well, that’s my excuse) and to capture it first in simple line on paper, and then transfer from flat paper to a convex shape…well, it looks more like my profile than his, but my Grammy still loved it.
She even wanted to have them up the night before Halloween and every night until the election, which made me very very happy that they were received so well and she was so excited about them. She’s in a lot of pain which none of us (including apparently, the pain specialists who sold her on a very expensive surgery [$82k] that if anything may have made things worse since it required her to be as still as possible for two months, a very debilitating “recuperation” for someone as active and unstoppable as my Grammy was and hopefully will be again) can do anything about, so it was thrilling to find something that made her smile.
I’d never used one of those special carving knife/saw kits before and I’ll never carve another pumpkin without them again. HUGE difference: so much easier.
I am thankful I had my Grammy’s help in sewing together some stuff for Amalia–I forgot to take pictures of the reversible outfit and hat, but they’re so big (baby sizes are all over the place!) that she’ll probably wear them for her fourth birthday and we’ll see them then. In the meantime, here’s a piccie of the matching hat and bloomers.
I picked the fabrics at a time when Amalia was drooling so much she had a perpetual rash–she was definitely what Heidi calls a “juicy baby.”
Ugh, I still need to put elastic in the bloomers. I’m not thankful for that, inserting elastic is a pain. A little chore, but easily put off…
And I was thankful to have my Grammy there while I tried to work from a pattern, reassuring me that it wasn’t just me who thought the pattern was perhaps too pithy and reliant on jargon as to be vague in what to actually specifically in this case do. Yo sewing pattern-writing peeps, I know if you’ve been sewing for ages it’s all obvious, but then I don’t get why a pattern is even needed then! It was totally like a form response from tech support.
I also did the Lorelei apron from A is for Apron (designer Joan Hand Stroh) while I was down in San Diego and I’m fairly happy with how it turned out. I think these two fabrics might have done better separately than together, but I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t choose between them.
I funked up the very wide rickrack–it shreds like the dickens when cut and had to be placed just right. I did stitching lines on the cut ends to keep it from fraying.
I like topstitching; I love the way it looks, especially with contrasting thread, and for the most part, I think my control has grown by leaps and bounds–but every once in a while, there’s a hiccup that will remind the recipient that this is very human hand-made indeed.
This will be a thank you present (long overdue).
I’ve pieced together a quilt top for a baby my stepsister is having next month, her first and my father’s first grandchild, so pretty exciting and worthy of trying to expand the whole sewing skill set thingummy.
I’m not sure if I’m terribly happy with how it turned out, but I’d like to think that with the odd colors and pattern going on it will have to be good for stimulating the ol’ baby brain.
I’ll finish it with some white space surrounding the top for visual separation from the bias binding edging, and I don’t know what kind of patterning for the top stitching, we’ll see.
I made a rough draft on paper first for the shape pattern of the thing, then plotted out the numbers I’d need to fit the proportions to end up with the crib size, then filled it in color-wise.
There’s some difference; there’s a pattern and some movement obvious in the rough draft, but isn’t readily apparent in the final top. I vacillate between finding it hideous and being very proud. Maybe pink, orange and green aren’t the best color combos, but I loved the poppy fabric and picked out the coordinating pinks, oranges and greens from those. So yeah, like I said, let’s hope it’ll at least be good for growing baby brains on.
Maybe better with more white space between some of the shapes, or a lesson in there about proportions. Or maybe it’s gorgeous and awesome and I’m a complete freaking color and quilting genius. Probably not.
I am thankful for Straus organic ice cream, the best ice cream ever.
I am thankful that I made a big pot of lentil soup last night, because I completely spaced on doing the grocery shopping and that’s what we’ll be having for our Thanksgiving meal since the shop was shut today when I went, last minute as always…and I am thankful Nick loves lentil soup. (I’m making a cake too, so I am also thankful for a stocked up baking cupboard.)
I am thankful that after all this time, Nick and I still fit together like were made just new for each other.
While we miss our families, I am thankful we live here in Yreka, in the middle of gorgeousness and lovely weather. We are also thankful for the health of our families, even if we can no longer spend so much time with them as to make them thoroughly sick of us.
I am thankful for handspun yarn, there’s really no substitute for its squooshiness, even if it’s not your own.
Messy coffee table. I would have trimmed the photo, but I liked the light and the serendipity of all the color coincidences.
I’ve been working on the same project for the last month, how sad is that? I just don’t pick it up much.
Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday, and I will try to focus on being thankful that we had her with us as long as we did and that we able to know each other as adults and share books, and that if there is an afterlife, and if people are able to communicate at all, perhaps through dreams, the dreams that Grammy and I have been having with Mom in them indicate she is having a great time. So I am grateful and thankful for the happiness this idea gives us, and thankful for the dreams which seem so real that it’s like being given more time.
Really, truly, I am so thankful for so many things. Nick, the dogs, this beautiful place, our happy home full of silliness and dog hair and sweet monkey love. I wish everyone could have what we have and feel what we feel.
