Chez Aristote

I did promise more. And more there certainly is to tell.

This was a particularly large, friendly sheep. One lamb even jumped into his food bucket to say hi to me: the sheep definitely gave me some love this weekend. You know, sheep get a bad rap, sheepish as they are, but seeing them in person, you see why they felt like throwing in their lot with us anthropoi, and why we’re lucky to have them along. James Herriot says, of all the young creatures on this earth, the gods gave the most grace to the lamb, and I think he is quite right: I saw one gambol, actually, even, just for fun; instantly lovable.

(Whenever I see I a lamb, (eta–or a young angora goat, which this is) I always think about Bert’s song about the lambies, here. I won’t bother you with its dialectic, today.)

Of course, I did also eat some lamb this weekend, which I feel was also appropriate. One of the things I like most about the MD S&W is that it forces you to understand and appreciate the whole animal; the fact that we use and know nearly every part, every age of it. Way to love an animal, all the way down. (Hiram has made me mutton before: stew with old sheep.) Far, far better than a thousand crazy chickens in a commercial barn somewhere swarming, freaking out, committing chicken suicide, and then one day, you accidentally eat one, which has to suck.

I also bought the perfect yellow yarn, which I had looked for Saturday to no avail. Sunday also provided certainty as to the make and model of the next spinning wheel I desire: I tried out the Majacraft (New Z) Rose, liked it fine, but then sat down at the Lendrum folding again, and Knew. Hard to believe that that can happen; but such was the account of the Yarn Barn’s man of practical wisdom. I guess it does make sense, in that, you sit in front of a thing that depends on its ratio, and you yourself are a ratio, and they need to be proportional. He was right–I’m a double treadle single drive kind of girl, and I need a tall, slightly awkward but taut wheel that goes fast to match myself.

So now I just have to sell the things I’ve made I’m not using, and soon, soon, I’ll have the appropriate wheel. Then my lace-spinning will have no bounds. (And the double treadle will keep my feet from becoming mismatched, like in the Grimm’s fairy tale.)

But have I mentioned the women part? I got to meet a lot of them: thank goodness. Pittsburgh knitters, Virginia knitters, lazy/godless knitters, even local knitters–it was a good weekend. I was brave; it was fun, and It made me notice: I haven’t hung around with a bunch of women for a while. Women are all right; I miss them. Ever since KJ moved to Nola and AT to Pb, it’s been kind of manly around here. (R. and I can’t do it all.) Which is fine; but I like my sexes to be moderated by each other. And women who know that making things is important: best w. of all.

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L to R: Barneswallow Farm’s Leicster Cross batt, Green Mountain Spinnery Alpaca Elegance in Dark Roast, Juanita Breidenbaugh’s merino tweed, Snow Star Farm’s sport in bluey purple.

Tea in foreground is Jamaican Rum, an old MD S&W favorite.

I also bought a Lendrum Folding Wheel in spirit–the nice man from the Yarn Barn of Kansas in the Main Exhibition Hall let me try out the new Louet Julia, talked me out of being interested the Louet Victoria, and found me a smaller flyer to put on the Lendrum, which had the orifice height that really matched my height. I felt like I paid back a little by answering questions by passers-by about spinning, and so forth. But it was extremely nice of them to help me out.

Their card.

Then, I actually won a friggin’ door prize from the Ravelry party Saturday night.

It’s really pretty. I was extremely excited to win anything, but this rocks fairly hardcore. They call it a clutch, and it holds knitting needles. It is by a company named Namaste, as I learn from the pretty leather label.

I had to show you a photo or two before heading off back to the festival, if I can make it out of the door. Stories and people-pictures to follow. I end with an amusing natural still life from paper-writing. Note the macaroni and cheese:

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You know, I just had a thought that gave me a lot of pleasure: not this fall, but next fall, it’ll be ten years since I first read Herodotus. Ten years! Since reading Herodotus! Since getting to know that peculiarly idiosyncratic, lovable, spoudaios man. Maybe getting older is worth it; a decade of knowing Herodotus. Surely not being 19, or 21, or 24, or even 25 anymore is worth that.

