Various news

First of all thank you all so much for telling me your hobby gene stories. 

These were so interesting. Aren't we lucky? 

Someone a long time ago said to me that she was often bored. Bored? Are you kidding? My backlog of projects is so large that I really hope there is such a thing as reincarnation. I am definitely going to need it.

On that note the pickle obsession continues. Bunny, I have some watermelon pickles started and soon as I finish writing this I am going to get up and finish them. Yesterday I made some banana and mango chutney:

I also finished my latest pair of more-ease-real-waistline-Project Runway-Simplicity pants. Adding the extra at the centre front as Kay suggested.

They are great! 

Just great. I have finally come up with a set of pants pattern alterations I think I can apply to any pattern, Simplicity at least, and make them fit me!

Well that was easy.

Only took me 35 years.

You might wonder where the picture is. 

Well once I decided that this pair, even though they are made in Kona cotton which is all I could find here, were good enough to wear, I put in an invisible zipper - which broke just after I had put it in. This is the first time that has ever happened to me.

So on the way to the golf course today (I am actually having a good time now we have applied the No Advice Rule and the promise that I can buy saddle shoes to golf in - I have been waiting since I was 8 for those to come back in) I am going to have to get a new zipper at Hobby Lobby.

It is going to be a bit of a rush because late tonight my mom and niece will be arriving. That will probably mean a transfer to knitting as we are going to have to do a catch-up on the whole family, that will be going on for days and will be round up only once we get to the all important question for each person, "who are they just like?" Once we have made a match for each personality characteristic and someone else in the family we will be done.

They are here for 10 days and we should have a good time. My mom needs a rest and we are going to be doing Disney World with my niece etc.

In the meantime for those of you who haven't been to this beautiful part of Florida here is a picture of the local neighbourhood:

Not Nova Scotia

And here is what got stuck under our back gate yesterday:

My husband opened the gate and let him get out. Mr. Rascal has of course been in this position for the last 24 hours, and is likely to stay like there for the next two weeks:

Now back to pickle-making.

A hobby gene?

When my dear stepdaughter and her sweetheart, who are both in the toy soldier business and doing very well,  were here we had some interesting conversations about what people do in their non-working lives.


Here is what they had to say:


There is a difference between a past time and a hobby. A past time, like listening to music, reading, or reading online, is enjoyable but isn't a hobby.


In fact they say that in their industry they talk about something called the "hobby gene" something some people have, and some don't. 


The hobby gene has the following characteristics:


1. It involves commitment, of time, and active effort, that has nothing to do with pleasing anyone else or in financial reward. You just do it and do it a lot because you just have to.


2. It usually involves some element of collecting.


3. Someone in your life has passed this on to you (hence gene). You watched a relative, teacher, or friend do it and caught their enthusiasm. They also validated the idea of a hobby as a good use of your time.


4. If you have this gene chances are you have more than one interest, beside your passion. You may have sub hobbies


I found this all very interesting. 


I definitely and obviously have this gene and just as definitely know people who don't. 


As I look around Florida I see many old guys who are retired and sitting on balconies in lace up shoes, dark socks, and shorts staring gloomily across the street to the "New York Style Deli" signs. I can hear the voices of the kids in my head "If only dad had a hobby."


I would suggest the hobby gene has to be in your bones - you don't catch it when you retire.


So what about you? These are my questions:


Do you have the hobby gene?


What else, apart from sewing, do you do?


Who got you interested in your hobby?


Is collecting a big part of your hobby?


What is your story?

Up to date

Blogger has been down for while and I am just catching up.


Yesterday I woke up early with the odd and not very familiar session that I had a fox terrier's tail up my right nostril


Yup, I was right. That's what it was.


After that start the obvious thing to do next was to get up and make a batch of Okra and hot pepper pickles:

  
The man at the local hardware store says they have had a real run on canning jars. Makes sense to me. Or there may be other Nova Scotians in town. We absolutely can't get over the great produce, here. Sad really when a grown person calls his wife into the kitchen to say "look at all the juice in this lemon! Can you believe it?"  I suspect we will be coming back this way.


Of course we are the same couple who are amazed that everyone doesn't have their laundry out on the line. Where we come from people would kill for drying weather like this.


I am having a great time. Even the golf is going well. I am keeping myself motivated by the thought I will have to make more clothes for this. Can't you see me in a skort?


