A WordPress Site

Author: 459856pwpadmin

  • Other entertainments

    I seem to run in fits and starts.  At times making time to play and write seems easy, at others I fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day and wonder where all my time went.  Sometimes I distract myself as well and end up on completely new tangents.

    IMG_3723  I started the weekend looking for a piece of blue knit.  I knew I had it but I couldn't find it and this really ticked me off.  Somehow in the middle of the searching process I decided that it was time to finish cataloging the yarn in the yarn/fabric closet, a job I had worked on extensively last December, stopped for holiday guests, and never resumed.  

    The impulse to organize yarn may have also been prompted by the fact that I came home from knitting group with four bags of yarn Thursday night.  My LYS is going out of business and I did my part to reduce the inventory.  I did finish the yarn inventory though, and got everything put away (whew, room for everything!) And I also mentally revised my "to knit" list to fill a few gaps and knit what I think I need now.

    The blue fabric eventually turned up, pretty much right where I was originally looking.  I put it on the cutting table where it has been sitting ever since.   It is an inexpensive knit I purchased just for its stretch factor and because I liked the color.  At $3.00 a yard it was a good fabric to play with, to experiment with knits and hopefully learn a little something.  The plan was to test a summer dress and a top or two, items I actually intend to make in other fabrics, but which I am just unsure enough about that I would prefer to make a first version.  If v1 works, at least it is in a color I love, and if it doesn't, no beloved fabric has been wasted.  Somehow though, my motivation got washed downstream with all the rain and the change in the weather.

    My work in the fabric closet was more than just an organizational exercise however.  As I photographed new yarns, folded fabric and reorganized I found myself being revitalized with new ideas swirling around in my head.  Although not finding something was frustrating, and at that moment the idea of a stash felt stifling, having it organized and accessible, being able to take out the pieces and let the ideas flow is liberating and inspiring.  

    Before my fabric closet foray I was stuck in a rut of a few summer outfits.  I was thinking about what I would make next, but only in a limited way, as a single piece to add into the mix.  Playing with fabric and yarn, and taking inventory, opened my eyes to connections and possibilities I had forgotten.    

    The blue fabric and those dresses offer possibilities beyond the immediate. Besides it is still August, and although it feels like fall  now, there are still summer days ahead. So this fabric remains on the table, and I hope to get started on it this week, but that may be  iffy.  We are going up to Lake George on Thursday to see my brother who is up from Texas and on Saturday I am having a passel of the neighbors over for dinner, all a great deal of excitement and interruption to our normally quiet routines.  We'll see how it all goes.

    IMG_3720  I'll leave you with a plate of cookies.  I whipped these up last night from this recipe by Aran Goyoaga, who writes the blog Canelle et Vanille, and they are half gone already.

    In fact I seemed to do a lot of baking over the weekend.  G had a chocolate craving so I baked brownies, then I baked brownies again. My baking pantry has seen little use of late and at this point I was out of chocolate and cocoa so I needed to make something else.  This cookie recipe had been at the top of my file, waiting for the perfect opportunity.  They are fabulous.  In fact this is my second batch.  Did I mention G has been suffering from a major sweet tooth?  Better him than me.  Anyway the first batch, which I made with shortening, looked more like the original photos in the blog, but mine are darker because I used unprocessed cane sugar rather than regular white sugar.  That first batch was devoured in a day. For this second batch, I was out of shortening, so I used butter.  Butter causes the cookies to spread more, but they are still soft and delicious.  I do love to bake, especially if someone else will eat the goods and save me from myself.

    Not only had I forgotten how much potential I had in my fabric closet, I had forgotten how much baking calms my soul and eases stress.  Back in my college days I would bake cakes and cookies and brownies for the dorm before finals.  And I continued to bake for years, until the combination of relearning to bake with gluten-free flours, and just the other stresses of life seemed overwhelming.  This may have been a mistake, luckily one that is easily rectified.

  • Creepy Crawly

    Picture 7  Am I the only woman in America who feels that the Bazaar cover spread with Jennifer Aniston as Barbra Streisand goes beyond bizarre? I'd much rather have had the newsstand cover.  I had to cut this one off before I could bear to look inside.

  • Wrapped and Tied

    IMG_3635  The Skirt is done.

    Blue eyelet cotton skirt, originally made from Simplicity 4186, original version here.  As I took this apart I realized that although I have made this skirt several times, I only actually like the version made from a beefier cotton, which emphasizes the volume of the skirt more. 

