Procrastination Diary

Lazy, or smartpants?

2012-01-19T07:48:00.001-05:00

Even before I got the new sewing machine I was falling in love with tutorials I kept seeing for ironing board covers. People are using fabulous vintage fabrics for their boards - sheets, tablecloths - and then getting to look at the prints every time they push the creases out of things. What's not to be crazy about? Even leaving out the fact that the edge of my ironing board cover somehow managed to get mildewed.

I was so all over the idea of making one myself. And then the other day I was out shopping for a magazine organizer and...

Oh.

$10, favourite colours, print I love, padding included...

Sold.

A bouncing baby Bernina

2012-01-14T21:56:00.001-05:00

For the last five or so years, I've been pining for a new sewing machine. New-To-Me would have been fine. Just new enough to have incorporated any of the technological advances in the industry over the past 70 years, you know?

Good heavens, my old sewing machine is old enough to be my mother.

And really, it's awesome. You can sew anything on it if the wires are hooked up right to the foot pedal - even organza, if you put some tissue over the feed dogs to keep them from catching. And it still winds bobbins (though it's no longer possible for me to find new ones that fit it, and if your speed is off with the foot pedal, say because the wiring shifts, you get disastrous tension issues) and stitches frontwards and backwards with a flick of a lever. You can even adjust the stitch length a little.

Still... I've been wanting something that would do More. And it didn't take long to fall in love with Bernina and want one of their machines. I actually saved up and everything. And now a beautiful one with quilting features - the 550 QE - is resident in my house:

(that's a sample of one of the buttonhole stitches lying in front of it, by the way. It's such a thing of beauty I had to keep it in the picture.)

A training session comes with the cost of purchase, but I have to say I don't think it's necessary. The shipping box comes with a very interesting and exhaustive manual, the company website comes with instructional videos, and the machine itself has arrows everywhere telling you where to draw the thread next when you're aiming for the needle.

I was a bit freaked out by the bobbin-filling experience though. I got about halfway through the steps involved in filling one on the Singer, and when I snapped a lever in preparation for the other half I was amazed to find the machine doing all the rest of the work for me. I didn't even have to cut the thread when it was done, as such. Just drew the thread past a cutter.

There are some crazy number of stitches you can make on this machine, and having used the most basic one of them for more than twenty years already I've been branching out to take advantage of them. But this is my favourite so far:

I anticipate rather a lot of sewing to show up here in the next few months. Can you stand it?

Ice-covered trees

2012-01-05T00:25:00.000-05:00

Just after Christmas we had snow, followed by a melt and some rain and then some more cold, which gave us this:

Even my car's reindeer antlers looked prettier.

Happy New Year!

Some things I'd like to be doing

2011-12-14T16:08:00.000-05:00

I'm getting totally burnt out on the crazy of this year, and I'm ready for Christmas. Not because I'm done with all the prep, but because I'm done. You know?

The other day I found myself thinking longingly of the evenings I spent browsing through creative ideas and tagging them from my Pinterest account. That's how much I need a vacation. (not to put down Pinterest, which I find immensely valuable.)

Some things I would do if it were up to me:

Sit down
Cook Chicken Stew with Dumplings for supper
Bake bread just for the aroma
Watch a marathon of Foyle's War
Stare at a grey sky as long as I want from a warm cosy room
Curl up in front of a fireplace with friends and hot chocolate
Read a book, cover to cover and not just a page a day

I'd add 'nap in a sunbeam' and 'enjoy a really good cup of tea' except that I'm able to make time for those things. They are called Survival Tactics.

And now: back to work!

I missed my window

2011-11-30T17:41:00.000-05:00

My cutoff for getting all the leaves raked up and out to the curb is the first snow.

Guess I blew that...

At least I got some into bags first!

Some pretty things

2011-11-05T09:11:00.000-04:00

It's definitely autumn here, with either bright blue skies behind starkly orange tree canopies or grey days that could stand in for murky movie scenes in a graveyard.

The local church has had its big fall rummage sale, and I got some vintage linens, one of which makes a nice background for the white bowls I bought recently:

The excitement about those is, they match my current dishes. White dishes are pretty boring in their way, but they look very peaceful in the cupboard with strong clear glasses that all match each other from size to size. My dish cupboard is one of my favourite things about my kitchen: even in the most chaotic moment, I can open that door and take a deep breath knowing that some things get to stay orderly no matter what.

I found a mug in the same shop - Anthropologie, if you're shopping - with an M on it.

It's not a great mug, or rather, it's a great big huge mug with a terrible handle. The position is wrong for balance and the size is wrong for fingers and you can't really carry the mug at all without burning your knuckles. On the other hand, it's got an M on it! And pretty scrolly flowery things. And you can fill it once and then sit down for a really long time.

Also: I discovered that the local posh grocer makes a cranberry-orange loaf every bit as good as the one mum taught me to make, which means I can have it without having to make it. Not that I don't like making it. But if I did make it, it would use up all the time I might otherwise spend eating it. You can see my difficulty.

Since August I've been thinking a lot about writing, by which I mean writing has been happening in my head, but my hands are busy knitting. I don't know why that is. I used to think all those other interests are me putting a barrier between myself and my writing and feel quite annoyed with myself for not being more responsible and focused. Now, at least some of the time, I wonder whether the other interests are feeding future writing, like random plants do a fallow field.

It's a pretty thought, isn't it? And it leaves me free to do what I like, which at the moment is to drink another cup of tea.

Murky Grey Mornings (how I love them)

2011-10-13T08:11:00.000-04:00

I'm sure this is a product of having read Wuthering Heights so many times as a kid

(seriously, is that any kind of example a 12-year old should be getting for adult relationships? apparently yes, since I've always been better off than Catherine. read it lately? whoa)

but I do love a murky grey morning in fall. There are so many possibilities for the day, all of them layered - from rain clothes and boots to the many ingredients in the cookies you'll probably bake or the pages of the book you'll read since it's too crummy to go out gallivanting through the heather.

No sun to make you squinty or too warm.

Leaves standing out but softly against the sky if they are still on their trees; the ones on the ground bright against the darkened pavements.

Air wet and chilly enough for a good strong sweater

A hot drink that much more comforting

A nap that much more enticing

and anything you actually accomplish so much more rewarding.

Also, I get to go out and hear music while knitting later, and then have supper in a restaurant with friends. And I tracked down my favourite weird skirt to wear. So even if it was gorgeous and sunny and warm it'd still be a pretty fab day. Yay!

The fine art of mailing it in

2011-10-10T09:04:00.002-04:00

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Canadians!

and aren't we lucky to have summery weather (at least in Southern Ontario) for it? of which I have been very much taking advantage, though mostly in my 'big organizational overhaul' way.

I have had time for that because back when people first started to let me cook the Big Holiday meals, I worked very hard to make them great, and now I cheat everywhere.

For example, a lot of people choose between turkey and ham for the main course. Both are simple and require minimal intervention during the cooking stage. But I've learned the hard way you can go crazy with brining a turkey before, and making turkey stock after. So I go with spiral ham. It's even pre-sliced!

Vegetables for this fall feast often include a delicious squash mashed up with maple syrup and butter, or potatoes mashed up with sour cream and butter, or better still scalloped potatoes and oh how I love those. Here is an amazing revelation though: if you slice up carrots and wrap them in tin foil with pats of butter and and some brown sugar, you get no-brainer candied carrots that pair nicely with cut potatoes roasted in olive oil on the otherwise unused bottom rack of the oven. And nobody cares that nothing got mashed or sauced. Unless they really hate mashed veg and cheese sauce, in which case they love you even more for not making them eat that.

Think about this one too: given the choice between fresh beans steamed on the stove (three pot pieces to wash plus cutting board and knife), or peas thawed and cooked in butter in a (solitary) saucepan, guess which gives you more green on your plate?

Oh, and let's not forget pumpkin pie. Ever since the year I did everything but remember to put sugar into the filling, I send somebody out to buy one.

Hope your day is simple enough to do fun things with too!

A vest from a sweater

2011-09-22T19:42:00.001-04:00

The other day I discovered I'd missed by 24 hours a small friend's birthday.

PANIC

Plus, she has everything. Fortunately I have a cupboard full of more than everything. Specifically, this previously-felted sweater:

Prior to the panic it was in one piece. But it didn't magically burst into segments - I had to snip.

Today we will look at what came of the body part. First, some blanket stitch:

Pretty pretty blanket stitch, will I ever tire of you? Especially now that I know to turn in the raw edge and catch it with some of the stitches so you get a nice clean finish? (had I but disovered this trick before the vest project...)

The blanket stitch is burgundy because nothing else looked better and because I also had these cute flower embellishments in the cupboard:

You may have to trust me on the beads being the exact same shade of burgundy. Also on the flowers being a rich purple, not at all this weird blue that the camera interpreted. I sewed on bar pins - more stash cupboard genius - so that Small Friend's Mum can remove them when washing the vest.

This is what they look like on. Cute?

I deem the vest Cute.

I just hope nobody minds the pink angora fluffs that are gonna be all over whatever she wears it with.

Baking from a foreign cookbook

2011-09-15T07:49:00.000-04:00

During the summer, Melissa wrote about cookbooks she likes called Ladies, A Plate. The title refers to the tactful code at the bottom of a community event notice in New Zealand for attending ladies to bring along some baked goods to share.

We know where this is going, right? I had to have these books. Or at least one of them. For a start pretty much everything Melissa does or gets interested in is awesome, and also, the custom of catering en masse is traditional to the neighbourhood where I grew up, too. Bonus: did you click on the Melissa link and look at the covers? Please.

Right away when my copy of the original book arrived I spotted the cuteness of the recipe titles - 'bumble bees', 'butterfly cakes', 'coffee cloud cake' - and in particular the presence of 'Nainoma Bars'. This recipe is immediately recognizable as what is known in my circle as 'Nanaimo Bars', after a town in British Columbia, but also 'You Name It Brownies,' and even 'Johnny No-Name Bars' because they are known under so many different titles. (graham/coconut/butter/cocoa crust, vanilla pudding-enriched icing for filling, melted chocolate poured over top.)

I love this book and have been making recipes from it, none of them yet keepers but all - and collectively too - fascinating. Like, who knew you could have so many ginger-based recipes in one book and have them all be different?

And another cool thing: dissolving the baking powder in milk or water so it's part of the liquids added to the dry ingredients. Where I live, the baking powder gets sifted in with the dry stuff.

Those are 'Friendly Road' buns, named after the depression-era radio show where the recipe was first shared. By my local standards, they are not a bun but rather a tall satisfying cookie, sweetened noticeably with a little addition of Golden Syrup (sweeter than pure corn syrup and generally one of the most delicious things imaginable: try it on pancakes.)

These are Ginger Kiss halves, served without being sandwiched over icing because who has time? They poured out onto the cookie sheet like cake batter, but puffed up prettily into a soft but firmer-than-cake morsel. I balked at the amount of ginger the recipe called for and halved it, but of course it came out very delicately-flavoured so another time I would make it as directed.

There are recipes in the book I would never bake, but which serve to point out how incredibly dedicated those New Zealand moms were about treating their families with special tarts and mini eclairs and elaborate cakes. Actually I could never make any other recipes in the book and it would still have been worth buying it - the pictures are soooooo wonderful! and the introductions to where the recipe came from or how it was adapted by dozens of different bakes! it's everything I like about social history.

Try a copy yourself and see what I mean - and if you make something I haven't but should, let me know.

Sewing some snack bags

2011-09-06T08:11:00.001-04:00

It occurred to me at the grocery store one day last year that I was buying a lot of plastic baggies for portable snacks, and I wasn't reusing them nearly enough. I wondered whether I could possibly sew something for the job - and a very brief hunt online told me not only that I could, but that many, many others have done it already.

I decided on the fold-over-top technique advocated at Angry Chicken and started hunting for organic fabric, because I'd read that some fabrics are treated with things to preserve them from damage during transport that you do not want on your food. Alewives to the rescue:

When this fabric arrived I worried that the half yard I'd bought of each might not be enough, so I stopped at Stitch in Jordan, Ontario during my next Niagara trip and found that Jocelyn stocks organic fabrics as well. Hers are hand-dyed and hand-painted in India and have a very nice floppy quality that contrasts with Alewives' crispiness:

Don't you love how you can see where the artist adjusted the painting tool?

I bought three fat quarters that sort of coordinated, and dressed up some bags with contrasting fabric until I came to my senses (they are only for snacks, and I do not have unlimited time):

And then I got to work on my half-yards...

Which resulted in 27 bags, including the larger drawstring one, all stitched in double rows and the edges pinked because my old Singer has no zigzag function.

That's a lot of snacks.

This old chair

2011-08-30T10:23:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I got to see a chair I've been hearing about lately: my Grampa's chair.

It's seen better days, obviously. In some of them, Grampa was enjoying supper with my mum and sister and brothers and their mum, then setting his head down to rest after a long day; this was during the Depression, when it was hard for carpenters for find work. I wonder too whether the brain tumor that cut his life short was beginning to grow then, sapping his energy.

Another thing I'm wondering: creamy paint? turquoise paint? a clear varnish to protect both parts of its history?

Not wondering: whether I will be doing this myself. My Grampa almost certainly got the chair from his, so I think it's safer in the hands of a professional, don't you?

Crop circles

2011-08-26T08:13:00.000-04:00

I saw these at my uncle's cottage and had to have their picture:

They remind me of Miss Muffet's Tuffet... which reminds me, it's time for breakfast.

Shed a little light: the before and after

2011-08-25T08:21:00.000-04:00

Here is what my verymost local municipal tree looked like before the big trucks pulled up yesterday:

The yellow arrow on the upper left points to the problem.

I sat in the living room for the 20 minutes it took to address the entire situation. The guys would sling a rope around one limb to act as a pulley for another, drop a few leaves with some sawdust, then swing a branch down, canopy first, to the lawn. A chipper parked in front of the house dealt with the remains immediately but I had time to see the round splotches of disease on all the leaves too high for me to see normally. The tree is nearly 70 years old so I guess it's not a surprise, but I'm sad to think I might be seeing the last of its long years.

They didn't cut the problem limb itself - they'd need a bigger truck for that - but they did cut away any branch that so much as thought about the roof of the house, thereby avoiding any liability risks in future. Which leaves us with this:

The house feels so barren.

On the bright side, maybe now I can get solar panels?

Cavalry: big truck edition

2011-08-24T08:29:00.000-04:00

The weather report for today is high winds and thunderstorms, and I was just taking glass off some shelves in anticipation of a tree limb crashing through the roof sometime around midafternoon when I heard a comforting

meep
meep
meep

and looked outside to see two guys in construction hats getting out of a very big tree-trimming truck.

