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Restingmotion

Monday Musings and Reminiscences of a trip to NYC

Well it seems that time just got away from me and all of last week went by in a blur. There are several posts that were composed mentally but never committed to paper or computer and now they are lost in the ephemera.

At the beginning of Father’s Day Weekend I still had such high hopes of leaping into my sewing. I wanted to make a dress to wear the next Friday (i had been hoping to do this for some time) to meet some friends during the day and to go to the symphony with my DH in the evening. But sewing time was not available and on Monday I realized that it was simply not going to happen, and in fact I had worked myself into such a lather of stress over not being able to sew that my creative instincts were literally being strangled.

I know when this happens it is time to step back. I told myself that I didn’t need to sew. After the first day, when I thought I looked like a sack of potatoes and was convinced I had nothing to wear, I calmed down and looked in my closet only to find that I did indeed have clothes and that I looked fine and would look fine on Friday.

That obstacle overcome, I was ready to curl up and read a book, deal with the many meetings that were scheduled last week, and just relax.

Then Friday rolled around and I went in to NYC to meet Carolyn and a couple of other sewing friends for lunch and an afternoon of shopping. It was a fabulous afternoon with fabulous women. Carolyn, who is much more together than I have been of late, has already written all about in far more charming detail than I think I can muster.

After chattering away through lunch, completely wrapped up in our conversations and oblivious to the fact that the restaurant was emptying out and potential shopping time was slipping by, we suddenly came to our senses and headed out the door.

The first stop was MJ Trim where Carolyn needed some trim for a special project and I just looked around hoping to learn some of the secrets of Carolyn’s remarkable ability to come up with the perfect trim for a project — one that enhances the garment without overpowering or drawing too much attention to itself.

Here are Carolyn and myself contemplating a few trim choices. Carolyn had good suggestions for everyone’s trim choices and also gently set us straight when we were contemplating bright pretty colors and trims that simply made too strong a statement on their own — not that they weren’t worthy, but that their very strength of character (and price) made them suitable only if a specific project was in mind.

I don’t often managed to keep a project in mind when I am in a trim store….I just grab for anything pretty and all rational thought just leaves my head, but I did find one trim that was deemed useful and versatile, and Carolyn had ideas that had never occurred to me:

This little light and airy sequined trim is perfect for me. I immediately had one idea for its use and then Carolyn gave me new ideas. Now that I am home I have several potential projects in mind so I do not think that this is something that is going to languish very long.

Well, that depends on what I actually get around to sewing…..

We also looked at buttons, where Joanna found the perfect button for a handbag she is knitting. I avoided looking at buttons (except for Joanna) as I have a sizable button collection which does not need general expansion except when I need a specific button for a specific project.

But I was entranced by the various sew on rhinestones and jewels, especially these sew-on jewels. You know there have been a lot of these jewels showing up in the spring collections, and there are also a couple of things coming up for fall. Looking at these little gems, and thinking about the photos I have saved in my inspiration file, I began to get an idea for a project that might materialize later this fall. I have the perfect fabric in mind, and an idea is taking shape, but I will have to work out the specific details first as I will need to determine how many jewels I will need and in what shapes and colors. Look for an update as we get closer to the cool weather.

Then we all trekked over to Metro Textiles, where I thought I was fairly moderate in my purchases, but then moderate is a rather vague term. Carolyn was definitely in control and she adhered to the principles of her fabric moratorium admirably. While we were at Metro Textiles, we met Trina, who recently started a blog, the slapdash sewist and who writes wittily about sewing and the pleasures of turning out fun clothes that are far more clever and interesting than anything I ever make.

Friday night I met G in the city for a symphony concert and we had a slow weekend without any sewing. Doesn’t this refrain begin to get boring after a while?

But I am waiting for the fabric to arrive. Kashi said he would ship Monday so I expect my package today. If I am lucky I will get two packages of fabric today, as I was back in NYC on Monday, meeting another friend, and I ran back to the garment district to stop in at Rosen and Chadick, where I had actually made a reconnaissance run before meeting up with everyone for lunch on Friday, but even then, it was late Monday by the time I got to the store, so the package might not have gone out until today…..

Now, I want to sew and waiting for fabric is sooooo boring….

(you know I have nothing else to sew in this entire house).

June 26, 2007
Crazy for wool.

Now what would possess a person, in the middle of a heat wave, where it is not only impossibly hot, but humid as well, to abandon the pleasures of knitting cool, sport-weight linen, and pick up wool on size 13 needles?

Tell me I am crazy.

