Spring flowers
So, the first week of March is nearly behind us and I feel that old familiar longing that always creeps in at this time of year. I look around my yard, and everything is still brown and gray. Nothing is blooming. Winter still has a firm grip. Shouldn’t it be receding by now? Shouldn’t there be crocuses and tulips, and little green buds on the trees?
Blogging regularly has been such a good thing for me in so many ways, but one of my favorite side-effects is the record it leaves behind. I can go back a year or two and see that March is always like this. It’s always still gray, and I’m always wishing it wasn’t.
I can’t help being impatient for spring. It’s as much a facet of my personality as brown eyes are a facet of my face. It’s one of the reasons why, come March, I often find myself digging through my fabric stash for energetic florals. It’s why these lounge pants came to be last night. And it’s why when I wore them this morning, I pretended I was enjoying my morning coffee outside on the sunny and breezy patio, even though backyard breakfasts are a good two months away.
Spring will get here when it gets here. Until then, I’ve got my pj’s and my imagination.
The details
Pattern: Lounge pants from Amy Butler’s In Stitches book
Modifications: Replaced drawstring with elastic. Eliminated ribbon ankle trim.
Fabric: Rose Bouquet in Ice from Heather Bailey’s Pop Garden collection
Verdict: I’ve made these once before, and I love the fit of that pair and this new one. They’re not at all baggy in the rear-end area (can’t say the same about the pattern I used to use) and the straight-leg makes them feel stylish and classy. I definitely have one more pair in my future – something in a different colorway, but I’m not sure what yet…
Like
Them’s shoppin’ words
Last night, while noticing that my computer screen has started to take on a pinkish tinge, and that I was irritated by it but resigned to living with it, Neil uttered these dangerous words: “New laptops are not as expensive as you think.”
What?? Is this true? And why have you not mentioned this before??
Eight years ago was the last time I shopped for a computer. I spent $1600 on it, and it served me reasonably well until it didn’t. At that point last February, Neil helped me cobble together a busted hand-me-down laptop and some spare parts on eBay so that I wouldn’t be left computerless and twitching. It hasn’t been the ideal setup – the screen is being held on with electrical tape, for one thing – but I’ve lived with it because I’ve been under the delusion that I’d have to drop another grand and a half to replace it.
I can be a little slow to have certain concepts sink in. Case in point: a few weeks ago, I went shopping for ink for my old printer/scanner/copier, and instead came home with a brand new printer/scanner/copier, because it was cheaper than new ink for my old machine. That probably should have been a clue right there.
So anyway, after Neil uttered those words last night, I wasted no time hopping online, and for about 1/4 of what I paid for my laptop eight years ago, I’ve got a brand spankin’ new one on the way. Woo hoo! (In retrospect, I would suppose this is exactly why Neil had not mentioned the price of laptops to me before…)
Now all I have to do is wait two weeks for it to arrive, and figure out how to replenish my PayPal account. (Psst! Wanna preorder a DVD?!)
How dashing
I’ve been drooling over this pattern since before I knew my way around a pair of knitting needles, and I finally started a set back in January. This is Dashing, from Knitty. I love them because they are masculine enough that I can make them for those hard to shop for men in my life, and also because they have that elegantly simple cable. It seemed to me to be one of the less painful ways to be introduced to knitting cables.
I was right – knitting these cables was pretty easy. The biggest problems I had with these were issues of gauge and of thumb-making.
I made these in Berroco Vintage, which is a nice yarn for the price (I’ve since stocked up on several colors so that I can make a pile of these gloves for birthdays and occasions later in the year). I initially cast-on for the larger size, using size 8 dpns, but it wasn’t until I was nearly finished with the first glove that I discovered how enormous it was.
So I frogged it, and decided to try a different approach. For my second go, I used a large number 7 circular, and used the method as described in Two at a Time Socks to make both gloves at once. (As an aside, I still have not made a pair of socks, but that book has been so valuable to me just for the general method alone – it’s great for anything that comes as a pair.)
This time, aside from a bit of difficulty with the thumbs, I met with success. The art of picking up stitches around a thumb hole I’m sure is something that will come to me with practice, but despite the un-elegant thumbs, I just love the way these came out. I wanted to keep them for myself, but I sucked it up and presented them to my father-in-law yesterday as a belated birthday gift.
