what will you make today?

cloud 9 - nature walk (available here if you're in scandinavia)

i'm thinking a plus quilt

beautiful materials at hand. sketches sketched. refreshed from a day of physical labor yesterday. i'm ready to create.

sew challenging

i'm a sucker for a display in a fabric store. they totally work on me. friday night was no exception. sabin and i went to a fabric store and saw a cute outfit all sewn up on a mannequin. we didn't buy exactly the same fabrics, but we bought all three patterns they were selling - for leggings, top and a vest. as you can see, i got the leggings and top done this weekend, but not the vest. i accidentally bought the wrong size in that, so i need to go back and exchange it.

the fabric store is called stof & stil and the patterns are their own line. the styles are cute, but as i found out, the instructions are completely opaque. there are few illustrations - only the pattern layout on two of the patterns. and the rest of the instructions are a numbered list full of insider terminology and confusing directions. they assume a very experienced seamstress. and it's only partially that the instructions are in danish (i turned to the norwegian and swedish when i got stuck and they were no better). steps are left out...steps that a beginner wouldn't know or someone who's not sewn with a pattern for awhile wouldn't remember.

if i'd followed exactly what was written in making the leggings, rather than using the knowledge i already had from making pants previously, they would have fit sabin very strangely indeed. they skipped the part about how you have to tuck one leg inside of the other before you sew the crotch together. if i'd never sewn anything before, i would have been frustrated and bewildered indeed.

the top, with the insets at the top and the gathered sleeves was a series of frustrations. i got so frustrated with the opaque directions last evening that i had to put it completely aside and come back to it this morning. i've been doing that for years with complicated patterns, going away and letting my brain process it in my sleep and then being able to finish when i wake up. there is still one spot (thankfully on the inside) where it's not quite right, but it went together in the end, so i left it, as i couldn't bring myself to rip out another seam.

it is a classic case of instructions written by someone very experienced. you see it a lot with technical instructions of all kinds. engineers who are totally into their topic write for their peers and completely forget their audience and the level they might be on. in this case, a very experienced seamstress wrote down a few instructions, but didn't include everything an inexperienced seamstress would need to know. terminology wasn't explained, much was assumed.

stof & stil could take a lesson from lego. lego instructions are excellent and they don't need to be provided in multiple languages because they're entirely visual. the japanese sewing pattern books do this very well too. i've got several of those and haven't had trouble sewing the patterns because the instructions are all based on illustrations, so i'm not missing out on anything by not being able to read japanese.

but, in the end, i got there. i bought fabric to make one more blouse for sabin in another color, and i should do it soon before i forget how the pattern actually worked.

lesson in this...any pattern writers out there, please remember your audience when you're writing!!

one more note, on the subject of japanese...sabin and i picked up sushi in yutaka in herning on friday evening. if you'd only ever had grocery store sushi, this would have made you long for that. and if you've had real sushi from someone who actually knows how to make it, you would have been sorely and sadly disappointed. we ordered a set of rolls and a few salmon and scallop nigiri. they took pre-made rolls out of a refrigerator - nothing was fresh. the salmon for the nigiri was at least cut before my eyes, but even the little rice balls it was placed on were premade. that meant they were dry and lifeless. the rolls were uninteresting and filled with miracle-whip style mayonnaise (which has no place anywhere near sushi in my opinion).  on top of it, the woman behind the counter was snotty when i asked if they had a children's box - most places have one aimed at kids - with salmon nigiri and a cucumber roll - but she snottily told me that children should eat what the adults eat.  it was, in short, a BIG disappointment and we will not be going back. if you're in herning, steer clear of yutaka.

clarity birds - the spice line - now available

i spent a lot of time this weekend making up a big batch of clarity birds. i call them the spice line and they have names like sage, sassafras, parsley and cinnamon. there are four that are a bit more posh (think "diamond" necklaces) they're available individually in my big cartel shop. i've also put up a listing for a whole flock of 7 clarity birds and the shipping is free on those, plus, you get to pick the colors.

 posh - chili

 basil

sassafras

these, along with fourteen others, are in the shop. note that it's my big cartel shop, not my etsy. i decided they would stand out a bit more on big cartel. it seems so noisy on etsy at times.

i wasn't the only one sewing this weekend, husband's oldest announced that she wanted to make a quilt and after rooting around a bit in the stash, she started to make one with bright, plain fabrics in 15cm squares. it's gonna be so cool when it's finished! i may have to make one myself!

checking the layout late last night in bad lighting. still looks totally cool, doesn't it?

i even succumbed and used flash (gasp!)

and a view of the colors in daylight.

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thanks everyone who left their thoughts on my post about being discovered by people from high school on facebook. you helped me a great deal in my thinking about the whole thing and i appreciate that.

