Me-Made May: Week 2

Left to right: 

Green Cookie Book dress, Liberty dress, Pots and Pans blouse with denim skirt, Yardley's dress, Red twill skirt, Bluebird dress, denim skirt

Another week gone!  It has been a pretty weird week, weather-wise.  Damp and cold, mostly, but a few warmish/humid days here and there.  Yesterday it got close to 80 with lots of humidity, but today it is back in the 50s and damp.  It is supposed to rain later, and the next few days will be cold again.  

I think you can see from this week and last week's photos that I've more or less sorted my transitional weather footwear.  I always struggle with what to put on my feet during these in-between seasons, because it is usually not the right weather for boots, but too cool yet for open toe sandals.  I cycled through a lot of options in March and early April before settling on these two pairs: a Birkenstock open-backed clog in taupe, second-hand from ebay (and a fraction of the price!), and an open-back strapped clog from Dansko in oiled brown, also second hand from ebay.  The Birks are fine, I guess.  I find the footbed feels strange, but I suppose I'll get used to it in time.  The Danskos are fabulous, as usual.  I can walk the 2 mile round trip to school in both pairs without pain, which is my primary objective with footwear these days.

They are perhaps not the most attractive shoes, but they are functional and comfortable, and I don't worry about blisters or arch issues when I wear them.  Cities are hard on footwear, so I need something that will hold up to the beating that my shoes take on the daily.  I've never been one to sacrifice comfort for fashion, but as I get older, I have even less patience for shoes that feel bad on my feet.

As for my handmades this week.  I had begun to think that my denim skirt was getting too big in the waist, but a cold wash and line dry seems to have fixed that right quick.  The Petersham interfacing really seems to snap back with washing.  I'm glad I didn't go to the trouble of unpicking the waistband and fiddling with it.  It may still need taking in this fall, but at least I can wear it through the end of this rotation.  I'm finding that having only two skirts this rotation is a bit limiting.  I think three is really a better number for me.  I've also had to rotate out a few pieces from beginning of the rotation and that has made this rotation feel kind of small.  I'm considering sewing an 11th hour Dottie Angel frock in another faux-Liberty lawn to add in for these last few weeks.

The Ivy League dress had issues right from the start, but it appears to have shrunk a little in the wash, and now fits rather badly through the shoulders and arms.  It was a little short to start with, and now is really too short to wear.  As a result, I'm thoroughly out of love with Michael Miller's fabrics--I've made about four or five things with them over the past year, and I'm just not impressed with how they hold up, how well they retain their size, and wrinkle; even sewing with them hasn't really been that great because of how the fabric is printed and the colors processed.  The blues in particular are not dyed through to the wrong side, so any unpicked stitches tend to create a run in the fabric that really shows.  

I'm sad to report that the pots and pans blouse is not holding up very well to wearing.  The risk when making up vintage fabric is that it will be brittle and strain at the seams.  The blouse is very loose and unfitted, but it is starting to pull and strain just under the arms.  There is a small hole in the fabric just under one arm already, and the other side is looking like it might do the same thing, so I think I will need to retire the blouse.  Perhaps I can make it into something that isn't a garment that will still be nice to look at.

I'm also sorry to report that I've gained three pounds since Bright Week, and while I know it is probably water, given the statistical unlikelihood that I've overeaten enough to gain three pounds of fat in a week and a half, I just feel gross.  I'm still tracking calories, trying to be careful, but I admit that I gave myself a bit of extra leeway during Bright Week that might be catching up with me now.  

I still have 15 pounds to go until I get in range of my goal.  I have a moon-shot goal of 25 pounds, but I would be happy if I hit the 15 pound mark and stayed there.  Truthfully, I'm not exercising enough.  I haven't really felt well since October, and my energy levels have been pretty bad since my food life took a hard hit late last summer.

I think I'm just frustrated with how limited my food life is, even when it should be a time of feasting.   We threw a Bright Week party with BBQ from a local place, and I really couldn't eat much of what we had on offer.  It made me kind of sad, even though the party was a lot of fun (we crammed about 45 people into our house, including about 18 children under age 10!). I have stomachaches and nausea constantly, and I frequently feel like my chest is on fire from the reflux that comes with my various GI conditions (I take a pretty high dose of medication to control it, but it appears to be breaking through anyway).  I've had some meals where I just throw caution to the wind and eat something healthy that I'm not supposed to have, but I always regret it afterward.  My doctors seem to have abandoned me to my fate.  I'm rather discouraged about the whole thing.  I'm trying to view it in light of the ascetic life, and see it as part of my spiritual path, but sometimes it gets the better of me.

But anyway.  I'm being morose.  Forgive me.  I think I will feel better if I can just get some things ticked off my to-do list this coming week.  My husband wants me to rebuild the guts of one of the toilets and I'm a bit nervous about it.  I e-mailed my dad about it to ask him some questions, and I'm sort of hoping he just tell me to call a plumber.

