Category: Musings

In yesterday’s New York Times there was an article about honeybees. It has preyed on my mind. Did you know massive numbers of honeybees have died off or disappeared?

What a disaster. How many plants are pollinated by bees? How much of civilization and our ability to feed ourselves is dependent on the activities of the lowly bee. Do we think of this? Not really I suspect. Bees are something we swat at when they disturb our picnic, or run from because we are allergic to the sting.

Spring is just starting; the bees aren’t really out here. But what would happen if there were no more bees? I read the stories, the theories, have the bees eaten something that has caused them to die off? This strikes me as interesting as I read about changing animal’s metabolisms or feeding them antibiotics en masse so that we can raise them on diets that their bodies weren’t built to handle just because it is convenient to big business. The diets of bees have changed. Beekeepers feed bees food based on the same processed corn that we subject ourselves too. Many natural foods have been so altered or eliminated by corporate agriculture that the bee’s normal food is not available. We are what we eat. What we eat may not only determine how we live, but how we die.

Or is it other things. Environmental changes? Corporate Farming? The arrogance of humanity?

Here we are trying to make ourselves more green, trying to save ourselves from the pending upheaval caused by global warming, and perhaps a greater damage has already been done without our even paying attention.

I have been thinking about Thomas Friedman’s article in the New York Times on April 15, which I am still pondering, and thinking about how I can be more environmentally conscious and take up a smaller footprint. I am thinking about what we eat and what goes into what we eat. I do not believe eating local will solve the world’s problems. I believe we need a global economy even for food, but there are many things that are done better on a local scale. I don’t believe people are going to stop using energy. I believe we need to find new ways to create it, ways less harmful to the earth. But if the bees die, will there be enough time. Or is our fate sealed.

In many ways, my generation and the one before me, the post-war generations have all been reared on experimental technologies, messing with food and chemicals as such a normal part of our lives we really have no idea if we are better off, or worse.

It may not matter. Like Goliath we may be heading for a fall from a source we never even considered worthy of thought.

Well SWAP is officially over and the submissions are absolutely fabulous.  Instead of sewing I have been drooling over the 31 collections and kicking myself for not participating. 

I have never done a SWAP.  I have trouble conceiving of doing a SWAP.  As those who know me well will attest, I have trouble sticking to even the simplest plan without being lured into something else.  Chaos should truly have been my middle name.

That does not mean that I do not greatly admire all those people (they were women, but there might have been a man) who have created coordinated wardrobes of 11 garments.  I am stunned, actually stunned at the variety and quality of the submissions.  Check them out here .  They are positively drool-worthy. Everyone who participated is a winner here just in terms of what they have achieved. 

As a member of Artisan’s Square, I am entitled to a vote, and I have been seriously contemplating the choices.  With 31 submissions, it is hard to choose, and I am trying mightly not to judge arbitrarily.    I have spent time listing what I believe to be the important points, carefully analyzing the photos, and attempting to look at the choices fairly and clearly.  I have narrowed them down to 7 in my mind.  After much deliberation, II have eliminated one and decided on my first and second place picks, but the remaining 4 all vie for third place.  I have yet to discern how I can choose between them.  In the end I will probably have to make some completely arbitrary decision about how well I think they succeeded in creating a wardrobe that meets their stated needs.  A lot of this decision will depend on how the intention of each swap was described and then how the final results are presented, and whether the collection works as a whole to meet the stated goals. 

If you have a better idea let me know.  Perhaps another night’s sleep will help.

Well, I copy the text for the previous post.  It looks great when I am writing it.  It looks great when I preview it at Typepad, all properly aligned and centered, but after I save it and go look at the actual blog, what do I get?

Bah! Humbug!

So what am I doing wrong?  Why isn’t it centered?  Obviously my priestlessly skills don’t extend to HTML.

I know that it is Thursday already, and in fact it is well into Thursday. But Thursday is just Thursday and I am already tired with the pure dreariness of it, whereas Wednesday was wonderful.

Wednesday was SO WONDERFUL that even walking around on the streets of NYC in the cold sleety/rainy/snowy mix, sloshing through combined water and slushy snow was a pleasure.