Saved!

and hopefully, so will our tree be.

Trees that point down

2011-08-22T20:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I tucked up with friends in the basement to watch Part 1 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you have seen this film or others in the series you will know there is rather a lot of arguing with bright crackling items, and will perhaps understand how a few authentic lightning flashes and thunder rolls could go along unnoticed.

Well. When the credits rolled we noticed there was just enough time to buy groceries before supper so off we went outside and, wow!

Tree branches were everywhere they ought not to be. Barely a block was not sporting a very large limb across the road, leaves pointed up taller than the usual car's roofline, to say nothing of the jagged edges left on trees that had dropped (marginally) lesser limbs on sidewalks and lawns.

A few blocks away, half of a tree had been split away from the whole right at the base of the trunk, careening sideways and taking out the awning over the front door of the nearest house. Worse, in another direction, an entire tree had been ripped off its trunk and deposited straight up the front lawn of a house set, mercifully, well back from the road; its second-storey eavestrough is bent, and both storeys' frontage is completely obscured by a wall of leaves and branches that press in at the windows, but the roof is untouched. I feel sad for the gorgeous landscaped garden which will likely not recover from the combination of initial impact and imminent sawdust, when the city's forestry crews come to cut it up.

My tree, the tree that shades my house and dapples sunlight into every window and is generally much loved by me and mine, seemed unaffected by all the excitement.

But no.

There is a long gash along the top of one of the larger branches - I am guessing about 4' in length, and 2" wide in the middle - near where it joins the trunk. Yesterday there was a crack in the same area on one side, today an additional crack in the same area on the other. That branch is coming down, and if it's not in the hands of the already overloaded forestry workers, it's on my roof. I'm hoping for the former.

The getaway

2011-08-16T08:49:00.000-04:00

I was invited to a cottage and left on Friday morning, expecting a long drive. Fairly quickly, it turned into this:

Miles and miles of this.

Hills, huge hunks of ancient rock, and loooooots of green things growing.

It was very. very. relaxing.

On arrival, the sky looked like this:

and the shoreline - because of course, the cottage sits yards from the edge of a pristine lake - looked like this:

I'm sorry I can't photograph the air or the mingled scent of trees, small animals, damp and heat, and deep calm. It was wonderful. I hope I get to go back!

Trajectory

2011-08-12T06:34:00.000-04:00

Cute tin wrapping, or inspired solution? You decide.

7 home-baked cookies looking for transportation

1 tin available

Former label from tin - previously removed - left glue, still sticky

Paper closest to hand an attractive sand colour but

Said paper, aka Parchment Paper, proves its nonstickiness by

Not allowing tape to stick.

Conclusion: either it's lucky the baker is an imaginative knitter, or it's obvious that the baker was too lazy to cross the room for another paper choice. Or both.

Happy weekend!

Autumn: on its way?

2011-08-11T09:12:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've had a few clues here.

One is that we're not yet halfway through August which makes it Still Summer. But I'm tripping over crispdry leaves outside that are spilling out of the corners in which they had congregated in corners earlier in the month. They are all green, but that doesn't fool me. I mean, they fell off the tree.

Another is that suddenly it's cool enough outside in the mornings that I need to wear sleeves (in April, I would have considered this balmy and gone sleeveless, but I'm putting that point down as another clue.)

A third: I've been baking. When it's heatwave season, I'm too busy being slumped on the floor in front of the air conditioner to think of something crazy like that.

Plus, have you noticed I've been writing in the diary lately instead of just posting a picture and maybe commenting on it? It's fall that always kickstarts the writing, for me.

Oh, and I'm thinking harder about what exciting things I want to be wearing soon. This mostly involves layers and layers of black, but still. The key word 'layers' is in there.

I suppose Spring is the same - you start getting milder moments in March, even when there's still snow on the ground. Seasons don't come and go by the calendar but in little steps - they are a process, like life. And like life, you gotta take those little reminders and recognize that what you have now is going.

This year though... I'm thinking that instead of shoring up for what's coming, like I usually do, I might just focus on enjoying what's left of Now.

(while finishing the cardigan I'm knitting for fall. Because I don't want to lose a moment of cool weather on not wearing it.)

The art of cheerful thinking

2011-08-10T09:43:00.000-04:00

I always bring a friend along when I have to have a blood test, so I have somebody to look at and hold hands with and talk to about a subject totally unrelated to the needle going into my arm for the purpose of removing something I rather like having inside me. My preferred topic: Holidays I Might Like To Take Some Day.

Today I had to give a blood test, and the topic was: Holiday I'm Taking in Two Days.

Me: crystal clear lake waters!

Friend: starry night!

Me: springy pine needle paths!

Friend: mosquitoes!

Nurse: putting vinegar on your skin deters mosquitoes.

Me: thank you for that tip! and also, dock!

Friend: mosquitoes! and other biting insects!

Me: lake! barbeque! marshmallows roasted over a fire!

Friend: blackflies!

Me: I am never bringing you with me for a blood test again.

(H'mmmm... I wonder if that was the point?)

A long summer's nap

2011-08-09T09:30:00.000-04:00

I'm not getting a nap today, but I'd really like one - I started the summer buoyed up with nervous energy that's finally dissipated over the last week or so. So in the absence of opportunity, I'm imagining the perfect miniature sleep. In a hammock under tall trees, or on a shady porch after a lunch of iced tea and cucumber sandwiches, maybe. And then waking up refreshed to a supper that somebody else made. Wouldn't that be nice?

Stairs, and what they lead to

2011-08-08T09:06:00.000-04:00

Good story, catchy tune

2011-08-05T09:05:00.001-04:00

Two winters ago, I listened to La Boheme via captioned YouTube videos, of which this is the first in the series:

Last night, I listened to the recordings I bought once I was well and truly obsessed, and fell all over again. I'm not good with opera, I don't know why, but La Boheme is just so easy to love. And it really helps when you know what the singers are saying.

* * * * *

here's more:

Act I part 2

Act IV part 1

Act IV part 2

Resilience

2011-08-04T09:42:00.000-04:00

The train that runs on this track hadn't been able to for a couple of months when I took this picture - other sections of track had washed away in heavy rains. Isn't it amazing how fast things these plants grew, with no train to knock them down?

A recipe

2011-08-03T09:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, it's pretty much just fruit in a cup - and apparently I'm one of the last to know that drizzling honey over fruit is a delicious idea. But see that lemon wedge in the green goblet? Yeah. Lemon juice drizzled over honeyed fruit = super yum.

A first

2011-08-02T08:55:00.000-04:00

The first solid food I ever ate, I took unasked from Mrs. Denver's basket of freshly ripened tomatoes.

I wonder if that's why red is my favourite colour?

Bridge to somewhere

2011-07-29T10:18:00.000-04:00

This is the covered pedestrian bridge in Wakefield, Quebec. I watched young men climbing through the diamonds to leap off into the cold clear water below, their bicycles left behind, but it turned out they were motivated not only by the heat. The owner of a vintage bike with a pretty wicker basket was lying on a sunny rock downstream, already surrounded by admirers.

White on white

2011-07-28T10:12:00.000-04:00

This picture reminds me vividly of my uncle's basement circa 1975:

He and my aunt had a plastered hallway painted white - so cool and still - that they'd lined with white bookshelves full of stories that could take you anywhere.

Skiving day

2011-07-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

The only thing better than spontaneously skipping work on a sunny summer day?

Mini-putt. (with new red shoes.)

You're facing the wrong way

2011-07-26T06:33:00.000-04:00

I like to sit down as much as the next person, but I don't think I could break my gaze long enough to do it here.

Steal this look

2011-07-25T08:29:00.001-04:00

Last week I visited a cafe full of tables with unironed vintage cloths over them (I strongly suspect mine had a sheet) and I was enchanted. Not least because I have a good few vintage tablecloths and not a lot of enthusiasm for ironing.

Also enchanted by: wraparound screened-in porches. But those are just a little less spontaneous to copy, dagnabbit.

Back in my day

2011-07-23T22:44:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I visited a train museum with an impressive collection of old Toronto Transit Commission subway cars. This is the model I rode on when I first moved to the city:

You know what? I really miss it!

Long-awaited

2011-07-20T21:18:00.001-04:00

Did you hear about the postal strike we had in Canada a few weeks ago? A lot of stuff got held up for the duration, much of it way more important than my mail (like, bees and other live things that kind of needed delivery to stay live) but as mail started to come through again I couldn't help wondering when I was gonna get my New Yorkers already because a girl can only read vintage copies of the Bobbsey Twins for so long before getting more than a little crazy.

So this is a welcome sight:

Very, very welcome.

An empty chair

2011-07-19T17:02:00.000-04:00

I took this picture the other day to test out some photo processing software...

and was surprised by how well it captures my feelings.

Snow

2011-07-12T09:31:00.000-04:00

My porch doesn't look like this today:

I almost wish it did because it is so terribly hot these days, but then I wouldn't be able to take my spinning wheel out there. I'm settling for enjoying the memory while enjoying the breeze.

Chipped paint

2011-07-11T09:12:00.001-04:00

This is the Gramma Step:

As I understand it, it was made by a teenaged boy and his dad so his Gramma could climb up into his first pickup truck and ride around the countryside with him.

It's been painted a few times and was well-used by Gramma, and then by a Nana with bad knees, and now by me... as a footstool, as a chair when I'm weeding, as a backdrop for photographing some knitting, and even as a little step to reach up high. It weighs a ton - there's no way it's gonna tip over when you're on it - but that strap on the end makes it a cinch to cart around to wherever you need it.

I am very attached to the Gramma Step, with its chipped red paint that speaks of years and years of constancy and usefulness and love. But at the moment I think I value most the fact that it makes the chipped paint on the porch look rustic and charming. Because I really don't want to paint the porch again this year.

Surprise

2011-07-08T08:38:00.000-04:00

One thing about being so swamped you only retain really vital information: you don't know what colour hydrangea grows outside the office window until after the blooms develop.

Pink!

The prettiest snack

2011-07-07T09:04:00.000-04:00

I highly recommend treating yourself to small pieces of vintage kitchenware - and then using them. (oh, and eating fresh berries. Delicious!)

A train

2011-07-06T09:29:00.000-04:00

The best thing that happened to me yesterday:

riding with friends on a vintage Toronto streetcar (one I like to think my grandfather, who was a carpenter and worked in the Toronto Transit Commission's repair yards during the Depression, might have touched) and being reminded of a short train route to try on another day. I love to be happy, but happy and anticipating more happiness all in the same moment? So great.

Sewing the retro satchel

2011-06-21T21:24:00.000-04:00

Okay, if we assume that by 'this week' I meant 'next week' when I promised to show the latest sewing project, then we're still good. Here it is:

Yep, another child-sized hiking satchel (tutorial here). I am telling you, these things never get old: they are just the right size even for an early reader or graphic novel, with a pouch in the back for snacks or pencils or both, and plenty of room left over for juice, more snacks, a notepad or sticker book, and a little stuffy or some toys for long car trips. Or, you know, you could use them for storing treasures found on an actual hike.

This time I ran into sooo many problems though, mainly because I was feeling sewing-averse at the time. For a start, I'd already given a bag made exclusively from the vintage bedspread I wanted to use for a main fabric to a friend of the girl I made it for, and my only other option was this super dark denim that kinda drabbed it down.

Compensation: lining made from a mostly unstained cut from a very old linen tablecloth my mum hung onto long after it was stained beyond whitening and worn into holes to boot.

Thank you mum! It's so washable and incredibly soft to the touch - perfect for a project like this. My young friend will never have trouble finding the last ladybug-shaped chocolate in the bottom of her bag. Also, I managed to use more bedspread for the pocket, and, having tracked down a white button with holes from the button stash I was able to use matching embroidery thread to make a shank version for the loop closure that ties in more of the pink.

(side note for anybody thinking of using a similarly ancient textile: I had to double-seam the linen lining because the fibers were so weak by the time I got to them.)

You can see where I messed up a lot of the topstitching, having procrastinated on making this till two nights before the birthday, but worse than that was a huge problem with the flap. I deviated from my pattern thinking I could make the bag roomier by putting on a longer flap, and for some reason - hysteria induced by exhaustion? - I thought it would be cool to make the back part of the flap out of more denim. Once I'd gotten it all ready to sew on I noticed I would now have to put the button down on the bottom of the bag, so I had to stitch it into the usual place, a pointless long flap hanging down the back of the purse.

Well, I thought, maybe she could wear the bag backwards in crowded airports - this girl's dad is a pilot, so she travels a lot - as a kind of teaser to thwart pickpockets.

Then I had a better idea and stitched on a very basic heart with my very basic machine, and because it looked as bad as that sounds I handstitched on a very basic heart with more of the pink embroidery thread.

For once, I think more is more, don't you? She liked it, anyway, so I call it a success.

Recovery in progress

2011-06-11T16:37:00.000-04:00

Hello there!

I see I haven't posted here in a few weeks... I do write about knitting every weekday of course, but two things have kept me quiet at the Diary:

not much Procrastinate-y has occurred to me

that I have had the energy to write about let alone prep photographs for.

Reader, I am completely wrecked. Two years of hard slogging in the emotional mines, topped off recently by quite a bit of physical labour, have left me quite happy to do nothing more ambitious every day than eat foods my body likes (as opposed the ones I like) and stay on top of the laundry situation. I actually washed the vintage teatowels that pass for curtains in my kitchen this week, and while ironing them (!!!) to hang back up again considered taking a picture of them in all their strawberryness to post here, but... too lazy. Welcome to the new normal.

Some small delights:

I wrote a few lines the other day in a book my writing mentor gave me to aid in Not Losing Ideas. The only reason I didn't have to dust it off before lifting the cover was that it was buried under a lot of other things that caught the dust first. The only reason I wrote the lines down instead of committing them to my mental compost pile was that I found the book while digging through the other things to find something that proved not to be there, or anywhere else I could see.

I seem to have mostly reset my perception of 'sweet' such that I can bear drinking tea with about a third as much honey as usual. This is a good thing for the local bee population.

I reorganized my textile supplies in a showcase sort of display that I adore looking at in spite of not having the least desire to sew. It's so beautiful I keep thinking I must take pictures of it for the Diary. On the other hand: lazy. Plus, there is the terrible interior lighting factor (next on the to-do list.) Perhaps you can imagine taking every cute vintage storage container you own, from old cookie tins and handbags to china bowls or crystal wineglasses, and putting bits and pieces into them before setting them out in some sort of dust-resistant furniture.

