Wednesday Poem

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Here’s one for the autumnal equinox, with an excellent use of “unstinting” in it.

 

Roses, Late Summer
by Mary Oliver

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can’t sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
so they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
if I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn’t mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Birthday Shirt

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I hadn’t made a shirt for my brother since 2020 and I had nothing but time those first couple weeks of funemployment; ergo, that’s what he got for his birthday this year. He recently bought himself a vintage Caterpillar D2 tractor so I went looking for Caterpillar fabric and found a surprising amount, from designer Riley Blake–definitely more options than John Deere fabric.

I went with one of the more subtle options, which could be a stripe if you’re far away and you squint. But I had fun playing with the stripe direction and went with some Western details too. (Looking through the archives, I almost always use pearl snaps for my brother? Must be because we grew up with Mom’s relatives wearing cowboy shirts.)

A shirt on a hanger. The background is yellow with gray tire and track lines and a CAT Logo. There are pearl snaps and a curved yoke.

Detail of the back yoke of a shirt. The fabric is yellow with gray tire and track marks on it, with the CAT logo.

I used the McCalls M6044 that I usually use for Doc–I have the paper pattern in two sizes now so used the smaller one for Alan. At this point in my shirt making career, it didn’t take long at all.

My Brother Is 50!

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Today is my brother’s 50th birthday! One on hand, that number seems ludicrous to describe someone who slid down the carpeted stairs with me; on the other, how lucky am I to have known such a good person for so long?

He’s generous with his time and his knowledge, and that knowledge is deep. He befriends everyone and picks up on what makes someone unique. He keeps his house and yard and things in good shape (and himself too).

He’s a good man, a good dad and husband, a good brother and son. Happy half-century, Alan!

Friday Links

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1. Any Human Ever is a fun little way to remind ourselves how good some modern technology can be (the “children per woman” stat is GRIM, as is the “died before age 5” one). Get assigned “a place, a life, each taken at random from real data” and learn about how someone lived and died in the past.

2. I’m always here for a Gilbert and Sullivan parody (the fonts being shown match what’s being sung, of course):

 

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3. Presented without comment:

Screenshot of a tweet that says CEO: we expect every employee to begin integrating Al into their day-to-day workflows immediately. this will help us seamlessly transition your responsibilities to Al and eliminate your role by early 2027, just in time for us all to perish in the robot uprising of 2035. remember, we're like family here.

Prepper Essay

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Here’s a short piece by Alex Sujong Laughlin in Defector, writing about preparing for the end times–honestly, something that’s not far from everyone’s minds at this point. It doesn’t go the way you expect though (emphasis mine):

…when the thought of buying weapons fleetingly crossed my mind, I knew I needed to call a time-out and figure out what I was actually worrying about.
I was afraid of losing control, of life not going according to plan, of another major disruption changing the course of history. I was afraid that my neighbors would turn on each other, that the world would turn into every post-apocalyptic movie I’ve ever seen, and that I would regret not doing everything I could to protect my family….
Once I articulated these fears, I realized I could not control them even if I spent my entire life in a defensive crouch of paranoid preparation. […] And doing that would require a change of my fundamental values and worldview, too, because it would make me live in a way that assumes people are more likely to hurt than help each other. 

Smart Boys

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Cheese and Mr. Wizard have quickly figured out that I need a lot of assistance with sewing:

An orange cat and a gray cat on a pattern piece

A gray cat on an ironing board, impeding progress

An orange cat asleep on a windowsill, seen through the harp of a sewing machine

I don’t know what it is about cats and fabric, but these guys learned that it must be sat upon pretty quickly. Now I just need to get Cheese to stop biting the serger threads…

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 🫠 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

Karen

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:

 

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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

Karen

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.