Tradition

I believe in traditions; I believe in the idea of things being passed between generations and the slow transmission of cultural values through tradition.
— Graham Moore

The human soul can always use a new tradition. Sometimes we require them.
― Pat Conroy

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
― Gustav Mahler

One of my favorite things to wear is an over-sized shirt over leggings, so Friday I finally broke down and bought a couple of big shirts I’ve been eyeballing for a while now. And like many people, I seldom try things on in the store, which is the only excuse I can come up with for not noticing the weirdness of their design.

The shirts had a shallow scoop neck in the front, and a vee neck criss-crossed with fabric straps in the back. Maybe it was fashionable, but it didn’t seem very practical to have your back exposed in a long sleeved, tunic length shirt. I tried one shirt on, but it just wasn’t comfortable. So then I tried turning it around so the vee was in the front, but the neckline plunged just a little too low.

Here's the thing. If I hadn’t tried the shirt on I would have never known how super comfortable it was and I would have just taken them both back and exchanged them for shirts with backs in them. But . . . I did try it on, and it was really, really comfortable, and I figured there had to be a way to make it work.

Of course there was. First, the criss-crossing straps had to go so I cut them off. Then I figured the only way to make the vee less plunging was to hitch it up at the shoulder. This meant cutting off the sleeves, taking about an inch and a half off at the shoulder, re-sewing the shoulder seams, and sewing the sleeves back on.

It might have been easier had my sewing machine worked better, but all in all it wasn’t all that hard. But it got me thinking about how lucky I was to have had a mother who taught me how to sew at an early age.

While I can’t remember the lessons themselves, I remember her sewing machine – it was a Singer brand machine and you could sew forwards or backwards, that was it. And I must have been 12 or so when I learned because she died when I was 13 and at that point I was designing and sewing my own Barbie clothes. But she didn’t just teach me how to sew on the machine, she also taught me how to embroider and so I also have her to thank for my love of stitchery.

I’m sure my mother learned to sew from her mother, who learned to sew from hers. My sisters both sew as well. I love the idea of these traditions being passed down from mother to daughter. I taught my daughter how to embroider when she was little, and I look forward to the day my granddaughter follows this tradition as well.

Metasthenic Monday

metasthenic ~ having strong haunches or hindquarters

The wheel turns and the seasons change. It’s still not all that warm, and the wind is particularly bitter, but the sun has been out more often than not lately and the oppressive gloom of winter is slowly lifting.

My big accomplishment for the weekend was getting a new zipper sewn into my black winter jacket. You know, just in time for the weather to warm up enough so I won’t get a chance to wear it.

This jacket was a thrift store find and I only got to wear it a few times before the metal zipper in it kept sticking and/or separating when it wasn’t supposed to. I actually paid more for the replacement zipper than I did for the jacket itself, but I really like the jacket so I figured it was worth it.

That feeling lasted until I actually sat down to put the new zipper in. Ripping out the old zipper was no problem, but my sewing machine did not like the thread I was using (it kept breaking) nor sewing through the leather. It pretended to like it, the new zipper just slid into place and I had no problem sewing initially, but several sections of the stitching didn’t catch so there were big gaps.

I adjusted the tension and the thread started breaking. I changed to a different kind of thread and it broke too. Then the needle started hesitating – sometimes it would stick in the material and pull the whole thing upwards. The cats went into hiding.

I finally broke down and went out and bought some upholstery thread (maybe it was a little overkill but I wanted a good, strong thread) and some leather needles. It should have been easy-peasy. It was not. The thread still broke. I adjusted the tension again. The heavy duty sewing machine needle bent. I replaced it. The hubby suggested I just take the jacket to the tailor in the mall – he’s lucky to have escaped with his life.

I took a break to get my blood pressure back to normal and then gave it one more shot. One long seam without stopping like it should have done in the first place and the first half of the zipper was in place. The second side only took a couple of tries, which was kind of surprising because it was the harder of the two.

I have another thrift store jacket in the closet, a nice medium blue ski jacket, that also needs a zipper replaced. Actually, the zipper itself is fine, it’s just the little piece at the bottom that keeps the whole thing from separating that needs replacing. I may look into alternative fixes before resorting to replacing the whole zipper.

It might be better for my blood pressure.

Motiferous Monday

motiferous ~ conveying motion

Isn't it strange how these Mondays keep creeping up on me? Every week, like clockwork, another one appears ...

Even more appalling ... only two more Mondays after this one before Christmas. Are you ready?

I'm barely even started. The outdoor lights are up, and hubby and I went Christmas shopping on Saturday. We came home again pretty much empty handed, but I guess that was pretty much to be expected considering over half of our Christmas list is small children and there was no Toys 'R Us in the city we went to.

