almost there

almost at the finish line.  i do not have all week off–i have bluelines to check, so i’ll be in either tuesday or wednesday.  but perhaps that means my staycation will have to spill over a little into the following week, hmm? and that’s a short week already, what with thanksgiving.

i’ve got a list far too long for the week.  i’ve got a birthday and a brunch and an afternoon cocktail hour to plan for, plus all the house things and garden things and errands that need doing . . . and then there’s the projects for me, writing and sewing.  i just have to keep reminding myself: to be glad i at least have this little time, it could be worse, i’ll just do what i can and it will be that much more done, however much it is.

besides, i have help:

it is her self-assigned task to stop the scissors in case they get too, um, scissor-y.  lots of cutting noise and she just puts her paw on them, pinning them down: “that’s enough of that, please.”  on the other hand, if she sits the right way on the pattern tissue (crinkly paper, oh my!) then she is the perfect pattern weight, holding everything in place while i snip around her.

and these are satisfying my need to use up every scrap of fabric possible:

paper-pieced hexagons.  i started making them before mexico, you can see the two i stitched on the backpack down there.  i’m not sure if i’ll ever have the patience to do a grandmother’s flower garden quilt, but i really love the hexagon shape, and the paper piecing bit is perfect to do while half-watching a movie or listening to the radio.  and there’s just something about that little pile of color, all even and shaped and ready to go.  when they were scraps, they made me cringe with their messy-hoardy vibe.  now, though, they are the start of something.  i’m just not sure what.

 

 

oh, and a gratuitous cat picture.

i thought i had photos of my hexes, but i must have deleted them from the work computer.  more on those later.  here is a gratuitous cat picture instead:

she’s been good company through it all, helpfully lying on my pages and swatting my pen when i was getting too wrapped up in edits to pay attention to her.  and she was right.  life is definitely better down here.

 

i feel bewildered.

we came back from mexico, i went in to work . . . and all **** seemed to break loose.  my big book, so nearly done in my head, was nowhere near done in my author’s head.  we did corrections and corrections and corrections . . . overtime plus three weekends’ worth, and although we went to press this morning we will still be making corrections to bluelines.

today i feel like i’ve been on another planet for the last few weeks.  totally bewildered.  what was i planning to do a month ago? what needs to be done first? i bought a little notebook just for my out-of-control to-do list, but even that seems like another language at the moment.  which one of these four pages of things is the most pressing? when are taxes due? adj’s application? how late am i with thank yous, with birthday presents?

i’ve said this before, but this time i mean it: never again.  i won a newer mac on ebay this week, using some of my plump-with-the-greasy-fat-of-overtime paycheck.  its first jobs will be to get adj back into school and me back on the job hunt. we were overdue; the lappy at home is at least 5 years old now, far too sluggish to handle my incessant photo taking and his need for streaming bootlegged soccer, plus all the other ‘puter tasks we need doing.

in the meantime, i’m all but demanding next week off, which is actually doable if the bluelines arrive by friday.  keep your fingers crossed for me! and i have found the perfect antidote to sitting up at night waiting for your compositor in india to post the files you need: cutting fabric.  i cut everything for two dresses, plus a few little things that i might try to put online in time to sell for the holidays.  so i don’t feel completely unproductive in my other-than-work life.  just 99% unproductive.

 

back, at last

there was mexico for ten days, and then back and straight into work disaster upon work disaster.  a dental emergency.  piles of laundry.  a thousand ideas in my head, as happens after every vacation, and me scrambling to at least note them before this daily grind pulps them like it does so much of my creativity.

not the least of which is writing more about mexico, finishing my uneasy thoughts about yelapa last year which came rushing back as we sweated our way through some of the hottest october days in the yucatan’s recent history.  only at this time, twilight, was it possible to breathe a little, to move without becoming drenched, and actually take in the spectacular skies.  i could have stared at those clouds all day and night.  never-ending displays of magnificence.

seriously.  it was a sky lover’s hit parade.  and the warmest bluest sea i have ever swam in.

postcard companies down there have it easy.  though i’m not sure i’d ever want to work for one, or reside in mexico period.  i have decidedly ambivalent feelings about mexico.

yesterday squandered a day of my first real weekend back to snatch a chance at seeing him:

zach condon, aka beirut.  though beirut is technically a band, it seems to be just mr. condon and whoever he surrounds himself with at a given moment.  i’ve never seen beirut before, but i love his? their? music–it is one of those rare musics that i can both enjoy and write to.  when you write to beirut, the prose comes out like the color wash you put down before you actually start an oil painting–the phrases have an added richness, depth, a more acute sensation of time passing.

this was at treasure island.  i hung around for a few hours to justify the exorbitant ticket price, and enjoyed seeing grizzly bear, the walkmen, the decemberists.  but the 50 minutes of beirut was really my only reason to be there.  as you get older, and work and family and life pulls you in all different directions, what used to be a pasttime–concert-going–becomes a specific and decidedly more precious experience.  you pick carefully and work your time accordingly, and in doing so appreciate it far more.  i am still filled with yesterday; had i been ten years younger, the impact would have been muddled with the other bands, the food, the people-watching, the chatter.  instead of a handful of sparkles, though, this morning i woke up with one whole, lovely pearl.

