Author: stenaros

45RPM: Cathy’s Clown

Where I match a song to a specific memory.

 I grew up singing.  Not in a choir, or formally, but just whenever. Around the house, walking down the street, driving, in the shower, doing the dishes, all of those are good times for a song. Whenever a song hits me, I usually sing it.  One of the best compliments I ever received was a friend who mused, “I always thought musicals were unreal, all those people bursting into song at every moment.  Then I met you.”  My singing voice isn’t particularly good, but it’s fairly on pitch, plus I can remember a lot of words and I’m very enthusiastic.  My friends in high school were wonderful in so many ways, but I think my favorite thing about them was that they too burst into song at random moments.  One sunny afternoon we were just sitting around downstairs when suddenly Cindy started beating out a rhythm on her leg.  Enough of us recognized it as the intro to “Cathy’s Clown” and we hit our first note and were off and running.  “Don’t want your luh-uh-uh-uh-ove, any-more…”  We sang through the song, with Cindy taking a guitar arpeggio here and there.  Our rendition was good enough to bring my mother from the laundry room, smiling at our crazy youthful theatrics.  We were smiling too.

Art Building looking metal-tastic


There are intriguing spaces left in the metal facings.  I’m wondering if those will be taken up with “pops” of color.
Interestingly, there is now a sign with the artist’s rendition of the building, but it’s rather inaccessible, and plus, I’ve waited this long, why see a picture of the finished product now?

In other news, Matt’s mother was visiting and she wondered what the large tower thing that has now been mostly eclipsed by the building.  You can just see it peeking up on the left.  She took a picture and emailed it to her partner.  Et voila!, she had an answer.  It’s a long range microwave relay tower. It carries voice and data for the phone companies.  Now I know too.  Thanks Linda and Pat!

Pressing the facings, joining bodice and skirt

Here you can see how I used an improper marking pen on a previous project and stained my tailor’s ham.  Here you can also see that the tailor’s ham comes in handy (or ham-dy?) for pressing this dress.
 
Here you can see the facings flipping out on the arm holes, completely ruining the effect of the cool sleeves.  I’ll show them what’s what, just you wait.

At this point, aside from facing wrangling, I just need to get Julie to mark the hem and then sew the hem and then I’m done.  Ahead of schedule, even.

Tacking down the facings.


The bodice has facings along the neckline and the arms.  I am making tiny stitches in the facings and sewing the seam to the facings, to encourage the facing to roll the right way.  Sentinel is helping and watching a movie with me.

Even after I did this, the arm facings would not behave, constantly turning out.  I ended up doing what Gertie did and carefully sewing the facings to the underlining.  That worked well, because of the two layers of fabric, but I’m not sure what I would have done if I had only one layer of fabric.  I’ve made a not on my pattern to underline, should I want to make this dress again.

NWCTC’s The Seagull

This was my first foray to NWCTC without Matt, who was busy with a race today.
 
This was also my first Chekhov play and it did not disappoint.  It was interesting to note how many roles there were for actors past the age of 30 in this play.  I feel as though this is something I don’t encounter very often in theater.

As usual, the acting was astounding.  Jason Maniccia and Ben Buckley were good as the playwrights.  And, as usual, it was the women whose performances were searing.  Jane Bement Geesman crackled as Irina, the mother no one would ask for. Clara-Liis Hillier and Brenan Dwyer sparkled as Masha and Nina, women who seemed to embody one half of the tragedy/comedy mask, at least for the first act.

I love when plays make me gasp aloud and this one did.  I’m already looking forward to NWCTC’s Season of Kings.

Sewing the pockets and skirt


One of the best things about Collette patterns is that she usually includes pockets in her skirts.  Here are mine.  I’ve always thought pockets laid out like that look rather dirty.  Thank goodness they will be tucked away where no one can see.  It occurs to me that right now we’ve got a sort of external genitalia thing going on, but as soon as I sew this up, we will revert to an internal genitalia thing.  But maybe that’s just me.

Three sentence movie reviews: Friday Night Lights Season II

O! Season two, you abruptly ended when Tim Riggins was in full-on wooing mode.  I found this season to be much more DRAMATIC than the first one, which I did not enjoy so much.  However, they laid such a firm foundation in season one, I just kept coming back for drama-fest season two.

Cost:  free from library (though I think I had to pay a few days worth of fines)
Where watched:  at home with Matt.

Crazy Hair Day.

She’s pretty much the winner of crazy hair day. (not that we ever have “winners” at my school).
Might I remind you the K/1 classes are studying birds?

I twisted my hair up into 12 individual twists making nobs on my head. But I forgot to take a picture. I was a bit horrified when–despite the lack of product and my completely dry hair–I had a huge head of hair when I pulled them out at the end of my day. My hair likes to follow orders.

Vintage Cakes’ Cherry Chip Cake. Also Chocolate Ice Cream.

I’ve been busy this weekend making ice cream.
 
And a beautiful Cherry Chip Cake to celebrate the end of school.

It’s Cherry Chip cake with a thin spread of ganache between layers and then frosted with a cherry buttercream frosting.

The cookbook author developed it because she missed the Cherry Chip cake mixes from her childhood.  I too enjoyed those and was happy to try this cake.  I assumed that the Cherry Cake mixes were no more, however when buying ingredients at New Seasons, the cashier told me that the Cherry Chip mix is still made and that New Seasons carries it.  It was rather deflating news.  I still made the cake from scratch anyway.