Category: Miscellaneous Musings

We were driving up the Taconic State Parkway today … Actually George was driving and I was knitting a sock and looking at the leaves changing colors and generally letting my mind wander hither and yon when  I had a sewing idea. 

And then, poof, I lost it.

I know I was thinking of a jacket or a sweater or something, I don’t remember which.  But I knew exactly what I was going to make, what color, style etc, and while I was thinking about it I realized that I had a piece of panne velvet that would be perfect for a coordinating skirt.  I first thought of one pattern, then decided that I had two other skirts planned for that pattern and should use another.  I remembered another pattern and decided it would be perfect as it was a little more classic, but with a bit of flare, and I thought the first pattern would  compete too much with whatever it was (jacket or sweater) that I was planning. 

Then I knew I had the perfect boots….

I looked up, commented on something, and it was gone.  I planned the perfect outfit.  I have all the coordinating pieces, but I don’t know what they are coordinating with.

Has that every happened to you?

I know it will come back to me someday.  Hopefully it will not be a 3 in the morning,.

In the meantime here is something else I picked up at Aida Dalati:  3 beaded brooches.  I plan to wear them as a set.

Lisa over at Blackwater Park  has nominated me as a rockin’ girl blogger.   I  don’t really picture myself as rockin’, not surprising for someone who has long been accused of being far too serious.  I see myself as confused and overwhelmed or perhaps just hanging on, but truthfully, the thought of being a "rockin’ girl blogger" is kind of cool.

Now I am supposed to pass this on to five other bloggers.  Considering that I am way behind on my blog reading, I am not really sure who has been nominated and who has not; especially since, as Lisa noted, not many display their rockin’ status as a button on their sidebars.   So I am going to attempt to list a few people who may not have been nominated, either that or I am just so behind and out of it I am probably displaying how absolutely not-rockin’ I am.  Anyway to those listed here,  if you’ve been nominated and I’ve missed it, apologies, if not you probably deserved it before now:

Liana:  Sew Intriguing
Marji:  Fiber Arts Afloat
Kathy:  Vast Amounts of Spare Time
Nancy:  Not So Fancy Nancy
Roseana  Matching Notches

And I have decided to post a button, but oobviously I need to edit it a bit as it gets chopped off.  That will have to be a task for another day as I am already stolen enough time away from my piles of "things that must be done". 

The new Threads magazine came the other day and I spent a little time yesterday causally looking through it.

This issue is interesting and entertaining and has some good information.  All in all, perhaps Threads is appealing to me more again…..not that I was going to stop subscribing or anything.

One thing really made me laugh however.  One of the first things I always read in the Threads is the article on the last page, the "Closures" column.  What tickled my fancy was this paragraph by Kristine Kadlec:

"If you listen to opera and/or classical music, you tend to be extremely organized.  You’re self-disciplined and always schedule sewing time into your day.  If your house isn’t clean and the laundry isn’t done, you can’t concentrate on your sewing projects."

Well, I don’t really believe people can be that easily classified and I listen to most genres of music fairly regularly, but my first musical love and primary treat will always be classical music.  People have always accused me of being organized, although I tend to think I am never organized enough, part of that same nerdy side of me that tends to think all problems can be reduced to a mathematical equation — the trick is finding the right equation.  And I used to schedule regular sewing time.  But lately I don’t seem to get through my list of things that need to be done efficiently enough to schedule sewing time.  There are too many distractions and interruptions and unplanned events.  Not that I am, or ever wanted to be a, highly scheduled "at 7:18 we take our vitamins" type of person, but I still can’t let myself sew when there are piles of laundry to be done or other "more important" tasks.

Oh well.

Not that means I have been out of the sewing room completely.  I just don’t have anything really to show for my time except fun and learning experience, neither of which photograph well.    SInce I have had bits and pieces of time, a half-hour here, an hour there, I have my machines set up and I am playing with their various capabilities.  I have been testing the various feet that came with my new Baby Lock serger (over a year old at this point) and learning how to use them and making samples and notes to myself.  I have also been working through my Bernina manual, trying all the different stitches and feet, although not in any comprehensive way.  I am but a mere beginner, but I am getting much more intrigued and confident about doing some new and different things. 

Besides, even though I don’t get the thrill of a new garment to wear, I am still sewing something, even scraps, and I am still simple-minded enough that I find that endlessly entertaining.