 

lotta jansdotter is tiny.

because i like to tilt at windmills, i decided to make a new bag for mexico.  almost all of my bags are shoulder bags, and my shoulders are a little sloped and rounded, so i am always holding onto the strap . . . not good, especially when you’re exploring and watching out for pickpockets at the same time.

i’ve had the simple sewing book for ages, but hadn’t tried any of the patterns after the Hat Disaster.  the sunhat pattern, which i basically bought the book for, was incredibly small.  like barely getting over any part of my head small.  but we have come round to lotta again, and her simple drawstring backpack:

the original pattern is an unlined drawstring back with dual straps out of medium weight cotton.  i decided to a) line it and b) make it out of cotton twill.  the initial sewing went fine, though there is a reason why googling this project yields many pictures of children going to school: this is not a big bag.  it’s really more a purse slung onto your back.  i did successfully line it, i just have to tack the inside lining into place.  i used scraps that i like but do not love, so if it drowns in the sea i won’t be heartbroken.

the one serious dilemma came with the straps.  we already know lotta has a tiny head and carries only tiny things.  now i can tell you with assurance she has a tiny body as well.  those straps are short.  don’t let the 54″ fool you–once you double them through the casings and bring them around there’s not much left. i was also a bit stymied by the narrow casing.  even with a lighter fabric, i’m not sure how a 1 1/8″ casing can accommodate two 1″ straps.

so: made the casings 1.5″, which required opening up the side seams a bit.  stitched the ends of the two 54″ straps together so they overlapped by a few inches, threaded the joined end through the back casing and then looped both ends through the front.  chopped off about 5″ on each end and tacked those in place at the bottom of the bag.

the result: the opening does not draw absolutely completely closed, there is always a little gap.  but it does close, smaller than any hand could reach in.  it’s deep enough that nothing will stick out at the top.  i think it works.  i’ll try filling it up tonight.  i can always undo the overlap and play around, see if i can get the opening a little smaller.  maybe sew each end to the inside of the casing? there are options, and already it’s functional.

now: do i have time to whip up a shift dress too?

there’s always another windmill.

 

planning and goodbyes

so i am in that position i always find myself before going on vacation: trying to get work done, trying to plan a perfect wardrobe (that never goes well), and trying to also do a thousand things that start out with the following prefix: “wouldn’t it be great if before we go . . . “

i will say this: for the last-minute vacation sewing, a good jersey is your friend.  i’ve been up for two hours this morning and i’ve framed out a dress and a skirt; all they need now is elastic and some hemming.  even if that’s all i get done, it’s done a lot to ease my nagging anxiety about packing light but broadly and planning for a far more tropical climate.

one other thing that must be added to the weekend to-do list: cutting the cat’s claws.  she’s on my lap right now, in an ecstasy of purring and rubbing (she loves it when i’m home working, i do so much sitting it’s like she can cram a week’s worth of laptime into one morning) and i know my thighs are going to be covered in pinpricks when i finally stand up.

on a side note: adj was back in alameda on friday and saw a kitty we once helped across the street. as it danced around him on dainty kitty-sized paws he finally, truly realized: yes, killie’s feet are enormous.  good thing she’s such a hottie everywhere else, it distracts people from her clodhoppers.

ten days, we’ll be back in mexico.  very much looking forward to seeing more of this country, and determined this time to finish writing about it.  writing that last bit about yelapa last year is still on my to-do list; i think i should start dating some of the items on the list, just so i can laugh at how long it takes me to finish things.

