Words of Warning

You know, when you get home from the hospital after surgery, they give you a list of things you can and can't do. You can (in my case anyway):

• Eat a normal diet
• Take a shower
• Rest as much as possible for the first 24 hours
  
• Resume limited physical activity after 24 hours, increasing as you feel better
• Remove dressings after 48 hours

You cannot: 

• Drive for at least several days
• Drink alcohol
• Lift anything
  
• Make legal decisions for at least 24 hours after the anesthesia wears off

Nowhere in any of the post-op instructions do they warn you of the dangers of reading David Sedaris' book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, specifically the section on the Stadium Buddy. They say that laughter is the best medicine, but let me tell you: that book is hazardous to your health on a good day, never mind if you had someone slice into your abdomen two days prior! I was laughing so hard I was crying, for more than one reason.

Today, Phyllis is coming up to visit. I'm feeling well enough that I might try to get some work done on the Chanel jacket. The under sleeves are cut on the bias. I think I'll sew the sleeves together so they don't stretch out too much. We'll see how my energy holds up. What I'd really like is to get out and take a short walk before the snow starts later today. This is the tough part; I don't know how to gauge how much to do.

Parting Shot - Guard Dog:

Hoover, hard at work keeping his world safe.

Slow Going, Steady Progress

I've been working on my McCalls dress, but it's been some slow going for a couple of reasons. First, I'm not crazy about their construction methods, so I'm using my own, which take a little longer. The way the pattern is designed, the bodice and midriff are lined, but the skirt isn't. I thought about whether to line the skirt, but I decided instead to underline it, so I can do a completely invisible hem. Here are the skirt pieces laid on my home cutting table after I had basted the underlining to it.




I don't really like the way they have you attach the sleeves. They tell you to stitch the bodice and bodice lining together, then stitch the lining of the sleeve to the sleeve at the hem, turn the lining to the inside and attach the sleeve/lining to the armhole of the bodice/lining. I decided to make them separately, setting the sleeves in  the lining, then setting the sleeves in the garment bodice. I'll attach them at the sleeve hems and necklines, but I'll do them in different order. I'll show it in a pictorial when I write the review. Oh, and to prove that I do practice what I preach, I set the sleeves just like I showed in my post on Setting a Sleeve Into an Armhole. Here you can see sleeve pinned and hand basted into the armscye.

 The other thing that has slowed me a bit is the plaid. I've been taking my time and matching my plaid lines up, through careful cutting, sewing, ripping out and resewing, and steam shrinking. The bodice shell and the bodice lining are both complete. I haven't attached them to eachother. I'll do that tomorrow, I hope. The rest of the construction from here out should go pretty quickly so I hope to have this all finished this week. Here's the bodice (it's hanging open in the back)

Parting Shots: Hoover and His Boys
It was a gorgeous day here (and the Pats beat Miami - Go Pats!!!). DH and both DS's did yardwork. Hoover's favorite thing in the world is to be outside with his sheep people. DH finished chopping a big pile of wood - left over from when the trees were taken down last year. So here's Hoover with DH and the big pile of wood.

Poor DS the elder almost never gets face time on my blog it seems. But here he is in the front yard with Hoover:

And here is Hoover getting his belly scritched - that is one happy dog....

Happy sewing!

Houseguests

L to R: Hoover, Tessa, Lexie

This week I have tripled the number of dogs in the house. Tessa the Rottweiler and her daughter Lexie (the puppy formerly known as Yellow) are staying with us while their owners are on vacation. Then when we head off to vacation, Hoover will stay with them. We are referring to our house this week as Puppy Camp, or Camp Hoovie.

There are only two problems with having three big dogs in the house. First, the amount of dog hair more than triples. Second, I have to pick my way over dog carcasses that like to strew themselves all over the floor. Other than that, they are great pooches. And Lexie likes to park herself in my sewing room, right behind wherever I am working, so I nearly go ass-over-teakettle any time I try to move. Oh well, it's nice to have the company.

