Yarn Along: June

~knitting~

The Lightweight Pullover is nearly finished!  I think the collar took the most amount of time, honestly.  The rest has gone so much faster.  I'm hoping it will look nice on me when it is finished. 

I'm also working on a shawl from some hand-dyed Chickadee.  The color isn't coming through very well on the photos--it's more of a green-blue color with some mint undertones.  

I really like the stitch pattern on this shawl--enough to be interesting, but not so consuming that I can't do something else at the same time.  The perfect mix.  I think it will be a really nice layering piece for fall and winter, and it is a good size for traveling with at this point.

~reading~

I finished David Brooks' The Second Mountain and I highly recommend it.  It was the perfect thing to read at this point in my life, and now I'm down the rabbit hole of chasing his research. 

To that end, I'm nearly finished with Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee's The Good Marriage, which is even better than Brooks' book, if that is possible.  I have Tim and Kathy Keller's marriage book on my stack next.  My next book is going to feature a complicated mid-life relationship in a working class context, and I'm starting to think through all this stuff.  The male protagonist has started to talk to me a little in my head, so I think things might start to take shape this summer.

The de Botton book is another book from the Brooks' rabbit hole, and I hope to start it after I finish Keller's book. 

I started Bowling Alone and made some progress on it one weekend, but set it aside for a bit.  So much of what he writes about has been used and cited in other things I've read it feels like old hat.  I'm skimming the data and just reading his conclusions.

This is my reading stack for a novel I plan to write at some point:

It will be set in Alfred's England, and I'm eager to delve into the period!

~watching~

The Spanish Princess on Starz.  I've been watching this series of Philippa Gregory novel adaptations since The White Queen premiered, and it has been fascinating to see the Wars of the Roses brought to life.  I think this might be the best series yet. 

I also finally saw those foreign films that were in my queue, and highly recommend them.  Never Look Away is by the director of The Lives of Others (watch that one first if you haven't seen it.  It isn't the same story, but the themes are similar).  Never Look Away is about what happens when a culture doesn't reckon with the past.  It is set in the late Nazi period, and then picks up the story in the mid-1950s in the GDR.  It is a fascinating, complicated story without easy answers.  I loved it.

The other film I saw was Cold War, by a Polish director.  It won a bunch of film festival awards earlier this year, all well-deserved.  It shares some themes with an older German film called The Promise (also excellent), and at times I felt this film was a bit too similar, but mostly, I enjoyed it.  If nothing else, it is a seriously gorgeous film from a cinematic standpoint, shot in black and white.

I also watched Patrick Melrose, largely because Benedict Cumberbatch won a BAFTA for his performance and I was curious about it.  The BAFTA is well-deserved.  It is not an easy watch--Patrick Melrose is not an especially likeable character, but Cumberbatch delivers a powerful performance of a man in a slow-motion emotional train wreck.  The final episode is devastatingly beautiful.  I had to watch it slowly, because it was such difficult material, but I'm glad I did see it.

I'm eager to see Chernobyl, in part because the reviews are rave, but in part because I was so affected by Svetlana Alexeivich's book about the disaster, Voices from Chernobyl.  I could not put that book down, it just got into me and grabbed me by the throat.  I'm waiting until the Starz series is done so I can temporarily cancel my Starz subscription to get HBO for a month to watch Chernobyl.

Also finished season three of Berlin Station and I'm gutted by the way this season went.  I won't spoil it for anyone who is watching the series, but man.  This season was tough stuff.  I probably won't watch a fourth season if there is one (and it seems unlikely, given how this season ended).

I don't have a lot of stuff in my queue at the moment--a few indie films and some recent award winners, but that's it.  I'm not that excited about anything coming out soon. 

~sewing~

Not much, obviously.  Just those two skirts I blogged in the last two weeks.  I have two yards of Essex linen that I don't know what to do with, since I bought it to make an Everyday skirt, and I can't see myself wearing one right now.  I did just get my paper copy of the Sorrel dress (from the Kickstarter campaign last fall), so I might use it for that (but so many buttons!  eek!), but I'm also considering Rose pants from Made by Rae.  Or I might just save it until my body settles into a size.  But my closet is so lean right now, I kind of want to do something with it.   

