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Yes, it is spring.

A combination of minor firsts has left me exhausted this evening. Today was my first day in the garden and it was a joy to be out cleaning out flower beds even if my back is now objecting. Or perhaps it is objecting because today was also my first day back at the gym since before our trip. Either way it is a good kind of tired, a curl up in my chair with a cat on my lap kind of tired, which is exactly where I will be once I post some garden photos. Spring has come and it is so pretty.

crocus

A hyacinth preparing to bloom

A few tulips will be gracing me with their presence even though I did not plant any new bulbs last fall. I guess there is some small advantage to not having worked in the yard last summer, I failed to dig up the old tulips and therefore get a small treat no

And a lovely small iris hiding beneath the leaves.

Hopefully there will be some other lovelies this spring, but I harbor no illusions that the garden has survived unscathed after two years of utter neglect, especially as they followed directly up two years where "men in boots" tramped ignorantly over the plantings.

So now to knit. There will be more I am sure.

March 21, 2009
Dreams and Community

Before I went away to the rain-soaked South, Karen nominated me for a sisterhood award and I was (and am) so flattered. I really meant to write a post thanking her.

Now, upon my return I find that Jenni has also nominated me. Of course I hightailed it over to her blog and where I found myself trying not to drool over the stack of bills waiting to be paid while I looked at her fabulous new trenchcoat. Do go look.

I think these awards are great, and I am extremely flattered to be nominated. Everyone who blogs puts themselves out there everyday and of course the best award is to have your words read by someone who cares about what you are doing, and for like-minded people to share their thoughts and comments. The sharing of blogs is another way of showing that we care about the efforts of our blogging sisters.

I am supposed to nominate 10 more bloggers. But I need to think about this a bit. Many blogs I read have been nominated and I don't want to nominate the same blogs again and again. I am also always discovering new blogs and I want them to be included. You are all, after all, my sewing and blogging sisters. So I will update you with the new links in the future.

Meanwhile I have been home 48 hours and have not sewed. Partially this is my own fault as I overly optimistically cut back on my allergy meds the first night home and had to take a dose yesterday morning to compensate with the result that I was drowsy and foggy brained all day. I was definitely not in any position to be wielding scissors or manning a sewing machine.

On the way home however, I dreamed about sewing. Specifically I dreamed about a coat. Obviously I have coats on the brain even though I really want it to be spring and not coat weather.

The coat in my dreams is rather vague but I remember it as somehow being a cross between the Marfy coat I am currently working on and the jacket from Simplicity 4046 which I made a few years ago. I know that, looking at these two patterns, it doesn't make sense to me now, but I woke up distinctly thinking of these two jackets. Or perhaps that was just confusion and longing.

Mostly I remember the color. The collar was a beautiful shade of deep aqua or a dull turquoise in a soft plushy wool velour or cashmere, and it also had cuffs in the same aqua color. The rest of the coat was two shades of gray or taupe, I think more taupe, with a seam below the bust with some kind of embellishment.

I think the overall shape is more the Marfy in length and style, but the neckline would be more like the simplicity pattern if it were properly interfaced and constructed.

This is a very vague description. I can't even draw it as I keep thinking everything I draw isn't right. But I need to remember this coat.

Someday the fabric and the pattern and my inspiration will all come together and this coat will make its entrance into my life.

March 19, 2009
Reflections on a painting

It has
been a busy visit with step-daughter and grandson and I, grandma, have been too
busy or scattered to write in any lengthy or coherent manner.

The
original plan for today fell apart and instead we went to the Knoxville Museum
of Art where we saw a fabulous retrospective of Josh Simpson Art Glass and we also looked at a
selection of recent acquisitions
by the museum.

The
Knoxville art museum is a nice size with just enough to see without being
overwhelmed. At least it is just
the right size that I am not overwhelmed. I tend to be the kind of observer of art who can only
absorb a small amount on any given day and am prone to sitting for long periods
of time in front of a piece, letting it slowly sink into my consciousness.

I used to
feel that museum trips were rather wasted on me because after a limited number
of works I would grow restless and need a break, unable to absorb or look at
more. But I have grown to accept
my slow looking even as a part of me admires the quick appraisal and stamina of
someone like G who can take a quick look and decide, like, don’t like, and move
on endlessly.

Today I
got stuck in the first gallery looking at a painting by William Wiley called
DOUBLE BASS FOR CB

I really
don’t know anything about the artist, and don’t recall that I have seen another
picture by him or at least not one that I committed to memory. But this painting really struck my
imagination.

