restingmotion

Playing with My Food 2025.01

Although I've always loved to cook, I go through phases, and occasionally get stuck in a rut of the tried and true and familiar.  Over the past year or so however, I've found myself increasingly in play mode.  This is due in part to cookbook clubs.  I've been in one, run through the Food 52 organization, now discontinued. for years, participating off and on.  Ii threw myself into it more fully last year, determined to at least try every cookbook, even those I had doubts about. and I found the experience exciting and inspiring, opening my mind and taste buds toward thinking about food in new ways.  Then I joined another cookbook club and the fun increased further, even though I do not always manage to keep up with the clubs.

 

And yet, I want to write about some of my adventures in the kitchen. 

 

II purchased this book, Made in Taiwan, by Clarissa Wei and Ivy Chen last December but didn't start reading or cooking from it until this year.  I do love reading cookbooks, and admit that there was a period where I did more reading and less cooking.  Not this book.  For the first time in a long long time I want to cook everything in this book, even things I don't normally eat or make.  I enjoy the nerdy details, such as making rice noodles from scratch, and even recipes for how to make the rice flour from raw rice kernels.  Yes, I could buy rice noodles, but I also love learning about the background and history of a thing, and I firmly believe that our food says so much about who we are.  We build large communities based on cooperation, and we cook our food; how could these things not say something about who we are?  Anyway, I am intrigued enough that I will eventually try most of these recipes even if I never make them again..

 

So far however I've only made three dishes from this book.  Each dish was an absolute winner and I very much look forward to cooking more.

 

The first recipe I tried was for a stir-fry of sweet potato leaves. A basic thing, right?  I love green vegetables and don't believe I've met a green leafy vegetable I haven't liked.   It also seems like every cuisine I've learned about has some basic technique for cooking green leafy vegetables.  Although the greens are different, the techniques are similar in that they incorporate some basic fat, aromatics, and water.  

 

So sweet potato greens show up in my local Asian market, and recently they have even begun showing up in the farmer's markets.  The greens in the Asian market are young and tender, perfect for this recipe, whereas the ones I got at the farmer's market last year were large and tough.  My attempt at stir-frying those was a failure, but I suspect the farmer in question was thinking of them more as a braising green.  If I see them again, I am now ready to explore the possibilities further.

 

But back to the greens at hand. The leaves of this bunch of sweet potato greens was smallish and tender, the stems tender as well. With the right greens this dish was a relevation. The stems displayed a small bit of toothsomeness with an almost nutty hint of bitterness to them. I discerned no particular bitterness in the leaves however, just a light, almost buttery flavor with just a hint of floral fruitiness that offsets the garlic perfectly. They are light, much the way spinach is light, but with slightly more crispness to the mouth-feel than spinach, and without spinach's sometimes mineraly flavor.  

 

And, while I am on the subject of greens I tried another new to me green when I made the recipe for Sacha Beef with Water Spinach.  I don't believe I'd ever knowingly had water spinach before, but now it is a regular addition to my grocery cart just so I can make this dish.

 

The recipe is simple and quick to pull together. The most time consuming thing is slicing the beef thinly and then letting it marinate for a full 15 minutes. Everything else can be prepped during that time.  Most of the success of this dish is due to the sauce. Although I originally wanted to make the homemade sacha sauce in the book, I am so enamored of a purchased Bullhead sauce, recommended by the authors, and available in my local Asian grocery, that I can't imagine doing so anytime soon.

 

The beef is tender and flavorful and I find the combination of the beef, water spinach and the savory umami-rich sauce almost addictively good. There is a bit of grittiness to the barbecue sauce, but it is not unpleasant and it added a nice counterpoint to the combination of flavors.  There is a hint of the dried shrimp in the sauce also, but I did not so much find it fishy as complexly rich.

 

This is a dish that is far more satisfying than would expect from the minimal effort involved. In fact, I've  enjoyed this so much that, as I mentioned above,   I purchase water spinach each time I see it in the market, just so I can make this dish.

 

 

The last thing I made before getting distracted was congee.  I didn't discover that I liked congee until fairly late in life. In retrospect this seems surprising as I grew up on hot cereal, and learned as an adult that although I still love porridge in any form, I prefer my porridges on the savory side.  Still, I had basically only eaten basic plain congee with a collection of savory toppings and I was eager to try this recipe for Shiitake and pork congee.

 

 

My congee is more deeply colored than the photo in the book, or is probably traditional, but I used an asian-inspired bone broth from my own pantry rather than the recipe in the book (or chicken broth, although my own chicken broth is sometimes dark as well since I often start with roasted bones). I also soaked the mushrooms while the congee cooked, and didn't start my mise en place until the congee was finished cooking, which meant that the congee thickened while I was prepping and cooking the pork. I didn't mind this as I think I prefer a thicker porridge anyway.

 

 

This was savory, delicious and very satisfying and I will absolutely make it again. I don't actually eat porridge very often anymore but when the craving hits, nothing else satisfies. Comfort in a bowl.

 

This seems like such a small start, and yet I find the whole process of cooking an act of both discovery and refinement.  So much fun.  Hopefully I will have more to report.

