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Today

January 20, 2021 By Karen in poems No Comments

Today marks two years since my mom died of pancreatic cancer. It’s also Inauguration Day and the person responsible for so much needless suffering over the last four years is losing power. The best of times, the worst of times.

I don’t have a lot to say today. I saw this poem last week, linked in Laura Olin’s newsletter, and it made me cry–I think because of the hope, and tiny beautiful things in with the awful things.

 

You Can’t Have It All

Barbara Ras

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.

Friday Links

January 15, 2021 By Karen in Friday Unrelated Information No Comments

1. Sea shanties are all over social media and I am here for it. In fact, I’m about ready to sign up for TikTok, since that’s where they’re all starting. This bass dueted a solo this Scottish postman put up:

@_luke.the.voice_##duet with @nthnevnss love this 🥰🥰##stitch ##viral ##sing ##fyp ##foru ##foryou ##xyzbca ##xyzcba ##blowthisup♬ original sound – N A T H A N E V A N S S

And then it spread:

@jonnystewartbass##duet with @the.bobbybass SHANTY TIME once again! Adding a lower middle harmony 🙂 @nathanevanss @_luke.the.voice_ @apsloan01 ##shantytok ##wellerman♬ original sound – N A T H A N E V A N S S

And now everyone is doing it:

@majin.bae##duet with @sampopemusic I- uh, *smoke bomb!* ##literalduet ##seashanty ##rowmebullyboys ##piratecore ##apple ##fyp ##MoneyTok ##larpersoftiktok
♬ original sound – Sam Pope

 

2. He has a point:

3. It’s been a long two weeks (remember the coup attempt?!) but I have Monday off. I’m taking Tuesday off, too, so I will be back on Wednesday–a day that’s going to be great (Inauguration Day) and terrible (the second anniversary of my mom’s death). Such is life, I guess. Have a good weekend, friends.

Thursday Reading

January 14, 2021 By Karen in essays, feminism No Comments

I’ve been sitting on this article for a few weeks now, but it seems like a good time to post about “The Myth of the Male Bumbler“–as more and more violent insurrectionists are arrested, how many of them will say they just got carried away in the spur of the moment? They didn’t realize what other people had planned? Gosh!

As Lili Loofbourow writes in The Week,

“Incompetence is less damaging than malice. And men—particularly powerful men—use that loophole like corporations use off-shore accounts. The bumbler takes one of our culture’s most muscular myths—that men are clueless—and weaponizes it into an alibi.”

It’s a great piece (if you want your blood to boil) and after you read it, you’re going to see that alibi of incompetence everywhere.

Wednesday Poem

January 13, 2021 By Karen in poems No Comments

It’s been a minute since we’ve had any Mary Oliver. I’ve posted this before but seeing the poem typeset is nice (from my new fav account). Also: “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

 

Mega Project Post: The Cascade Duffle Coat

January 12, 2021 By Karen in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup 2 Comments

Back in November I got it in my head to make a bright plaid duffle coat–and here it is! It was definitely the most involved project I’ve ever done, in terms of steps and specialty materials, but nothing about this was really very complicated. It just took time, which was a lovely way to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s. (It also helped that my Bernina sewed through everything beautifully and without complaint. Unasked-for life advice: Buy the deluxe sewing machine, you will never regret it.)

Anyway! Here is my NEW COAT:

 

CONSTRUCTION
The pattern includes pieces to interface strategic points of wear (front and back yokes, armscyes, behind the pockets) but I added a back stay out of muslin, as well. I debated interfacing the full fronts but decided against it; we’ll see if I regret this and the fronts gets droopy.

I used weft interfacing everywhere except the shoulders and back yoke,where I switched to hair canvas. I also added shoulder pads and the first sleeve heads I’ve ever used (following this how-to).

The combo of hair canvas, shoulder pads, and sleeve heads makes for a heavily tailored shoulder–here it is standing up on its own (!).

I’m pretty happy with how the tailoring additions worked, though: I cut a straight size 12 and the shoulders were just a hair too big. I opted to keep them too big because I plan to keep lifting, so the shoulder pads and sleeve heads help to fill out that extra quarter inch until my muscles do.

 

DETAILS
Part of what made this such a fun project to get wrapped up in was planning and executing the details to make it fancy, like a $400 ready-to-wear J. Crew coat. I added satin bias trim in between the lining and the facing, and I added a double welt interior chest pocket (following this tutorial).

I’m also really tickled by the zipper I found. This is a YKK “Everbright” with a custom pull, which I didn’t think you could get outside of the Garment District. But then I stumbled on Zipper and Thread out of New Jersey, who will do single zippers in a custom length with your choice of pull.

I also added a coat chain for hanging, for even more fanciness:

PATTERN THOUGHTS
This was just beautifully drafted. I already knew the Grainline block works well for my body (I didn’t even have to lengthen the sleeves!) but I was really impressed by how everything went together so precisely. The faced hems were a revelation and the only way I’m doing a bagged lining ever again–they ensure an even turn and no droopy hem.

