Now on to sewing and flypaper thoughts

• Only 1.37 of a sock to get knitted and I am done.
• Would some good knitter tell me how to fix my ssk? My k2tog are neat, my ssks are loose and looked like some pigeon knit them.
• Last week we got a call from Costco to throw out that Tabouleh.  
• You know that rare impulse purchase because I am knitting too much to cook.
• Recalled for Listeria.
• My son and I ate two tubs.
• Not fair in a house where we grow our own organic Kale.
• Looked at each other for signs for three days and then forgot about it.
• Kale makes you strong. Body and teeth.
• I have thrown out my rash inducing retinol and am now washing my face in baby oatmeal cereal.
• In my mind there is a direct line between these events.
• DIY.
• Skin's great.
• Kale helps.
• I am renting my tablecloths and napkins this year.
• Thank you Auntie Nancy for the idea.
• I think I ordered a big package of red bra strap elastic and fasteners last night when I was sleepy.
• Not sure, I was trying to ssk at the time.
• There is sure a lot of sewing for self backing up over here.
• Thank you McCalls for the Spring patterns.
• Nicer than usual.
• Going to cook for two days now.
• I am doing the recipes that say "fast and easy" spouse is doing things that say "complicated and involve ingredients we have never had in this house before."
• Sent me out of celeriac root and I came back with Japanese Daikon. 
• This is a large radish.
• It does not look like celeriac root. 
• It is however a root.
• Apparently this is not close enough.
• Now we are going to have Vietnamese sandwiches on Boxing Day.
• Calls for Daikon.
• Since these things are not made in a crock pot I will not be involved.

In closing here are some shots of what my spouse brought to my knitting location for dinner last night. From a recipe from this family friend. Going to miss that man when he goes back to Tennessee. 

At least I have the dogs and the crock pot. And a whole lot of red elastic.

Question for you

I feel really bad about not posting, but life has been dense.


OK, the update.


I was definitely the only person who wore a bug suit at the event last night. A couple of people even told me that they couldn't believe I made my outfit. I am sure they were being honest.


The high point for me of the whole black tie event though was seeing my students. Some of them were working as servers, some where on the door. I had a moment just while I was leaving when one girl found me in the hall by the coat check and said " Come here give me a hug" and she told me that I had given her confidence to be herself. That meant so much to me. 


Is there anything we can do as adult women that is more important than giving a young girl faith in herself? What a protection that is from what we adult women know really lies ahead.


I want to tell you a story.


I once had an important job. Good salary, great pension, fancy title, etc.


Well then one of my sons graduated from high school and I went to the ceremony. I had one of those moments standing in the auditorium and I looked at the graduating class and I looked at the teachers and I thought, their lives have been worthwhile, their work goes on to the future. And at that moment I knew I should have been a teacher, like my dad who left a good profession and went into the high school classroom.


You know when my dad died we had to put speakers on the outside of the church so all the kids who were standing in the street could hear.


Well the universe noticed and let me be a teacher too,


What matters in life?


There is a lot should have mattered to me that didn't. In the end all that really matters to me is young people and my sewing. And looking at other women who sew and really seeing who they are. Does that matter?


Does it matter that when I see someone's mother, some women in jeans and a hundred obligations. Some woman with a few extra pounds with a to-do list from last week, and so many people asking her to be someone - that I can see a focus on a bound buttonhole, on those pants that finally, after twenty years of trying that really fit, that I can see someone there really trying.


I notice.


That, in my bug suit, is who I am and what I see,


Sewing is the spirit man, sewing is the spirit.

My internet has been soggy

I feel bad about not posting, something I really enjoy, but conditions have not been ideal around here.

I told you were were gutting/replacing the kitchen, which turned into tearing out most of the ground floor. Well that involved moving everything downstairs.


And then  downstairs went under water.


Along the way we lost internet too - so I have been a person without a sewing room, without internet, and with all her patterns more or less like an old newspaper someone left out in the rain.


I am not complaining (and to those of you who were nice enough to pm me, I haven't been able to get back to you, but will now try to) and in fact I am OK about all of this. Since I am fairly used to chaos, having caused a lot of it my own self in this life I am sure.


The thing is though that when things get too much I generally regroup by going down to my sewing room to look things over  - and well that option is not available to me now.