Which brings me to the other timely aspect of the new Threads magazine, at least for me.  A good portion of this issue is about wardrobe and planning and snoop shopping, in short deciding what to sew,  I have been spending a little time doing mental gymnastics in the wardrobe department.  All this not sewing has me itching for new clothes.  Not only that, I am itching for more pulled together outfits rather than the mix-and-match kind of very casual separates I have been working on in the recent past.

There was a reason of course.  When I stopped going in to an office every day I stopped needing suits.  I liked suits.  I liked skirt-suits and pants-suits.  I like menswear inspired tailored jackets.  But I got a lot of well-meaning advice from friends that an Armani-inspired suit with jacket, slacks, and loafers was not really appropriate casual-weekend-spent- antiquing or watching-a-soccer- match attire.  My friends were probably right.  But I had a hard time figuring out a casual wardrobe.  Now all I have is my casual wardrobe, and fancier go to nice dinner or cocktail party/evening clothes. (I am probably exagerating here  ) And I think I have gone to far in the casual direction….I crave outfits, which is really more my nature.

Perhaps my mood is influenced by the fall designer collections, which have certainly be heavily leaning toward a more polished, formal silhouette, a look that I really prefer to the completely casual attitude.  Today’s Wall Street Journal  has an article about just this trend and the doubt that it will be an easy sell.    It could be that I have had to spend a few days lately in a suit and heels and hose and it felt really good.  I had forgotten how much I love being DRESSED, and how much more myself I feel, when I make a bit more of an effort.

As to gloves and hats?  Well, I would definitely go the glove route.  And I love the look of layered sleeves, short over long, or short with gloves.  I already have a small glove collection and have a pair of gloves to match every coat I own, and some that I just have for contrast or special occasions.  I love hats too, and if I lived in a city where I walked more, I would probably have a hat for every coat as well.  I have sometimes toyed with that idea. But it is hard for me to get in an out of a car with a hat, much less drive in one, so the hat is mostly off, as is the coat if I am spending a day in and out of the car.  I think if I ever quit the suburban life I will just have to head for the city…and find a good milliner too, as my head, unfortunately, is too fat for one-size-fits-all women’s hats.

I’m still here, although I have yet to find much time for sewing. 

Now that G has been given the all-clear, I decided that is well past time that I started whipping myself back in shape.  And so I have been at the gym every day the past week (or at the physical therapists — I am not yet up to gym and PT in one day).  6 days and 9 hours of exercise later I can definitely say that I am more exhausted than I can imagine, but I also have less back pain,  and less sciatica.  Yeah for me.  I also think my pants are a little looser in the waist, but I think that is more due to wishful thinking than any actual visible benefit of exercise at this point, unless I am just too tired to lift my fork to my mouth.

Going to the post office on the way home from the gym has also been a challenge this week as the September fashion magazines are rolling in:

The vogue is so heavy I have to have it flat on a table to look through it.  To think I had hopes of reading it on the exercise bicycle.  Ha.  I would have to use both hands just to hold it and would have to stop and put it down to turn a page — not good for exercise. 

So my progress through these wish books is slow.  That is good, because I think I also need to take my sewing slowly, with a plan.  I need to sew what I am going to wear now, not what I hope to wear later in the fall, so that leaves plenty of time for perusing the mags and dreaming.

But what is that plan?  I have no idea.  I only know I am sick of the few clothes I have been wearing and am ready to dress again.  But in what?  I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out, because at this point I don’t even have energy to figure out what clothes I have much less what I might need. 

As to these magazines, I am still working my way through the 4 buckets of mail I picked up from the post office after I returned from a trip of a mere week’s duration.  I don’t think I have ever gotten that much mail in a week in my life….and at this point I only hope that I get caught up before I go away again. 

Of course it always happens during a heat wave — the AC is broken and cannot be repaired.   A replacement will not happen right away as a new condensing unit must be ordered.  Even a replacement of the same size would take a week to 10 days, and our previous system was woefully inadequate — in fact I am probably responsible for burning it out during the heat waves we have had this summer. Knowing full well that the unit could not handle the afternoon sun on the western wall of the house, but also having an elderly ailing spouse who couldn’t take the heat, I pushed the AC beyond its limit.  The power supply to the compressor is a burnt out mass of molten plastic, metal and soldered wires. The compressor is a small burnt partially charred mess.

So now we have two homes — the hot one where I am working now, and the one shown above where we will be sleeping tonight.  Even with the windows open and the fans on, the nights during this heat spell are too warm for me too cool the house down to a tolerable level for my ailing DH.    He is lounging around in the cool hotel room while I am working at home in the heat, catching up on work, meeting a contractor and doing other tasks.  Luckily I have a cool pool, and the sun has not yet hit the house or the 50 feet of glass on the western side, so there is a cool breeze.