I would whole-heartedly agree.

The Decadent Fibers wool from last fall has come to life again, this time alternating balls in simple reverse stockinette stitch. I am knitting a sleeveless cowl or turtle or funnel-neck. I am not sure which yet because I am not sure about how close I will be cutting it with the yarn. I have enough for the shell, and something leftover for the neckline, but I don’t really know what yet. I am knitting in one piece bottom up, around the shoulders and back down and am somewhere in the armhole shaping right now but have not yet gotten to the neck shaping.

That is enough. I can return to the linen.

I think I just needed something fast and colorful, something where progress could be determined after minutes of knitting, not hours.

June 26, 2007
Deck progress (no knitting)

May was cooler than usual and I couldn’t get any of the contractors to show up and work on my ongoing deck project. So why do they pick the hottest week of the summer-so-far to all show up and work — and why do I have to keep dragging myself out there in the hottest part of the afternoon, in the sunniest part of the yard, to look at everything and answer questions?

I am drained, I tell you just drained.

But it is looking good:

The privacy wall on the north end of the deck, protecting us from the neighbor and people coming down the driveway. And another view of the same thing seen from across the deck:

Generally I think it looks great. But do you notice that the colors don’t match? The deck is gray Correct Deck as specified in the contract. The contract "deck built according to plans". The contractor tells me they don’t have to paint the wooden parts of the deck to match the gray deck material because the contract doesn’t specifically say that it must be painted. He is right, the word "paint" does not occur. It never occurred to me that it needed to. I thought that if you are building a gray Correct Deck deck, you would make everything match (and this contractor came very highly recommended by many people).

There is a whole lot of painting to be done here.

What does this have to do with knitting? Nothing except that the exasperation factor is eating into my knitting time. And I would never promise someone a gray cashmere sweater and then knit the collar and button bands out of brown cotton while using the excuse "you said the sweater should be cashmere, you didn’t say anything about the collar".

It probably isn’t the same thing, but it sure looks that way to me. It certainly has been a learning experience.

June 19, 2007
How Michael Ondaatje changed how I think about Sewing

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.

June 16, 2007
Winding

Well, I have not started the front of the linen tank yet, but tonight is knitting night and therefore I am certain that some knitting will take place.

I have however, learned something from the half of this sweater, and I am determined to avoid the endless tangles. The light beige yarn was rewound the first time around. But the blue, and the second skein of taupe are sill in their initial center-pull balls. Although I have started rewinding the blue, I don’t think I will finish both before tonight’s knitting group. Sitting and winding is almost as nice as sitting and knitting however, so I dont’ see a problem here.

The little taupe balls are the left-over bits of the first skein: pre- post, and mid- knot, surgically disentangled.

June 14, 2007
She’s making a list…

Today was supposed to be a Perfect Sewing Day, but well, it wasn’t. In fact, the sewing aspects of my plan for the day were completely not realized and now, although it is only 9:30, I am having trouble focusing on the idea that I could start now. So I have been refining my list of things that need to be sewn.

So although I am rather chomping at the bit at this thinking-about-sewing thing without enough actual sewing going on, I think I will ramble about my recent sewing thoughts, before they too get lost in the general shuffle and focus on other things that seems to be my life right now.

It kind of dawned on me this week, actually as I was out in the garden pulling weeds, that it is summertime and I have done very little of my summertime sewing. Now I don’t need much in terms of new summer clothes this year but that is really besides the point. I was thinking about clothes and the clothes I want to make.

Carolyn posted a picture of a really cute new tank top she made from a pretty piece of border eyelet that she got from Kashi at Metro Textiles. Now I bought that same eyelet or a very similar one, back in March but haven’t made it up yet. So I started thinking about those fabrics, purchased with such high hopes in early March (see this post ), before my life changed, and started thinking about which of those fabrics I really needed to make up now. Not surprisingly, I have come to different conclusions that Carolyn, but that is one of the things that makes this sewing community so interesting, we have so many ideas and approaches to this shared passion and there is always something more to learn. Now I don’t see that particular fabric as particularly trendy and I can see ways to use it. But although I realize that there are fabrics that are trendy, for the most part I think it is how a fabric is used that makes it trendy. I don’t think I buy many fabrics that are limited to a short time-span for use. Now I could use those fabrics in a way that would limit their life, but I am pretty consistent in my style, and there is very little that I make or wear that is "of a season". Of course Carolyn has her style sense much more on the fashion pulse than I, and I tend border more on "fuddy duddy" so perhaps I should pay more attention

Anyway, so I have been thinking about what I actually want to get made this season, and there are a couple of things from that Metro Textiles pile that I want to get made up really soon. And there are a couple of other things, two of the bundles on the pile I showed you here and a few other things I still need to pull out. So when I have a few moments here and there I shall prepare a list and a pile, not neglecting that big old stack of knits either, so that when actual sewing time presents itself, I will be raring to go.