Back to sewing.


I have decided to transfer my first set of Simplicity pants pattern alterations to a new pattern, this one with a higher waistline and considerably more design ease, 3 1/2" at the hip. I should have it all cut out tonight and then there is no stopping me.


Stay tuned.

Pants and update

First of all thank you to those who left kind comments on my last post. And thanks too for Kay for telling me exactly what I need to do next. I have another Simplicity pants pattern on the chopping block and will transfer those alterations there.


But not tonight. 


Today I played my first ever 18 holes of golf with my husband. When I write my sure to be a best seller book of advice to new brides make sure you remind me to put never say you are going to do something just because you love someone. 


It makes it harder to weasel out of the deal.


Here are my comments on my golf career to date:


If family are reading, a sand wedge makes a lovely present.


No, I was not the one who put so many balls in the water trap that the alligators woke up.


All in all as an experience remarkably like sewing velvet.


For someone you don't even know.


At midnight.


Later folks, I am off to play the princess who needs someone to cook dinner for her.


I believe we are hitting the links, or something or someone, again tomorrow.

Brace yourself: pant thoughts and photos

O.K.


I have worked through a pretty decent Wild Ginger PMB pant but the leg and style are frustrating me. I would like a sort of narrow leg slack a la Betty Draper, and like some I have seen in the Spring collections. Never mind that I am built like two Betty Drapers. That's not the point.


I would like to make pants that were slimmish and comfortable. I would also like to work out a protocol for standard pattern alterations for pants patterns like I have for upper body garments. You know a set of things I could wack onto any pattern I liked and have it work.


I decided to try all of this out on Simplicity 2261, despite the fact that you really can't tell from the photo what these pants look like.


I have also been thinking a lot about where most sewers, myself included, have trouble with pant fit and it seems to come most often down to two problems: 


1. a baggy front crotch with so-called "smiley lines" although no one is smiling about them
2. saggy stuff and the infamous diagonal wrinkles under the butt


The fixes for this are many. I decided however that for my body one of the problems and frustrations was a pant leg that was too large.


So this is what I decided to try.


I cut out a pants pattern for my thigh measurement ( flat pattern and about 2-3" ease) this gave me a size 14.


You need to know that if I had cut for my hips I would be a size 16 and for my waist a 18.


So I just added that to the pattern. I also tried the famous "clown butt" alteration to add to my centre back  length and to take in some of the extra fabric under my butt. You can find a good explanation of that here kindly posted on Patternreview by Karla Kiser.


Now about my body. That is, after all, what I was trying to fit. 


Some people have an hour glass figure, some of us have a glass tumbler figure. In my case with a large behind and a belly for which I make no apologies- the two of us celebrated Mother's Day together thanks.


These two realities meant that I had to add length to centre back (2" in total) and to the centre front (1").


Here are what the pattern pieces looked like after my alterations:

Now of course I didn't bring my sewing room with me so my trial pair is made in broadcloth, not a good fabric for pants, doesn't ease, but gave me an idea.


I also made one design change once I saw the waistband pieces really were a contoured almost yoke. I eliminated the fly front for this pair and just put in an invisible zipper that I inserted all the way up through the waistband.


Now truthfully, for reasons my belly makes obvious, I could do without such a prominent seam along my middle, and since the pattern says that these pants are meant to sit 1" below the waist, I would probably add that 1" in the pair I intend to make in a stretch cotton when I can get my hands on some.


So lousy test fabric taken into account, I am really pleased with the leg shape in these. I might take up a bit with a more pronounced Clown Butt alteration next time, but considering the shape I am trying to fit and considering I will never be wearing anything tucked in, I am quite happy with these.


You may of course look at this test photos and say "is she nuts" but listen this fit is just fine with me and with this body. I have no intention to drive myself crazy trying to get a perfectly smooth fit over a non perfect, not smooth, body. I am a realist.


However I definitely feel I am on to something with the smaller pattern thing and will try another Simplicity pattern with the exact same alterations and see what happens.

My test pants:

Pants front with top. Photographer did not notice tucked up top. Would get another photographer but this one is a damn good cook and kind to small children, animals, and me.

Butt with dog shot

Sad illustration of all my figure flaws. Nice pant leg though.

Revealing front shot at artistic angle, this time with the dog's butt. Some professional blog.