Here are the pictures:

Birthday flowers from my daughter- so much appreciated in all the mess

  
When the water is rising you just throw things to high ground - not an ideal work environment at present.

The emergency drainage hole that was put into my sewing room floor, after the floor was taken out in a huge rush and thrown out the window. Noticed DH posted a comment taking issue with my description that this was just a hole in the floor - apparently it is much more than that. He didn't want my readers to think he breaks concrete floors for any other than strategic reasons.

This used to be my downstairs bathroom floor - the water was shooting up this drain like a geyser. 


Enough about me.


On the sewing front I will be making Miss Scarlett her "beautiful pink dog suit" tomorrow night after work on the kitchen counter. 


She needs a lift. 


She has adjusted to the new baby sister very well if you don't count the only wearing one yellow rubber boot and a diaper to eat dinner, the "DON"T LOOK AT ME" comments and the fact she has developed a lisp from trying to talk with a soother in her mouth "JUST LIKE A BABY" even though she never had one when she actually was a baby.


Oh, to be a mother of a two year old again - not sure if all my stories that my daughter, Miss Scarlett's mother, and her brothers, were far, far worse are all that helpful. Grandmothers think things like the boot and the soother are hilarious particularly if they can go home to their nice orderly quiet home to sew.


That is if they had a nice quiet orderly home with an intact sewing room in it.


One last thing.


I have an invite to a black tie thing next week - and I can see my box of fancy fabric - but I can't get at it. I would have to climb over the dehumidifier and two shop vacs to get it and if I slipped I would fall down  the Useful Hole in the Floor. I have fabric in there that has been waiting years for a chance to play Black Tie Bingo (OK it sounded classier before I told you about the Bingo part).


Maybe next year.


But don't for a minute think I am not sewing up marvelous things in my head.

What is plan B?

Flypaper thoughts:

• Storm today, road washed out.
• Sewing room under 6 inches of water.
• Husband got home from work just in time to lift machines and fabric to safety.
• Tomorrow is my birthday.
• My mom sent me a Home Depot gift card.
• Good thing.
• Each son has asked for a sweater for Christmas.
• I have a feeling they mean Christmas this year.
• Last time we drove from Nova Scotia to Tennessee I knit two dish cloths and one sock.
• They have to be kidding.
• However my sewing room is under water.
• I have to stop talking to the TV.
• What's with those Viagra type commercials where the couple are suddenly transported to two bathtubs where they start to hold hands?
• I have three children and I have never held hands in twin bathtubs.
• And I am not going to start.
• The minister of finance is taking me out for lunch tomorrow.
• I knew him before this happened.
• Knowing him it's going to be separate checks.
• My husband had to take a sledge hammer to the concrete floor in my sewing room to make a place for the water to drain out.
• So far it has just filled up with water again.
• Now the floor has to be fixed.
• The dogs want to know why they haven't been taken out for a walk.
• Dog pee is a highly effective solvent on floor tile glue.
• Just so you know.
• I have just eaten two chocolate cherry blossoms.
• Thank god.
• I mean that.
• So far I have cast on one sweater.
• That's it for today.
• Try again tomorrow.

On the issue of quickie

Right now I don't have enough time to sew and it is getting on my nerves.


You, of all people, know what I mean.


The sewing I have also been able to sneak in has involved a lined jacket - not a hard project - but involved and slow. It should be done tomorrow and there will be pictures up. Most definitely.


Carolyn and Debbie Cook have talked about the concept of a quick project and that has really been resonating with me. 


You know there was a time when I traced Burda lined jackets and made them. When I made those fully lined wool suits for work. And I didn't mess them up.


But somehow along the line, the line that involved a more complicated life with harder jobs and with older kids who do things like have new babies and two year olds and need help, I need to sew in tighter circles. From concept, to execution, to my back in a day or two or over a weekend. I like to have an idea on Friday and wear it to work on Monday. And then on to the next thing.


What's happened to me and my sewing?


I have a confession to make.


I often look at the blogs of other super sewers - folks making muslins of tricky jackets, under-lining with china silk, and hand basting the hell out of every thing, and I wonder if I have lost my game, if I should try harder.


But I think there is a little bit of balance here. I did my achievement sewing more in the days when I was home full-time with kids and trying to match socks and trying to find a supper all participants would eat. At that time in my life my sewing represented some kind of quality work. 