Another not-picture-taking detail: I am officially in love with an elusive tea blend, Scottish Breakfast. I found it at the local Posh Grocer's and adored it, bought a second tin that was the last on the shelf and was not restocked, found it in loose tea form at a more distant Posh Grocer's which then stopped stocking it, then secured it in bag form again at the first PG's. Each version has enormously pretty packaging but you'll have to imagine that too I'm afraid.

There are a few leaves from the third purchase shifting gently in the tea at the bottom of my cup right now, reminding me of Auntie Bert. Auntie Bert told fortunes with tea leaves and she was Never, Ever Wrong, mainly by virtue of predicting things she knew were about to happen. She was a very good Aunt (my great-aunt, actually, in name as well as deed.)

It being June, the garden is growing. I spent exactly one weekend wresting weeds out of the ground and setting in a very few new plants and ever since the constant cycle of rain and sun has been working wonders on it all. There are a lot of blossoms, all very pretty, but not as fragrant as the lilac bushes at the hospital (about which the less said the better.)

I am loving Blogger. I may not write here often, and I may be less often interesting, but writing here has been a great way to keep writing at all and following other people's blogs has been a great way to catch inspiration. Today's bright spot: the ever-talented Lucy at Attic24, who possesses the view voted most likely to be coveted by me and is generous about posting frequent photographs of it. It sounds like Lucy is having a pretty lousy time of it too but my goodness, she is smart. Three words, folks: flowers, chocolate, magazine. How could I forget the medicinal powers of that particular combination?

I am totally getting up the energy to acquire the magazine she's reading. By which I mean, getting somebody else to pick it up for me.

(I did sew something last week, and I took pictures, and I'll post them in a few days. Promise.)

Complements

2011-05-15T13:40:00.000-04:00

Rainy days are great for weeding, because the dirt gets looser and it's easier to work the roots out of the ground. Yay!

Rainy days are great for digging worms, because the dirt gets looser and it's easier to work the worms out of the ground. Yay!

Rainy days are terrible for people who freak out about worms wriggling up with the roots of some plant and either squirming and curling away or weaving blindly after having been unexpectedly cut in half by a not-meaning-any-harm trowel because there are so many more worms than on a normal sunny weeding day. Ugh!

Rainy days are great for sitting inside, knitting. Whew.

Cherry blossom time

2011-05-11T17:56:00.000-04:00

On Monday it was brought to my attention that there are cherry blossoms blooming in High Park. High Park is pretty much on the other side of the city from me, but by a freak scheduling accident yesterday I found myself by midafternoon with fresh bread from the bakery for sandwiches and some friends who wanted to go see some trees and eat a picnic supper.

It wasn't a sunny day, but that didn't seem to bother all the other people who wanted to see some trees.

Seriously, the people watching was incredible. So many pretty young girls in fancy gowns or otherwise elegant attire posing with trees or rocks for their boyfriends and said boyfriends' telephoto lenses! So many high heels for the 45-minute blossom walk! So many white blouses and dresses! None of which turned up in any of my pictures. (I felt a little silly taking pictures of that when everybody else was pointing their cameras at trees.)

But the blossoms were also amazing. I've been to Washington D.C. in May so I know cherry blossoms can be spectacular, but I don't remember this sea of white where you usually see green.

Soooo maaaaany trees! 2000 apparently.

And so many blossoms.

While in the park I spotted other cool things, like evidence of bona fide Canadian beavers

orangey-yellow crocuses

and an odd dirt heap

that turned out to be a maple leaf-shaped flowerbed.

I really gotta get over to High Park more often.

Mother

2011-05-08T13:37:00.000-04:00

My aunt made a copy for me of an old photograph of my mum, their mum, and my aunt, found in the depths of mum's albums when we were helping to organize for her recent move:

That's mum on the left, laughing.

My grandmother died when I was just three, but I have a slight, persistent memory of being tucked in safe and happy at her side while she read from a book she'd brought me. She had such a tough life really. Lost her mother when she was just a little girl too young even for school, lost one of her children in the days before kids could be vaccinated for the scariest of diseases, lost her husband when the oldest of the surviving ones was just 16 and the Depression was still an obstacle to survival. But she's remembered for her gentleness and great sense of humour, traits she passed on in spades to the next generation.

I've been thinking today that that sums up motherhood: the need to carry on - with a good outlook where possible - no matter what else you have to carry, because other little lives have to come first. I'm glad that mum and I have both lived long enough for me to put her life first, if only in the form of packing and shifting her things.

I finished that job on Friday after about three months of work, and guess what bloomed on Saturday?

I hope you have a very happy Mother's Day today, whether you spend it with children, or mothers, or both.

A tisket, a tasket

2011-04-24T13:17:00.001-04:00

.... a pretty floral basket.

This china basket was a present to my mother from her aunt many, many years ago. That aunt lived to be 104; she was a lovely woman and very kind to the shy young me-as-houseguest, especially along the lines of late-night buttered toast.

I always loved this basket and for a long time believed the Tooth Fairy lived between the strips of woven china lattice; I'm so happy to give it a new home now. It is the perfect Easter centrepiece, not least for its subtle reminder about the importance of dental care!

Happy Easter if you celebrate it, happy almost-May if not - and I hope your day has either chocolate or some other little treat in it.

The first aid kit

2011-04-12T10:42:00.003-04:00

While not posting here, I've been clearing things out of my mum's old place and into overflow venues, including her new place. It's a big job! with not so much time for writing (aha, at last a legitimate excuse) or sewing. Still time for knitting though, what with all the commuting back and forth.

In my travels through the cupboards I came across this tin I remember well, which ended up getting stacked in my storage room with this book I don't remember at all:

This may make sense, since mum and dad didn't consult me about where we would go on our driving trips. But I did have a lot of contact with the tin, which housed all the first aid stuff.

The tin lived at mum's feet in the front of whichever very big car dad was driving at the time - in the 70s all cars were big, but we needed an especially big one because when I was new, there were five kids to cram in around all the camping stuff. (By the time I was starting school, the oldest ones were working and didn't come away any more.)

Diversion alert:

The other thing that lived at mum's feet was a square Tupperware container full of sandwiches. We were all prone to carsickness which mum sensibly put down to hunger, so if anybody complained she would ask what flavour was wanted and hand back a neat triangle - white bread with mustard and ham, or butter and peanut butter (you need the butter to be able to swallow, since the lemonade jug didn't come out till we were out of the car.)

Sometimes we even got peanut butter with potato chips layered between the bread. It sounds totally disgusting, doesn't it? But it was delicious, unless you ate it too long after it was made or the chip bag opened, such that the chips got soggy or were stale to start with.

Return to main subject:

The label is scratched off the bottom of the tin so I couldn't say what sort of cookie - or possibly tea? - was in it when it was purchased, but with all those animals it must have been irresistible to buy in the store when she got it. Also it's hinged at one side which makes it perfect for future uses; you can't lose the lid or leave it somewhere to be stepped on by a bleeding child or an anxious sibling.

I love how resourceful and far-thinking mum is, even to the extent of choosing a cheery, attention-keeping tin for something so basic as a bandage box. She would say now that the tin should be tossed, being too messy and scarred for use. At least, this is what she said about our original cookie tin, a repurposed round stripey Peak Freans tin that held the chocolate chip cookies she baked weekly, when she let me have it years and years ago.

She's right in a way. But these things, when you use them for so long, develop a second life. And I think the first aid kit, even empty of bandages, still aids.

This seems physically impossible

2011-03-27T20:41:00.000-04:00

Explain the math to me, somebody. My storage room looked full but accessible before I started getting rid of stuff. After, it looked like a bomb site with little pathways.

Today I took another foray in there and sent six boxes out to Goodwill and dumped a solid box of paper into recycling and

it looks even worse.

So my questions are:

How is this possible?

and

Can the situation be improved by chocolate?

(no, really, that was a joke, because of course all situations are improved by chocolate, unless it's really bad chocolate - there is such a thing - and there is no other chocolate within ten yards in which case the situation is automatically a disaster.)

The real second question:

Do I need to hire somebody to come in and make it all go away, or should I just go in there and start carrying it all out to the car without considering what I should keep and what needs to go?

The opposite of procrastination

2011-03-20T13:56:00.000-04:00

A terrible thing has been creeping up on me the past few weeks. Not spring cleaning, though it is the time of year when you don't wait for all the snow to melt to start raking up last fall's leavings

And when green things start to look even better than usual next to the hibernating ones

And my stone bunny emerges again from under its pile of winter shovelings.

All that cleaning and reorganizing I've been getting up to... well, it got me doing some serious math. Like, what it would cost me, per additional room, to move to a bigger house. Which is sort of inflated because I could get the same effect for less investment by adding on to the current house, if I didn't put a value on my sanity mid-renovation, but I do. And my conservative estimate on the value of the 8x12' room I use for storage works out to about $30,000. Is there $30,000 worth of junk in there? No way.

You can see where the creeping terribleness is coming in. I would like more space. I would not like to go through all that junk and figure out what can go to a thrift store and then package it up to go there. But I would like more space.

And yesterday afternoon, I thought - ENOUGH. and instead of going through boxes and shedding stuff like I have for the past 15ish years in there, I moved every single box and bag out of it, turning the next room over into something out of that show about people who hoard stuff.

It took 5 hours, and I am a fast mover.

Then I dismantled the biggest storage shelf and moved it out for donation purposes so I couldn't put more stuff back in there.

Then I realized I need to say goodbye to another big shelf if I want to be able to use that room for anything functional so I got rid of it too.

Then I realized I need to get rid of at least 60% of what I was hanging on to because I've lost about that much storage and my workbench was still completely covered in boxes.

(that's okay though. I don't need the first communion certificate of my dad's childless cousin who died 35 years ago, or six French-English dictionaries.)

It will be a miracle if I get everything out the door or back into the room by bedtime tonight, but hey!

you can see the floor now.

Cleanup rewards: vintage china

2011-03-16T21:22:00.001-04:00

I've been clearing up my house lately to make space for new things and ditch the clutter, getting rid of anything I don't use and consolidating what I do. It's hard to part with things sometimes - I'm sure you've had the same experience!

My aunt sent me a little summary of how to make tough decisions about what to keep and what must go which echoed what I had learned through experience. It amounts to this:

If you don't need it now but might need it in ten years then compare its replacement cost to the real estate value of the storage space it will take up during that time. Then get rid of it.

If it cost a fortune and you're not using it, then it's costing you even more of a fortune and not just in money. Guilt is a heavy burden.

If you've collected a lot more of something than you can display (or use - are you getting the theme here?) then you need to prune.

Things are just things, not memories. You'll remember high school without the leather jacket you bought there in your last year.

Family heirlooms aren't heirlooms unless the current and next generation get to develop attachments to them. Use them.

Bearing these policies in mind to steel myself for the task, I emptied two out of six storage boxes this week, and one of the remaining four is only half full. A lot of what I decided to part with was stored china I had collected over years of thrift store and rummage sale visits in various towns I visited, by way of acquiring functional souvenirs. What I kept, I've put in my newly-cleared out china cabinet where I can get at it.

The plate in the middle was sitting on a crowded table at a church bazaar in a little village along the eastern coast of England when I found it. I love it so much for its cheery colours and seeming movement. Years ago I had it hanging on a wall with these plaid plates (I'm such a sucker for a good 50s plaid plate) but it's been nice these last few days to serve cookies on any of the three.

I can't remember where I got these, but I think they would be perfect at Christmas, don't you? and maybe for a special meal with a friend.

This one I picked up at some totally unassuming charity thrift shop. I can't tell you how much I love this plate - it's very smooth and new-looking and toast looks beyond perfect on it.

I adore these two bowls, too - I did say I can't resist plaids, right? The pink one has a little chip but I decided I don't care and it needs to stay. They are great bowls for slipping round cookies or wrapped candies into.

This cappucino-ish set is special - I found it at a flea market it during a weekend spent with a childhood friend who was turning 30 and wanted to revisit all our old haunts, including the near-vertical cliff we used to climb along at the lake. Horrors! I'd like to think it wasn't quite so treacherous looking then but I suspect it was just as dangerous. I've used them once since unpacking them but I don't know... I think I might give the set to that friend, who actually drinks both cappucino and espresso.

These ones are pretty posh by comparison with the rest, aren't they. An inheritance from my dad's cousin's widow that I have never used, but clearly need to use, perhaps for a small lunch party or a little tea and cake?

I should do something to celebrate all this cleaning, after all, and it really can't be a trip to the thrift store.

Where maple sugar comes from

2011-03-13T23:44:00.000-04:00

This weekend I decided that as a lifelong resident of Ontario, having lived under maple trees for pretty much the duration and being more than fond of pancakes, I needed to see for myself what maple syrup looks like when it's really new.

Any time this sort of urge descends upon me I hit up some friends to come along, and somehow even in the depths of summer Sio and I, alone of the group, freeze. One time we had to talk each other out of buying silk shawls in some 19th century castle's gift shop because it was August for crying out loud. Unseasonably cold and rainy, but August.

This time I was determined not to mess up. The temperature was hovering just over the freezing point as I left the house and the sky threatened rain or worse, so I put wool/mohair socks inside my rubber boots, two layers on my legs plus a skirt, a giant wool sweater and scarf, and a wool hat with my raincoat.

I was glad of the rubber boots.

(Sio begged off by the way, claiming to have too much laundry for gallivanting. I bet she was warm.)

There are four kinds of maple trees.

I think the one in front of my current house is a sugar. I grew up with two reds. Mum didn't realize how big they'd grow when she planted them, and a subsequent owner of our house had to cut one down to save the other (and have natural light in the living room, and get any free time at all from raking leaves every autumn I expect.)

The idea is to tap the trees when the sap starts running in early spring, and catch said sap in something or other. One of the more picturesque approaches is a pail.

The sap is quite clear and beautiful.

Also in evidence at the park I visited: the more modern method

which eliminates the risk of overflow and protects the sap from marauding raccoons.

Either way, you have to boil it down.

This is the part that prevents sensible people from tapping the maple trees on their own lawns even if they aren't growing on the municipally-owned portion of same. I mean, you've got to get the sap down to about a 40th of its original volume to get to syrup, which is a lot of steam, and I say this with confidence because the one guy I know who did once tap his own trees made his wife really, really mad when he boiled the sap in their kitchen. She had to rehang all the wallpaper. Hence the 'once'.

(the syrup was delicious though.)

