Hurricane Season

The past few weeks the weather has remained fairly gross--high humidity, highs in the mid to upper 80s.  The redeeming factor was that the nights were finally dropping into the upper 60s and low 70s, so the mornings were tolerable.  Sort of.  I did have a week there of being able to have the windows open most of the day, but then we had a stretch of days that felt more like mid-August than mid-September.  

Thursday, a storm blew through that was the tip of whatever hurricane is moving up the coast currently, and the heat and humidity finally broke.  Yesterday and today have been downright chilly and I love it!  My windows are open, I'm borderline cold without tights, and finally feeling like I can think straight again.

My garden has been producing steadily this month, but I think with the cooler weather it will slow down now, and I need to start thinking about winterizing the containers.  I transferred the hydrangea into one of the five gallon buckets that previously held my potato plants before they died in the heat.  

I put the rose bush into the other bucket and clipped it to train the sprawl to fit into the space between the two containers.  I also moved the wild flowers into a larger pot and combined them.  They seem to have weathered the transplant okay.

Finally picked this puppy today since the leaf above is well and withered.  Hopefully it is orange and ripe inside!

There are still watermelons on the vine (it suddenly started producing again after I put some fertilizer in the ground last month) but I think only one will make it to maturity.  It's like the little watermelon that could!  I saved seeds from some of the earlier fruits to maybe try planting next spring.  

There are three still ripening here.  There was a fourth but I accidently pruned it when thinning things last week.  It was small and unlikely to reach maturity, so no harm done.

I clearly did something wrong with my original blueberry bush last fall, so I'm hoping I can figure out what to do differently to make it fruit again next spring.  

As the weather stayed stubbornly humid, I did some last ditch sewing for the season this week and made up three quick linen tops.  All use my nearly-self-drafted woven t-shirt pattern, and it is just the thing to wear in hot temps.  It is cool, non-binding around the arms, and I generally like the look of it.

Mostly, though, the last few weeks have been all about jewelry making.  I've got some new pieces that I really love, and am still poking away at the beads, experimenting with this or that.  It is creatively satisfying.  The pieces in the collage above are sets that coordinate but aren't matchy-matchy.  I don't know if it is the (negative) influence of the 80s/90s or what, but I prefer to make sets that don't quite match, but go well together.  (Speaking of the 90s, I'm having a Moment.  I bought a midi-length black leather skirt and Doc Marten combat boots off ebay recently and have been listening to music from jr. high and high school.  Looking forward to going all stompy and grunge when the weather really cools).

I'm not quite ready to contemplate my cold weather projects yet, so jewelry making is a nice transitional craft.  (Although I have been knitting all summer, just not with any kind of determination...a bit here and there while traveling or sitting in waiting rooms, or whatever).  

This morning we went apple picking for the first time in the area (I haven't been since I was a kid and a parishioner invited our family to pick on their home orchard).  We probably picked way too many, but considering that we can go through more than 10 pounds of apples in a week's time during the fall and winter, it should last us a little while anyway!  

I'm making a St. Pharnourios apple crisp since I owe him several breads, and cannot at this moment contemplate making a dense recipe.  We put a cross of chocolate chips on the top and I said a few prayers for his mother, so good enough, I say.  I think he'll understand.

Trio

It's almost November and I'm still catching up on posting projects from September and early October, so forgive the out of season photos.  It was hurricane hot and humid here until like last week and I was beginning to think I was never going to be able to wear a sweater again.  But thank the Lord, the heat and humidity seem to have finally passed, with morning lows in the 40s and 50s and highs in the 60s.  My kind of weather.  My kids remarked this morning that Alaska would be a good place for me.  Indeed.

 

On a more prosaic note, I tripped getting onto the city bus this morning, and totally wiped out in front of everyone on the bus and behind me in line--a wonderful and humiliating start to my day.  My left arm aches and I can tell my ribs will be sore later, so I think my plans for today might need to include a down shift.  I probably need one of those wristbands you get in the hospital that says "FALL RISK."  Think that would help?  Ha!