Now, when my day job requires more out of me, I want to sew to try a new pattern. To have something fresh to wear maybe, but mostly just for a few hours of having fun, fooling around.


You know I don't think that my ability to sew complicated stuff has left me as much as my life has broadened a bit. In some ways, I don't know how else to say this, I just don't feel I have anything to prove, to myself in particular.


So that damn jacket is going in the out basket tomorrow.  Then I am making a "beautiful pink dog suit" as requested for Miss Scarlett, I am going to get going on a Christmas present for one of my kids (no further details in case anyone family member reads this), and then I think I am just going to get up on my weekend mornings, go down to the sewing room and see what I feel like at that particular moment.


These days that's how I sew. 


How about you?

Flypaper thoughts

Here we go this rainy morning:

• Sometimes your life is about you, sometimes it's about other people.
• Good to be who they call.
• You can still sew in your head.
• Woke up wanting a plaid skirt, first time I have had this thought since grade seven.
• Being a good parent is doing yourself out of a job.
• Someone told me that in a Boston playground 25 years ago.
• Doubt if my son can take is dog with him when he goes off to the new job in Newfoundland.
• Will have to choose my moment to ask my husband how he feels about driving to Florida with a barking fox terrier and a Border Collie running in circles in the back seat.
• Someone has to herd the luggage.
• Maybe later.
• After I tell him I have invited my entire family to take turns joining us on vacation.
• Maybe I space this out.
• Had a meeting with Successful People yesterday but was late because I ran into students on the steps.
• Decided the only difference between being young and old is the amount you laugh.
• Consider this seriously.
• Facebook makes my head explode.
• Politicians, relatives, students, and professors all want to be my friends. 
• My worlds collide.
• Facebook is no place to push your latest book, article, campaign, or social commentary.
• See laughing above.
• All I want to read the BVM posts so I don't miss a garment or a sale.
• And see baby pictures.
• If I defriend you don't take it personally.
• Why do the pattern companies even publish jacket and coat patterns they call "unlined."
• Who would ever make an unlined wool coat and be happy with it.
• After they stood up after having sat down.
• If I didn't need to be warm I wouldn't need a jacket or coat.
• Why do they give multi-sized and multi-cup patterns but no lining pieces?
• It is a pain to draft these myself.
• Why not include the lining pattern pieces and say "If you don't want to add a lining don't use these pieces."
• I still haven't had my pattern instruction writing job offer come in yet.
• I want to get up early and go to the market downtown to buy fresh collards.
• The deal is I can have company if we ride the motorcycle.
• Seems fair.
• Where do you start with a student who thinks Wikipedia is an scholarly source and People magazine is a journal?
• I am letting my hair go grey.
• The students are helping me with this.
• I figure if I wear enough lipstick I should be OK.
• Colleague at work said her hair is a lot thicker since she stopped dyeing.
• Worth a try.
• I have to get my knit on if I am going to get even half what I want done by Christmas.
• Is it possible to knit on the back of a motorcycle.
• While raking leaves.
• While doing the dishes.
• While marking papers.
• Walking dogs.
• Plan B is to go to bed early and watch the news.
• Good thing the US election has these super long campaigns. 

A shout out to nurses

I don't know if any of you are healthcare workers. I don't know if, as I write this, any of you are coming down after a 12 hour shift, or getting ready to go on one.


If you are a nurse I just want to say thank you. I was in having a conversation yesterday finding out that some surgery I was told 25 years ago might have to be done sooner or later - well I'm getting close to later. Doesn't matter what, no big deal, it's not that interesting to even me, but that whole thing was made better for me because of a nurse.


Doctors look at numbers and see you as a chart. Nurses look at your face and remember you are someone's mother.


Do you have any idea how important your work is? I hope so.


Listen.


When I take over I am putting twice as many nurses into hospitals and paying them all twice as much. Three times.


That's a promise.

Hurricane Leo hits my kitchen

The leatherette skirt is done except for the hem and I actually like it a lot. The pattern is great and fits.


I am going to get some pictures and comments up tomorrow if I can - my photographer took off his Cookie Monster suit today (huge, huge hit that was) and got into the destruction side of renovation. That took him off paparazzi duty.


