Tuesday Project Roundup: Let's Take Pictures Of Fabric Instead Of Actually Sewing It Edition

I've slowed down a little over the past two weeks, which, combined with the beginning of August and the realization that fall is five weeks away, is making me feel anxious.

I have patterns I want to make:
I have fabric with which to make them: (Can you tell I'm planning on yellow shoes for fall?)

I even have fabric cut out and ready to be sewn:
But lately there's been something else (farmers markets, Nigel Slater cookbooks, mindless fashion magazines that I read, thinking, "I could make that") that I'd rather do. I thought a sewing machine at home was supposed to make me more productive.

Flowers!

Look, I have some:
I have some flowers.

Friday Unrelated Information

1.. It’s getting to be county fair/derby season: Tooele’s is this weekend, Weber County’s is next weekend, and if you want to enter a baked good, sewing project, or wedding dress in the Salt Lake County Fair, you’d better have it ready on August 11 or 12. Then you can go see if you won a ribbon and watch the mayhem in the derby arena! Also, you can look at the fancy chickens. I love fancy chickens.

2. Here’s a link on how to predict the weather by observing the natural environment.

3. J. Crew, I don’t have your damn DVD.

4. How to tell if you’re a drunk astronaut:

J. Crew, I Am Over You

So I used to live and breathe J. Crew. Back in the days before the innernet, I'd devour the catalog and irritate my mother by falling in love with a sweater, without which future happiness was impossible. Then I got a job, and started buying my own J. Crew. J. Crew got a website! J. Crew stores came into Utah! I got a J. Crew credit card! I worked for J. Crew for about two months, where I spent about twice what I earned! You get the picture.

But now I can't look at a J. Crew catalog without wanting to fling it across the room, usually followed by some expletives. J. Crew, what went wrong between us? How did it get so bad? Is it because you are SO EXPENSIVE? Consider this dress, made of cotton corduroy:It's $120. I could make it for $12.

And while price is a big part of it, J. Crew, I started to realize something was wrong between us even before I became the cheapest woman in the world. I blame your prose style. There never used to be any copy in the catalog, other than the fiber content and the color name. Now, there are condescending "Did You Know" sections ("The secret is too good to keep to ourselves...so we're letting you in on what you might (or might not) already know") [note: what?] and useless bits like this: "Our head designer loves this design so much, we named it after her." J. Crew, I hate to say this, but I don't care.

So J. Crew, I'm afraid we're over. Even the shoes, J. Crew--even the shoes aren't quite what they used to be. I know this is hard, but it's better this way. For me.

(Now all I need to do is figure how to remove the link to J. Crew in the right nav here. I can't very break up with J. Crew and keep promoting it.)

Trial Marriages and Neopaganism

Today is August first, which I learned last year was Lughnasadh, a celebration marking the beginning of the end of summer. (Love those Druidic holidays.) And while I won't be doing anything Wiccan to celebrate, I do like to share:

Lughnasadh marked the beginning of the harvest season, the ripening of first fruits, and was traditionally a time of community gatherings, market festivals, horse races and reunions with distant family and friends. Among the Irish it was a favored time for handfastings - trial marriages that would generally last a year and a day, with the option of ending the contract before the new year, or later formalizing it as a more permanent marriage

Tuesday Project Roundup: Street People Appreciation Edition

I thought my crafty production rates would go up after I got my sewing machine last week, but they really just shifted: Instead of making a dress over the weekend, I made one during the week. This is fabric a friend in Hawaii sent me for no reason. (More people should send fabric for no reason. It's fantastic.)
But with my production rates so high for so long, people at work have just given up asking, "Oh, what a nice dress. Did you make it?" But to make up for it, people on the street have started shouting, "I like your dress!" or "What a nice summer dress!" as I walk to the library or the Gallivan Center. At least wearing a dress prompts polite comments.

Guess The Photo Monday

Where was this picture taken? Canyonlands? Somewhere in the Mexican desert? No—Mars.

