Machines of integrity (in the mood for drama tonight)

You may or may not remember, that would depend on how long you have hung in with me on this blog, that last spring my husband and I put together a vintage Bernina Sport from parts on eBay. We got a good body and power cord from one seller and collected an extension table, feet, and bobbins from others.

I think the whole project cost us about $450.

We cleaned, downloaded manuals, and oiled and greased it.

Of course in my too-busy life at home I didn't have much of a chance to get to know this machine after all that trouble so I brought it down here to do just that.

Currently I am working on a very successful sheath dress from a new pattern (more on that later) and having a wonderful time with this machine.

This experience happens to coincide with some email traffic about new machines from several dealers.

Now listen. 

I have enormous respect for the hard work it takes to be a sewing machine dealer these days. They are caught between far too many large companies who pressure them non-stop to sell machines like it was 1960 and every woman is spending happy afternoons set up over the beige broadloom and sewing away making everyone's clothes, and the present.

Modern women should be so lucky.

Anyway the thing about sewing on this old Bernina is how great it feels. 

I don't care what you tell me about your new $12,000 top of the line but it has to feel right under my hands.

This machine does. The stitch is perfect and I can feel all those metal parts working away without a snag.

It feels like a well-oiled machine. Because that's exactly what it is. It cruises over those lumps and layers without an hesitation. I hold my breath when I am about to sew over a definite juncture, and I can let my breath out.

This is the way it is supposed to feel.

Now I have a couple of very good machines at home, including a former top of the line that does embroidery. It didn't get to go on vacation.

The sewing machine industry is in a dilemma. 

An economic crisis. 

With so many fewer hall closets these days hiding a necessary sewing machine somewhere under the tails of coats and the boots, the only way the companies can survive with so many fewer units sold is to amp up the price of the machines they do sell. And also there has to be a new and better model every few years. So suddenly we have machines with computers in them that can digitize, maximize, minimize, flip, reverse, mirror and advise on screen.

Machines that cost more than a second hand car and are about the size of the bathtub in a cheap hotel.

There are two problems with this approach:

1. The buttonholes are still often suspect.
2. You don't need any of this to actually sew clothes.

This whole new machine culture is starting to offer machines that, I hate to be really rude here, but they look like a bunch of guys designed them.

You know exactly what I mean.

You know when that male in your life, any age will do here, shows you something complicated, mechanical or electronic, but most of all new, and therefore apparently improved, and you are real patient and then you say "well when would you exactly use that?" and they look at you like you just told them there was no Santa Claus. Or Easter Bunny. Or no snow day and school is cancelled.

Well that is the mind I see behind so many of these new machines.

Here's an idea.

If I were to buy a new machine this is what I would want to hear:

This machine is the most carefully manufactured machine we have ever made. The stitch is impeccable, the buttonholes are the most beautiful anywhere. No one else has a machine of this quality. No where near.

Let me know if you hear anything like that.

On a less serious note I have three unique pieces of intelligence to share with you tonight:

1. If you leave the back door open in the evening in Florida, well, when you wake up there might be an extremely large toad in the middle of the living room floor. Extremely.

2. If you are making a dress and you are in a sewing frenzy and try it on and decide you need to move the darts down half and inch and you do that. Well when that dress is all sewn up and this time you try it on with a bra on, or at least a good one, well you are going to have to cross out those new markings you put on the pattern, because those darts need to be moved up half an inch.

3. And if you make tailor tacks, I do, and get fed up with ripping the paper over the markings, just make a puncture hole in the pattern where you are going to want to make that tailor tack. A golf tee works great if your pattern is lying on beige broadloom.

This is the life.

Fabric and pattern big news

First of all the fabric:

On the way here we had a necessary detour at Fabricmartfabrics in Sinking Springs Pennsylvania. It's a small store front on an older partially residential street that disguises a large and highly organized inventory in the warehouse rooms in back and upstairs.

In the main store part there were racks and tables of ends at super prices. Some $1 a yard silks, and I kid you not.

To avoid losing my mind I decided to focus on knits and what you see here are 24 yards of mostly rayon/lycra with a few yards of cotton/lycra thrown in. Nice quality and this whole pile cost me $100 which, as I explained to my husband, is another example of how sewing saves me money.

I definitely will be putting Fabricmart on the permanent itinerary along with that great Thai place with the vegetable spring rolls, the world's best, in Freeport Maine of all non-Thaiwanese places. A must stop.