Knitting. Writing about Knitting...Writing.

I didn't intentionally stop writing.  I got one of the dread viral infestations that have been running rampant this winter, and then it seems like my energy levels have been slow to recover.  

 

Then I finished this cashmere shell.

 

Well, I was planning to finish it, but finishing is one of those love/hate situations.  It always takes longer than anticipated, and I both love the detail of it, of finishing something nicely, but by the time I am at the finishing part, I just want the whole thing to be done so I can start something new.  And I know better than to start a new project before I finish the old project, or the old project will simply languish in a pile because, well, knitting is more fun than finishing.

But this project was an exception.  At least partly.  It was seaming the sides that thrilled me beyond anticipation. These curved edges had worried me.  Until I got started, and then I was captured by the magic of the curved side seam.

Who says a seam needs to be a certain thing.  Who says a life needs to be a certain way?  IT feels to me like the world is descending into chaos, and yet all I have control over is my own small life.  That doesn't mean I don't care or that my actions don't have impact on those around me.  But I am but a tiny droplet in an infinite pool.  I cannot control the choices of others any more than they can control mine (unless I allow them that privilege).  The simple truth is that as long as there are humans it appears there will be strife.

 

But as long as there are humans there will also be beauty, and kindness, and creativity.  We can choose which parts of ourselves we feed.  

 

For a while I wondered how I could write in this world.  Then I realized my world is my own.  And even these simple distractions are just as present, just as worthwhile, just as much a part of my own tiny puddle of existence.

On Hold

I had a note in my calendar that I was supposed to write a blog post on Tuesday.  Unfortunately I spent most of Tuesday in bed with some kind of vicious chest cold.  I wasn't doing anything on Tuesday, or yesterday either for that matter.  Today. I've gotten a little simple mindless knitting under my belt but am still lacking in energy and have a lingering cough, which probably lingers further because my chest muscles are so sore from coughing that my attempts feel a bit pathetic. In fact I do not feel inclined to do much of anything, but I'll try to string some words together.  

I went out to the store Monday morning to see about getting some fish for dinner. I picked up fresh sardines.  By the time I got around to scaling, cleaning and filleting them, I was already coming down with cold symptoms.  Truthfully I didn't feel like doing it, but I also didn't want to waste the fish.  My patience, and therefore my skill, was lacking, but I got everything done. The process brought up happy memories of sitting outside with my dad scaling and gutting bluegills when I was a child.  I think he would have approved of the sardines as well although I don't recall ever having fresh sardines when I was young..  These are rolled around a mix of breadcrumbs, orange zest, golden raisins, pepitas and caciocavallo cheese and baked with additional orange slices.  They were not difficult and they were delicious, but by the time they were done I was so tired I had to force myself to eat.  At least they didn't go to waste, and I probably needed the protein..

 

Otherwise I've not been up to much.  Two days in bed.  Today barely puttering about.  I'm working on a garter stitch blanket in Plymouth Yarns' Baby Alpaca Grande that I started in late 2021.  The pattern is the Modern Log Cabin blanket pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting although at a much larger gauge and yielding a much larger blanket.  I knit the first five blocks and then abandoned the project, probably because I made the temperature blanket in 2022, and one blanket at a time was enough for me.

 

I am currently knitting block 5.  You can't see the number because it is hidden by the yarn swatch, but it is the teal block above blocks 3 and 4.  Actually I will probably finish that block tonight and pick up stitches for block 6.  I've been chilled to the bone and can't seem to pile enough sweaters or blankets on to feel warm.  The extra layer of alpaca feels delicious.

 

My other two projects are too complicated for me to work on at the moment.   I'm knitting a lime green cashmere shell.  I finished the back last week.  I cast on for the front and knit one pattern repeat before I got sick.  There are four more pattern repeats before I begin binding off at the underarm, but I don't see anything happening on this until I am feeling better. 

Also in the active project bag is a jacket knit out of Prism half-inch wide rayon ribbon, but I've been avoiding it for a while.  I think the last time I worked on it was in October.  I am finding that the yarn is very twisted and I have to iron each skein before I knit it.  This is the annoying part.  I usually enjoy ironing, but untwisting and ironing 100 yards of ribbon at a go is not fun.  I finished ironing a skein just before Thanksgiving, and the only reason I didn't start knitting it up was because then I'd have to iron another skein of yarn.  The knitting goes faster than the ironing. Silly no?  I've also learned that I tend to twist my projects and my yarn in funny ways when I knit, which doesn't help in this specific case.  I know I will love the cardigan though, and I am determined to finish it this year.  There are three more skeins of yarn.  If I do a skein a quarter, I'd be contented with that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Musings, Mutterings, Knitting.

Hello blog! It seems I have been absent although in many ways that is not surprising.  It seems that I have been swinging wildly between being present in my life and at the same time being absent -- not as in depressed, although that has probably been the case on occasions. More that I have just been sorting out some things in the hopes of reconnecting with something essential to myself.  That has seemed like a slow process.