Somebody found the NASA site while idly reading about drunken astronauts. Science is cool!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Martha Stewart has an interview in Wired magazine, in which she blames the Walkman for the end of her marriage. (And also makes some good points about creativity.)

2. My morning glory is blooming—I’ll have to get up early enough to get a picture this weekend. And a hummingbird was checking it out this morning!

3. For all the science-fiction lovers, here’s a Dune lolcat picture:

I Love The British So Much

Yesterday I read a New York Times article about the flooding in Southern Britain, with the story of John Burrow, an old chap who had to be evacuated:

As for Mr. Burrow, he said the worst part of being flooded was the struggle to evacuate his cats, one of whom jumped into the water in fear. Finally, he corralled them into cat boxes provided by the fire department and, led by several firefighters, he waded through the river that had been the road, being careful not to fall into a manhole after their covers had been ripped off by the force of the water.

"I wasn't scared, as long as I could wade along the road," he said. "And the war was worse."

The war was worse. What understatement. Carry on, sir!

Now I Can Really Be A Sweatshop

Because now I have a sewing machine!And I have a fan. (Sweatshops get hot.)

I took over my mother's oldest sewing machine about two years ago, but it conked out when I moved this spring. This weekend it got a tuneup and I got a cabinet for it, so now it can sit out all the time, just begging for projects. Think of what I can accomplish! I'll be unstoppable! I might laugh like an evil villain now!

Tuesday Project Roundup: Happy Edition

So when a large part of your happiness comes from controlling your reality by way of fabric, as I explained Friday, it can be more upsetting than normal when a project doesn't work out. Like the plaid dress with the vintage, instruction-less pattern last weekend. It didn't work. I was unhappy.

But I needed a project to give me meaning and purpose and a sense of fulfillment, and lo! ask for a project and ye shall receive your friends' mothers vintage pattern stash. And ask for a fabric for said pattern and ye shall find it on sale. So I had a happy time making a happy accident dress:It's also something of a "happy eyesore," to use a phrase from the Dress a Day blog lady, but I like eyesores ("what? I can't hear you over this print!").

Something To Do Today

BoingBoing, source of all my interesting news, posted a link today to a site where a very clever person had re-imagined famous poems as limericks. Nothing makes me happier than corny literary tricks! Maybe I’ll write my own today!

(Also try Twitterku, which are haikus made up of random lines from Twitter. Good times!)

"Habe Studia Otii Et Vide Quid Fiat."

Remember the title from last October? I wanted a Latin translation of my motto, "Have hobbies and see what happens," which I love fo rbeing so apt. In fact, something happened yesterday to reinforce my motto:

I was driving in town and saw a dog poking its head out of a car window. I like dogs, and this dog was big and black and shaggy and obviously very excited about getting to poke its head out of the window. So I smiled and looked at the dog as I sped up, and glanced over to see what type of person would own a dog like that, and I saw an old boyfriend, one of the two people I've loved, and I just thought, "Goddammit, why are you driving around in a new car with a dog I don't even know about, if I loved you once? Why didn't that turn out differently?" [Commenters: just don't.]

As long as I'm talking about my old loves, what about the second of the two, the one who showed up on my doorstep last August with a Ravel CD, the one whom I hadn't seen in five years, whose appearance I thought heralded newfound happiness and a bright future and lots of Ravel? The times we would have! But no. (I do still have the CD.)

But before I start sounding too crazy-bitter, I'd better get to the larger point, which is this: Very often, people do not do what you want them to do. They do not buy big black dogs with you. They do not decide to move in with you and have a life together full of chamber music. They do what they want to do, and if that involves dogs or Schubert with someone else, there is not a thing you can do about it.

That is what makes hobbies so fantastic. The yarn or the fabric I work with does not have a choice. I can make it do what I want. In the craft world, things are exactly how I want them to be. It's a great feeling--sort of a metaphysical "Take that!" to a universe that won't accommodate me.