Now onto exciting pattern news. In my travels I had some time to think and it occurred to me that sewing really was my core business, despite all the other things I do with my time, some of it for a salary.

My mind is going with the sewing all the time.

So to cut a long drive, and a think, short as soon as I was in a place with a table where I could write I emailed off Stylearc and said you know those Linda pants are great but a slimmer leg version would be nice.

And they emailed right back and said, well that's exactly what we are releasing this very minute, and now well we are going to call it Barb.

This completely thrills me, you have no idea. This means more to me that any of those prizes I won in university, by far, and more to me than all the elections I helped to win (sorry about that senior members of government).

I mean this is a pattern.

With my name on it.

A pants pattern.

I couldn't be happier if I had negotiated world peace. Sorry about that.

I can hardly wait to sew it:

Isn't life exciting?

Cooking in jars for people who have better things to do

The end of day two here on location in Florida. Still working of course but online, this www is pretty nifty.

I am so glad to be here.

On the way down I examined the skin on my legs, among other things to do on a long road trip, and noted that somehow my skin turned 90 - I was shocked to see my epidermis sort of detaching from my body like crumpled tissue paper on Boxing Day - well, when did I become this old I wondered?

The thing here in Florida though it is pretty humid, that's why everything is so green and lush and there are turtles and birds and other stuff with long skinny tails that move slow into the bush pretty much everywhere you look. 

So it appears I have been re-hyderated here, in only two days, just like magic, just like a TV commercial where they are going to send you two for the price of one, plus separate shipping and handling.

Somewhere, maybe it was the beach or around the 15th hole where I actually managed to hit the ball backwards, my skin had the water added to it and all that weirdness has gone and I am smooth (this is relative and we are going to gloss over the use of that word pretty fast) again like 35, OK 45 year old legs.

Makes me wonder what the rest of my life spent in dry indoors winter will do to me. 

I had the old vaporizer on a bit when I thought I had a cold in January, but I am thinking next winter I will have to fire those units up in every room before I curl up and blow away in the wind.

OK.

This was meant to be a cooking post. I guess you can gather by now I figure Florida weather is good for me. Now we can move on.

Back to the mason jars, illustrated last post on the hood of the car. I was definitely the only woman taking shots of mason jars on a car hood with an iPad at the gas station, a fact that was noted.

If you haven't already done it via more reliable Google this is how you can make these up:

1. Get yourself some big mason jars.

2. Make yourself some dressing (or you could buy some, I make it). Current simplest is 2 parts olive oil and 1 part rice vinegar, sometime with a bit of dijon in it. Put these ingredients in one jar and shake it and then pour some into the bottom of each mason jar you are making a salad in.

3. Isolate the dressing by putting a layer of something not wilty on top. I like black beans, my spouse likes quinoa. Go crazy.

4. Then put little layers of bits and pieces on top of this. Red pepper, beets, feta or blue cheese, clean out the fridge. Tomatoes, whatever.

5. Stuff the remaining 1/3 or so with leaves. Lettuce, arugula.

6. Screw on the lid. I found these salads stay nice and fresh for three days.

To eat you have two options:

1. Option one. Empty the jar onto a plate or in a big bowl, toss a bit and eat it up. You do this style at home or in the lunch room at work.

2. Option two. The I-95 option. Shake it up, take off the lid and try to eat it on your lap with a fork. Can be done, but be prepared to wonder if maybe some dollar store sells long handled forks.

Admission.

I am sort of into making these regularly. I get busy, like when there is a major sewing project underway, and don't like to take time to cook or fix myself something respectable. It is awfully nice to have about half your daily Canada food guide vegetable requirements ready to go without any work or time out.

And these are fabulous when you are on the road.

It has occurred to me that I have come by car food prep honestly.

Back in my childhood when we used to go on those mega car trips, in a station wagon with a plywood car top carrier my dad made on the roof, with everyone fighting and no one wearing seatbelts, and my father spending his hard earned vacation saying "bloody Murphy" a lot to himself, my father used to put cans of tinned spaghetti in the car engine to heat up while we drove.

Remember those old cars had enough spare room in them to roast turkeys, which I am sure was next on my father's to-do list.

The plan was when we stopped at some rest stop we would all head to a picnic table and my dad would open the car hood and take out a can opener and presto there was lunch.

