Category: All (-ish)

Laurel Dress. Making more bias tape and a setback.

I concluded I did not have enough bias tape to complete this project, so I made some more.  Matt helped.  I have good spacial relations, but not good enough to be 100% confident that I could make the bias tape exactly as before with those stripes.  

Also, I discovered my iron has sprung  a leak.  I store it on top of the file cabinet when I’m not sewing and I discovered a wet, rusty mess below the file cabinet.  This involved moving the file cabinet and cleaning under it.

Then I propped it up on bars of soap so air would circulate under and dry the bottom, without leaving rust stains.

I felt very smart to think of this solution.

Should there be any future reference needed, this is the way you slice your stripy bias tape to get bias tape to come out vertical.

Here’s my new bias tape maker!  It’s the yellow thing on the right, nosed against the iron.

Here’s my good helper.

And here I am sewing together sleeves.  You can see where the iron drips.

45RPM: Both Hands Ani DiFranco

Where I match a song to specific memory

 It was perhaps inevitable that I would come across Ani DiFranco’s music in college.  It was the 90s, it was a women’s college, there were a bunch of girls from everywhere in the states, so DiFranco and I were fated to meet.  In this case, she showed up on a soundtrack of  a play my friend had written.  Our college was small and fostered the belief that we could do anything.  So when two women said, “Let’s each write and produce a one-act and then direct it” that’s exactly what happened.  Well, nearly.  The other women didn’t write her own one-act, but she directed an already written one.  My friend wrote and directed, because that’s the kind of woman she was.

I was enchanted by this friend: she was from Canada and had a father in the Air Force, so she had lived many different places.  She was intelligent and a strong feminist, and with a long-time boyfriend.  Strangely, she seemed just as interested in me.  Her play was the first time I saw the words of a person I knew come to life, and realized with a jolt how much of their own lives writers use in their work.  This song always reminds me of her, not only because it was used in the one-act, but also because after we left school, she disappeared, not answering the letters I wrote to her.  It turned out she had, without telling me, applied for the same full-ride scholarship to a transfer college and got it, leaving me high and dry.  I heard about her coup from a friend.  We never spoke after college.

Postcard from China, the Netherlands & China

Here’s a pretty one from China.  One of the things I list in my Postcrossing profile is that I collect quotes.  Here’s what this postcrosser said in response:
“You said that you want to collect quotes.  So I tell you, China to foreign postcard is 5 yuan (RMB)”
I giggled, I must admit.  I’ll have to revise that word to “quotations”

This is from Maya, who sends this lovely view of her hometown.  She lives with her dog and six cats.

This is a beautiful place in Beijing that used to belong to the Royal Family.

Postcard from Virginia

Thank goodness!

Although message written on the back of the postcard laments that it keeps snowing in Virginia.  I took a picture of the obverse, because this postcard got rather damp in its travels, washing out the ink.  Perhaps it was snowed on?  Also, I was intrigued by the stamp cancellation.  Who knew ball point pen and odd circles had become a thing with the USPS?

They started building that building again.

It’s been on ice for several years.  The last time I posted about it was in this post in 2009.  Soon after, the recession waylaid the plans to get it built, something about not enough occupancy so the bankers pulled the funding.  But it’s started again and this monolith is emerging out of the hole.

Card from Finland

Is this not lovely?  It was a cold and rainy (as well as grumpy) day when I received it and it immediately cheered me up.

Inside, along with the temperature and a picture of the weather, it says:
Greetings from Finland!
I liked to paint card to you with acrylic colours. Yesterday we were on ice fishing. I fick four fishes and then I ate them. Outside I have snow heart and (drawing) of snowballs and candle is inside it. I hope all the best to you.
Oh Postcrossing!  So wonderful!  I checked this postcrosser’s profile to see if she painted everyone a card.  She does not.  I’m not sure why I was the lucky one, but I’m happy she picked me to receive such a beautiful card.