 

At the moment I feel fully "back", meaning increasingly settled in myself but not a promise that the blog is back, although I hope it is.  I intended to attempt a start-up in January, and although it is not the beginning of the month, it is still January.  That is good.  There has been a lot of hemming and hawing here, fretting over wanting to write, letting my inner voices argue over whether or not I had anything to say only to find myself back in a place of apathy, where the whole blog thing didn't seem worth the effort.  

 

I had an idea to write about movies, or a particular movie, but the negative arguments won, the voice that says "who cares what I think", which may or may not be true.  By the time I resolved the issue the movie in question was weeks behind me and it seemed hardly worth the point.  The idea may find its way back up, or not.    The only thing I know is that I want this blog to be about whatever is on my mind at the time I am writing it, and that it is an extension of a journal of sorts.  I tell myself that I should write polished essays, and I occasionally work on those, but that is NOT what I want this blog to be about.  My original idea was for an online journal, really purely for my own reference and entertainment, and then I let the idea get perverted into something else, something I didn't want.  I don't really know what I want now but I am willing to let the impulse play out.

 

So, after this long, and mostly irrelevant introduction, the remainder of this sweater is going to be about sweaters and knitting.  Specifically it is about sweaters and knitting and colors, specifically puce and muted wines. 

 

Puce seems to have been the color of the year.  I knit two sweaters in the color.  In fact the color of neither yarn was called "puce". The color name for the yarn used in the first sweater was "vintage wine".  You can see that sweater here.

 

It is a lacy cropped cotton cardigan, knit in a 4-ply yarn.  Technically a summer sweater although I am not likely to wear it in the hottest months.  It is a color that has a presence throughout my wardrobe, a few pieces popping up whenever muted wines and roses become fashionable.  

 

 I never really thought about the color as puce until I was finishing up this cardigan.  Technically I would suppose puce is darker, with a bit more brown.  But it struck me that the range of muted brownish purply pinks suite me well, and I am consistently drawn to the range. 

 

Then, in December I felt the urge to knit a warm snuggly sweater and I decided to knit another sweater in an alpaca boucle.  Although this wasn't planned, the yarn I ordered falls into the same color range.  This time the color is named topaz.

 

 

 

I finished it in early January and have been wearing it steadily throughout the current cold spell.  I am not quite sure how my dream of an oversized snuggly sweater morphed into this shorter, slightly more fitted sweater, but it did, and I love it. Even though I do not always like sweaters out of bulky yarns, this sweater has ended up being exactly the sweater I wanted.  It is a  sweater that sits a the top of the hip, that looks good with a pair of pants, and which has fairly close fitting sleeves that do not get in the way.  It is a color that makes me feel warm and happy.

 

 

In fact it goes well with my most-frequently worn coat, at least most winters in Knoxville. Seen here with an assortment of reds, all of which are really pinkish or brownish reds. 

 

This photo was taken last winter, when my hair was still permed in an attempt to maintain those post-chemo curls.  It is not permed now, and I am wondering if I regret the decision to grow my hair out and stop perming it.  I am not thrilled with my hair the moment, but I can always go back.  It is just the transitional process that is difficult.  Transitional processes are always difficult.  That doesn't seem to get easier with age.

 

Perhaps this blog, like my hair is in transition.  Like all transitions it will take time to see what develops.  And, in that spirit of transition I am going to toss this out, messy as it is, because once I start editing, doubts will set in,  and my words will fall into the bottomless pit, never to reemerge,

 

September Reading

I skipped a few months, but I will continue the count and, hopefully, fill in the middle one of these days.

 

45.   A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire Book 5, George R. R. Martin.

46.  Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories, Amitav Ghosh.

47.   This is Why We Lied, Karin Slaughter.

48.  The Five Star Weekend, Elin Hilderbrand.

49.  Golden Girl, Elin Hilderbrand.

50.  The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese.

51.  Katherine, Anya Seton.

 

There are some books on this list about which I have little to say.  The George R. R. Martin is part of a longer post that has been swirling about in the back of my mind, a post I hope to get to one of these days, although at the moment my days are busy enough and I am content.  This state of affairs does not drive me toward greater achievements however.  There are many things I wish to accomplish, and a long bookish post on a fantasy series is just one project among many.

 

I wrote about The Covenant of Water a year ago, after my first reading.  I read it again for book club.  At that time I wanted to discuss it in book club, and found it far more compelling and thought-provoking than the book that group read in lieu of this one.  When my second book group chose to read it this year I was eager, although we really didn't get into the meat of the book.  Still the book works so well, both as a compelling and touching story, and as thought-provoking novel and it holds up well to re-reading.

 

Five Star Weekend and  Golden Girl are both summer beach reads, light, fun, entertaining and unsubstantial.  They fall into the category I call "popcorn fiction".  They are books that you dive into, read too fast, want to read more than you should, and which are then rapidly forgotten -- fun, filling, with no nutritional value.  Still, I enjoyed them.  I was recovering from a flu-like virus and my brain wasn't really up for anything more compelling.  Books like these can be great palette cleansers, whatever their genre (mystery, romance, fantasy) and they are quick reads.  But indulging in a diet too heavy on this kind of reading and I feel like I become a dull girl indeed.

