Karen

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Tuesday Project Roundup: Gifts Of Shirts

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

Is it even a holiday season if I don’t make at least one version of McCalls 6044? At this point, probably not. Shaking things up a bit, this year my dad got a shirt, in a tasteful Dad Plaid.

I wanted to make him something warm since he keeps his house cold, so I got some Kaufman Durango Flannel from Bolt Fabrics (now sold out). The thickness of it made for some tricky sleeve vents and hems but it’s stayed together so far and he reports it’s cozy.

(Check out those pattern-matched pockets!)

 

Doc got another birthday shirt, which is never really a surprise since I run the fabric choices by him first. Because he has excellent taste, he picked this “Hats for Cats” print from Hart’s Fabric. It’s quilting cotton but maybe the nicest quilting cotton I’ve ever seen–much closer to a shirting, in my opinion.


The print was a lot of fun to work with (and not only because I didn’t have to match any plaids, just these shoulder overlays): There are indeed cats! wearing hats! all over it.

Finally, is it even a gift given in 2020 if you don’t make a matching mask?

Happy 2021

By in poems

Hello, friends! Having a week off was so, so great: I made a coat! I got nine hours of sleep! We went to a new fabric store! I turned 41! And I found this poem on this new account and thought it was a nice mindset for the New Year.

No resolutions or words to live by this year–I plan to just “keep on keeping on,” doing the work and trying to be kind (especially to myself).

Links For The Rest Of The Year

By in Christmas, Friday Unrelated Information

1. Today is my last workday and then the agency is closed until 2021. I’m going to sew a coat and eat a lot of cookies and not post anything, so here’s some things to read until then.

2. Watch this before it gets taken down: The full 1986 special “A Muppet Family Christmas.” I didn’t see it in 1986 and it wasn’t even on my radar until I read this Paste Magazine article about it (which includes the best summary of the Muppets ever: “The variety show icons remain, at their purest, a family of co-dependent anarchists”). We watched it last week and I nearly died from happy nostalgia–the Muppet Show cast! The Sesame Street cast! The Muppet Babies! The Fraggles!!

3. If you think about it, training an AI to do classical voice leading makes sense. Blob Opera from Google Arts & Culture is a lot of fun (and can play Christmas carols if you want, too).

4. Don’t fall for any articles coming up about how productive people were in 2020. We went through a pandemic that didn’t have to be this bad and oh, also an attempted coup and a whole bunch of other rage-inducing stuff, on top of whatever we were dealing with personally. As Anne Helen Petersen says:

“Whatever you’ve done this year in your personal or professional life, it’s enough. […] You are beloved and worthy of rest. Not because of your capacity to work, or your relative capacity to subsist on fumes. You are beloved and worthy of rest because you are human, not a robot. This year has emptied us. Give yourself permission to continue to seek fullness.”

5. And finally, even in a year that wasn’t full of exceptions, every single one of them bad, Christmas is hard for a lot of people. Maybe it’s bad memories of early family trauma. Maybe it’s missing someone who isn’t here now. Maybe it’s thinking, like Charlie Brown, “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” Guess what? Whatever you are feeling is how you’re supposed to feel. Feelings are just feedback, like being cold or hungry. So be nice to yourself. Listen to that feedback. Do you need to not do that holiday thing that makes you feel bad? Don’t do it! I, a person on the internet, give you permission to feel and do what you need, rather than what you think you “should,” this Christmas (and always).

Tuesday Project Roundup: Snow Pants

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

When I made my fleece tights last November, I said I’d need another layer over them for cold weather. Did I ever get another layer? Nope. I was cold on every hike from December to March. After the first cold-leg hike of this year, I started looking at RTW insulated pants. Reader, I screamed. They were $200 to $300 and looked so bad–bulky and ill fitting and low rise.

So I spent about 6 hours researching technical fabrics and digging for pattern reviews and generally pondering, and came up with my first pair of snow pants.

Are they warm? Yes! Are they fairly sleek? Yes! Are they easy to move in? Yes! Are they the highest rise imaginable so your pack doesn’t push the waist of your pants down? Oh hell yes:

That detail shot shows you the fabrics–a fleece-back softshell with an additional layer of nylon Taslan on the front. The fleece is wicking and insulating and the Taslan has a DWR (durable water repellent) finish.