This is my first copy. Bought seconds after Beth snatched up the last non-naked-man edition. I now own four versions:this one, the brokenness of which the picture doesn’t, of course, do justice to; the same translation in hard back sans naked man, bought used from Olsson’s downtown; the Landmark version (which you can see the edge of in the picture, on the left) which I just received from Gill and Ian for my January birthday–you know, I’m beyond excited about the maps, but the translation isn’t as good as Grene’s; and a well beloved audio version, with some random old translation and a equally random crackly old man reading it. (This last claims H. named each of his nine books after the nine Muses, which I still don’t know is true or not.)

I finished my paper on Aquinas and the passions today–it turns out that pleasure is the closest passion, ontologically speaking, to a habit, as it’s an energeia of its own, but whatever– and I couldn’t think of anything better to do to calm down and celebrate than to walk five blocks to Dr. Granville’s, a mussels-fries-and-Belgian beer place on H St., pictured above. (It’s the one with the tallest spire.)

Then, drinking, I had my thought, but then I had to think about why it was so peculiarly pleasing. It’ll also be, for instance, ten years since reading the Republic, the Iliad and the Odyssey; the anniversary of the plays will come a little earlier, since I read them the summer before school began. I had read, basically, genre novels, novels, and plays, and the Apology, and I knew I might do better reading similar things before than anything else. (I also read Middlemarch that summer, and understood not perhaps a word of it.)

As much as everything was profound, affecting, life-turning, life-messing-up that I read that year, back in 1999, why is it a decade of Herodotus that gives so much simple, easy, calming pleasure? Consider this: my dad and I share two beloved writers in common: Bob Dylan and Plato. Really, that’s us. Oedipus and his dad both get pretty angry at dishonor pretty quickly; me and my dad, we listen to Blood on the Tracks and dream about the Soul, and all the images one might well make about it. We like thinking ironic poetry and poetical ironic philosophy. So it’s not as though Herodotus were me, were simply a part of my soul. I don’t think I read him easily. Yet there was something striking about him: his voice was a voice I knew I could hear, in its characteristic self, more easily than other voices through the muddle of translation; he was a Character, like an Oxford don or something, a weirdo, but one you could love for the right reasons.

I even wrote my Freshman essay on the man. (It was not well received.) The title of my document in the computer, though not the official title of the essay, was the same as this post, a Bob Dylan album title. Herodotus does bring it all back home; tonight, I read how when the Persian fleet was wrecked, one man became rich from simply picking up gold cups from the shore, although he later came to grief from other reasons. I also read, that with the 5,283, 220 troops of Xerxes, there were numbered-less numbers of women, eunuchs, baggage animals, and dogs. And that, of these many ten thousands of men, for handsomeness and size there was none worthier than Xerxes to hold that power.

(I like that one woman, third from the right. She knows what she’s doing.)

I guess it was at least obvious to me that Herodotus was telling important stories, stories like people I knew from the South told, and that it was vital to tell them, and that the telling brought it home to you–even if I didn’t know what any of them meant. Miss Brann used to ask me, I guess in seminar, and in my paper proposal, and also in my oral on the paper, whether there was some underlying unity, some reason why one story came willy-nilly after the next–or none, she said, at all. I guess, I imagine she was wondering whether he was another Plato, or Aristophanes, a poet with a clear, even harsh eye towards the ultimate meaning of his text. I think I can now say, his eye isn’t harsh; he has so many reservations about what real poetic unity would look like–think of his criticisms and re-tellings of Homer, for instance–and he wants to tell you what’s true about broken truth, about anecdotal truth. He’s not bringing it back home in a fully conscious, pointed, sharp, wordy way, but he does have a profound poetic sense of what stories are important and which aren’t, and as a serious reader, it’s your own human job, he thinks, to figure out why. Ms. B. pointed out my essay was really about what an anecdote is: now I know that’s not bad.

I have a year and four months before the ten years is up. When I finish reading, really reading, Books 7, 8, and 9, I’ll have read it all. And that will be something. Something better than me reading some book and instantly having a theory about it.