You may remember that a few weekends ago the downstairs bathroom was gutted. Now I have a kitchen to match. Destructo man went through layers of wall, paint, flooring, back 50+ years.

My dishwasher and only current work surface sort of

Historic layers of my kitchen as it went out the door and onto the front lawn

What was behind the wall behind the wall behind the cupboards

I am feeling somewhat disorientated. This was not something I had scheduled, planned for, or expected to be happening this fall. I had this in my four year plan and this was not the year. Right now was supposed to be year one and the kitchen was year four.

Nonetheless (is that one word?) Things had to get moved out of the way of the tornado and my house looks like someone took all my stuff and flew over the house in an airplane and dropped out all out.

Now I am not a perfect housekeeper and can live with a fair amount of chaos, but when this was not on the agenda - well it sort of makes me want to take tomorrow off to go down the basement and spend the day doing hand-washing (an activity I find particularly soothing) or putting my patterns in a new order, or go buy chocolates and have a bath in the afternoon and eat them and read a murder mystery where the hero is one of those smart alec talking PIs women who has a kitchen. (Has anyone read the Spellman series? Hilarious. ) 

Instead I believe I am booked to do a performance as an adult at a local university. How did that happen?


But when I come home tomorrow I am putting on that leatherette skirt and stand in what used to be my kitchen and get some pictures taken. Makes sense.

Like yourself

I have this student.


First class last term we were talking about the job hunting process. She commented that "well I know this isn't fair but I am probably going to have an advantage, you know, because of my looks. I hate to say it, but being attractive makes a difference."


I kept on my best teacher face but I remember thinking to myself that I hadn't actually considered this girl really attractive. Eyes a little close together maybe, nose a little big, a few pounds, and well those were sort of knock knees...there were far, far prettier girls in the class. I was taken aback a bit by her comment.


Over the course of the term I got to know this student. I eventually realized that there wasn't any vanity involved, no stuck up ego, it's just that somewhere along the line she had been brought up to just like herself. She enjoyed herself, she could laugh at herself. As student, and not a particularly good student, she had a great attitude. Nearly fail her, and I would get an email back "Great feedback Barb, really appreciate the trouble you took to explain this to me. Now I know what I need to do." And you know, the next assignment I saw she actually had taken it all to heart and I could see the changes she made. 


You just couldn't get this kid down. Unlike nearly everyone her age somehow this girl understood how not to take it personally, it was my comments on the work, not on her.


By the end of the term I started to notice things. How this student was always so well-groomed, well-dressed, good appropriate make-up, she took care of herself. She just took care of herself.


Last class I took her aside and told her that when she went job hunting I would give her a reference.


Not that she might need it, such an attractive girl already has an edge.

Deep acting

Those Syle Arc Linda pants are great. I have a day off today and have made one pair and just cut out two more. More on that later.


I realized I haven't talked about my amazing visit with my old school friend yet (we haven't seen each other since 1972 if you can believe that). It is worth talking about because it, and she, brought some things together for me.


First of all, our outsides have changed. What hadn't is that we each knew exactly who the other person was, the original.


You know how good it was to spend an evening talking with someone who really knew who you are? 


We talked about everything, including my dad who has been gone now for nearly twenty years. She remembered everything and she made him come back to me. I don't get many chances to talk about him around here, my children barely remember him, and my husband never met him.


I felt very connected together when she left.


This has got me thinking of something I read about and something the movie The Help made me think about. 


It's a concept psychologists call deep acting. There was a lot of deep acting going on in that movie. It's a behaviour women get involved in, especially in work situations, where we are called to put a smile on our faces or act interested in something we are not, or be "professional" when we really feel we are by nature an amateur. I remember going to so many official events in my life where the other women were in black and large silver jewelry and in houses that were so precious, you know I would have killed to have gone into one of those powder rooms and seen a crocheted toilet paper cover someone's grandmother had made. I think of meetings where I said something was "exciting" when it wasn't at all, at least not to me, and of working for politicians who really thought the purpose of my life was them. Really.


All of this over time separates you from the original, and by the way, people who are forced to do deep acting too long really can't get back to themselves if they tried. The disconnection can be haunting.


Lucky for me sewing has always been my route back. Lucky for me my family and current job are what I need.