See this is why I don’t post very often. I’m a dork, a smug braggart, a slow and sporadic knitter, a spasmodic sewist, I stink at taking pictures of finished objects and I end up not posting for so long that there seems to be too much to catch up on, or, sometimes surprisingly little and not worth the bother, or completely lose focus and end with something random and kind of gross.
I am not thankful for the return of the box elder beetles.
These guys get everywhere. At the end of last winter, they were piled in the tracks of our windows in crunchy little drifts of dried exoskeletons. And they look like mini cockroaches at first glance.
Yuck.
Long time no post. Time just flies by when you’re living in one of the most beautiful places on earth, I tell you what. We have been busy, but that’s no excuse. We’ve basically been blogging via flickr, but even that, sporadically.
I have been knitting, but have already put these down in favor of some fingerless gloves with a mitten overlap flap.
I finally finished the Amy Butler Anna Mini Dress. Holy cow, I measured beforehand, but this dress really is mini. I can’t bend over and touch my toes without showing my goodies. So I just don’t bend over and touch my toes while wearing that. Problem solved.
(The boots are the closest I have to go-go boots. I don’t think they really work. ;))
I had recut the waistline, but I didn’t want to lose the fullness of the skirt, or the ease in the chest and ribs, and I think the incut/slope of that shaping could have been more subtle, but I’m not sure how. Even so it looks rather sacklike from the side without the belt. I’d seen people mention the snugness of the armholes, and it is on the borderline for me.
Not too snug, but close–this isn’t a dress to be doing a lot of reaching or bending in, so I’m going to try not to wear it working on any loading docks, yo.
Over all, I’m very happy with it and what I learned from making it. Definitely the trickiest most challenging sewing I’ve done and I kept ripping stitching until I got it (mostly) right.
It’s the yoke that makes this dress distinctive, and was the trickiest part:
(although since buying this, I’ve seen that Vogue or McCall’s has a very similarly style pattern)
But my favorite part are the buttons from my Mom’s stash. The whole dress is very 60’s air hostess-y to me, so I thought they fit.
Anyway, I love this fabric, and I’m very happy with the dress and the project overall, but I know I won’t be making this again. Because I thought I might be, I had cut out the dress and pattern pieces on separate tracing paper and left the pattern uncut–what if I’d totally n00b’d and cut the wrong size? So, if anyone wants this pattern, leave me a comment and I’ll send it to you. The instruction sheet’s a bit rumpled, but it’s fine, really.
That’s all the time I have for blogging now, I still have to pack for my trip tomorrow. I’m visiting my Grammy (and taking Tahoe so Nick and the kids aren’t tempted to move away while I’m gone ;)) for the next week and Halloween and I’m going to bring my sewing machine and a whole bunch of projects that she’s going to help me with and together we’re going to miss my Mom a lot, because she was an amazing seamstress. But she learned from my Grammy and now so will I.
Anyone know what kind of berries these are?
ETA: Grammy knew! This is Toyon, or California Holly, apparently a food staple and medicinal plant. And amazing family fact: Crater Lake, where I took this picture and the fish are incredibly aloof to my favorite kastmaster, was the last place my grandmother & grandfather went as a family before my grandfather was killed. (He was a naval aviator and died during a NATO exercise. There is a cool story of a watch in there.) My uncle was still in diapers, and having navigated that lakeside terrain, I marvel that he is still with us, since the shore is mostly boulders all jumbled together that must be navigated carefully and seem just made for swallowing babies up whole.
Anyway, I was showing pictures to my Grammy and asked her about the plant ID, and pictures of Crater Lake and I found that out, so chalk up another win for technology building bridges in information and experiences.
via Boing Boing
Unfortunately, the WP update seems to make my Viper video embedding go kaputz, or perhaps I am missing something. It’s long, but funny, and a message worth 8 minutes and 42 seconds of your time, even if it’s been said before, by different people in different ways…it’s all presented here in a cohesively argued statement with bonus lovely accent. 
Craig Ferguson, Sept 10th monologue
No news on the knitting front. I’m still working on the Wear Everywhere Pullover, but only picking it up occasionally. I think I’ll be queuing a lot of stuff from the new Knitty though, especially these socks.
It’s still hot during the day here, but getting cooler. We open everything up around six and close it up in the morning–and in the morning, I wear a sweater and long socks, because it is very chilly yet. I have to cover the dogs up in blankets (when they dare to leave the warmth of the bed) and I’d better get cracking on sewing Tahoe’s winter coat. Knee socks are a nice way to extend the skirt season and starting a new project all fresh-like might motivate me to knit more, who knows.
just spoiled for choice in stuff to do and blogging hasn’t been much of a priority lately.
I had a birthday, and I was utterly spoiled and received many wonderful presents and had a fun day kayaking & fishing on Kangaroo Lake with Nick and the SIL and nephews.