You can get maple syrup in different grades depending on how much water has been boiled off the sap. There's a brownish fluid that resembles syrup but pours like water, and there's something sweeter and little denser that says With Real Maple Syrup on the label, meaning just a whiff probably, and there's high quality maple syrup from Quebec that is a rich lustrous brown and glugs out of the bottle or can, and there's my friend's syrup that took down the wallpaper, and then there is the sample they gave us on the trail.

It only took about 113 seconds for this stuff to hit my bloodstream. I'm amazed it was still liquid, there was so much sugar in that cup.

There was more of the same for sale in the Sugar Shack.

But my preference was for something with not much liquid left in it at all because

who can resist maple leaves made from maple sugar?

Lime marmalade

2011-03-08T07:44:00.001-05:00

A while ago Melissa at tiny happy made a passing remark about having lime marmalade on something or other, and while I seem to recall the point of this being the something or other I stopped in my tracks at the lime.

Lime?

In my world, there is only orange marmalade. My mother likes it, so there was usually some in the house when I was growing up and I tried it once. It was bitter. There were huge hunks of orange peel in it that stuck to my teeth and were just all wrong, consistency-wise, for a cheery little piece of toast. Admittedly my mother likes tea that pours out like ink, so on reflection I suppose it's possible that other brands of orange marmalade might be less bitter, but still. Marmalade = ew.

Yet there was Melissa liking marmalade, and it was lime, so obviously I had to get some. I mean, I live in a pretty big city and we do import things. Surely I should be able to find lime marmalade?

It seemed not, for several months as I haunted different posh grocery shops. But last week, the nearest one suddenly had: lime marmalade with ginger, lime marmalade fine cut, lime marmalade. I went for Fine Cut, remembering those hunks of orange peel.

It is heaven.

I might even go back and get the regular kind. But not the With Ginger. I mean honestly. Ginger and Lime?

Happy birthday to me

2011-03-04T07:11:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, in honour of it being my last day at the age I've been for the past year, I took advantage of not getting Rob's first slot of the day for the haircut I've been trying to fit in since November and got myself into my favourite French cafe for the first time since I think 2003.

Twenty years ago when I lived near it and went every Saturday, I would very occasionally take a vacation from my office job to stay home and write fiction. And at some point during the day I would go over to drink cafe au lait in a bowl and listen to grownup arty professional types having their business meetings there under cover of the always-fabulous jazz music. Every time, I promised myself that some day I'd be in some arty line of work that would allow me to go there in the middle of the day, just like them.

So yesterday it was pretty great to sit at a marble table with my cafe au lait in a bowl, and the draft copy to review of another knitting pattern I wrote that's due to be published in a few months' time, and a pineapple danish at my side, which was just way too sticky to eat while holding a pen over paper but I ate it anyway because there is Nothing. Better. than a custard danish with a slice of pineapple on it. See?

And this time when I listened to the grownup arty professional types - who still seemed to be the same amount older than me without actually being the same people, which struck me as more than a little time-warpy - I thought: I am really happy with my life just the way it is.

That's a pretty nice feeling to have, especially the day before your birthday, don't you think?

Tough to top on the actual day.

Unless of course you can't decide on a birthday cake

and opt to have them all.

Spot the bedding

2011-03-01T18:49:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I had to go to the fabric store to buy buttons

(newsflash: it is in fact possible to have the most stash buttons of your entire family put together plus the stash of at least five of your crafty friends and still need to spend $20 on retail-store buttons)

and spotted some denim ends in a bin for $4/meter. Substitute yard for meter if you like, it'll do for this story.

Though I usually try to resist such indulgences when using public transit, I just happened to be carrying a much bigger bag than buttons typically require, so I bought about $7 worth of a lovely dark grey and headed home, where I immediately spotted a pillowcase on my stash fabric shelf with a shade of blue that comes pretty close to matching a blue crochet doily I've been wanting to use for something.

Then Michelle asked whether I want to meet up for coffee next week. Aha! Michelle's birthday is in March. A built-in excuse to drop everything and make a tote bag with the pillowcase for lining and the blue doily for an accent.

Of course, once I wanted it I couldn't find the blue. But I did find a nice white one I'd been hoarding.

And then I did find the blue after all.

I gave both of them big roomy inside pockets - the white bag's being sourced from a sheet, not a pillowcase.

Both of these have been imagined as market bags - box bottomed, and deep yet narrow enough to hold the better part of a baguette from any of the nice bakeries on the high street. Michelle doesn't actually use that high street any more, having moved a few neighbourhoods over, but I don't care, I will picture her carrying a baguette in her bag before visiting the butcher's and the fruit and veg store anyway.

A tougher call: which one do I give her?

Saved by walnut cookies

2011-02-28T21:33:00.001-05:00

Last week I got food poisoning and spent about 36 hours either asleep or wishing my stomach would be transplanted into a lake approximately 487 miles due west of my then-present position. About 20 hours in, my friend Rosa happened to delivered cookies in lieu of the ones she wanted to make me at Christmas but was too sick for, herself.

Don't they look just like walnuts?

When I got past the soda cracker stage, I gave in to the illusion that they might be mostly protein without too much fat and tried one.

It wasn't sweet. It was actually pretty much like eating a walnut but with the texture of a soft biscuit. I imagined being well and drinking coffee at Rosa's (Rosa makes wicked coffee too, and I say that without even liking coffee under normal circumstances) and eating these cookies; they would be perfect together.

Over the next few days I ate a few more, gingerly and then less so as things started to settle down. They totally took the sting out of not being able to face chocolate even though I was miserable and wanted comfort food. Treated as dessert, they made plain boiled eggs seem like a sumptuous lunch.

I guessed that Rosa has a walnut-shaped cookie mold and pressed in some walnutty dough to get each shell, then pasted them together with the walnutty filling (I asked her today: I was right.) I thought about acquiring such a mold myself. I wondered whether she'd give me the recipe. I decided that I want to recuperate with walnut cookies next time I get food poisoning, which I hope will be never.

Finally I thought I'd better take a picture before they were all gone. And now that they are I'm glad I did, aren't you?

Waiting

2011-02-26T14:30:00.000-05:00

I thrifted some new sweaters last week, including this one:

Normally I would pass on something with this sort of embellishment over the front but, um... 100% cashmere, people. For $6. I could not say no. Bonus: it felted beautifully.

I have removed the cowl neck for use as a cowl (it is awesome) and

I have removed the sleeves to see whether it would work as a vest and

it fits me perfectly.

I'm going to hold out for the perfect black merino sweater, cuffed or otherwise, and then I will cut the remains of this sweater in two for an empire waist and finish the neck and arms with a discreet run of handstitching or maybe black merino as seam binding, what do you think? Then I will turn the merino upside down and stitch it to the cut line for a floaty vesty thing. I'd go for a minidress but I think hoping for that much perfect black merino is pushing it, don't you?

Meanwhile: waiting.

How to send hugs to a sick and distant friend

2011-02-22T23:24:00.000-05:00

What do you do for someone you love who's stuck in the hospital and you can't go visit? Send a hug in blanket form, of course!

I can't take credit for this idea but I did do the sewing and can attest to its being a super easy project if you have the materials handy, in this case mostly leftover polar fleece though I was told a sheet would do.

The friends with hugs to send each chose their own super soft felted wool from my embarrassingly large stash and traced one of their handprints onto scrap paper. I cut two facing prints for each, pointed the lowest pair of hands downward - woolly fingers ready to be clasped - and turned the ones on the shoulders to the back for a hug.

And then I stitched them on and sent the blanket on its way, where I hope it's doing a whole lot of good.

How to make a hugging pillow

2011-02-14T11:46:00.000-05:00

This Valentine's Day, I thought it would be fun to use up some of my softest felted sweaters on a pair of hugging pillows.

It would have taken maybe 4 hours tops including photography time if I hadn't gotten distracted by a pair of cats, but more on that later.

In addition to thread and a sewing machine you will need:

A set of nesting mixing bowls you are comfortable running a rotary cutter around
A rotary cutting mat and cutters
Scissors
Castoff cloth dinner napkins a little larger than the largest bowl, or other lining fabric
Stuffing
Soft felted wool sweaters, enough to provide at least four circles cut around the largest bowl
Yarn for blanket stitching the pillow covers over the pillow

First up, use the biggest bowl to cut out circles for the front and back of your stuffed pillow, plus the front and back of your pillow cover. I found it easiest to cut up the sides of the sweaters so I'd get the flattest possible fabric. If you're layering a smaller circle over one or both of the covers, cut that with the next-smallest bowl.

(I did that because the super soft sweater I wanted to use for Side B features a delicate eyelet lace pattern not entirely lost in the felting. Bit of a visual waste of the stripey underlayer but it wasn't really soft enough for a pillow on its own, and it does provide a lot of extra squish factor. I put the wrong side up for nicely blurred stripes, a different sort of soft.)

Then cut out any embellishments, like a heart or a pocket.

You have to be opportunistic with felted wool sweaters. When I bought this orangey red cap-sleeved mock turtleneck sweater I couldn't figure out why anybody would design such a thing in superhot alpaca, but when I noticed how nicely the cap sleeves would work for pockets on my pillows, I gave that designer mental thanks and snipped them right off.

Doesn't it all look pretty when you stack it up?

This is where the cats come in. While I pressed everything and stitched the embellishments down (layer by layer so as not to accidentally stitch your pocket down in the middle without thinking, as has happened to me but not, thankfully, this time) I plotted what I could possibly make to tuck into the pockets. A small stuffed animal made sense, and what can I say? I like cats. Probably should have gone for a long skinny shape to fit into the pocket better, but hey.

Yes, I embroidered the face with the sewing machine. With regular stitch and backstitch, because it's a 1940s Singer without a single bell or whistle.

They are too big to fit into the pockets. If you make a hugging pillow, you can learn from my mistake.

Back to the pillows. Stitch around most of the circle about as far in as you expect to do your blanket stitching later, leaving a gap big enough to push through stuffing,

Then turn inside out, press if compulsive, and stuff:

After that, it's all over but the blanket stitching. I ended up using leftover sock yarn with a gradual colour change (Noro Silk Garden, if you're a knitter) to get a good match for the stripes on the pocket side. And I stitched a little more than half of the circle before tucking in the pillow, to make it easier to get the sides to line up well.

I think all I need to make these a perfect gift is chocolate and a good book, don't you?

Hope your Valentine's Day has hugs in it!

Stealth crafting and other updates

2011-02-12T10:44:00.001-05:00

Hello, I'm Mary! You may remember me from such blog entries as Where Is The Nearest Chocolate? and No, I'm Still Not Writing.

I've actually been up to a lot of interesting stuff lately in addition to eating chocolate and not writing, including some successful crafty items I want to tell you about. Unfortunately I've also been out sick or helping other sickies for a couple of weeks so none of the pictures made their way to the blog. Some teasers, while I sort through photographs for tutorial posts:

If you drop by here on any sort of regular basis you'll know where the materials for these projects came from, but I will admit I'd be entertained by guesses in comment form.

In other news...

My desk, which was beautiful and tidy on January 1, is disorganized again, the sorting baskets full of odds and ends that are cascading down.

I have a mix for chocolate brownies in the pantry, purchased after I tasted some baked from said mix at a friend's house. It's for emergencies, and since I seem to be out of chocolate again today might be one.

I can breathe again following 4 days of a killer cold.

I have new knit socks to wear out to an Important Meeting today.

I have the kind of life where I can get away with wearing outfits involving handknit socks to Important Meetings.

There is another stealth craft underway that I'm especially excited about.

It looks like I'm going to be able to swing by my favourite gourmet shop today for my super most favourite chicken pies, of which I ran out about a month ago.

It just snowed enough to cast a clean blanket over the stuff that's been stomped over by any number of living things of all ages, and pee'd upon by what appears to be roving packs of neighbourhood dogs - seriously, there's nothing like snow to tell you when the dog population is going up in your area - and now the sun is shining, so it's pretty out.

and:

I have the fixings for a super fabulous grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.

It's going to be a great weekend.

How 'bout for you?

How to make felted wool pins

2011-02-02T08:36:00.012-05:00

I've been making so many of these pins this week, I thought I'd better take some photographs and do a tutorial... even though they are so easy, really, as to not need much instruction.

You will need:

Two felted shapes (in this case hearts) that are cut exactly the same

A darning needle and length of yarn that's even longer than you think you're going to need

A backing pin.

Run the darning needle through the wrong side (which will become the inside) of the shape you'll be using for the back, at the point where you want the pin to sit.

Don't make a knot at the end or pull the yarn all the way through - if you leave a tiny tail, you'll be able to secure it and the pin at the same time.

Now start sewing on the pin on the right side (aka outside), catching the original run of yarn as you tighten each stitch so it's held in place.

Once the pin is on, bring the yarn back to the wrong side (inside) and catch just enough of the fabric to run the yarn to the edge of the shape without anything showing on the right side (outside.)

Position the front piece with its right side facing away from the back piece, perfectly placed to match every curve, and begin a border of blanket stitch (instructions here, compliments of the awesome Stitch School.)

... and that's about it.

You may find they're rather addictive.

This isn't the only thing I've been up to with my felted wool hearts, but that's a tutorial for another day!

Colour love

2011-02-01T13:36:00.006-05:00

I had a surprising call this morning asking, would I be home for a delivery of flowers?

For flowers? Absolutely.

Aren't they gorgeous? They are from my cousin, a little celebration for making it through an uppy downy week. And such perfect timing, because they arrived while I was sitting down with a bowl of felted wool hearts and bucket of enthusiasm for blanket stitching them. In fact, just moments before I had cut a length of orange wool/silk blend to work on a navy houndstooth one.

So matchy, in that love it! kind of way.

Even better timing - we're due for a big snowfall tonight and tomorrow, so big I've heard talk of school closures.

I'm having visions of the deep snows of past winters that feature staying home to dig out the driveway and overly optimistic drivers, then coming in to thaw out over a steaming cup of hot chocolate. All in midweek - totally stolen time - with lots of blanket-stitched hearts for company and lovely flowers to scent the room and rest my eyes after acres of brilliant white snow.

hope hope hope...

A skirt from just one sweater

2011-01-25T16:05:00.012-05:00

Check out this 'After' shot!

I've been wearing my original felted wool skirt so much, I decided I needed another. I found this sweater at the local thrift store:

It's your basic merino wool turtleneck, in size XL. Even felted, it was still super long, which is where I got the idea to make a whole skirt from this and nothing else.

First, I cut the sweater across the back and chest, at the armpits. It fit my hips all right, and it would have made a great miniskirt as it was, but I wanted to go as close to knee length as I could. So I cut a piece as wide as the front would allow...