I am so impressed with the universal appeal of this pattern. They look nice on me, they look nice on Neil who posed for the second shot above. Everyone I’ve shown these to has really liked them – male, female, child. My 10-year-old would like his own pair. Guess I know what I’ll be knitting all spring and summer – and I thought I’d be putting the needles away for a few months. Ha!
Ten? Really?
It feels like I only just blogged about Nine. Or Eight for that matter. And yet, here it is, already Ten.
Time flies. Happy Birthday to my big kid!
Body Powder Gift Set
Over the course of this past autumn, I swore off shampoo, deodorant, and moisturizer. I know. Either you’ve done this before yourself and are thinking “good for you” or you’ve never done it and are thinking I’m crazy (not to mention stinky).
Well, maybe I am a little bit crazy, but I smell just fine. Plus, my hair is clean, and my skin has not felt this smooth in ages.
At some point, I do want to talk a little bit about what I’m doing with my hair (baking soda followed by vinegar, similar to Simple Mom), and my face (currently almond coconut milk soap followed by straight-up coconut oil), but for this post, I thought I’d focus on the deodorant issue. Why? Mainly because I made my deodorant look pretty this weekend, but I still don’t have a nice bottle for my “shampoo.”
You do know it’s all about the photo shoot, right? 
I’m not sure what made me try this powder. I suppose it was the fact that the ingredients were simple, on-hand, and cheap. And if it didn’t work, I’d have lost very little in the trying. And trust me, I was a huge skeptic. I’ve spent the last few years depending on stronger and stronger antiperpirants, right up until I was left the only option that didn’t disappoint me: the clinical strength stuff. I could not imagine that a puff of powder from my kitchen would be even a little bit effective.
You can probably guess where I’m going with this… it worked! I have used it every day for six months, and I have not been disappointed. Admittedly, I have not gone through a hot summer yet, and maybe I’ll change my tune a bit when I’m perspiring more regularly, but the sweaty situations I have experienced so far have been just fine. [I'll update here, if I discover otherwise once the hot weather arrives.]
To make the powder
Combine 1/2 cup baking soda and 1/2 cup corn starch in a glass container. Add five or so drops of lavender essential oil, close the lid, and shake up the powder to thoroughly mix all of the ingredients. Cinnamon, rose, and birch are also good options to try for their antibacterial properties and may be substituted for the lavender.
For my second batch, I used the last few drops of a honesuckle fragrance oil I’ve been hording since 1995. I realize that cuts down on the all-naturalness of it, but the scent makes me happy, and I can live with that.
To apply the powder
Since my first batch was a test, I just used what I had handy: cotton balls. I shook up the powder a bit, dipped the cotton ball into it, and patted it under my arm. You can do the same with a powder puff, or if you’re kind of a nut, you can make your own applicator to match your bathroom.
I (being kind of a nut) eventually made an applicator. I used a flower loom, but you can also use size 13 dpns in the round:
- Cast on 12 stitches with a double-strand of cotton yarn, and knit 20 rounds.
- Knit the next round of live stitches into the original cast-on stitches, rather than into the working yarn. This will give you a folded-up double thickness of fabric, making your puff resemble a doughnut. If you’re confused, think of it as making a hem. For a more detailed explanation, see these instructions for a tuck stripe (if using needles) or these directions for knitting a brim (if using a loom).
- Bind off using the gather method.
You can use the gathered end as a handle, and dip the flared-out end into the powder. If you make two, you can swap them out every now and then and toss them in the laundry.
Things to think about
If you’ve been using antiperspirants, you have to get used to the feel of sweat under your arms. Deodorant (powder or otherwise) doesn’t stop you from sweating like an antiperspirant does. Instead, it allows you to sweat, and then goes to work to neutralize any odor. There were a few times in the beginning, when I would feel moisture under my arms and be sure that I must be rather “ripe,” but I wasn’t. Just a little damp.
Depending on how much you sweat, you might have to re-apply the powder later in the day. When I was using the clinical strength stuff, I could skip a day if I wanted to, and it would still be working. That’s not the case with the deodorant powder, but it’s not really a big deal. Put it on once in the morning, and once again in the evening, if necessary. For me, a second application has only been necessary on rare days.