Yarn Along: Sweater Progress and Crawford

I'm making slow but steady progress on the Saucy Librarian sweater.  (I know I've said it before, but the title of the pattern really is most unfortunate).  I've tried it on a few times, and I'm just not sure about it.  The yarn feels better against my skin than the Sapphire sweater (it is also Wool of the Andes, but in DK weight, and the Aurora Heather colorway), and I like the collar and fit a bit better, but it was very difficult to accurately measure the length of the body and sleeves while on the needles, so both have come out slightly shorter than ideal.  I'm also not sure that such a dark green is the best color for my complexion--it reads almost black against my skin, and black definitely does not do me any favors.  If nothing else, it will be a good learning experience.

I returned some knitpicks yarn that I bought during their sale, as I ended up not liking any of the colors (my monitor must really be off right now).  I did buy some yarn from Webs yesterday that I think might work better.  I just found out that my beloved Stockbridge yarn is being discontinued, so I'm trying to decide whether to stock up on that or not.  I did buy the red-purple colorway to make another pullover sweater at some point, but I'm considering one of the lighter blues as well.

I picked up Matthew B. Crawford's second book again this morning, and am riveted.  I had started it last fall, and then set it aside in favor of other things, but am now getting back to it.  My husband said it was easily the best book he read last year.  I read Crawford's first book, Shop Class as Soul Craft, last summer and got a lot out of it.

I continue to plug away at War and Peace--I'm nearly half way now!  I'm about 40 pages from the end of Volume 2.  Natasha has just encountered Anatole Kuragin for the first time, so I'm sure the going is going to be gritty for the rest of this section.  And yes, that is an empty bias tape card holding my place in the book--they make excellent bookmarks!

(As a side note, I thought the recent BBC production of the same was very well done overall, and so far tracks very well with the novel, but I thought the actor playing Kuragin was miscast.  He is supposed to be extremely good-looking, and I didn't really think he was that appealing.

That aside, Episode Seven was stunning: breathtaking beauty in its emotional and spiritual scope. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but both times I watched it, I had to take a few days to process the episode before moving on to the final one.  I'm so eager to see how those scenes were written in the novel!  I feel certain there is even more depth and beauty to be found in the written words.)

And finally: the ductless AC on the back of the house is finished!  It took 2 and a half days, starting Bright Wednesday.  I forgot how disruptive it is to have workmen in the house all day long, but I'm hoping that these units will help us have a better summer.  After nine AC-less years in the Swamp, I'm ready for some help with the humidity!  Because we have a row house, it wasn't possible to put units on the front half of the house, but we do have two small floor units for the second and third floor front rooms, and the living room generally stays pleasant during the summer anyway.  We have ceiling fans in every room of the house, so that helps too.  

It's funny, though because the weather is still feeling very late winter/early spring like, rather than late spring/early summer-like, as usually the case by the second week in May.  I'm still in tights and long sleeves, and sometimes heavy wool sweaters, and I'm wearing lots of layers at night.  It's been very damp, so it just gets into my bones and makes me feel cold, even though the highs are getting into the low 60s some days.  I'm not complaining--I'm not really a fan of the hot weather, but it just feels weird.  I also planned my spring rotation badly, because I assumed a more normal weather pattern for this time of year. Oh well.  It goes that way sometimes.  I guess my spring rotation is just going to be the Rotation of a Thousand Swaps.

I still have that last skirt to sew for my summer rotation, but I've just not had the time or energy to get out my sewing machine since Holy Week.  I'm hoping to get it done before the end of next week.  It's really a two-hour project, but skirt fitting takes a certain type of concentration that I'm a bit short on at the moment.  

I'm kind of in clean-out mode, so I'd like to tackle the bathroom cabinets later this week as well.  I somehow ended up with a lot of appointments stacked up this week as well, so it seems like all my free time is taken up with those.  It's okay--they have to get done as well!  I keep telling myself that All The Things will get finished in their own time.  My focus at the moment is making sure I don't exhaust myself, and to make time and space for reading and thinking.  And Russian.

I've got three loads of clean laundry calling my name, so I'd better put on my hiking boots and scale Washmore once again.  I've gone back to the beginning of The Americans, because it has been a while since I started the series; I am finding new things to like in the first season, since I understand the plot trajectory better now.  Plus, I'm really crushing on Keri Russell's clothes in the series.  I feel some late 1970s/early 1980s fall fashions coming into my rotation later this year.  Bring on the cowl neck sweaters, midi skirts, and tall boots!

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Talking Tuesday: Muddy Tattered Children

A friend posted the following on her blog a few weeks ago, and I was so taken by it, I knew I needed to repost it here for Talking Tuesday.  Lewis never disappoints.

"I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.

We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean linen clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of his presence."

~C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, volume 2, ed. Walter Hooper (Harper: San Francisco, 2005), 506–507. 

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!

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