...and then across the base of the turtleneck with my pinking shears, since I wasn't going to have the nice tailored hem I got last time. I did the same with the back, matching the length of what I got from the front.

Sewing those two pieces together wasn't going to give me enough coverage, so I cut open the sleeves and got two more, much narrower, pieces of the same length from each of them.

I made a long strip of those pieces, the pinked edges all on one end, and then I sewed them into a tube. Pinning right side to right side, I fit that wide frill onto the raw edge of the sweater's body and improvised pleats as I'd done with the original skirt. Only this time I had so much fabric I had to put pleats right across the back after making the little kick pleat I like on the right of center in front.

Once I'd sewn the frill in place and rather sloppily topstitched the seam from above (I tried it just below the seam first, but the pleats were too much for my machine) I took a look for moth holes.

Yep, front and center - the last place you want to put any sort of applique. So I improvised this geometric design to draw the eye over to the side. The hole is at the top left edge of it.

It still needs work. I've been eying the sleeve cuff for a possible pocket, and if you thought it looked a little wide in that top shot you weren't wrong - even though felted wool tends not to slip down over leggings, this baby could stand to be taken in a lot at the waist. But when I pressed the pleats under a wet cloth they looked downright professional, and at this length, it's so warm.

Plus, it matches the handspun cuff of my boot socks! Gotta love that.

Instant cowl

2011-01-23T11:37:00.010-05:00

This winter, which has my house more full of freezingness than I remember in previous years, I finally get the point of a cowl. And now I have one:

Here's how it started, as a partially-felted Banana Republic sweater (90% merino, 10% cashmere, and boy can you feel that 10%):

I cut off the body just below the arms, not even very neatly:

and then I turned it wrong side out, folded the cuff up, and folded the cut edge down far enough to tuck into the cuff.

This sweater felted down to 34" around, with 11" from cuff to armholes; folded, it's about 4" deep.

I'll try this approach again with a sweater that felts narrower, because I think this one's gap is about as big as I'd want. In a floppier wool I'd only fold it once or maybe not at all, and blanket stitch the raw edge since it would show. This sweater was heavy even before it felted and doesn't drape enough to be tall for indoor use. (outdoor, folded into a coat, definitely.)

Even at this size though it's still deep enough to tuck my chin into and go all Veronica Lake-y,

so between that and the cashmere I'm happy!

Vehicles for blanket stitch

2011-01-19T11:45:00.007-05:00

I find embroidery enticing but difficult, which doubtless feeds my supreme love for blanket stitch. I can do blanket stitch. And it's so. peaceful.

As a result I am always open to projects that can use a little blanket stitch in the finish. So while looking for stress relief last weekend I cut out some circles.

I used my rotary cutter and a bowl with a stainless steel rim for the job. It went really well and made me wonder why I hadn't used my rotary cutter before.

Seriously: last winter I became obsessed with putting together every possible tool for working with felted wool or needle felting fiber, and even after scoring the bigger pieces like that mat in some sale or other, I just kept sitting down with scissors to cut freehand. Rotary cutters are just very sharp and scary-looking.

In the event though, the cutter gave me much better edges for showing off future blanket stitchings, so I guess I can live with it.

This reminded me of another tool I bought in that particular frenzy and never used:

Must think about making a felted wool skirt with a pretty scalloped edge some time.

The circles are destined to be doubled up and used for tea trivets, or I guess pads for any hot bowl or pot that could damage another surface. I'll embellish them in some way since that will give me an excuse to cut out more felted wool with my scissors.

To give you an idea of what I mean, here are some rejects I started last year:

I didn't finish them in trivet form because the circles came out so bumpy. Perhaps they will be happier if I re-trim them with the rotary cutter? Or perhaps they will find themselves some other use.

Meanwhile, my basket of blanket-stitchable things is full again

and I am very happy.

Snowhearts

2011-01-17T13:23:00.005-05:00

In my experience, when the going gets tough, the tough get scissors.

Is there anything more relaxing than cutting out bits of things from felted wool scraps? And at this time of year, my preference is freehand hearts.

As you can see, I got carried away again.

After last year's drawer sachet extravaganza, I'm not really sure what I'll do with these. But they are nice to take pictures of in fresh snow.

Especially when you pose them in a pretty drift.

An older man I don't know strolled past when I took a break from shoveling on Saturday to take these pictures, and it was nice that he assumed I was doing it for some purpose. When I explained it was just that I just couldn't resist, he paused and said They do look very nice in the snow!

I should have made it Random Acts of Felt Hearts Day, and given him one. Perhaps I'll just fill my pockets next time I go out, and try to come home with none?

Another sweater's journey

2011-01-15T08:06:00.008-05:00

It may take longer to get to post my fab feltable-sweater finds, but I do like being able to show off the finished objects too so - welcome to today's installment of One Sweater's Journey!

I had high hopes for this sweater - Fair Isle always gives you so much scope for picking up colour at the finish, depending on what you decide to make - but it was fluffy enough in the store that I didn't know how it would come out of the washer. Sometimes these things come out covered in whatever pills didn't get left behind on the sides of the washer and you can never quite get them flat again (I call these sweaters 'Lining' or 'Interfacing.')

Even if that did happen though, I knew it was worth spending the $3 for the hook closures:

In the end, this sweater turned out to be one of my best - thick but soft, with just enough drape to do whatever I wanted. With that lovely turned hem, what I wanted was mittens:

and of course, some glove warmers:

It cuts down on how many mittens I can produce, but I really prefer the two-piece pattern I came up with a year ago - it's so much more comfortable to wear, and soooo much easier to sew and fit! And the person who got them seemed very pleased too.

The glove warmers went into a brown paper bag with some of my grandmother's shortbread and a journal when I was invited, three days before Christmas when I had already moved on to the baking frenzy, to participate in a little exchange. Good call on my part, taking the time to make them Just In Case.

What's most amazing is that there is still a huge amount of sweater left for smaller projects - almost as though each cut makes it grow bigger, like every other sweater I use for something. Have you noticed that?

I'm finding some little uses for the scraps, of course, but that will have to wait for another day (with better photography-friendly lighting.)

Bean plant progress report

2011-01-12T07:50:00.005-05:00

Just had to pop in with another pic of the bean plant.

Things I cannot believe my eyes about:

how fast these beans are growing

how slender and delicate the stalks are that are holding up those heavy beans

how the plant still hasn't died in my care

And further to that last point - is it bad and/or jinxy that I'm beginning to wonder how the beans will taste?

Memories in the lining

2011-01-10T16:53:00.006-05:00

I've been accepting old linens from my mum for a while, some of them actually linen, others cotton and hand-embroidered by mum's friends 60 or more years ago. The idea was I'd use them in some way, but most were a little stained or ripped or worn and that meant

cutting into them

which is just unthinkable to me.

Then last week mum said she needed a messenger-style bag she could cart around in lieu of a pocket, something big enough for her reading glasses and some tissues but 'in a darker colour' - referring, I knew, to the bright red recycled juice box bag I was wearing at the time.

I did try to shop for one for her but there was nothing I liked, and it's not like I haven't been making little messenger bags for a while - see my hiking satchel tutorial - so I went home and pondered my stash.

The darkest option was a pair of coordinating Waverly fabrics I bought I think 8 years ago and have never found a use for, but what to use for lining? My white cottons just looked too bright, and the thrifted cotton sheets I bought last summer all had big prints the Waverly didn't like.

Then I thought of those old linens. My mum's aunt had left her some lovely placemats (can you imagine the luxury of dining over linen?) and they had made their way to me, complete with tiny breaks in the lace and small stains on the panels. But the colours - ivory and pale sage green - were right, and the size meant I wouldn't have to cut into them, and how can you beat that sentiment?

I chose the one with the darkest stains, and cut a linen napkin I'd bought elsewhere to stitch on as a pocket over the stained area, being careful to leave the square details exposed. Even the napkin had been so well-washed, it draped open; I had to stitch a line down the middle of the pocket to make two just so it would function as more than just a purse divider. It worked: either of them are deep enough to keep keys or lipstick from falling out.

It doesn't look like much and it photographed like a lot less than that, but when you put your hand inside and feel the linen: hello bliss.

I couldn't see mum fussing with a button or hook closure, so I weighted the front flap to help it fall shut naturally. And yes, I used buttons given me from her own button box.

She loved it. And that made me so happy.

Bean plant

2011-01-08T21:15:00.006-05:00

I'm up to my elbows in crafty stuff again, but in the midst of it all something really creative has been happening on my kitchen windowsill.

It's a bean plant.

It was a gift, and it's very important that I not kill it, which is extremely challenging given that this is the only window in my house that receives sufficient sunglight to keep a plant alive, while being sufficiently out of the way not to be knocked over.

In fact the only other plant in residence is some extremely hardy tree thing that has lived through about 16 years of neglect and dim light on my mantelpiece and still looks fabulous. I don't deserve it.

The bean plant came in a tiny pot where it had taken up residence as a seed, but outgrew it very quickly and then began actually to flower, so I had to scramble through the cupboard at the back of the garage for a bigger home for its roots. I'm pretty sure it's still not big enough, but it was the best I could do and not have the lot fall right into the sink.

Earlier this week it flowered, and a few days later the flowers began to wither and I thought, Well, I gave it my best shot.

I mean, it's crazy cold on the other side of that window, and it's got inches to go before it can wind itself around the silver sugar tongs I positioned as welcoming supportive arms for the vine I assumed must be scheduled to appear eventually.

Then I remembered that flowers do die before the fruits and veg appear, and I looked closer.

Tiny green beans, growing on a plant that's surviving my windowsill. Imagine!

Happy New Desk

2011-01-01T09:05:00.006-05:00

I just had to take a picture of my desk overhaul before it returns to its usual bomb site status (which I predict will occur around 2:03pm on Tuesday.)

See those baskets, and the top of that three-drawer thingy? For the last 18ish months they've housed stacks of paper so tall they hung out over the shelves entirely. Not to mention all the bits and bobs that are always taking over the desk itself. You know how brains work - why have one idea when you can have three? and then you have to put the notes for the other two somewhere, which is usually in a pile of mail and magazines and brochures.

It took about five hours to do this job yesterday, my gift to myself for a new year with my thoughts collected. I found notes for 17 knitting patterns in various stages of near-completion, all but one or two of which were begun in 2010. And amazingly, there were some short stories and essays in the mix as well, almost as though I did any writing last year, which suggests I must have done without noticing.

I did something else last year too - took an outing to a pottery painting shop with some friends. Just last week in fact, and after I did the desk cleanup I picked it up from the shop that fired it so it could go straight to work as my new creativity mascot:

I copied the colours and flower design from a vintage apron that had belonged to my mum's mum, and while I wish I'd trusted the firing process and left a lot more white (I thought I'd end up with unglazed patches, which turned out not to be the case) I'm pretty happy with the result.

And so is my sheep-shaped tape measure.

Hope your new year is making as happy a start, and more importantly, goes on to be great!

This blog needs smell-o-vision

2010-12-20T23:28:00.006-05:00

The tree is up:

and it smells amazing.

In other news, I have been blanketstitching fingerless gloves like nobody's business and I have a whole lot more to go. More in fact than I need for gifts. I'm not sure why I have given myself this task - unless I want to have backups in case people really hate the ones I chose for them, enough to tell me so, and to demand another option? This seems unlikely. The last two parts of that equation, anyway.

Perhaps because I'm already going totally overkill on the fingerless gloves business but probably because I am essentially selfish, I took a break from giftstitching to finish a pair for myself:

I mean, you gotta test these things out, right? Just like a cookie tasting before you hand out cookies you miscounted the sugar scoops for. Which I might have done this year to advantage, unlike the time I made a pumpkin pie and forgot the sugar entirely. Urg. I hope the cookies are better than that but I won't know for sure till I try one of the non-burned ones, which almost taste good, which bodes well for my not having to make another two batches.

But back to this glovewarmer business. They are both warm and attention-getting. I like them. Probably that explains why I am making so many - that and the procrastination problem.

And while nobody with a stash of scrap felted wool is likely to be visiting here for last-minute crafty gift ideas that will be viable for this year's Christmas gifting, I do plan to break from cookie-baking to pull together some images of how I've been doing it.

In the meantime, the one pictured above is the cop-out version, useful when a sweater felts perfectly to the requisite width:

cut the bottom 6 - 7" or so off a felted sleeve

cut a slit in the seam for your thumb

stitch the raw edges with complementary yarn or embroidery floss.

(in the next easiest version, the only further revision is to machine stitch the bit from the top of the thumb to the finger opening at a bit of an angle so it tucks in closer to the shape of your hand, rather than moving further outward as when its job was to protect an arm.)

Felted wool fish

2010-12-18T09:06:00.010-05:00

Time for another installment in my series of Before and After moments:

The all-reddish orange one is baby alpaca, and the green trimmy one is super soft merino. Both were dotted with a ton of moth holes, making a big project impractical. It was however the obvious choice for the smallest of my extended family members who likes sea creatures.

I should have done a proper tutorial for this project but I didn't have much time - it only took about 90 minutes start to finish, which is about what I had, and in less than stellar lighting for photography purposes. But I can tell you that I simply cut out two layers of a fishy shape and opted for topstitching, so as to maintain said shape. It would have been a lot cuter if I had bothered to get red thread into the machine but - did I mention the 90 minute time limit?

Most of that went to improvising and then lining up his features, and to a lesser extent the side fins. I sewed all those bits onto one side of the fish, then used it as a template and put the other side of the fish nose to nose with the first to make sure everything lined up well. After all that was securely in place, I pinned in the top fin and topstitched all but a 2" span of belly, through which to stuff the stuffing.

Here's a tip: if asking the opinion of other children about a project that you think may be lame for the person you intend to give it to, be prepared to have to make more of said project. Seriously. This fish is going to a 7-year old boy not because I think 7-year old boys like handmade stuffies but because he is severely disabled and has difficulty even holding onto something. I figured anything in bright colours and supersoft fabric was a good idea. On completion I panicked, but unnecessarily as I discovered when I took the finished project to be judged by boys of similar age. Far from scathing, they were all - "make another one for him and give that one to me!" and "I want mine to be green!"

There is still a lot of fish-sized fabric left in each of these sweaters, so maybe I can make those boys some fish of their own. But not until my Christmas tree has had its moment and gone back out for composting, because the sewing machine is all tucked away behind it for the rest of the season.

(that doesn't prevent me from handstitching, of course. Stay tuned for one more project next week!)

From three felted sweaters to one fabulous skirt

2010-12-13T21:06:00.011-05:00

On Saturday I finally had time to fix a skirt I botched in the fall, and it's so cool I thought somebody else might want to know how to make one. Sorry this isn't a real step-by-step pictorial, but it's such a dead easy project you probably don't need one anyway.