In the
painting, in the lower left corner there is a small portrait of a man playing a
double bass; apparently a portrait of Brancusi. Surrounding the bassist was a large whitish gray area where
shapes and formulae and words were floating as if in a muddle of thoughts and
inspirations. I don’t really know what the artist intended and I did not read
the note until after I had looked at the painting for some time but it
initially struck me that this was the space of the mind as opposed to the
solitary musician and the solitude of the music and as opposed to the outside
portion of the painting which was an over-lush view of the natural world in all
its greenness and ruggedness.

My first
impressions were that the white rectangle represented the kind of random connections
the mind makes as it adjusts to the spell of music, or at least the kind of
random thoughts that flit through my mind as I make the transition from the
fragmentation and overstimulation of daily life and settle into the flow of the
music. As I looked further at the square I saw the formulae and the random shapes,
yes, some of which reflect Brancusi’s sculpture, and also the practical
problems of life, of at least man-made life in a man made world.

Contrast
this white space, this cloud of chaotic thought and inspiration and problems,
with the other two extremes of life:
the other as represented by the world of nature, and the inner life as
represented by the musician and the world of art. I saw it as quiet
spirituality versus the violence of the wild, with the artificial construct of
the man-made world in between in which we live on a daily basis.

The
portrait of the bassist was so calm and composed, seemingly only a small part
of the whole, and yet it is this small core which supports all the rest. The natural scene was overwrought,
reflecting more on that earlier view of nature as wild and uncontrolled and
dangerous, reminiscent more of the medieval view of the wild as dark and
dangerous than of the reflective embracing of nature that came out of the Romantic
movement. Yet nature is still
uncontrolled. And yet, in our own
artificially constructed world we need to experience and be aware of both the
need for art and occasionally the respect, love, and fear of nature.

It was
really a most thought-provoking painting.
In my own greedy way, I feel I need to look at it more. And yet those few minutes were enough

March 14, 2009
Radio Silence

I've had the beginnings of another post running around in my head the last couple of days but it is only just beginning to coalesce. Or perhaps I am just too tired to corral my raging thoughts. Either way, it isn't going to happen before we depart tomorrow morning, and I am uncertain about connectivity on the road or once we arrive at our destination.

Have a good week and I'll be back on the 18th, if not before.

March 9, 2009
Ready to go

Well, I didn't spend as much time on my jacket project as I originally hoped to but I am happy with my progress so far. I have the alterations made to the pattern and new front and back pieces cut out and ready to sew as soon as I return. It will be nice to have something waiting for me that I can just sew up when I have a few minutes.

I am not inclined to sew tonight even though it is early yet. I'm just too tired already, and I don't want to get all wrapped up in my project and stay up too late…we have a lot of driving tomorrow.

I'll be back on the 18th, but I doubt I will get to the jacket that soon. Have a good week.

March 9, 2009
A clean sweep and a new beginning

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a woman cleaned out her kitchen cabinet.

Well, yes, that was me. It was only a month ago, but at times that month has seemed like a black hole of lost time. And then, another part of me wants to say "What! Only a month!" Oh well. I have been here, but often out of touch. Good intentions alone don't quite cut it, do they?

You see there was a reason for cleaning out the pantry, a reason beyond just plain cleanliness and orderliness that is. I was purging the kitchen, just as I have been purging my body, of gluten.

If you have followed the erratic progress of this blog you may recall that I was previously on a gluten free diet. And then I wasn't. And I didn't seem to suffer from the lack. I won't bore you with all the tedious history. I thought I had a problem with gluten. I went off it, I felt better, my doctor's disagreed. I gradually felt worse again, I was referred to more doctors, specialists in celiac disease, who were also puzzled and who ran more tests. In the end they told me to go back to eating gluten in September 2007. I felt fine. Then G got sick, and had trouble eating and stopped eating bread, pasta, potatoes and rice. Since getting him to eat at all was a challenge, I adopted the same diet and felt no major lack in my life. I felt great. I lost 20 pounds. Once in a blue moon I would have a small treat mostly a rare indulgence in a lemon bar at the Farmer's Market, really the best lemon bars I have ever had. But for the most part our life was mostly gluten free although not necessarily by design.

And then everything changed.

In November I had an allergic reaction to Fosamax. I went to the emergency room twice and was on Prednisone and various antihistamines for 6 weeks. When I went off the Prednisone I had occasional bursts of hives, mostly on my hands but they got better each week and responded to antihistamines.

And then, sometime in January my body went haywire with hives over more than half of my body, at one part over most of my body. I couldn't figure it out. No one could figure it out. I had already been tested for almost everything. At some point it struck me that my hives got significantly worse after I ate a slice of french bread. I insisted on a blood test. My doctor's thought it wouldn't show anything, gluten doesn't cause hives usually, but went along with it. It was positive. And I cleaned out the pantries. And I bought gluten-free flours.

