Little Chef in the Big Kitchen

Somebody got his own cooking supplies for Christmas

 

 

So we made pancakes for dinner

side by side 

 

He did all of the dancing.

dancing is a very important part of cooking

 

so is love

 

big pan. little pan

that is his pile of pancakes on the back burner

 

And it was delicious!

Snowday Sewing Projects, Updated 12/28/14

I have been a little obsessed with looking at layered clothing on Pinterest....I should be obsessed with my Christmas knitting since Christmas is next week....but I used a coupon to get this amazing fabric from JoAnn's for 60% off, with free shipping!

I bought two yards and thought I would make a jacket but the back side is slightly ribbed and polyester.....eeeew, a winter full of sleeves getting stuck.  So I am going to fall to one old standby, a simple wrap poncho.  I have made a few of these out of medium weight knits and wear them a lot.  This fabric is soft and has a nice drape while being winter ready.  

There is my daughter wearing one of them.  Super comfy, and very much inspired by Alabama Chanin, I have three and they are wardrobe staples.

For the rest I am going to make a top I saw on Pinterest,  basically a long tube with armholes that can be worn a bunch of different ways....I am going to adapt it to an a-line asymmetrically hemmed dress.  

I have fabric, I have notes, needles, and thread.  Beads if I feel like it, not to mention all of the things I already own that I know will go....

But back to knitting.......until that elusive magical wonderful thing known as a Snowday!

A favorite dress, I used this to make the pattern. I laid it out on muslin and traced it out, leaving out the sleeves and extending the neck to make a modified funnel neck.

                                    "Are you sure you know what you are doing?"

Working so hard I broke a needle in half.....

Finished!  One lagenlook inspired, very warm, soft, and cozy

quilted tunic.

Thus was a super easy project. I sewed the side seams up from the bottom, used the x stitch on the front of the arm hole, continued sewing up to the neck, felled the seam on the outside going back down, x-stitched the back of the arm hole, continued with felled seam to the hem.  the side seams, the hem, and the hem on the neck are all a simple running stitch. I used heavy duty hand quilting thread.  This makes very strong seams that hold up well, felled seams add a nice sense of structure.

The View From the Cave

Still all about Outlander

Or Voyager

One of the most haunting images from this book, one that always sticks with me

is that of Jamie's time alone in the cave.

Here is my ode to outlaws and rebels and loneliness

A shawl the color of sunlight through bracken and fading leaves

Simple garter stitch in chunky yarn

Trimmed with bits of fabric salvaged from trips home

Old and worn but still filled with the warmth of home and hearth

Like the arms of a loved one wrapped around your shoulders

Hoping for the day their touch will be real and not imagined

Longed for

What unimaginable loneliness and sorrow

Clinging to life and hope and memory

the Faire

I had to give up knitting for a bit and do some sewing,

Very important sewing...

Joe's first Ren Faire experience,

And Nellie's first time back since she was tiny

Cloudy provides quality control and measuring assistance to all sewing projects

Joe and Hershey liked their new cloaks so much they put them on straightaway

And fell asleep in them.  Sewing success!

(Cloaks are half circle construction...found on google,

Half circle Hobbit Cloak)

How do you put a cloak on over your fairy wings?

This was my big challenge

Solved by making a hole to slip the wings through,

We'll patch it up with some pretty fabric later....

It will go from "hole to accommodate wings" to "design choice"

And so........

 After several days of manically sewing cloaks

It was finally Faire day.

One and a half hours of driving through beautiful

fall filled scenery we arrived

Myself , my two youngest, and honorary auntie, Tammy.

That's Tammy with Nellie

And me with my not so little little ones....

There was chili in boules, pizza

And enormous turkey legs

(And warm honey mead for me)

And fire juggling, jousting, hand cranked carnival swings,

Pirate boats, rope ladders,

And more jousting.

Too much fun for picture taking

Fun, lots of fun and cozy warm cloaks to keep us warm

because fall was being very fallish

So let your freak flag fly and hit your local 

Renaissance Faire.

You'll be glad you did....

We were!

Dragonfly in Amber - fabric bracelet how to

For this bracelet I used a piece of light brown linen

A brown/green/blue piece of flannel from an old shirt

A piece of blue/green cordouroy

A broken dragonfly barrette

And assorted beads and yarn remnants

First I sewed the linen to the piece of flannel

Added the dragonfly and beads and yarn

I have no particular method for this

I put everything in a pile and just add as I go

I use button/craft thread and stitch through the beads twice

Fold the flannel edges in, and fold in the edges of the bottom layer,

Wrong sides together, edges rolled over and pinned

I added braided yarn after the edges were folded

These are for the ties

Tie together....all done

All the fabric is remnants,  either from old clothes or sewing projects

The most important thing to remember is too use very strong thread

I use a #9 sharp needle for the sewing....the head is small enough to slip through the beads,  and wide enough to accommodate the heavy thread.

I don't really measure, but my wrist is about 7 1/2" so I cut the bottom fabric to about 9" so I can roll it over twice for the hem.

If I use a knit fabric or felt I don't usually hem, sometimes I leave the edges raw to get a shabby chic effect.  

By sewing all the trim on the top two layers first all of those stitches get hidden by the bottom layer.

Fabric bracelets can be carefully hand washed and dried flat.

Last but not least

Wear it with pride.-

Lallybroch

Have you ever fallen in love with a place that doesn't exist?

If you have ever read the Outlander series you'll be familiar with a place called Lallybroch.

My Lallybroch looks something like this.....

A perfect balance between the wild and the tame,

With my own flock of sheep which produce the warmest, softest wool known to man.