    The skirt is still pleated and still full, but the shape is different, more of a tulip shape and I am very happy with this version of the skirt.   I worried somewhat about the fullness at the hip, but in the end I like it, and the fact that the contrast tie waist emphasizes the waist, making my middle aged waist appear a bit smaller than it actually is.  Or perhaps the skirt just makes my hips look bigger; if so, I can live with that too, because I feel fabulously pretty in this skirt, and in the end, I think it is how our clothes make us feel that plays the biggest role in how we actually look in them.


    Picture 5      The details:


    Pattern:  Burda Style Magazine, April 2010, style #111, tulip skirt with box pleats and a large tie waistband-sash.

    Materials:  Blue cotton eyelet recycled from a previous skirt and olive cotton batiste purchased many years ago from www.fabric.com.


    Picture 6      Details:     

    This pattern is a "tall" pattern from Burda.  I use the word tall with parenthesis because supposedly this pattern is designed for someone who is 5'9".  I am 5'9" and I added 4 inches to the length of this skirt.  As it was, I shortened the original skirt by 4 inches from the waist to cut the new skirt, and I could not have made the new skirt longer because the top of the old skirt was in rather fragile condition after several alterations.

    Because the pattern is cut with a curve at the hem, to accommodate the shaping provided by the pleats, and I wanted the hem to be my eyelet border, I straightened the hem and transfered the shaping to the waistline.

    I also underlined the eyelet with the olive batiste before proceeding with the skirt.  Since the pleats were made through the two layers of fabric, my skirt probably has more body than was intended in the pattern, but I rather like the volume of the finished skirt.

    I used the waistband from my original skirt rather than the contoured waistband provided by the pattern.  The pattern waistband might have been better, but I had fabric issues.

    I also made the tie sash wider than called for.  The original pattern called for a piece of fabric , 8" by 84" (I decided to make a long sash as I am no longer slender-waisted), which was to be folded in half, seamed, and attached to the back waist of the skirt.   Two layers of 8" wide batiste was too much to make a bow as shown in the photos unless I made the sash much longer.  But I like the modified bow effect shown in the picture much better as I'm not convinced that big floofy bows are appropriate on middle aged women.  The sash is also long enough to wrap around my waist twice, creating a cummerbund effect, when I want to be a little more serious.

  • Coming Home

    I am sitting here this morning in a cotton skirt with deep pleats around the hip, a button-down shirt and ballet flats. It is a very classic outfit, in many ways more traditionally classic than I have worn in a long time.  I feel completely at home and "in character" although in some ways this character I am in today may seem to be at odds with the person I may have appeared to be on other days.  We humans are complicated that way.

    But back to the outfit.  My skirt is a cotton print on a background of  a deep plum wine color.  In fact if you had a pantone color card you would see that the color of my skirt is Pantone 18-1411 which is, indeed, called plum wine.  There are other colors in the skirt as well, green, yellow, more muted plums and although the skirt has many colors the overall effect is muted.  This may be why I have not worn it much this summer although I used to consider this a summer skirt.  This summer it has felt more like a fall skirt.  Whether this is due to the colors of the skirt and something that has changed in my perception of these colors, or the fact that all my sleeveless summery tops that used to go with this skirt no longer fit, or just the fact that it has been such an unusually hot and humid summer than the entire idea of muted deep colors seems oppressive, is beyond me right now.  I only know that today the skirt is perfect even though summer is far from over.

    With this skirt I am wearing a deep plum somewhat fitted shirt with 3/4 sleeves.  The sleeves are my concession to summer and the shirt is only somewhat fitted because I have lost weight.  I have a warm yellow-amber belt and a pair of bronze ballet flats. When I write the colors and look at what I am wearing I can see that my head is heading toward fall even though it is still August and we are still in the midst of summer.  But the nights are growing cooler again, and early mornings in the garden are crisp. Today is cloudy and somewhat cooler and perhaps that too has affected my choices

    But the truth is  I am thinking about fall and renewal. Perhaps I am thinking about renewal because I am thinking about how happy I am about the progress on the front yard, which is now on hold for a month while the mason is away.  Or perhaps I am thinking about fall because I bought a pair of boots which it is still far to warm to wear.  Or perhaps autumnal thoughts are only background music and I was actually thinking about this skirt because I have been working on transforming another skirt, one made from the same pattern as this skirt, into something new.  The new skirt in progress is on my other blog, here.  At the moment that seems to be my public frivolous face blog, and this seems to be my self-absorbed inner face.  I am willing to link from here to there, but not at the moment the other way around.  At times this has been different; it may be again.  My blogs and I seem to be in the middle of a dance but we haven't yet figured out the tune.  