Again–ten years is a long time. But it is a light burden when I think of my long story of getting to know Herodotus–even a burden I would gladly make heavier, with further age to come.

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Does anyone remember Noel’s scarf?

Well, it’s famous now. A lot of people want to make it, too. And HB’s sweater, and Jenny’s cozy. Crazy. But cool. Fame is heady.

I used to think that Jenny, Beth, and I were probably the only people with our sort of taste, but know I know better. The world is filled with chicks our age, older chicks, younger chicks, who rock the Vintage Punk Modern. The world is thus a little brighter.

This picture includes things that are helpful when finite determinations of the understanding get you down.

(I just found out that when you google f.d. of the u., you get marxist junk. I’m going to try not to let that get me down.)

It’s paper writing week, and I may be close to being out of words.

I’ve been working on my own Swallowtail shawl, with Watershed in Logan Circle, some nice DC-based yarn. But I think I left it in my Aquinas classroom today. Hope it’s there tomorrow. It’s so beautiful, I worry for it.

So, I’m heading to Maryland Sheep and Wool, that fountain of all coolness, this weekend, and will be camping. It’ll be nice. I’ll bring back some pretty pictures of sheep.

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Perhaps you’ve heard how difficult it is to make one’s man a sweater. Well, it’s the truth. They have strong but nebulous likes and hatreds, and an underlying sense that their intuitions on this score are unified, despite the contradictory examples they give. Really, asking them to describe clothes pushes most of them into a fairly womanly dither.

Not this man, I gather. He knows his style, and is comfortable in it. He really is an icon of American fashion, without at all aiming to be so: he simultaneously made the cardigan super awesome, and super lame. Cardigans now must be worn with an edge of irony, yet still as a tribute.

Which was why I was so surprised why HB wanted this sweater. Back in the day, he was cool with irony in clothing, but working for Congress and subsequent law school have made him chary of it, at least on the outside. But the first sweater I made him was a failure on several levels–the most humorous of which is, it’s too warm. So I set to work buying vintage patterns from Ebay, and we went through them all, trying to find one both of us could agree on. This one, finally, was deemed “fine” by the prospective wearer, and so I set to work to interpret and modify those terse vintage directions. (The armholes, among other things, turned out to be a bit wonky.)

Now, the frown you see in this picture is not representative of his overall praise and blame of the sweater–in winter, he pretty much wore it every day. He says that cardigans are better for him, since they’re easier to take on and off; more convenient for temperature shifts; to his credit, he doesn’t mind scratchy, which a hell of a lot of the gentlemen do; indeed, it’s ultimately better for him, as this yarn, because of its weight and tensile strength, will last far, far longer than soft yarns that pill and stretch. Heck, one lucky child might even inherit it.

But to the point of it all: because of Mr. Rogers’s Sweater Day, his 80th birthday this past February 27th, HB’s own sweater got a little more praise and fame, and I have decided to roll out the pattern, both in its original, public domain form, and in a modified version of my own, both quite for free. So, ta da, and enjoy. Feel free to ask any questions you have about the pattern!

PS: Shout-out to Tr., who let me recommend a blazer and shoes for him the other day. You are doing well, sir!

Tags: Knitting, TodayIhadasandwich // 5 Comments »

The pope-given holiday this past week allowed me time to cut out a dress for Croquet. Surely planning what to make for a particular event is the most pleasant sort of clothing-planning of all. The specificity of an event’s place and time, its magnitude, what Jenny will be wearing–all this makes for miles of pleasant deliberation.

But I took a longer time to make it; in fact, I dawdled.

I started to get excited about the geometry of the thing. This is the most complicated fabric in terms of pattern I’ve used, and that leisure I had allowed me to believe I might give some successful thought to making the pattern repeats line up. (My Physics class’s failure to understand the infinite gave me some Euclid hubris, perhaps.)