But….

In the meantime, while I am still trying to get my head around summer, fall is just around the corner and the magazines and catalogs are starting to roll in.

Look what came in a catalog from Bergdorf Goodman:

Alberta Ferretti wool and cashmere; $1990.

Dream on.

I think I’ve seen a pattern I can adapt that from.

June 13, 2007
Just in Time

Just as I my arms were beginning to ache and my fingers were beginning to rebel…
Just as my frustration level was about to outgrow the bounds of my control….
Just as I thought that double moss stitch was the cruelest form of knitting torture…
Just as I thought I would abandon knitting altogether to avoid another row….

I realized that I was almost done with the back of the linen tank.

Whew!!

Once I knew that all that was left was the little bit of shoulder shaping my resolve strengthened and I knew I could finish.

Actually once I got back into my knitting groove it went quickly.

Now for the front. I am filled with anticipation and dread. The bottom will be easy, the alternating stripes, the thrill of changing yarn….but then comes the dreaded expanse of double moss stitch, endless back and forth, knitting stretching to the end of the horizon like a sea becalmed.

Well, perhaps it won’t be that bad.

At least I can dream of wearing a cool linen tank. I can dream of the next project, and I can even enjoy knitting the dreaded double moss stitch, and now that I have passed the "half-way hump" perhaps the front will go faster and I will finish before I even have a chance to realize how quickly it has gone.

June 13, 2007
Monday Musings

A collection of random thoughts on sewing, clothing, and other fiber-related thoughts.

I have been sorting through the fabric collection and in one box, hidden among the neatly folded fabric I found a small stash of ribbons and trims. Now currently I keep ribbon separately, in a drawer under my file cabinet, but this was not always the case.

I had almost forgotten this beautiful deep maroon trim. It is darker than it appears in the photo and very long. I also only have a short piece, not a full yard, about 32 inches total. I have no idea what I thought I would do with it, but I do recall I fished it out of a remnant box and paid about $1 for it. Looking at it this weekend all I could think of would be ends on a scarf. I could use doubled silk chiffon or georgette and put the trim on the ends, or perhaps I could knit something out of a fine silk yarn if I can find the right color, perhaps a simple stitch with just a bit of a lacy pattern just a little bit above where the trim is attached.

I found this in the same box. I have much more of this, at least 4 or 5 yards. I have no idea what I planned to do with it, but there are far more possibilities. I don’t think this will be used this summer. Although it looks heavy with the embroidery, the background fabric is actually a very lightweight cotton, almost like a fine batiste or voile. There were a few other ribbons and trims as well, not as inspiring individually, but perfect for some project or another. They have all been added to the trim drawer, which reminds me that I have piled a few things in there lately without organizing them, so it is time to do that again soon.

I was at JoAnn Fabrics last week looking for some patterns on sale and I picked up this newest issue of Quilting Arts Magazine. Now I don’t quilt, and really have had no interest in quilting, but I love this magazine. I have an ever expanding collection although I only buy them when I happen to see one. I love the ideas and it always makes me think about sewing and art and fiber in new ways.

I curled up with this magazine one afternoon this weekend and passed a happy hour or two just perusing the pages and dreaming. If anything will ever get me interested in non-garment sewing, this magazine might do it. And if it doesn’t that is OK too because I love the way it inspires me to think differently and look at things differently.

Perhaps I should just get a subscription because I get so much pleasure just from reading each issue. I suppose there is a place for inspiration even if never directly leads to practical applications.

I didn’t make this skirt. I bought it at Sears last summer when I suddenly lost a lot of weight and needed something to wear in a hurry. It was early July and already on sale. I paid something like $10.00.

I actually have worn it more this summer than I did last summer, even though I suppose it was last summer’s trend. Although I still get compliments every time I wear it. I needed to sew the hook and eye back on this weekend. Why do commercial closures always come off?

Anyway mending the skirt made me think about summer skirts and seasonal clothes. This is definitely a trendy item. But I still love it. I would love to find prints like this to sew up, but I never quite manage to do so. I have, on occasion, thought of cutting up my grandmother’s old printed tablecloths, but the fabric is heavier, and I somehow can’t convince myself that I wouldn’t just look like I was wearing an old tablecloth. I like vintage to some extent but I can’t pull off full-on-vintage it is just not my style. And although I have a friend who could make a skirt from a tablecloth and look fabulous I don’t have confidence that I could pull that off.