———————————————-+

as for goodbyes.  i saw this morning, though i think it got announced yesterday, that triquarterly review is closing its print edition and becoming some sort of student-run web journal thingamabobby.  the scuttlebutt is that the university librarians basically decided that literary journals are dead and the most valuable forum for lit now is the open source web site.

this is pretty awful, for a lot of reasons.  triquarterly has been around for decades–their last issue is their 45th anniversary i believe.  they’ve printed some of the leading lights of letters when their careers were both nascent and at their peak.  i’m not sure yet another web journal will be able to match that tradition.

i’m very torn about the print versus electronic book debate in general, but i have a real problem with the web journal thing.  there are a freakin’ lot of them, and some of them post very good work, and some of them provide a valuable service in getting first-time writers out into public view.  but to decide that these most fluid, open-source sites are the future of letters seems foolishly hopeful.  i am all for democratizing information, but in such a way that we are raised up collectively, not flooded with a morass of short, mediocre works.  it is remarkably hard to comfortably read something longer than 2000 words on a website, and there have always been more would-be writers than readers out there.

i am also just incredibly disappointed in the university and the uni librarians.  the budget for a journal is a very small thing, and it serves the function of marketing as well as promoting the cultural development of a community, which is a part of a university’s mandate–one that they seem very eager to forget these days.  as for the librarians, what gives? are they so eager to dump everything online and work in a sea of terminals? i always thought of the librarian as the conservative protector of information, quick to point out the pitfalls of electronic display and archiving, eager to point students to the best ideas housed in their domain.  to dump a forum for literature into the laps of a few students with programming knowledge seems a blatant abdication of responsibility to the intellectual welfare of the students they are supposed to serve.

my .02.  now i have to go proof more of that stinkin’ book.

 

still here

i just haven’t been posting.  there really hasn’t been much to report, at least not of the pretty photo variety.  this may be in part due to the smudge reappareing on the lumix and my unwillingness to pay for it to be repaired. i hate this aspect of technology–it will cost almost as much as a new camera to send the lumix to panasonic so they can open it up and remove a tiny bit of dirt from inside.  they do this on purpose, i know.  i find it appalling.

no new plants in the garden, no substantial work on the house.  we added dirt.  we ended the squash plant’s reign of terror.

i am sewing, but nothing is done yet.  a blue version of 2599 with sleeves–needs hemming.  an oversized men’s shirt being sized down into a tunic or dress–needs serious thinking about the length and how short can i go at my age and still wear it as a dress. some hexagons for future quilting/applique–but nothing actually cut to applique them on to.

i am writing, or i was.  the less i work the more i write, and i had a breather of about a week where everyone i was working with was away or otherwise occupied.  sadly, the breather ended before anything could be completed.  but at least i know can still string words into sentences, given enough time and privacy.

we have had illness in our family and the cat finally figured out how to get over the fence, giving me palpitations even as she struts with assurance through her new territory (and has already made a new little friend).

we have had many nights of just watching old dvds, too tired to think.

i keep reminding myself that we get to take a break in just a few short weeks, but it feels very far right now, and the to do list is as long as ever.

 

highlights of the week

the farmer’s market on wednesday: sauteed summer squash, heirloom peppers, and chard with an afghani eggplant sauce; served it with fresh bread and chopped tomatoes.  a nice dinner.  there was a real beehive, fully occupied, and a face painting booth; there was a woman selling potted herbs but it was too hot to lug them back.  it’s a little bigger than the market in alameda.  i do love market shopping, and you have to support your local farmers, right?

got my bangs cut; my stylist, it turns out, will trim your bangs for free between cuts.  awesome.  nothing like being fussed over to perk up your day, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

finished the first attempt at simplicity 2599:

apologies for the bad light.  it was late at night (thus the jammy bottoms).  but i really wanted to finish this.  another shirt done in a day, though just the sewing, not the cutting; i did the cutting a week ago.

it’s got a few little wonky things but overall i’m so happy.  simplicity has started this line of patterns with different front pieces for different bust sizes.  it is absolutely wonderful.  when you are larger than a B-cup the world of clothing is a decidedly unfriendly place: all ready to wear clothing is cut for a B-cup, all sewing patterns are designed around a B-cup.  some companies are a little more generous, some are not.  certainly the last two years, with the narrow clingy 80’s clothes that have been the trend, has been particularly unkind to anyone not a stick.

when i took up sewing, it was with this in mind: that i could bang out a decently fitting garment in a day or less. so you can imagine my distress when i finally was told the patterns-designed-for-B-cup fact, and i realized i was going to have to do elaborate acts of scherenschnitte and origami just to make the pattern roughly my size, and then fiddle and fiddle with it past that, and hopefully after a dozen or so experiments i could get to the point where i would know to do this kind of cut and paste on pattern company a, this kind on pattern company b . . . it would have been like learning to sew for a second freakin’ time.

i’m buying a second copy of this pattern, just in case some terrible accident should befall this one.  i am pulling out all the oversized shirts i had hoped to resize but never had a pattern to guide me.  i am so stoked.  and i’m buying every other pattern in this multi-bust series, even that weirdy ugly dress that looks like it belongs on an amish swinger, just because.

heh.  that may be the first time the words amish and swinger have been placed next to each other.  i really don’t know where that came from.  i just saw the envelope picture and instantly thought “better get that kerchief on and climb into his buggy, honey!”  i have no idea why i thought that.  it has no bearing on the dress itself, you can see it here:

http://www.simplicity.com/p-1920-missmiss-petite-dresses.aspx

watch, now i’ll end up making the dress and totally digging it.