 

I enjoy Karin Slaughter's novels, although perhaps "enjoy" is not the best word as they tend to delve graphically into the darker aspects of human behavior.  I preordered This is Why We Lied, and started reading it pretty much the instant I took it out of its package.  I'll also admit I enjoy the main characters and have followed their development.  This is also a pretty fast read but it sticks with me much longer, not so much because it is insightful as it is disquieting.     Still, I think it is good to read things that disturb us, that make us think about the aspects of life we would rather avoid.  Am I willing to read disturbing books more now that I am retired and live in my own peaceful little bubble, more than when I was out in the world and wanted to escape every day pressures?  I don't know the answer to that.  I'm not sure the question occurred to me before today.

 

I was sixteen the first time I read Katherine by Anya Seton.  I loved the story, the romance of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, but I also loved all the historical detail about life in medieval England.  In fact, this book kicked off a long time love of medieval history and early English literature, a passion I still carry today.  I have carried that book around, and it is one I read occasionally, although it has probably been over 20 years since I last read it.  There are books we hold onto as much for the emotional weight of their influence on the people we become as the merit, historical or literary of the works themselves.  I'll admit that I cannot read Katherine without, at least in part, connecting with memories of my younger self.  And yet I also see the book differently than I did.  I understand that we know more about the period, and about both Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt than perhaps was known when Seton researched this book.  This knowledge does not significantly alter the worth of the book, or my enjoyment of it; the book is about a time and a place as it is about a particular love.  That endears it to me further.  If anything the depth and extent of the "extraneous" details, the attempt at historicity,  the development of people and a culture who think differently than I do, think differently than do the people of my own time and culture, makes the story itself, and the romance, all the more solid and enjoyable in my mind.

 

That leaves me with Amitav Ghosh's non-fiction book Smoke and Ashes, which was, by far, the most compelling and absorbing book I read in September.  Not surprisingly, it is beautifully written.   I loved reading the book despite the sometimes heavy information load.  There was a great deal of information that I knew little about, as well as some things I might have known vaguely, along the fringes, but about which I had never connected the dots:  Information about the drug trade, exploration, and the what I see now as perhaps unsavory, and certainly morally questionable, foundations to the very structure of a society in which I live and from which I benefit.  Anyway, this is just my reading and my understanding, and my long-standing policy with non-fiction books is not to review the information, but rather that the way I rate the book is based on how likely the book is to make me question my own understandings of the world in which I live, and drive me toward doing further research.  Said research may uphold or refute the authors statements.  

 

My main goal in life is to never become complacent.  I find complacent people, and complacent books, boring as hell.  This book is anything but complacent.  A worthy addition to my library.

 

 

Continuing On...

Hello Autumn!  I welcome the arrival of fall, although the world feels oppressed with summer-like heat at the moment.  Not summer.  The days are shorter, the light different, the summer colors have long since begum to fade. I love the autumnal fade, the process of winding down and preparing for rest.  An interesting dichotomy that, as the natural world winds down, the social world, the school world, the world of the arts seems to kick in high gear.   It is autumn and winter I look forward to, but it is also autumn and winter in which I feel most pulled in multiple directions.

 

As usual in September I am behind in the garden, and ready to look inward to the studio.  I am also behind in the studio as August and September seemed to toss a few minor hiccups my way.  But that is of no import, and I am surprisingly sanguine about projects getting resolved in their own good time.

 

There are two unfinished projects on my sewing table right now, one almost finished, the one I'm not going to write about, the past being the past and all that.  Don't you just love being teased and then dropped?  And a second project, one that was cut out and then, completely unintentionally, set aside.  That is my subject today, simply because the project may have been abandoned, but it was not forgotten, and I am about to pick it up and finish it.

In July I was working with the Simplicity pattern pictured above, Simplicity 9147,  long discontinued.  This is the pattern I used for the simple, straight-legged elastic waist pants I made earlier in the summer and have been wearing since.  This time however, I was working on the vest pattern.

 

One of the reasons I started a sewing blog oh so many years ago is that I am terrible at keeping records, writing things down on random bits of paper or notebooks and then tossing them out in an organizational frenzy.  Blogging helped me keep records.  But here I am two months after starting this pattern trying to reconstruct what I did.    There are some basic facts however, and I can start there.

 

The largest size on the pattern I have available is a size 14, which, according to the pattern information is for a 36-inch bust.  Now my full bust is not 36 inches,  but my high bust is 35 to 35 1/2 inches.   For older Big 4 sewing patterns I have found that buying the pattern by my high bust measurement works best for me and I would get a far better fit through the upper chest and shoulders by starting with the 14 and then adding a full-bust adjustment.   My full bust is 4 inches larger than my high bust, which means that I actually have to do a full bust adjustment on most patterns, unless it comes with cup-sizes.   This still puzzles me to no end, because I had to do it when I was younger as well and I have never felt like I presented as particularly busty.  But then again perhaps I've just never gotten over my mother's comment that I didn't need darts because I had a "dartless" figure.  I now know that was clearly not true, and I've always had at least 3 inches between my high bust and full bust measurements, even when I was a skinny young thing.  The problem was more likely that I just couldn't get bras with small enough bands at JC Penney in the 1970s.