Happy sewing... woof!

Weekend Pictures

The video of the concert isn't supposed to be ready for about 2 weeks, but DH and DSons took pictures at the concert.

Here's Ryan conducting the chorus


Here's The first song of our set - "I Can't Sit Down". I'm sitting next to Dick Frost, who is a wonderful baritone. I love singing with him, we always have a great time. We weren't singing for this one. But the funny thing is that I was singing along silently with the chorus, to stay warmed up. You don't see it in this picture, but there's one picture where my mouth is closed while my throat is obviously working. You see that a lot with singers.

And MTV videos notwithstanding, singing is not an aesthetically pleasing endeavor if done right. Watch any good singer and you will see that when they open their mouth, they have a lot of stuff going on at the back of their throat that doesn't photograph well. Usually when you see stills of singers, they aren't really singing. Same with videos. You'll see people lipsynching, and keeping their lower jaw set so they don't get a double chin effect. Not so when someone is really singing.

Dick was up next. He sang "I Got Plenty o' Nothing", and nailed it.

The audience just ate it up. What fun!

After that, I sang "Summertime". Interestingly enough, I wasn't nervous at all. I think this was the first time in about 20 years that I didn't have butterflies when I stood up to sing. I was even sitting there while Dick was singing, thinking, "Wow, my mouth isn't drying out like it usually does before a performance. Whazzup with that?" I think it went really well. I love this song, and I can't believe I never performed it in public before.

It was a truly wonderful moment. I've said before that the closest I ever get to a religious experience is when I sing. This was it. Allow me a little navel gazing for a moment. When I sing, I really try to interpret and internalize the text. The music is beautiful, but it's the words that make it communicate. "Summertime" is a lullaby, and when I sing it, I immediately call to mind holding my children and rocking them to sleep or comforting them. I try to float the high notes, not blast them. It makes the music that much more lovely to me, and I hope that comes across in my singing.

Okay, enough navel gazing. The last song was "I'm On My Way". It was a blast. I got to hit the wicked high note at the end, which is always fun. That one I did power through. Fun fun fun!

Here's a better picture of the dress I wore. It's Butterick 4343. I made it 5 years ago for another concert. It's actually a little big these days - yay! It's made from a 4 ply silk, lined with silk habotai. You can't see it, but I did a hand-set embellished zipper with sequins and beads on both sides. It's fabulous and comfortable!

Okay, enough about me. Here's the parting shots from the weekend. Mother's Day was wonderful. One of the things we did was take Hoover to a place we call "Dogtopia". It's a huge field in Lexington that has a cistern where dogs can swim. Hoover loves to jump into the water, so here are some action shots I took:


I cut out another knit top and am about 2/3 of the way through it. I'll review it tomorrow.
Happy sewing!

The View

It snowed again last night. This week they are predicting two more snowstorms, followed by sub zero weather. Sounds like it's time to make a boeuf bourgignon. Actually tonight I'm going to make a roast chicken. But I'm going to do the stew thing this week.

Here are a couple of shots for those of you who don't get to share in the wunnaful world of weather we get here in New England. First up, the view from our back deck:
Yes, the Mustang is a pig in the snow. No I don't drive it much in this weather.

Second - Hoover. He loves the snow, and he loves lying in snow banks while we're out shoveling. And he loves bounding across the snow after snowballs.
Okay, that's all for now. I'm heading up to the sewing room. Hopefully I'll have a review of the cardigan later today.

Happy sewing!

One Last Set of Puppy Pics

Today, Tessie's puppies went to their new homes. Sigh. They grow up so quickly! Yesterday I went over to take some last pictures for them. Dawn (the owner) asked me to bring "Uncle Hoovie". Hoover has met the puppies before, but they were really little and not sure what to make of him. This time, they are bigger, more confident, and curious. So here are a couple of pictures from Uncle Hoover's visit with "the kids":

Uncle Hoovie's here!


Forget the kids, it's snack time!