This is one of those lucky find kinds of projects. You need at least three merino wool sweaters because they tend to be thin and felt softly - ask me how I know a sweater that felts to the thickness of board won't work - of which one has to have a torso that felts to exactly your hip size.

Materials

One merino sweater with a torso that felts to your hip measurement and a ribbed cuff around the waist

At least two merino sweaters with a folded or flat (as in, not ribbed or gathered) hem, buttons and pockets a bonus

Instructions

First, you will cut the flat-hemmed sweaters off at the armpits, thereby freeing yourself to use the flat hem as the hem of the skirt.

Next, you will cut both bodies at one side, at least, to make a long strip of fabric. One of my two was a button-up vest with pockets, and I wanted to save one of those front pieces for a different skirt later, so I cut it in three pieces leaving the back of the vest intact and separating the button band for use elsewhere.

Now you want to stitch these sweater bodies together into one long strip, which when complete you will sew into a tube (leaving the upper part, where the armpits were, free to stitch onto your waistband later.) Because I had had to cut my vest, I cut the other sweater into two pieces so that I could have a grey-black-grey-black repeat. That sort of decision is entirely up to you; just make sure you get the hems lined up as perfectly as possible.

At this point you will address moth holes. My grey vest had several, but thanks to clever use of the button band, they became design features. (That's part of the button band over there on the right; the buttonholes are more obvious in person.)

I stitched my fakery over panels where possible, which is why I waited until I had a tube, but you may prefer to do this job before you join the strip.

Now you are ready to make your waistband. Cut the cuffed sweater across, just below the armpits, and turn it such that the cuff is now the waistband, and the torso the hip. Start pinning the hemmed tube to the hip section with eventual wear in mind, pleating the fabric to fit.

For my skirt, I wanted the pocket at the front of my right leg, as shown above. I also wanted pleats primarily on my left hip, so in addition to the one at the back part of my right hip for balance, I put deep ones there with two falling at the front and two at the back. Each set faces the other to make a flat patch at their centre.

Run one row of stitching close to the edge with the right sides of your hip and hem sections facing, then open it up and topstitch the seam along its hip side.

And - you're done! And I dare you to take if off again once it's on.

Transformation

2010-12-06T07:55:00.006-05:00

As promised, I have before-and-after pics of one sweater's journey past my sewing machine.

Behold:

This sweater was in perfect shape which does make me feel a bit guilty, but also makes me click my heels with joy because I don't lose any fabric to month holes. You usually can't tell about moth holes until after the felting, have you noticed this? and sometimes the end result is more patch than project.

In this case I got not only a full set of metal buttons but enough fabric for two pairs of mittens:

I cut the second pair's back from the sleeve cuffs, and the palm from the upper back of the sweater; that of course meant no cuff, but I was able to cut extra cuff from unused parts of the sweater's body and stitch them on. I don't think it looks too bad.

That sweater was definitely worth the three dollars it cost me, wouldn't you say?

It's a start

2010-11-30T21:23:00.007-05:00

I gave in and went back to the thrift store on Friday for more feltable sweaters, having convinced myself that I simply don't have enough for this year's Christmas-gift crafting.

This of course turned out to be Not True, but it was fun anyway and I got some great stuff - 7 sweaters, in fact, for $20. And one of them, though small and nearly sleeveless, was made of baby alpaca. I'll share pictures of them when I've made them into something so you can see the Befores and Afters.

A few weeks ago I had a little time to cut off a lot of felted sleeves for fingerless gloves, and yesterday I sat down to blanket stitch a trim on one pair of them:

The best thing about this project is that the yarn I used for the edging was a little present from Melissa, some vintage darning wool with a marvelous label. I love being able to incorporate bits and pieces from people I care about into the gifts I make, don't you? It's such a good way to spread happy feelings.

So - one down, 426 to go, give or take. Wish me luck for a pair of actual mittens this week!

Procrastination that paid off

2010-11-27T16:16:00.002-05:00

Well, this is a first.

I've been too swamped this fall to get all the leaves up from the maple tree that generously shades my house. But if there is one thing I can't stand, it's not getting all the leaves up before the snow - because then when all your better-organized neighbours are joyfully looking out the window with their April morning coffees at pristine snow melting over green grasses and colourful crocuses, you're looking blearily at brown-dappled snow melting over brown sludge.

Last night, most of the leaves having been dealt with by somebody much less lazy and rather more generous than me, I went out in subzero temperatures to bag the remaining leaves the wind had raked for me into a few big piles. And this is where it gets good!

As I have learned to my cost in previous years, if you bag leaves after a rain, they will melt the compostable bag before the city comes to pick them up.

But as I discovered yesterday, if you bag leaves after a rain in subzero temperatures - why then, you can bag them with a shovel. Because the raindrops are now ice particles holding the leaves in one neat pile.

It was still a lot of leaves - 5 bags' worth, I think - but it only took about 40 minutes to do. And today: it snowed. Ha!

Fabric with feeling

2010-11-13T08:13:00.004-05:00

My cousin has sent me an article about an exhibit we wish we could visit together - Threads of Feeling at The Foundling Museum in London (by which I mean England, not Ontario!)

It's a collection of fabric scraps given as identifying marks for babies left in the 1700s by mothers who could no longer care for them, but hoped to be able to come back for some day. Apparently only 152 of the 16,282 children accepted by the foundling hospital over a 19 year period were ever reunited with their families, which says a lot about the life expectancy and economic hardship of the time.

The history is amazing and moving, but a side interest to the creative people who visit this blog is the fabric itself, real everyday fabric that would probably never otherwise have been preserved for people like us to look at. Even wedding fabrics might not have been saved for so long - cloth being one of the most recyclable materials, especially at the level of poverty we're talking about here. But a baby is different, and the giving up of one unimaginably significant.

If you've got time for a hot cup of something and a longer than usual read, the first link will take you to the news article about the story behind the collection, the second to the museum site and a few remarkable photographs of the actual scraps.

What a quilt all that would make!

Getting a start on gifts

2010-11-08T08:06:00.003-05:00

It's really been bugging me not to have had time to start on Christmas sewing. I mean, I bought all those sweaters to felt all through August! and there they are in my sewing cupboard, folded up and waiting.

So yesterday when I had to do a tiny bit of sewing, I decided to take advantage of the machine being open and got out the scissors:

and a quilty tea cosy for a template and got this:

Which is photographed flat because it falls over like a much limper sweater than it actually felted to, when you put it over a teapot. I think it needs a liner, which it will get in the next 45 minutes of 'free' time that occurs post-solution-idea.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of the bonus hour we got from Daylight Savings Time or whatever it's called at this time of year, I decided that since the sewing cupboard was open I should cut a bunch of sleeves for fingerless gloves.

Not every sleeve felts suitably for such a project, but it turns out that sometimes you can get two pairs of handwarmers from a single pair of arms, so I ended up with I think 7 pairs. I spent a happy hour or so positioning the thumb openings and adjusting lengths and steaming the wool, and now I have 7 pairs of canvas for blanket stitching and other embellishments.

You know, next time I have 45 minutes of 'free' time.

A thought occurred to me as I did all this. Well, two thoughts.

1/ Is it a gift if all I do is cut off a sleeve with a pair of scissors and then cut a whole for the thumb?

2/ Yes. Because it took time, effort, and money to find the right sweaters to felt, and then more time to fit perfectly, and it will take time - no matter how much I enjoy it - to embellish them however sparingly I do so, and moreover, I have so little time, and people know that, that they will know how much love got poured into these little tokens.

Then I had a third thought:

Just because it's super easy for me to do these things doesn't mean it's easy for everybody else I know. It's okay not to undervalue my skills.

And it's okay for you, too!

Raccoons ate my pumpkin

2010-10-31T22:07:00.012-04:00

I knew a smooth Halloween was not in the cards for me when I stepped out on the front porch three days before the big event to discover what had been making that curious thumping and crashing sound the night before.

Raccoons ate my pumpkin!

Actually there were four uncarved pumpkins marking the porch steps, and thankfully they only dug right inside of one. Another had some holes in it, and the remaining two had the sort of surface scratches that meant they were probably going to stay non-rotten until I actually had to cut in there and find out. Also, it was garbage day, and the trucks hadn't been by yet, so I was able to run the two wrecked ones to the curb for instant removal.

Spoiler:

The one I cut into was fine; I didn't risk it with the other. The cut-into one became a cat, with spaghetti whiskers - and may I recommend boring holes for the spaghetti rather than expecting it to push in there on its own? I broke a lot of spaghetti while trying not to have to look around for a tool that would do that. The non-cut-into one became a canvas for a second cat drawn on with marker. I forgot to take pictures of either, mostly because they weren't finished and in place until about 45 minute before the first trick-or-treater, a neighbouring zombie with impressively cut-up pants, arrived to terrorize my house.

End Spoiler.

The night before Halloween I was invited to an outdoor movie party, wherein the guests would be watching a movie projected on a sheet at the back of some friends' house. I missed last year's party but I knew that good use was made of blankets and several layers of long underwear, so I dressed accordingly (which you should read as 'unattractively') and filled a bag with blankets and walked over - only to find the back yard was empty.

I didn't have the wrong house.

The party had been moved to indoors.

Also, a bunch of other people decided to wear costumes. So while I was in the bathroom peeling off layers and trying to decide what I could leave on that would look remotely presentable in a party situation, everybody else was wearing cool wigs and/or hats and crazy-yet-flattering outfits and taking silly pictures of each other.

It was a fabulous party and I had a great time in spite of being way too hot but about three minutes into attempting conversation with people I either knew well and like a lot or had never met but wanted to know better I realized I was about as exhausted as I've ever been in my life. I mean, I could barely string a sentence together.

Thankfully about an hour in somebody handed me the resident baby and I was able to spend the rest of the evening curled up in a chair with her. Sleeping babies are only slightly less restful than briefly awake babies that stare and stare at you before snuggling back in and nodding off again.

As I was leaving I ran into a friend who was just arriving. I told her I had cool wig envy and she said she'd had hers on for 20 minutes and it was itching her like crazy and did I notice she had only one false eyelash on because they are super hard to glue in place? I had, but said that I thought it was part of the effect, which was true. I mean, how cool is that to show up in a weird dress with a crazy long-haired wig and one false eyelash? You're like creepy demented zombie lady, then. That is totally going to be my goal for next year, when probably it will turn out to be an outdoor party after all.

Of course the nice thing about having Halloween on a Sunday is that you really can spend the whole day just doing that. And since I have a thing about decorating the lawn, this is a super nice feature.

When I first moved here, there were no kids to take candy off my hands, which was problematic. So I started doing all these beacon things - several carved pumpkins all lit up and glowing in the driveway, an open door, lots of lights inside, and so on. Leaf bags became a fixture - I'd draw faces on a bunch of them and gradually I started adding branches for creepy reaching arms and putting floodlights on them to make them a focal point.

And more kids did start to come over the years, mostly because more kids moved onto the block. But now I've made a tradition of the Leaf Bag Ghouls and the Headless Man (coveralls stuffed with leaves, accessorized with an old pair of men's snowboots and a pair of filthy work gloves) I really have to keep up with it.

This year's big project was the Giant Leaf Bag Ghost, rendered by stacking up a bunch of leaf bags and throwing a length of white cotton purchased for bag linings over the lot of them. Why do I still have a huge length of white cotton when I could have sewed it into bags, do you think? Because it won't hold a press, which is just so unsatisfying. I will totally use it again outdoors though. It makes a great ghost.

The Leaf Bag Ghouls are usually in a row, starting with a happy oblivious one and leading up to a really terrified one who realizes he's standing next to a Ghoul of the demonic variety. This year, they were progressively more scared of Giant Leaf Bag Ghost.

Leaf Bag Ghost's arms are fallen branches, and his hands are white cotton manicure gloves.

His face is courtesy of hockey tape. I couldn't face drawing directly onto the fabric in case I find a better sewing use for it some day.

He looks too happy to be scaring the Ghouls, don't you think? But they are easily frightened, and they're probably too short to see the smile on his face way up where I slid a beach ball onto the highest bag. He had to be a smiley ghost, because there are some very little children on the block just now. And I needed them to come up the steps because it is Not Good when too much candy gets left over after Halloween.

Of course, once they got to the door, they had to park themselves near Headless Man.

Headless Man got a head this year because I found a broken broom handle in the garage that still had a partial broom on top. Somebody threw it on the lawn at some point in the summer and I never got around to throwing it out. Also, I decided not to be so attached to the white pillowcases I bought at a discount store 20+ years ago. I mean, you can wash these things after all.

As the day progressed, an improvement suggested itself, and the pillowcase was filled with leaves and the hockey tape was pressed back into service for a face.

Talk about luxury for Headless Man. The pumpkin with the cat on it went into his lap, so he spent a very relaxing evening indeed.

The other pumpkin should by rights have been in the driveway on beacon duty but I quickly discovered it was very easy to knock the spaghetti whiskers off its face while dashing past. So I moved it over to the other side of the steps where the Ghouls were standing, leaving the driveway dangerously empty.

Solution: dragging out the two evergreen topiary things that normally stand alongside the porch steps, and putting bags on them, and taping pumpkin faces to the bags.

It would seem that these were the most popular decorations of all, so I think they may make a return appearance next year.

The beauty of all of this last minute do it yourselfness with stuff you already have is that it can be quickly disassembled and put back where it all belongs - no need to find storage crannies for a giant skull or inflatable lawn-sized light-up witch's cauldron.

And now that it is for all intents and purposes November I can sigh a deep sigh knowing that everything is already back to normal except for a giant bowl of un-treated candy it is now my job to consume.

Oh, and Christmas sewing. But I will wait a day or two more before panicking about that.

Call me irresponsible

2010-10-25T07:41:00.005-04:00

I have a massive shelf full of fabulous lightweight cotton fabric thanks to my sheet hunt at various thrift stores this summer (and here it is nearly the end of October and neither the felted wool bag nor the writing bugs have been biting, after all that prep and way-clearing)

yet

I succumbed to some Liberty fabric at a craft show on Friday. I couldn't justify a whole yard of it since it was pretty obvious I just wanted it to look at and touch and smile over, so I bought a very small piece of the green sailboat one (it matches my new cardigan and I thought maybe, scarf?) and a slightly longer one, 54" by 18 I think? of the bolder print.

I don't actually wear or even see the point of a cotton scarf, though this may change as I get to the stage of feeling bad about my neck, so maybe I should make little bags, such as drawstring ones for knitting so I can touch the fabric a lot. Or linings for heftier bags, because I don't have enough cotton sheets for lining those, obviously.

