Me Made May '16: Week One

Time to wrap up week one of Me-Made May!

(click to embiggen)

I can't believe that I'm still wearing wool sweaters and heavy tights during the first week of May!  But it has barely edged above 50 degrees all week, with lots of rain, so the damp cold just gets into my bones.  I guess it is good that I'm not looking longingly at my summer rotation pieces just yet!

We also had workmen in the house this week, installing ductless AC in the back half of the house (for reasons way too complicated to go into, we can't put it into the front half of the house; we'll still have to use our two floor units on the second and third floor front rooms, and just hope for the best in the living room).  But I think it will be a vast improvement over the last nine years of sweltering summer heat!  The humidity here is hardly to be believed, and then combined with Southern-style summer temps, the weather in the summer is really awful.  The ambient temperature in our house in the summer has typically been in the mid-to-upper 80s.  In short: soporific temps.  I always feel like summers are lost time for me, as a result.  I'm hoping that will not be so much the case this year.  I'm also hoping the kids will sleep better if they aren't so hot all night.

But the disruption of two guys clomping up and down the stairs all day, windows and doors standing open to the chill, having to stay in the house for two full days, meant for a pretty non-productive week.  It is okay--short term pain for long-term gain.  They still have about half a day's work left, but will come back on Monday to finish up.  

I'm still falling asleep at weird times and feeling kind of worn out all the time; I'm probably coming down with a little virus, which doesn't help.

As for Me-Made May.  My denim skirt is getting a bit big in the waist (about an inch at the moment) but I want to wait until fall to take it in, since I may lose more weight over the summer.  (My rust cord skirt will need some similar attention around the same time, so might as well kill two birds with one stone).  I also want to give it another wash, since the cotton will shrink up a bit in the wash--it always does.  The cotton teal-green sweater I have on with that skirt (fourth photo from left) is also getting too big (and I got it second hand right at the end of the winter!), but that is okay.  It actually turned out to be a great transition piece for the spring, and I'm glad I got a season's wear out of it.  I don't know if I mentioned this, but I ended up tacking down the collar of my Rosemont cardigan, because it just wanted to roll in weird ways constantly.  It sort of drove me nuts.  The collar didn't do this at all during blocking, or even when I took it off, but I just couldn't get the collar to lie right without tacking it down.  It looks much better now, I think.

The boys have a half day today and my mother-in-law is coming this afternoon, so I'd better keep plugging away at stuff this morning.

Yarn Along: Sapphire Sweater

~knitting~

I finished my Sapphire sweater on Holy Saturday and blocked it on Bright Monday.  

It is cold for the first week in May, so I'm sort of shocked I can model it today!  It is also weirdly humid, so the weather feels clammy.  I found I had to put on something different after photographing the sweater this morning.  (Besides, it isn't meant for this rotation anyway).  

So the good: the yarn is really beautiful (the complexity of the shading really doesn't show up well in photographs), and the blocking did wonders to even out all the stitches and to stretch the bottom ribbing nicely.  The not-so-good:  I'm not sure I really like how the sweater fits or feels on my body.  It looks fine, I guess, and the color is a good shade for me, but even with a layer underneath, it feels sort of itchy, and I'm not happy with how tight the shoulders and upper arms are.  I knit according to the fullest part of my bust, and I think if I had gone up a size, it would have ended up too big in the shoulders.  I feel like it fits well below the bust, but not above it.  

I also am not happy with the neckline.  Oh well.  It was a good learning experience, and the yarn was super cheap (but I guess you get what you pay for).  Perhaps I'm better off sticking with cardigans and accessories for the moment.

Which leads me to my next project: the Saucy Librarian sweater.  (I did not come up with the name).  It is similar in fit to the Sapphire sweater, so I'm concerned about liking it when I'm done.  It does have a different type of neckline, and the bottom fits quite differently, so perhaps it will be okay.  It is also the same type of yarn, so I'm concerned about the itch factor.  I'm about an inch from being done with the body, so I kind of feel like I should just solider on and finish it, if only for the experience, but I'm feeling discouraged about pullovers.  Or at least about Wool of the Andes yarn.  Maybe I should stick to Swish and Stockbridge yarns.

Finally, I present my dad's sweater vest.  I'm making good progress on it, and it is a pretty fast knit for all the stitches on the needles.  I'm using Camel Heather Swish, which is what my dad picked out.  He was very specific about the color.  My goal is to have it completed in time for his birthday.  And yes, I know it won't be a surprise, but I think knitted garments as gifts are generally better known about ahead of time so that the recipient gets what they want, given the time involved in the making.