 

But back to the pattern at hand.  Even though I know I often need to cut patterns single layer, I cut the first muslin as designed, on the fold in back and with two identical front pieces. I did my full bust adjustment.  In measuring the pattern it did not appear that  I needed to add anything to the back of the pattern.   Then because I also know that I have what is called a shallow chest (hollow in the upper chest), and a forward head, I made those adjustments.  Both meant moving the neckline a little forward at the center which also means tilting the shoulder seam forward at the neck.  Based on more recent experiments with a sloper and my knitting, I figured I needed to drop the center front about an inch, and because changing the neckline also affects the shoulder seams, adjust the shoulder seams accordingly.  I did all that and made the first muslin.

 

The first muslin fit pretty well, surprisingly well in fact and I was excited because a year ago I just felt overwhelmed by all this stuff.  I don't know why, I suppose I was just out of practice.  It is only math after all. My initial adjustments were good.  The bodice fit, the bust darts provided ample room and the bust point was in the right position without my having to move it up or down.  In fact, this Simplicity pattern fit me pretty well, with only minor adjustments (since I always need to do the full bust adjustment) and the bust point was at the right point for me, unlike both the Love Notions Cadence dress and the Closet Core Cielo dresses,  where the bust point was an inch too low.

The only minor quibbles were at the shoulders.  My right shoulder rolls forward, and I needed to move the shoulder seam forward 7/8 of an inch at the outer shoulder edge, and there was also a wrinkle at the arm where I have a smaller shoulder joint on the right and a slightly narrower upper torso on that side, resulting from my flatter egg-shaped upper torso.  All of this is related to my scoliosis.    Further alterations were needed, which was not unexpected.  But I was happy to have taken a two-stage approach because it made the process more clear.   After moving the shoulder forward (both front and corresponding back pieces) , I still needed to remove extra fabric at the front edge of the armscye between the side seam and the shoulder without removing the needed extra volume at the center front.  A minor adjustment when tackled incrementally as I did here, but it does substantially reshape the armscye and increase the size of the dart on that side.

Once I finished the pattern adjustments, I redrew my pattern pieces.  As expected, I would have to cut this pattern single layer, as each piece is different.  The differences are actually slight, but the implications for fit are significant.  I cut the garment piece out of gray linen and put it aside, thinking I would sew it as soon as I returned from a quick trip to Texas.  

It is still waiting, but I am planning on starting the project now.  I am making this out of a light summer weight linen, perhaps too light for fall, but you wouldn't think so based on today's temperatures.  I actually have doubts, wondering if perhaps the linen I chose is too light for the planned garment.  But it is all a learning process anyway and I am going to go ahead.  The worst thing that will happen is that I don't like the garment, but I have learned something from the process.

 

I will keep you informed.

 

 

Clothing. Thoughts and Questions.

A couple of years ago I was in a quilt shop in Bandera Texas when I spotted a camp shirt made out of cotton batik.  The colors reminded me of the autumnal colors of Texas grasses and the limestone of the Texas hill country.  I was reminded that once upon a time I would have lived in such shirts.  Not only that, there was some part of me that wanted to reacquaint myself with this perhaps neglected portion of my psyche. Neglected, because I wouldn't have worn those shirts during my NY years, during my career years, during the time when I was perhaps too attuned to the dichotomy between my childhood west Texas self and my professional NY self.  

 

A couple of years went by when I wasn't really interested in clothes at all, an anomaly in my life.  I've always been interested in clothes, in the way people put things together, and in fashion, even as, at the same time, I struggled with fashion.  I've never been particularly fashionable, or stylish, or cool.  Perhaps my interest is more abstract or intellectual. I would buy something I loved and then let it sit in my closet for six months or a year, until it settled in, and then wear it to death, even though it was probably "out of fashion".  I suppose then my interest in clothing is both practical, because I have to wear clothes, but also sociological, because I love watching the way people wear clothes, even myself sometimes. I was also reminded that clothing is, in many ways our armor, the way we present ourselves to the world, a signaling message which we can employ deliberately, or sometimes even unthinkingly. 

 

I was reminded of all of this recently when I attended a Lafayette 148NY trunk show.

I love the brand, and if I still led a professional life, I might well live in it, but there was very little in this collection that appealed to me.  Mostly this was a color thing.  One thing that did catch my eye was the suit shown above.  The color was perfect.  I loved the graceful lines of the jacket and the high-waisted faced pants. There is no picture of it currently available on the website, so my impromptu snap will have to suffice.

