Endings and Beginnings

Tags

cats, clothing, politics, SCRAP Tri-Cities, sewing

Happy bears make everything better.

How’s everybody doing?

It’s been a supremely weird, discombobulating couple of weeks, hasn’t it?

I actually wrote a long, long post about the election the other day, but then decided it was so “inside baseball” that it was probably interesting to nobody but me.  I felt better having written it, and that’s enough.

All I really want to say about the election, and our rather uncertain future, is this:  President Obama was on a conference call the other day with some Democratic activists and he told them that they have until Thanksgiving to mourn, then it’s time to get to work.

I sent a card to Hillary Clinton to thank her for her lifetime of service to the country and apologize for how she has been repaid for that service.  I’ve told Chrissa and Rachael at SCRAP that I won’t be volunteering there for a while.  My partner and I are going to sign up to work at Second Harvest; I’m also looking for a local immigrant organization that needs volunteers. And, even though I’m one of those people who really hate telephones, I made my first political call today to Paul Ryan to express my support for Obamacare.  My goal is to make one call a day.  I’ve also put myself on a news diet, just for my own mental health.  I’ve been a political junkie for some years now, but I need to change how I engage with politics–less time spent reading about horrible things that I have limited power to change, much more activism to hopefully help change what I can.  #ImStillWithHer  #StrongerTogether

And, while I’m doing that, thank goodness there’s sewing, and cats, and fall weather, and delicious food, and all the pleasures of life.  The American Thanksgiving is coming up this Thursday, and my honey and I will eat too much at the buffet, take a walk in the cold, and then come home to mulled wine, an afternoon nap, and sleepy cats on the bed with us.

On the sewing front, much has been happening here.  I finished both the vest and the red fuzzy jacket, though I haven’t gotten around to taking pictures of them yet.  I have reservations about both, but I probably need to actually wear them out of the house before I decide what I think.

In the meantime, I’ve started work on my partner’s cycling jersey, which then promptly came to a halt when I realized I’m out of narrow elastic and the zipper I bought for the jersey isn’t long enough. 

Also, my plan for the extremely fabulous corduroy has changed again.

I’ve had such a hard time committing to a pattern for this, I think because it’s such a great fabric and I don’t want to waste it.  I love jumpers because I can layer them and change how they look, but I wanted something really interesting and non-frumpy for this one.

So I got this at Joann’s on Saturday:

Looks like I’m finally going to have to learn to pattern match.  😛

I’ll have to lengthen it a bit, but I should have enough fabric to do that.

This dress is lined, and that’s a good thing, because that corduroy is going to fray like crazy.  I went to the stash, not expecting to find anything suitable that would be long enough, and found this:

No, not the fabric model–look at all that color around him!

This is a really unusual cotton that I bought at a quilting store years ago.  It’s magenta at one selvage, then shades to purple, blue, green, and finally dark gray at the other selvage.  I had figured I’d use it as a quilt backing, but I think it’ll make a cool lining for my cool ’60s style jumper.

But before I do that, I simply MUST MUST MUST do something with this:

MUST.

This Hello Kitty remnant has simply GOT to get combined with some other fleece pieces–I’ve got light pink, dark pink, orange, white, and black–to become a pullover.  I’m not sure why, but I’ve been dreaming of colorblocked fleece (and grabbing fleece remnants at SCRAP) since the middle of last summer, and fleece season is finally here!  And I really need me some cute and colorful and silly right about now.

So I’m hoping to get the cycling jersey done this week, then get to the Hello Kitty pullover.

Hope all is well with you folks.  Back soon with project pictures.

STH