But the skirt does make me think of seasonal styles and prints and fabrics and remind me of some of the lovely things I bought at Metro Textiles earlier this spring, with great plans to make them up. What I really need to do is take some time and pull out a few pieces that I think must be made this summer and make them up.

And while I am thinking of current styles and fabric and design inspirations, I am also behind on my cut and past activities, making collages of my magazine style clippings. I managed to look through the ever expanding box of clippings and put together two more pages using just a fraction of the inspirations I have saved from the last couple of months:

I don’t know why I can’t manage the same kind of time and attention to detail and layout that I give to these very personal collages and apply it to our photo albums, which are woefully behind.

June 11, 2007
Strawberries

The little wild strawberries that make their home in various parts of my yard are ripe:

They are very sweet and good.

The local strawberry season has also begun for the more commercial variety of strawberries. Our favorite U-Pick farm stopped growing strawberries a couple of years ago and we missed it terribly, but it is not really worth driving to the opposite end of the county to pick strawberries (25 – 30 miles) so we just bought baskets at farm stands.

Another orchard started having some self-pick strawberry fields this year and we went up today. After picking 10 pounds of strawberries I could hardly stand up, and I am not sure it was totally worthwhile.

The old strawberry farm had a small, intensely flavorful strawberry, which I loved. These strawberries are large and fairly firm. It is easy to pick them without bruising them. But they don’t have that intense strawberry flavor that the best strawberries should have, and that I expect when I have just picked them off the vine. Even when they are ripe at the edge of over-ripeness the flavor is lacking. This kind of strawberry I can buy in the store without consequence to my back.

These were the prices at the farm stand:

U-Pick $1.49 per pound
Pre-picked $4.29 per quart

When I got home I weighed a quart basket and it was about a pound. So the money savings even made up for the gas spent driving to the farm and back (about a gallon) But the strawberries were no better than those in the store, which are cheaper now (of course I don’t know what the actual energy cost to get them to me is either).

What I want to find is a farm that still grows the old-fashioned, flavorful strawberries that would perfume the house and had that rich strawberry flavor. Those strawberries would be worth bending over and picking, or worth paying for.

Meanwhile I will eat all the little wild strawberries that I can find. Since I am behind on weeding this year, they are plentiful.

June 10, 2007
This and That

When I began knitting, my mom was kind enough to give me a swift and a ball winder, and I have made great use of them over the years. They were wonderful, functional, Japanese plastic devices that worked very well. Then, a couple of years ago the swift broke — goodness knows how, I think a cat was involved somehow, and I needed another. I was given this nice wooden swift and the lovely wooden ball winder shown next to it.

These are beautiful devices. However they have one problem. The swift does not fit on my sewing table or any of the counters in the house. You see, the part that is supposed to clamp to the table top is about 1/4 inch to short to fit around my counter edges or table top edges. The old swift was made with a clamp much like the ones shown on the ball winder and it could fit anywhere, but the new swift has this lovely wooden clamp that is just a smidge to small, and it fits nowhere except on the room divider between the entry hall and the dining room.

I set it up some weeks ago to wind the linen, and as I intended to wind more yarn, I never took it down. Now I am wondering if it can just become a permanent or at least moderately permanent part of our decor — I might be convinced to take it down for parties for example if I could just leave it up for every day. I would be more than willing to compromise — for example I could stop complaining about the pile of sunglasses and other things that are stored on the kitchen counter near the coffee pot — in exchange for permanent swift mounting.

So far most visitors to the house have no idea what it is anyway and this leads to some interesting conversations. People come up with the most outlandish ideas.

The two missing blue yarns arrived for the Anny Blatt sweater. Now I just need to finish something so I can move on to this project. Something else arrived in that box as well. You would be completely naive if you think I can call a yarn store and only request two missing skeins of yarn without ordering something else — it would hardly be worth the postage after all. But you will just have to wait to see what that something might be. I WILL get to it this summer, even if some other project gets bumped further down the list. Life is a constantly rejiggering of lists after all.

And I am knitting on the linen tanks. I am about 5 1/2 inches above the armhole shaping and making good progress. After a period of just not wanting to pick up the needles I have returned to a more productive frame of mind and I just can’t wait to sit and knit in the evening. May this bit of knitting fever continue.

June 10, 2007