We didn’t hike yesterday but we did hang out for a mini “beach” day at Millcreek:
It was lovely–the air didn’t feel like opening an oven, the water was “refreshing” (numb your toes cold), and messing around in that lovely shallow stream always makes me feel like I’m in The Wind in the Willows.
1. I spent way too much time yesterday clicking through Window Swap, which is pretty much what it says: Look out of other people’s windows around the world. Mesmerizing.
2. A short essay about the appeal of jumpsuits:
Put one on and you feel both armed (with the ability to do at least one useful task) and liberated (from the toil of wearing multiple garments at once).
3. More fashion: a New Yorker piece about what to wear at home, with lots of recs for extremely fancy pajamas–but also fashun history and facts!
Recent retail-sales data reflect a world where there’s nobody to dress up for except your cat. In April, clothing sales fell seventy-nine per cent, the largest decline since records have been kept. But tracksuit purchases were up seventy per cent, and sweatpants eighty per cent. Sales of pajamas rose a hundred and forty-three per cent. Evidently, pants are cancelled (unless they come with an elastic waistband). Their sales declined thirteen per cent. The new focus is above the waist.
This came through in the Pome newsletter a week or so ago. I like that last line a lot, especially after being too social.
The Copper Beech
Marie Howe
Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,
with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where
I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.
One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.
Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,
watching it happen without it happening to me.
I love how even the vocabulary Twitter account is sub-tweeting our president now:
The Latin proverb ‘stultorum quanto status sublimior, tanto manifestior turpitudo’ warns that inept people who engineer themselves into powerful positions will always end up disgracing themselves. It literally means ‘the higher the status of fools, the more obvious their shame’.
— Haggard Hawks 📚🦅 (@HaggardHawks) July 13, 2020
The Latin feels appropriate for President Nero, doesn’t it?
In continuing to sew for what my life looks like now, I made a new pair of gym tights. (Gym disclaimer: it’s about the only place I go; I know it’s a calculated risk; the reward is greater than the risk for me; I feel safer there than at the grocery store; I always wear a mask around family in case I pick anything up.)
Anyway, I squeaked these out of a yard of $15 spandex from a place in NYC called, accurately, Spandex World. They’re the new Cavallo Leggings from Greenstyle and the pockets are HUGE. They’re also pretty fast to make and, so far, I haven’t noticed any mobility issues from the lack of a gusset.
I didn’t have a lot of leftovers but I loved the green and orange so much I used every last scrap on another Watson Bra (my sixth; there’s another bra blog coming) and some matching undies (the Trixie Briefs from Jennifer Lauren Handmade).
And since I had green thread in the serger and was using up scraps, I made another Ogden Cami to wear at home in the leftovers from this skirt.
Sewing for the life you have is pretty fun, it turns out–you can still be stylish at the gym or kicking around the house (or in your underwear, I guess).
Roll on it like it’s a cool bathroom tile floor and you’ve got crazy eyes
1. This was another challenging week but hey, look, it’s Friday!
2. Part of the week’s challenges included being on set with a LOT of crew to film a commercial I wrote, as Utah sees new coronavirus cases climb every day. Everyone wore a mask but distance was…minimal…and it just added another layer to a day that’s already stressful.
This Kottke post sums up how tiring any return to “normal” is (“many of us are constantly running risk calculations in our heads for every little thing we do and don’t do”) AND included this XKCD comic:
3. For no particular related reason at all, here’s some great work from Paperback Paradise (which can be a little NSFW):
My therapist has been on maternity leave since the first week of April and WOW can I tell. I saw this on Instagram last week and realized I’d slipped right back into being the “let me fix it so you don’t have an uncomfortable feeling” friend/daughter/parter, instead of being the truly empathetic one.
This shit takes work! It’s like going to the gym, you gotta just do it regularly.)
After I finally realized I’ll be working from home for the rest of the summer, sewing got a lot more fun again. I’m using fabrics from my stash and kind of just going for it without a plan of what will match my work wardrobe or what would be office-appropriate.
That’s how I ended up with this cotton gauze muumuu-meets-jumpsuit:
This is the CCP Amy Jumpsuit, which I’d already bought in December and had printed out. The fabric is a cotton gauze I picked up at JoAnn last year and the whole thing is really light and cool to wear.
Fit-wise, I added an inch to the torso, which I always do. I probably could have gotten away without it, but the extra length allowed me to shorten the straps quite a bit so the neckline wasn’t so open and the darts hit me in a better place. The bodice is lined and I was really impressed with the instructions for finishing that around the zipper.
I haven’t sewn a CCP pattern since I was so underwhelmed by the Kalle Shirt, but I was impressed with this pattern: The instructions are good, the straps are wide enough to cover bra straps, there are pockets, and I think the cut is really elegant. (Or as elegant as a crazy big leg jumpsuit you wear at home with bare feet can be.)
As is tradition now (at least since 2017), we went up to the Uinta mountains for the Fourth of July. This time, we didn’t do the full Lofty Lakes Loop trail; we haven’t been on real hikes at all this year because of the rona so we didn’t want to attempt a thousand feet of elevation gain per mile, at altitude.
Instead, we hiked to the lowest lake and played around in it. This is Scout Lake, but it should really be called Bob Ross Lake:
Likewise, Bald Mountain should just really be called Mount Bob.