No darts on this pattern, New Look 6723, but rather princess seams, making motif-matching rather more difficult. (See how the curve of the middle front piece which I’m holding above has to be sewn to the non-symmetrical curve of the side piece? Oh, visual imagination, you are getting better, but you have yet much to learn.) Hiram helped me think through a few geometrical conclusions about where the pattern repeats and the directions of the flowers would end up, given how the fabric was folded, and how the pattern would reverse itself on its underside, though I don’t think we quite got to the bottom of it. (There’s always an extra reverse involved in cutting out for sewing that I think I failed to communicate.)

This is how that seam ended up:

At least the circles were on the sides with the squares in the middle. That was the main thing.

Also note how the pattern mostly matches up around the zipper in the back; and that although the motif in the bodice to the skirt matches in the front, on the back it was offset by half, which isn’t terrible, but not perfect. (Nina Garcia saying “impeccable” is still echoing in my mind.)

Overall, quite pleased, though everyone and his brother was wearing Charming Print. What caught my eye was the black or white dresses with interesting tucks or embellishment, mainly beyond my skill. Perhaps next year–this year’s dress was far beyond last year’s in difficulty of pattern and overall polished-ness; I can hope.

My Forecast is nearly done! What a pleasure it was to talk to the actual designer of such a brilliant pattern. (Thank you again, Stefanie! And god bless Knitting Daily.)

Tags: Knitting, Sewing // 14 Comments »

Because her lovely sweater won a Knitting Daily Readers’ Choice Award!

It is called the Cable-Down Raglan, and was originally published in IK Spring 2007, but now it is Free, along with the other four winners, in an e-book available till May 14th. Thank you, Knitting Daily!

Stefanie is a knitting designer of great fame, and a personal favorite. Think the fairly iconic Orangina, from her site glampyreknits, or the startling, impressively original Forecast from Knitty, or perhaps the charming book Fitted Knits. When I first found her designs on the internet, I thought, now here’s the real thing. She is a master of the top-down raglan and of the use of texture and stitch patterns for shaping and visual interest.

And I actually was lucky enough to get to pepper her with questions, thus:

~words of Stefanie in bold~

Congratulations on this sweater!

Thank you for your congratulations! I love this sweater and I think it’s my favorite of my designs, but I’m so surprised to find myself in the top 5 designers of IK’s first 10 years! I can’t express what an honor this is for me. This was my first design in IK, and I feel honored just to be included in the magazine!

Well, it’s so deserved. It’s so striking, very original, and I love the way the cables organically mimic the body’s lines.

I really appreciate that a lot of your designs and their embellishments do this–sometimes it’s hard to think of shapes that aren’t just plain-geometrical-abstract, but you seem to consistently come up with things that manage to do this very elegantly. Was there any new or specific inspiration for this one?

I designed this sweater after just finishing Fitted Knits, so I had shaping-by-using-a-different-stitch-pattern on the brain. I had used ribbing at the waist as shaping in several patterns in the book, and cables are just more elaborate ribbing, so it seemed logical to try them as a shaping element. So, pretty much a progression of what I had started with the book.

(Here’s a picture of Stefanie in the Boatneck Bluebell Sweater from said book.)

Similarly, you’re so good at finding colors and silhouettes that have a visual Pop–where do you like to look to be inspired?

I’m just flashy. I love color and I love to play with fit and shape. I have a hard time figuring out exactly what it is that inspires me. If could put my finger on that…I’d just do whatever the inspiring thing is all the time.

Well, I hear that. Is there any sort of art you prefer, or place you walk to first in a strange museum?

The first place I like to go in the museum is the gift shop. I go right to the glass counter where they keep all of the jewelry and little objects that the local artists have made and are selling. Then I go to the textile exhibits, and then to the paintings. I like to start with the most modern paintings and work my way back in time.

I’m also so appreciative of the fashionable-but-not-trendy look your sweaters have–are there any particular designers you like?

I really like Marc Jacobs, but I haven’t followed any new designers in a while… this is a hard one for me.

Yeah, I have to admit the only reason I would ask at all is that I’m a big Project Runway and Tim Gunn fan; otherwise I probably would have continued to have little interest or knowledge in the actual world/business of modern fashion.

I LOVE Project Runway!

Sweet. Any particular likes? (I liked Jeffrey from S03, although I could never get my sister to admit that yellow plaid couture dress was cool.)

OK, I really liked Jeffrey, too. I forgot his real name, we just called him “Neck Tattoo” around our house. He really made the most beautiful-trashy clothes. I also was so impressed with the winner of the first season, taking the time to include knits in his runway show! That was amazing to see.

Yeah, I could have sworn I even saw a mitered square.

By the way, how on earth did you learn to pose in your pictures so well?

We take SO many at a time, then choose the ones that look the best. My husband is an artist, so he has an eye for these things.

(Readers, here is one of my favorites, Camellia. )

You were early in blogging, early in designs on the internet. How does it feel, looking back over the internet-knitting transformation/explosion/kablooie that now exists?

The resources we have online now are so incredible. I can find not only the definition of any knitting technique, but probably find a video of someone demonstrating it! It’s really amazing. But what’s more amazing is the number of people who still believe that if something exists only on the internet, it isn’t real.

Quite.

What is your PhD in specifically, again?

Earth and Planetary Science.

Rock. I feel as though good old Virginia Woolf, among others, would be proud of your ability to have both a science career, more traditionally manly, and a clothes-designing career, more traditionally womanly. I was wondering about how you think about your knitting, how it relates to your life as a woman, how you feel it balances (or doesn’t) with the scientific side.

Knitting gives me a very definite feeling of connection with the women who came before me. Knitting is something that has been done in my family for generations, and my maternal grandmother knit almost as obsessively as I knit myself. I don’t really have philosophy of knitting. Or if I do, I haven’t really worked it out to the point that it’s clear to me as a definable thing. I like to just cast on and see what the yarn wants to be. Many of my top-down sweaters have a relatively plain yoke, and then the ‘action’ happens on the sleeves and body, after I’ve worked with the yarn a little bit. I think knitting has been a good balance to the science. I mainly studied in the laboratory, so there was a lot of , “what happens if I do *this?* Or mix this with *that,*” etc., and I do the same in my knitting.

Well, way to combine intuition and the scientific method. Take that, Mssrs. Descartes et Bacon.

I really think that the processes are similar…designing experiments and designing garments. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Taking careful notes so that future experimenters can reproduce the same result…

Do you have a favorite scientist of old? (I can’t decide between Newton and Huygens.)

When I was an undergraduate, I took a Women in Science class and studied Florence Bascom. She was the first woman to earn a PhD in Geology from Johns Hopkins University. She was into mineralogy and petrology. And later, just by weird coincidence, I ended up at Johns Hopkins studying similar stuff. SO I feel a special connection with her. But, yes, without Newton, we’d never know why the apple falls!

(A nice neckline on Florence Bascom, there.)

I’m glad to hear about the Mission Falls DK and SWTC upcoming patterns I read about. And that cover photo of Glam Knits on Amazon looks awesome, can’t wait to see the whole thing.

Er, any more hints or pictures?

The garments have just gone into photography, so I don’t even get a preview yet! As soon as I can leak a little something, I will, though!

Brilliant. What’s its general aesthetic like, and the types of garments? I’m really pleased to see a dress on the cover; it looks very wearable. There aren’t that many dress patterns out there, either!

There are several tunic-dresses in the book. Most of the garments are knit top-down, but there ARE some with set-in sleeves, one is knit in one piece from the back hem to the front and all of the details are picked up and knit on. I’ve got one skirt, a couple of handbags, a lacy scarf, and the camel tweed sweater that I wore in my author photo for the first book. A couple of coats… I think it’s a good mix of quick-knit and more labor-intensive knits.

Ha ha, set-in sleeves. (The top-down raglan makes shoulder seams quite unnecessary.) Well, that sounds really exciting.

Thank you so much for talking to me!

You’re welcome! Thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, go look at the other winning designers on the KD Blog tour, gentle readers;

Monday, April 14: Sandi Wiseheart interview on Smoking Hot Needles

Tuesday, April 15: Norah Gaughan interview on Lolly Knitting Around

Wednesday, April 16: Kate Gilbert interview on Moth Heaven

Friday, April 18: Evelyn Clark interview on The Panopticon

Tags: Knitting // 6 Comments »

I ran down to Eastern Market before Aquinas class this morning, to buy the appropriate crochet hook to finish my Lotus. A nice chat with sensible women at the store provided good contrast to clever Thomistic arguments I heard and made later that afternoon.

Back home, I persuaded Sister to take my picture.

It actually looks nice over my class-going wear.

Delaying Sister’s tv-watching further, I made her take another shot, to show without modest shirt.

You know, I thought the neckline would be more flattering on me, as these Tudor-esque styles have been in the past. But perhaps the no sleeves spoils the silhouette? For instance, consider Thomas More’s daughter Cecily–certainly the sleeves make it more graceful. But maybe it’s just that the shoulder lines are pointing in for a triangle, instead of out like on Mary Tudor here, and that’s what my disproportionately small shoulders can’t handle. Hmm. I’m not ready to give up on the line, however.

Also managed to weave in the ends on my unmercerized-cotton-shawl-of-great-length.

Hi there pretty tulips! The shawl goes all the way down below my knees, when I’m standing up straight and have left equal right. No doubt it will eventually become warm enough to wear it to Nationals Stadium, its intended venue.

And I spun. But didn’t finish the second skein, because Hiram stole my stool for his brewing.

I suppose the eventual beer will make up for it, though. I plied together March Spunky Club and March Zen String, as they were the exact same colors. Some serious color-zeitgeist, which one wouldn’t think would apply to colors, necessarily.

For Nate and Hayden, I will throw out that I learned what the four medieval/Galen-type temperaments are today, learning the whole truth about yellow and black bile. There’s only one temperament that gets called Bilious, the Choleric one (Ha!), which is the yellow, and of course the angry one; black bile goes with Melancholy, then blood with Sanguine, which is hopeful, phlegm with Phlegmatic, which is staid. (So we were both right, as they are both called bile in Greek, but biliousness eventually meant only anger.) Aquinas pointed out that spiritedness passes more readily to the next generation, while specific desires hardly ever continue. (Isn’t that cool? Like, the shoe maker can’t get his son to like making shoes in the same way he does, but you can probably count on Sir Harry Hotspur’s children being pretty darn spirited.)

Tags: Knitting, Spinning, TodayIhadasandwich // 7 Comments »

The story I know about American cooking comes from Julia Child’s retrospective introduction to the 40th Anniversary edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Large, largely unseasoned, platters of beef, next to sculpted marshmallow salad in aspic. Casseroles that called for a potato chip topping. Well, these last two images rightly induce horror in you, gentle reader, and I was lucky to largely avoid these canned-food-concoctions as my Dad, the cook in the house, had a far more Cajun and French aesthetic, seemingly from nature. But every now and then my Mom would cook, and as she claims to be less “creative” than Dad, she fell back on her 4-H and Pirate’s Pantry favorites.

Such as Cheesy Squash Casserole. Submitted to pictured cookbook by the wife of the lead singer from Dad’s band in high school. Which casserole is really really good. To eat.

What I want to stress is that this is the exception to the Betty Crocker rule that Julia Child talks about. (I still can’t smell a tuna melt without feeling nauseated.) This casserole rocks, and let’s face it, casseroles are easy ways to satisfy those cranky housemates/relations by blood or marriage. (An aspect of cooking Julia Child herself is always sensitive to.) And these Cheez-It crackers (substitute your favorite off-brand) aren’t really that bad for you–of course no dietary fiber, but no trans fat, and some protein. And so I give the recipe to the world, and especially KJ, because I know she will appreciate it.

I excerpt from an email from said mother, in which I have requested the recipe:

‘Of course you can. It comes from the kitchen of Joyce Miller, who will be
this year’s Queen of Barataria.