I started out early at the Poughkeepsie train station (not all that early in fact, I took the 8:00 train),  With all the other intrepid citizens of Poughkeepsie who wanted to take the morning train I stood on the cold platform while the wind blew across the river, transforming our faces into sheets of ice, listening to the announcement that the 8:05 train was boarding on track #3, then listening to the announcement again and again as they announced that the 8:05 train for Grand Central was about to depart from track # 3, and we just stood there.  We stood there because the train lumbered up from the yards, slowed at the platform and the proceeded to continue past it another 150 yards.  Then the train stopped and sat there.  The train came back toward the platform again and passed us, heading back into the yards.  We continued to stand and freeze.  On its third pass the train finally stopped at the platform and the doors opened.  We boarded.  The train left.  All was well.

I got into the city and trudged up to 108th Street to Crown Machine Service, where I dropped off my Elna.  They said it looked like a slow day (it was pretty unpleasant outside at that point) and they would call me in an hour to tell me when it would be ready. and I went back downtown.

Then the fun began!

I met Carolyn of diaryofasewingfanatic and Ann of Gorgeous Things for lunch. The lunch went way to fast for me.  It seemed like we were just beginning to talk and chat about fabric and blogs and all manner of sewing things when, poof, like Cinderella’s pumpkin, the clock had struck 12 and Carolyn had to leave. 

Then Ann and I walked down to Metro Textiles to check out Kashi’s new store.  I had never been to Metro Textiles before, and I was pretty confident I would not go crazy and buy much fabric.  WRONG! 

I thought I wanted the brown eyelet, just from the description, but when I saw it I knew it was not a brown for me.  It was much too warm of a brown and I need a deep dark cool brown, like the brown of really dark dark chocolate, or a rich brown with a bit of red or purple in it.  Oh well.  But before I could even think there was Kashi, pulling out fabric after fabric that would be just right for me.  And more often than not he was right.  He has an eye for looking at you and choosing the right colors, and he picks up on what you like and what you don’t tremendously quickly.   He has found another loyal fan.

I think I got some of the same fabrics that Carolyn described:  a beautiful magenta and brown floral eyelet, the dotted fabric with the embroidery along one edge, and more.  I already had to lug my sewing machne home so I wasn’t about to carry fabric.  Besides "charge it" and "ship it" are two of my favorite phrases.   It may be a bit elitist of me, but the older I get the less interested I am in lugging things around.  I want to sail through life unencumbered, at least as much as I can get away with it,  and just have things arrive at home.

And I got my "Metro Textile Pass"!.

It was only later, on the train home, when I was thinking about what a lovely day it had been and how much fun I had spending some time with Ann and Carolyn, that I realized that I had dragged my camera all around town but had forgotten to take any pictures.

It seems like that is what happened to last week.  I had plans.  I got lost.  Here we are in a new week and I am exactly where I was and the time is gone forever.

I had planned to cut and sew a simple top from one of the Burda Magazines.  In my head I thought it was January 2007, but it was not.  I finally found it in the December 2006 issue.  Of course I had hidden the December issue in a stack of fabric (in anticipation of cutting perhaps?) and so the search took longer than necessary.

This is the top:

It is pretty simple and even I should be able to produce this pretty quickly.  I am not that good at knits yet, and I can’t tell by looking if this pattern or shape will fit, so there will be at least one "muslin" in some kind of inexpensive knit.  This doesn’t bother me.  I can’t tell in a store either which tops will look fabulous and which will look just terrible.  With knits, the apparently subtle differences in cut and the stretch and drape of the fabrics all seem to make a difference.

Or perhaps I am just difficult.

At any rate, finally got the pattern traced and cut:

Now I at least have somethng to work with. 

It is not that late, only after 10, but I am still suffering a little residual exhaustion from last week.  Or perhaps I have just lost that will to drive myself to exhaustion.  If I were ready for some actual sewing perhaps I would just leap right in.  With cutting out, even on knits, or especially on knits as they tend to have minds of their own and cling to themselves when I least expect it, cutting late at night is not a good idea.

Besides, I am obsessed with getting a little further on a knitting project.

We drove home from Tennessee a day early, not realizing that while we were cruising up I81 in the brilliant sunshine the storm we were expecting to bring ice and snow had stalled over the Midwest.