Gift-giving
A jar of powder, an applicator, a washcloth, and a bar of natural soap would make a nice gift for someone. You can make everything yourself, or buy some of it from other crafty types. Here are a few resources:
- The book Better Basics for the Home has a few chapters and skin/body care and includes this deodorant powder recipe as well as a coconut-oil-based moisturizing cream I’ve been wanting to try.
- This ballband dishcloth pattern makes a nice washcloth. The pattern is also in Mason-Dixon Knitting.
- If you would rather buy a wash cloth, Carrie of Wash my Cloth crochets some nice ones, and often includes the soap and a soap dish as part of a set.
- If you plan on giving a lot of these, you can get a dozen glass jars at The Jar Store.
- There are a lot of handmade natural soaps on Etsy, but I’ve been experiencing unusually silky-smooth results under the influence of Rochelle Rose Almond Coconut Milk lately.
And just one little thing you might want to keep in mind – if you are giving a jar of deodorant powder as a gift, you might want to avoid calling it “Deodorant Powder.” You wouldn’t want your giftee to read it as “you smell bad, please apply this as soon as possible.” Just label it “Lavender Body Powder” and put “also effective as a deodorant” somewhere inconspicuous on the back of the tag…
Bwwwaaahhh!
Aidan’s having a Raving Rabbids
Hey, if the guys are getting t-shirts, it’s only fair that I get a new party skirt
I had found the Rabbids images online, mirrored them, and printed them onto t-shirt transfer paper. I made the skirt itself out of a white linen-cotton blend, using my favorite a-line elastic-waist pattern, and ironed-on the Rabbids around the bottom edge. (I did so before inserting the elastic, so as to avoid bunching up the fabric.) There are twelve different Rabbids altogether, all of them cute in a deranged sort of way.
It’s funny. I’ve been entertaining ideas of making a skirt with ironed-on motifs for some time, but what I had in mind was something more involved (and feminine): I’d wanted to dye the skirt blue on top (for sky) and green on the bottom (for grass) and then use a combination of buttons, embroidery floss and iron-on images to make a wildflower garden.
Instead I have crazy bunnies carrying oddball props.
Ah, well. There will always be time for wildflower skirts, right? A son only turns 10 once! Or, as the Rabbids would say, “Bwwwaaahhh!”
Poor neglected husband
My poor husband claims I don’t pay enough attention to him. Usually when he says that, I just laugh and shoo him away so I can get back to what I was doing. (hee hee) But yesterday, after my podcast post, I started to think maybe he’s right. You see, he saw my list of recommended listening and asked why his podcast wasn’t on the list.
Uh… what?
Apparently Neil has a podcast. Not only does he have one, but he’s had it for a year and a half.
I suppose maybe I could stand to pay a wee bit more attention.
Let’s just pretend Clarkesworld Magazine was on yesterday’s list, and that I put together months ago, the obvious fact that “audio fiction” = “podcast”, ok?
Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s also pretend that I’ve actually been listening to it all of this time, and that I didn’t only just add it to my list five seconds ago.
These will be our little secrets 
P.S. On a completely different note, I’m in the mood to write up a tutorial. Anything I’ve made that you’d like to know how to do?
Better living through podcast listening
Every now and then I post about the various tools I like to use to get organized. Then a few weeks go by, and I am usually posting about what a mess my house is. The truth is, the best organizational tools in the world won’t help you unless you use them. Sticking with the process is the hardest part of getting organized for me.
Unsurprisingly, I was faced with a messy house yesterday and a pile of tasks that had been begging to be done for weeks, and I finally felt I had no choice: I was going to have to suck it up and just do them.
The thing is, I am the worst self-motivator in the world. I know I’m so much happier when the day’s meals are planned, the laundry is chugging away in the washing machine, and I’m not tripping over shoes in the entryway, but that’s not enough to get me to put down the laptop and make it happen. There is, sadly, no magic potion that is going to make me face the mundane tasks I’d prefer to avoid. Often mind games are my only tool.
Sometimes I succeed by convincing myself that my dear mother-in-law (who was born with a bottle of Windex in one hand and a squeegee in the other) might drop by for tea. That’s unbelievably motivating when it works, but I couldn’t use that one this week – she’s away on vacation.