Not sure which puppy this is. I think it might be Red


Nose to nose


And the aftermath....


Happy puppies!

They Should Come with Warning Labels

That say, "I turn into a large, slobbery dog". Remember I told you that Tessie had her puppies? Here they are. They are 6 weeks old, and they are sooooo cute! Right now they don't have names, only colors (differentiated by their collars). They will get names when they each get their owners.

First up is Green, aka The Green Monster. He will be a 120 lb. lap dog. He's a creampuff.

Red is the other boy in the crew. Another sweetie.

White is the one that I really love. She's such a cutie, and so sweet. She has a droopy eyelid, so the vet sutured it. I guess that makes her not show quality. I wouldn't care. I'd take her home.

Purple. What a cutie patootie! And she is going to be a big girl.

Yellow. Can you say, "trouble"? She's got that mischief in her eye, and she's always playing with the others.

And here is the proud mama herself.

Now, I can't post about someone else's dog without talking about Hoover. Hoover has decided that one of his favorite things is to play Basketball. And you know what? He's not half bad! You should see him catch air when he is rebounding.

He's okay on offense, but he's really good on defense!


Happy puppies!

Jammed!

Two nights ago I went over to see our neighbors, Steve and Dawn. They own the Rottweiler, Tessie, Hoover's best girl. Tessie had puppies 6 weeks ago, and I went over to see the puppies. Uncle Hoover can't come over until the puppies are weaned, and it drives him crazy that I go over there without him. Tessie is always so happy to see any of us. But she does have one bad habit. She jumps. Normally, trainers will teach you that if a dog jumps up at you, the thing to do is to put your knee out in front of yourself and block them. That stops the dog without hurting them (you don't knee them per se - you just put your knee up as a block). It also discourages them from jumping. But of course, Tessie is a nursing mom, and my memories of nursing a baby are recent enough that I can't knee her right in the milk jugs with a clear conscience, right? So instead I put my hand up to block her.

Bad idea.

I have mild arthritis in my right thumb joint. Nothing terrible. Nothing an Advil won't take care of. But she jammed my thumb right into the joint. Owwwww! You never realize how much you use that joint until it hurts every time you do. It's been killing me. I can't even twist open a jar. Owwww! Owwww! Owww! It also has slowed down my progress on the Burda dress a bit. I dumped the kids on DH for the afternoon treated DH and the kids to a matinée of the new Indiana Jones flick and headed up to the studio. That Burda dress has a ton of itstybitsyteenytinylittlemicroscopic pieces. Cutting out twenty bazillion little pieces can be agonizing, especially when your cutting hand is throbbing. But I did get everything cut out and interfaced, and tomorrow I will finish sewing it up.

Can I just say, though, Owwwww!

Happy sewing. I'm going to find the 800mg Motrins.

Oh, PS - the puppies are ADORABLE. I'll bring the camera and post some pictures tomorrow.

New Toy Tool

I've had it with my old point and shoot Olympus. Don't get me wrong, it's a good little camera. But for taking closeups or for details, it gives me fits. It was overexposing everything, and I am not a Photoshop-geek. And since everyone seems to be having big sales on cameras, I decided to take the plunge and get a DSLR. So here's what I bought myself for a late birthday present:
A Canon Digital Rebel XT

So far so good! It takes great pictures. I am not a photo geek anymore. I was the yearbook photographer in high school, but that was some time back, and the Hasselbad that I used then was much more unwieldy than this baby. As an aside, forget the cheerleaders, meangirls clique, jocks or student council, the yearbook photographer is the real power in high school!

But the picture quality seems great. Here's one of the first shots I took. Hoover in his typical position during the day:


That was done with the camera set on Auto. It looks to be very promising for closeup shots of sewing details, fabrics and such, so I'm sure it will get a lot of use.

And how about Hoover? That is one happy puppy, eh?