If the weather breaks enough that I can clear out enough residual heat to return to our bed over the weekend, we shall be home,  if not, we will have to move.  This is a resort area in high season and all local hotels are booked on the weekends for the remainder of the summer.  We shall be literally going over the river and through the woods to the far side of Kingston, the next nearest available hotel.

I don’t know what will be happening with my sewing plans, but I will try to sew here and there — who knows, freed of other duties I might find more time…or it may just be too hot.

Last night I curled up in the air-conditioned hotel and pondered fall sewing: The fall Marfy and the new Vogue Patterns both arrived.

The new Vogue Patterns looks quite promising and I think I will be making a large pattern purchase when the website is open.  The new Vogue’s are not likely to be stocked in my local Jo Ann fabrics until sometime in August, and I refuse to patronize that kind of pattern rationing.

There are also quite a few Marfy pattern I like but I need a little more time to consider, look at patterns I have purchased in the past, and narrow down my selections.  Not to worry I will show you the final list when it is finally compiled.

I tell myself I have been having trouble finding time to
sew, but that Is not exactly true. I
have trouble finding time to lose myself in sewing, and that is an entirely
different thing.

It came to me this morning, making breakfast, a task in
which I don’t tend to lose myself, that this is precisely what I am
missing. It is easy, with sewing, to
lose myself, to get all wrapped up in the task, which is perhaps the greatest
reason I am not a good 15 minute a day seamstress. A mere 15 minutes is enough that I am a
goner, that time disappears into the fog and I am sewing. I can’t escape that fog of steam, the rhythm
of the needle running up and down, the hum of the machine, the allure of
turning something flat and two dimensional into something else entirely. So I wait, not always patiently, until I can
steal away a little time.

In the past I have done a lot of sewing in the evenings, but
then I had a husband devoted to his work who often did not struggle back to the
fold before 8 PM and 10 and 11 were not unheard of. I still have the darling husband of course,
but he is home, and evenings are spent together more or at least it is looking
like that might become the routine – I haven’t completely settled down to it
yet, but I am in training, and he waits patiently. Knitting, which I love but which does not
engulf my attentions in quite the same way may benefit from this change in
ritual.

I have actually tried working in the sewing room (on sewing
not work – which still occupies the same space) but it has not gone well so
far. I don’t brook interruptions by life
as well when I am sewing, and finding interruption free time has been
difficult, except in the evening, but then I am torn by the competing calls of
my creative side and the love of my life. At the moment these primary forces are still in a state of negotiation.

But how is this morning different? How did I discover something I had been
missing? It was not the pan of chicken
fajitas, peppers, and eggs.

Blame Michael Ondaatje. I got up early this morning, but I was a little draggy yet and a little
stiff, so I curled up in a chair and continued reading my current book, Ondaatje’s newest, Divisadero. When I was interrupted it took me a little
bit to come out of that world – the world of the really good book. It is more than a story, it is more than the
beauty of the writing – there a quite a few writers who do one or the other
beautifully. But this craft of fiction,
where you can create an alternate universe almost in the telling of the tale,
that is a rare skill. I am not sure if
it is a skill or a gift. I suspect it is
both because even a gift must be honed and mastered.

Admittedly I had trouble getting into this book and I am not convinced that is
Ondaatje’s fault, but perhaps a symbol of my own fractured attention span of
late. The book is complicated and it
seems to weave together completely separate and unrelated stories – but then
again they are not (separate that is) just as life is separate and distinct but
not at all so. Everything intersects and
reflects and is echoed again and again. So now (and I am well beyond the half way point) I pick up the book and immediately
get pulled away from what I was thinking and doing into another room in my
mind, a room that at this moment seems to be reserved for this book. I turn the pages, open the mental door and go
somewhere else, only to be startled later when someone knocks.

And it struck me, later, standing at the stove, that when I
sew I either use a different part of my brain or I use it differently than I do
with the rest of my life and the transition back can be difficult – hence the
trouble with interruptions. It is like
some part of the circuitry has been put in some kind of “sleep mode” while
whole new systems have been opened up and turned on. But the process of shutting down and
reawakening my “normal life” mode is time consuming and sometimes harsh. So sewing, at least for me, is about more than just the making of clothes, although that is the most obvious aspect.  It is about art, and thought, and then to some extent about life itself. 

Of course in realizing that sewing makes me
think differently I also realize that sewing time is then even more vital to
keeping the whole mental machine going.