There’s no getting away from the fact that the drive to keep with the program (whatever the program may be at the time) has to come from within. I’m still working on that, but I thought I’d share what I did yesterday and how it helped:
I first broke down my big tasks into smaller, do-able bites, and wrote them down as such. I have a much easier time looking at a long list of easy tasks, than I do a short list of really big tasks. Enormous tasks have a “where do I begin?” element about them that often leaves me paralyzed.
Then I picked the task that would deliver the most bang for the least effort, and started there. A clean living room is a happy-making thing for me. It’s the room with the front door, so it’s also the place that is the most mortifying if it’s a disaster when unexpected company drops by. A clean living room allows me to welcome someone into my home and keep them right there so they don’t see what’s lurking in the rest of the house.
Now, here’s the important part. Telling myself to clean the living room usually doesn’t work (if it did, I wouldn’t have this problem.) It feels like a big job. Telling myself to clean the living room for 15 minutes, is another story. That I can do. And to make it a more interesting 15 minutes, there should be something for my brain to do while my body is wiping fingerprints off of glass tables. Enter podcasts.
I have a selection of podcasts that I enjoy. I subscribe to their feeds, and I download any episode that I think I may want to listen to at some point. My podcasts folder is quite full at this point, and it runs the gamut from 5-minute music reviews to 2-hour interviews. Yesterday, I picked out a 20-minute Craftypod, and told myself to clean the living room for as long as the podcast was playing. At the end of 20 minutes, I had learned a little something about Craft Leftovers, and had a nice-looking room that was no longer an embarassment.
Better yet, I found motivation.
I used more podcasts to get me through cleaning the kitchen, starting the crock pot, and tackling the daunting task of digging through my wardrobe for donate-able things I no longer wear (I generated 2 big garbage bags full and got to see the top of my dresser for the first time in a year!).
There are more things on my list today, and luckily I am still in the right frame of mind to get them done.
If you’re feeling stuck like me, might I suggest picking a task, a time limit, and a podcast long enough to fill that time nicely? You hardly realize you’re doing mindless work, when you’re listening to something interesting.
Here are the podcasts that are currently on my must-listen list. Some of them I only listen to certain parts, and others I may skip whole episodes whose descriptions don’t grab me, but even with that, there’s still plenty to listen to.
- APM: A Prairie Home Companion’s News from Lake Wobegon
- APM: The Splendid Table
- Craftcast with Alison Lee
- CraftSanity » Podcasts
- CraftyPod » Podcast!
- Hello Craft!
- LOST Podcast: The Transmission
- More Hip Than Hippie Podcast
- Television Zombies: Podcast
- WFUV’s Music Review Podcast
If any of you can suggest more great listening, I’m all ears!
P.S. I also recommend Pandora, if you’re in a musical mood.
Built by Wendy Dresses
If you know me at all, you know that in the last few years I have become a skirt fiend (weather permitting), but what you may not know is that in all of my skirtmaking, I have successfully avoided having to do such things as make darts and sew zippers. All of those pesky little details that make clothes fit you well, I have skipped by crafting skirts in a wraparound style, or by giving them elastic waists. This has been fine with me, really, although I have often thought that if I could master those shaping techniques, I could actually make myself a nice dress or two.
As much as I love my summer wardrobe of tank tops and a-line skirts, nothing says “easy, breezy, effervescence” like a well-fitting sheath dress.
Enter Built by Wendy Dresses, the new book in the Sew U series by Wendy Mullin. (Wendy Mullin is the genius behind Simplicity 3835, which, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know is my go-to pattern for shirts, and what I generally wear in the summer when I’m not in a skirt.)
The book includes patterns for three basic dresses: sheath, shift, and drindl (which is basically a dress with a defined waist and gathered skirt). I went straight for the sheath, traced the correct size of the pattern on to tracing paper, cut it out, and made a muslin out of a thrifted bedsheet.
The instructions for putting the muslin together are somewhat vague. There is sufficient detail when it comes to measuring yourself , choosing the right pattern size for your body, and cutting out the fabric pieces. All of that is very helpful, but if you’re new to dressmaking, you might be stumped by the instruction to “stitch or pin the pattern pieces together” with no further elaboration. While the book comes with the patterns to put together three basic dresses, there are no instructions for any of these basic styles. I was able to overcome this by flipping to the projects section, finding a dress based on the basic sheath, and seeing how that one was put together.