I decided to go ahead and try the Rose pants.  I'm not much of a pants person, but I like Rae's stuff, and the Rose pants seem to look nice on a pretty wide range of figures.  I'm going to try the cropped version and see how we go.  I don't really have quite enough fabric but hopefully I can make it work somehow.

And random because I can, I found some old photos of my grandma recently and wanted to share them.  Wasn't she gorgeous??

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Mellow Yellow Skirt

They call me Mellow Yellow (that's right Sprite).  

Um, no.  I don't think anyone has ever used mellow in the same sentence as me.  Ha!  

But!  I did make a yellow skirt, so there you go.  This is my trusty Anne Adams 9481 with major grading down and changes over time.  It's basically just a straight skirt with yoked pockets and three sets of darts.

I used Kaufman's Ventana Twill, which I've never used before.  I'm not sure what I think of it.  It handled nicely while sewing, and it pressed beautifully, but it wrinkles a lot during the day.  I took these after an hour-long car ride, and it wasn't too bad, but by the time I got home this afternoon, I was looking rather rumpled.

I did get a lot of compliments on the color, though.  My main complaint is that the fabric is a bit thinner than expected, so the pocket lining shows, as does anything I tuck in.  I did wear a slip, but there's only so much you can do.  I don't think lining it would have helped, as the lining just functions like a slip.  I would have had to interline it to fix the pocket-lining-showing issue.  (<<--Technical term).

I used a 3" waistband folded over twice for a 1/2" finished waistband, which is just right for comfort and ease.  I did do a button + hand worked button hole on this skirt instead of a slide closure.  I always forget that it takes a button hole or two to get the rhythm of them, so when you are only doing one, it doesn't always look that great.  Oh well.  It is functional.  I put a bunch of fray check on it because the stitching wasn't catching as many of the raw edges as I wanted.

It's an okay skirt and the fit is slightly better than my olive one, so there's that.  It will do for now.

A bit of olive

Despite the fact that this season is shaping up to be a mostly store-bought dresses season (thrifted and new), I really wanted another skirt to wear.  My denim skirt is the only skirt I care to wear right now, and I wanted another color in a similar silhouette for summer.

Almost all my summer tops go well with olive, and it will carry into my fall palette well, so I decided to start with an olive twill.  This is the Kobe Twill from Robert Kaufman, and I have never used it before, so I was a little nervous.  My last Kaufman twills (in Hampton) did not hold up the way I would have liked, and I wanted something with just a whisper of spandex.

This twill is okay.  It is a great weight for summer, and it washed and dried nicely.  It handled well while sewing, and I cannot really complain about the look of the finished skirt.  Like all cotton twills, it wrinkles during wearing, but no worse than my denim skirt, so it is fine.  (These photos were taken several hours after I got dressed; I had run errands and done some other things by then).

Unfortunately, I didn't have a zip that matched well, so I went with something lighter in the same color family.  I may either swap it out for a dark gray one, or just try to color the zip, because it shows a lot more than I thought it would.  I already swapped it out for a dark grey one; a picture is worth a thousand criticisms.

I used a scrap of my Liberty #2 dress to line the pockets (I used most the dress to cut down to a summer dress for Birdie) and I like the little pop of floral at the pockets.

I also made the waistband much narrower than any earlier iteration.  I thought about trying a contoured waistband, and I just couldn't get my mind around it.  I have a pattern piece that I even went so far as to cut out, but gave up after trying to think it through.  

The nice thing about the straight band is that it is easy to apply, and the narrower height helps it not roll very much.  I think 1/2" is about right, but I do need to cut my waistband narrower in the future, given that it was difficult to get the overlap by the zipper to behave nicely.  

My other mods were to make all the seams 7/8" and to add a second set of darts in the back (but I almost always have to have two sets of darts in the back).  I also cut this slightly straighter (I had pegged the hem on my last unblogged denim iteration and it looked weird).  I think this is a nice compromise.  