Given a reprieve, we spent part of Saturday morning tooling around Northeastern Pennsylvania and the lake Wallenpaupack area where G worked at a camp owned by the Brooklyn YMCA on one of the smaller neighboring lakes.  He couldn’t remember if the lake was near Hawley or Tafton so we just explored the lovely area.  The camp is apparently long gone, and we had trouble finding anyone who remembered a camp which apparently closed more than 50 years ago, but it was nice just to putter about the countryside.

We used to spend time just wandering and puttering, stopping here and there and seeing whatever we found.  But the 21st century obsession with not wasting time caught up with us and lately it seems we rush here and there, always trying to do more, with fewer stops just to sit and let the world wander by.  We need to try slow down, appreciate the time to sit and relax, and let the world move a little more slowly.

I will leave you with this, a street sign found about a mile from where the one-time-campsite was located (now a nice housing development).  It bears no relation to G’s youth, but the name on the street sign was G’s father’s name, although there are probably lots of Herman Steiners in the world.  We just found it interesting in the self-absorbed way that we humans are always looking at ways to tie what we see into our own personal lives and stories, no matter how distant they may be.

I am off to indulge in holiday festivities, savoring pleasures both adult and childlike.  In between I shall indulge myself by reading about the frivoloties of the fashionable life.

See you again in 2007.

I had some time this weekend for some fiber-related activities and it was difficult to make a choice.  I really wanted to work on the jacket and finish it.  But I also wanted to finish up the sweater I have been knitting so it was really difficult to make a decision. 

That always seems to be my biggest problem, deciding what I wish to work on.  It is actually quite a luxury, having the leisure to decide what interest I wish to indulge on any given day; the issue is not really that there is no time, but that there are so many options to fill that time. (well perhaps there could be more time as well)  I really don’t stress about this a lot, until I get too many unfinished objects on my plate, a situation I have been approaching again recently.   I think I have finally come to terms with the idea that I am not a particularly focused person.

Long ago I accepted the fact that I am never going to be one of those people who is focused on a career, a person who defines herself by what she does for a living.  G is one of those people, and I actually know quite a few of them and admire them greatly.  They have something in their personality that I just don’t possess.  I get all wrapped up in whatever I am doing, and whatever job or career I am pursuing until I get bored and then I move on to something else.  I don’t regret any of the choices I have made in my professional life and I have never been one to define who I am by what I do.

By the same token I don’t really define myself by my hobbies.  They tend to be longer lasting than my interests in various careers, but they too wax and wane.  I actually am interested in sewing now, although I know you have heard more thoughts and dreams of sewing than you have seen concrete results.  Part of this is because it is easier to make time for knitting — I can do it sitting with DH in front of the TV, whereas sewing requires that I isolate myself more.  I feel like I am focusing more on the sewing even though I did not get any sewing time in last week due to the general combination of seasonal activities and the resurgence of construction on the deck, including more meetings with contractors, more errors and oversights, and further changes in the plans.

The sweater needed to be finished because I want to wear it to Christmas Eve Dinner at our neighbor’s house.  But I also wanted to work on my jacket.  I had hoped that I would be able to wear the jacket into NYC when I meet my friend Mary on Tuesday.  But that was beginning to look less likely.  Aside from the fact that I haven’t cut the lining yet, the weather does not look promising for that jacket.  Despite the warm weather we have been having, it will cool down some, and it will not be warm enough to wear the jacket as outerwear.  The cut of the jacket is not really meant to be a suit-type jacket under a coat, and I don’t think I have an appropriate coat to wear over it.  So that is out.  What a relief.

Oddly enough, in many aspects of my life I work very well under pressure and deadlines, but not with my sewing and knitting.  Perhaps because this time is for me also a creative and relaxing period, and pressure is not relaxing, nor does it allow the mental freedom to channel whatever little creativity I might possess.

Finishing the sweater was the right decision for me this weekend. I am wearing it as I write this and it makes me very happy.  I am still trying to find ways to balance my knitting and sewing time, but at least I am free of deadlines and I can be inspired to work on whatever catches my fancy.  The jacket is still high on my list, as are all the other projects I have started this year and never finished. But there is no pressure.

I suppose it would sound arrogant to say that the test was too easy.