More doctors, more tests. I definitely have celiac disease. No one knows why I get hives when I eat gluten but I do. Perhaps my body was just in overdrive after the Fosamax allergy. Perhaps it just had enough. It is not unheard of, but not common either.

And I have to be very very careful, more careful than before, when my symptoms were purely abdominal. The tiniest amount of gluten and I erupt. Three Hershey's nuggets were enough to make my knees and feet erupt in hives and swell so much that I couldn't walk for two days.

Two glasses of ginger ale resulted in swollen feet, lips that looked like hot air balloons, and a hive on my throat that made it difficult to swallow. Who thinks of ginger ale as having gluten? I do now.

We are going on a road trip and I have gluten free snacks in the car: almonds, and raisinettes and potato chips. We have a list of chain restaurants that have gluten free menus or have gluten free items on their menu and will make the effort to make sure the food is safe. So much of convenient highway food revolves around bread and flour. I downloaded some menus and made a list and a file for the car. When we find a nice cafe that has salads or nice simple grilled foods that I can eat we will note it for future trips.

I am going to start baking again but at the moment my emphasis has just been on feeling better, not trying new things. Besides which, I know I can make excellent gluten-free pasta dough for lasagna and ravioli, or probably whatever else we want. And I can make a pretty good pie crust too.

I bought this book at Christmas for my brother and kept a copy for myself. I have had some excellent gluten free breads, cakes and cookies at the Culinary and I am looking forward to trying out the techniques used here. They are a little different than what I have seen before, but if they work it will be a lot of fun.

Besides, the best chocolate chip cookie I have ever had anywhere was a gluten free chocolate chip cookie at the Catarina de' Medici restaurant.

I know I can't reproduce everything I had before, and I don't even want to, somethings are best remembered for the perfection that they are.

I can remember churros in Madrid. There will be no more churros. But I can still have the huge cup of coffee. And there are plenty of indulgences I can have.

I can hold on to the memories of eating croissants at the little cafe near our little hideaway hotel in Paris, and although I will miss the croissants I am happy to have the memory. Besides I can still go to Ladurée, or better yet, Pierre Hermé, for macarons. Now that is a real treat, and something to look forward to. And I can make macarons at home as well. I have done it before, but not recently.

I admit that I have been lusting after Pierre Hermé's new book, Macaron for a few months now. I wish we were going to Paris, so that I could eat a macaron at the source and buy the book as well. I have tried every kind of search I can think of, and I can't find an online vendor that will sell the book and ship it to the United States. I don't mind having the book in French, but it looks like I will have to wait and hope that there will eventually be an English translation just so that I can get a copy.

As for avoiding gluten, there are far worse fates. Besides how can it be so bad to say I can only eat the best foods, the ones with pure ingredients, without additives, prepared in places where the chefs care about the food they prepare for their clients?

March 8, 2009
Doubts, Musings, and Moving Forward

So I didn't get much done yesterday either.

The full first muslin is made.

I need to add an inch at the shoulders. In the back I need that Inch all the way down and I might even need a little more room near the bottom. So of course then I started second-guessing myself. I know I am not really a 42. I wondered if perhaps I should try a 44.

But my issues aren't with the back.

When I gained a lot of weight I bought and made a 46 and later decided that was a mistake. I made a 44 last year and the muslin is still wadded up in my UFO pile where I left it in disgust. If I make the 42 I have to increase the size of the back at the shoulders and on down. I might need to add a little more width near the bottom to accommodate my lower half, but that is an easy adjustment. The neckline on the 42 fits, which means less hassle with collar alterations.

Of course if I need an inch at the shoulders in the back I also need it in the front. But I absolutely need no more fabric between those shoulders and the bust. I made the 42 because the 42 is my size for the area of my upper chest, between the shoulders and the bust. That is the most difficult area for me to fit. It is easier to expand out to accommodate the bust and shoulders.

I also need that FBA. I did that yesterday, and it took me a little time just because I am not that experienced with FBAs and the raglan sleeve in this jacket is very deep, almost to the waist. Even so, the FBA was fairly easy. The problem was that I don't want a dart from the side right at the bust and I didn't know how to place the dart so that it would not ruin the lines of the jacket or make me look like Humpty Dumpty.

My first attempt at moving the dart was a dismal failure. It is distinctly possible that the glass of wine I drank before attempting the dart migration contributed to the resulting mess.

So I quit and decided to knit and watch TV. Sometimes taking a break is the best solution.

Before I took that break I thought my entire idea and inner vision of this jacket was a big mistake. I realized however that I really just needed to think about what I really wanted.