~reading~

I'm about 475 pages into War and Peace, and about 2/3rds through Vol. 2.  I hope to finish volume two during the Bright Season, and then perhaps start on something else in my stack.  The Catherine Marshall books I read many years ago, but I think it would be good to read them again.  I'm also reading Archimandrite Irenei's The Beginnings of the Life of Prayer.  I've been poking away at it for some time, and have finally made it to part two.  It is quite profound, so slow reading.  I read a little in The Horse and His Boy, and am just not as engaged with the story as with the first two, but it makes for good reading on nights when my mind is less than crystal.

~watching~

My weekly watching includes Grantchester, which just wrapped for season 2 (and I read that it has been renewed for a third season--hooray!)  I'm not sure where they could go from where season two ended, but I'm endlessly fascinated by these characters.

I watch Blindspot on NBC.com and find the premise and unfolding story lines quite compelling.  I'm curious to see where they end this season.  The final season of Person of Interest started last night so I'm eager to catch up on that later today.  I've missed Reese and Finch!

I also started season three of The Americans on amazon.  I really enjoyed the first two seasons, and was holding season three until after Lent was over.  As a Soviet historian, I find the storyline endlessly interesting.  I have a few quibbles with costuming choices for some of Keri Russell's outfits, but overall, the casting and production are really great.  (Plus the show's opening credit sequence is a fabulous montage of Cold War imagery)

I'm waiting to start Outlander season 2 until it is finished airing so that I can take advantage of the 7 day free trial of Starz on amazon and just watch the season in one go. 

I've been so tired after last week that I'm finding myself less than productive this week.  We are having some work done on the house this week, so that has also thrown me off.  I feel like I can't get to anything else until that is complete.  So, I knit and watch stuff because I get sleepy if I just sit in a chair and knit.  I've taken a few naps too because I just keep falling asleep at weird times.  That's Bright Week for you, I guess.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Talking Tuesday: Flannery O'Connor (#2)

From her prayer journal, dated 9/22/47:

"9/22 and Bloy again. It should be a great instigator of humility in me that I am so lukewarm as to need Bloy always to send me into serious thought--and even then it is not sustained very long. The summer was very arid spiritually & up here getting to go to Mass again every day has left me unmoved--thoughts awful in their pettiness & selfishness come into my mind even with the Host on my tongue. Maybe the Lord had pity on me and sent me wandering down the stacks to pick up Pfleger on Bloy & Péguy and some others. It is terrible to think of my unconsciousness when I really know. Too weak to pray for suffering[,] too weak even to get out a prayer for anything much except trifles. I don't want to be domed to mediocrity in my feeling for Christ. I want to feel. I want to love. Take me, dear Lord, and set me in the direction I am to go. My Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for me." (35)
~Flannery O'Connor, Prayer Journal.  New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Books, 2013.

Bright Monday

Christ is Risen!  

Indeed, He is Risen!

Христос воскресе!

Навистина воскресе!

We made it!  I almost can't believe it is the Paschal season at last.  It has seemed like a long Lent this year.  Fruitful, but difficult.  The Holy Week cycle was particularly intense.  I think it is difficult to convey the intensity of the week leading up to Pascha.  

I will say that last week was, in addition to being intense, very beautiful.  There was something that awoke in my soul last week, something that had been asleep for a long time, I think.  I'm trying to hold on to it, to stay spiritually awake, especially during this feastal time.  I sometimes think the temptations of the Bright Season are harder than in Lent, when you are expecting them.  Festal temptations sometimes sneak up on you and bite you in the shoulder when you least expect.  

Birdie kept complaining about being cold.  Those wool sweaters I knit were just the thing for the temperatures.  Although, you'd think we had gone on an Arctic expedition in our swimsuits, the way the kids were carrying on about it!  Thankfully the part of the service that is outside doesn't take that long.  She did refuse to take her jacket off for the rest of the service, and Ponchik wore my extra cardigan like a cape for the whole service.

Doors open, all the lights on, Bright Feast!  (My husband is on the left)

Today also marks the second day of Me-Made-May!  Readers who've been around a while will remember I participated in this challenge last year.  It is, basically, a challenge to wear your hand-made garments every day for a month.  Last year, I was still wearing about half ready-to-wear, and about half me-made, particularly in separates, so the month presented some challenges for me.  This year, my wardrobe is much more me-made, and I think it will be easier.  I learned a lot from the challenge last year, and I'm curious to see what this month will reveal.

I plan to blog this month much the same was as last year, with a weekly photo round up, probably on Fridays.  I don't have as much sewing planned this month as I did last year this time, in part because this is the last month of my spring rotation, so I have almost nothing new to share for it, but also because my summer sewing is nearly complete.  I have one skirt left to sew (it is cut out) and hope to finish that later this week.

That said, I do have one last project to share for this rotation: my Pascha dress!

