Niche Playlists

Karen

Vinyl records are currently 90% of my personality and now I’m doing the [undiagnosed but let’s be honest here] autism spectrum trait of “go EXTREMELY deep on a hobby.”

Salt Lake City has a newer listening bar that only plays vinyl; they held a “Sunday Service” on Easter of jazz and soul. Their Instagram showed the playlist for the afternoon so of course I had to recreate it on Apple Music so I could hear all these rare tracks. (Here’s the link.)

Screenshot of an Instagram story with a printed program of music on a bar with a glass of wine

 

And if really niche jazz albums weren’t enough to get into, there’s even more niche international releases. Vietnamese pre-1975 soul, anyone??

In Praise of Lifting

Karen

I was talking to some of my gym friends yesterday and realized that right around this time is the 8th anniversary of me starting weight training, if you count the continuing ed class I took to get started. (I joined my gym in June 2018; here’s a report from that July when I couldn’t even bench the bar).

Now I can deadlift 150% of my body weight, squat 115%, and bench 75% (we’re getting there), and just existing in the world is so much easier and smoother. I saw a Reddit post asking, “Muscular women of Reddit how does it actually feel to build and carry that strength?” this morning and, well, they said it all:

 

Mentally, I do feel more confident and empowered. I know I can show up for myself, I know that I’m disciplined, I know that I can do hard things.

 

I feel more capable and confident. I carry myself differently, I’m more aggressive and less apologetic. My body image issues are gone. I appreciate my body for what it can do, not what it looks like. But it has been healing to look strong and not “pretty” after being terrified of looking “bulky” for so long. Finally. Peace.

 

You feel more safe in the world. You learn to trust yourself through stressful experiences.

 

Mentally I feel grounded and clear. I cannot imagine my life without lifting and hope to never have to. I will never have enough muscle and the feeling is just wow. I look forward to the gym each day. I love everything I eat and it happens to align with my goals. Getting stronger over the years, putting on size, it all makes you feel so confident and capable of anything. Obviously you look amazing too, but that pales in comparison to how it makes you feel. Just alive and full of joy.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Matchy-Matchy

Karen

I finally made some matching machine covers for the Luxury Sewing Lair so now the decorating is all done.
Three covered sewing machines in a row on a long table.

Look at all those matching machines! I used the Closet Core free patterns  for this but adjusted them for my machines: I cut the serger/coverstitch one down about an inch in width and two inches in height based on the last time I made it since it’s a little big for a Juki. And I had to add quite a bit of width/length for the sewing machine cover, since my 740 is about twice the size of a regular machine.


A sewing machine with a cover on it. The cover has a print of a Japanese pine tree in white and green on a dark teal background.

The fabric is from Spoonflower. I just guessed quantities and got a yard of their heavier sateen wideback. At 108″ I was just able to fit all three covers on there, but I didn’t have enough to make a table pocket for the back of the machine cover.

That 6.5 oz sateen is a nice substrate, though. Part of me wants to get more printed so I can have a pillow on the couch that matches the machine covers, but that might be getting a little TOO matchy-matchy.

Semi-annual Cookie Fest

Karen

We did the new Easter tradition of brunch and cookie delivery over the weekend. Six dozen cookies and six pastry tips this time!

Cookie decorating workstation with 6 piping bags and trays of cookies

Decorated cookies with pink, yellow, green, and orange frosting

I took today off too, because it’s so slow/I decorated cookies most of Saturday. Time to eat cookies and sew!

Friday Links

Karen

1. I might be a little too excited about a woman in a rocket named after the moon goddess, but in our theme of space and parodies this week: Shoot Men Into Space. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” for 2026.

2. Via Robin Sloan, the JR Kuyushi Railway Company site. Look at those trains! Let’s book the one that goes to the hot springs.

 

3. This is absolutely what Toyotas would sound like:

 

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Moon Rocket!