And my school friend, she knew I still sewed. She didn't need to ask.

Let downs

In cleaning up a today I found an old notebook from a job quite a few years ago. Scribbled in the back, doodles when I was supposed to be paying attention at a meeting, where lots of numbers while I tried to figure out my life. 


At that time I was doing a very stressful job that gave me little joy. My math represented how many more years I would have to work, how much money I would have, how well I could manage if I found a less demanding job for less money. I was trying to find an escape route and trying to make the numbers work. At that time they just didn't.


It made me feel really funny to read this today because I could read in all the rows of calculations just how trapped I felt.


The thing is a few years later, completely out of the blue I got an offer to teach and this job suits me perfectly. I laugh every day and although the students sometimes wear me right out, I love them, I care about them, and so often I hear back from them that something I said (usually an off hand comment I hardly remember making) got them through a tricky professional situation.


I wish that person who wrote down all those numbers could have known that it was all going to turn out just fine.


There are times in every life when it's hard to keep your spirits up. I was at a benefit over the weekend for a student who is really going through some very tough health challenges. There are time when a person is sick and can't imagine feeling better again. There are times when you need a break and that break just refuses to come. There are times when your particular story just isn't turning out the way you thought it was going to.


But you never know, you just never know.


I tore those pages out of that old notebook and threw them away and went on my day. Times change, I'll remember that.

A change of seasons

Spring officially begins tomorrow, but I have already declared it here. 


It has to be.


This week I purged perfectly good winter clothes that I was sick to death of and put them into a big garbage bag. I took it down to the diabetes society bin and threw them in and let the metal drawer close before I could get sensible and drag them back out.


This week I also decided black is no longer, after my whole working career, my basic. Black and grey make sense of course when you are traveling for work, or downtown in buildings, but my life is changing. At the end of April I become a part-time teacher and that's it. My private life or the classroom, no more meetings, no more pitches about projects people are "so excited" about.


Black is so sensible when you need to stretch a wardrobe but there are a lot of cool colours that you can't wear with it. OK white, sure, and primaries and red and grey but it is not so comfortable with anything quirky or individual IMO. So I am going to go in other directions now. Indigo navy, who knows what else.


This week I took my partially completed SWAP that was based on black and white and red and winter fabrics and bagged it. Put it away for next fall when I am likely to change my mind again and need those clothes.


I refuse to do any duty sewing. Ever. OK except in emergency, family situations. But never, not for myself.


I am done sewing a wardrobe. It's time I sewed a life.


And where does this leave the White Shirts? Right where they should be. In the department of I will make them when I get up in the morning and decide that's what I want to sew. And I will. I have collected some wonderful fabric and patterns but the long sleeved versions will be waiting along with the old SWAP for cold weather. The seasonal white shirts will appear not when required, but when desired.


On the subject of seasons I was killing some time in my office this week between appointments and read CNN for news. I got distracted from even that by an article on midlife etc. etc. A question posed was that people tend at mid life to think of all the things they would like to have done, but haven't.


So I wrote that down and thought about it. I was surprised at how short the list was, but it was important to me, and some of it I note had to do with things. Here goes:

• I would like every single thing in my wardrobe to be a "piece" I love
• I would like my house to be really clean, every day. (this will require getting rid of some family members and the dogs, and will bite into my sewing "pieces" time, oh well maybe next life)
• I would like to have a big laundry sink. You know for dirty paint brushes and muddy boots and big things that you want to soak. Somebody ripped out the old one that came with this house and replaced it with a bar sink. All you can put in that is a teaspoon and a shoe lace.
• I would like to be able to say I am in the best shape of my life. This probably isn't as hard as it sounds considering I have never even tried to go there so far.
• I would like to write a book, OK, even a booklet. On sewing.
• I would like to have the same number of towels in my cupboard at the end of the year as at the beginning. Why does no one ever know where the towels have gone? The same people, incidentally, that want to know what I have done with the other sock.

That's it. I realize this is a weird list. Not on it are family or travel I notice. I have done a lot of traveling in my life and worked in other countries and any more places I go to are a bonus. I have a husband I really like, and will like even better when he comes home in  few weeks. I had three kids and I am glad about that. Two boys and a girl. I used to wonder if I should have had another girl, but then now I have Scarlett so that's fine. As to working I have had some tough jobs but at the end of my career as a teacher I am doing the best job of my life. I am glad I will be finishing work this way - imagine if the best work of your life had happened at the beginning and the tough jobs came after? 