 

But truth be told, I could probably justify that suit: it is not particularly corporate, and there are occasions I could wear it.  I don't need it, but I could wear it.  Except..... except that I am going through an entirely different internal monologue concerning pants right at the moment.  I could buy that suit, and it could be tailored to look good, and I would wear it, but there would always be small issues with the fit of the pants that although not particularly noticeable to others, make them uncomfortable for me.  When I was younger, I just assumed that this was one of those inconveniences of life and I just lived with it.  But this year I have made pants that fit pretty well, that are comfortable, sitting and standing, and walking and bending over and doing all the things that we humans normally do.  And I have learned that I really like that level of comfort.  The pants I made so far are not tailored, but are instead rather casual, straight, loose pants.  But that doesn't mean I couldn't take the lessons I've learned and attempt to make a more tailored pant.  I can alter tailored pants so that they fit better and look good, but perhaps I could achieve even more.  I don't know.  I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to a pair of ready-to-wear pants at this moment.  And so my suit dreams fade.

 

Or do they?  Do I even care about suits?  Or am I just trapped in a stroll down memory lane?  When I was cataloging my pattern collection I would look longingly at blazer and jacket patterns, and at suits.  I'm not sure I would ever make a suit again, but I remember suits past, and am not I suppose ready to give up the thought of suits future, or at least the patterns that contain both memory and promise. 

 

I don't know if I am going to make tailored pants, but I suspect I probably will.  I do not know if I will ever make a suit jacket or blazer, but I might.  I know I will make camp shirts.   But I also know I'm not going to make all my clothes, nor buy all my clothes.  I like the process too much, and I am privileged enough to have options and skill and choice.

 

At the moment perhaps I feel pulled between the idea of camp shirt and suit in the same way I feel pulled between various changes in my life.  In some ways the camp shirt represents the life I increasingly aspire to, and the suit the life I have mostly, but not completely, relinquished.    And between them is some middle ground, that is broad and wide and probably accommodates both.

 

Reality is a pastiche of things,

The second thing that caught my attention at the trunk show was this dress.  Above (my photo)  is a more accurate reflection of the color (at least on my monitor) than the photo from the website (below).

 

 

I took the photo because I like the idea of the dress and the way it is color blocked (all in one color).  The dress is silk in a mixture of fabrications;   georgette, crepe back satin, another silk, perhaps a heavy crepe de chine.  Both sides of the crepe back satin are employed, creating matte and shiny surfaces. The different weaves reflect the light in different ways.  

 

There is room in my life for a dress like this, but I would never buy or wear that dress because the color is one that would make me look particularly ill.  As inspiration however, it sings. A similar idea could be used in any dress in any color.     It is not so much the dress that appeals to me as the idea of the dress.  To me the dress embodies the idea of play but it is also wearable, and even elegant.    There is a thread between quilting cottons and suits and party dresses, between our career selves and both our early and late childhood selves.  We can allow ourselves to play.  What interests me in the sandbox of life may not be what interests you. But it is all the same sand.

 

"The world is so full of a number of things"  wrote Robert Louis Stevenson.  I'm sure you know the rest of the line, I shall not copy it here.  When we are young the world is only as small as our imaginations, we can be anything and everything.  And then we grow up and grow smaller.  But perhaps we are each of us also as full of a number of selves.  As we grow older we can choose to relinquish the narrow constraints that "adulthood" has placed on us, we don't have to be defined as the one thing that we were, but can embrace the many things that we are.   Quilting cottons and fancy silks bear equal weight on the spectrum of our imaginations.

 

 

In My Own little Corner

This is one of my happy places.

In the library, the corner where my desk sits.  Of course I look out at all the books except the ones behind me, but it is easy to roll my chair around as needed.  This corner houses my cookbook collection, or about half of my cookbook collection.  The other half is downstairs in the breakfast nook.  The wooden stool is not usually there, but I needed to access a high shelf.

 

I recently resorted all the cookbooks.  I had thought about it for a while; I've been cooking a great deal the last few months --  exploring new recipes, revisiting old favorites, thinking about the way I want to eat now -- and in the process realizing that the way my cookbooks had been ordered recently wasn't really working for me.  But shifting books, especially big heavy hardback books, is a job.  It is a job made all the harder because the books are on two levels of the house and when I started I had only a rudimentary idea of which books would go upstairs and which would be downstairs.  All I knew was that the previous method, straight alphabetical by author on each level was confusing.  The books I used the most were downstairs; the remainder were upstairs.  But then I would start using a book that was upstairs more, and a book that was downstairs less.  When I wanted to cook Thai, or Spanish, or whatever, none of the books were together, and I like to compare recipes.   Long ago, when I cooked a lot, I grouped books by category.  It was time to go back.

 

Admittedly I never really stopped cooking, but I had grown a bit staid and stale.  Then I bought a new mixer after contemplating it for about 3 years.  I hadn't really done any baking in those three years, whereas I used to bake a great deal.  Baking for one is problematic, and my church no longer has a coffee hour on Sunday, so I no longer have the excuse of baking things that I can take to church.  Yet I miss the act of baking and making dessert.  I actually miss making desserts more than I miss eating them.

So I bought the mixer above and started playing.  This will be a good mixer when I get to bread, but I'm not there yet.   I started with simple and familiar basics:  choux pastry (which does not require a mixer at all) and meringues and pavlovas.    I made choux puffs to make tiny appetizer sized lobster rolls, then I made cream-puffs, where the mixer was required for the pastry cream, and savory puffs filled with pimento cheese, and salmon mousse.  I made multiple batches of pavlovas with spring berries.  I made a batch of cupcakes and then I stopped baking for a while.  I'm not worried, I will start up again, probably as the weather cools.  But the mixer, and the baking, shifted my brain from the utilitarian "I need to eat" setting to "let's play in the kitchen" mode.  I'm still playing. 