Karen

I haven’t made a new entry in the “space” category of the blog in six years (and before that I was really excited about, uh, SpaceX) (oh, my sweet summer child)–but the MOON ROCKET launched successfully yesterday!

 

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Nothing will make you feel more “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” like seeing humanity do an amazing thing in 2026, but the moon rocket did indeed cure my depression yesterday.

Wednesday Poem

Karen

This might be the best thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, I love a parody but I also sincerely love how reassuring this is.  Thanks, random Tumblr user! (and friend Mike who shared the link.)

 

EVERYTHING’S FINE 🙂
By W.B. Yeats

Tracing a neat straight line, adept and sure,
The falcon heeds the calling falconer;
Things hang together, and the center holds;
Mere symmetry is ordering the world,
The sea-bright tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence proceeds;
The best have strong convictions, while the worst
Are full of resignation and are sad.

Surely no revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming’s far away.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When an indifference borne of stable comfort
Leaves my sight clear: somewhere in sands of the desert
A lion with lion body and the head of a lion,
A gaze calm and leonine, as is usual,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the normal desert birds.
What a nice lion, right? And now I know
That twenty centuries have gone along
And things were bad sometimes, and things were good,
And if a lion slouches toward Bethlehem,
That’s ’cause it’s native to the Levant.

Two-Shirt Tuesday

Karen

Did you know? When you sew two shirts at a time, you end up with two shirts! I don’t usually batch sew things so this feels kind of like magic–I know intellectually that it took twice as long to make two of them, but it feels like I got a bonus one for no extra sewing time.

First there’s a Robert Kaufman woven stripe, which I think is intended as quilting cotton but looks like a washed oxford. It’s soft but substantial; I flat-felled all the seams and added a pocket and a contrast inside yoke (and a fancy label).

The second one is Liberty from deep in the stash, which I’m calling my “Easter dress.” This one got French seams and a contrast inside yoke not to be fancy, but because I didn’t have enough main fabric. (That contrast is also Liberty and it’s from even deeper in the stash–maybe 16 years old?) I can’t get the phone camera to capture that neon coral background and neon pink leaves situation very well, but trust me that it’s BRIGHT.

The pattern for both of these was the Jenna Shirt from Closet Core, which I’ve made three times before (only two made it to the blog). It’s my current ideal button-up shirt pattern, mostly because it’s oversized which means I won’t Hulk out of it after a year.

Organizing In My Lair

Karen

We didn’t get a hike in Sunday, but we did see both our families and I finished my Big 2026 Vinyl Project. Everybody got a bath; then if they had paper sleeves, they got a bonus round-bottom anti-static sleeve, and if they were missing a sleeve, they got an archival one. (The goal is to keep them all dust-free.)

Then I organized them within an inch of their lives:
A cabinet of records, divided and labeled by genre and type

Does this look as cool as a messy cabinet of vinyl? No, but my brain short-circuits when I have to look through a hundred titles to find what I’m thinking of. Plus I got to use my label maker! A lot! Because those tabbed dividers are labeled on both sides, because what if you look at the records from different angles? You still need to know how they’re organized!

Anyway, this was a fun project and I’m really enjoying listening to everything now. I may not have a huge collection (yet) but I like it.
A panel from a Charlie Brown comic, where he's putting away a record and saying, I'm real proud of my record collection.

Friday Links

Karen

1. This was fascinating: Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green. It covers color theorist Faber Birren, the Manhattan Project, and mid-century industrial design.

2. We didn’t have as much client feedback as expected on a big project, so this has been me all week:
woodcut style black illustration and text on an orange background. Image of a possum with a sword riding a crocodile is surrounded by the words, Okay i'm here where is the work

3. But because it’s been a slow week, I’ve been hanging out in the basement with all my sewing and records:

Fantasy painting of a waterfall and a pond with swans on it, surrounded by flowers with a rainbow in the sky. Text reads, life when I craft in my room
Screenshot