I want to make the jacket out of this fabric. I have "seen" this jacket in this fabric almost since the first moment I saw the pattern, although I have also wondered if I have lost my mind and if this is more fitting, tailoring, and matching than I am ready to deal with.

But when I put the fabric on Matilda, and looked at the pattern and my muslin again, I confirmed that I really do want to give it a try. I may be crazy, it may not work, it may be a mistake, but I will never know unless I try.

I believe I was correct in thinking that I do not want a dart coming out of the raglan sleeve, nor do I want a dart coming up from the bottom of the jacket or angling up from the side. It occurred to me that I can bring the dart down from the neckline and hide it under the collar. Doing that will also add a little fullness at the hem in front. But I probably need a little extra room there as well. I should be able to give this a try later today.

First though, laundry and pulling out clothes and knitting projects for the trip to Knoxville. Once everything is together and packed and ready I know that my time will be free for playing with patterns and muslins and dreams of red and white jackets.

March 7, 2009
Update

I thought I had about an hour yesterday to work on the muslin, it ended up being less than that, but I did make progress. Thursday is knitting night, and even a muslin in process wasn't going to keep me away.

I only managed to put together half of the jacket. Even thought the back is cut in one piece on the pattern, I cut the muslin as two pieces just for ease in fitting. It is rare that I cut a back piece on the fold anyway, even though I will cut the final back in the final version in one piece. Usually there is just enough difference in the right and left that I need to work from a full pattern piece.

This is what I learned so far:

The 42 looks like it is fine through the shoulder and through the back, at least the half back, that is already made. I need to release the seam a little bit at the hips in back, but so far there are no other major back adjustments. When I have a full garment I may see other changes, especially at the sleeves, but I have the right size pattern.

I definitely need to do a FBA, but I was expecting it. Otherwise, the front seems to fit well through the shoulders and upper chest.

Today I can make and attach the other half back and do the FBA. Once that is done, I can see what other adjustments are needed. I am sure there will be something, but I am feeling my confidence returning.

March 6, 2009
First Muslin Cut

There was no more sewing time last week after Matilda had her retrofitting, much to my chagrin. And my frustration at my lack of sewing times continues…

But I did get a couple of hours to work on my jacket today and I got the entire laid out and marked and cut out of muslin so I can begin the process of fitting.

I had hoped to start sewing today as well, but I ended up with a little less time than I had hoped but I hope I can get the first draft assembled and checked on Matilda tomorrow.

I really couldn't wrap my head around the flat pattern adjustments because there have been so many changes in the intervening years since I last did this, and I realized the only thing to do was work from a muslin. Besides I am really itching to just be working on something….

I would really like to get the muslin completely fitted and finished this week so that I can cut the actual garment as soon as we return from Knoxville. Oh yeah, we are leaving on the 10th, which doesn't leave me much time.

Considering that this is Wednesday, and I feel like I have no idea what I am doing, this might be a completely unrealistic goal. On the other hand, I am hoping that once I get to work things will come back to me, so far results have been promising.

March 4, 2009
The Birthday Present

I took myself to bed this afternoon and finished The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine.

Initially, I thought it was not my favorite of Vine's books, but the further I get from having finished the novel the more I revise my sentiments. Vine is the more "literary" voice of Ruth Rendell. Now I love Rendell's novels as much as I love Vine, but they serve completely different purposes in my reading life. Rendell is perfect for the genre of popular fiction I call "bicycle books", those books that don't occupy my full attention while reading but move along just fast enough to keep me going on an exercise bicycle. I have been through a few bicycle books, the past month, most recently some James Patterson and Stuart Woods.

But back to The Birthday Present. The detached style reminded me more of Rendell than Vine's past novels but actually this novel seems to be quite a departure for the author, writing under any guise. In fact, I think this is what initially gave me pause. If one picks up the book expecting a typical Barbara Vine, or even a typical Ruth Rendell, one is in for a surprise as it is neither. And yet, once I settled into the pace of the book and the voices of its narrators, I found it quite compelling and beautifully written.

It is more of a political analysis than a thriller, and there is really no mystery except for how it will all end up.

Actually I found the book quite compelling and a bit disturbing and unsettling as well. It is not unsettling because of the depths of human depravity and psychology it reveals but more because there really is no great depravity here but just normal human emotions, sometimes pushed beyond normal expectations. In typical Vine fashion, the character one most expects to feel sympathy for is the one that is most despised by the end of it all. And the character who began as the most callous is in the end the most sympathetic.

In the end this is the Vine book that I think will have the most longevity in the memory. After the initial disappointment that it does not fit the expected formula, it may be the one that worms its way most into the consciousness, and the one that most deserves to be re-read.

March 1, 2009