Organizing In My Lair

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We didn’t get a hike in Sunday, but we did see both our families and I finished my Big 2026 Vinyl Project. Everybody got a bath; then if they had paper sleeves, they got a bonus round-bottom anti-static sleeve, and if they were missing a sleeve, they got an archival one. (The goal is to keep them all dust-free.)

Then I organized them within an inch of their lives:
A cabinet of records, divided and labeled by genre and type

Does this look as cool as a messy cabinet of vinyl? No, but my brain short-circuits when I have to look through a hundred titles to find what I’m thinking of. Plus I got to use my label maker! A lot! Because those tabbed dividers are labeled on both sides, because what if you look at the records from different angles? You still need to know how they’re organized!

Anyway, this was a fun project and I’m really enjoying listening to everything now. I may not have a huge collection (yet) but I like it.
A panel from a Charlie Brown comic, where he's putting away a record and saying, I'm real proud of my record collection.

Am I An Audiophile Now?

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I got my turntable in 2017 (thanks, blog archives!) but it lived in the big open kitchen/living room area and I never listened to records as much as I wanted, probably because that space was full of noise and other activities (and a kitty that would MEOW if he didn’t like the record).

Now that the records and turntable are downstairs in the sewing lair, I’m listening to something nearly every day. I have a lot more records, too, and I just got another haul of used ones. Clearly it was time for a record cleaning system: A spinning record cleaner and a drying rack on either side of a bathroom sink

This is the “HumminGuru EZ Vinyl Record Washer” and I got it vs the SpinClean because it comes with its own drying rack. (Of course there are options for every aspect of every hobby. You can also spend five figures on a cleaning machine, some of which require their own plumbing.)

The HumminGuru works great, though:
A vinyl record covered in dust and fingerprints
The same record after cleaning, looking pristine

Even the records without visible filth are getting a bath, and they sound so CLEAN–no hiss or pops. It’s also been fun to handle everything. Most of the used ones I’ve gotten are classical, and other than the dirt they’re in beautiful shape. I like to think who had them before me and how often they listened.

Tuesday Tool: New Rivet Press

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Last week I got an email from my health insurance that I’d earned rewards (for being healthy?) and gotten a digital gift card. I immediately spent it on a semi-professional rivet press because–with 5 pairs of jeans under my belt–I was tired of hammering in jean buttons. Behold!

A metal table press for installing hardware on a work surface, surrounded by dies and bags of rivets and buttons.

There are a lot of options for home table presses: Gold Star Tool, C.S. Osborne, the aptly-named GrommetMart, and my beloved KAM Snaps. I went with KAM because they had the best explainer videos/made it really clear what you needed, plus I’ve always had great results from just their hand press and plastic snaps.

Two fabric scraps with test jeans buttons and test rivets installed

My test buttons and rivets went in like butter and I even tested a generic Wawak button and it worked fine! (My only hesitation with KAM Snaps was their limited metal colors–no classic copper–but now I can source hardware from the other places.)

PS – Here’s a deep dive on different jeans brands rivet types.

Twelve Years (Tomorrow)

Karen

Twelve years ago a friend arranged for me and a tall handsome man with kind eyes to be at a birthday dinner. Of course he makes me happy (every day), but he also makes me a better person and a better partner. I can’t imagine a life without him.

Two skeletons from Pompeii gaze at each other. Text says, Love be like, "I will end in heartbreak or death." My partner in life, you made the pain of existence worthwhile.

Thursday Poem

Karen

I’ve been missing Toby and my mom and how things were ten years ago. I love the title on this one, and the green motif that goes from fields to bruises to hope. Something to remember:  “Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,/ Come spring. Every empire will fall:/ I must believe this.”

 

Greensickness
by Laurel Chen

after Gwendolyn Brooks

My wild grief didn’t know where to end.
Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied.
Whole swaths of green swallowed the light.
All around me, the field was growing. I grew out
My hair in every direction. Let the sun freckle my face.
Even in the greenest depths, I crouched
Towards the light. That summer, everything grew
So alive and so alone. A world hushed in green.
Wildest grief grew inside out.

I crawled to the field’s edge, bruises blooming
In every crevice of my palms.
I didn’t know I’d reached a shoreline till I felt it
There: A salt wind lifted
The hair from my neck.
At the edge of every green lies an ocean.
When I saw that blue, I knew then:
This world will end.

Grief is not the only geography I know.
Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,
Come spring. Every empire will fall:
I must believe this. I felt it
Somewhere in the field: my ancestors
Murmuring Go home, go home—soon, soon.
No country wants me back anymore and I’m okay.

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then
Oh, I’ve loved so immensely.
That summer, everything I touched
Was green. All bruises will fade
From green and blue to skin.
Let me grow through this green
And not drown in it.
Let me be lawless and beloved,
Ungovernable and unafraid.
Let me be brave enough to live here.
Let me be precise in my actions.
Let me feel hurt.
I know I can heal.
Let me try again—again and again.

Good Old Irving Berlin

Karen

 

I saw the above cover of a purported Irving Berlin song on Instagram and thought, “No way is that real”  But reader, it IS. It appears in the “list of Irving Berlin songs” Wikipedia entry and Glenn Miller recorded it in 1941:

 

Many other artists followed Glenn in 1941, if we can believe whoever compiled everything on Secondhand Songs. I can’t blame them; this is catchy as hell.

“When they lay him twelve feet deep
I’ll be there to laugh not weep
When that man is dead and gone”

Shirt Season Started Early

Karen

When you have 20 years of blog archives, it’s easy to identify patterns. In this case, every spring I start thinking about sewing button-up shirts. It’s early this year–previous posts were in April or May–but it’s also been an unseasonably warm winter so that makes sense.

I have two at a time going right now: One in a Liberty from deep stash (RIP, Fabric.com) that will be my “Easter dress,” and another in a woven stripe I picked up with the last of a gift card from Sewtopia. (There’s also a cut from Salt Lake Sewciety waiting to be a different button-up shirt pattern.)

Two shirts being sewn with collars but no sleeves. One is small pink floral and one is blue and purple stripes.

(Speaking of blog archives, that Liberty is a different colorway of a shirt I made in 2016 that I hulked out of but still have. Good to know my taste is pretty consistent.)