Happy sewing!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

We're getting socked with a nor'easter today. So far we've got about 9 inches of snow, on top of the 8 or so we got earlier this week. The concert I am supposed to sing in this afternoon has been postponed until January 6th. That's a little anticlimactic for a Lessons and Carols. The 6th is Epiphany (little Christmas). But let's face it, after Christmas, the desire to hear or sing Christmas carols is highly diminished.

But forget the Dog Days of Summer. These are the real Dog Days. Hoover just loves the snow. Here he is with DS the elder, just about to go dashing after DH.

And here he is just about to leap into a snow bank.


Hoover loves it even better when his dog buddies come over to bound through the snow with him. Yuki, the German Shepherd from across the street, came to play this morning


After Yuki, his buddy Pugsley the Puggle came over, but I didn't take any pictures of them.

I'm working on my BFF's Christmas present, a rendition of the LaRue Bag from HotPatterns. This one is made from a peach-toned Mongolian Lamb that will be utterly fab. If the snow stops and the roads clear, I'll try to head out this afternoon (after the Patriots/Jets game) to pick up some light colored pack cloth for lining it.

In the meantime, Happy Hoover!

Universal Armageddon! The Dead Rising from the Grave! Dogs and Cats Living Together!

Well, that's what they would have you believe on the weather channel, anyway. We're having a snowstorm today. The kids got out of school two hours early, which means I got next to no work done. But Hoover loves the snow! One of his favorite things to do is sit in a big pile of snow while DH clears snow off the cars, preferably onto him. He moved before I could take a picture of him, but here he is just after coming in.

He's back outside right now, laying in the snow whilst DH is using the blower on the driveway.

Happy Hoover!

Dog Days

Yes, it's definitely the dog days of summer! Everything is going at a slower pace than the norm. Kids are wrapping up summer vacations (not a moment too soon, either). And friends are going on vacation. That means we get to babysit. Dogs. Lots of them. We had Tessa the Rottie a couple of weeks ago, and last week we took my friend Barb's dogs. And it was one hot week! Oh, I know it's worse in the middle of the country, but if you wear a full time fur coat, anything over about 80 degrees gets pretty bad pretty quickly. I spent the whole time trying not to trip over various carcasses strewn across my floor. It reminded me of the morning after parties in my first apartment. To whit, we had

Hoover:


Polly, a very sweet, 14 1/2 year old French Bassett

and

Maggie, a 140 lb. lap dog wanna-be. Fortunately, this heat makes her less cuddly than usual.

I must say, of those 140 lbs, I think about 120 are spit. See that head? It's solid drool. Okay, 99.9997% drool, and two brain cells. I'm still mopping up!

Well, tomorrow I'm off for some fun adventures that I'll share with you this weekend. Until then, stay cool and happy sewing!

Dogs and Cats, Sleeping Together!

I just love weather forecasters in New England. Since the weekend, they have been warning of a massive nor'easter (their description, not mine) that was going to start at midnight and dump feets of white stuff on us poor, snow-deprived denizens. Oh yes, it's Armageddon in a snowstorm, folks. Wow, how on earth will we ever get out of the house? It's the Blizzard of '78 all over again! Run for the hills, there's snow! In Massachusetts! In February!!!

Yah, right

Here's the view from my bedroom window around 7:30 this morning.


You know what folks in New England do in a snowstorm? They make French Toast. Really. Yesterday, the shopping malls were empty, but the grocery stores were jammed. And they were cleared out of bread, eggs and milk. And this happens every single time the forecasters tell us we're going to get a snowstorm. You can't find bread, eggs, or milk anywhere within a 20 mile radius. So when people wake up to snow in New England, they must make French Toast. Prove me wrong.

But Chez Us, we make BEBs, with cheese - that's Bagel, Egg and Bacon sandwiches. Mmm, mmm, mmm! Total artery chokers, but what the hell, we haven't had a snowstorm in over a year, so it's time to have a cholesterol bomb.

Today will also hopefully give me the opportunity to finish my second incarnation of the HotPatterns Tango Blouse. I decided to stabilize the shoulder seams because the crepe was quite stretchy.


