Author: 459856pwpadmin

I am a little slow getting caught up with things, apparently including managing more frequent posts.

 I finally got around to reading the new Threads Magazine, which arrived between Christmas and New Years.

It is an interesting issue with several fine articles, but what really interests me at the moment is the fabulous article by Kenneth King, showing the fitting technique he used with me when we were fitting my shirt and my pants.  The illustrations are far more clear than anything I could do to even partially explain.  This technique was really fabulous and changed my way of looking at pattern fitting.

If you haven't read this yet, and I realize I am a little slow here, please do.

I am making progress on my goals.

We are cleaning, this is something G and I can do together and it helps him feel a little more useful, although I would not have anticipated this a year ago.

I am not exercising an hour a day yet, or even every day, but I am working on this.  I still have trouble exercising without breaking into a major coughing attack, and days I exercise, I have a much harder time settling down to sleep without major coughing attacks at night.   I have however, lost all the holiday weight, so I am more relaxed about the workout schedule.

I am knitting, and getting some reading in.  Sewing not yet.  Reading and sewing are the hardest things as these are the things I tend to get completely lost in, where I lose track of time, hunger, and the presence of anything else going on the world.  A little hand sewing can be interrupted, reading the newspaper or a magazine likewise.  But as for losing myself in a book or a sewing project, these are things about which we are still negotiating boundaries.

I do think I will be sewing this week.  I have had a bad electrical switch in my sewing room, where I have trouble getting the lights to come on (it is not the lights but in the switch) or to stay on once I get them on.  I will cut off the power and rewire the switch today, or at least that is my intention.

I also have a kitty in kitty ICU today in critical condition on oxygen and IVs.  We don't yet know, if we will ever know, if it is the primary cause is a heart condition or a major infection; at this point we are merely hoping she will pull through.  I am very distracted and scattered, and I may cancel plans that require attention and thought (like wiring) and curl up with a blanket and my knitting.

I know I've asked this question before, but when you sew, or even when you buy fabric, do think about single garments or outfits?  

I've always been an outfit person.  When I see a fabric I love I think about what it will go with either in my stash or my closet.  When I buy multiple fabrics I often think of the outfits they will become.  Historically the same has been true when I sew, well except perhaps for the last year or two, not because I wasn't thinking about the outfits, but because I would get started and then never get to the coordinating pieces.  

I seem to think of my closet as outfits too, although I have a pretty sports-wear based wardrobe, and I love the idea of just having x pants or skirts and a bunch of tops to go with them, I still tend to dress in outfits, not really in a mix-and-match kind of way. So although my style may be sportswear oriented,  I tend to think of the contents of my closet in terms of complete looks more than as a collection of players, and I love bringing in a new piece (either purchased or made) and exploring all the possibilities to find new favorite looks.  

 Here's what I wore yesterday running errands.  This was the first day actually that I didn't come in from the cold and collapse into a limp pile barely able to function beyond the heaving coughing spell.  I took the photo a while back and posted it over at SG so it is not so recent; the picture of the sweater below is how it fits on me now. 

In fact, one of the things I have been doing while I have been laying about is playing a version of paper dolls with the contents of my closet by organizing pictures and uploading them to the TouchCloset app on my new iPhone.

I wrote about this long ago when I first got the app, but I hadn't managed to photograph the clothes that I am wearing now or the outfits that work.  I really wanted to have a good assessment of my closet before I started making new clothes.    Here is the same outfit as put together in TouchCloset:

Playing with the pictures and putting together outfits has really helped me to get some kind of handle on what works now, what I can wear now, and what I need to make to get the most out of the things I have or need/want.   So I've been lining up the players and making these "critical" decisions, such as "I like top A with Jeans B, but not with Jeans C".  

Silly organization freak that I am, with nerdish tendencies as well, this kind of thing makes me very happy. 

Even a simple thing like a dress becomes a potential outfit as it must have shoes, and jewelry or a scarf or a jacket or something.  And I tend to gravitate to favorite combinations.  

 I've even been known to make a dress to go with a pair of shoes or boots, to design an outfit around a belt or piece of jewelry.  Silly yes, but I feel more together.  Here is my Touch-Closet outfit from today; just a sweatshirt and jeans as I was taking down the tree and putting away Christmas decorations.

I was out at a friend's for tea in the afternoon and we were talking about finding clothes that are long enough (she is much taller than I).  That reminded me that I love these jeans because they fit so well, and G always says very nice things when I wear them, but they are just low enough at the waist that most of my tops, at least the RTW ones, are a tad to short.  So I made a note that I need tops to wear with the jeans. That will be something you will see showing up before too long.

I've done some reading:  

 Early this morning, I finished the last few pages of Kaylie Jones memoir, Lies my Mother Never told Me  which left me stunned.   