 

It seems like I've been doing everything except writing.  I play in the kitchen.  I work in the garden, mostly weeding, but I went through a period where my early mornings were all spent wrestling with chicken wire as the rabbits were feasting on my vegetable beds and my flowers.  I've been sewing, slowly but steadily, learning new things as I go, but also making things I am happy with and happy to wear.  Knitting.  Reading.  Occasionally seeing friends.  

 

All of this makes for a very full and happy life, but it is not necessarily an interesting life to write about.  What would I say?  "I cooked dinner, I am working on a muslin, I knit four rows of lace?"  Who cares?  I've been reading, but mostly reading genre fiction which I have thoroughly enjoyed but I don't really have anything to say about the books, nor do I need to say anything.

 

Mostly I've just been wondering what the purpose of a blog is in this world where the internet and social media in particular sometimes feels like it has become too commercialized, to politicized, too fraught.  I was an innocent when I started this blog. I am terrible about throwing away pieces of paper.  I've lost a lot of things.  I thought of this blog as a journal I couldn't throw away only to regret it later.  A part of me wants to go back to those innocent days.  That may not be possible.  But it seems that writing here fills a role, provides some outlet that I still need. Throwing words out into the digital void is different than writing a journal.  It is not better.  It is not worse.  It is different and I write differently.  I also see myself differently, and learn about myself in different ways.

Somehow, a post Lisa wrote in 2011 came up on my feed.  That post is here. I don't know why, I think I just needed a little kick.  So I think I will post a picture from my kitchen window.  If I am standing at the sink, this is the view from my window.  But the entire outside wall of my kitchen is windows.  I neglected to put in upper cabinets because I wanted the view.  In the house before this house, the condo I lived in when I first moved to Knoxville, there was no kitchen window.  The kitchen was in the center of the house, there was no view to the outside.  I hated it.  In retrospect perhaps that contributed to why I lost interest in cooking.  George died.  I had only to cook for myself.  I felt claustrophobic in that kitchen.    

 

 

It has taken me a while to settle fully into this new house; there were reasons, but I am here now.  My kitchen is another one of my happy places.  I watch the robins while my coffee brews in the morning. At the moment my big fancy espresso machine needs a bit of fiddling and I don't have the patience for it, so the drip coffee maker is out.  Apparently this is a happy place for my orchid as well.  No complaints here.

Studio Update

I've been tired today, too tired perhaps to trust myself working in the studio.  Instead it has been a slow knitting and reading day, but I do want to make a progress report, so let's see if I can string words together. 

 

 

Most of my knitting time has been spent on the Summer Wine cardigan.  The lace pattern consists of a fairly simple four-row repeat and it is easy enough knit, even on evenings I am very tired; it is also simple enough to unknit as needed.  That has happened a couple of times as well.  I took a break to recheck my math once I started the armhole shaping, in a mad panic, somehow thinking I had made an error. I hd not.   The armscye shaping is now done.  There is some slight variation between right and left, but now I just have to knit even for another 10 centimeters, when I will begin the left shoulder shaping. 

 

This cardigan is fairly fitted through the shoulders and upper chest, and only slightly past waist length overall.  The shoulder shaping will not be symmetrical, but I've been pretty consistently rewriting the fit on my knitted projects, based on the sloper I made, what two years ago now? 3?  Some of the sizing has changed, and I've accommodated that, but the shoulder shaping has not.    I've been very happy with my progress Improving the fit of my sweaters and the results are well worth the time involved.  I will have to do some recaclulating when it comes to shaping the tops of the sleeves, especially as each sleeve will be slightly different, and I haven't really perfected a system for that.  This might just be a fiddly bit of math that I have to do with every project.  But smooth sailing now, just finishing this piece, the back, and then the two fronts before calculating the sleeves.  I almost always end up redoing the math on sleeves anyway.

 

But I've also been sewing, and perhaps putting in more time in the sewing room than knitting.

 

I washed a stack of linen with plans to make some summer pants and tops.  The pants take priority because I have summer dresses in my closet, plenty of tops, and three skorts, but not really any summer pants.   Because it is summer, and it is hotter than usual here, I have been thinking "easy, casual, loose" and so the plan has been to make some fairly wide-legged, pull-on elastic-waisted pants.

 

Upon searching my pattern stash, I found I had four possible patterns.

 

 

Three of the patterns are by Simplicity, one by Hot Patterns.  Although I have many pants patterns, these are the only ones that call for a woven fabric and have an elastic waist.  I have a two one-seam pants patterns, which I intentionally did not wish to use for these pants.    The ponte pants I made in the spring were also based on a Simplicity pattern, and I thought that might give Simplicity some advantage here, but nonetheless I looked at all four patterns before progressing.