Just a basic skirt and I think it will serve nicely.

More Body Thoughts

The last couple of years, my internal thermostat has been off.  Way off.  I've always run a bit cold, but it seems I'm running even colder now (like my core is cold somehow).  But I notice in the past couple of weeks, as the weather has fluctuated between the high 40s and mid-80s, sometimes within a single day, I'm a bit warm.  I'm still running pretty cold overall, but when I'm warm, I can't get cool.  (And conversely, when I'm cold, I can't get warm).  It's super annoying to have a body that can't regulate itself. 

All that is to say, I find myself in my familiar conundrum for this time of year: what the heck am I going to wear now it is too warm for boots and sweaters??

At the risk of rank melodrama, a lot of my warm weather clothing hurts my feelings. 

Lemme 'splain. 

Last Friday, I took a ruler and a pair of scissors to my red M7353 (my Pascha dress last year, sadly neglected this year) and cut off the sleeves and shortened it quite a bit.  I had already taken up the hem in the hopes that I would want to wear it shorter, but it still languished in my closet.  I couldn't even bring myself to wear it on Pascha.  Part of the problem is that a red dress is just so very...red.  Part of it is that I'm not really in love with the M7353 anymore, although I couldn't say why.  It's a flattering style on me, and comfortable, but I just feel very "meh" in it.

I put it on and took a couple of pictures, and while I wouldn't say I felt awesome in the altered dress, I did feel different in my body in that moment.  A bit more...powerful, perhaps.  Like: See?  I have arms and legs.  Get over it.  I've spent a lot of my adult life feeling ashamed about my body.  There are a myriad of reasons for this, most of which I'm not going to share publicly, but suffice to say, I'm climbing a mountain of baggage to work through it.

Powerful is not a word I would use to describe my feelings about my body lately.  I have not felt awesome in my body.  I had a couple of pieces in my late winter/early spring rotation that felt great, but as the weather has turned a bit more balmy, I find I'm at loose ends with it all.  All my Everyday Skirts make me feel bloated and whale-like, and I only have my two fitted denim skirts for warmer weather.  (And frankly, one of the denim skirts has major fit issues that I can't figure out).

I love the color of this skirt, and it looks great as long as I don't move at all in it.  Otherwise, it poofs and the waistband rolls, and I'm generally fussing with it all.the.livelong.day.  Pretty much the story of my Everyday skirts right now.

I'm between sizes in ready-to-wear and most of my me-made clothes are sloppy.  It's a weird place to be--having almost no clothes I want to wear (and fit well), and really no idea of what to make or buy to replace them.

Stasia Savasuk would say to just try things until something clicks, and to use my power words to feel good about it, but I'm struggling.  I've learned to use my words about what I do in the past year or so: "I'm a writer, I work from home," but I'm still working on the body stuff: My body is strong, my body is good, my body has housed five humans. The clothes are wrong, not my body.

But at the end of the day, the body that confronts me in the mirror is not a body I recognize.  The seven or eight pounds I gained last summer continue to hang around, and I fear I'm just continuing to gain.  I hate that I give the number on the scale so much power over me.  It's just a number.  The questions I should be asking are: do I feel strong in this?  Does this feel quirky?  Does it feel whimsical and interesting?  Powerful?  Does it make my today body feel loved and appreciated?

I've also been having a think about why I only feel good in my body when it feels "small" to me.  Sometimes this is literal--the size tag on the garment is small (or a lower number), sometimes it is more ephemeral--I just "feel" small in something.  Because big feels wrong somehow.  Why is that?  Why do I have this voice in my head telling me that it is wrong to take up too much space in the world?  What is "too much" anyway?  Why is "big" or expansive (by whatever definition) somehow less dignified or worthy?

