Another fabulous use for refashioned sweater trimmings:


I mean, I'll never learn to knit and would instead attach old sweater/scarf/mitten trimmings to thrift store or Forever 21 bangles (or, far preferably, cuffs) using a glue gun, and these, from Yarborough Jewelry, are clearly beautifully purpose-knit. Still, I love the idea of figuring out how to make something inspired by these in my own half-assed glue-gunned way.

[via dearada.typepad.com]

Are you there God? It's me, Fern.

So far I've made two things for my mom, who's extremely crafty (I never tire of bragging that one of her quilts won a blue ribbon at the Michigan State Fair, though part of the reason I like talking about it is that it makes it seem that I had a far more Charlotte's Web-style childhood than I did). She taught me how to sew ages ago and gave me a sewing machine for Christmas last year. Despite her generally critical nature and high standards for craftship, she's a good gift recipient and kindly overlooks all the flaws and mistakes.

I just finished making her this apron, which she hasn't received yet:



For an apron it's kind of pedantic, what with the letters and yardsticks and all. It's from reprodepot, but they're out of this fabric now. I like how clean and odd it is. The yardstick straps are from the trim that ran along each edge of the fabric for some reason.

For Mother's Day I made her the garden tote from Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing book. The outside fabric comes from a vintage kimono and the yellow gingham lining is from Joann's. There's also a heavy white denim layer between the kimono and the gingham to make it stronger because I can't stand the feel of flimsy homemade bags. My dad took these photos:



I'm really happy with how the bag turned out (it was hard to think of the best ways to use the kimono pattern). I love searching flickr for photos tagged "jansdotter" because there are all sorts of photos of things people have made from her book (including some really lovely and humbling versions of this bag). I'm thinking of making the sunhat next, but I'm a bit afraid I'd look like a dowdy baby with accelerated decrepitude or like Laura Ingalls if she took up golf (it's kind of a modern bonnet).

Oh! La vache (et les bison)

This tent reminds me of the first time I ever camped (other than in my parents' backyard):



We camped at the "primitive" site in the Badlands -- amazing. South Dakota is far from my favorite state (awfully regressive hate-based politics), but the southwestern corner is one my favorite regions in the U.S. (and not solely because I love those fuckin Deadwood cocksuckers; the Badlands, the Crazy Horse memorial, and Mt. Rushmore are totally underrated. No, that's not right: I mean, they're very well-rated, but I was surprised by how stunned I was by each -- expectations were low because accolades were so high [and often so goofy] and yet, I felt genuinely amazed, touched, awed, humbled by each). In any case, when we were at the Badlands there was a crazy windstorm that looked like it might become a cah-raaaazy thunderstorm, and we were kind of scared of staying there, in the open plain. (Luckily we had Ambien ["Campien" by the end of the trip] so the fact that our tent was nearly torn off of us by the wind wasn't as disturbing as it otherwise might have been.)

When we woke in the morning all was calm and cool and still, but there was this weird springing squeaky noise, almost like someone was jumping on the bumper of an old car. We looked out of the tent and a huge male bison was just a few feet away, hurtling himself at a horse-hitching post, trying to scratch an itch. Throughout the open, barren campsite were several more solitary male bison(s?) (exactly the sort all of the signs all over the Badlands urged you to steer [get it?] way, way clear of). They were sniffing around, rolling around, hanging around. No one was trampled or gored and the entire scene was completely magical. If I got this cow tent I could have a similar experience but with out so much nature and crap (though actually I really do love all that nature and crap).

(As a needless aside: Although I may lust in my heart, I would never be unfaithful to my Orla Kiely dome tent, which I love love love and can't wait to use on a little weekend camping trip/Farnsworth House visiting trip soon.)

(Photos via matejewski.com via, indirectly, the Times)

Cold Lampin

This used to be the most perfect pendant lamp (until it became both expensive and unavailable [which I guess is like complaining about the small portions of bad food -- what do I care if it's expensive if I can't get it anyway?]), and I superwanted it for above our table:


It's the Caravaggio P4 by Cecilie Manz, and it's huge -- 700 mm (27.5 inches) tall and 550 mm (21.6 inches) across. When I ordered it, it was only $395 -- not Ikea but way less than anything else. But the UL approval process that's apparently required for sales in the US is stalled, and the prices seem to keep going up -- I think it's set to be like $700-$950 or so once it's finally sold here. Now that I've seen this lamp, though, all the salvaged/industrial solutions seem so, I don't know, coarse and dirty or something, and all our homemade ideas seem so messy and amateurish, and every other new lamp seems so slick and soulless. Who do you have to blow to get some light above your dinner around here?

To do [or at least think about]:

- Bag for camera: For the camera bag I think I'll use an Etsuko Fuyura fabric, maybe turquoise honeycomb, but I'm also interested in working with burlap and felt, so I might make a burlap bag lined with moss-colored felt. A zipper would look silly on burlap and a grommet wouldn't work well, so I'll probably fashion some kind of button closure if I do that (I think a drawstring would look too rustic, but maybe it would be just right).

