Category: All (-ish)

Fort Leavenworth

My visit commences!  After a smooth flight, a trip through the Kansas City airport, (which I hadn’t seen since 1995), Heather (who I haven’t seen in the flesh since 1997) picked me up and we picked up some barbecue for a taste-off.  Not surprisingly, the place with the sauce in the prepackaged pouches did not win.  Also not surprisingly, the sauce without so much vinegar was my favorite.  Although that place didn’t have pulled pork.  Anyway, yum!
We went for a walk.  Here’s where Heather and her family live on Fort Leavenworth.  They have one half of the building.  It was pretty awesome, that house.

Most of the older houses have informative signs telling you how long they’ve been around.

Nice detail here.

There was a lot of brick, which I was a fan of.  And a lot of good detail, like on this porch.

And a lot of zoom things like this bird’s nest, which can be seen in the above photo at the top of the right-hand column.

The original wall of the fort, with rifle slot for defense.

It curved, that original wall.

We saw a fox!

My zoom was a little shaky, but there he is.

There are a lot of historical markers.  I also like this photo, because both Heather (on the right) and myself (in shadow) are in it.

Patrick and E.

The mighty Missouri.

Back side of the chapel, which I liked because there are three kinds of building material used on this end: stone, cinder block and wood.

More good detail.

And this.

There were a lot of flags, not just US flags, but from all over.

Big houses.

This is the commander’s house.  Faaaannnncccy!

These cannons have never been fired.

Nice clock tower with this building.

For some reason, the thickness of this drainage grate fascinated me.

This is the “beehive”. More on that in a later post.

Good window detail.

This is Heather’s porch.

Flag and tree.

Just tree.
Digital cameras are a good way to entertain a youngster.  I would take the picture and the show her the image.

Random song. fun. without Autotune

I love fun.  Despite the fact they have a stupid name that constantly causes confusion.
Example:
 “I’m going to the fun. concert tomorrow.”
“Oh good.  Who’s playing?”
“fun.”
“Is that a band?”
“Yes, they are called fun.  But with no capital ‘f’ and a period at the end after the ‘n’.”
“Huh.  Never heard of them.”

But they have, of course.  That “We Are Young” song was everywhere for an entire summer and “Some Nights” took over the following autumn.  People have heard them, they just don’t know it.

Their first album, “Aim and Ignite” was full of quirky and well, fun songs with non-standard pop music instruments (trombones anyone?).  I loved it a lot. They reminded me of Queen in their playfulness.  So I wasn’t really that excited when their second album “Some Nights” seemed to have been taken over by the Autotune.  It was out of control, espeically on later tracks.(What would be “side two” if we were still listening to albums)  At one point while I was listening to “Some Nights” the boyfriend yelled from the back of the house, “Are you listening to Autotune the News?”  Not the greatest thing to be confused with.

Where was all the great singing I heard on the first album?

So I was happy to find the above video taken by a cell phone wielding college student at the University of Rochester on October 2, 2011. It’s the same song from the album, but minus the Autotune.   I’m hoping their next album will be more of what came first and less of what came second.

Also, here’s my favorite song from “Aim and Ignite”  It’s chock full of lyrics (unlike the catchy-but-overly-repetitive “We Are Young”) it seems to be about the lead singer’s parents, and is very sweet.

Pop Up Project Finished. Capes

I’m visiting Heather in Kansas and she is the mother of two girls.  So I used those blue satin sheets from Goodwill and made capes.  (Don’t worry, I laundered the material before I got to sewing).
The pattern (found online)was a circle skirt, essentially. You cut two circles (four in my case) drafted a Peter Pan collar, sandwiched everything together, sewed, turned, and then stitched around the outside.

I bought buttons you could cover so they had matching closures and embroidered a monogram in each one.  I’m really happy with how these turned out.

Guess who wants to monogram everything she owns now?  Me! I see where Laverne had the right idea about that particular topic.

Here are my templates. I found a font I liked, blew up the letters in Word to the right large size, and then printed and sliced out the black part.  
And guess who still has an entire blue satin sheet left?  Did you guess me again?  You are correct.  I have notions of a circle skirt with a monogram.

Random songs from Guardians of the Galaxy

Aside from being a charming and funny film full of misfits, Guardians of the Galaxy has an outstanding soundtrack, as my postcrossing blogging friend pointed out in her post.

My favorites:
Escape
I can’t not like this song, even as cheesy and stupid as it is.  Plus it takes place in Boston!  Or thereabouts.  Heather introduced me to this song back in high school.

Hooked on a feeling
Much like Kathleen (the aforementioned postcrossing blogging friend) I love this song.  It was used very effectivly in the trailer for the movie and in the movie itself, it is playing when we see our heroes being disinfected while in jail.  (read: the beefcake Chris Pratt scene).  I love the horns (the #1 way to get me to like a song) and how many different parts you can choose to sing.

Moneta Dress. Finito!

Man, this was a sewing win.  Big time.

I’m 39 years old with a BMI that puts me in the obese range.  I dress nicely when I am out and about because I think we should all dress nicely when out and about.  Still, after a certain age/weight, a female is pretty much invisible.
Not in this dress. The first day I wore it I got seven compliments.  SEVEN COMPLIMENTS!  From people I encountered along the way, from random passers-by in the street, seven people told me how much they loved this dress.  And I love it too.  The cut and the colors.  And the compliments.

Moneta Work Uniforms. Tricks with the clear elastic, attaching it to the skirt.

I found it helpful to mark the stitching line on the top of the skirt where the elastic will be sewn. It was too hard for me to try and manage stretching elastic and keeping track of where the elastic should be sewn on the fabric.  Drawing in that stitching line gave me a guide for this.
In the Moneta sew along, the instructions are to divide the elastic into five parts.  I think that is fine if you have a relatively small waist, but mine is not and so I had to stretch the elastic over very long distances, which resulted in some uneven elastic attachment in the first dress I made.  So I did the five marks and then found the middle of each of the five segments and marked them.  I found the middle of the official anchoring points and marked them. 

So here we see I have less length to stretch the elastic.  This was quite successful.

I also found it easier to not sew the elastic in a circle before pinning it to the skirt.  Here’s one end here.

Then I just pinned the other end over the first, matching my ending places.  This way I could start at that point and do some firm back stitching to join the circle of elastic right to the skirt.

I have no idea if this is a correct technique, but I found it easiest to stretch my segment out so the elastic pulled tight against the fabric and then plop my fingers down on the sewing machine, keeping the elastic taut.  I then sew until my fingers hit the presser foot and repeated the stretching process.  Because I have more than five points of contact between elastic and skirt, this worked well.

Postcards from Kansas and Kansas

These are from H., who is luring me to Kansas.  Here are some Oregon Trail immigrants, which is fitting since those immigrants likely started their trip in Missouri, not far from where I am visiting.  So I’m doing the reverse commute.  But in an airplane, not a covered wagon.  I don’t have THAT much vacation time.

And here is one of the sights at Fort Leavenworth that I might get to see.

Moneta Work Uniforms. Tricks

Oh, Wonder Tape. I love you so.  My days of fabric slipping around when I try to hem are over!  I used Wonder Tape on all hems in this project: neck, sleeves, skirt.  It’s one of those supplies I might have eschewed back in the day (why do you need this when you can use pins and do without it) but now that I’m an old, jaded sewist, I’ll take anything that makes some regular task easier.