Today I pulled out every piece of clothing I own and put it on.  (Well, most of it).  I looked at it in the mirror and assessed how everything felt on my body, and how things fit and looked.  Turns out that a big chunk of it needs to go.  Some of it just didn't fit me that well (either too big or too small, or too poofy, or needed more alteration than I am willing to make), and some of it just didn't suit my aesthetic.  With 40 staring me in the face, I find my tastes are changing rapidly.  Which is fine, because my bins were feeling a bit full.  The price of going through a transition within yourself is that it often manifests in the closet somehow.

It's not really about the clothes.  But it is, because we all have to get dressed every day.  So I'm going to give myself some grace about the flux of fabric through my hands these past months, and be grateful that I was able to wear all of it, many times, and look with curiosity to what this next phase will bring, sartorially and otherwise.

Yarn Along: May

~knitting~

I finished my Stoker pullover sweater and....it doesn't fit.  It blocked out really big, and putting it through the dryer didn't really help that much.  The color does me no favors, and I just don't like it.  Blerg.

I finished a little gray hat, which fits just as I want it to.  I made the smallest size for once, and made the crown height shorter, and that seems to be the right combo for the way I like to wear these.

The Lightweight Pullover is progressing apace.  I nearly pulled it out to make an Owls pullover, but decided to keep on keeping on, and I'm glad I did.  I'm past the torture part (the 9" collar and raglan increases) and now just working the body.  I think it will be nice for late fall, assuming it fits well.

~reading~

I finished a bunch of Lenten reading right before Pascha, namely Father Alexander Men's Inner Step Toward God (very good), plus dipping into Meditations for Holy Week.  I read a chapter or two in The Benedict Option as well.  

I started in on St. John Chryostom's Marriage and Family Life after devouring Philip Sherrard's Christianity and Eros.  Sherrard's book is slim but dense, and his third essay is kind of bonkers, but the other three are well worth the price of admission.

After reading a snippet of The Wilderness Journal somewhere else, I decided to give that book a go next.  I say that with hesitation, as I did not care for her last book at all, but I'm willing to be open-minded about this one, based on what I read so far.  

I have a book by Czesław Miłosz waiting on my stack as well.

~sewing~

I made a couple of lawn dresses for Birdie from some of my old dresses, a begged-for strawberry dress (four years running now), plus a birthday dress for Ponchik (photos coming soon).  

I reused the pockets from my dress, which worked a treat.

This fabric (below) was my absolute favorite of all the Liberty lawn knock off dresses I've made, but I had to come to terms with the fact that a) the style no longer suits me and b) the dress itself was a bit long in the teeth after four seasons heavy wearing.  It was still good enough in the middle to cut down for a little girl dress, however, so I'm glad to be able to see this fabric on my girls for a few more summers!  I cut it long and it has 1" of hem that can be let down, plus the elastic could be let out.

Reused the pockets on this one too.

I made a strawberry dress for Birdie out of some Penny Rose fabric several summers ago, and she was super sad when it didn't fit anymore, so now I've had to come up with a new strawberry dress a couple years running.  Last year's strawberry dress went into Ponchik's drawer this year.  Birdie was super sad about it and asked for another.  So here is iteration number 3!!

It's pretty cute if I do say so myself. (I used Simplicity 8101 for all three dresses because a) they are easy and fast to make, and are super easy to cut down my old dresses for and b) the girls can dress themselves in these dresses, unlike the Geranium which requires a bit of input from me).  I also think the S8101 is a better play dress.

I also made another plain denim skirt for me, out of the leftovers from my Maudie skirt.  On the left is the Maudie skirt, on the right the new one.  It is slightly shorter and bit more pegged at the hem.

I lined the pockets with my favorite Liberty knock off lawn (that I remade Birdie's dress out of).  There are fumes of both fabrics left now.

I ended up having to take in both skirts last week, since the Maudie skirt had gotten too big, and the new one drooped weirdly in the back because of poor fit on the backside.  

Both fit much better now.  I also did a few alterations to some other things in my closet, but I'm not super happy with them.  My skirt situation needs some serious attention.  