I would probably mind less if I hadn't had a fall at church two weeks ago that similarly damaged my right side.  (The fall was one of those weird accidents--someone's coat slid onto the floor as I was going by, it caught on my shoe, and I went down hard).  I sort of feel like I've been through the wars about now. 

Anyway.  I thought I'd post about three projects at once to save time.  The first is the Free Range skirt hack I mentioned in the last couple of posts.  I used the same silky noil from yesterday's Remy Raglan.  The hack is basically to straighten the line from the top of the thigh to the middle of the calf by removing the crotch curve.  There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to do this (I think Helen's Closet has the best one), but it's a pretty easy change. 

The Free Range Slacks are constructed with three pieces--front, back, and sides.  I cut the crotch curves out of the front and back, and kept the side panel the same since it has straight side seams.  I did shorten all the pieces to the lengthen/shorten line closest to the bottom of the pattern, and while I like the length on this version, in the future, I would probably take it up to just below the knee as with the pants I hacked after the fact.

#SewnShownSeated

One note: it would be easy to overlook that the grainline on the back piece isn't straight to the side of the pattern, so if you make these either as pants or as a skirt, be mindful of that.  Otherwise, I made these according to spec.  The noil was a little tricky on the pocket facing, as the fabric wants to sag a bit, and I had to be extra mindful about not letting the fabric hang off the edge of my table while sewing.  If I sew on future make in this substrate, I'd probably interface the edge.  The pockets aren't super useful as a result of this feature, but I can at least put a housekey in my pocket, so that is something.  

Next is the top.  I had an almost usable scrap of the Meadow linen left after making my dad's shirt for his birthday (which I have yet to post...so much behind).  I decided to piece together a simple top and hope for the best, since I liked the color and was trying to use up things.  I used the Sorrel bodice as my base, and lengthened the back and front by 2".  I had to piece a corner of the back shoulder and the 2" add on the back hem, but otherwise, it was pretty easy and the piecing isn't too noticeable.  The linen is handkerchief weight, so it was a nice top in the disgusting weather of September.

And lastly, a wrap top!  I mentioned previously that I've been crushing on 18th century silhouettes again, and thinking about how to work them into my closet in a more modern way.  One of my ideas was a wrapped bodice, but I ran out of steam when I tried to draft it myself. 

Something like this.  I especially liked the little tie closures along the edge.

My main issue with wrap tops generally is that they are never drafted for small busts and gape badly when they fit in the arms and shoulders.  Nonetheless, I decided to look at wrap top patterns and stumbled on the free Peppermint Magazine wrap top, which has over 1,000 posts on the IG hashtag.    

That said, the Peppermint wrap top is generally well liked, and folks say the overlap and coverage are good, and the drafting well done.  The sizing held me up, as it is VERY generously sized.  My measurements put me solidly in the D size, but it seemed like most people sized down at least one or two sizes, and I couldn't decide whether to do a C or a B.  I found one IG post with someone who also sized in the D range and sized down to a B and was happy.  So that's what I went with, and used the beet colored linen I bought in August.

The B fits quite well, the coverage is good, and my only beef is that I could use slightly more arm motion in the sleeves, but I could always add a gusset in later if I want to.  The fit is good in the shoulders and otherwise, and I do have pretty good range of motion, but I think a very small gusset would make it perfect. 

I tried to make a dolman sleeve version last week out of a yard of linen, but it was an utter catastrophe, such that I cannot even rescue the thing--and trust me, I tried.  I hate it when things go that badly, but given the amount of new patterns I've tried this fall,  I suppose one fail isn't too bad. 

 

It is fun to have a wrap top in my closet--I'm find it is nice to have a variety of options right now, given how much my internal temperature swings around throughout the day, and am glad I tried a new pattern and silhouette.

#reallife

School Colors

I mentioned that I made a kelly green knit dress on the same pattern as the teal one in August, I think.  I saved it for the first day of school since it was exactly the green of our school color.  I had to do a meet and greet with new families, so it was good to have something highly visible on!  

 This dress was much more successful than the teal dress, I'm happy to report.  It also is a bit more saturated than it photographed, mores the pity, as it really is a gorgeous shade of green.