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here's wishing everyone a productive week!

a simplify update

sometimes you have to buy something in order to not buy something.  buy it to not buy it, as it were. i recently wrote over on domestic sensualist about the dinner box that we order from the company that delivers our weekly friday box of organic veg. we've been subscribers to this veggie box for more years now than i can count and in the interest of being a locovore, i've been quite faithful to the "dogme" kasse - which features only danish-produced veg. i'll admit it's a bit hard to stay faithful to all that root veg here through the winter, so when årstiderne introduced these mealtime boxes, i switched.

the idea with the box is that you get three full meals (two of the meals stretch to leftovers and a second day, so it's not a 3-meal box, but more like a 5-meal box) - meat, veg, condiments, even bread, pasta, quinoa and the like. today is the fourth week we've had it. and it may sound rather expensive at 445 kroner per week ($82), but what i've figured out is that i'm spending FAR less on groceries overall. all i've bought this week at the store is milk, bread and cucumbers (the child goes through cucumbers like you wouldn't believe), nutella (ditto that on the child), some tea and a big tub of greek yogurt. in a normal week, i'd probably spend 100-150 ($20-35) kroner per day at the grocery store, just buying whatever struck me for dinner. now, the dinner ideas are already here at home and the daily grocery store total is under 50 ($10) kroner. and bear in mind everything in the box is organic, so i don't have to worry about chasing that down at the store (it can be hard to find certain items).

this week's box has a whole organic chicken, a package of cubed bacon and a package of ground beef. additionally, there is fresh full grain pasta, grated topping cheese, a jar of capers and a container of vegetable juice (bloody marys for friday evening anyone?). the veg includes carrots, potatoes (they are always there), one of those celery roots of which i'm not that fond, tho' they add good flavor to a soup, some greens, a head of very fresh lettuce, tomatoes, a lemon, 3 medium onions, a big handful of fresh lovely ginger, a zucchini, a cauliflower, and a red pepper. that's actually quite a lot of food for the money. as an extra i ordered danish-milled flour in durum and spelt so we can make bread this weekend. the box comes with three suggested recipes and they've totally gotten me out of what had been a cooking slump, inspiring me to spend and enjoy my time in the kitchen again. and if you factor in the value of your time and not spending as much of it standing in line at the grocery store, because they bring the box right to your door, the box is very good value for money.

other than that on the simplify front, i've been very good about not buying things. i've kept my fabric purchases to a minimum (i haven't given them up completely, after all, i am making birds for sale now, and i have a baby quilt order, so it's arguably a business expense). i've bought no electronics (so the iPad isn't out yet) and no clothes or shoes, despite everything being on sale. there was a panic last-minute lego buy for sabin's birthday, but the child needs birthday presents and lego is a good investment.

they made fun of me at blog camp, saying i'd decided not to buy stuff i already had and didn't really need and that i'm not imposing any really hard restrictions on myself. and to an extent that's true, but the exercise has made me more conscious of what we spend our money on and more concerned about buying quality and not crap. i think twice before grabbing those big fluffy towels that are on special because really, we don't need any more towels. and i've restrained from buying any new model iPods (tho' i'm certain my restraint will not extend to the iPad once it's released here), because one for every room of the house is enough.

it's also true that i've just not really been tempted at all to buy things, since it's been so snowy and i've mostly been at home. there is a whole world of shopping out there on the internet, but aside from the odd fabric purchase (hello fabricworm), i've exercised remarkable restraint - nothing at all from amazon (for me, i did order some of sabin's birthday prezzies there) and not a single sheet of pretty paper.  i do have my eye on a gorgeous crocheted blanket, but have thus far restrained (tho' i could easily talk myself into it in the interest of it having been made by a cooperative that's helping women in a cape town shantytown) because of the not buying it project.

i've also been doing a better job of looking around at what i already have when i'm going to make something...from the embellishments on my birds to fabric that could be made into a dress i keep dreaming about, to the japanese pattern books i have lying around, waiting for me to learn japanese. i think i'll have to make that dress today, to get it out of my system, making it in my dreams twice should actually make it sew up rather quickly. i'm off to do that and some more birds. i didn't get any up on etsy yesterday because i ran out of stuffing. but i should get some up this weekend. i'll put a note here when they're up.

blowsy and a bit past prime

it's a sunny, but windy saturday and it struck me that i'm feeling a bit like my peonies. blowsy, somewhat unkempt, windblown and a bit past prime. but still pretty magnificent.

note: when i looked up blowsy on dictionary.com, i was pleased to learn it came from blowze which is an archaic term for wench. and i'm intentionally using what's probably the british spelling instead of blowzy, because it connoted the wind for me a bit more and i wanted that.

hoping you have a lovely weekend going, wherever you are...

p.s. nikon rocks the color--these are completely untouched, as they came out of the camera.