I caught a lovely couple of trout, and Nick got some good bites and hooked a niced-sized one that leapt right back out of the boat and away, licketysplit, and -huzzah!-while it didn’t come home with us, it counted as us both breaking our awful fishing slump.
It was a good day.
I still cried myself to sleep because I missed my mom, because, again, I am spoiled. She should have been here and it’s not fair that she’s not. So I cried, oh well. Glad I got that out of my system. I may be a big girl of thirty plus years, but dammit, I’ll always miss my Mommy.
Apparently certain catalog companies were notified that I have become a woman of a certain age. And apparently, they feel that as a woman of certain age I would like the financial security of being a pimp (or at least dressing like one) and running my own string:
We’ve been looking at houses. I’ve fallen in love with a few lovely properties, but as I am notoriously easy, Nick is the one to convince.
One promising prospect…but I don’t plan on jinxing this one anytime soon.
While it was really hot and the fires were at the worst, we went camping on the coast where we needed to bundle up in long pants and sweaters and the air was clear of smoke if not fog.
Clam Beach is great because it just goes on and on and on with lovely packed sand.
Crivvie was unsure about the whole “sleeping in a tent” thing but she did very well.
2 adults, 2 whippets and a greyhound CAN fit in an REI Halfdome.
We went to the county fair, on the last day.
The fair here is only 5 days and is of course a much smaller affair than the SD County fair.
I’m sure there must have been a spa salesman somewhere but I didn’t see a single. Just a lot of animals, auctions, farm equipment and local businesses and local organisations.
And funnel cake.
It was really nice.
A deer at the petting zoo kept trying to eat my skirt. I would love a pet deer, as disgustingly impractical as that is.
Seeing all the deer here never gets old for me. At one of the houses we looked at (an absolute money pit) in the middle of the day, practically in the middle of town, we were standing outside talking with the realtor and saw a doe and two fawns saunter along the sidewalk and down into a neighbor’s yard…acting like they were just making the rounds.
It’s just a lovely surprise, going along your day and there, suddenly, deer! They’re everywhere. And nowhere, if you’re looking for them. It’s bowhunting season, and soon, enough, the regular season so we haven’t been seeing the big guys at all.
I made scones last week with blackberries we gathered from a vacant lot on our way back from the video store. This morning I made scones with huckleberries from the Ashland farmer’s market, gathered locally by “our mushroom guy.”
We have an apple tree in the back yard that really needs topping off. I climbed up it in my new shoes the other day and clipped some little branches, sawed some others, but mostly just picked some apples, dropping them into my backpack, and shook some down. They’re delicious. I made loads of applesauce from the bruised ones and we’re eating the others in salads and with cheese.
Nick and I caught nearly identical fish on another jaunt to Kangaroo Lake. It’s so gorgeous there. So clear and quiet, a beautiful place to camp.
I just love that we can actually eat from the land here.
I got a little part time job at the local coffee house; it’s fun. It’s nice to be “working” again and I’m starting to recognise some regulars, and the owner of the Village Grind is great to work with (and for) and has hired some great workers. (If I do say so myself) As a 30 year old, I am about 13 years older than my colleagues, but I tell you, I would totally clone them, they are good at their job and a pleasure to work with–which is awesome, because customer service can be hard. But frankly, everybody’s pretty darn nice on both sides of the counter so the job isn’t really “work” at all.
I took a sewing class at a local quilt shop hoping I would learn more about finishing techniques but well, I learned how to do a french seam. I do wish I could hang out more with the woman I sat next to though. She was teh awesome wit da sewing, and we had a good time commiserating about the state of the world today.
In terms of learning the promised “professional finishing” techniques or getting more comfortable, this class wasn’t it. “Kimono in a Day,” my tushy. Cutting it out one day, sewing the next…two people actually finished theirs, the rest of us took ours home to finish them. But I did have fun, because of my table mate, and because I was making something for someone I love very much and thinking about her and the bright colors made me happy.
I added a reading glasses pocket, a tissue pocket, and belt loops and finally finished it all yesterday, so it will be winging its way to my Grammy soon.
I still haven’t finished the Anna mini dress.
I did recut the muslin lining, and the outer fabric, to take it in four inches at the waist. I should have taken more from the back, but I was afraid I might not be able to get it on if I took it in too much, as my shoulders and hips are pretty wide. (heh, all this good Siskiyou County living) I thought I was in the home stretch–I sewed on the tunic yoke, but didn’t like the way it looked (I accidentally sewed too narrow a seam allowance and exposed the stay stitching–only after unpicking the tunic yoke from the body did I realise I could have just unpicked the exposed stitching and it would have been fine) and then after painstakingly doing the gathers and re-matching up the pieces just exactly right with the exactly right amount of seam allowance and then unpicking and ironing and folding and prepping to go to the next step…did I realise that I had sewn the tunic yoke on wrong side out. D’oh. So it’s unpicked and waiting to be finished still. There aren’t many steps left, but I’m sure it will take me a few more mistakes before it’s done. But I am learning.
Life is good.
