About Karen

Posts by Karen Kaminski:

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. When I have downtime in the afternoon, I’ve been enjoying the “Color Stories” from Katy Kelleher–a longer piece on the history and culture of a particular color. Read one and I guarantee you’ll learn something new.

2. I stumbled on this quote from novelist Donna Tartt and really liked it (honestly, because I still need to be told it’s OK to be a Serious, Smart Person and still like clothes):

Poring through racks of vintage clothes or obsessing over just the right shade of sky-blue or violet satin for the lining of a black jacket stems from exactly the same impulse that makes me tinker happily with a sentence all afternoon, changing adjectives and moving clauses around until it’s just right.

3. The latest from Nathan Pyle’s “Strange Planet” is pretty accurate:

 

Thursday Essay

By in sad stories

Here’s a short, searing piece from Andy Kopsa about losing her father to pancreatic cancer. Why do I keep posting about grief when I have enough of it in my life? Because, as she points out in the essay, there is something to be said about hearing from someone who has also been through this. “I am finding my tribe — the ones of us who watched our parents dying.”

From “There Are No Five Stages of Grief“:

 

My research suggests there will be a period of adjustment as I try to find a new normal. So far my new normal has involved a variety of public and private acts of mourning. Some days my pain is like accidentally brushing fingertips across a hot iron, burning yet mercifully brief.

Other days I start crying over a bag of frozen shrimp at Trader Joe’s. Or like today, I stare out the back door at my wintry rooftop garden and think of summer tomatoes, the smell of dirt, of my father, and sob.

[…] As Americans, we have been trained up to believe that grief is a process, something linear we are capable of understanding. But I am comfortable with my broken heart now after my dad’s death, comfortable even when my sadness reaches a maddening crescendo because that is when I get the gift of giving up.

Be Here Now

By in book lists, hippies

A couple weeks ago I ended up at a tiny online store (to find a shirt I wanted) and clicked around a little before I left. In their “Books” section was Be Here Now by Ram Dass and the illustrations they sampled were astonishing.

I dug a little to find out more. You can read the whole thing online; I haven’t (yet) but I was just taken with the art.  Was that type hand lettered? Rubber stamped?! Turns out it was rubber stamped–I found this article about the making of the book on Fonts In Use:

Ram Daas explained the production process in a 1970 lecture at the Menninger Foundation that was later published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology:

They start with these four-foot pieces of cardboard and this book is 108 pages and each day they meditate from five to eight in the morning – there’s a group of five of them – and then all in silence … they hand rubber-stamp each page, all the letters of the page, and then the artists do all the sketching around the thing. Then the whole thing is photo-reduced and shipped to Japan where it’s printed on rice paper and hand stitched because it’s an experiential-type document.

As the Fonts In Use article says, “The book is a feat of non-mechanical text arrangement” and pretty amazing to dip in to–both for medium and for message (for this hippie, at least).

(That “Surfing” one made it up to my office wall.)

Tuesday Project Roundup: Traditional Gifts

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

For our fifth anniversary, I made Doc the traditional gift of “condiment-colored loungewear.”  This is the Rebel Raglan sweatshirt in bamboo terry and matching ribbing from Blackbird Fabrics.

More online fabric companies need to match their ribbing to their sweatshirting because when Blackbird Fabrics did it, I couldn’t click “buy” fast enough. Literally–they had a really great muted rust and even a nice blue and those were gone before I could get an order in.

I did clear this mustard color with Doc before I bought it and again when it arrived. He deemed it “OK for loungewear” but sometimes I forget not everyone loves 70’s yellow the way I do. (Also, I realized I love it so much that now his sweatshirt matches my own Everlane sweatshirt I wear around the house. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Three guesses as to who really, really loves this fabric and color, though:

Eleven Years

By in Toby 1 Comment

Eleven years ago yesterday I brought Toby home from a Petsmart adoption event. He’s been the constant in my life, between houses and jobs and relationships and sorrows, and as we both reach middle age together he’s both a given and a fresh joy every day.

