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Author: 459856pwpadmin

  • LEAD NOT MISS CAT INTO TEMPTATION

    My favorite sewing scissors and shears live here:

    Tabascotemptation1

    I try to put them away at the end of each day.  Still, I am only human and I suppose an occasional lapse does occur: One of those lapses happened last night when I left my favorite scissors here:

    Tabascotemptation2

    Enter Tabasco, fleeing her bed while her parents prepare to take over that real estate that, during the day she claims for herself: rumpling the sheets, squirming around trying to get comfortable, wishing each other a good night, and all those things that humans do and which cats find to be an affront to their territorial rights.  The ironing board is her bedtime resting place, out of the way yet close enough so that she can hear when the ruckus has settled down and she can sneak back into bed, feigning indifference.

    Tabascotemptation3

    But on this night temptation lies in wait on the sewing board.  Shiny metal objects are lying there. Who knows what will happen?  What cat can resist the temptation to push those shiny metal things over the edge of the ironing board and watch what happens when they hit the floor?

    Clang! Bang! Clatter!  Mom is out of bed!  She makes loud unintelligible (if you are a cat) noises which don’t sound at all encouraging.  Miss cat runs away.  Mom picks up the scissors, puts them away, and goes, grumbling, back to bed.

    …

    It is not until the next morning that she notices that they no longer close all the way to the tip and are useless for cutting fabric. It looks like a trip to the hospital will be in order.

    The second caftan is done.  Today has been a busy day filled with music, laughter, and dinner with friends.  There will be time for pictures tomorrow.

  • Orchid

    The orchid that George gave me last year on our Anniversary is blooming.  It has spent the summer in the front yard hiding in the shade beneath the Rhododendrons.

    Orchid

  • Entropy

    Friday’s entire sewing output:

    Caftans8

    Kind of pathetic don’t you think?   I am not suffering so much from lack of opportunity as lack of motivation.  Sewing will come.

    Meanwhile, I am about 15 feet along the stone wall for the raised flower bed under the kitchen window.  It is about 2 feet high and the old wall is completely collapsed with stones scattered over several feet of ex-planting bed.    I might have found an entrance to the Rat Snake’s hole, I found a path through some rocks, as I was excavating them, and then on moving one, I saw that it lead to a deep hole under the bed, along the foundation of the house.  Unfortunately when I removed the rock, the soil came rushing down and that entrance was obliterated.  Not so bad for me.  I was not about to explore further.

    Otherwise lots of cooking and reading.  I have been wrapped up in escapist fantasy reading “The Other Bolyn Girl” not so much great literature as just a good read that gets one away from all the day to day bother and buzz.

  • Process or Product?

    I wonder how I got from product-oriented sewist to process-oriented sewist?  I certainly spent most of my sewing life interested in the clothes, not the sewing itself.  I started off wanting to take the shortest path to the desired goal – something to wear.  I have certainly spent more of my sewing time rushing against deadlines, than embracing the act of sewing itself without regard to the time spent.

    And yet, here I am, more interested in the seam, boring little stretch of thread that it is, allowing myself to move slowly through the garment enjoying the process itself.  I certainly enjoy the final product more when I have savored the courses leading to its completion. 

    That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard, checking my impatience at the sewing room door.  Sometimes I just don’t have it in me.  Sometimes I have to tell myself to stop if I am rushing too much.  It is not a contest.  Actually no one cares whether I buy a blouse or make one, except me that it is.  If I can’t sit back and enjoy making something, why no just go read a book instead?

  • Fall Comes to the Hudson Valley

    Autumnfog1

    The calendar may indicate that Autumn is officially a couple of days away, but Mother Nature has declared it officially here.  The first of the fall fog on the Hudson.

    There was a very interesting article in  today’s New York Review of Books  which made me really think about the situation on the gulf coast in a new light.

  • Second Caftan Cut

    I cut out the second caftan last night.  This cotton print is heavier than the first and much busier.  I am having grave doubts and am wondering what I was thinking.  I knew I loved the print (why oh why??) and could not imagine wearing it as an actual garment.  If I could not picture this fabric as a top or sweater set in my mind’s eye, why did I think I would like it as an even bigger garment like a caftan.  I know that I like caftans out of large, gaudy even, prints that I might not otherwise wear, but this, this may have been a serious miscalculation.

    Caftans4

    Well, since I started, I am going to go ahead and finish.  Who knows, it might be nice. 

    Once again I ran out of fabric and did not have quite enough for the sleeve.  Since I purchased the two caftan fabrics together and they both have Lycra, this was anticipated, although I was naively hoping that the first knit was an exception.

    Caftans5

    Two points here:  First the sleeve will have to be cut on the cross-grain even though the garment was cut on the lengthwise grain.  I wonder how that will affect the drape of the sleeve and the join of the sleeve to the garment.  Secondly, as you can note in the photo, there is a little piece missing about mid sleeve, roughly in the elbow region.  I decided to piece the fabric so I would have enough to cut the sleeve:

    Caftans6

    There will be a little pieced in area under the arm.  I am hoping it will not be particularly noticeable. I may be acting on totally blind faith.  It would have been better had there been a way to piece the fabric at one end or the other, but I see no possibilities there.  I briefly wondered if I should have but the entire garment on the cross-grain; it may have been tricky as the garment is 58" long: with shoulders and hem it probably would not have fit.  Too late now anyway.  I suppose if I had not started this process at 9:30 in the evening I might have thought of these things before I cut.