So yes. Some Latin, some of my uncomfortable personal history, and another reason I like my hobbies. (And if I end up knitting myself a dog and a family in the next ten years, well--I guess this was the first warning.)

Happy Friday!

Early Unrelated Information

I have tomorrow off, which makes today feel like Friday. So here’s some early unrelated information!

1. I will be struggling with the vintage dress pattern tomorrow (and I will win, by god). The fabric is a bright plaid, and while spending THREE HOURS on the bodice last week I had some time to wonder about the origins of the word “plaid.” The first recorded usage was in1512, from the Gaelic plaide "blanket, mantle," of unknown origin, perhaps a contraction of peallaid "sheepskin," from peall "skin," from Latin pellis (but OED finds this "phonetically improbable"). (Unrelated note: I need more opportunities to use “phonetically improbable” in everyday conversation.)

2. Have you ever wanted to see where your cat goes when he has his adventures? Order him a CatCam and find out! Or just see photos from a day in the life of a cat named Mr. Lee.

3. If you ever need to ask a French person is he or she made something themselves, this is how: Avez-vous fait cela vous-meme?

Remember These?!

There was a post on BoingBoing last week about scary monsters from Sesame Street, and guess who were listed? Those Martian things that said “yip yip yip, uh-huh, uh-huh”! They absolutely terrified me, especially in the episode where they discovered the telephone and mimicked its ringing. The first “Brrrrrrringgg!!!” out of their scary, scary mouths was almost too much.

The post has an awesome quote from someone who was also scared of the Yip Yips: “I found a clip on YouTube and freaked myself out a little. When the phone rang and their lips flew up above their head, I thought about cowering behind my desk chair for a second."

I’m glad I’m not the only one.

Tuesday Project Roundup: There Is No Project Roundup

No, I didn't finish a project over the weekend. I've discovered vintage patterns but was sadly surprised by how...laconic the instructions are. (If by "instructions," you mean a step consisting of a picture showing a fabric configuration that has no relationship whatsoever with the fabric you're holding in your hands, of course. Not that I was frustrated.)

But there's nothing a little seam binding can't gloss over, so in the spirit of this post's title, here's the Magritte picture of a pipe announcing, "This is not a pipe."

(He's right, you know--it's a painting of a pipe. Oh, those tricky French intellectual painters!)

A Scary Story, Plus Acceptance

If you couldn't tell from my jokes about curing cancer with the same amount of effort, I have felt a little guilty about the time and energy I've spent sewing. (Knitting, somehow, gets an exception. Knitting is magic and like therapy; therefore, I should probably spend MORE time doing it. I don't feel guilty about knitting.) People I know play music, are lawyers for the environment, grow gardens, start families, etc. I spend a lot of time making pretty things to wear.

I started sewing at my current rate about February of this year, which is when the Great Financial Turnaround of 2007 began. I gave up credit cards and was left with cash, which didn't buy what I was used to buying. But cash could buy fabric. Fast forward to today: I'm now the conductor on the Debt Reduction Train and have become the cheapest person I know, announcing when I can find fabric for $2 a yard or get 12 rolls of toilet paper for $5 (at Target this week! Use a coupon!).

Here's the scary part: Being the Mayor of Get Out of Debt City, I was paying my bills last night and had to look up some old statements. I found one from last year---June 2006--and first I thought, "Oh, the good times when I had credit cards...I remember those times...I loved those times...let's see what I bought last June..oh...oh.......oh sweet baby Jesus, how much did I spend in June alone?!" And then I tipped over. And then I hid the statement. It was that scary.

Anyway, my point is that since I have lots of time on my hands (and a deep-seated belief that happiness is just another new item away) (yes, I know; that's an issue for another day), I am so glad I can sew and spend so much time doing it. Because otherwise, I'd be hitting the mean streets of Anthropologie and online shoe stores. And that can get ugly.

Friday Unrelated Cultural Informaition

1. Tomorrow is Bastille Day.

2. The French don't like their president jogging.

3. Watch out:

Weather!