 

a better weekend

much was done, though i do think we’ll soon need a weekend off from the house completely . . . maybe an overnight somewhere? must talk to adj about it.  we’re overdue.

the concrete we dug out of the ground, and the lingering remains of the shed.  can you see the wily mountain lion in there? look closely at the concrete . . .

i can never remember how much color cats can see, but she has zeroed in on the concrete for her stalking.  conveniently, this also means she gets to lie in the nice, dry dirt.  a perk!

not that the birds seem that bothered.  all the finches are losing their summer colors now, shedding their bright red breasts for brown winter sweaters.

first coat of paint on the garage, covering the purple.  our neighbors told us that we’ve done more on the house than the previous owners did in the whole 9+ years they lived here.  it doesn’t feel like that much, though.

the other night, adj suddenly popped out with, “if only we could move the garage up, think of what a bigger backyard we’d have . . . we don’t need a garage that big . . .” visions of swimming pools competed in my head with the sin of tearing down such a well-built structure with the horror at just how. much. work. it would be.

i strung our sickly, wilting morning glories up on a few stretches of twine–a month later and they were green and healthy, growing faster than i could control them really, but with no flowers.  until this weekend.  all at once, morning glory.

when we took the shed apart, we also ended the Raccoon Thruway that led from the shed roof over the chicken wire to our neighbor’s roof and beyond.  these guys were not pleased, and they were equally displeased that on saturday night we could see them as easily as they could see us.

the raccoons love the house next door.  there is something in the roof, or the gutter, that they go digging and chewing for–adj was guessing maybe a sap in the shingles, or something tasty that’s fallen from one of the trees in the surrounding yards?

for my part, though, i would never be comfortable with the party that happens there every night.  they are all over the house for a few hours after the sun goes down–digging at the roof, running up and down the fence, nosing around on the ground on the side of the house.  it would drive me crazy, even without the cat! who, i might add, is never, ever going out of the house after dark.  not with big al there and his buddies at large.  she put up a good show of growling and tensing at the screen door, but even she wasn’t itching to get out there and tangle with these guys.

 

let’s just make shirts. or: simplicity 3835, the jersey muslin.

this sewing thing.  it’s like any sort of studying really; once you start doing it, you can’t look at clothes on the rack the same way.  now when i go into any store, i know that the garments were not cut for my shape, period, and finding a good fit will be like finding a needle in a haystack.  now i’m fussier about fit, and the quality of the fabric and the sewing in relation to the price, and where in the world it has come from and how lousy is that country and how much carbon was emitted to get this garment here . . . and i was already pretty fussy.

so i realized not too long ago that i really don’t have many warm weather work tops.  i can’t wear a t-shirt every day, and a few of my tops from last year became too worn to carry on.  i grimaced at the thought of trudging down to the mall and spending hours of my time with every other woman who had just gotten out of work.

i do, however, have a closetful of fabric.

so i’m starting.  i stole a couple hours on wednesday and did a lot of cutting.  simplicity is starting to put out patterns with different pieces for different busts, halleleujah, and i scored a sleeveless top pattern off ebay for $2.99.  yesterday i cut two, and got very clever and cut sleeves for one.  more on those to come.

i had also, some time ago, thoughtlessly whacked into my first copy of 3835 without any real knowledge about bust sizing, and when i got halfway through my first blouse i found it fit everywhere . . . except in the bust.  it looked really good as long as i didn’t raise my arms or breathe too hard.  i have since bought another copy of 3835 and i don’t rush into cutting patterns anymore, but i still had the old too-small pieces.

i also had this green tissue jersey which is exactly the kind of jersey i hate (where DID you come from, yucky green jersey?) and some nice blue-grey FOE, and voila.  a shirt.

a shirt, i should add, in two hours from start to finish.  bingo.  i’m not happy with the bottom, though i’m leery of doing a regular hem on something as slippery-yucky as this jersey.  also i think my serger needle was a bit too big and i will need at some point to check the seams in case they start fraying.  but still: a top, a wearable top, in two hours.

this is a big milestone.  i may not hit it again for some time, but i have hit it, and it will come again.  plus i salvaged a bad pattern and yucky jersey.  the clinginess of the jersey balances out the overall gathering; it just looks comfortable, not billowy; it clings a little in good places and flows over bad.  i sewed the FOE satin side out so it looks a bit ornamental, not just functional.

two hours.  i was very much in need of this, as work continues to be a monumental pain.