And I put the organza frill on it, taking Sewing Diva Georgene's advice and cutting the frill on the bias, in a doubled layer.

I may add some black lace to it, I'll take a look at it later today and decide. I also need to decide on what buttons to use for it. I'm not sure what I have in my stash that's appropriate. But given the progress of this storm, I don't think I'll have much trouble getting out later to go to Fabric Place if I need to.

Oh, snowstorms like this do have the advantage of making the squirrels easy to spot. We call it Squirrel TV.


Happy Valentine's Day!

There is Only One Thing More Annoying...

... than a Border Collie who is demanding to be walked NOW!
(Don't let the prone posture fool you. He stays perfectly still, but the eyes follow you everywhere, and periodically he'll whine at you about how slowly you are moving.)

And that is a dull rotary cutter blade. Grrrr!

Last night I started cutting out my next incarnation of the HotPatterns Tango Blouse, this one in heavy red silk crepe. When I felt that telltale bump in my hand as I cut the collar pieces. Sure enough, there's a spot on the blade that is terribly dull. You can't see it, but boy, when you try to cut through fabric, you feel it! I know I didn't run over any pins in my last project (the triple-secret project), but I must have just worn it down. That's the problem with rotary cutters. I dearly love mine. I use it for 95% of the cutting that I do, and the rest goes to my Kai shears. But when you hit a pin, or when the blade gets dull from normal use, fugghedaboutit. And those little sharpeners they sell in sewing stores? Pfeh! They don't do squat, I don't care what anyone says.

The bummer is that I have been holed-up in my sewing room, trying to see how long I could continue to sew cool stuff without having to set foot into the frozen tundra that is Massachusetts this week. Oh well, I have to go out to see a friend who's visiting from Sydney at lunch, so I'll just stop by JoAnn and pick up a 5 pack on my way home.

Happy sewing!

Border Collies are NOT Labrador Retrievers

The Super-triple-secret project is coming along, but that means there's nothing sewing that I can talk about right now. But that's okay, I have Hoover:


Hoover is a Border Collie mix. We think there is some golden retriever in there somewhere, but we can't be sure. He joined our family two years ago. He followed in the large pawprints of our two Labrador retrievers, Carmen and Otto. Carmen lived to the ripe old age of 13 1/2. Otto lived to 14 and change. Now, 15 years of Labs inured me to a basic fact of dog life. Labs eat first and ask questions later. Even after Carmen passed away and Otto was an only dog for two years, he would still inhale his kibbles like there would never be any more. And we had a joke that we didn't need a vacuum cleaner because no food ever hit the floor. The Labs would do a diving catch first.

Hoover, on the other hand, deigns to eat his kibbles only when all other possibilities are exhausted.

And he prefers to take his kibbles out of the kitchen, into the comfort of the family room rug to eat them, several at a time. This means that there is frequently a trail of kibbles left along the way. And being a Border Collie, he's very stubborn about not eating anything once it has hit its expiration date, which in his mind is about 5 minutes after you buy it.

The labs, Otto in particular, were notorious for trying to levitate food off the table. They would sit in front of it and stare at it so hard that they figured it would fall off the table into their waiting mouths. Hoover hasn't the patience, He prefers a more direct approach. When he was young, he used to climb up on the table with all fours and eat the butter. He doesn't do that any more (thank goodness!), but he does whine at food on the counter. Incessantly.

Hoover also believes it is his duty to rid the back yard of all vestiges of the Evil Squirrel Empire. He is glorious to behold as he bounds so prettily over the stone walls and tries to skitter up the trees after the squirrels. The squirrels, on the other hand, get pretty pissed off at this, and they sit there yelling at him while he circles the base of the trees.

Hoover is, of course, also a big Patriots fan:

Oh, and Hoover's favorite food? Sushi, specifically California rolls. He likes to take them into the family room, unroll them, and eat each piece individually. Except the avocado. That he spits out.

Happy puppies!