~writing~

I'm still querying agents for the manuscript, and starting to work with feedback from beta readers.  (I plan to have another round of beta reading in June).  I sent off a query to FSG, which was terrifying. #punchingabovemyweight  #wayabove

~watching~

All kinds of random stuff I've seen before because I need comfort watching and nothing new is especially appealing.  I'm looking forward to The Spanish Princess on Starz later this month.  I have a couple of foreign films in my queue that I really do want to see, but I haven't been in the right headspace to absorb them properly, so I'm waiting to watch them.

Although!  I did go to an actual movie theater on Tuesday to see Avengers: End Game.  It was worth every penny--I won't spoil it for anyone, but it is a completely satisfying ending to the long story arc that the MCU has been working on all these years.  Well done!!

That's all for me!  Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along.

Project 333: Spring/Summer

Christ is Risen!  Truly He is Risen!

Христос воскресе! Воистину воскресе!

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Crist aras! Crist sodhlice aras!

Christus is opgestaan! Hij is waarlijk opgestaan!

Happy Bright Monday!  Our Bright Monday started off with a bit of a bang, as my husband was involved in a fender bender on his way to the Bright Monday liturgy.  He is fine, the other driver is fine, but our (very old, very decrepit) Toyota Corolla is on its way to the great car graveyard in the sky.  Rest in peace, faithful friend.  We are going to try and get by on car shares and Uber for the next few months while we evaluate whether we need to replace the car.  Weekends are the toughest, as that is primarily when we need to drive and need two cars to accomodate my husband's clergy duties at church.  But.  It could have been much much worse, and we are grateful for all the mercy of the situation.

On to less serious things.  I never posted a winter rotation wrap up for Project 333, nor did I post about my spring rotation (and here it is almost May already!).  This was actually deliberate on my part, as I'm sort of experimenting with things right now.  I've noticed, after doing this rotation thing for a couple of years now that March and April are kind of miserable clothing months for me, and I realized that rotating out most of my winter wardrobe at the end of February had a lot to do with it.  

Our weather in March and April is completely bananas.  80 degrees and humid one day, down to below freezing the next.  Snow storms and torrential rains and everything in between.  It is epic.  My spring rotation just wasn't up to the task.  The problem is that by May, I do want some lighter things, but it usually isn't that warm for most of May (although, again, huge and extreme temperature shifts).  Some years I am still wearing boots and stockings the first week of June and other years it is sandals weather by then.  

What I did at the beginning of March was to rotate out the heaviest of my winter garments and to rotate in a few things from my spring that could be layered appropriately for the colder weather we were still having then.  I didn't put my parka away for the season until April, so it was plenty cold.  I also added a few heavy cotton sweaters to my closet from ThredUp, and found those to be extremely useful additions.  (I'm wearing one today with wool tights and a denim skirt, as we're back in the 40s again after about a week in the upper 60s/low 70s).  

I tried not to focus very much on the total number of garments in the closet or in the drawer.  My style continues to evolve away from the relaxed silhouette/quirky art teacher vibe I've been wearing the last few year, but I can't quite tell where to land yet.  I've been experimenting with different hem lines and silhouettes, trying to work out what makes me feel good in my clothes.  

I've been wearing a lot of separates this year, but one problem my Everyday skirts have is that the waistbands roll a lot during the day.  It makes me crazy and looks frumptastic.  I'm trying to work out why--I've decreased the height of the waistband to 1", which helped, but maybe I need to go down to 1/2", which makes the back elastic bit tricky.  I don't mind wearing a fitted waistband, but I have trouble getting those fitted well because my middle can fluctuate a bit during the day due to gastroparesis.  

The side profile of the Everyday Skirt also doesn't do me a lot of favors.  It makes me look much wider/thicker than I am, and that doesn't make me feel particularly good in my body either.  My sewing limitations are such that I know I have some fitting issues to overcome, but lack the skills to figure it out.  

There is also the perennial struggle of making new things when there are so many second hand clothes that could be thrifted instead, saving some waste and churn on the environment, but my proportions are such that finding RTW skirts that fit well are difficult.