Last night there was something different from the month of sun and sky we’ve had: wind and clouds! And even some rain! Like just about every other thing, weather makes me think of poetry, and I thought of what Pablo Neruda had to say about it:

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

(From “Every Day You Play,” complete text here. [Warning: terrifying web design.] It’s really a love poem, so if you’re not in love it may make you sad and bitter. Hey, I’m just saying—)

Growing (Plants, Not Business)

My patio garden is hitting its stride and I couldn't be more tickled. All I do is keep the pots watered, and look what happens:To quote my sister-in-law, "It's working!" And to quote M.F.K. Fisher: "They did as they were meant to, which is one of the most satisfying things that can happen to a gardener."

Tuesday Project Roundup: Cheap Edition

This is the time of year for end-of-season sales at the fabric store, which means that if you find pattern on sale, too, you can make a dress for $10. Including the zipper. That's what I did with this one, made from the Venice fabric. I wore it to the yarn store at lunch yesterday, which was full of knitting ladies, and one of them said, "That dress looks just like Audrey Hepburn." (I think she meant the dress looked like something Audrey would wear. I took it as a compliment.)

The internet is also a good source for cheap fabric, and if you don't mind ordering from a place called "Fashion Fabrics Club," you can get heavy Italian linen in a purple plaid for about $15: Notice the neckline? I was really thrifty and used the same pattern as the Venice dress and just changed the skirt. And notice the pleats under the waistline? Gut pleats. Brilliant. I may never wear pants again.

The one disadvantage to dresses is that 99% of them close in the back. And while I've gotten good at zipping myself up, the hook and eye at the top of the zipper--that hits right at the middle of my back on this pattern--had me questioning my decision to live alone this morning. But one must put up with something, I suppose.

11 Things I Did In 5 Days Off

1. Sewed a dress.
2. Sewed another dress.
3. Discovered websites that sell vintage patterns(also called "heroin").
4. Bought three more patterns and some fabric for more sewing.
5. Learned how to dance like a hippy at the Gallivan Center concert.
6. Saw my high school music teacher leading the marching band in the West Jordan July 4th parade.
7. Watched the West Jordan City fireworks.
8. Washed and waxed my car.
9. Went to the Western Stampede demolition derby.10. Washed my car again because it got rained on at the derby.
11. Ate some nachos.Nachos rule!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. The Tour de France starts tomorrow.

2. The Tour de France knitalong starts tomorrow, if you're a knitting blogger and want to enter. (Although I'm really not clear on this concept: How, exactly, does the polka dot King of the Mountains jersey translate to knitting? Does one knit a jersey? Does one knit while climbing a hill? What?)

3. The West Jordan Western Stampede Demolition Derby is tomorrow at 7:00. Hot damn!

4. There's a new cria baby at the alpaca ranch. His name is Zoom Zoom because he's fast!

Business Speak That Must Go

I'm not working for the rest of the week, but that required a lot of slogging through Microsoft promotional materials Monday and Tuesday. Which made me realize that some of the accepted business phraseology is (maybe like a lot of business marketing) incredibly stupid. For example:

"Take it to the next level." What, exactly, does this mean outside of a video game? And do you really want to compare improving your business to Super Mario Brothers?

"Full service." To my knowledge, this only applies to filling stations before about 1970. "Full service" does not accurately describe any sort of services a business may offer, either.

"Grow your business." your business This is the one I hate most. You can increaserevenue; you can expand your business offerings; you can even create more profits. But business is not a plant. You can't grow it.

I just had to vent. I'm going to enjoy not thinking about any sort of business for a few days, and instead think about fabric and demolition derbies.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Be Glad It's Not A Dress Edition

I'm not shy about wearing really loud prints or really big prints, but this fabric made me question myself: It's a print of Mexican loteria cards that I loved online, but that just screamed "fortune teller" in person. But I had ordered enough to make a dress, so I thought I'd better make a dress. I was so relieved when I saw the bodice wasn't working and I could make it into a skirt.