- Computer sleeve: I'm not sure what I'll do for the computer sleeve. I made a leather one with a fleece inner lining for a friend recently (photos to come; why do I never take pictures of things that I make before I give them away?) that I was pretty happy with, but I might end up using burlap and felt for this instead.

- New backpack or bag: I almost never take the train to work anymore, but today promises to be a bit stormy, so I left my bike at home. One of the pleasures of taking the train (besides about 40 extra minutes of reading each day) was always walking past the shop windows on Damen (though they don't change them nearly often enough). Now I go past them so rarely the displays are always new to me, which is somehow satisfying. Today there was a sort of good bag (when will I learn to bring my camera with me?) in the window of a shop that I think is totally off in every way(shoddy, goofy). I had seen something like it before (where?) but it didn't occur to me then that I could sew something similar. It was a leather bag with sort of inverted pleats of fabric, with a grommeted drawstring closure. It could maybe be a backpack (esp. since I almost never carry a shoulder bag), but I'm not sure -- and also, been using way too much leather (even though it's only remnants -- I swear to god!).

But at least I'm crossing things off of my old to do list:
- I finished the wine bag (photos below)
- I'm nearly done making the alphabet apron
- I'm nearly done painting the bed dark gray
- I've bought a new computer and am nearly done transferring photos from the old one (I'm sure I'm making the process a blillion times harder than it has to be.)

Tour de Pants
(There's really no reason to call this entry "Tour de Pants." I mean, it does deal with biking and and it does mention the peloton, but I only thought of pants because peloton reminds me of pantalon, and, well, there's this place in France . . .)

About two months ago we were riding our bikes to a byo restaurant and I carried wine in a bag I had made, slung over my shoulder. My mind is still blown by bike riding. It feels just as liberating now as it did when I was 7 and the only way I had to get anywhere quickly on my own. I started riding regularly only this summer, but a day I can't ride to work is a day that sucks. I mean, I ride a 40-year-old three-speed, I'm not in particularly good shape, and the only people I pass tend to be homeless-seeming people tooling around apparently aimlessly, but still, I frequently fantasize I'm in some sort of peloton of one.

But the bag I was carrying that night wasn't ideal for wine, and as we were riding to the restaurant (Bite; riding side by side in the cool wind on quiet dark summer side streets) I was thinking about creating a messenger-type bag specifically for carrying wine while riding bikes to byo restaurants or parties. I found in Lotta Jansdotter's excellent book Simple Sewing a pattern for a bag for a yoga mat:



I used the basic yoga bag pattern, but changed the proportions and a few other things to make it into a wine bag. My first attempt worked fairly well (though I haven't made photos of it yet). I used fabric from a vintage kimono in a weird sort of Miro-ish pattern, but the proportions were somewhat off. My next one, which I brought as a gift to friends we stayed with in Philadelphia, was pretty successful, and I used the same kimono fabric. My third iteration of the bag was my first project using leather. I was going for mod, but given my general impatience and my inexperience with leather, it came out more rough-hewn, so I've sort of tried to convince myself that rough-hewn was, in fact, what I had been going for all along.




I think the proportions of this one are about right. I like the way I attached the strap to the bag and the D-ring to the strap as well as the little pocket I made for the wine key:



It also fits two bottles of beer (and probably two Soda-Club bottles), but it's too narrow for a standard Nalgene bottle. More bags to come, maybe: I'm thinkng about a double-barrelled bag and one that could somehow carry a six-pack, but that would probably involve a different paradigm.

Members Only

I've just joined Soda-Club, which for some reason I always think of as Soda Club International (more classy for sure that way). Well, not really joined, but I bought one of these soda makers:

It carbonates water! On my countertop! I've broken free of San P.'s chains (imported mineral water being the opiate of the masses and whatnot). I mean, you just use Britta'd tap water et voila -- this machine shoots fucking air into it. It's awesome. The chargers fill a hundred bottles and they're refillable, which is perfect, what with the planet and all.

Bean sings this every morning:

All the little dogs say good morning.
And the bigger dogs say good morning.
And all the dogs say good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.

The fact that I use only remnants makes it OK, right?*

Although I still buy leather shoes, using a leather bag just feels like reaching into the body of a lifeless animal with its guts scooped out. But why, then, is sewing with leather so awesome? Cutting the skins with my sharp Gingher scissors nauseates me -- it's way too fluid and easy. It reminds me of when I sliced a chunk out of the fleshy part of my left index finger without feeling any resistance in the scissors, without even noticing -- until I saw my dead tissue stuck to the stainless steel blade as blood ran down my hand. eeeewwwww. Sewing with leather is like reading Kathryn Harrison -- visceral.