In fact, it took me a little while to warm up to the book
and at one point I was wondering why I was reading as the early sections seemed
to be in danger of becoming just another example of a “child of celebrity” writing about the
dark underbelly of life with famous drunks.  It was not that it was badly written; Jones’ direct style
and sometimes shockingly spare prose serves the material well.  The book is often moving and is filled
with moments of humor even in the midst of madness and despair. 

But as the author slowly began to find her own self, her own
voice, her own place in the world I became more and more wrapped up in the
book.  As Kaylie begins to learn
and accept that she is first the child of an alcoholic, and as she moves from
this discovery onto the discovery that she herself is an alcoholic, she also
learns that so much of what she has always known in life is shaped by this
terrible childhood, or even in some ways this lack of having a complete
childhood.  Ms. Jones is very good
and delving into this aspect of her own awakening, explaining it and conveying
it with a very real sense.  Her
relationship to her alcoholic mother may be textbook, but even textbook cases
are painful and often not recognized by those who are living them.  Kaylie Jones brings great humanity to
her journey.  The journey is brutal
and the story seems to be told with unflinching honesty. 

I think that although there is much here for any one who has
grown up with an alcoholic parent, whatever the situation, this well-written,
compellingly honest memoir also has much to offer any reader who is interested
in trying to understand the difficulties faced by children of alcoholics, or in
fact anyone whose childhood had profound impact on their ability to become
their own “selves” in adulthood. 

 Then later this evening, I read John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which had been on and off my list for quite a while.  I actually have mixed feelings about this as a book for young readers as I tend to see this as an adult's book masquerading as a young-adult book.  This does not mean I think it is inappropriate, but I would think it would depend on the child and how it was presented, as well as how well it was supported. I certainly would have read it, and gotten a lot out of it, although also perhaps have found it quite upsetting.  (well that might apply now as well).  I definitely think this is a book for teens or adults, although I tend to think some adults would be put off my its apparent over-simplification of the characters and story, thereby missing an important point. 

The naivete of the protagonist, Bruno, does not bother me particularly, although I can see how some would find it off-putting, and I certainly cannot imagine such naivete in the nine-year-olds of my acquaintance.  And yet, I was far more naive at nine, than these children of today, and I do believe that is possible for priveleged and sheltered child of the time to be completely  unaware of the darker things happening in the world around him.  The extreme naivete of the protagonist is a very good tool here, silhouetting much in Bruno's life about which adults prefer to turn a blind eye.  

I can also understand how a child wold misunderstand and therefore mis-hear a word without understanding its background, coming up with "out-with" for Auschwitz.  Again I certainly remember words I mistook or misheard as a child, some of which I would be embarrassed to admit to now, no so much because I misheard, but because what I thought I did hear now seems stupid and naive to me.  

The author's use of the voice of an overly naive child to tell the story adds poignancy and by contrast adds a starkness to the setting of the camp and the prisoners. Episodes that are inexplicable to the narrator are all the more shocking  just because of this confusion and lack of understanding.  Without the extreme naivete of Bruno, and perhaps even of Schmuel, the friendship between the two boys could not have existed, and the tragedy of the ending would be far less profound.

For all that Bruno was incredibly naive, his story points to the much wider questions surrounding the Holocaust, and how millions of adults could, and still do, turn a blind eye to what is going on right next door.

Now perhaps I should move on to some reading in an entirely different vein, something less likely to keep me awake pondering the vicissitudes of human nature.

 One of my favorite Christmas presents was really just a stocking stuffer.  I really do love this little green and pink jeweled tape measure.

Inspired by Marji's post  I thought I would post my plans for now.  Like Marji I am working on a type of "1 hour plan" and my goals sound a lot like Marji's. Basically I want to get away from a life that seems to revolve around to reacting to things out of my control and get back to some sense of doing the things I want and need to do.

To wit, every day I will:

*  exercise 1 hour.  I was doing this routinely from late July to early October.  Then my schedule got disrupted and I never got back on track.  I want to put that routine back in my life.  I don't believe it contributed that much to my weight loss (which was more diet) but it did help me firm and shape and it did wonders for my attitude and sense of self.  I am not here yet.  At this point I break out in a hacking cough walking the roughly 50 feet from my bedroom to the kitchen.  But the cold will end and I will work my way back up to exercise.

* spend one hour cleaning. I have a big house.  I don't like to clean, but I abhor mess.  There is no other solution to maintain sanity.

*  Knit 1 hour.  I have been basically doing this.  I usually knit in the evenings while I sit with G at the television.  But some evenings I have other things to do.  I don't tend to let myself knit during the day, but I am giving myself permission to do that as long as I get knitting time every day.

* Sew 1 hour.  I am not back in the sewing room yet either, and it still has the wrapping paper and christmas ornament boxes on my cutting table.  I never take my tree down before the 6th, and given how run down I still am, I doubt I will get this cleared up until everything is put away this coming weekend.  Then I sew.  I was making good progress with 1/2 hour a day in early December; an hour will be better and I will move forward from that.

