Still here

I want you to know I will be back to blogging and sewing when the dust settles around here. 


The end of term paper marking crunch with the attendant meetings with amazed students who say things like "But I always got 90s without doing any work in high school" or "This mark has had a serious impact on my positive attitude to life".


And of course great work from most students. But it still all has to be marked.


Lots of life going around too. My last kid at home is getting ready to go out of province to a new job just after Christmas, little Heidi was down at Emerg with breathing problems after a cold (fine now) and my daughter's dog is now blind in one eye with a detached lens after a collision with a ball.


I have been caught up in classes so my husband has stepped in as usual to help everyone out. Helped son buy a truck, went over and walked the baby, and took Miss Scarlett to work with him two mornings this week to give my daughter a break.


Miss S was a big hit apparently in the Materials Lab and had quite a good time too at the courthouse where Poppa had to go for some business. And he has been cooking and bringing me dinner so I could mark.


Are you interested in this at all? Never sure if these details are totally boring or not, but feel if I am not sewing or posting I should let you know why, those of you who have been kind enough to follow this blog.


I really appreciate my husband. You see I didn't find him and marry him until I was 48 - with enough life experience to understand it's the quiet ones you have to watch. He has been so good for us.


Also I am feeling particularly appreciative because yes he is going away to Tennessee again this winter - although with a much improved schedule of three weeks away one week off. Some of those weeks off will be at home, the week before Christmas thank god and a week in January when we are moving his mom into the city to an apartment near us. Other trips will involve me on routes that will take me close to my NYC son and the garment district.


I have to tell you that negotiating a settlement for another winter apart was fairly time intensive - I was fine once I reorganized the whole idea in my head as "three weeks to sew without interruption followed by one week of fabric shopping."


It's all how you look at it, and how you can get it arranged in your mind.


I had a funny conversation too with my mother this week who was doing her annual round up called "How everybody turned out" which she does as a warm up to her annual outrageous Christmas letter - you know the one that forgets one person every year or explains her position on same sex marriage.


After reviewing everyone's lives she said to me that despite the challenges I have had on and of in my life like everyone else, she has never worried about me. I found this statement, from a professional worrier, interesting so I asked her why.


"Because you sew," she said. "You can always cheer yourself up."


Well how about that?

The best laid plans

You know I did some sewing today after all. Interrupted by Another Flood.


I could hardly believe it when the waters started rising in the sewing room floor once again. 


My side of the street has really taken a hit. My next door neighbour has had the remediation folks in there on two separate occasions lately - she has it all torn out and new floors put in and it happens again.


Fortunately for me I live with my remediation crew and lately he has been at home for all events. He had a sump running in the sewing room with a discharge hose running out into the bathtub in the downstairs bathroom. So we got through it alright.


There was nothing much I could do but I felt it would have been in really bad taste to be working on a 50's hostess gown style velour housecoat while he was sweating it out with the pails.


So I only cut out and stopped and then went to work on Christmas presents and made sure I made appreciative noises at the same time. I felt that was more virtuous and expressed my solidarity with someone being so useful.


Maybe better luck on all fronts tomorrow. I am convinced I'll look great walking around the new kitchen in this get up.

About today

Karin pointed out that today is Armistice Day in the UK and what we call Remembrance Day here in Canada. Both days I suspect were designed to remember those who died in the world wars, unlike the American day which seems to me to include those who are still serving now.


A sensible inclusion I think.


So I hope I didn't offend anyone with my post yesterday about this being a day off.


Because I actually do remember.


Near me there is a neighbourhood where every street is named after a young man from town who died in World War II. I drive by there often and wonder about their mothers. How did a whole generation, several generations in fact, send all their sons away? I also take Miss Scarlett to a park named after a boy from the neighbourhood who died in Italy with a letter about this place, addressed to his mother in his hand.


I wonder if the park made her feel any comfort, I hope so.

In case you didn't know tomorrow is International take the day off day

O.K. enough with the life getting in the way.


Yes I had a flood, yes my house has been productively trashed renovated. Yes I have 120 hysterical first year students this term. Yes my husband may be away again this winter. Yes Christmas is on its way and all my projects for other people are only at the mental sewing stage. Yes I have neglected my blog for reasons above.


We are turning the page tomorrow folks with International take the day off and be totally irresponsible day with the full potential to be the first day of the rest of my life.


