Tuesday Project Roundup: Pencil Skirt #3
Here’s the third variation on a pencil skirt, with a shaped waistband. (I love the fits of that Burda pattern; can you tell?) This is an orange pique that I bought thinking it would be a top, but then I caught Skirt Mania so now it’s a skirt.
(My legs really aren’t blue in real life, I promise. This camera is really temperamental in low light and with the color orange.)
"no guarantees in this life"
I probably think about the end of the world more than is healthy. I remember seeing Mad Max as a kid and obsessing over what I would do in that situation. (I still cant watch disaster movies.) Between unseasonable weather, bomb attempts in New York, oil spills, etc., I was thinking about it again more than I probably should. So I had to remember this poem:
Yes, by William Stafford
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could you know. Thats why we wake
and look out–no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.
Friday Unrelated Information
1. Oh, this weather…at least it will be a good weekend to stay inside and sew. I’ve finished the third pencil skirt and am moving into a polka dot phase. Maybe someday it will even be warm enough to wear everything I’ve been making!
2. I can’t think of anything to cook lately. I think of things that sound good and then once they’re made I don’t like them. Maybe this is the weather’s fault, too.
3. On a less complain-y note, I found a site that makes fun of the worst science fiction covers you’ve seen. Like this:
You’re Making Me Re-Quote Hemingway, Weather
I posted this at the beginning of April two years ago when it was merely cold and rainy, so now that it is NEARLY MAY and there is SNOW I think I am justified in re-quoting:
Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it [spring] back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life…You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the tree and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
Sometimes, Work Is Work
I like trying to figure out how quotes by fiction writers apply to commercial writers. This one’s by Ursula LeGuin:
I am going to be rather hard-nosed and say that if you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you’re writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn’t flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.
Tuesday Project Roundup: Not A Pencil Skirt
I got a fancy new purse for spring and I didn’t want to just throw it in my wire bike basket, so of course I had to sew a liner for the basket. I just made up a pattern and used some fabric on hand–a big vintage print and leftover pillow backing fabric. (When everything you own is either aqua, turquoise, or orange, all your fabric coordinates!)
Now I can carry my purse and it won’t get wire marks:
And look what else fits in there!
I was putting it on and he came to investigate and jumped right in. No, I did not try taking him for a ride.
Today, We Ride
If it’s not going to be like Copenhagen, maybe it will be like this:
Lady parade, coming through!
Friday Unrelated Information
1. I got caught up on the new Glee episodes last night and my favorite hair insult ever was in the latest one (the cheerleading coach is always making fun of the teacher running glee club’s hair):
“I thought I smelled cookies wafting from the ovens of the little elves who live in your hair.”
2. My friend Kara told me about a store that sells apparel fabrics here in town and now I can’t wait to check it out! I am really excited about the thought of getting suiting and silks and nice things in person instead of online.
Thing #20: Find A Perfume
Thing #20 on the 30 Things is done, and the winner is L’Heure Bleue, by Guerlain. Created in 1912, this is described by Guerlain “a bouquet of roses softened with iris, violet and vanilla,” but you have to go read some of the reviews on Basenotes: “An old woman sobbing softly in a church” (?), “a mixture of White Diamonds and baby powder” (!), “thawing earth and sulking, hardy blossoms.” Apparently, it is a love it or hate it sort of smell.
To me it smells mostly like violets (I’m no perfume expert), but expensive violets–kind of how I imagine someone’s apartment in Paris would smell. It seems calm, and kind, and confident, and those are all good things to be when you’re 30.