And honestly, she’s not wrong. The less time you spend wrapped up in work, the more time you can spend building community and resting so you can create change. Hmm….
Tuesday Project Roundup: SEWING FOR TOBY
This is not a drill: I made cat clothes and Toby wore them…for about 24 (glorious) hours. Why? He has to wear a glucose monitor to check how the insulin is working. It’s a human monitor that supposedly can stick on for up to 14 days, but we didn’t know if he would immediately try to lick it off.
So we had the vet put him in a medical shirt after they applied the monitor Saturday morning. He hated it. He looked like a sad, scared sausage in a casing–and that’s after I hiked it up from snapping around his tail.
I bit my nails for an hour or so and then thought, “Wait. I have baby clothes patterns. I have so much fabric. I can MAKE my cat a better shirt.” Reader, I did:
I used the Brindille and Twig free Ringer Tee pattern (last made for a human baby) and cut the back on the flat, adding an overlap for a placket. I finished all the edges with foldover elastic and used my trusty KAM Snaps.
He tolerated that shirt so much better (you can see he’s less mad about it) but the neck was still a little low. So I made another one that afternoon, using the neck binding piece from the pattern…and leftover fabric from a shirt for Doc (!!!). Reader, I died. It was so cute:
Toby deigned to wear his second shirt overnight and we took it off Sunday for supervised “naked” time. In hindsight that was a mistake, since he was having none of it when we tried to put it back on while we left for a visit Sunday. But he’d left the monitor alone for that visit, and it was still on Monday morning, so we made a deal that he didn’t have to wear clothes if he didn’t try to tear off his monitor.
Hooray for sewing, though–I solved a problem in about 20 minutes (and enjoyed seeing my baby in a handmade outfit).
Friday Links
1. I’ve made 3 different pasta salads in the last week. And not fancy ones, more like the ones my grandma and mom made, the kind you get a a Midwestern church potluck. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Taste of Home will show you (make sure you read the head notes for high praise such as “This will feed a lot of people”).
2. The classic text tones as dance moves:
@cost_n_mayor Reply to @krustykrustykrab ♬ original sound – Cost n’ Mayor
3. Really feeling this, but enjoy the long weekend regardless.
Taking A Break From Rage: Jewelry-Making Class!
I escaped during the workday Tuesday and met our Canadian friend at B. Golden Jewelry School, which I’ve heard about for years but never looked in to. Reader, it was so fun! Our class was an “intro to precious metal clay,” aka a mix of silver dust and binders that acts just like clay.
You roll it out on a texture plate and cut it to shape, then let it dry a little. (If you’re friends with our friend, you can also bring a 3D object and use her silicon mold-making supplies to make a mold of it and then press the clay into that mold.)
Then–the exciting part!–you torch fire it with an acetylene torch (!) to burn away (!!) the organic binders in the clay and sinter the silver dust into a solid.
Then you scrub off the residue from the firing and add patina if you want, and polish it all up:
And then you have JEWELS! That are fine silver, that you MADE! Including a couple casts of a Toby claw that I’m already planning on learning how to add a cap and a bail to:
I haven’t talked about it here but this year I’ve gotten into fine jewelry, which started when I got some of my mom’s to wear. Is jewelry making the next step? Can I afford a gold smithing hobby? It’s probably about the same as a gold collecting hobby… 
Wednesday Poem
An excerpt from “Right to Life” by Marge Piercy; full poem is here if you want to be even more fired up.
… I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold
shares in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back. My life
is a non-negotiable demand.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Patio Chair Cushions (so you can watch your rights erode in comfort)
Even though I was pondering fancy “egg” chairs, I ended up buying some mod IKEA chairs for the patio. The IKEA chair pads made me sad (too thin and too beige) so I made my own:
Joann had outdoor foam in a 15×17 inch size so I didn’t even have to cut it. I used an outdoor jacquard that was on sale from there, continuous zipper coil from Wawak, and the Sailrite tutorial I used for the chaise slipcover.
It took me three weeks or so to get around to making these, but the actual sewing time was under an hour. And now we can sit more comfortably and watch the slowpocalypse from the deck!
It’s Morning In America
…and a gun or a corpse has more rights than I do! (No, I hadn’t read the news when I posted Friday.) Here are some memes and links to enjoy if you, too, have been reduced to a vessel. But guess what? If I can’t be a person, I can be a problem.
View this post on Instagram
And some things I read over the weekend that gave the tiniest glimmers of hope:
AOC’s thread on what Democrats can do now
The NY Times on how to discipline a rogue court
Mass online volunteer training happening July 17
A few questions you can ask yourself on hopeless days
Friday Links
1. The Summer Solstice was overshadowed by cat health crises this week, but happy belated longest day. Maybe you recited the Orphic Hymn to the Sun?
Agile and vig’rous, venerable Sun,
Fiery and bright around the heav’ns you run,
Foe to the wicked, but the good man’s guide,
O’er all his steps propitious you preside.
2, Marimekko has launched a library of all its fabric prints (!) called the Maripedia. Someday I’m gonna visit those Scandinavian countries and return with so much Marimekko and Josef Frank.
3. This. So much this.
Anybody else watch trailers lately and you’re like, “No thanks, I’m trying not to feel things”
— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) June 12, 2022
Thursday Poem
I try to be careful about sunscreen but I’m at the age where any sun exposure really brings all the latent UV damage to the surface of my skin. (Oh well, I’m not going to avoid the life-giving daystar.) Looking in the mirror and thinking about all the summers past reminded me of this poem
Dark Charms
by Dorianne Laux
Eventually the future shows up everywhere:
those burly summers and unslept nights in deep
lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
Here’s the corner store grown to a condo,
the bike reduced to one spinning wheel,
the ghost of a dog that used to be, her trail
no longer trodden, just a dip in the weeds.
The clear water we drank as thirsty children
still runs through our veins. Stars we saw then
we still see now, only fewer, dimmer, less often.
The old tunes play and continue to move us
in spite of our learning, the wraith of romance,
lost innocence, literature, the death of the poets.
We continue to speak, if only in whispers,
to something inside us that longs to be named.
We name it the past and drag it behind us,
bag like a lung filled with shadow and song,
dreams of running, the keys to lost names.
Feelings And Memes
Toby was a champ at the vet and barely stopped eating just now when I gave him his first unsupervised insulin injection. So that’s a relief. But I’m sure he feels this just as hard as I do:
This is so accurate and I change what side of the bus I sit on every hour, sometimes:
Live footage of me at my job:
View this post on Instagram