My muslin had its fit issues, which is why this is all I plan to show you of it Luckily, BBW Dresses features a section on altering patterns to fit, and that alone is worth the price of admission. Wendy describes (and illustrates) how to translate your muslin’s shortcomings into pattern modifications. I can’t stress enough what a valuable thing this is. My muslin gave me practice putting in my first zipper, helped me get comfortable sewing darts, and then let me slash it up in an effort to learn a little something about my measurements.
Once I had my new, improved, basic sheath pattern pieces, I was ready to cut into the good fabric. I bought and pre-washed two yards of the Wall Flower print in the New Day colorway from Denyse Schmidt’s Hope Valley collection, and laid out my pattern pieces.
They didn’t fit.
A word of warning: the front and back pattern pieces, if you are making one of the larger sizes, may not fit side-by-side on 44″ wide fabric. If this is the case, as it was with me, the two yard quantity called for in the pattern is not going to be sufficient.
Since I didn’t want to wait to mail-order more fabric, I decided to get creative. I perused the sheath-based projects in the book, looking for ones that involved making the sleeves or neckline shorter (thereby making them easier to fit on what was left of my fabric), and settled on the “Oktober Dress.” I only modified the pattern in terms of the sleeves and neckline, and left the skirt as it was. Theoretically, this would have given me the basic sheath silhouette, with just a deeper, wider neck and shorter sleeves.
Suffice it to say, somewhere along the line I screwed that up, tried to fix it with some homemade bias binding, but found that to be even more awful than it was without it.
So, ok. The neck looks terrible. And the zipper isn’t perfect (by a long shot) but it’s in, and it’s better than my practice run was. On the bright side, the rest of the dress fits so much better than the muslin did, thanks to the pattern-modification process.
I do love the way the skirt portion fits me (minus the static that plagued my photo shoot), and if I never manage to figure out how to fix the upper half of the dress, I can always just cut it off and make myself a nice fitted skirt out of it.
Anybody have any ideas for things I can do to improve the top half of the dress? Is there any way to turn a raglan construction into a sleeveless style? I could see this looking nice with spaghetti straps, if I could figure that out.
While I did have some difficulty with this project, it hasn’t soured me to the charm of the book. Many of my problems were due to user error and lack of experience – both things that should be less of a factor the next time I try this process. And I do want to try it again. The bulk of the book is dedicated to projects that use the basic patterns as building blocks to more interesting designs, and I haven’t even scratched the surface!
I’d call this an Intermediate level book. Or maybe a book for motivated beginners who have a comprehensive sewing guide they can refer to where necessary.
Intrigued? Check out these links for more
Wintery things
So yesterday I got caught up in the snowiness of it all, bundled myself up, and went outside to run down the hill and feel the falling snow bounce off of my face as I flew by. Four times. I made a snow angel, and had a snowball fight, too.
Before all that, though, I had started the day wondering how the boys could be happy doing indoor stuff when there was a white wonderland outside just begging to be played in. I remember snow days when I was a kid, and they all involved building a fort and stockpiling enough snowball ammunition to attempt pegging my little sister in the head. That is what snow days are for, right?
My kids spent the vast majority of yesterday’s snow day in the house, bickering. Listening to that can make me utterly crazy, so I was lucky to discover two unwritten rules of winter that stopped the insanity for a little while:
- It’s hard to bicker with your brother when you’re running like the wind, down a snowy hill, laughing and out of breath.
- Making valentines for your class is a good way to distract you from the fact that your brother lives to irritate you.
If you are snowed-in with two bickering brothers, and you’ve had all of the outdoor fun you can take, wander over to Living Locurto and check out this great list of Valentine’s Day printables Amy has put together. For Eamonn’s square cards, we used a really cute pdf from Secret Agent Joesphine. For Aidan, we taped lollipops inside the fold of Amy’s Sandwich Bag Goodie Label (we didn’t bother using bags).
Today is another snow day, and it’s probably a good thing, since I woke up with a head cold and don’t really feel like doing anything. Bleh. I’m going back, now, to popping Cold-Eze and geeking out on all of the fun places online that Neil’s Snow Dalek has traveled since I posted it – the number of Twitter mentions and trackbacks on that post are cracking me up!