A shout out to a great book

When I packed to come to go away to Florida for a month I brought my sock knitting book, a pile of mysteries from the library on their wonderful "vacation" extended loan program, and the completely best book on making pickles, relishes and chutneys I have ever read:

I love my condiments and I enjoy making anything pickled. Unlike jams and jellies that get quite complicated - that damn soft ball stage- and which you can buy and get exactly what you want just about anywhere, pickling is easy. You can also make exciting things that are very hard to find if you do a little of your own pickling, and for so little cost. Cost is important, any kind of chutneys and pickles that are at all interesting are so artisanal and boutiquey that you are paying more to accent the meal than to make it.

My son sent me this book for my birthday. At first I thought it was going to be one of those usual compendiums of standards or poorly tested recipes that had been added to just get the recipe count up. You know the kind of book I mean, I own a few of those.

However this book is anything but that. It is a brilliant collection of amazing recipes that, in the many I have tried from it, always produce a winner. In detail, this is what I love about this book, in addition to the great and successful recipes:

1. It is written from experience, lots of experience, and it shows. The advice on pickling in general is all you need to know and makes the whole process very possible even if you have never tried anything like this before.

2. Expanding on the above you can just tell these recipes have been tested to death. Things happened in my kitchen just the way the author, Jennifer MacKenzie, said they would.

3. There is a surprisingly little salt in any of these recipes. This is Major, if you are cooking for yourself or someone and want to cut back on the salt. 

I will give you an example.

When I made my lime pickle earlier in the week (I would have liked to use the recipe from this book but just couldn't source curry leaves locally) I used 10 tablespoons of salt to make 4 jars of lime pickle (and I will be careful about eating them as a result).

By contrast when I made 8 jars of Mango, Papaya and Ginger Chutney with Lime last night (recipe to follow) I used only 1 teaspoon of salt for whole batch.

Just think that one through.

Here is what one of those jars of chutney looks like, the pieces are a bit large but this establishment is knife challenged, not to worry:

Now I have to tell you that this is about as good as it gets. Even my husband, who is the expert cook in this family, stood over the sink and scrapped the pot saying "This is good, this is really, really good." Myself I have to tell you it is unbelievably good - spicy but so tasty. Blows store bought Bombay chutney out of the water. And it was so easy to make I also finalized my test pair of summer pants the same evening. I will be posting more about that tomorrow.

So this morning I emailed Jennifer MacKenzie and asked her if I could post the recipe here. She was very nice and wrote back and said I could.

So here we go: (book also has metric quantities, I used cups etc.)

Mango, Papaya and Ginger Chutney with Lime 

6 cups chopped peeled sweet mangos (look for the yellow ones)

2 cups chopped peeled papaya

2 cups brown sugar divided

1 cup finally chopped sweet onion

1/4 cup finally chopped gingerroot

1 tsp canning salt

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (author suggested freshly grated, I used ground from the store)

1/8 tsp cloves

1 1/2 cups cider vinegar

1 cup water

2 hot red or green chili peppers, seeded and minced

1 tsp grated lime zest

1/4 lime juice, freshly squeezed

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids (book has detail on this, I brought my canning rack with me. It's necessary to do a hot water bath if you are going to keep it).

2. In a large bowl, gently combine mangos, papaya and 1/2 cup of brown sugar, set aside.

3. In a large pot, combine the remaining brown sugar, onion, ginger, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vinegar and water. Bring to a boil over a medium heat, stirring often. Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes or until onion is soft and liquid is slightly reduced. Stir in mango mixture and chile peppers, increasing heat to medium and boil gently, stirring often, for about 30 minutes or until fruit is translucent but still holds its shape. Stir in lime zest and juice.

4. Ladle hot chutney into hot jars, leaving  1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace as necessary by adding hot chutney. Wipe rim and place hot lid disc on jar. Screw band down until finger-tip tight.

5. Place jars in canner and return to boil. Process (this means full boil with about an inch of water over the jars in the canner- my note ) for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and remove canner lid. Let jars stand in water for 5 minutes. Transfer jars to a towel-lined surface and let stand for 24 hours. Check lids and refrigerate any jars that aren't sealed.

Excerpted from The Complete Book of Pickling by Jennifer MacKenzie © 2009 Robert Rose Inc. www.robertrose.ca Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

This is soo good.