Because it doesn't scream "fortune teller" at all as a skirt. Not at all. (I wore it yesterday and caught someone reading my skirt during a meeting.)

Other things I'm glad are not a dress:
A pillow, finally finished. It's for the living room but it got its picture taken in the kitchen, where the light is better. The back is knitted, but it needs a button, so I'm not showing it off.

Another thing I'm glad isn't a dress-- no, wait, this is going to be a dress:
It will be another big full skirted 50's dress with a square neck, so I can pretend I'm in "Roman Holiday." Except the print is of Venice. Venetian Holiday!

Fashion Quote!

We find our clothes, our clothes find us: they save us from being lost. At home in dress, we enjoy its touch, its crispness, smoothness, softness, texture, its feel on the skin it fits: these pleasures serving the larger pleasure of being at last, or hoping we are, our more glamorous and more potent self. In dressing we enter an inheritance, which may include a new self, which we feel to be a 'true' self, revealed or rather realized by the donning of these good clothes.

From Men in Black by John Harvey (U of Chicago Press, 1996)

I found this on the trusty Dress a Day blog and was struck by the first line. My hobby doesn't just keep me from talking to the houseplants and serve as a substitute for a social life; it's profound, too.

Unrelated Information Again!

Yesterday’s post got me thinking that maybe I have some traits that could be a little, um, addictive. That may explain why I finished a dress last week, have one cut out to sew this weekend, and found fabric for the next one last night. And why I’ve made 7 tops, 2 other dresses, and one failed pair of pants in the last four months. It’s a good thing I’ve never tried cocaine.

Here’s an article from the NY Times about liking your mom. Well, duh—it’s your mom!

I only work Monday and Tuesday next week, then have some vacation. I’ll be sewing (of course) and enjoying being outside. Just like this kitten.

Cure For A Book Hangover

I've been thinking about how much sewing I've been doing lately, and I tried to remember what I used to do with my time before. And I remembered that I used to read. Growing up, I would read to the exclusion of everything else, read instead of playing with my brother, read at night until I would hear my mother shout-whisper "Go to bed!" from across the hall. I remembered all that, and I couldn't remember the last new book I had read from start to finish.

So I picked up some Cormac McCarthy, thinking I should start with something good, and he's so good he's made me despair of having any goals. But The Crossing is as bleak and sad as it is well-written. I would read a paragraph and have to pause to absorb both how astonishing the prose was and how god-awfully depressing the events were. At that rate, I realized it would take me years to read it. And it was a library book.

So on Monday I returned The Crossing and picked out the exact opposite: a science fiction book about crystal miners in outer space, and (cringe) a Judith Krantz book. Something also made me get a Dashiell Hammett detective novel. By Wednesday morning, I had read both the outer space crystal book and the Judith Krantz. I had stayed up nearly all night both nights, not because I liked the books, oh no, but because I am incapable of not seeing what happens next. (That sentence explains a lot of my personal life over the years.) (And that is also why I will happily re-read books--I'm able to put them down.)

Anyway, due to lack of sleep and the literary equivalent of sugar-coated speed, I felt like I had a book hangover. I was dubious about reading anything more than the cooking time on the linguine box last night, but I peeked at the first page of the detective novel. (The Dain Curse), which begins, "It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick wall." I kept reading. I didn't hate myself for not being able to stop and sleep. I didn't hate Hammett for lacking things like characterization, or vocabulary, or a point, becaus he had all those things. (Along with about twelve bodies, three suspects, and a pretty young morphine addict.) It was delightful. I went to bed happy--and yes, I finished it.

More Fun Online

This was posted on the Dress a Day blog this week, and I agree with it completely. (Dress a Day is really great--not only do you get vintage patterns and lots of talk about sewing, she uses words like "aleatory".)