You see the flooring guys are coming tomorrow to put in floor in the kitchen and hall and points in between. I have decided that the only safe place for the dogs and I is going to be down in the semi put together sewing room.


I am getting up at 7:00 am, packing snacks, taking the iPad and the boys and am heading down there for the duration. I have a bathroom down there and if the boys feel the urge I am passing them out the window.


You might think I am joking about this. You should know better by now.


My lack of sewing lately has worn away at my nerve endings.


I have a few Christmas projects to work on but my main event is going to be a housecoat in navy velour from this Vintage pattern:

Vogue pattern magazine last issue did an outstanding feature on using vintage patterns in updated ways and I was truly inspired.


So I am doing this longer, closed at the front with a zipper.


This is project is part of an approach to life I am thinking about.


You see the bug top was fine for a black tie one off but it's my family and myself who see me most in my day-to-day clothes. Around Christmas for example, and hell if my husband goes away again and its me and the dogs at night in the sewing room or knitting on the bed with our Ovaltine and CNN, myself by myself, why shouldn't I dress up for that?


I mean whatever happened to hostess gowns? To robes that were non ratty enough to talk to people in, in person not just on the phone.


I am channeling my considerable inner Doris Day. We will see how that turns out.

All in the family (but children of mine don't read this)

Time for a visual update. My renovations and flood recovery are continuing. The system seems to be that for every thing that gets added, one thing gets taken down. Like a wall.

All of which is good. I am amazed at the space hidden all these years in my house, consumed in awkward corners and unnecessary built-ins. I feel the house can breathe now, despite the disruption.

Here are the kitchen cupboards up and my contractor getting the floor ready for the floor guys this week.

Tons needs to happen but this is really starting to look great. All due to my husband's hard labour in the evenings and weekends, not to mention the disaster relief he has provided downstairs.

An unusual bit of news though was that his company would really like him to go back to Tennessee again until the spring. Stay tuned on that one, currently my circuits are overloaded at the thought.

Which means of course I have gone into creative retreat until I understand what's going on.

I am aware that December 25th is on next month's calendar and I have started to go into high gear on my Christmas projects. My own vision for the holidays sees me relaxing with a glass of wine and some baking in a nice living room once classes are over - not locked in the bathroom trying to finish knitting socks like last year until 3:00 a.m.

Once the Tennessee rumour started (not that I don't love TN but I would rather be there than get calls from there) I headed down to the sewing room and the few cleared surfaces and started three pairs of pajamas for my daughter using the excellent Jalie pattern she loves and which has unfortunately been discontinued. If I don't get recruited to help with the leaves today these will be more or less finished by supper:

No idea why this shot is off kilter except that this is consistent

I have also, thanks to Herman Cain (you are sooo lucky I am not writing a political blog) and other news stories, been able to get considerable work done on a son's sweater. Am still figuring out what to say to the other son who also wants a sweater - god I hope I am not heading back to bathroom knitting.

And finally the best for last. Here are my girls, Scarlett and her new sister Miss Heidi at Hallowe'en. Miss Scarlett in her pink dog suit done to her specs:

Now off for leaf avoidance.

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.

New Look 6051 bug suit

After a very fun sewing day with my local guild in a church basement I was able to produce this version of New Look 6051. It is sort of a poncho thing in bug fabric as part of my some-old-little-black-dress disguise.


No doubt some of you are going to look at this and think "is she crazy enough to be wear that?"and I can only answer, yes I am.


Of course on the night I will wear proper jewelry and deal with the hair somewhat, but for the purposes intended this is fine with me. Question for you though. You can see the grey coming in here. I decided to let my colour go in the hope that it would be good for my fine-thin-disappearing hair, make it thicker maybe or healthier, but is this a good or bad or useless idea?


Next. Back to the sewing:


Technical notes are :


1. No, the pattern did not call for an asymmetrical hem. You can achieve this exact same look in the privacy of your own sewing room by sewing the waistline elastic on crooked. Not that hard to do if you concentrate.


2. The pattern called for two button holes in the front, as waistline casing and a drawstring. I did not do any of this. Reasons- I am not so crazy as to do buttonholes in chiffon. And there is a local to this location policy, to never put details over our stomach.


Also zig-zagging on elastic on the inside was fastest, even faster if you do it crookedly. That's a tip.


So you see I am almost back under control here, and if there is any doubt here is a candid shot of my contractor/husband, entertaining me. And no I did not put his head through the wall. Tempted... Not really.

What a guy, you can see why I married him.