Not only is it gross, sewing with leather is hard because all of the little needle punctures remain after you make a mistake, so you really can't make a mistake. Back to the grossness, this is also gross, because I imagine sewing through living skin and having blood emerge from each puncture. And I think of Ed Gein and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Also, it's hard to maneuver leather through my sewing machine, and sewing it by hand is impossible and also gross.

But white leather is so groovy. And in working with it I've begun to appreciate all the things about leather that people have loved forever: its heft and its drape and its flaws and the ways it evolves and even the fact that it's skin. [eeeewwww]

In any case, along with my preexisting plans to reupholster the drafting chair in white leather and to experiment with leather piping on a fabric pillow and a fabric-covered hairpin-legged foot stool [did I just write "hairpin-legged foot"?], I'm totally inspired by the simple rawness of these pieces from http://truck-furniture.co.jp/, which, somehow, honors the beauty and horror of the material:

Also, this is the fabric I'm using to make a pillow and reupholster the footstool:

(It's mondo black from reprodepot: http://reprodepot.com/mondoblack.html; not really simple nor raw at all.)

* I'm writing this while I have two deep, long, infected cuts on my leg from a retractable dog leash. The constant awareness of a painful gaping wound contributes, at least partly, to the gruesome physicality today, I think.

If she were a St. Bernard she would be Camper van Beethoven.


Bean with my Orla Kiely tent.

Don't forget: washers as sequins.

disappearing

yesterday I went to work without my security card, and Dora, a secretary, was sitting at the front desk in lieu of Dawn, the receptionist. I knocked on the glass door so she would let me in, and she indicated that I should pick up the phone outside the door and call her desk. Um, OK. I called her and asked to be buzzed in, and she asked me who I was there to see. I said that I worked there and she buzzed me in.

today I was riding my bike to a doctor's appointment for my retractable-leash wounds, and I passed someone I know (barely, but I saw him two days ago). I said, "Hey, Harvey." He said hello but clearly had no idea who I was.

then, in the hallway outside the doctor's office, which was in one of the Northwestern Hospital buildings on LSD, I ran into someone I knew from law school. I said hello and asked him what he was up to. He said that he was working at "a law firm downtown." Dude, I could tell that by your shirt. I asked him which one. He said Kirkland, in a tone suggesting that I might not be familiar with it. He then asked me if I had ridden to work, as though he thought I worked at the hospital.

I would prefer not to.

If Bartleby the Scrivener were a children's book about a dumbo octopus it would be called the Obstinate Octopus. Of course the octopus would refuse to go to school rather than refusing to leave work, but it would be the same idea.

(from thedeepbook.org, via book-by-its-cover.com)

loldog

I was going to get a blog for Bean called bmho.blogspot.com. We always imagine that she has a blog that has a million entries reading, "Saw the dachshunds on their deck again. BMHO! BMHO! BMHO!"

The dachshunds are her archenemies and BMHO = bark my head off.

Instead, though, bmho.blogspot.com is a dead blog by a German(?) whose headline reads "suche frau fürs leben u zum kennenlernen." Even to my nicht-deutsch ears this is barely literate, but I think it means something like "looking for a woman for life [living?] to get to know." Actually, if Bean spoke German that's probably the kind of grammar she'd use ("IM IN UR BLOG KENNENLERNEN UR FRAULEINZ").

to do [exhaustive edition]

- spray-paint bean's sticks bright green, hang above bed on little nails
- paint bed wall a sunny, not-too-buttery light yellow
- paint bed a laquery dark gray
- paint bathroom light gray
- make mondo gray pillow (white leather piping)
- reupholster hairpin footstool in mondo gray with white leather piping
- reupholster drafting stool in white leather
- make alphabet apron and patches
- make striped apron and patches
- finish white leather wine bag
- paint ikea deep boxes, mount fake butterflies, typed cursive latinate labels; or maybe use big evidence frame instead, no boxes? no, probably not
- make camera bag (what fabric? kimono? ikea? superbuzzy?)
- make mittens from felted brown sweater
- refashion felted gray sweater into cropped cardigan
- shorten brown cashmere cardigan
- will i ever learn to crochet?
- will i ever sew-draw a portrait of a walrus?
- what goes into that weird mirror frame?
- learn to use my camera
- get new computer and transfer photos from old one
- refashion veruca t-shirt

A running [queue] list of lazy twitches*

- Frankly
- To be honest
- Regular readers know
- For those who don't know
- For those who are curious
- As a matter of fact
- In the first place
- See,
- Ah, but
- Let's face it
- Literally [to mean figuratively]
- Legitimately [to mean genuinely]
- Profoundly [to mean very]
- Actually [to mean nothing]
- When all is said and done
- After all
- WHEW!

* An attempt to empty my head of the spastic linguistic ticks of a blogger who cannot be named (due to his excessive self-googling) but whom I've been reading -- with great care and exasperation -- for nearly 10 years.