Tuesday Project Roundup: Cranking Out Shirts

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I have a freelance project going on this week and a few more in the pipeline, but for the first couple weeks of funemployment (pre-cats), I was desperate for stuff to do. So I sewed a lot! Hooray for an enormous fabric stash.

I got this quilt print fabric for Doc when I bought the fabric for my river shorts, with his approval.A men's shirt hangs on a closet door. It has a pink, yellow and blue quilt print on a white background.

If I had discretionary income, I would absolutely have ordered some black-on-white labels instead of using the white-on-black that I have, but they work.
Close up of a pocket with a label that says "Catagonia:

 

And with white thread in the serger, I sewed up a little vest top with some fabric I got earlier this summer from Harmony. This is the Elova Top from Open Studio Patterns and it was a fun sew. I decided to do the welt pockets because I had the time đŸ«  but somehow got the welt pattern upside down.
A welt pocket in a yellow-on-white block print shirt

I’m not too mad about that because the fit around the armholes ended up a little gaping, which is what happens when you don’t make a muslin. But it’s still cute.
A woman takes a mirror selfie. She's wearing a sleeveless yellow-on-white block print vest and tan balloon pants

State Fair Time

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Since I needed things to do in my funemployment, I entered some stuff in the state fair this year. According to the archives, the last time I entered was 2010 or so, and I guess my skills have really leveled up in 16 years because look who got a BEST OF SHOW rosette: A brown plaid coat with a best of show rosette ribbon and a first place ribbon

I also got a first place on my quilt coat and a second place on my log cabin throw–the state fair ladies do not play when it comes to judging quilts.

The sleeve of a quilted coat with a blue ribbon on it

We were there on the opening afternoon, so it wasn’t too busy. We looked at all the other exhibits, petted some goats, and just enjoyed ourselves out with all the other retired people.

A dahlia exhibit with orange and pink flowers

A tan and black goat and a black and white goat give side-eye in a pen

A sign with the 4-H logo of a green clover

Friday Links

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1. I loved reading this so much: Why ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ Looks Like That.

[Background designer Maurice] Noble took an experimental route. That included some of the colors: a red Elmer Fudd against a purple sky, among other unnatural choices. With work underway, Friz Freleng dropped by Noble’s office and saw the concepts. “[He] muttered, ‘What the hell?’ and then just left,” Noble recalled

 

2. This fills me with evil glee:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Joe Fenti (@fentifriedchicken)

 

3. I can’t believe it hasn’t even been a week with the kitty boys. Look at these little faces! We love them so much (although Doc wishes they sat on his lap just a little more.)

Thursday Essay

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Here’s a loving little piece from Danny Lavery about working in a senior care center and driving people to their appointments: “Getting in and out of cars.”

It’s possible to take the “Don’t get old” injunction too seriously, to take someone else’s aging as proof of failure, to decide that if one just does enough balance and mobility exercises, lifts enough weights, they will never experience physical frailty or loss of control, remain in perfect rude bursting sheer vigor right up until the moment they drop dead, still as healthy as an ox. But I am inclined to take it seriously, that little automatic annual deduction of muscle that one scarcely notices until the stairs and the bathroom become newly dangerous; there is a balance to be struck between living as if there were no tomorrow and behaving like that billionaire who’s always drinking his son’s blood.

Funemployment Outing: The Outdoor Rec Archive

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I thought I’d posted about the Outdoor Recreation Archive (ORA) before but it looks like I just told everyone I knew about it in person instead. The ORA is “a historical collection of books, catalogs, periodicals, photographs, and manuscripts documenting the history of outdoor gear” and it’s housed at Utah State University.

I’d been following them on Instagram for a while now, just for a hit of nostalgia/some gear sewing inspo. I saw that they were bringing some actual materials to a bookstore in Salt Lake so we went to check it out. It was a vintage catalog WONDERLAND–my catnip.

The exhibit is at Books & Supply in downtown SLC through September 18th; you can just roll up during their open hours and go to the back of the store and spend hours going through everything. Highly recommend!

Embracing ALL The Change

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Reader, we made a snap decision. Meet Mr. Wizard and Cheese:
A grinning woman on a bed with a gray cat and an orange cat on her lap

After we tried meeting a dog in June, I wasn’t going to even think about another animal until the winter. Then I got laid off and thought, “Yeah, that’s for the best, we don’t need another mouth to feed.” But THEN my brother sent me a bonded pair of kitties at the shelter because the orange one was named Cheese just like our childhood cat. We met them Friday, they both sat on my lap, and we took them home.

When I immediately wrote about getting laid off, I said I wasn’t panicking yet, but as it sunk it, I’d been starting to panic, literally–waking up and having my heart start to race, upset stomach, needing to do my breathing exercises. NOW I have two lap cats who wake up with me and need snacks and pets and have the best purr motors. Now I have two little guys to keep me company in the office as I send out applications.
A gray cat and an orange cat on a couch in the sun. The gray cat has his arms around the orange cat.

We think these two are pretty young. Mr. Wizard might be older but their fur texture and body type are so similar that they might be litter mates. I’ve never had a bonded pair of cats and they’re just a delight. Mr. Wizard makes sure little Cheese is OK; when Mr. Wizard is around, Cheese is so much braver.
A gray cat guarding an orange cat under a blanket fort.

They’re also good boys, settling in and letting us sleep through the night. I have had to move some houseplants around and buy two more scratching posts, but they’re pretty chill overall. An orange cat and a gray cat sitting on a wide window ledge, watching birds

Was it the most responsible thing to take on extra responsibility and expense without a steady income? Maybe not, but I don’t regret it. I guess part of me was ready to blow up everything about my old life. But I think the new life with the kitty boys will be pretty good.

Happy Labor Day, Comrades

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As we celebrate the workers today, remember that people died for us to get where we are, and those in power are doing their damndest to take us even further backwards. Don’t let them! Educate yourself!

Here’s Hamilton Nolan’s newsletter today, reminding us that it’s capitalism against everyone else:

We are all mad at the billionaires and whatnot but let’s be very clear about the mechanism driving all of this: American companies are making more money than ever and they don’t have to share it because workers don’t have the power to claim their fair share, and because some of the money has been used to purchase political influence to prevent the government from stepping in, and so therefore the money accrues to the owners, which is to say, to the rich.

Friday Links

Karen

1. Some more Wendell Berry, from Life is a Miracle: “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

 

2. One week into unemployment and I’m not finding a job like this?? Screenshot of a tweet that says the only career path i'm interested in is one that leads me deep into the woods where I can curl up in the hollow of an ancient tree and slowly become one with the moss

 

3. Here’s Ordinary Abundance, an interactive appreciation of all the (good) things modern society has given us: “All the items in this room were once out of reach; some not yet invented, others too rare or costly for the vast majority of people. Today, most of us lucky enough to live with them walk past without a second thought.”

RIP, Wendell Berry

Karen

He died Monday at the age of 92. Looking back through the archives here, I’m surprised I never posted this one–arguably his most famous and very much up my alley.

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Funemployment Field Trip

Karen

Doc has Tuesdays off and I don’t have anything to do (yet–I do have some freelance starting next week, hooray!) so we went up to the Uintas yesterday. Nothing like some vast distances and being surprised by four deer bounding across the trail (not pictured) for some perspective.