    Or maybe I am thinking autumnal thoughts because I am thinking about aging and how our lives change, and I am thinking about how we can embrace the changes of life gracefully or we can struggle through them in denial.  But that is really much too weighty a discussion for this frivolous post today.  Maybe it is enough for today just to wear a full cotton skirt and ballet flats, an outfit that embraces the past and the future, that makes concessions to summer but admits that fall is on the way, realizing full well that whatever I wear today has no bearing on how the day will unfold.   Maybe it is enough not to think about what we wear or what we do or how we do it, but just embrace each day and say "This is what I want today" and hope for the best.

    Or perhaps I am just ready to metaphorically come home to one of my favorite colors, to a classic shape, to what is tried and true and familiar.

  • Boots

    If you had told me a month ago that I would be buying green boots for fall I would have laughed in your face.  I wasn't looking for green boots.  I've owned green shoes, but I don't think I've ever owned green boots, and frankly I never really missed them.

    And yet, I ordered a pair of green boots, all the while telling myself that I really wanted black boots, that I really wanted seriously dressy boots with killer heels, and that they had to be black, and yet…….

    1203383-p-DETAILED They are perfect.  They are just what I wanted, although I hadn't realized it yet.  

    I love the fact that they look like hiking boots, except for that heel.  And the heel is definitely a killer heel, but it is not too narrow, and the platform helps with comfort a bit.  It looks higher than it feels on.  These are shoes I can wear for those "I need a stylish pair of heels" days.  And although they are not comfortable walking boots, I have lots of comfortable, practical, walking boots.  Sometimes the soul just needs a little something extra, a little attitude, a little style, a killer heel.  Yes, it is true; I am rationalizing a bit here, but it doesn't really change anything. 

    Although they can be laced to the top, I love them like this, with the tops folded down.  In this form I can even imagine wearing them with a skirt and tights.  I can imagine them with a pencil skirt and a fitted cabled sweater.  In fact they remind me of a cabled sweater I had for 20 years in a deep dark olive, much like this olive.  Unfortunately I felted that sweater last year trying to remove some impossibly recalcitrant stain.   I consoled myself by turning the felted sweater into Christmas gifts, telling myself that the sweater was worse for wear anyway.  But now, looking at these boots I wish I still had it.  

    The boots may be telling me that I need to knit a fitted cabled sweater in deep dark olive green.  It wasn't in the plans, but sometimes you see something new and suddenly realize it is just what your wardrobe has been missing.  Fabulous new pieces with attitude are like that; you add them to your closet and they make themselves right at home, making friends with all your existing garments.  But it is not long before they start causing trouble, inviting all their friends to come in to play.  And there you are again — shopping, sewing or knitting and finding you need things you never imagined needing.  It is quite possible these boots are going to be troublemakers.  If so, I'm up for the challenge.

  • A Little Change in Plans

    Funny how plans change if you allow yourself time to dream and play.

    IMG_3622  I had intended to dismantle the blue skirt, and remake it in the exact same style, just shorter and smaller in total girth, but somehow, the more I looked at it, the more evident it became that I didn't want to make the same skirt over again.  

    So I found a pattern, traced it off, dithered over alterations and decided to just go for it.    

    A shorter skirt, with eyelet over the entire length of the leg, required a different lining than the original skin-tone silk/cotton.  The demands of the new design dictated underlining rather than a separate lining.   As I fretted over lining choices, an olive batiste practically threw itself off the shelf at me.  Olive and Navy is one of my favorite combinations.   It seems this skirt remodel is taking on a life of its own.

  • A Day in the Sewing Room

    IMG_3615  I had a really good day, or partial day actually, in the sewing room yesterday and I am amazed at how much it helped my state of mind.  

    First of all, I finished a sweater that I started in April and abandoned.  At the time I was looking for some mindless knitting and since I was working without a pattern, and didn't know if I would have enough yarn for sleeves, I put the whole aside rather than do the math. 

    The yarn is a cotton/acrylic/rayon boucle from On-line, now discontinued.  The stripes on the sleeves are in Dolcino, a nylon ribbon by Trendsetter.  I added the stripes to the sleeves when I realized that there was not going to be enough of the original yarn to have much more than cap sleeves.  I really like the way the sweater turned out and it is a good basic sweater that will see a lot of wear.

