Month: March 2020

Tuesday Project Roundup: Secret Pajamas

Karen

This is going to be the last “modeled” shot for a while (taken last week) but it definitely won’t be the last of the Greenstyle Brassie Joggers–this is my fifth to date (only the third blogged) and I stress-sewed two more pair this past weekend for comfy isolation wear.

These are in an Ankara print “DTY knit,” which I’d never heard of before, from a big Fabric.com order after Christmas. To me, the DTY (draw textured yarn) feels like a cross between a brushed nylon/Supplex activewear and a double brushed poly knit. It has that cotton-y feel of the Supplex and the softness (but not the sponginess) of a DBP.

Either way, I wore them to work last week and then to dinner with my BFF and he saw them and exclaimed, “Are those Pucci?” Quite a win for what could be pajama pants.

Acting Accordingly

Karen

These are unknown times, my friends. I was working from home but still going to the gym at off hours. Doc, who works retail, was still going to his shifts (along with the rest of the store). I got Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter Sunday morning and it finally hit me that what we were doing wasn’t enough:

It’s difficult to strike the right tone here, between inspiring the appropriate amount of concern to actually act and scaring or lecturing in a way that makes people shut down or become obstinate. Last week my approach was encouraging us all to be proactive, and think of what we could do for our communities. This week, I keep thinking of a line from this harrowing piece from an Italian in the Boston Globe:

“We thought a few local lockdowns, canceling public gatherings, and warmly encouraging working from home would be enough stop the spread of the virus. We now know that wasn’t nearly enough.”

People are hoarding toilet paper because they are scared of the abject worst: what will happen if society unravels, if we lose our ability to sustain the practices, routines, postures that make us feel human today. This, I think, is such a huge part of why people are still going to bars, why older people are insisting on keeping up their routines, why people are furtively going to the gym and telling themselves it’s okay because they’re wiping down the equipment. If you behave like nothing’s happening then maybe nothing will. This delusion will be responsible for so much continued spread, so much unnecessary suffering.

[emphasis mine]

Yes, I felt personally called out by the gym comment. But after I read that Boston Globe article she linked, I felt more and more strongly that we needed to cancel EVERYTHING for the next two weeks. No trip to Lowes to pick up the shower door, no more gym, no visits to family (Dad! I’ll call you!), groceries only when we absolutely have to. Doc was going to take some sick time and stay home–when he emailed his boss Sunday night, he got the reply that REI was closing all stores* and giving employees their pay to stay home.

I still know some people who think all of this is a huge overreaction, and I hope it is! But for now I’m behaving like the only thing I can do to help this situation is to have no social contact. If you have the ability to do that, too, please join me. (And let’s all be thankful we have a fabric stash.)

 

*From the press release: “Our decisions are grounded in the belief that there are more important things than business right now—we owe that to one another.” 

 

 

Friday Links

Karen

1. I got the OK to start working from home yesterday, my state seems to be taking things seriously and canceling lots of events, and I went to therapy last night–so I’m feeling better all around. My therapist’s take on it: “The world needs a two-week time out.” Looks like I picked the right month to sew a bunch of stretchy pants.

2. This also made me feel better (yes it’s from Twitter whoops I was back on):


3. The most important question of all: Is It Safe to go to the Gym in the Midst of the Coronavirus Outbreak? (Short answer: yes if you and your household are healthy, be clean, avoid crowds.)

 

Whew. Hang in there, friends. We’re all in this together.

Planting Iris

Karen

Hey have you paid attention to the news lately?  Nationally, we get to watch one old white guy with a history of inappropriate touching try to beat another old white guy with a history of inappropriate touching. Globally, we might all die/see the collapse of society as we know it! NOT A GOOD TIME for people with anxiety.