The teal dress is out of the telio cotton knit that is slightly heavier than the KnitFabric.com mystery cotton knit, and so the whole thing drags a little from my shoulders, and the ties are too heavy.  I need to fix it now that I made the green dress ties differently.

Not much to report on construction; I used the fit tweaks I made on the failed yellow dress to make the bodice and skirt slightly roomier, cut 3" ties at twice length (they are twice as long as the skirt), and rounded the neckline slightly, but not much else.  It's a good dress and I'm glad to have it in my closet. 

#sewnshownseated

 

 

 

We've been assigned to a more ethnically Russian parish in the past year and a half, and I was recently reminded that Russians dress up more than Americans, particularly for church.  I had forgotten, being away from Russia for so many years.  I'm never a schlub, but I clearly need to up my church dress game, especially as a clergy wife.  And stop wearing Birkenstocks to church.  

#sewnshownseated

Which left me with a connudrum.  I have fine shoes for cold weather, but usually wear comfortable sandals in summer because we stand for almost 2 hours on Sunday morning (plus another 40 minutes or so Saturday nights), and my feet are terrible.  I can't wear even a low heel on a regular basis in that setting because of my neuroma, so I've been casting around for solutions.

I bought these shoes, which I never thought I'd like, but I actually do, and while I wouldn't want to do any serious city walking in them, they will do for summer church services.  They have a big toe box, unusual for this style, and the ankle strap is light and flexible. 

They are extremely flat with no arch support, and I did need a little bit of moleskin along the back edge but I have bone spurs on my heels and arches for days, so that's no surprise.  Forgive the swollen legs and feet; the humidity is still pretty intense. #pittingedemaisnofun

It seems like I have a lot of balls in the air just now, so I'd better get back to juggling!

Me-Made May: Part 2

To say we are living through history right now would be an understatement.  This past week has brought the highs of the successful SpaceX space launch, the pains of the continued lockdown and consequent economic devastation, to the lows of riots and looting, of peaceful protests turned violent.  

Saturday night was pretty tense here, as rioters and looting took over the main part of downtown, which is a mere stone's throw from us, and the air was uneasy.  Police choppers had been overhead for hours by then, and it was clear that things were escalating rather than dying down.  A neighbor returning from a shift at one of the hospitals knocked on our door to offer to store our bikes overnight in his garage, as he had seen first hand what was happening, and was worried about what the night hours would bring.  We scrambled to move the bikes as choppers circled our streets and the curfew loomed.  (We securely lock the bikes to the iron grates and railings on the outside of the house and cover with heavy duty covers most of the time and do not have a garage to store them).

This morning (Sunday), the heat and humidity broke, and the day dawned sunny, cool and pleasant, a welcome relief to the stifling wet heat of the previous days.  This last week of May has felt more like the dog-days of August.  

The choppers are still swirling overhead, but with less frequency as the day has passed, and the sound of sirens is mostly replaced with the more homely sounds of birdsong.  Some clean-up has begun.  We shall see what the night brings.  I have many thoughts jumbled in my head, but no coherence to write about it.  

With that said, I'll just wrap up Me-Made May, this being the last day of the month.  I'm well aware of the frivolity of such a post on a day such as this, so please forgive the dissonance.

May 19-24

This week was still cool, but definitely the last gasp for my corduroy and denim skirts until the fall.  I pulled out my Fusion dress again on May 21, and enjoyed wearing it, to my complete surprise.  I wore it quite a bit in the fall, and liked it with my Seafoam shawl then and now.  That shawl is probably my most-worn make from the past year.  May 22 would have been my gram's 93rd birthday, and I wore a bracelet of hers that day in remembrance.  I miss her so.  It was also a bit of an outfit experiment I had been wanting to try with my Purple Violet Squish dress, which had been slated for the block, but has been granted a place in my closet again.  