I was planning to make this dress in the fall, but when I realized that Pascha coincided with the start of Me-Made-May, I knew it needed to be my Pascha dress instead.  I had planned to wear a red knit dress from eshakti, but as it happened, I'm glad I wore this instead.  It was surprisingly cold (and raindy) for a May Pascha, and I ended up pairing it with a red merino wool sweater, instead of the thin blue cotton one I had planned to wear.  I think the red looks better anyway!  (And is more appropriate to the liturgical colors of Pascha, which are red and white)

I don't have a lot of construction details to note.  This fabric is a semi-vintage length I bought on etsy.  It is a reproduction feedsack from the late 1980s or early 1990s that was made for Joann fabrics, and was a scant 2 yards.  It has a really interesting texture, and if I didn't know it was reproduction, I would have thought it might be original.  I had originally planned to make a skirt with it, but decided to try for a dress instead.  I didn't have enough fabric for a full dress, but I had some red broadcloth that was a close enough match, so I went for a contrasting border hem.  I think it works because the border is narrower than the pots and pans dress.  

I went back to bust tucks on this version, which shaped the front of the dress nicely.  I put elastic in the back, as usual, and found myself completely comfortable all night long.  I've also experimented a little with the back neckline height--this one is close to the drafted height of the XL size (I cut a small-medium, for reference).  I've been cutting the back neckline a lot higher on most of my dresses, but I wanted to see how I liked the slightly lower neckline on some of my warm-weather dresses.  I think it is okay, but I will continue to raise it 1-2" in the future.

I drafted a kangaroo pocket and applied some crochet lace from my late grandmother's stash to the facing edge.  

I had just enough left over to put a little peek of lace at the front neckline.  I like the small little extra.

I did worry about putting all the reds together, but it kind of worked!  I found a greenish egg pendant on etsy at the beginning of Lent and saved it to wear with my Pascha outfit.  Some people collect egg pendants and wear a whole charm necklace on Pascha, but I think this single egg is perfect for me.  It also provided some entertainment for Ponchik during the long midnight service.

I wore my trusty Dankso gheille shoes again this year--they were so comfortable and easy last year, that I thought, why mess with a good thing?  The fact that they coordinated so well was quite a bonus.

Christos Anviat!

Adevărat a înviat!

Today is Hung Upon the Tree

Holy Week Musings on Dante and Repentance

In a recent homily, a local priest said that Lent is not a hoop that we jump through so that we can eat meat and cheese on the other side; rather Lent is the annual writing of a personal chapter into the larger history of the Church.  It is a continual opportunity to repent, change, move further along the path of theosis.

I think my main takeaway from this Lent is that I have made absolutely no progress.  None.  I find myself sinning the same sins, dealing with the same failings of character, unable to move forward.  I am broken, stuck in place.  I still feel the sting of the thorns in my flesh.  Often, I do not even want to be good, to change, for change is to peer into the abyss and wonder what may be on the other side.  And then take a step forward into it.  And then another, and another.  Sometimes it is easier to keep on with the pain than to surrender to the healing.  But I suppose that lesson is part of the spiritual life too--one must learn the depths of one's brokenness in order to fully accept the gift of the Savior, what His sacrifice on the Cross and His Resurrection mean for us, the sinful children of God.

I ran across a little blog post from Joshua Gibbs about teaching The Divine Comedy to his students, and thought the following was appropriate for this week:

"I have found it liberating, exhilarating, and encouraging to admit to my students that I do not want to change. Change begins with the admission that you do not want to change— otherwise the change would have already taken place. When a man admits he does not want to become righteous, he understands the nature of the problem: he knows what righteousness is, but has not lived in such a way as to find righteousness attractive. A man who is not becoming righteous may have convinced himself of any number of lies which excuse stagnation: the problem is ignorance, the problem is environment, the problem is a hectic life. I do not have time to be good. When the problem is recognized— and the problem is a lack of desire for goodness— then that man can begin praying and confessing properly. Forgive me for not wanting good things. I have regularly confessed to my students, “I have a hard time praying for God to give me enough faith to pass the martyr’s test. Instead, I just pray I won’t be put to the martyr’s test.”'

~Joshua Gibbs, "Dante: Do You Want To Want To Want To Be Good?", Circe Institute Blog, April 23, 2016.

Talking Tuesday: Flannery O'Connor (#1)

From her prayer journal, dated April 14, 1947:

"I must write down that I am to be an artist.  Not in the sense of aethetic frippery, but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually--like this today.  The word craftsmanship takes care of the work angle & the word aesthetic the truth angle.  Angle.  It will be a life struggle with no consummation.  When something is finished, it cannot be possessed.  Nothing can be possessed but the struggle.  All our lives are consumed in possessing struggle but only when the struggle is cherished & directed to a final consummation outside of this life is it of any value.  I want to be the best artist it is possible for me to be, under God.

I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God.  Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You." (29)

Flannery O'Connor, Prayer Journal.  New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Books, 2013.