My take is that people who wear clothes on airplanes that are better suited to washing a series of strangers' cars at $5/pop have essentially given up all hope that they will ever be the recipient of happy chance. They've decided serendipity is not for them, so they've forsaken the notion that perhaps one day they may need to make a good first impression on a stranger. (They've also decided that they don't ever need to be upgraded to business class, never mind first.)

Last night I saw clothes that said "I model for Frederick's of Hollywood, Lamé Division" and clothes that said "my favorite Saturday morning cartoon and a bowl of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs are what I REALLY need right now. " None of those clothes said "Take me seriously, please."

I'm not against comfort -- but there's a line between 'comfortable' and 'raggedy-ass lazy' and the airport is not the place to cross that line. An airplane is a confined space, and, like any confined space, demands MORE civility and regard for others, not less.

Tuesday Project Roundup: 1950's Housewife Edition

The loudly striped orange fabric from last Tuesday's roundup turned into this dress. It didn't get any quieter, either. I used a reproduction pattern from 1952 and nearly five yards of fabric. The skirt is a full bias circle, meaning if I twirled in it, it would flare out into a perfect circle. (Not that I've tried it or anything.) It reminds me of Lucy on vacation with Ricky in Florida, or of what a housewife would wear for her Wednesday errands.

And here's a little cardigan I finished a couple of weeks ago. It's like something the housewife would change into when the errands were done and dinner was ready and "the Mister" was due to arrive home any minute. And while that scenario made my skin crawl a little, I like the cardigan.

Monday Unrelated Information

1. This was me this morning. Spots and everything.

2. Ray Bradbury writes a story a week. Why don’t I do that? I stay up late enough to write a story a night.

3. Tomorrow: A project roundup, including some knitting I never photographed and some dresses. (Yet it took me ten minutes to find something to wear this morning. Why?! I’ve been making things to wear for three months now.)

Happy Summer Solstice, Here's A Poem

So today is the longest day of the year, a day that I've always wanted to celebrate--because it means no snow for a few months--but that I always end up feeling sad about--because it's all downhill from the longest day of the year.

But I've been going to the Gallivan Center at lunch for a couple of weeks now, and while that doesn't make me more reconciled to the inevitable shortening of days again, the Mark Strand poem carved above the stream-fountain thing there does.

Visions of the end may secretly seduce
our thoughts like water sinking
into water, air drifting into air;
clouds may form, when least expected,
darkening the glass of self,
canceling resemblances to what we are.
Even here, while summer sunlight
falling through the golden
folds of afternoon
brightens up the air, we mark
our progress by how much
we leave behind. And yet,
this vanishing is burnished
by a slow, melodious light,
as if our passage here
were beautiful because
no turning back is possible.
It is our knowledge of the end
that speaks for us, that has us weave,
as slowly as we can, an elegy
to all our walks. It is our way
of bending to the world's will
and giving thanks.

"..as if our passage here were beautiful because no turning back is possible." Yes, that makes me feel better about the Solstice. (I bet it makes the construction crew cleaning out the stream-fountain thing and the homeless guy watching them feel better, too.)

And as a bonus: my tomatoes. They're pretty summery.

In Trouble

Last night at the airport, I saw people in the “park and wait” pick-up lot parked and waiting in their cars—with the windows up and the air conditioning on. I’m afraid humanity is going to stupid itself to death.Yep.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Big Top Edition

The cotton lawn got sewn up into a Smock-Like Blouse (SLB) and finished Sunday, and I'm really pleased with it. Not only is the fabric nice and light, the print somehow reminds me of a circus. Send in the clowns! In their SLBs! Wait, they're already here!

This project went together well--I got the zipper right on the first try, didn't have to unpick anything, and even the gathers look nice.Gathers! Thrilling!

Here's another SLB. It's been finished for over a week, but I never got around to a picture until Friday, when I wore it going out. (Not shown: matching red shoes. I tell you, the movie theaters on 3300 South had never seen such shoes.)