Incidentally, I'm not sure if I ever explained the origin of the name of the dress.  When I was in college, I had a semester where I wrote two 30-page papers simultaneously, one on the Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, and one on Robert the Bruce and the fight for Scottish independence.  It was a bonkers semester, as I would spend one weekend immersed in the American 1960s, and the next in medieval Scotland.  "Purple Violet Squish" was referenced in the Haight-Ashbury research--a hippie poem, I think, and I used it as part of the title of my paper. 

May 25-31.  I suppose I need to practice looking to the left for a change.

 This week the weather turned hot and steamy and just gross.  It was pretty hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and maintain routines, particularly with everything going on in the world.  

 The cooler weather today has been a major boost to me.  My only complete outfit repeat of the month was May 25, when I wore the red Brussels linen Everyday skirt again with my stripey top, and I think I like it well enough to keep it in the closet for the summer.  We celebrated Ascension on May 28 (thrifted RTW mint skirt and white top, with my Chinook scarf, a MMM stretch but I'm counting it). I debuted two new skirts and an altered dress this week (May 30...details to come).  I also cut down my green linen skirt for Birdie, and refashioned an old toile into a dress for Ponchik, as well as cutting down another old dress of mine for her.  I'll post those photos separately. The blue skirt on May 26 is really a refashion of this dress, but it is a decent comfy skirt for gross weather, so I'll take it.

So that's a wrap on Me-Made May for this year.  Over and out.

Corona Days: Bright Spots

Some bright spots this week:

One of our neighbors have had a series of Westie dogs over the years, and their current dog is a white one they call Ramsey.  They need some temporary help walking him (she broke a small bone in her foot and he is supposed to be staying indoors for health reasons), so asked us if one of the kids could do it.  Boo eagerly volunteered, so now he is walking a dog twice a day and happy as a clam.  He is absolutely transformed around that animal, and it makes me wish we lived in a bigger rural space so we could have an outside dog (Piglet and I are both allergic), but I'm also mindful of my own limitations with pets, so I'm grateful that Boo can have this opportunity to look after Ramsey and serve our neighbors. 

I also made what I would consider to be a peak quarantine meal yesterday.

I had a few random ingredients bought by mistake at the corner store by Boo, an extra tube of crescent roll dough, as well as shortages of things we use a lot of in this house (bread and croutons). 

So we had leftover beef roast from the weekend, carrots from three absolutely GIGANTIC carrots my husband bought at a local produce stall, salad with homemade croutons (I may never go back to buying them!), baked brie with jam, and fresh warm bread from the bread maker (because who are we kidding here?  I already told you how things go around here.  Plus: involuntary homeschooling). 

In addition, the weather has cooled significantly to British-worthy, and I'm loving it.  Longtime readers will know my feelings about hot weather, and I never welcome its return to the city, for it means months of misery for me.  I was feeling tetchy and out of sorts when the temps and humidity began climbing last week, despite forecaster's predictions of a cooler-than-usual April and May, so it was a great relief to me when the chilly breezes swept through. 

I pulled my new Doocot off the blocking mats (i.e. the top of my dryer) yesterday and took some photographs of it this morning.  (I didn't end up wearing it today, because it wasn't quite cool enough for a midweight wool sweater, but might have a chance this weekend!)  I'll share the full photos in the next Yarn Along post; today you get a weird sneaky peak photo of my hand, courtesy of Birdie.

 

Our local corner store has stayed reasonably well-stocked for its size, and I'm ever so grateful to them for keeping their doors open, and to having things that many of the bigger stores have been out of since late February or early March (i.e. flour and lemon juice and some root vegetables of normal size, instead of the bitty seed crop I'm seeing elsewhere.  Photo above for scale.  I wear gloves when I cut onions).  There is a local stall market not far from my husband's chambers that has also stayed extremely well stocked, and is currently keeping us in meat, dairy, and veg, for which I am incredibly grateful.  Keeping a household of six in food plus everything else is a job under the best of circumstances, which these are not.

Speaking of not, Tuesday night, I noticed that the fridge was hardly cold at all, and the food inside tepid.  The freezer was still running, and stuff was still frozen, but it all just seemed off somehow.  I turned the thermostat down as far it would go on both fridge and freezer, but in the morning everything was still tepid, even more so.  I wasn't sure if we could even get a repairman to come look at it, and it isn't cold enough to put stuff outside any more.  (In any case, the closure of restaurants has forced all the garbage-feeding pests up into the residential areas, so I wouldn't dare leave anything out back anyway.  My husband saw what he thought was a possum the size of a large cat the other day, running nochalantly down our street.  I said it was probably a rat, given our previous experience with the water/sewer pipe replacement). 

In any case, I decided to see if I could figure out the problem myself.  So I googled a few DIY fridge fixes, and set about getting the fridge away from the veryveryveryvery tight space between the wall and counter.  (I do this every year or so to clean behind and under, but man.  It is a Job).  Vacuumed the vent at the back and underneath, and then emptied the freezer to get at the access panel for the compressor fan, which two sites suggested might be the culprit.  The kids helped ferry tools and cover the cold stuff with blankets to keep it from defrosting too quickly, while I unscrewed the panel and took a look.  There was a fair bit of frost and ice on the copper coils  and aluminum bits, which began to thaw almost immediately, so I brushed away what I could and pulled off the rest with my fingers (gently!) into a bowl.  Cleaned and dried the whole thing, plus the inside of the freezer itself, turned it back on, and voila!  The fan worked fine.  Put everything back together, and it all seems tickety-boo now.  I'm feeling rather Hoss about the whole thing myself. 

Boo's birthday cake from the weekend.  He turned 10!!

I could share more, but I'll leave it there for now.  These are strange days, to be sure, full of stress, uncertainty, and anxiety, but there are some moments of sweetness, which I try to keep on my tongue to balance out the bitter.

One Lent to Rule Them All

I don't know about you, but I have been regularly hitting the wall in the past week or so.  Some of it is that we have been on legit quarantine since 3/20 and haven't been able to leave the house.  (It's not that I'm not stir-crazy. We've all had sickness and I've been dreadfully ill; I'm still not well and not feeling at all myself.  Forgive me if this is scattered).   

Grocery deliveries (or any deliveries, really) became impossible around the same time, and we were okay for the first few weeks, but fresh food had begun to run low toward the end of last week.  I had hoped to be feeling well enough to go to a store this past weekend, but it was not to be, and I'm still inside, managing ridiculously low energy levels and brain fog.  

I know intellectually that we are not in any danger of food insecurity (not even close), and that I have friends who are eager to help with these things, but it was hard not to feel crazy about it all with six people to feed three times a day.  I also know that these are largely first world problems and all that, but I've lived desperately poor, and food insecure, and don't want that for my children.  Some of the stories I've read from WIC recipients unable to purchase their monthly allotments due to panic buying and are in danger of running out of formula or other necessities for their babies have made my heart hurt.

God provides even though my faith is small; by a miracle, I was finally able to get a delivery slot for Pascha afternoon (4/19) on Monday morning. A Pascha miracle, thank God!  I cannot tell you what a weight is off my mind.  (It's unlikely I will receive everything I've ordered, as shortages continue, but I'm hoping to get some Pascha treats to break the Fast).  I also discovered that a local produce-only shop was offering delivery and was able to secure an (expensive but worth it) order of much-needed produce yesterday, just in time for our festal meal of Annunciation. 

 

 

The whole thing has made me think a bit harder about thrift and economy in the house, as well as how I shop for the household.  I've long been uncomfortable with amazon's growing creep in our economy, and how that affects local stores in particular, but also unable to escape it since there are very few places within walking or public transit distance that provide household supplies at a reasonable price.  

(Yes, I know I could drive 30 minutes or more to a big box store, but then we have to get it all home and park again--if we can.  To do that regularly is very stressful and time-consuming, and I find it is better to do things on foot or by public transit with the smaller stores that are naturally on my daily paths, but that also means I can't get everything we need for the house.  It is also not very efficient or cost-effective, to be honest, since we can't easily store Costco-size quantities of things anyway, and I feel very ambivalent about the whole Costco consumer model). 

So grateful to have a full bowl of fruit again!

Amazon's deliveries of even regular stuff are now running 2-3 weeks out, so I'm looking for alternative ways to supply the house.  The city announced they would only collect recycling every two weeks instead of every week, and I expect trash collection is going to get spotty in a week or two, given past history, so it behooves us to further reduce what is going out the door.  Interestingly, our recycling is considerably less since the lockdown, for no reason I can discern, since I'm making roughly the same amount of meals from the same things I usually cook with.  Our trash output is relatively low for the size of our household and is mostly unchanged.

In any case, I'm also considering how I can better use what it is already in the house, reuse or re-purpose things, or make my own as my energy improves, God-willing.  Necessity is the mother of both thrift and invention.  I made my own vegan mayo for the first time yesterday and won't be going back to store-bought!  We're using cloth napkins at the table again, after a lapse of many years, and while I have more washing to do as a result, we're not running through paper napkins (which are in short supply) like they are going out of style.  

I've had this bread maker for quite a few years, but don't use it much, and was almost ready to get rid of it earlier this year, as it takes up an enormous amount of cabinet real estate, but I'm so grateful for it right now!  I don't have enough flour or yeast to make bread every day, but having it with soup a few times has been a treat.

The tree-hugger in me is happy about those small things even if it is just a drop in the ocean of environmental issues.  Those things are so often a zero sum game anyway: use less single-use paper or plastic, but use more water to wash everything...potable water access is an invisible environmental issue, but it won't be for long.

What with everything, I've been unable to settle to anything for long, to relieve my mind from the heavy weight of everything.  Knitting seems to be the only creative endeavor I can work on, and I've done a lot of it.  I just started the ribbing on the body of my Doocot as well as dashing off a few quick doll accessories for my girls.  I doubt I'll be able to wear it much this season, but at least it will be ready to go in the fall when it cools down again.

Yesterday, I squandered a few of my spoons of energy on taking in some transition- and warm-weather skirts, but I'm glad I did it in the end.  The weather is mostly getting beyond wool-skirt temps, and even though I'm in the house, I can feel the shift outside.  I spent the rest of my dwindling energy on the festal meal, and am feeling it today.

So.much.darning.  It seems like every load of wash I do, I have to take a few socks for repair.

This morning I used my allotted energy to fold laundry from the weekend and get the kids' sheets in the wash.  I had hoped to make vegan pancakes for dinner tonight, but I think that shall have to wait to tomorrow and we'll have leftover shchi instead (thanks to my friend Claire for bringing an enormous cabbage last week--I am going to get three meals out of that batch of shchi!)  I confess to feeling frustrated about this energy lag.  With everyone home all the time, there is a lot of household to manage, and feeling ill and exhausted all the time is not helpful.

If I add more broth and another potato, we can definitely get a third meal out of this. (The container is bigger than it looks)

I watched a documentary about the Black Death over the weekend and it was strangely comforting to me in my infirmity.  To remember that humanity has faced this sort of thing before on an even more devastating scale and come out the other side.  In the nine-month plague outbreak of 1348-1349, 6 in 10 people died in London alone.  A town in Italy that had been 120,000 was reduced to 20,000 during that same period.  During the months of February and March 1349, the city of London was burying more than 200 bodies a day.  King Edward III made sure that burials were prompt and done with dignity despite their mass nature, as well as ensuring the peace during the chaos of death and destruction.  Social distancing was normal and expected, as people hunkered down in tiny homes in fear and worry.  It's strange what can be a comfort.

For fiction drama in this direction, I recommend Restoration, a 90s-era film starring a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. as Charles II's court physician who falls from grace during an outbreak of plague in the city.  It is the journey of a man toward redemption in many senses of the word.

Limiting my news engagement and social media (Instagram, mostly) has been helpful to my mood, but I could do better with it.  I finished the fourth book of the Court of Roses and Thorns series, and finished book two of the All Souls Triology this week, and made quite a bit of headway into book three.  I have enough on my stack not to be concerned about running out just yet, but I could see re-reading both of these series sooner rather than later anyway.  They have been diverting in a helpful way.  

Anyway, a long ramble about nothing really.  How are things in your neck of the pandemic woods?  Inquiring minds want to know.