Well, here we are, rolling into the dark season. Over the last 17 years (my god) of blogging here, I’ve gone from truly dreading it to being mostly OK with it. Medication helps a lot, of course, but so does realizing that the seasons passing are “not such an awful linear progress but instead a looping and a return.”
So here are some vibes for Fall (and don’t forget the classic vibes of September 21).
It’s my big brother’s birthday today and he is 47?! How does this happen? How is it thirty years ago that we were watching MTV and MASH together?
Ever since I read that Heather Havriliesky essay about showing up for your loved ones, I’ve been thinking about how that translates to my family, how my brother and I used to hang out so much and how now our goals from any interaction can be so different (spoiler: my goals almost always are to talk feelings).
But what matters is showing up, and when I show up I see the human I was raised with, who knows 40 years of in jokes and exactly how I think. I see a good guy, utterly convinced about right and wrong, fascinated by the world, unflinching about the pain that’s part of the world, and able to do a really good impression of Beavis.
I see my brother, and I love him. Happy birthday, Alan!
When I’m able to sit, I’m sewing another pack: the Trail Running Pack from a one-guy company, LearnMYOG. Except every time I work on it, I end up feeling like picking a fight with that guy, because the instructions are so bad.
There aren’t actual instructions, just a video sew along… but I’m not sure this guy had ever watched a sewing video before he filmed his, because why is he sewing black on black for his example? Why is it lit with a single 40-watt bulb?!
My other issue is that this was a THIRTY DOLLAR pattern. (For reference, the lumbar pack pattern I used was $9.) Not having real instructions or decent videos at this price point is bad enough, but not having anything marked clearly on the pattern is inexcusable. There are several points where you’re instructed to “pleat to fit” but… no pleat lines. Notches are hit and miss. And where should we place the straps? Is anything marked on the pattern piece? No, apparently we’re just going off vibes:
Anyway, I’ve been sewing long enough that I can figure out what to do, but I can’t imagine being able to finish this if I were a beginner. It’s also not the most restful sewing experience to be mentally composing scathing reviews while you’re working on it (although that might be a me problem). But lord grant me the confidence of a white guy who’s never seen a sewing pattern… releasing a $30 sewing pattern.
I got my first taste of sciatica over the weekend, when my right buttcheek started hurting and all the usual places I sit made it worse. I guess this is what I get for getting into the habit of working from the couch or a hard kitchen chair? (My buttcheek is a lot better today, though, and I’m sitting on the yoga ball instead of the couch.)
But yesterday, even sitting for sewing was rough, so I pulled out my case binding kit and stood at the counter and got the signatures folded and pressing–shoutout to the flower press my dad made for 12-year-old me and the bone folder I took from the worst job–and made the case.
Next up is sewing the signatures into a text block and then casing it in (look at me learning terminology!) but I really think I like the “folding and gluing pretty paper” part the best. This new hobby might veer off into another new hobby if I’m not careful:
1. The United Auto Workers Union went on strike at midnight this morning at three plants. As the NY Times reports:
This limited strike… could hamper the automakers because the sites produce some of their most profitable trucks, such as the Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle and the Chevrolet Colorado pickup.
The union has demanded a 40 percent wage increase over the next four years, pointing out that the compensation packages for the chief executives of the three companies have increased about that much, on average, over the last four years.
The UAW president Shawn Fain is my new hero. We absolutely love to see someone saying it like is: “It’s not that we’re going to wreck the economy, we’re going to wreck their economy, the economy that only works for the billionaire class.”
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2. This was cool: Proof of evolution that you can find on your body
3. Thinking about tomatoes yesterday made me realize I haven’t been to a farmers market this year (!) which reminded me of this: There Are Two Types of Farmers Market
Type 1 includes
The dreaded Type 2? CHAOS! and lavender
I ran into this one on the Reddit poetry forum and what language: “trellising” as a verb, “beefsteaks like baubles,” what a combo.
In my next life let me be a tomato
lusting and unafraid. In this bipedal incarnation
I have always been scared of my own ripening,
mother standing outside the fitting room door.
