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Posts by Karen Kaminski:

30 Minutes A Day

By in sewing No Comments

I’ve been feeling like there isn’t enough time to sew all the things I want to sew and it’s been stressing me out. (Admittedly, I keep thinking of MORE things I want to sew and buying fabric for them, which is piling up and adding to the problem. I’m making a rule for the summer: NO NEW FABRIC. )

So I’ve adopted something I saw discussed in the Instagram sewing world: “30 minutes a day.” There’s a Pattern Review forum for it, which says:

You can make your own rules – do you want to sew every day? Or does an average number of hours over the course of the week or month work better? Are you only including actual sewing or do you include shopping for fabric, the prep work, the pattern alterations, organizing your sewing space, etc.?

I’ve been trying to get some time in daily and I am indeed counting pattern prep, cutting, and even threading the serger as sewing–because it’s all part of the process.

With just a little bit of time every day I was able to finish a shirt for Doc in just over a week (!) so there’s clearly something to this idea of small, daily action towards your goals. Hmm….

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information No Comments

1. There is a mass of something metallic in an impact crater on the Moon?! Cue the Transformers (or Armageddon) movie jokes.

2. Via Kottke, who was appreciating the manners of Keanu Reeves, I learned about “manner hands” in South Korea, aka not actually touching someone in photos, just hovering your hands above them. Manner hands for everyone!

3. Scanned pages of a French “how to draw animals” book (via Austin Kleon). Who else wants to print some out and just spend an afternoon practicing?

Thursday Poem

By in Mary Oliver, poems No Comments

More Mary Oliver, because she is great and because we’ve had the windows open at night and I can hear the birds in the morning.

 

What Gorgeous Thing

by Mary Oliver

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

There’s Still So Much Left To Learn

By in Uncategorized No Comments

For example, I–a lifelong Dune fan who feels confident I could win any trivia game about the books and wants to get a “Litany Against Fear” tattoo–did not know until last week that National Lampoon did a satire of the first book in 1985.

The  entire plot summary on Wikipedia is just…wow…but clearly I need to track this book down:

Arruckus is also known as “Doon”, and is additionally known as the Dessert Planet. Covered entirely in sugars, it is a harsh unforgiving environment, where not an entree can be found; the natives live entirely on whatever they can import, produce from the sugars, or produce from soy protein (the native food experiments known as the Mahn t’Vani).

Duke Lotto accepts the fief, aware that it may well be a death trap but also conscious of the importance of Arruckus’s only export, the wide-spectrum intoxicant known as beer. Found naturally on Arruckus as a result of natural processes and nowhere else, it is the engine on which commerce runs; the Schlepping Guild, who has a monopoly on space travel in the Imperium, will not run without it. Who controls the beer controls commerce.

Summer Of Basics: Why NOT Plan More Projects?

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup No Comments

It’s time to squeeze more projects into the planned year with the “Summer of Basics” again. Yes, I bought more fabric for it, but two out of the three really will fill a (small) wardrobe gap: Wide summer pants to wear when working from home. Then I threw another shirt into the mix because why not?!

From bottom to top, there’s a gray bamboo knit from The Fabric Fairy that will become Greenstyle Warrior Pants (probably without the side slit, but we’ll see if I want the extra ventilation). I’m living dangerously and not making a muslin because the Greenstyle patterns have fit me so well.

The rainbow stripe linen (from JoAnn) will be a pair of Emerson pants, as discussed here, and the multi-stripe linen look (from La Mercerie, now sold out, I think) will be a boxy button up, as discussed here.

I just want to take a solid week off and alternate between sewing and reading in the sun. Anyone with me?

Squats, Roses

By in weekend report No Comments

This is the kind of story that would have made me roll my eyes SO HARD before I started going to the gym, but my Sunday morning workouts have included Bulgarian split squats for the last few weeks and they make my quads hurt so much that hiking anything steep that same day is right out (I made Doc turn around last week!).

So instead, we went to Red Butte Garden to look at the roses in bloom:

coral roses blooming on a trellis

an orange rose in bloom

pale yellow roses on a bush

pink old-fashioned rose

pink roses blooming on a wall

 

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. The Twitter account that talks about tailoring (I linked to them before) did a long thread about the really egregious choices of Trump and his mob at the state dinner in London.

2. Kimberly Harrington again: Answers to “Is Your Dog Friendly?” Applied to Me

“She’s aggressive toward men wearing hats, men with beards, tall men, big men, men with deep voices, men.”

3. Yes, I found this on Instagram, but I really like the philosophy. Which is why I follow only my best friends, sewing accounts, goat accounts, inspirational saying accounts, and cartoons at this point:

(By Emily Coxhead, who has a delightful account.)

Books In Your Pocket

By in book lists 2 Comments

I only learned about the Libby app a few months ago but it’s one of the best things ever: You can check out ebooks from your local library and read them on your phone (or Kindle, I think).

Since I downloaded it, I’ve read more books in a few months than I think I read all last year–the screenhot below is from my sci-fi kick of the spring. (I’ve moved on to Chief Inspector Gamache novels now, but highly recommend the Martha Wells and Ann Leckie series if you want some space reads.)

 

Since Libby connects to your local library, it doesn’t have everything and sometimes there’s a long wait, but it’s a great thing to do instead of scrolling Instagram. And it’s free!

Women In Rock

By in music

I saw this doctoral project by Leah Branstetter linked on Twitter yesterday and it’s fantastic–a digital dissertation with biographies, playlists, and a whole bunch of info disproving the idea that the pioneers of rock and roll were all men.

All of Branstetter’s research is fascinating–I had no idea about answer songs or that there was a  “female Elvis Presley,” Alis Lesley:

Lesley usually performed barefoot, claiming shoes made her feel inhibited. An account of one of her shows reports that, clad in yellow satin pants, Lesley “stood on the piano, lay on the floor, wrestled with the microphone, embraced the string bass—and sang.” Another noted that “using guitar and movable anatomy … she makes ‘Elvis The Pelvis’ look like an elderly, arthritic Salvation Army drummer.”

The playlists are a fantastic addition, too, so you don’t have to click back and forth to YouTube as you read. Check it out: Women In Rock and Roll’s First Wave.

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