Month: May 2017

Tuesday Project Roundup: Oxford Forever

Karen3 Comments

I finished the “square” shirt I was planning a couple weeks ago and, barring some construction issues, I love it.

The pattern is the Style Arc Blaire Shirt, modified to have a one-piece front and no overlay, with the back shirttail slightly longer. (After I had bought this pattern, Closet Case Patterns released their Kalle Shirt which is already drafted to be what I really wanted. Maybe that’s next.)

The mods were easy enough to do and this isn’t a complicated pattern but if I make this again I’ll take the curve of the hem down quite a bit. I knew it would be tricky to get curves that steep to behave nicely in a foldover hem, but I didn’t realize how tricky.

David Page Coffin tried to warn me…

I tried a foldover hem, I made self bias tape and tried a faced hem, I debated a narrow hem…and finally I’d fiddled with  it for so long I just fudged the area around the side seam with the tiniest of foldovers, put some Fray Check on the inside, and called it a day.

Hems! What can you do! (And why is it so hard to get a modeled shot? I dunno!)

I intended this to be a wearable test of the pattern so it was pretty easy to let the hem go (especially after hours and hours). The fabric was maybe a little too nice to use as a test: lovely, dense hydrangea-colored oxford from Tissu here locally. I haven’t sewn with a real shirting fabric in a long time and it almost folded itself into crisp corners and smooth felled seams.

They had the same oxford in white when I was in last…maybe I should do a classic white shirt next.

Garden Day

Karen

For Mother’s Day, my mom took the whole family to Red Butte Garden, where she’s been volunteering lately. She also made us sack lunches with our name written on them (!). Either her kids did Mother’s Day wrong or she’s the best mom ever (both, but the latter is true too). Happy Mother’s Day!

Friday Links

Karen

1. A question I asked myself a lot this week: “Why is learning so uncomfortable?”

2. We set the patio up this week and Oliver is trying out the chairs.

Yesterday he tried the basket chair
Today he hopped in the club chair after his breakfast

 

3. The weather is so amazing lately, I have to think of John Denver–“sunshine almost all the time makes me high.”

Advertising, Ostriches

Karen

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I’ve been learning new things in my industry (long tail keywords! empathy maps!) and thinking about it a lot as a whole. When you boil it down, we sell things people don’t need. Sometimes we do it terribly (ahem, Pepsi). Most of the time we do it forgettably. And, as diving into content strategy is showing me, there’s just so much of the forgettable stuff being churned out. You can get the science down, but what about any art?

But then, you see a really good commercial before a movie and it makes you think, “This industry might be ok.”

The version I saw in the theater only had “Do what you can’t” as an end tag, which was much more effective (trust your audience to make the leap, guys). But still. There’s good stuff out there to be made.

Reading Laurie Colwin Again

Karen

The older I get, the more I think that no one write about food or relationships better than Laurie. (Sorry, Mary Frances. I still love your food writing but you had a lot of baggage.) I picked up A Big Storm Knocked it Over again over the weekend and found this:

She and Teddy had simply merged their possessions and were now thinking about buying a sideboard. Jane Louise had never bought a piece of furniture with another person in her life. It seemed to her an act of almost exotic intimacy. After all, anyone can sleep with anyone, but few people not closely connected purchase furniture in common.

 

Tuesday Project Progress: Sock Monkey

Karen

Doc’s dad loves handknit socks, which means he will get a pair every year for his birthday and for Christmas for the rest of his life, because really good gift ideas are rare and it’s always nice to have a sock on the needles.

Here’s the progress on the birthday pair, which is starting to look a little like a sock monkey:

This yarn has been discontinued since I made his first pair from it, but it’s been reported as “the warmest” and requested again. I found a few balls on eBay but wanted to stretch them into two pair–hence the colorblocking. (The Christmas pair will be this colorway reversed, if my yarn estimates are right.)

Mountain Day

Karen

It was a near-perfect day in Millcreek Sunday: 75 degrees with blue skies and Bob Ross clounds and fast streams and–once you made it past the hordes trying to picnic in closed picnic areas–not too many people on the trail.

Friday Links

Karen

1. File under “things you never knew you wanted to know about but then find fascinating”: A History of Sequins.

Since early sequins were made of gold, they quickly became synonymous with money: The word “sequin” comes from the Arabic word for coin, sikka; in 13th-century Venice, gold coins were called zecchino. Not only did the display of these coins on clothing denote wealth, but sewing them onto clothes also had a practical application as a way to create a kind of portable piggy-bank. To prevent theft, travelers would simply sew coins directly on their person.

2. Three things to prioritize for a better life (I liked the point that “technology has taken away…our ‘stopping cues.’ “)

3. Oliver is getting a little braver! I gave him his dinner and sat down for a second to see if he’d come out with me there, and he did.

(Gonna re-stain that deck tomorrow and weed the no man’s land between yards, too.)

Poem About Your Stuff

Karen
We’re in full-on spring improvement mode at the house–getting the deck stained, planting up pots, realizing that weeding is a losing battle. But would I give up any of it? Never. I like this poem about how the things in your house “[root you] on this earth.” 

Belongings

by Margaret Hasse

After being a student, then an hourly worker,
I became a career girl and earned real money.
I left behind a provisional furnished apartment
with its stained curtains, butt-burned table
and Goodwill mattress I was never sure about.

Alone I bought a house with an attic,
a basement and a skirt of flowers.
Freely I spent on white paint, silver knobs
for kitchen cabinets and a sofa made of corduroy
that wrinkled my face when I napped.
A bureau with a display to worship
photos and framed mottos:
If only one prayer, thank you will suffice.

Do I regret the down payment,
fixtures, fittings, furniture, years of mortgage?
Would I take anything back?
No, I would not. I meant it all,
every purchase, all the weight that encumbered
and rooted me on this earth.

More Covers

Karen

I keep digging into Nina Simone covers of pop songs and I keep being delighted. For example, did you know she did a version of The Five Stairsteps’ “Ooh Child”?

And! She covered Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.” This is a live recording from 1990: