Matthew Ogle has restarted his Pome newsletter and this came through a couple of days ago:
Daylight Savings
Like money the light
doesn’t go
as far these days
Kevin Young (2010)
Hercule Poirot, Therapist
I was reading Death on the Nile and found this passage:
Jam maker, therapist, world’s greatest detective–what can’t Poirot do?
Make Nine #7: Cozy
This may be the last of the 2019 Make Nine that gets made this year. I like having a plan but I’ve figured out that I treat sewing like shopping and enjoy making something on a whim or to hop on a trend. (And I make a lot more than nine things every year, anyway.)
With that said, this year’s plan got me some really nice basics, like another Sloane Sweatshirt from Named Clothing:
This is in a merino wool sweatshirting I bought at the end of 2017 from The Fabric Store in New Zealand. I’d heard about the quality of their wool and the hype is real: this is machine washable, not itchy, thick and spongy, and just gorgeous. It’s also gone*, but I hope they get more in at some point.
The Sloane pattern is beautifully drafted and sewed up in a Sunday morning. Love those long French darts and warm basic tops you can wear with snake pants.**
*My dad made me feel better about buying fabric I didn’t use right away: He called it “limited edition” and said that I had to buy it at the time or I would miss out.
**From J. Crew; the first J. Crew I’ve bought in about two years.
“The bare bones of it”
The canyon is mostly bare of leaves but not yet snow-covered; we went up for a walk yesterday and I thought of this passage I found in The Wind in the Willows (at the start of the chapter when Mole ventures into the Wild Wood):
Copses, dells, quarries, and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering—even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple.
Friday Links
1. Take a break from feelings and read about cooking a good pot of beans instead.
2. Be the crow you want to see in the world:
Words About Feelings
Speaking of just sitting with your feelings, here are some nice words I found (from Morgan Harper Nichols‘ Instagram account, full of nice words):
Of course, this doesn’t get into the haunted house aspect of feeling your feelings, but I can speak from experience that that part does go away a little more every time you do it. And “take heart, breathe deep” are evergreen words of advice.
All About Feelings
This is a wonderful recent advice column from Ask Polly–aka Heather Havrilesky–advising someone who just can’t be alone with their thoughts, who feels like they’re a sham, who can’t relax or find meaning.
“Feeling your feelings”–and learning to differentiate feelings and thoughts–has been ongoing work for me in therapy (to the point of keeping a journal where I had to start every entry with “I felt” to practice). I’m still working on it but have learned enough to see that Polly is spot on in her advice: The only way to “deal” with feelings is to feel them. I relate to this haunted house analogy HARD:
Even though [sitting with your feelings] might sound like walking straight into a haunted house and scaring the shit out of yourself for no reason, what you’ll find, when you turn on the lights, is a bunch of fake-looking automated ghosts running on car batteries. You’ve got to shine a flashlight on these wilted ghouls and see them for the self-created echoes of your underlying anxieties. Your anxieties are your mind’s way of trying to handle all of the feelings trapped inside your skin. You never let them out. The automated ghost is your irrational fear, the car battery is your anxiety, which is recharged whenever you try to take your feelings and stuff them inside your brain instead of just FEELING THEM, which would drain the energy there and keep the ghosts from dancing around.
When you feel your feelings, you turn your haunted house into a regular house. Feeling your sadness and your longing and your love for the people who matter to you is a way of dragging those fake ghosts out to the curb and stuffing them into the trash. Are you morose or depressed, or are you just sad sometimes? Is this a momentary manic feeling, or is it actual joy? When you pay attention to how you’re feeling, your thoughts slow down. You can focus.
The whole answer is wonderful–it was hard to quote just two grafs.
Tuesday Project Roundup: More Gym Tights
Still going to the gym, still making tights for the gym, still waiting to get my bench bigger, which is why I’m still going to the gym four days a week. I have to remind myself that 16 months ago I could barely use the 10 pound dumbbells to bench press, so I am making progress. But my upper body progress is slooooooow.
Anyway. Now that I’m at the gym in the mornings, I have to pay a little more attention to when class ends so I can get to work, which means I’m reaching for my tights with pockets more. So here’s another pair of Greenstyle Super Gs with phone pockets: 
The fabric on these was a lucky find from Fashion Fabrics Club–brushed nylon Supplex (my favorite tights base) that’s super soft and luxurious. The burnt orange is very fashion-y, too.
Here’s a slightly better lit still from a form check video that shows the pockets in the side panels. This is 70 pounds, which is 80% of my max of 85 pounds, and it was moving pretty well. Slow and steady, right?
Outside, Inside
We went to the botanical gardens yesterday instead of a hike. Outside, it looked like the Arthur Rackham illustrations for The Wind in The Willows…
…and inside it looked like Hawaii–the Utah Orchid Society was having their annual show.
Friday Links
1. It’s Samhain (well, it began last night at sundown) in the Celtic tradition, which means we are at the midpoint between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice. Six more weeks of the darkness.
2. It’s also Dia de los Muertos, which I had never really studied, assuming it was just a take on the Roman Catholic All Saints Day. Turns out it has its origins in Aztec culture–2,500-3,000 BCE–and the Catholic Church just put its veneer over it.
3. And, since we’re talking about death and gray hair this week, here’s another take on it from Long Reads: I’m 72. So What?
[…] The approach of death puts pressure on life, to extract as much juice from it as we can. But it’s a different kind of pressure than the one I felt when I was younger—the social pressure to conform, to hit the required milestones, meet the right man, get pregnant, have a family, succeed in your career. Rather, it’s a new awareness of time being finite, the focus sharper, the purpose clearer. Simplifying, pruning, keeping only the essential. There’s a huge relief in attending to your core needs and goals, getting closer to the bone, a deeper spirituality.