I only become bright after Bloody Marys, only whole
in New Jersey summers where beefsteaks, like baubles,
sag in the yard, where we pass down heirlooms
in thin paper envelopes and I tend barefoot to a garden
that snakes with desire, unashamed to coil and spread.
Cherry Falls, Brandywine, Sweet Aperitif, I kneel
with a spool, staking and tying, checking each morning
after last night’s thunderstorm only to find more
sprawl, the tomatoes have no fear of wind and water,
they gain power from the lightning, while I, in this version
of life, retreat in bed to wither. In this life, rabbits
are afraid of my clumsy gait. In the next, let them come
willingly to nibble my lowest limbs, my outstretched
arm always offering something sweet. I want to return
from reincarnation’s spin covered in dirt and
buds. I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble
space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing
I’ll end up in an eager mouth. An overly ripe tomato
will begin sprouting, so excited it is for more life,
so intent to be part of this world, trellising wildly.
For every time in this life I have thought of dying, let me
yield that much fruit in my next, skeleton drooping
under the weight of my own vivacity as I spread to take
more of this air, this fencepost, this forgiving light.
– by Natasha Rao
Another way you can keep buying things is to say you’re starting a new hobby. Like I said in July, I wanted to try bookbinding, so I got some papers and glue and attempted a stab stitch binding. Then I was afraid to break into the case binding kit I bought (and veered back into sewing outdoor gear; too many hobbies).
But then I saw a case binding class was being taught at a local paper place in September so I signed up and learned how to do it live. Reader, there is sewing involved!
Above is sewing the signatures to make a text block. We used a curved needle, which felt primitive and satisfying.
Then you make the cover, which involves the old favorites of cardboard and fancy paper and glue:
And then you glue the text block into the covers and boom! A real book!
The little guy on the left is just a pamphlet stitch practice run, which the class started with to get extra practice on punching holes and sewing with that curved needle.
Will I try my kit for a casebound book on my own next? Yes! Except do I want to buy more supplies for it just because I can? Also yes!
Well, I’ve found a way to keep shopping for sewing stuff without buying more garment fabric: making outdoor gear. I got a few little kits from Ripstop By The Roll (when I ordered the fabric for the hip belt for my lumbar pack) and sewed them up in an afternoon.
First is a dry bag in Dyneema, which is the darling of the outdoor gear world because it’s so strong and light. It sewed normally but felt weird, like sewing paper or a really thin blue IKEA bag.
The kit had everything you need, including seam tape to make it waterproof, plus hardware.
I also got their general $10 DIY Kit to try out some different fabrics. The hardware included in that one would make a stuff sack, but I wanted a zip pouch to hold my headlamp and emergency space blanket.
I tried out the LearnMYOG pattern generator to get the dimensions I needed and used a zipper I had laying around. (There are SO MANY zippers laying around… and after this MYOG craze fades, I’m going to have so much outdoor fabric laying around. Bury me with lots of craft supplies, I guess.)
I’m trying to get as much out of the last of summer as I can–including continuing to call it “summer,” even though there are mushrooms and golden grasses and afternoon clouds and all the signs of coming fall.
1. This story about a plumber was the “just trust me” rec from Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter and it didn’t disappoint: Man Called Fran
“Well,” he said, “let me put it to you this way.” Sean explained that he and his guys were “good plumbers,” whereas Fran, he and his crew had “crackhead power,” and sometimes you needed that.
“A crackhead will just throw himself at a wall, even if it’s totally pointless.”
Somehow I knew exactly what Sean meant.
2. I recently discovered Perfect Sentences, which is “a collection of the best sentences I’ve come across all week.” Exactly what it says on the tin!
3. This video from Kottke was mesmerizing: “The Chief” of a marble quarry in Carrara and the hand gestures he gives to the excavators as they break away big slabs. (I’m 100% sure there’s a term for that but I’m not up on my quarry language.) As the original post says, “Notice the tips of two fingers are missing. That’s how you get to be the boss.”