I used the Controlled Exposure Stretch Fleece Pants pattern and would recommend–the fitting instructions were good and the articulated knee detail is just really professional.
Look at that snow bead up! That Taslan is good stuff.

I didn’t get a swatch of my fabrics before I started and my main fabric (Schoeller Extreme, beautiful quality) didn’t have anywhere near the recommended stretch for the pattern. I did make a muslin first in woven fabric and then basted everything in my actual fabric to check the fit–but I ended up needing to put in a back zipper to get them over my butt. Because of that, I did a separate waistband vs. the foldover with elastic as drafted in the pattern. I think that worked the best, since that Schoeller Extreme is extremely thick.

I got everything from The Rain Shed in Oregon, down to the pocket zippers. They were super helpful–my original choice was sold out, so they gave me options via email and just subbed things out without even adjusting the price up (!). Highly recommend.

The pants had their test run when it was right around freezing and they were perfect. I could tell they were wicking and the warmth was just right. They’re sleek but just roomy enough for a base layer underneath when it goes below 20. Total price for the project was $35–that is just a win on all fronts.

Happy Solstice

By in astronomical events

We made it, friends. After today the light returns, the calendar changes, and I think we can hope a little bit. Light a candle tonight, literally or metaphorically burn something you no longer want to carry, and plant the seeds for a better world.

Here is a poem by The Dark Is Rising author Susan Cooper for the shortest day today (and here’s an NPR interview with her and the illustrator of the book version of the poem).

The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. I just discovered the Cheese by Numbers Instagram and site and I am obsessed. When I want to mindlessly scroll, I scroll through the archives and just…look at cheese plates. Rules to follow + food that you arrange instead of cook? I’m in. Check it out.

2. It’s dark, there’s a pandemic, it’s nearly Christmas, then it’s my birthday, and after that it’s the second anniversary of my mom dying. Things are rough. I appreciated this thread about grief, written by a mom 14 years after she lost her son, but… I’m not to the point of really believing it yet. You can read it on Twitter or read a compiled version.

3. From Doc, and this is the Christmas spirit I want all year:

 

Happy Birthday to Matt

By in birthdays, love

It’s my love’s 50th birthday today. Whenever I talk about him, it’s easy to make it all about me. He did, after all change my life–not just for being such a good partner, but for giving me the push I needed to get into therapy and onto medication. If he did nothing else ever, I’d be forever grateful.

But he does so much else, every day. He’s constantly checking in with his friends, our friends, work friends, family (including mine). He loves to learn things–anything, from history to how things are made to what actor made a cameo in that series. For him, I think it’s a way to connect even more with other people and appreciate how smart humans can be.

He is the fairest person I know, but he won’t tolerate cruelty. He holds himself to the highest standards of all, which can be tricky (I speak from experience) but he gives the people he cares about so much benefit of the doubt.

He’s the wokest bae, classically handsome, the literal strong and tall man of my dreams. Happy birthday, honey. I love you.

Ornament Exchange

By in Christmas, sewing

My work is doing an ornament exchange-by-mail and, in a moment of being a team player, I signed up for it. The company is small enough at this point that I thought I’d get someone I knew pretty well, but no, I got the one person I almost never work with.

So, I broke out the felt and made a generic tree. Everyone likes trees, right?

I forget how fun it is to play with felt–I just found an image I liked on the internet and then layered the felt as I went. I was able to use the embroidery stitches on my machine for the first time, too.

The felt was all leftover from the stockings I made my brother’s family back in 2014 and I just threw this in an envelope with a couple stamps for mailing, so it was a zero-cost project. Not bad for some (grudging) team player holiday spirit.

Monday Poem

By in Christmas, poems

This seems appropriate to the season and today’s weather:

Christmas
by Bernard O’Donoghue

Despite the forecast’s promise,
It didn’t snow that night;
But in the morning, flakes began
To glide all right.
Not enough to cover roads
Or even hide the grass;
But enough to change the light.

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