    (if you also read my knitting blog, purlsandmurmurs, sorry for the double posting)

    I also got the blue eyelet skirt completely disassembled and had an accompanying "aha" moment.  You see the skirt, as it is now, is too long by a couple of inches.  It ends at mid calf which is not a flattering length.  But I didn't remember it always being that unflattering.   So when I looked back at the original post, in September 2007, I saw that the skirt was slightly below my knee, but not as long as it is now.  It didn't grow so what happened? And no, the skirt is not sitting below my waist now, nor was it sitting above my waist then.

    Hips.  The problem is in the hips, and perhaps in the backside as well.  When I first started loosing weight I lost it mostly through the middle, through the tummy and waist, and that pesky full hip measurement did not budge one iota.  Now I'm not complaining about losing the middle,  but I got in the habit of altering my skirts by taking in the waist and upper hips, but leaving the fullness at the hip.  Well as fabric goes out to accommodate bulk, it draws the length up.  Apparently somewhere along the line, my hips started getting smaller too, and I didn't really notice this.   The extra fabric that used to go out over the hips now hangs straight down, making the skirt longer.  Hence the need for complete disassembly.   The final skirt is going to look much like the original, but I need to recut it, removing three inches of length from the waistline.  I'm sure there will be some other reworking to be done as well. 

    I also spent some time cataloging and sorting patterns, both knitting and sewing, and finally working through the stacks of patterns and magazines, and piles of clothing and sweaters that I want to refashion.  Now that  I feel I am taking control again, I feel the pressure lifting and a bit of that ability to just play coming back.

  • Stash Building

    IMG_3604  I ordered some fabric.  

    And somehow it struck me that I stopped buying fabric somewhere along the way.  Perhaps it was the beginning of the fabric closet reorganization, in which I suddenly didn't need or want any more.  Or perhaps it was something else.   I am inclined to think I saw all these wonderful things I have, each filled with potential that I want to explore and I realized I had enough.

    That is until I received some swatches from Michael last week.  They weren't the first swatches from Michael, or from anyone else, but somehow this was the first fabric that tempted me since last April.  

    IMG_3605  I don't have specific plans for these so they are just potential.  I do have ideas, but they are not at the top of my list.  I have no regrets even though I will admit that when I was sorting through the fabric closet I thought I had far too many bouclés and tweeds and fabrics with color and texture and not enough basic things. 

    IMG_3607  And yet here I am buying more of the same.  Temptation calls.  I was perhaps feeling a little weak and overwhelmed and engaged in a little retail therapy.  I have no regrets.

    There will also be a few other pieces coming, pieces for which I have specific plans, plans I hope to execute soon.  Oddly enough, despite having a closet full of fabric there seems to always be some lack.  I shall share with you upon arrival and hopefully creation.  It would be nice if execution immediately follows arrival, but then that may be asking a bit much.

  • Searching

      "We cannot love ourselves unless we felt affirmed by the parent." James Hollis The Middle Passage, p 68.


    No, I am not starting a diatribe against parents here.    My parents raised three successful children who shared and carried out their mores and became responsible respectable members of the culture in which they live.  All parents are only people who tackle a job that has been defined for them by a culture in which they are only bit players; most of them hope they are doing the right thing.  As I said, this is post is not about parents. 


    But, if you have been reading any of my blogs for a while, it is no secret that I have been struggling with a lot of issues revolving around who I am and my place in the world.  Whether fretting about what to wear, a representation of my place in the world, or what I really want as opposed to what I feel I should want, it has been a rocky couple of years.   And truthfully, during much of this struggle, I have felt pretty stupid.  I felt stupid because I didn't understand how I could do and become everything I was brought up to do and become, well almost everything, and still not know who I was or what I wanted.  I felt stupid because I felt the yearnings of my 6 year old self, the idealism and anger of my 20 year old self, the magic and spiritualism of my pre-teen self, and I wondered if my adult self had anything to do with me, the actual me, or if it was all just an illusion of the self I thought I was supposed to be.


    I don't particularly feel stupid anymore, and truthfully, finding Hollis's book has contributed greatly to that acceptance.  I found the book on a lark.  I knew nothing about the author.  I really didn't know anything about the book.  But the title appealed to me.  I expected some frivolous self-help book.  I was surprised.  I have read the book twice now in the last month and feel I need to read it again.  I can't really review the book at this point because every time I read something I start making connections and thinking about things in different ways.  I am still in the middle of this whole process of discovery.


    But back to that quote.  It is not necessarily representative of the book.  The book is not about blaming one's parents for all life's ills, quite the opposite, it is more about seeing one's way through the choices one has made, and the choices that have been made for one, accepting responsibility, and moving on. And yet the ease or difficulty with which one embarks on that path begins early, before one even has a choice. 