I thought he was a genius and figured that his brilliant ideas had something to do with the fact he was a science teacher - although I am sure cooking canned spaghetti with a combustion engine was an original idea.

And a pretty good one.

Many times we had something nice and hot for lunch - those cans usually didn't explode if you stopped the car somewhere between Moose Jaw and  Regina.

Shots from the road trip

Here are some iPad shots as we work our way down from Nova Scotia. I knit a Noro Silk Garden wave scarf, part of a sock and served up mason jar salads ( google these if you have never made them) which are perfect for car food if you can't face the Popeye chicken and chips at the Vince Lambardi rest stop. I also made jelly jar sized yoghurt, wheat germ fruit and maple syrup breakfasts.

This jar eating in the car seats is no reflection of my domesticity but evidence I am on Pinterest too much..

Tomorrow we will be in Florida after a stop in an Econlodge breakfast room in South Carolina in the afternoon where they are letting me sit and teach my last class, as arranged by my sweet talking husband.

They even have leaves on the trees down here.

Trips and technology

Don't fall over, I am back blogging.

Wrapping up the old life to move it down to Florida for two months has taken some time.

My house is re-ordered and will be ready for my house-sitter by tonight. He is a surfer and film-maker friend of my youngest son, and between places, so staying here suits us both. Very nice guy and will cut the grass if it ever starts growing again. Not completely sure why I am doing the big clean up because I am sure he isn't fussy, something I'm suspecting based on the dust bunnies he has in his very own vertical hair, but I know he will take good care of the place and he does need a place to stay.

Tomorrow I teach my last live class of the term and my husband and Rascal are picking me up at school with the car all packed and off we go. I have an elaborate schedule of stops near wi-fi on the way down so I can teach my remaining online classes - that strange woman in the parking lot with a laptop and a fox terrier on her lap and a headset on (and a man snoring next to her in a reclined driver's seat) would be me, if we cross paths. Just tap on the window and I will wave.

I will also be teaching two courses while I am away. I am amazed that technology has given me all this flexibility in my life. Teaching in a class room, that you have to walk to up a steep hill in the sleet, is one thing. Marking in a lawn chair under an umbrella is another.

Yesterday I told Miss Scarlett I was going to be away for a while and I would really miss her and she patted my face and said "Don't worry Babs, we will Face-time."

She is three.

I have a had a good, but too over-booked year this year, and I am so needing to reconnect with myself and my own interests a bit. One of the things I am going to do is clean up this blog, which is as messy as my sewing room right now, and catch up on my Pattern Reviews.

I am taking just dress fabric with me and some knitting. I have signed on for a Craftsy Fair Isle vest class and will have the time when I am away to figure that out.

Off I go now.

I have to load all my empty mason jars into the trailer with the motorcycle, the golf clubs, and the surf board my husband has borrowed, optimistically. I am really looking forward to continuing  my Florida canning routine (you can take the girl out of the prairies but you can't ...). I have to  remember to pack my stitch counters and wash Rascal's dog bed too.

Check.

After that I think I will sit on the front steps and wait.

In my winter jacket.

Pants etc.

O.K. note to self. 

Do not blog after you have just tried on five pairs of pants that don't fit. Nothing, repeat, nothing gets to me like having sewn multiples that don't fit. And don't write those blog posts late at night.

Obviously.

Today my daughter read my last post and said to me "Mom, what's up? You are always so cheerful, this doesn't sound like you at all."

"But I can't wear all those pants I just finished," I said.

As if this explains absolutely everything.

Which it should.

However I am happy to report that I have put all those pants away for another day (somewhere I can't see them) and actually went out and bought two pairs, on sale, that fit me just fine.

My morale has returned.

I need a holiday. 

I have been doing a job and a half for the last twelve months and figured I was managing just fine, but I am beginning to think it has depleted my resources more than I thought. You probably figured that out. I have that female taking on too much thing going on and I should have outgrown it by now. I have pretty much made up my mind to go part-time, no negotiation, in the next year.

Now I firmly believe the universe speaks back to you. And because I am incredibly deep I figure finding pants that fit just fine on sale, was a lesson to me.

I don't have to do everything and I don't have to sew everything. In fact why am I spending so much time sewing something I can buy?

So I'm thinking it is time for me to revisit my I don't have to do that list. 