So I’m doing what I can: staying off Twitter, reading books, keeping my personal life raft of loved ones and home and hobbies afloat. And I remembered this post from Austin Kleon, where he shared a quote from Leonard Woolf’s autobiography (it ended up inspiring Kleon’s latest book, Keep Going):

 The last months of peace…were the most terrible months of my life, for, helplessly and hopelessly, one watched the inevitable approach of war. One of the most horrible things at that time was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler—the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple-tree iris reticulata, those lovely violet flowers…Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.” Last March, twenty-one years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those violet flowers still flowered under the apple-tree in the orchard.

 

Tuesday Project Roundup: Poms!

Karen

Sometimes you just have to make a very wide and very pompom’d top:

Pattern: Cynthia Rowley for Simplicity, S8636
Fabric: Stonemountain (sold out)
Modeling: “just touch your hair”

This was one of those “buy it NOW, figure out what to make later” purchases from Stonemountain. The poms are woven in, like a giant clip dot, and it has a fairly thick, heavy drape. It also frays like a beast, which meant the quarter-inch seam at the neck had to be unpicked and redone as a half-inch seam because it started to unravel (!).

I also took the ruffle at the bottom off (after sewing 124  inches of ruffle ON) because of the fabric’s thickness/pompom quotient–I don’t say this very often, but it was just Too Much. But I wanted more length so I ended up making part of the ruffle into a banded hem. Then I used the rest of the hem ruffle to make matching sleeve bands, also for more length. It all worked out because it would have been about impossible to do a narrow hem with these pompoms.

It’s hard to capture how tent-like this is but the bottom hem is five feet around. The colors are full Late 70s Clown. It left fuzz everywhere in the sewing room. I sewed it pretty much twice over, between the fraying and the ruffle. And I love it so much.

Tile All The Things!

Karen

I had my dad show me how to set tile because I was fed UP with a shower curtain in the master bath. And if you give a mouse a glass shower door, then she’ll want to tile from the top of the tub enclosure to the ceiling to look a little more custom (and then she’ll probably want to put in a tile floor and add tile to the wall behind the toilet, too).

But phase one–the shower tile!–is done and it looks great. And it looks even MORE great because I did about half of it with my own two hands (under Dad’s expert instruction, of course).

I had a feeling I would like tiling and I do: it’s kind of like piecing a quilt top, just with cement instead of sewing. Thanks for showing me how, Dad!

 

Friday Links

Karen

1. Oh hai! I didn’t mean to disappear for two days but my dad was teaching me how to lay tile and we started early. I learned how to cut cement board and plan a tile pattern and use a tile saw and tile scorer and put up thinset and set tile. Learning!

2. If you’ve ever read a food blog, this is hilarious: If You Want My Blueberry Muffin Recipe, You Must Read This Crazy-Long Preamble First.

3. Anxiety makes me go immediately to the worst-case scenario of, well, everything. So sometimes I need to remember this:

(via)

Tuesday Project Roundup: Big Witch Energy

Karen

The Australian fabric retailer Nerida Hansen appeared on my radar last year. Much like my favorite clothing company Nooworks, they work with women artists to make limited runs of fabric. So when I saw that my favorite artist Lisa Congden was coming out with fabric for them, I snapped up three meters as soon as it was available. (Lisa did a very similar print for Nooworks at the same time, if you want a garment vs. fabric.)


Just look at it–there’s a pencil and lightning and snakes and rainbows and an ampersand and a hand that looks like it’s flipping you off but is actually crossed fingers!

I didn’t want to break up that print too much so I went with something pretty simple–Vogue 9198. I lengthened it by about 5 inches and then added an 8-inch ruffle to the bottom. I also just put elastic at the end of the sleeves vs. doing full cuffs, mostly because I didn’t want to deal with interfacing.

I went full FASHUN on the styling (inspired by this image) and honestly I need to wear more dresses with grandma sneakers. It really adds to the “witch goes to art school” vibe of this fabric.

Monday Poem

Karen

I don’t usually put a poem up at the beginning of the week, but this came in from Matthew Ogle yesterday and it’s just a delight. So maybe it can set the tone for the week.

Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris

 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
 
I like your hat, blog friends. Happy Monday.