What can I say? I have such happy feelings about Liberty from my time in London. And it didn't help that the booth had clever packages for little-girl patterns with a paper doll and one cute outfit as the front card for each design - a different doll and outfit every time, I mean. I don't have any little girls to sew for and I don't collect paper dolls but I do love Clever!

Pumpkins, in life and art

2010-10-18T07:31:00.009-04:00

The last two days here have featured all the things you associate with your dream autumn:

Just-cool-enough-for-wool temperatures

Richly blue skies

Brilliant sun

Equally brilliant leaves, in some cases still on the trees

And, in my case, pumpkins.

Yep, the annual pumpkin hunt happened Sunday and was its usual success, right down to the butter pecan tarts ingested by me and the locally-produced honey that will be, by way of tea.

The local United Church also held its Awesome Fall Sale (not to be confused with its Awesome Spring Sale). I was pleased to find that whoever baked the toffee cookies for the Spring Sale was back again for Fall.

I scored some vintage knitting things in the back corner of the housewares room:

And - you knew this was coming, right? - a big New Wool sweater to felt:

This thing is huge, with a 44" chest that looks bigger, to me. And for some reason it didn't shrink when it felted; could it be superwash wool? I hope not. I hope it just magically retained its shape after both the hot water wash and the dryer and will not fall apart when I cut into it.

I've been avoiding the unexciting colours of my own wardrobe in feltable sweaters lately, thinking I had more than enough of them for all the houseware/accessory projects I prefer, but then last month I looked at a previously felted sweater upside down, saw some light dawning, and cut it to get this:

aka a very wide waistband to which a long strip of pieced-together bits could be sewn.

You will note I am not showing more pictures of how the resulting skirt turned out. Let's just say the concept needs some fine-tuning, shall we?

Getting back to the argyle-esque sweater - it's very matchy with the rest of my wardrobe, and it's so ridiculously large I could cut it off at the armpits, turn it upside down, gather up the waistband a bit, and have a warm quirky knee-length skirt in the time it takes me to do a blanket stitch hem. And... I can't believe I'm saying this, but...

it's also perfect just as it is, worn Boyfriend Sweater-like over a pair of tights.

I am so far from being twenty years old and able to get away with Boyfriend Sweaters it's pitiful, but I'm gonna wear it that way today anyway; it can be a whole pumpkin for now, and if/when I get sick of it, I'll wave the ol' magic wand and transform it into something dressy-uppy. Or what passes for it in this house.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-10-11T10:59:00.003-04:00

I never have trouble thinking of things to be thankful for, no matter how dire the time, but when I stepped out into this morning's cold Canadian Thanksgiving Day and saw this

well, I just had to feel thankful that there are so many things in this world that can take the trouble to be beautiful while going about the business of being on this earth.

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are!

Princess FishCat - a felted wool project

2010-10-05T07:47:00.016-04:00

Last week was Abby's fifth birthday party, which meant present-shopping, which I love, usually. Her father told me that Abby loves everything pink and girly, especially The Little Mermaid and dress-up. I also know she loves cats, having two new kittens of her own.

Sadly the toy store options, though vast, were limited. Disney is putting a huge push on Tinkerbell just now and frankly I found the displays a little depressing anyway, not least because I guessed that many other people would be bringing many of these very same gifts.

So I went to a card store instead and bought this:

I had an evil plan to use up some felted thrift-store sweaters and hit all of Abby's favourite things, all at once.

First I took measurements (design tip: Lands' End is a great place to get average measurements, using their Size Charts) and made these three pattern pieces:

I did try to get a child's crown pattern online but none felt really right - what I did in the end was to cut out a half-triangle to trace for the point that goes onto the fold, then used it as a template for the two sides of each subsequent point until I had half the dimension of a small child's head. The tabs on the back, cut to taper so as not to obscure the gems if the crown is taken to its smallest size, are extra inches to allow Abby to go on wearing this for a while.

The cat's crown didn't need tabs because the cat isn't going to get bigger, so when I realized I could cut the piece out of the top of a felted sweater sleeve I folded the tab in when positioning the pattern.

I didn't have enough of any one colour sweater to make perfectly matched crowns for Abby and the cat, so I made them complementary. After I sewed on a lot of gem pieces I stitched a small piece of the grabby side of Velcro onto the inside of one end of the tab (using bobbin thread that matched the fabric - ha, remembered!)

The mermaid's tail pattern is half the width of the cat's tummy, and stays that width for the length of its lower body, then tapers in to make the fins. These measurements will vary depending on what animal you're making fishlike, so I will leave them to you. I did add in a little seam allowance but not much, since stuffed cats squish and sweaters stretch and I didn't want the tail to just fall off.

This black wool, though textured in a nicely scaley way, was too heavy to sew and generally Ew, but I had this wavy-cabled Aran sweater used initially for mitten backs that offered the perfect shape and allowed me to use the ribbing as the cat's waistband:

I folded the tail inside out stitched it from the ribbing to the start of the fins, then flipped it back and did a blanket stitch border around the fins. You have to do the blanket stitching twice - once with each side facing - to finish it properly. And then I embroidered a little heart on the back.

The crowns took one evening, and the tail about four hours the next day, mostly because it took so long to decide on which sweater bits were best. I'm pleased with how it came out though. She looks pretty cute, don't you think?

Serendipity

2010-09-27T06:36:00.007-04:00

Ever since I was little I've had my most creative ideas in church. I would like to think this isn't because I'm not paying attention but because it's a quiet meditative place filled with many people leading many kinds of lives and all with their own stories and struggles and, um, really cool clothes.

Yes. I design clothes in my head in church. Have I missed my calling?

This weekend I had an actual breakthrough, after weeks of thinking I would like to make a skirt with some of the felted sweaters I've stockpiled. Specifically, a super comfy skirt of many panels I can throw on over tights and wear with boots all winter. The problem was figuring out how to get a longer length when felted sweaters are so short, and in church it hit me: I can do a 12 or so inch waistband all in one colour and then do a second row of scrap panels below that.

This solution leads to another problem, which is basically how to make the pattern pieces. Tissue paper or a big piece of inexpensive cotton would do, but either way I have to decide on how many panels and how much seam allowance and where exactly to put which curve and the button opening I had in mind and so on, mathematical challenges I can't see getting too excited about for a while.

(Clearly I have not missed my calling.)

Mere hours after said breakthrough - serendipity. I found myself in a sewing type store with a lot of very old stock alongside the new, including this little gem:

It seemed like it might be kind of like those hard cardboard shapes that tailors use to mark out the pieces for men's suit - on the cover, there are exciting messages like the number of styles of skirts you can make with it and the fact that you'll never have to buy another skirt pattern, etc.

Inside, it's exactly what I hoped for:

You can adjust the form for how much flare you want and what measurements, then set it right over fabric that's set over a mat and use a rotary cutter for minimum fuss and bother.

I'm not yet inspired to sit down in a pile of felted sweaters and decide which to put where, but I'll bet you anything the first day I set aside for writing, which will occur on the day I finish my knitting obligations, I will think of nothing else.

Lost and found

2010-09-24T10:56:00.002-04:00

I found the book!

And that wasn't the first find, either. Yesterday I got to sit in my big armchair for the first time in ages, turned to look at the books on the shelf beside me and

ZING

A library book I had to report returned or possibly missing back at the beginning of the summer was sitting right there with its spine neatly presented.

I was thrilled, but then annoyed that I hadn't found the mitten book, because I am essentially an ungrateful person.

Also: overly suspicious. I was really starting to think that there might be a prank-loving ghost living in my house because I not only lost that book, and the mitten book, and a bottle of sunscreen that was expensive and hard to source for replacement purposes, but also my compact umbrella (pink with little cars, now out of production and purchased to celebrate having got my learning-to-drive permit.)

Having found the library book on the shelf today, and the mitten book just now - it had fallen down the back of a drawer in another IKEA cabinet and was slowly getting bent out of shape in there as parts of it eased out the back where the particleboard rear had come loose, as happens with IKEA cabinets, which is how I managed to find it, noticing the weak pleas for help from those few escaping pages - I'm wondering

will I get my umbrella back now?

I mean, I've fulfilled my obligations on that front. I've stopped looking, and I've bought a replacement. But luck being what it is, I suppose it will be the sunscreen instead. I'm not nearly as likely to need that in fall.

Procrastinatory Guilt

2010-09-17T07:43:00.003-04:00

Well, here we are at the last day of the first two weeks of my New Writing Life and I have written...

nothing, including this blog.

Though I did buy a spinning wheel, which I needed for research for some of the short stories, because it's much better to experience something than to just watch somebody else do it, if you're writing it. And experiencing spinning on somebody else's wheel just wouldn't be the same at all, honestly.

I also haven't pursued any of the felted wool art ideas I had in August while collecting sweaters, which makes me feel even more guilty about the fact that I am spending all my writing hours thinking about or playing with my spinning wheel.

That's not why I popped in though.

Last night while knitting for a change, I watched a profile on Mavis Gallant that included a personal appearance in a bookstore in which she was asked questions from the audience about how she writes, and suddenly I thought

GAH

that is a part of the job I'm not sure I would enjoy, should I ever reach the point of bookstore appearances, which at my present rate of inactivity is unlikely. It really threw me off my stride, I'll tell you. Not that there's any striding going on, but you know what I mean.

I also watched a special presentation of popular performances from Andy Williams' old TV show and whoa! was he ever dishy around the time I was born. His intro to his rendition of 'Call Me Irresponsible' reminded me that another thing he was doing around the time I was born was singing the title song for the film Charade, which I love and now want to see again, which prompted a very messy hunt through my old video tape collection looking for my copy which appears to have gone missing.

So now instead of just not writing I am
a/ spinning
b/ stealth knitting
c/ hunting to replace a movie so I can watch it.

I guess on the bright side, I'm good at guilt. Maybe I should include some guilt in the spinning stories to balance out what I don't know?

How do you like them apples?

2010-09-07T11:39:00.007-04:00

It's early in the season for apple picking, I think, but everything was early this year - even the leaves are falling off the trees a month ahead of schedule after unfurling themselves in late March.

The day my friends and I chose to visit the farm was more like late fall - bitterly cold with a high wind - after days and days of heat and humidity.

Translation:

Mary = blue feet in sandals and numb fingers peeping out from the 3/4 sleeves of a thin cotton cardi

Everybody else = winter hats, down vests, boots

Still, the view was nice.

None of the trees were marked and nobody was around to tell us what varieties of apple were growing in the orchard, but I didn't have any trouble recognizing this baby:

Russet apples are my all-time favourite. They look sort of ugly but taste oddly sweet and are only available for a short time in the fall as they are poor keepers. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

I tried to get a variety but I mostly got russets.

See these clouds?

That's what the whole sky looked like by the time my friends and I laid down blankets and pinned them with folding chairs against the fierce wind for a determined little picnic of sandwiches and fruit. I brought chocolate-covered digestive biscuits to share. It was lovely but I was longing to wrap the one extra blanket over me the entire time.

When we paid for it all plus some local honey and Saskatoon berry jam I can't wait to try, the girl at the counter said she loved my sweater and thought it looked warm. Oh that this were true. And then we ran through the rain to the parking lot.

The next day, I started sampling apples for baking vs. eating, grating the sour ones for some muffins I was about to make.

Guess what?

They're all sour. Even my beloved russets - inedible. The Honeycrisps, too. I have no idea what happened - was it the weird weather in the spring that did it, the early heat and then the cold before summer settled in? Is that they needed more time to sweeten on the branches?

All I can tell you is that there is a lot of apple crisp in my future.

Trixie's Household Tips

2010-09-03T08:56:00.002-04:00

Man, I can't believe how many household and safety tips got written into Trixie Beldon. I'm reading The Red Trailer Mystery and here's what I've got so far:

Pantry supper idea - heat dried canned beef fried in oil, add a can of mushroom soup, add a can of peas if you're lazy about pot-washing, and smear over toast. (I haven't had breakfast yet, so I'm hungry enough to think this sounds pretty good.)

Saving a drowning person - swim out but instead of grabbing, throw a towel for your quarry to grab, tell them to flip onto their back, and tow them to shore - that way they won't flail and drown you too.

Peeling an onion without tears - do it under running water. (no word on how you chop it without tears, though.)

Cooling a minor burn - mix baking soda and warm water and smooth it over the affected area.

I love how Julie Campbell slips this stuff in without slowing the story. Makes me think I'd be pretty smart to acquire the other ones she wrote, and not just self-indulgent...

Done with Dell

2010-09-02T10:16:00.002-04:00

Remember when it used to be exciting and crazy expensive to buy a home computer?

I remember my first - a $5000 desktop I bought to start my own writing and design business. It was such a space hog and I loved it so much. It and the ergonomic keyboard I had to buy to go with, because I've been staring down carpal tunnel syndrome since I started typing. It was a Dell and any time I had to call in for support, which wasn't often because it ran so well, the people there were so nice.

Eventually I handed it down and bought a laptop from Dell - $1500 I think, and much more space-efficient. Yay!

I love buying Dells - customizing everything, knowing that it will just turn up in the mail with all my favourite software pre-loaded - it's bliss.

But no question, Dell isn't the company it used to be in the profitable old days. No more super nice perky cheerful people - even the LiveChat people cut off communication abruptly without letting you know. Long hold times on the phone are a given, but I also find the lines themselves are scratchy and make it hard to hear. Last time I had a problem - a big one, requiring access to all the files I'd paid to store offsite on a Dell server after my hard drive fried - they wouldn't help me because they wanted a password on my hard drive. Which had fried.

So I decided my current Dell is my last, until my current Dell started showing signs of needing a replacement.

Did I mention how much I love being able to customize everything?

This time I ordered online so as to avoid the phone nightmare. Though actually, the online ordering experience is far from smooth. Still, it's the computer that counts, right? with the great screen resolution and familiar keyboard and crazy long-life battery?

Sigh. In the time it took me to turn on the freshly-arrived new laptop this morning and adjust the touchpad and cut the standard glaringly weird desktop image and key in my MS Office registration key, my wrist was aching. Why? Because the long-life battery is designed to protrude down from the bottom of the unit at the screen end. This not only makes it too big for my laptop sheath, but presents a non-adjustable tilt to the keyboard that is just murder for repetitive stress injury.

Well, I only got shunted between four people this time, and one of them had a clear phone line.