1 16 OZ. BAG FROZEN YELLOW SQUASH OR 4 MEDIUM SIZED FRESH ONES (BETTER)
STEAM THE SQUASH IN A LITTLE WATER UNTIL TENDER; DRAIN

SAUTE THESE INGREDIENTS WITH 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER IN A SKILLET FOR A FEW
MINUTES:
2 STALKS CELERY, CHOPPED FINELY
1/2 CUP GREEN ONIONS, CHOPPED (*I make it with whatever onion I have on hand, though green onions are super good.)

ADD DRAINED SQUASH TO THE ABOVE. YOU MAY WISH TO SEASON WITH SALT AND PEPPER
HERE. (*Tony’s, that is. Jenny, be sure to put enough in. HB, not too much.)

STIR IN CRUSHED CHEESE NIPS; (2 20Z. BOXES) RESERVE SOME FOR TOP. (*Really, more like one box for me)
8 OZ. SOUR CREAM
1 EGG, BEATEN (*If you’re making it a little bigger, I’d use two eggs.)
3-4 OZ. GRATED SHARP CHEDDAR CHEESE (*Left out of still life as it ruined the balance.)

POUR INTO CASSEROLE AND TOP WITH SOME CHEESE AND CHEESE NIPS. BAKE AT 350
FOR ABOUT 30 MINUTES. ENJOY.

Trust me. You will.

Edit 4/8:  Some nice key phrases from Amazon’s Pirate’s Pantry page:

by Junior League of Lake Charles (Author) “How do you make the initial Roux required in so many Creole and Acadian dishes?…” (more)
Key Phrases: Lake Charles, Cool Whip, Tablespoons Worcestershire (more…)

Tags: Cooking // 5 Comments »

But first, a new possession.

Capezio leather T-strap character shoes. I finally threw out my first pair, bought in 1997 for theater camp in Boston, which lasted me through the trials and tribulations of The Waltz Committee in college. But the insoles were crackling into pieces, the heels worn down, and the arches broken (though some dancers prefer this last, not me)–so time to say goodbye. These are very promising; they’re surprisingly comfortable. The old ones took a long time to break in, but these may be ready sooner.

Progress, the inevitable movement of: I’ve been sewing on things, but nothing’s finished.

Vogue 2902, in muslin and corduroy. Now, Sister would have you believe that these two colors will not make a good dress, but I beg to differ. The cream and deep black are very striking next to each other, and little does she know, I have some plans for embroidering something around the 360 degree skirt. I sort of want to do some Jacobean-esque crewel embroidery with all my Appleton Crewel; or, I could cut out circles of black and do some appliqué. The latter is faster and safer, so we’ll see.

A very old wool skirt of mine, from the Lake Charles, Louisiana Goodwill, which was basically a rectangle that was gathered at the top with a band sewn over the gather. To be honest, the band was always a little small, and the very dirndl-skirt was never that flattering, but this fabric is so nifty (and reminiscent of a tablecloth we had when I was 7) I could never bear to throw it away. Following out links on other sewing-chicks’ blogs, I realized I was sitting on beautiful fabric which could easily be changed into an awesome skirt. So I started playing around with pleats, as you can see, and it is well on its way to becoming an a-symmetrical pleated wool skirt. What stopped it from being finished already is where to put more pleats in the back so that the waist will be small enough, and the question of what fabric will form the new band. Stay tuned.

Lotus Tank-to-be. So close. Working on the left shoulder strap.

Accidentally-on-purpose. I do think it looks good, and the extra fabric on one side does keep it from being a poodle skirt, but the whole thing was such a failure to think through the geometry of this. Laziness on my part. I sewed the ribbon on, put in the zipper, tried it on, remembered that I had wanted to make it much shorter, but had spent much too long on getting the straight ribbon to go nicely around the curve to rip the ribbon and cut the bottom. ( I was also worried about crushing the velvet.) So I ripped out the yoke, made the cut that my illustration illustrates:

I may put ribbon on the opposite side of the flounce. Also, must fix the lining of the yoke, and cut threads.

A final thought: a nice Aristotelian distinction for you. A better way to translate the ”rational and irrational soul’ division at the end of book I in the N. Ethics: Speechless and Speechifying. Much more literal, accurate, if slightly Country.

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