* Read 1 hour.  I mean read something for myself that I want to read.   Not the mail.  Not bills.  Not the newspaper.  I finally accepted that I get really grumpy if I am not reading anything.  Yes it means less creative time.  It means more happy time though.  

I am very confident that I can do all this although I can't just start my day and set the clock and do each of these things, no matter how much I would like to.  It will probably take most of January to establish priorities and get settled into this kind of routine.  I can spend more time on whatever I want to do or need to do on any given day after I've put in my minimum commitments.    But I can't spend my time running from crisis to crisis anymore.

I have closed the old year and opened the new year by lying around surrounded by blankets and cats, reading, knitting, and napping.  I have been actually working on two novels more or less simultaneously.  The second one begun was the first one finished, mostly because it was more frivolous and required substantially less attention,  all a boon when suffering from a major head cold.

On New Year's Eve I finished Barbara Taylor Bradford's Voice of the Heart.  I admit I enjoyed reading it.  There are times when a sappy romance just hits the spot, but in truth it has not settled particularly well, like a sickly sweet dessert that seems enticing at the time and later leads one to wonder what possessed one to overindulge.  Yes, it was heartwarming in the end.  But the characters were never particularly well developed, the story occasionally jumped from event to event in a rather awkward manner and Ms Bradford did not necessarily transition well.  It goes down well if you don't ask much of it, but if you want a dessert to really tantalize the senses, this was not the one.

Today I finished Stuart Neville's The Ghosts of Belfast,  I actually "read" this book as an audiobook, and it is one book that I believe was well served by this medium.  The narrator, Gerald Doyle really captured the Irish and the sense of the people and place, rendering it much more fully than I believe I would have experienced by reading the book.  Of course this may not be true, but ti sounds good to me right now.

Of course this book was also much better than the Bradford novel.  The author manages to make the story plausible even though the premise seems implausible — an Irish killer haunted by the ghosts of the innocents he has killed.  The characterizations are full and the sense of the people and the place is well rendered, and this is brought home by hearing the irish brogue of the narrator.  Of course the narration is not enough to make up for a poorly written story.  These were people you could imagine, although they were not, for the most part people you would want to know.   The protagonist is a nasty piece of work but we slowly gain respect for him as we watch him slowly come to terms with his past and his own responsibility for it.  This is more than a simple story of revenge.  It is the story of how one man comes to terms with his own guilt, his responsibility for what he has done and his eventual redemption, set in a world where many are willing to sacrifice others for their own advancement without any recognition of their own culpability. 

This was a violent, harsh, nasty novel which is not for those of tender sentiments but it was also a gripping, thought-provoking story, reasonably well rendered.

I am not one to put voice to my new year's resolutions.  I've not done so in the past and I see no point in starting now; besides, you've heard it all before.  I hope and dream and plan and promise and nothing comes of it.

I will go so far as to say that this has changed and even though you have yet to see proof positive of that change, I can assure you it has occurred:

Here is what has (and has not) happened since my trip to New York:

1.  I made the changes to my shirt pattern, but have not yet finished the 3rd muslin.

2.  I spent many many hours measuring, folding, and cataloging the fabrics that have piled up in the guest room and guest room closet.  As a result I found many things that I love and want to make.  I have a fabulous stash. I want beautiful clothes.  I must use this stash to make things I want and love to wear and I must not be tempted to buy new things until I have made garments from the fabric I actually have.  To that end I have decided that I can only purchase one piece of fabric for each 4 garments I make.  I'm not good at yardage in/yardage out or counting by the piece.  The problem is not that I don't love my stash but that I need to make it up.  This may not be a year long goal, but it is most definitely in effect for the first six months.  Oh and by the way, I have not finished cataloging fabric and that must continue as well.

3. I cancelled a trip to Knoxville to spend Christmas with my grandson only to have said grandson's family decide to drive to New York at the last minute and spend Christmas here.  I spent the week before Christmas  baking, cooking, decorating, and generally preparing for a family Christmas complete with a visit from Santa Claus.

 4.  I have spent the last week with said grandson, having a grand old time.

5.  Everyone has gone home and left me with the worst cold I have had in  many many a year.  To that end I am spending a lot of time curled up on the sofa with the cats, movies and some nice books.  There are times when sewing really should wait.

Back soon.

It seems winter has come finally to the NorthEast.

Although I was toasty warm in my fur coat, gloves and Miriam Carter felt hat standing outside waiting for the post office to open so I could ship a trunk-load of packages to family scattered far and wide, my cheeks reminded me that it was only 4 degrees.  

Was it worth it to beat the seemingly endless line of package mailing citizens?  Yes.  Coming home to a second cup of hot coffee and the remnants of the previous night's brownies was better yet.