And although with realization can come resolve, resolve
alone does not reconcile the competing needs that life brings. I still need to work out a way to combine
sewing time, with living time, and work time, and also gym or exercise or at
least activity time, because the body must be kept as well maintained as the
mind and the creative spirit.

Yesterday I just had to face the mountain of ironing that I had been storing up for "a rainy day". 

Yesterday was rainy, and I had nothing left to wear that didn’t require ironing. I also thought it would be nice to wear something out to dinner besides my gym clothes.

So there was no sewing but there was lots of time in the sewing room looking at the stack of fabrics piled up near the ironing board, thinking about what I would be doing next, taking brief breaks from the ironing board to look at patterns, and so forth and so on…you know the drill right? 

I don’t usually let the ironing pile up this much, but life has not been normal of late.  I know some people don’t iron their clothes, and although I can admit it would be more environmentally conscious not to iron, I can’t bring myself to do it.  I don’t iron my slips anymore, or my gym clothes so I think I am working my way into a more laid-back lifestyle, but very slowly.  I still iron most everything else, including my jeans.  G irons his own shirts.

I defend myself briefly by saving the ironing up until I have a pile, I don’t iron the clothes for each day in the morning before getting dressed like some people I know.  Mostly this is because it is wasteful of time (I would rather sleep in a few minutes more) and energy.  The most energy is used during that initial time when the iron is warming up, and it seems a waste to warm up the iron and then use it only a few minutes.  I usually don’t heat it up unless it will be on at leat an hour.  I think that is part of why I have never been good at sewing in 15 minute intervals.  I can’t sew much before I need to press and I refuse to heat up the iron unless I will be there for a while.

Anyway, the circuits were configured in this room so I could use the iron with other equipment and not blow any circuits.  And the new Naomoto iron takes less energy than my old Sussman, and in fact it uses less energy to warm up than the coffee pot uses every morning.  After I blew the kitchen circuit the first few times I had to run around the house, tapping into the different circuits and measuring the actual energy use of various appliances and pieces of equipment in the house.  I am such a nerd that I found this highly entertaining.  I can iron, but I can’t make coffee and toast at the same time, which sometimes requires some interesting choreography in the mornings.  In fact, if I didn’t sew, I would use less energy ironing than I do making coffee over the course of a year. 

But then I do sew, and I am not going to stop.  Nor am I going to stop making coffee, although the espresso machine draws less power than the drip coffee pot for some strange reason. 

So just call me energy hog..

Pink Energy Hog.

I don’t know why it took me 8 months after making this skirt to realize that I could wear it with pink.  Now it is a perfect skirt for a cool spring day, not just a fall and early winter skirt.

Duh.
.

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Thanks to Ann at Gorgeous Things  and Barbara at Cat Fur Studio for steering me toward this diversion.

I’ll be back.

I am almost caught up from our trip over Thanksgiving week.  There are only two small piles of paperwork to finish,

and a pair of pants that needs to have the buttons sewn back on in the background.  They are from Chico’s and are about 2 years old so if the buttons held up this long I can’t really complain. 

Hiding out of site is a pile of ironing and some shoes that need polishing.  They are on the cutting table so that I don’t give myself permission to start sewing before I have finished basic maintenance.  Tomorrow is grocery shopping day and I haven’t finished the list yet — this is the first winter-season shopping since the farmer’s market closed, and I am wondering how much I should plan in advance and how much I should leave open to market finds.  I can take my portable computer with me, I have all my recipes there (although not the extensive cookbook collection) as well as my pantry and freezer lists.  I have spent some time coordinating the freezer list to the menu and shopping list so that now, when I plan a menu, it should tell me what I have in the pantry and automatically reduce the quantities on the list as I use items in the menus.  Of course this week will be the test run, so I don’t yet know that it will actually work…..

Needless to say, I have been busy enough that I haven’t actually missed sewing yet.  The jacket is sitting patiently on the side and I can see it, filled with promise, and I know I will get there yet.  I have spent some time knitting so I am getting some fiberly therapy.

I have also been s.l.o.w.l.y sorting through my extensive pattern collection, deciding what I will save and what will get stored in the file cabinets in the sewing room.  It is a very slow process, usually taking a couple of passes through each category.  I find that ruthlessness doesn’t come as easily here as in other aspects of household decluttering.  Perhaps this because patterns have both physical worth (or lack of it) and dream potential.  It is that dream state that is hard to analyze and categorize adequately.

I have also sent off thread packages to most of the people who requested them; you should be receiving them shortly.