A wise older woman I know once told me that she has a dinner party rule. She makes one course and does it well and buys the rest. She is a great, relaxed hostess. Real lesson there.

So I am going back to my sewing list, right now, updated this is what it looks like:

I sew:

Dresses ( I am going to sew nothing but dresses all summer I think) - I can't get buy them to fit or long enough and I like to make them.

Bras. The only ones I find comfortable are the ones I make.

Tops and shirts. Again my long body and few fitting issues like square shoulders make this a good use of my time and I can be creative.

What I don't really have to sew:

OK pants, except for a few TNT like the Lindas. I am not going to be making jeans in my lifetime.

Winter coats and jackets. I have made these a lot in the past but really they are pretty detailed and I can buy, if I shop well, exactly what I want.

So that's me being sensible.

Now what is your sew and not sew list? Or are there a few things you have crossed out in other areas of your life.

I am really interested to hear how you negotiate your balance.

My last week in the sort of thawing North

This morning my husband said to me "well I guess you have given up on that blog."

Being totally self-controlled and mature I didn't say much, or at least not what I was thinking.

That might have been great idea to start drywalling, sanding (translate this into a fine layer of dust on everything, the dog, your mascara in the cupboard in the bathroom, the cheese grater in the drawer) and painting the whole house two weeks before we go away.

I am not a fool. 

When a person has been nagging for so long to get something done that she has gone out the other side and actually given up on that whole sighing thing, list making and long speeches about how finishing things is as important as starting (because obviously the only reason the home improvement projects stall is because no one has explained, in great detail, the finishing part) she knows to try to not say that one more thing.

Except to the world wide web.

Which brings me to my pants crisis.

I have been having throat problems all winter, particularly after those days when my first class starts at 8:30 a.m. and the last one ends at 7:00 p.m. Fast forward to the ENT who said I had a throat typical of someone who sings loudly all day and eats late at night.

Well, actually he said I had the same throat as Ozzie Osborne, who he has treated.

I can't make this up. First I am a Keith Richards look alike and now I have the insides of Ozzie Osborne. 

This would get a lesser woman down. What happened to only getting better as I get older like Oprah and Jane Fonda? Guess they're not from around here.

And I actually am lesser.

Following throat friendly instructions, which are now held onto my fridge by magnets of places I wish I was now, complete with stick figures and headlines like "so what is silent reflux anyway?" except it is not silent enough in my case (I actually had a better time with my wonderful GP who just looked at me and said, stop talking Barbara), I have eaten small meals instead of big ones and done nothing by mouth in the 3 hours before bed. No cocoa with the knitting, no ice cream with the husband and Piers Morgan, no Raisin Bran and a library book.

This has been a terrible idea as I have suddenly just lost 10 pounds and as a result my SWAP pants don't fit! All the gabardine, all those invisible zippers, all that pressing and fitting.

Out the window. 

I have of course lost the weight in all the impossible to take in easily places and the way I look in these pants now reminds me of the get-up my late father-in-law would wear when he was off to check on his combo chicken coop greenhouse (not his best idea those were sort of pre-cooked chickens). Old dress pants, pre-heart smart.

I think you can get my drift.

So in addition to having a rocker's throat, drywall dust on my toothbrush, 500 assignments to mark , a house to pack up for two months in Florida, I have had to deal with sewer's angst.

I have decided to let it go and deal with it all when I get back in June. Unless I return from sunnier parts a stronger person this probably means I am going to drive those pants down to the Canadian Tire parking lot at 11:00 at night and drop them into the Diabetes Society clothing collection bin, where the metal drawer clangs shut and you can't stick your arm down into it to pull things back, if you were to experience donator's regret.

Not that anyone I know has ever tried to do that at night in a parking lot, not even knelling on the hood of the car for a better reach.

So that's my update.

I have a sewing machine and a serger packed up ready to go and won't be sewing much in the week left before we leave. That should give me a good clean week to get my job responsibilities stabilized until I am back online teaching the end of April, and should give me a good week to move pieces of fabric in and out of the project to-do box I have allocated myself for the trip.

So far I am spending about two hours a day changing my mind about what I think I will want to sew when I am away. I can't imagine why my marking is behind.

I also have to clean this place up. We have a surfer on a bicycle who is going to be staying here to watch the house when we are away and I have my standards.

I will check in during the next few days, count on it.