I have just two minor quibbles–one is that Grainline just adds a bottom extension to the shorter version to get a long version, rather than including a new pattern piece for the longer version (I drafted one anyway to eliminate that seam). My other issue is that the underlap of the front zipper is the same size as the overlap, which means you have to press like hell to get the center front to lie flat. Including a separate piece for the underlap that’s a little smaller to accommodate for turn of cloth would have been more in line with how precisely drafted the rest of this is.

 

IN CONCLUSION:
I love this coat. I don’t think I realized it would be close to a 30 hour project so I kind of wish I had splashed out on slightly nicer fabric, but I do love all the Bob Ross colors in it. While making it, I was also worried the style would be a little too classic/preppy to work with my wardrobe, but it looks good with all my boots and knit tops.

 

SOURCES:
Pattern – Cascade Duffle Coat from Grainline Studio
Coat fabric – Fabric.com
Quilted lining and fusible hair canvas – Farmhouse Fabrics
Sleeve lining – stash
Weft interfacing, shoulder pads, and sleeve heads – Wawak
Toggle closures and satin bias trim – Pacific Trim
Coat chain – Etsy
#5 separating zipper – Zipper and Thread

A New Week

January 11, 2021 By Karen in quotes No Comments

It’s  a new week and here are some words for it, from Sister Corita Kent.

It’s hard not to look at the date of this (40 years ago) and be discouraged at how far we still have to go to “share as equals” but… the crocuses have always come up.

 

Friday Links

January 8, 2021 By Karen in Friday Unrelated Information

1. This is perhaps the best use of the internet I’ve ever seen (also the Animaniacs reboot is so good):

Animaniacs is the key to all of this pic.twitter.com/uXcUbf3ARh

— schmoyoho, accent on the ho ho hooooooooo (@schmoyoho) January 7, 2021

(Original video for context)

2. I had a project start up this week that requires video interviews and wow I am not used to seeing and talking to people.

(via)

 

3. Remember:

“If you’re reading this, you do too.“

“But her emails!”

January 7, 2021 By Karen in politics

Slow news day yesterday, huh? Just kidding, I didn’t do any work after about 2:00 pm here and was glued to Twitter yesterday. On one hand, I’m not surprised at all–this is what liberals were worried about in 2016 and we got laughed at and called snowflakes–and on the other hand I’m still shocked at the utter confidence of white men not even trying to disguise who they are as they attempt a fucking coup.

Absolutely unbelievable footage in this Vice article: Storm the Capitol as a White Man and You’ll Get It (A Selfie With a Cop)

 

Hey Alexa, what is white privilege?:

‘White privilege is storming the capitol building and not getting shot’.

— Francis Maxwell (@francismmaxwell) January 6, 2021

(Not only did this guy somehow not get attacked or killed by the police, he get a fucking interview with the New York Times)

 

Via

 

 

 

2016: it’s only four years, how bad can it get

2021: are the armed insurrectionists storming the Capitol aware that there is a plague ravaging the land

— Owl! at the Library 😴🧙‍♀️ (@SketchesbyBoze) January 7, 2021

 

But guess what?

 

Coats On The Brain

January 6, 2021 By Karen in sewing

I’ll get some good pictures of the duffel coat I finished over Christmas break and write that up…but why not rush into another tailoring project? I had such a good time and was so impressed with the pattern that I want to make more coats–and Grainline makes another coat style. Plus, I’ve discovered Linton Tweeds (who weave the fabric for Chanel jackets!).

The Yates Coat 

 

That TWEED! I may have already ordered a swatch and it’s a perfect spring coating weight….

 

Can’t you just see it? Because I can. I even have flannel-back satin lining sitting around in that exact royal blue accent color, plus all the leftover specialty interfacing.

Of course, I also want to make myself a technical parka for hiking (I even got a gift certificate to The Rain Shed for my birthday!). Will I be able to sew all the coats before it warms up? I’ve got 2-3 months, so stay tuned!

Tuesday Project Roundup: Gifts Of Shirts

January 5, 2021 By Karen in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

Is it even a holiday season if I don’t make at least one version of McCalls 6044? At this point, probably not. Shaking things up a bit, this year my dad got a shirt, in a tasteful Dad Plaid.

I wanted to make him something warm since he keeps his house cold, so I got some Kaufman Durango Flannel from Bolt Fabrics (now sold out). The thickness of it made for some tricky sleeve vents and hems but it’s stayed together so far and he reports it’s cozy.

(Check out those pattern-matched pockets!)

 

Doc got another birthday shirt, which is never really a surprise since I run the fabric choices by him first. Because he has excellent taste, he picked this “Hats for Cats” print from Hart’s Fabric. It’s quilting cotton but maybe the nicest quilting cotton I’ve ever seen–much closer to a shirting, in my opinion.


The print was a lot of fun to work with (and not only because I didn’t have to match any plaids, just these shoulder overlays): There are indeed cats! wearing hats! all over it.

Finally, is it even a gift given in 2020 if you don’t make a matching mask?

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