Here's a pocket detail--remember, that's hand embroidery. I might need a hobby away from my hobby.
Finally, this is the next project (because if I don't have a project I go straight to the crack cocaine) which is going to be a full-skirted 50's sun dress. I considered gingham, then decided I would look as if I were wearing a tablecloth. So I went with "circus tent" instead: Trust me, it's even more orange and striped in person. It's either going to work very, very, well, or not at all.

Standing Alone

I had never heard all the lyrics to "Blue Moon," because people stop singing it after "..you saw me standing alone." Two different people did that Sunday, and then I heard the entire song on KRCL last night. (Sunday nights from 10:30 until 1:00 they play Big Band music.) And it's such a charming song! It's my new theme song!

Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

Blue moon
You know just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for

And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will hold
I heard somebody whisper "please adore me"
And when I looked to the moon it turned to gold

Blue moon
Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

Awwww....

Things To Do This Weekend

1. Go to the Deseret Peak Demolition Derby in Tooele tomorrow. (Fireworks! Cash! Prizes!) Starts at 5:00, tickets are $5.00. They have beer there, too, but if you’re drinking it you can’t sit in the family section. I highly recommend this one.

2. Hell, if you can go to the first demolition derby of the season, why would you want do anything else?

3. Watch out for Godzilla:

Not Long Now!

Really, aren't we all waiting for coconuts? I know I am.

I Have Nothing

I have no witty observations, no literary quotes, no poems, no pictures of finished sewing or knitting projects. But….

Meeting People

I met my upstairs neighbors last night. I’d been calling them Mr. and Mrs. Stompy, due to their penchant for stomping around. But their names are actually Kara and Clark. Kara and Clark Stompy. (Actually, they seem very nice--they admired my patio garden. And they don’t mind the cuckoo clock, which is loud enough to scare quail outside.)

Okay, Maybe It Is Just Like "Little House On The Prairie"

While I take offense at people thinking my hobbies are pioneer-like, I was cutting out the latest blouse Friday night and had a flash. And the flash had to do with Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I was working with very, very nice cotton lawn. Cotton lawn is lightweight, tightly woven, and very crisp. It's so lightweight it felt like I wasn't cutting through anything while I was cutting out pattern pieces. I was being careful to line up the pattern pieces, and enjoying the fabric, and admiring the print (pink and purple at the same time!) when I thought, "Wait a minute...something's familiar here--oh my God, I'm in a passage from a Little House on the Prairie book."

For Laura's summer dress they bought ten yards of delicate pink lawn...The lawn was so crisp and fresh, the colors so dainty, that Laura was afraid to cut it lest she made a mistake, but Ma had made so many dresses she did not hesitate. She took Laura's measurements; then, with her dressmaker chart, she made the pattern for the waist, and fearlessly cut the lawn.

So maybe I should just EMBRACE my inner Laura after all. At least the finished blouse will look more like a little girl's smock from 1968 than a shirtwaist from 1890. (I think that's a good thing.)

And did you catch the part in the quote about Ma MAKING the pattern? Not only were there no sewing machines in 1890, you had to know pattern drafting, too.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Check out this Time photo essay (via Boing Boing): Families from around the world posed with the food they eat in one week. Sobering: The family in the refugee camp in the first photo.

2. Okay, that’s enough sober thought about world hunger. On to crafts! It may be a two-project weekend. I’m close to finishing the embroidered-pocket top and have a second blouse ready to go. We’ll see.

3. And more news off BoingBoing: I found this interview with Ray Bradbury from the Los Angeles Times this week, in which he says Fahrenheit 451 was never about censorship, but about TV taking over people's lives. And of all people, he would know what his book is about.

I Have No Goals. But I Have Books.

My newest find on the internet is personal finance sites. The advice they give is alternately inspirational (if I can save $20 a month now, I won't have to eat cat food when I retire!) and terrifying (oh my God, I have no emergency fund!). But the real blow was not this quote: "If you think it's hard to make ends meet now, try doing it when you're old and sick." No, sobering as that was, the real blow was being told in an article to make a life map.