    The quote above struck me the other day when I read it because as I read that line that day I gave myself permission to forgive myself for loosing myself and for working on finding my way back.  I felt like saying: "Well of course it took you this long".  And with that statement came acceptance.  


    This line struck me because something else has been on my mind as well in this period of turmoil.  In mid-July, soon after I began reading Hollis I made posted a comment on this post  at La Belette Rouge about a dream I had throughout my childhood and at different stages of my adulthood.  I called the dream my gluttony dream, and although I won't go into it here you can find it at the link above.  My comment garnered the following answer from Belette:


        "What is supposed to be nurturing has holes in it and instead of being a source of nurturing for you has started to eat you up.  Is that how it feels? Did you have that kind of feeling as a child?" 


    In reading that comment I suddenly looked at the gluttony dream differently.  Oh it was still about gluttony, but it had a broader context, which well may be true of all dreams.  And I realized that this feeling  that nurturing had holes and was eating me up characterized much of my childhood from an early age.  And of course this feeling has occasionally consumed me lately as well.  It is no one's fault in particular that the child I was felt she was being consumed in the process of trying to be the child she felt the world expected her to be.  It was no one's fault that the adolescent I was felt that there was the true me and the me I presented to the world.  All adolescents feel this way to some extent or another, and probably all children feel consumed during some stage of the passage from childhood to adulthood.  Why it plagued me so much I may never know. 


    I don't know that the six year old girl who first had that dream knew anything about being consumed by nurturing.  But that night is permanently imprinted on my memory and I know that that little girl knew that she had to chose between who she was and what was necessary to be a part of that laughing family on the other side of the wall. I only know that that little girl who sat in the dark and cried that night needs to come out now.  That girl cannot escape the woman she has come to be, that woman cannot escape the world in which she came to live, but she must also embrace the girl she was.  It is nice to come home again I think, although sometimes the passage is rough.

  • Disappointment and a Plan

    I had a bit of a panic weekend before last and attacked my sewing room in a frenzy, pulling projects out of knitting bags, and tossing the various stacks of things to be refashioned, ripped or just finished in a mad flurry of cloth and yarn.  I hadn't done that in quite a while and it is amazing what havoc a few moments of frenzy can wreak on a space that took considerable time to sort and organize.

    IMG_3595  I never found what I was looking for, but I did eventually realize that it never existed.  I did however find a skirt I had put aside to take in and subsequently forgotten.  It was one of the very few summer items in a stack that is mostly appropriate for fall and winter and has therefore been mostly off the mental radar.

    I tried it on and took it apart weekend before last, before life got a little hectic, and only managed to take it in and put it back together this weekend past.  I wore it yesterday and it was a bit of a disappointment.  I can't say that there is anything wrong with the skirt but that it just wasn't "right" for me, and although the issues were minor, they added a grating edge to a day that had its own share of frustrations.

    1.  It was still too large, although not that much, 2 to 3 inches in the waist.  I could wear it but it kept spinning around.  For this, at least I don't blame myself.  I did loose a couple of pounds and have been working out, but the effect of this has been somewhat hidden as I had a couple of gluten encounters over the past couple of weeks and those, combined with a couple of courses of prednisone which they required have led to much fluctuation in size, the kind of which I had not seen for a long long time.

    2.  I had forgotten that I didn't really like the skirt.  Oh it is pretty, and I loved it once.  But the tops and shoes I once wore with it are gone now, the tops too large and the shoes too small, and I had trouble finding just the right thing.  I wore it with a striped tee and espadrilles and it was fine but not quite great, and I was discouraged by not finding anything in my closet that seemed to work correctly with the feel and the proportions of the skirt.

    I was disheartened at having spent my precious sewing time altering something which only needed altering again immediately.  I was also annoyed at myself for not thinking about the actual garment and how I would wear it.  For once I just grabbed something and did it without over-thinking the whole thing and it ended up that I should have thought about it a great deal more than I did.

    I spent the evening watching a movie that made me cry (For Love of the Game) and knitting the sleeves to the project that prompted that tossing frenzy mentioned earlier.   Somehow, when the evening was over the solution came to me, and I will still have this skirt and a way that I can wear it.  After a quick check in the closet, I am sure that the new skirt will work, at least with shoes I currently own, and possibly with a couple of tops, but I really need to make some new tops and blouses anyway.

    Although I started the day disappointed that I was just going to rip the skirt apart again immediately, or just toss it aside and call it a casualty of war, it ended on a positive note, and now I am actually looking forward to ripping and refashioning.  

    More to come.