I don't wish I had a big house. I can hardly keep up with this one. I don't wish I had more money. If I have a fabric budget and can afford to go visit my son in the States and my family in the rest of the country I have all that really care about.

And I want spring to be here, really here. It's change time.

Sewing up the raveled hem

I had a fairly frazzled weekend. I was busy, I was out, I talked to people. I felt scattered, worried, and just wish my husband's tour of duty working away was over. I have too much to do and too much on my mind right now.


And if you are alive and particularly if you have been alive a bit, not all news is good news, some people you care about are going through tough times. One of the best and most alive men I know, one of my oldest friends and the husband of one of my best friends, has started a long struggle with a tough degenerative illness. Their faith isn't the same as mine, and I don't know where you stand on such things, but I have to tell you, when the chips are down it makes a difference.


So because of a lot of things, not anything I can control or fix, the weekend wore me down.


It wasn't until 8:00 tonight, Sunday night, that I made it down to my sewing room.


At first I just sat there and looked at my stuff.


Then I got out the boxes and boxes of 60's, 70's and 80's patterns my neighbour had rescued for me from a church sale and I looked through them. I am taking a bunch to the local sewing guild Tuesday night but keeping all the ones that have meaning for me.


There are patterns in those boxes that I absolutely remember making, or I remember my sister making. It is as if all my very own patterns from decades ago in my life have come back to me. Looking through them I lost the years too, and it was as if I were in my dad's house in the basement sewing something new to wear to school, waiting for my mother to call me for dinner - my life just that complicated.


The amazing thing is  with all the things that have come with an adult life, the challenges and adjustments that come with serious territory, my sewing life and how I feel about it is exactly the same - that part of me is completely intact. Me, in the original, is there -with none of the parts broken off or worn off or given up on or taken away.


I am still there, as is, as always.


One of my sisters used to do some home care for a lady named Doreen. I went with her once on one of the visits. Doreen was in her 90s then and had lost a considerable number of her marbles, but when she heard I sewed she took me into her bedroom where her machine was set up and she was working on a blouse. The blouse was turning out very well, and this woman who I think had the elements disabled on her stove for that burning pot thing I think we are all going to do one day, had even taught herself how to use a serger, which she said wasn't all that hard to thread once you got the hang of it.


True, she wasn't remembering every body by the right name, even people she might have gone into labour for, but I sure understood why Doreen kept that little table in the corner of her bedroom set up to go.


That's the spot where she knew she still was.


So tonight after I looked through those patterns and felt myself settle down inside, I picked up the navy wool skirt I had started to make to go with some of these white blouses and I finished it, and took a lot of time pressing it too.


It turned out absolutely beautifully and while I sewed I felt like all my own scattered parts flew in from the corners of that room and sort of reassembled inside of me. So by the time I was done I was saying to myself that yes I knew what to do, it would be OK, these things can happen to anyone, we would all get through it.


And then I turned off the light and came upstairs.

The best thing about sewing is not the clothes

My mom is one of those who says "it's always something." She is right of course, if you have a big family who is always in everybody else's business and we do and we are, well there always is a something.

Lot goes on in life and if you are looking for material to worry about, well yes mom, there always is something to work with.

It can crowd out your mind. You know what I am talking about. The thoughts you have in the middle of the night, the issues that don't have tidy solutions, the things you are not crazy about, can't do anything about, but know you are going to just have to learn to live with. Some things don't happen for a reason, that's the truth, some things just happen. 

But when I go down to my sewing room it all just goes away. Knitting, you do when you have to think, but sewing takes you to a place where your mind lets go of everything but your project. When sewing takes over it takes you away.

It is such a relief. You are relieved.

I think sewing just rests my soul.

You feel that?

Is it just me?

Weird meetings today. Sometimes adults are too much.

Is it just me or am I the only one who sometimes feels that the only part of life that makes complete sense is her sewing life?

Or that the only place she truly can let her shoulders down and be herself is behind her own front door?

Or that the most peaceful place on earth is sitting in front of the sewing machine.

Or is it just me?