I'm very much into slim skirts right now, but they can be hot in the summer (particularly the disgusting swamp the city becomes every summer) so I'm thrifting, trying to find something that will work for me (thank goodness ThredUp has a nice return policy!)  I'm also between sizes which is always challenging.  I have some navy yarn dye Brussels linen to make into some kind of skirt once I figure out a summer silhouette that feels good.

I didn't even bother to get or make a proper Pascha dress this year, because it just felt too hard.  None of my me-made dresses make me feel great.  I ended up wearing my basic navy knit dress with a new headscarf and a long navy cardigan and boots and calling it good.  As it happened, I would have been better off in my wools, as it was quite chilly, and the AC was on in the church to keep the clergy comfortable.  It was so cold all night!!

Blah-blah-blah, clothes are hard.  I'll let you know when I settle to something!  

Over and out.

Geranium Dresses

I don't remember when I first became aware of Made By Rae's Geranium dress for little girls, but I did decide to have a go with the pattern this spring as part of expanding my repertoire.  (Coincidentally, the pattern is quite similar to the Washi dress for adults)

My summer dress sewing for the girls has mostly been the little girl version of the Dottie Angel frock (a great summer dress pattern!) and the Lazy Daisy Jones girls dress pattern (also good, but works better for my girls cut at shirt length).  I usually make a birthday dress for each girl, as their birthdays bookend the warmer weather, and I was starting to think about Ponchik's birthday dress, since I will need to make it up soon.

I also had several of my old Dottie Angel frocks in the bin ready to be cut down for them, so I figured they were prime for testing out the Geranium pattern.  I measured both girls again and set to work.

First thing, however.  I do not love pdf patterns--all that taping!  And then the storage is a hassle.  Imagine my delight when I learned there is an online place that does cad printing for very little money!  They do have a minimum, so you need to print about three patterns to get there, but I wanted two copies of each dress plus the expansion pack, so I easily made it.  I had hoped to get Kinko's to print this for me, but they couldn't figure it out.  

I used a size 6 for Ponchik, which is on the border of too small.  As in, it fits perfectly right this second, but there is no room to grow and I think the neckline is a little high.  I'll cut a 7 for her birthday dress if I use this pattern again for her.  This is also the In Threes sweater that never seems to go away--I knit two of them for the girls' Pascha outfits like three springs ago?  At least.  This is the bigger of the two, and Ponchik is just growing out of it.  I'm going to make the girls some brownish ones for next fall.

I cut down That 1940s Dress from two summers ago--I was able to use the bottom half of the dress for the skirt without totally deconstructing the dress, so that was a speed bonus as well.  The cap sleeves are a little tricky if you aren't lining the dress (I wanted these to be cool and easy for summer, and this fabric is lawn), but I got there in the end.  I did a better job on Birdie's dress since I had a better sense of how to finish the curved edges by the time I got to her dress.

Not my best zipper insertion, but it will do for now.

Birdie's dress is a 7, and I cut it down the same way as the first one, preserving the side seams on the original skirt of the dress and just putting in the pleats from the pattern.  This is also the Rennie dress I wore quite a bit for two or three seasons and then decided I didn't want in my closet anymore.  I'm starting to have a complicated relationship with floral prints.  (#clothesarehard)  But the print is Alexander Henry and the fabric is pretty hearty, so it will be a good dress for both girls--I think Ponchik will be able to wear it when it is too small for Birdie, although both girls are so similar in size, I can't always count on the hand-me-down.

My only complaints about this pattern are that the bodice is tricky if you are finishing with bias (admittedly, this is my fault and not Rae's, as the dress is meant to be self-lined), and also I don't love that the girls can't get these on and off by themselves because of the zipper.  The Simplicity 8101 (DA frock) and Lazy Daisy Jones dresses (S8087) are easy for them to pop over their heads by themselves, so if I make a bunch of summer stuff for them (probably not this year, as I said earlier this week), I will go back to those patterns instead.  But the Geranium dress is good for a slightly nicer dress, and the girls always need one or two of those every summer too.  I haven't decided what to use for the birthday dresses yet, but it is nice to know that I can easily cut down one of my old dresses to work with this pattern too.