 

All three of the simplicity patterns were meant to sit at the actual waist.  They were pretty similar through the hips, with the same ease and basic lines.  All had the same crotch curve, which was in fact the same curve as the pattern I used for the aforementioned ponte pants.  This gave Simplicity an advantage.  The differences were in the width and shape of the legs.  The crotch curve on the Hot Patterns Marrakesh design was different from both the simplicity pattern, and the curve I had created for my own knit pants, giving it one negative strike at the outset.  The Marrakesh pants pattern also has a grown on waist, and I specifically wanted a separate waist band, strike two for Hot Patterns.

 

 

I decided to start with Simplicity 9147 (above) using the straight leg version (View C) as it was closest to what I had in mind.  However all of the Simplicity patterns only went up to a size 14, so the first thing I needed to do was grade the pants up.    First I graded the pants to a size 18.  The pattern calls for 4 inches of ease through the hips, and I knew this would not be enough ease in the back pattern pieces; possibly not in the front either.   I also altered the back crotch curve to match the crotch curve that I had created on the ponte pants, which basically meant creating a deeper curve with a longer extension.  I basically just copied this from the curve of the knit pattern, then added extra wide seam allowances and sewed my first draft.

 

You don't get any in-progress pictures.  There were a couple of iterations, but I learned a lot from the process.   I've always had trouble with pants, but my goals were basic.  Straight of grain perpendicular to the floor, straight side seams, no skewing.  Sounds easy, but it never is with me.  I've been in all kinds of fitting classes where we've done all kinds of odd things and it remains a struggle.   Now it feels like I am finally beginning to understand.

 

Basically, all I needed to do was add width at the high hip in the back, and alter the crotch curve and center seams.  In the end, I ended up using the front crotch curve from the size 14 pattern, with the deeper longer curve on the back pieces.  These then had to be graded to work together.  I also needed to shorten the center front seam by 2 inches and lengthen the pattern at the center back by 2 inches.    This ended up being exactly the correction I had needed to make on the pattern for the knit pants, although I actually understood it better this time around. It is for this basic reason that both my first woven and knit pants were for basically straight leg pants with a waistband that sits at the waist.  These patterns make a good jumping off point for future work on pants.

 

Here you can see half of a muslin, side by side front and back pieces, with the center back at the bottom and the center front at top.  This shows the basic progression although some additional fiddling was necessary before everything was transferred to a new paper pattern. But it was this view, this photo that sparked an "AHA!" moment that really helped clarify my thinking.

 

After a couple of days. working on muslins, the first pair of pants, out of a medium-heavy weight linen double jacquard, were pretty easy.  

 

I cut the elastic for the waistband a little large, and the pants slip down about an inch with wear.  You can see that in the photo.  It is something I will have to fix, but not yet.  The temperature is in the mid 90's and humid, and I am perfectly happy not having a fitted waist band at the moment

I've since cut two more pairs of pants, one in a fine, tightly woven black linen, and one in this pretty Japanese cotton.  The black pants have been sewn except for the waistband and the hems.  I didn't finish them today because I am tired enough that I think I should stay away from sergers with cutting blades.

 

I also have a pale gray linen with a bit of a lilac undertone that I intend to use for both pants and the layered vest shown in the pattern photo above.  Vests are in right now, but not necessarily this kind of vest. I'm not sure if the currently trendy version fits into my very casual lifestyle at this point anyway, but the point is moot until I progress further with pant fitting. 

A Walk Through the Garden

I've spent a lot of time in the garden this spring.  Now that summer has officially arrived, it is too hot for me to be out but for the early morning hours.  Still I am happy.  I had a landscape crew do most of the heavy lifting, but the weeding, watering, and maintenance is all mine, plus ,loving a few things about, here and there.

 

It all makes me very happy.

I've spent more time sitting outside as well.  That is partly because I've been more dedicated to taking care of things, to getting my energy back, perhaps just to the mental shift that requires me to reclaim more of who I was once was.  I'm not ready to lose her, but she was embattled and energy lost is hard to reclaim.

Luckily I have a shady oasis in the mornings.

And I've been shifting planters around, brightening my spaces with flowers.  That took a little time, and has been a gradual process.  I had to add something new, then make sure I put in the time and energy to actually water everything and keep it happy, before adding more.  I have failed at this a lot in the past.  It has taken a lot of dedication to push myself to build my energy back up, but it was ether push forward or give up.  I'm all for pushing.

Plants still need to fill in but now instead of empty spaces and failure, I see hope and promise.

Yes there is still a lot of weeding, but now I feel motivated to keep up.  I've a nasty habit of seeing the things I haven't done instead of the things I have accomplished, but this year, I am looking more at the good, and working more to eliminate those nagging doubts, and those creeping stoloniferous weeds.

It is a nice mix of the established beds I put in years ago now, and the new.  The promise, and commitment, of trying to keep newly planted things alive.  The hope that is ever present, even in the vegetable garden, which I didn't eve really start planting until June, too late really, because I was too occupied elsewhere, but better than not starting it at all.

At least there will be a bumper crop of raspberries.

As well as flowers, and doorways, both new and familiar.