Plus all the plants needed to dye the riotous colors that I love.

It is nothing like the rather ordinary corner of my living room.

There is no television, no telephone, no stack of bills waiting to be paid.

The cats are there though, still curled up at my feet.

My children are running around the yard, chores finished.

Our dog magically restored to life barking at their heels.

It is not my tiny apartment on a busy street,

The sound of car engines and the smell of exhaust are replaced by the smell of honeysuckle, roses, and heather.

I go there every time I pick up my needles.

The television may be blaring, kids running up and down the hall,

the telephone ringing....

But the cat is curled up at my feet while I sit on my corner of the couch.

And

 I am three thousand miles away knitting the perfect stitches of a perfect place.

Outlander - a literary love affair

Just over seventeen years ago I took a trip to Paris with my then boyfriend and another couple. Faced with my first trans-Atlantic flight I picked out the thickest book I could find in the airport bookstore, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.  I wasn't expecting much but I fell in love with it.  I read it over the Atlantic, in cafes, sitting on the edge of the reflecting pool in front of the Louvre, sitting along the Sienne on a glorious spring day.  

On our first night in Paris the four of us went on a jet lag fueled walk at two a.m. on what happened to be recycling night.  We were staying in St. Germaine des Pres, surrounded by design houses. Out on every curb in front of every shop was barrel after barrel of beautiful fabric samples. I gathered up as many as I could, making my companions scoop them up with me. It was like Christmas, in the spring, in Paris!

That first book became a series now on it's eighth volume. Over the years these books have stayed with me, the characters like a secret family. My mom has also come to love them. I have laughed, cried, been bored, been worried, and happy over these books for almost two decades.

This vest is my tribute to book number eight, Written In My Own Hearts Blood.

This time the story ends with a family happily reunited in the home they have made in a place called Fraser's Ridge. Happy, teary, joyful ending.

The yarn is yarn I had bought on a whim, on sale. It is brown with green tones throughout. The fabric is the last of that long ago Parisian hoard. Serendipity.

For even more serendipitous, I began making cropped, appliqued vests inspired by the work of a woman named Flora Kennedy, who sells her designs under the name Innerwild.  She is also the person who created the knitwear worn by the main character in the upcoming series of, you guessed it, Outlander.

The show airs this summer, I can't wait. In the meantime I will keep on knitting,

Some mitts and maybe a cowl to match my vest.

Oh, and for some more serendipity, that top that goes so well with the vest, thrifted for three dollars while I was at the local charity shop hoping to find a replacement for my long lost copy of that very first book.

No luck with the book but you can't have everything.

Lamentable Sketches, Falling off Horses, and Perfect Light

Friday night is riding lesson night.  I pack my kids into my minivan and drive the thirty miles to a farm in the rural north western corner of the state. I love this weekly ritual for all sorts of reasons. The joy it gives my sister, the growing sense of pride my little girl feels as she learns a new skill, the sound of crickets, the smell of the barn, a few hours away from the sound of traffic, and as the Grinch would say, " the noise, noise, noise.  When we turn the last corner on the windy road we pass the white house pictured above.  Every time I drive by I think of Christina's World and Andrew Wyeth, and think about stopping and taking a picture.  Tonight I finally did just that to the consternation of the truck behind me.  Oh, well. He was driving too fast anyway.

We get to the barn, a small barn run by a retired man with retired horses, for a casual couple of hours. My sister Amanda always goes first, ten years into lessons still on a lead line and blissfully content.  She is weekly proof of the miracle that riding is for people with special needs.  

Nellie is next. While she has her lesson I sketch, or I doodle while wishing I could sketch.  Sometimes I knit or crochet, they work a bit better for me.

  Tonight was lesson number two, or as it will now be known, "What Really Happens When Your Ten Year Old Falls Off a Horse.".  The first thing is that your heart beats really fast and loud while you casually walk over, help her to her feet saying, "brush off". "Okay?" "Good".  Then walk away feeling like a little bit of casual has returned to your insides. Nellie does just that, brushes the dirt off her jeans, takes the horse by the lead for a stroll around the ring, and Gets Back On! Just like that.  No tears, no fuss. I'm not just proud, I am beyond proud. She is no longer my little girl, not to say she is grown up, or no longer needs me, but she belongs to herself in a way that she didn't before. She is no longer mine. She is hers.

                           

On the ride home there is a pasture we pass, about ten acres of open field complete with stonewalls, apple trees, wild roses in full bloom, and cows.  We slow down every week looking for deer. The deer obliged.  No picture for that, my phone isn't quite up to the task.  It was that perfect moment of summer sunlight.  That moment where the sun is low enough to stop glaring in your eyes but has yet to acquire the rosy glow of sunset. That moment when the sun gives everything a clarity so perfect that you feel as though you can see every petal on every flower, every leaf on every tree, the cows, the deer, the stone walls all thrown into perfect relief.  A beauty so perfect it almost hurts to look because you know in seconds it will be gone.  For a few minutes I feel a deep sense of loss for knowing that I used to know how to recreate that moment.  All of those hours I spent in darkened theatres and converted barns and dance studios searching to create that perfect painterly moment for dancers as they move across the stage.  Painting with light in a way that painting with pigment eludes me. The kids sing along to the radio completely oblivious of my moment of longing.  By the time we reach the highway we are talking about tomorrow.  The sun has gone down now, the kids are falling asleep, I am going around shutting windows against the chill. A perfect Friday night.

Battling February doldrums!

Dinner date with Gabe

At the all you can eat 

Chinese buffet.

Followed by music

Joe and Nellie helping dig out after yet another snow storm!

Nothing is as fun as a snowday!