  • Reading Achebe

    The irises were transferred to the new flower bed between rain showers.  I also got 10 of the 24 poppies planted.  The remaining poppies and about 3 dozen daffodils will be planted tomorrow morning before we go to Pittsfield.  Perhpas there will be photos tomorrow.

    We indulged in a little late afternoon swim and cocktail hour  and it was a lovely change.  Instead of working on my sewing or knitting, I read the Chinua Achebe book I picked up in Red Hook on Thursday.  It was very interesting and made me rethink my impressions of many books I had read peviously by Achebe, Tutuola, Naipul, Gordimer and Conrad.  I might have to indulge in some re-reading as well.

  • No regrets, but…

    If you are one who pays attention to detail, you might have noticed that the caftan was unhemmed when I took the photo the other night.   This was intentional.  At that point I was feeling a bit lazy and thought I would just not do the hem.  The knit was stable, it was not necessary.

    As usual I changed my mind.  But until after wearing it that evening.  The next day Matilda got to wear the caftan so I could sit, obeisant, at her feet and turn up the hem, which is now complete.

    Since finishing the caftan I have kept myself entertained by putting away my summer fabrics and bringing out the fall/winter and “transitional” fabrics.  Transitional is an open term and here refers to whatever I might feel like sewing that is not obviously fall/winter.  As I told you some time back, I had previously sorted the pile in my sewing room into the “sew” and “store” piles, but I had not progressed beyond that point.  Since then I took some fall fabrics out of the closet and can now transfer the summer fabric to their spot. 

    Usually, when I buy new fabric, it is immediately indexed and stored.  This summer all rules were suspended (I am still paying the price) and the new fabrics were just stacked up in my sewing room, a most unsatisfactory method of fabric storage.  One evening I sat down with all the summer fabrics, the two boxes they are to be stored in, a pile of index cards, and my handy glue stick and set to work.

     

    This resulted in 21 index cards of fabric that I p

    Summerfabrics

    urchased this spring and summer and did not get around to sewing, and one, the yellow linen, of which there is enough leftover to make a little camisole, but that fabric was a stash fabric and not a new purchase.  How embarrassing.  I will not even tell you how much yardage is involved, but I am sure you can make an intelligent guess.  More fabric than I could normally sew up in one summer.  Now these will be the first things pulled out when spring sewing approaches.  As I begin to look at the spring photos from New York Fashion Week, I think that they will all be quite appealing next summer as well.

    At least I am trying to make a concerted effort to not buy much fabric this fall, unless I have a specific garment in mind and I am actually ready to sew it at the time I buy the fabric.  Even then, I have to sew more stash fabric.  So far I have been successful.  The fabric situation is not yet out of control and it shall not become so.   I think there is a hording gene and it runs in my family.  I hope not to succumb.

  • Beware of Good Intentions

    Beware of Good Intentions
    And the Passions in their eyes
    For None of them can open
    The Gates of Paradise

                                                David Byrne "The Gates of Paradise"

    Pardon my ranting, raving, and rambling.  I suppose I have been a little frazzled and as a result, not as coherent as I would like to be.  I should not have inflicted my silliness on you.

    Following is a rather long quote I saved to my quote file when I was reading Ian McEwan’s "Saturday".  It seemed like a rather apt and well put description of a modern phenomenon, and I still like it:

    Have his anxieties been making a fool of him?  It’s part of the new order, this narrowing of mental freedom, of his right to roam.  Not so long ago his thoughts ranged more predictably, over a longer list of subjects.  He suspects he’s becoming a dupe, the willing, febrile consumer of news fodder, opininion, speculation and of all the crumbs authorities let fall. He’s a docile citizen, watching Leviathan grow stronger while he creeps under its shadow for protection.  ….  Does he think he’s contributing something, watching news programmes, or lying on his back on the sofa on Sunday aftrnoons, reading more opinion columns of ungrounded certainties, more long articles about what really lies behind this or that development, or abut what is most surely going to happen next …  Either way, it amounts to a consensus of a kind, an orthodoxy of attention, a mild subjucation in itself.  Does he think that his ambivalence — if that’s what it really is — excuses him from the general conformity?

    No answers, just something else to think about.


                            

  • Crazy!

    I sometimes think the world has gone to crazy extremes and there is no place left in the middle anymore.

    FEMA is a joke, brimming with incompetence.   I have to say the same for the government as well.  These are the people who are supposed to be looking out for us?  And they think we are stupid enough not to notice?

    The republicans are so far to the right I am surprised that they are even on the horizon, and yet, they seem to have successfully convinced us that they are pretty close to the 50-yard-line and we are going to be OK.  Are we waking up from this nightmare yet?

    But the democrats!  Sometimes they too get so wrapped up they are almost rabid!.  At times they act like the poor revolutionaries (remember Nicaragua) who overthrow the Fascist government only to become Fascists themselves when they get in power.  The parties used to be much closer, now they are like polar opposites, and yet they both get so caught up in the screaming and justifying that they forget the ocean in between them.

    What ever happened to responsibility and caring for your neighbors and your family/community/country?