Sometimes I look at him and don’t see Toby, the cat whose meows I know, but this wild creature who lives in my house and will let me pet him–and I’m overcome with wonder and gratitude that such an impossible thing could even happen. Who hasn’t dreamed of having a tame tiger ?

 

First year babyface with a pink nose

 

With the dignified nose freckles of middle age

 

Currently a Very Distinguished Gentleman with his floppy ear

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. This was an interesting take–I’m vegetarian for animal welfare reasons, I try not to buy from companies with terrible labor practices, I avoid “fast fashion, etc. and I still worry about my choices (I mean, less so now that I’m working on managing my anxiety, but still). Having someone assert that “It’s impossible to lead a totally ethical life—but it’s fun to try” was a little freeing.

2. RIP, poet W.S. Merwin.

3. Via Kottke, every type of “hello” you’ll get on a hiking trail.

Five Years

By in feeeeeeeelings 2 Comments

Five years ago today I met Doc, he of the Steinbeckian nickname and ready puns.

For the longest time I thought a relationship was mostly like playing house: buying groceries, talking about our day, doing the cleaning and the errands. But Doc taught me that a real adult relationship should be about the interior, about two people who like each other learning to like each other more, learning to respect differences, learning to communicate the way the other needs it.

He’s been so caring during Mom’s sickness and after we entered the void of losing her. He gave me the push to start therapy, for which I will be forever grateful. He listens patiently while I describe all my workouts in great detail and he always admires the fabric I buy.

Here’s to another five years, honey. Happy anniversary.<3

Equinox

By in children's literature

We made it to another Vernal Equinox, the sun has been shining, bulbs are coming up, and when you come in from a walk you smell like outside.

There is, of course, a quote for that:

“You smell like flowers and – and fresh things,” he cried out, quite joyously. “What is it you smell of? It’s cool and warm and sweet all at the same time.”

(from The Secret Garden, when Mary comes in to see Colin after working in the garden for the morning.)

Tuesday Project Roundup: Beta Test Tights

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

My doubts about the longevity of the space tights were justified: I wore them to a second workout and the stitches holding the elastic to the inner waist all popped. So I decided to make one more trial pair before I cut into the good stuff.

Beta test results were mixed, but overall positive: This pair has survived three workouts and washes so far!

The positive:

  • This is a far more breathable fabric than the space print swim spandex (it’s from my local  JoAnn, labeled as a “microflex compression” and it’s really thick and smoothing).
  • The stitches holding the elastic to the inner waist didn’t pop because I used stretch thread in the bobbin of my regular sewing machine (thanks to this tip).
  • I made the version of the Super G tights with side POCKETS. My tights have POCKETS! That held my phone securely through glute bridges and back extensions!
  • This pattern seriously makes the most comfortable pair of tights I’ve worn. I am not a “lounge around in leggings” person because they are all too tight, but these Super Gs somehow stay up and don’t budge without making me feel like my pants have turned into a boa constrictor. I didn’t change immediately after Sunday’s workout and realized I was lounging around in leggings–in comfort!

The negative:

  • I still had issues with the three-needle flatlock seams coming out along the waistband. I was able to mend the popped stitches so they’re wearable but it looks a little chewed up, as you can see below. My shirt covers the most egregious mends so I’m still wearing this pair (because POCKETS)–but I’m switching to a four-thread flatlock for future pairs.

Side view with pocket (!). At the top, you can see the zigzag stitches attaching the elastic to the inner waistband. You can see the mend on the vertical waistband seam.

 

I’ve been thinking that I don’t need to make any more clothes to wear to the office, so being able to channel the sewing energy towards something functional is really great. I’m going to have the fanciest wardrobe of tights instead!

Sun At Last

By in Toby, weekend report

The sun was shining all weekend so instead of a hike in the mountains where we’d still need snow gear, we went to the botanical garden where we wore light jackets and saw flowers in bloom.

 

Toby did not join us for the outing but he enjoyed the sun nonetheless.


(Pet portraiture by Doc, of course. He takes all the good ones.)

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