The idea behind a life map is to start with long-term goals, then find shorter- and still shorter-term steps to reach them, so you have a meaning and purpose to your savings plan. The article suggests starting with your name and then attaching your biggest goals to it, working outwards in a sort of spiderweb, with the shortest-term goals on the outside leading into the main goals on the inside.

"Cool," I thought. "A life map. I'll do that." But then I discovered I have nothing to put on my map.

Seriously. Three things floated through my head. Three. They were, in order:
1. Own an alpaca ranch in a place that's kind of like Hawaii and kind of like Castle Valley.
2. Go to the Cook Islands.
3. Win the National Book Award before I'm sixty. (I only write if there's a deadline. Therefore, sixty.)

Now, you may argue that these are indeed goals. If I can save and invest, yes, I could get a ranch. And even go to the Cook Islands. (More about writing coming up.) But what about things like changing the world, spiritual growth, home ownership, even having a family? The life map example used "being a good parent" as one of the primary goals. I suppose it's a mercy that didn't cross my mind, because I suspect having a relationship last for more than three months should come before wanting to be a good parent, and I haven't even managed that yet.

As for being a writer, it's the one thing in my life I've always felt I could do. But then I go and read All The Pretty Horses (which won the National Book Award) again after realizing I have lame goals for my life map and think, "Just abandon all of them now, including the Book Award one. Because you will never, ever, be as good as this guy." Case in point:

"They rode out along the fencline and across the open pastureland. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumpsect, like theives newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."

Reading that passage, I can't imagine coming up with anything remotely as good, ever. But, reading that passage, I don't care about goals, or my own talent, or anything else. I just want to keep reading.

So if I end up homeless from not having parenting goals that would motivate me to make a savings plan, I'll hang out at the library.

Honeysuckle

I brought some home from my parents’ last night. Then I put it in a blue vase on my red nightstand. And then I took a picture of it. And put it on the internet. Of course.

Best Packaging Ever

A friend gave me a bag of Lion Coffee ("The King Of Coffees") on Sunday, which she had brought from Hawaii. I had no idea Hawaii had a fairly famous coffee brand, let alone a fairly famous coffee brand with awesome packaging!

Not only is there a lion wearing a sailor hat, the lion has EYEBROWS. And there are coffee beans in grass skirts DANCING THE HULA above him. Even better, the text, which you probably can't make out, says both "The cup that cheers" and "A Century of Wisdom In Every Roast!".

My own bag is of Kona Organic, which I had with pineapple rice pudding this morning, while admiring the delight that is the Lion Coffee packaging.

(Incidentally, I've been on a vaguely tropical food kick--the rice pudding, coconut cheesecake, pineapple salsa, sangria, etc. I think part of me is hoping that eating the food of sunny climates will help me get tan.)

Have You Any Wool?

Saturday was shearing day at Blue Moon Ranch!

It started with getting alpacas into the barn.

“Oh, shit, what’s going on?”

Then they were wrangled into the shearing station, where they couldn’t kick or squirm and get accidentally cut.

Alpacas spit when they’re mad or scared. Shearing makes them mad AND scared, so there was a lot of spitting. So much spitting, in fact, some of them got a sock as a temporary spit shield.

My job wasn’t so spitty: I got to label and bag the fleece after it was off the animal.

In spite of the spit and the scared alpaca noises, after it was done, they seemed fine. Just much smaller.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I finished what I was calling the Lincoln Green Robin Hood Tunic-y Thing this week. Its new name is the Green Tunic-y Thing That Disturbingly Reminds Me of The Jolly Green Giant. (There may or may not be pictures next week.)

2. Tomorrow is shearing day at Blue Moon Ranch! I'll be wrangling alpacas! And I'll get to see Ziggy Marley, the first cria (baby) of the season. (Click to see Ziggy Marley, but be prepared to shout, "Gaaaah!" due to his extreme cuteness.)