What is Toys 'R Us, those of you without children ask? Only the Mecca of all toy stores. Think Walmart sized super store, but with nothing but toys. And if you're still having trouble picturing it, check this out:



So ... we spent at least five hours on Saturday and came back with nothing, then I had to pick up something at Walmart on Sunday and came back with a couple of things off the list in under an hour, and this morning I stopped at Walmart for some thread and ended up with a couple of actual Christmas presents - and I was there for less than half an hour. Apparently slow and steady does not win the race when it comes to Christmas shopping. And I also came away with ideas for both sisters and a great-niece.

I baked cookies yesterday, but not Christmas ones. I finally made the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies the hubby's been whining about ever since I started my apple baking marathon, and when the daughter found out I was baking cookies her ears perked up, so I ended up making some peanut butter ones for her and her hubby so there'd be at least a couple of chocolate chip ones left when hubby got home.

I will need to start thinking about the Christmas baking soon though. And I think this year's theme will be "chocolate covered". When we were at Costco I couldn't resist a 2.4 kg (5 lb) bag of chocolate chips. The good ones. I can use them in fudge, but you can only make so much fudge. ;-)

And I hereby promise not to refer to Canadian Tire as Crappy Tire any more. They had a cookie gun for me, and at a reasonable price. Now all I have to do is find the time to mix up the Spritz cookie dough.

On top of everything else I have going on, yesterday I was handed three pairs of pajama pants that need to be made. Call me crazy, but I just knew this was going to happen the moment the daughter mentioned wanting to make them for Christmas. The material she got was striped, which is a little tricky to match so she needed help cutting them out. So we did that yesterday (and by "we" I mean "me").

Then, of course, she was going to need "help" sewing them together. I had visions of my free time being sucked away by having to go over there multiple times to talk her through the sewing part; remembered how easily frustrated she'd get as a teen when she tackled a project like this; and before I could sensor my mouth I said, "Just leave them here and I'll do them."

*sigh*

Fortunately, it's a super easy pattern and shouldn't take me more than a couple of nights. Provided I don't run out of thread again.

'Tis the season! LOL

Manuduction Monday

manuduction ~ careful guidance; leading by hand

I must say, November is really kicking my butt. If anything can go wrong, it does. I'm behind in pretty much everything, including my Monday posts. Seriously, I just do one post a week and I can't even seem to manage that. And I'm doubly glad I opted out of NaNo this year because I strongly suspect it would have been an epic failure.

*deep breath - inhale, exhale*

Okay, now that that's out of the way ...

Have you ever noticed there's just not enough hours in the day? I've heard a rumour that our cable company is going to change their format in the new year - no, I'm not jumping off topic here, bear with me for a minute - instead of having to subscribe to all these bundles to get the one or two channels you actually want, they're going to have basic cable and then packages allowing you to pick and choose your channels. So you might have 50 channels, but half of them won't be sports or French or whatever.

So what has this to do with the hours in a day? Well, I was just thinking. Wouldn't it be great if we could choose how many hours there were in a day? You know, so if you were having a bad day you could shorten the hours, and if you were having a good day you could lengthen them. Or you could borrow time from the rest of the week to use now to finish that important project. I don't know about you, but I think it would be awesome.

I've been feeling stretched very thin for the last couple of weeks, and I feel like I'm on the verge of snapping. There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything I need/want to get done and something's got to give. Lately it's been my sleep.

Last week, on top of the lack of sleep thing, I had a bad cold kicking my butt. Then it was the cold medication. Can't win for losing apparently. Now the cold medication I was taking was one of those all-in-one things that you can get in just a regular package or in a package that includes a night-time version. I went for the regular one and discovered that instead of it making me sleepy, it made me more awake. So even though I didn't get a lot of extra sleep last week, it made me feel like I did, and it was a pretty good feeling.

For one thing, I didn't have the urge to nap constantly. And because of that I actually got a few things done last week that I've been letting slide. Funny how that works out. One of the things I was able to do was make the Christmas dress for my granddaughter. When my daughter was little I used to make her a fancy dress every year for Christmas and sometimes Easter. So it was kind of nice to be able to carry on the tradition.

My daughter gave me a picture to go by and the material. The rest was up to me. But never fear, I've been sewing most of my life and for a baby's dress a picture was all I needed. Granted I pretty much blew off everything else to get it done in a day and a half, but I think it was worth it.

Here's the picture I had to work with:

And here's my version of the dress:

Not bad if I do say so myself. And as I type this, the dress has been sent to my daughter's friend in Vancouver to have silver snowflakes embroidered on the red part. I'm a pretty fair hand at embroidery myself, and I've worked with the metallic threads before. And all I can say is, better the friend than me!

:-)