And after I explained twice what carpal tunnel is and how this particular design is horrible for it and there are no photographs of a laptop with this battery on the website so you'd know what you were committing to and no, a $100 refund to just keep the thing wouldn't solve my problem, the last person agreed to waive my return shipping fee. I think. So, you know, not so bad.

But I think this time I'm definitely done with Dell. Got another option you can recommend?

Trixie Beldon

2010-08-31T11:47:00.004-04:00

I found these at a thrift store yesterday (my last thrift store run of the summer season, sob!):

Also, a boy-directed horseriding mystery entry that had been owned by the same girl who had the Trixies; I passed on the girl-turns-mermaid book from the same era, which I still sort of regret and am trying to get over.

These series books were pretty lame in a lot of ways I know, though obviously the concept still does well today, but when I look at illustrations like these

I can't help but remember the comparative innocence in which a child could grow up in the 50s and 60s. Obviously, not knowing about seamier parts of life leaves you more vulnerable to experiencing them when you might choose to avoid them if only you knew more. On the other hand, freshly back from picking up fruits and veg as I am? I gotta say I am glad I wasn't checking out of the grocery store with my 40-something mother at a time when Cosmo is considered an impulse purchase to be displayed directly above the batteries.

Seriously, most of the headlines on this month's issue are worse than Barbie!

(disclaimer: Barbie did not teach me personally that social success can be obtained only by fitting a certain mold, but I do blame her for my time- and energy-wasting love of putting together outfits.)

Anyway this is it, my last hurrah. I've got my work cut out for me this week to get ready for my return to the writing life, but I am carving out a few last bits of summer reading time to laze in a chair with my jeans rolled up and my hair in ponytails to solve a mystery about a red trailer. Yum!

Stocking up

2010-08-27T21:53:00.009-04:00

I got into four different thrift stores today hunting for materials to use in the inevitable sewing projects that will overcome me this fall and winter. Why I feel the need to do this when I'm sneaking out to thrift stores in those seasons is beyond me, unless it's because I don't get out of the city to do it once summer's day trips are done and small town thrift stores are just more fun, but I'm trying not to question myself too much.

So far, everything fits into the storage space I've got, but I've noticed myself getting picky about what I bring home; I turned down at least five things today I would have leaped at in June. Good Mary!

Moderately good, anyway. I probably should have turned down a couple of these sheets because I have far more lining than I do outer fabric for tote bags... but I love the prints, and I know I won't be able to find them when I eventually run out and go looking for them in stores again, so I've washed and dried them and found some little nooks and crannies on the lining shelf.

And can you believe this tablecloth, the perfect size for my table?

I'm hoping my friend who's allergic (seriously) to the expensive holiday cloth I have had to stop putting under the turkey dinner won't have a reaction to this one because hello, fabulous? and not a single stain. (and $4.00, to boot.)

I checked every store for wool sweaters but there wasn't much on offer. You know, except for a single cashmere ($3.00) and a couple that turned out to fit me and have therefore been washed and set out to dry. And this cutie from New Zealand which is felting as I type:

and these three primary colours, the scraps of which will end up as raw material for some art objects I think.

The yellow has already been through the washer after a discussion with Trish about whether it was worth unraveling for its yarn (No.) It's come out as flat and as stiff as a board and I think wants to be a bag, with some cool lining from a sheet, probably the new one with the matching yellow cabbage roses in the top pic. The other two - indescribably soft - are quite thin and floopy and might make some really amazing mitten liners. I know that seems like a waste, but the hands of loved ones really do deserve a treat in winter, and you'd be amazed how many other projects the cut-up bits of a post-mitten sweater can go into.

Not to mention how much space they take up. Oh dear, and there's one more thrift run coming up next week...

Big Little Books

2010-08-26T11:37:00.007-04:00

One of my favourite things about thrifting is the discovery of things I had or at least saw when I was little - something that, oddly enough, happens more frequently when I thrift in the region where I grew up than in the one where I live now.

These two Big Little books were a particularly nice find. I never had these two titles, and I couldn't tell you which ones I did, but just the sight of these chunky books with their comic book illustrations?

They brought me back to some quiet happy day in summer when I was smaller and no doubt wearing my much-loved orange shorts/yellow T ensemble with a kerchief over my hair, worrying about not very much at all.

Summer on a plate

2010-08-25T15:52:00.008-04:00

I saw this plate in a thrift store a couple of weeks ago and even though it's pretty worn, I didn't think twice:

It kind of encapsulates my summer - the day trips and the thrifting, the family and the friends, but also Museum Week when I was alone for part of every day looking at very old, brightly painted ceramics and tea sets and thinking about how many generations of people have used colour and imagination to make ordinary functional items special.

I'm hoping that when I bring it out at Christmas with our traditional family meringues and shortbread on it, I'll remember these not-so-lazy days that made up a special part of this year.

I wonder what family traditions it was part of in its previous life?

Conundrum

2010-08-24T10:29:00.003-04:00

Sunny days are the very best for housecleaning, because the sun is streaming in and spotlighting all the places that need attention. They are also the worst, for pretty much the same reason.

This is the same problem I had yesterday at an exhibit of set props and so on from the Harry Potter movies (no explanatory link needed, I think?) You know, with the costumes. I learned to sew in Home Economics class when I was about 12, and terrible as I was with the school machines, I recognized immediately the theatrical possibilities - because for more than half my life before that I'd been watching old movies on a mainstream TV station and period dramas on the public broadcasting one. I never got very good, but I did get very persistent at making over vintage clothes to fit me, and I wore them too.

My poor parents. There they were, having survived the Depression and the War and doing everything possible to give their children an education so they'd have a marketable skill and there I was wanting to find a way to sew or knit or write stories for a living.

Just as well I didn't argue though because I could see from those costumes that I don't have the spark that would have allowed me to compete for jobs with the likes of the people who made them.

There's one character whose name I forget but who wears a disheveled looking suit that makes me just want to hug him every scene he's in - and yes, it was pretty clear looking at the suit that it's made without any sort of interfacing, so the rough tweedy fabric has to give itself its own shape. And the formal dress outfit that Ron has to wear when Hermione has her date with someone much more dashing? Well, it's better than it looks on screen, and much cooler than the staid black and white that Harry wears, but you can see how the combination of fabrics and colours would make it an embarrassment when viewed through a camera. My favourite though was the Bloody Baron's costume - the fabric was nothing like anything I'd ever seen, and I can't even imagine how you'd sew it. Just the imagination required to source the materials for these outfits is beyond my comprehension.

Fortunately I don't feel as hopeless with words... and fortunately, words don't take up nearly as much storage space. Bad enough having to vacuum and clean on a sunny day without having to shift around a lot of sewing gear to do it.

Thinking and - about - vs - writing

2010-08-23T10:23:00.003-04:00

Two weeks to go before my self-imposed start date to get back to the short story collection!

Even though today is perfect weather for knitting a fall cardigan (grey, soft-breezy, a little damp) I'm averting my eyes from such an idea and thinking about how that will work... which is to say, how many projects I have to get finished or hidden so I'm not drifting off to them instead once my tea is brewed on Day One.

And what to do if I do find I'm drifting, other than sit right back down again at the keyboard. Like, making a schedule for projects I really, really want to have done before Christmas and doling them out to myself as little rewards.

When writing goes well, it's the best thing in the world - Binnie described it to me recently as a kind of dream world where most of you is in the fiction and the rest just drifts through the house and daily life - and when it's not coming out at all, it's the hardest.

Harder even than not eating the remains of the fudge that got hidden in the back of the 'frig last week (yes, I ate the remains of the fudge.)

So: motivation. I'm a pretty accountable person and I do stick to deadlines which is why I set so many for myself, but it's tough to beat the motivation you get from a course. That's probably why along with the thinking, I'm remembering that this is the time of year when one applies for the Humber School for Writers correspondence course, so as to be sending off some work every week or two to a published, often award-winning or at least award-shortlisted writer for feedback and some direction.

Of course, delightful as this process is, it also requires a spare $3000 Cdn. So, you know, maybe I won't do it again this year. Or maybe I will use some of these last two weeks to figure out how I could.

Project ideas in the wild

2010-08-20T11:21:00.011-04:00

I'm always getting project ideas, or at least questions, from visits to museums. This week it was the Simcoe County Museum, which includes not only an inside display but an outdoor collection of buildings and equipment (ranging in size from snow blower to train.) And in the buildings, of course, there were accessories.

Like this cute doll set from the 1922 cottage:

I took this pic for Kathi, who has a thing for paper dolls - it came out fuzzy, but you get the idea (mostly that these probably aren't paper dolls to dress up.)

But also, this interesting-to-me scrap carpet, whose pictures are also fuzzy, from an 1800s log cabin:

I've never seen one like it, and now I want to make one with my many felted sweater scraps.

This style is more common but now that I have rug-hooking tools I'm wondering - is it hooked, or woven, or sewn?

Here's a fuzzy closeup:

And here's a project I am definitely not getting ideas about - pillow tatting:

Even though the accessories are very, very pretty.

Because amazingly, I do have some sense of self-preservation.

Preparation

2010-08-18T20:40:00.005-04:00

If I'm going to be writing this fall, I have to be sure all my procrastinations are as organized as they can be - otherwise, I'll waste valuable typing time looking around for materials instead of just making things. Which is why, today, I looked at this:

and decided to Do Something about it, with this:

Janie H. gave me this tin at the beginning of the summer and told me I had to use it for Stuff, and I am pretty sure embroidery thread counts. And those little white cards were packaging from something or other I used to buy a lot of - no idea what, even less idea why I kept them, unless it was some deep instinct that someday I would need a dozen or so little white cards that weren't index cards (index cards would also have done nicely, but these are a little firmer and also, pretty and shiny.)

See how pretty they look with satin embroidery thread on them?

I know, it's not much. But it's a start!

Sheets: they're not just for bedtime anymore

2010-08-17T23:04:00.005-04:00

I get my best ideas from strangers. Like, last month? when I made a pitiful attempt at carting along a picnic to a municipal park?

There I was sitting at this really filthy ripped up picnic table wishing I'd brought plates or something so I didn't have to nibble my sandwich out of a bag, and across at the next table there were two clearly very sensible ladies enjoying a delicious lunch (packed in a basket no less) on a sheet. A big floaty flat sheet they'd brought along and thrown over the table by way of a tablecloth.

This, I thought was brilliant, and I started hunting for sheets at thrift stores because sadly I don't have any extra sheets to take out into the wilderness with me. And that's how I managed to go those ladies one better, with a fitted sheet:

I know, I know, you can buy a plastic tablecloth for a dollar just about anywhere. But can you throw it in the washer when you get home? Can you roll it up as a pillow if you want a post-lunch nap? Will it stay put instead of getting too friendly with the wind and folding itself up onto the potato salad? Ha. I didn't think so.

Yes, those are leaves on the table. I am getting freaked out about all these falling leaves. We're not even into the final third of August yet!

Oh, and today when I saw another very sensible lady taking a picture of a butterfly? I did the same thing with another butterfly I spotted a bit further off.

Hint: it's in the lower centre of the picture, resting on the second-shortest foreground flower. You'll probably still have trouble seeing it, but it's there, and so pretty.

Blanket solution please

2010-08-16T10:54:00.005-04:00

I feel like a squirrel frantically storing up nuts for the winter - i.e., the season when I'm less likely to be out on fun day trips that just happen to pass by thrift stores. I'm filling up my fabric shelf with old sheets and tablecloths to use whenever I need sewing therapy or can't wait to try out a new tote bag idea (I have a few simmering right now, so hey, it could happen!)

But last week's thrift finds were a little too successful, and I'm now housing things I can't really use as they are and can't justify cutting into because there's nothing wrong with them. Let's focus today on the blanket problem, shall we?

There are now three in the house:

The top one is a pale sage green, queen sized, merino wool with a soft halo and not a single hole or stain. Plus, it cost me $5, which makes it an amazing find not to be squandered. The colour gently clashes with everything in my house, and I don't have a guest room. It would make an awesome coat if I could face sewing one, but I can't. It would also make a ton of really, really good tote bags and pillow covers to give as gifts if I could face destroying something so perfect, and again - can't.

The middle shows its true colour, a breathtaking blue. Just plain old wool this time, technically in twin size but it's shrunk up somewhat so it's closer to a square that is still perfectly functional. It's soft. It shares the same problem as the sage green, except for only costing me $4; it's perfect and beautiful and looks wrong with everything.

The last is a peach double size I bought a year ago and still haven't even washed, though that will probably change today now that I've taken a closer look at it. It's stained in a few places and has some moth holes, so I can cut into it - it doesn't matter that it too clashes with everything I have.

BUT

I can't help thinking that with some matchy embroidery it would make great cushions covers for the blue blanket, especially after I've washed it in hot water and dried it in the dryer so that any felting potential is realized. And again - it won't work here.

I think there's really only one solution to this problem, don't you? I need a cottage. After all, I have enough sheets now.

Cottage industry

2010-08-13T22:07:00.002-04:00

Last night my aunt asked me whether or not I've ever considered buying a cottage and I sort of stammered over saying No, not really. Because I have been thrifting again, and here is what I have bought after hesitating longingly over vintage Pyrex double boilers and other kitchen essentials:

Sheets
Pillowcases
Wool blankets

I made these purchases with no intention of using them for their intended purpose - I bought them for cutting up into Other Things - and I can guarantee you I will not be going near them with scissors because they have no holes or stains or other problems that would prevent them from being delightful to sleep under at a cottage.

There, I said it. All this thrifting I pretend to myself is for eco-frienly craft work? I'm about 96% certain that secretly I've been amassing stuff for a weekend residence. You know, for that long-distant day when I can actually afford and justify one.

Now if only I can think of a place to store it all while I wait for the lottery to pay off...

Fate is being sneaky with me

2010-08-12T22:01:00.003-04:00

I went on a thrifting trip today (well, actually it was a day trip full of picnics and amusements and water fests and so forth that I planned as cover for several thrift shop visits) and guess what I found mixed in with the pillowcases and sheets that are so alluring as tote bag liner fabric?

Yes. Hooks for rug-hooking. A whole bowl full of them - I chose these two because they represented the two different shapes on offer and felt the most comfortable in my hand and one of them has Patons punched on the side and both were made in England, which makes them extra appealing to me.

This does not mean I will pursue rug-hooking. They cost 29 cents each and I decided a 60 cent investment that goes to charity is a perfectly reasonable response to being presented with a bowl full of tools for something that intrigued me just this week. I will be strong. I will just put them away quietly until some urgent reason arises for me to take up a piece of burlap and thread wool into it.

(and yes, that lovely blue doily really did cost 49 cents. Don't you love thrifting?)