Last night I switched my laptop over to Windows 7 (which is made of WIN), and I’m pretty happy.  I lost a single folder of stuff, which I didn’t really need anyway.  I reorganized most of my computer files (the photos are still out of control but that’s a whole night’s work by itself, so some other time).  Now my computer feels shiny, happy and new, so that’s good!

Buoyed by this sense of accomplishment I started to take hold of my life today.  Well, that’s a huge project, but I got the closet cleaned out.  Packed away my summer clothes.  Pulled out all the fleecy lounge pants.  How much do I love Nashville weather that it was possible to wait until the last day of November to do this?  Granted it was an abnormally warm November, but still awesome!

Now I’ve finished lunch.  The closet stuff is done, including taking stuff to the Goodwill drop off.  The laundry is laundering.  I have a massive, ambitious to-do list.  Which really I need to break down into ongoing lists of projects to be done, and then parcel that out into smaller daily and weekly lists.  I could in fact lose an entire afternoon just to trying to organize all my projects, which really, I probably should do.  Hmmm.

(Picture today from Ricko on Flickr.)

As I did at exactly this time last year, I have taken the refashion pledge:

I pledge that I shall abstain from the purchase of “new” manufactured items of clothing, for the period of 2 months. I pledge that I shall refashion, renovate, recycle preloved items for myself with my own hands in fabric, yarn or other medium for the term of my contract. I pledge that I will share the love and post a photo of my refashioned, renovated, recycled, crafted or created item of clothing on the Wardrobe Refashion blog, so that others may share the joy that thriftiness brings!

So I will probably be doing most of my sewing blog posts over there, but I will try and link them here when they go up.

I made Thai green curry for dinner to stave off the depression of the first Standard time early sunset. Spicy, wonderful nom nom noms!  And hopefully to help me feel better.

The past two months of house guests, lots of running around, plenty of work and then, most recently, being sick, have left me feeling broke down and worn out.  I have need-to-do projects stacked knee-high around the house. I feel the need to just catch up on my life.  Like not even the projects, just you know, being me who isn’t hosting guests or sick or at work.  Ugh.  Lots of sewing will surely help. I should get started on that.

This weekend I spent a bunch of time fantasizing about a lovely, relaxing summer holiday here.  My mom is just now flying back from here, which also seems about right for where I’d rather be right now.  I did, after many false starts, finally book my tickets to Seattle for the winter holidays.  Dec 20-28.  I’m very much looking forward to that too.

I didn’t do anything for Halloween, but come home and put on pajamas. Lame, maybe, but so relaxing.  I’ve been thinking about my Gramma Marge and my Grampa Ray a lot today. El Día de los Muertos means honoring them.  For a while now I’ve been wanting to make a standing El Día de los Muertos altar for them in miniature.  I should perhaps take some time today to put down my plans for it so that I can start making the little pieces of it over the coming year.  I will light a candle for them tonight.

Picture today is my dining room fireplace “altar” for honoring the dead.

Would I be happier if I lived here?

- Yesterday I waited 7 or 8 minutes at a train crossing.  Too long. At least too long for 2pm.  Maybe in the middle of the night, but not the middle of the day.

- I am in between perfumes.  That seems weird, I guess.  But the summer scent I was wearing just isn’t appropriate for cooler weather.  The winter scent I wore last year now seems cloying and strange to me.  I’ve found one I like but it’s prohibitively expensive and the lasting power on it isn’t great.  I want my perfume to last if it’s going to be expensive. My most favorite scent ever was discontinued a couple years back and I’ve been only temporarily satisfied ever since.  I feel like I’m settling with the scents I’ve used in recent years.  I need to find one.  Or two (summer/winter).  Just some scent I love, rather than something I can live with.  In search of this obviously I need to go to the store and smell lots of stuff, but also I’ve seen reading perfume sites for reviews and to get a basic idea of which perfumes contain the notes I want (vanilla, lavender and grapefruit/blood orange–any or any combination of these).  I think I’ve narrowed it down.  Wish me luck.  Also if you see me and I smell good, tell me.  It’ll help me choose.

- Some one needs to come up with books I don’t have to hold up to read. I like to read in bed. But my hands always get cold being outside the covers.  Why can’t the book just hang in front of me at the angle I want?

- My sinues hurt so badly, and I ache all over.  Stuffy and sore throat and yuck.  The kind of yuck where you wish your mom would bring you soup while you watch movies. Or maybe your boyfriend could bring you spicy thai chicken soup and rub your neck and feel sorry for you.  Alas, I have no access to this kind of comfort.  So instead I will watch episodes of Fringe and whine to you guys.  Whine whine whine whine.

I should be sewing, or working, or doing something but mostly I am too pathetic.  Am drinking gallons of fresh ginger tea which should fix me right up.  Was going to make green chicken curry today but I am too pathetic to even go to the store.  Instead I will take a hot shower and a nap until I have to go to work.  Is there some sort of sinus removal operation? What do I really need them for anyway?

Momma love

I was going to make a post.  Then I decided I was too lazy.  Then I was reading someone else’s blog and they posted the following:

“The lazier the man is, the more he plans to do tomorrow.” -Norwegian proverb

So, yeah.  I’m effing lazy.  Seriously.  I’ve kind fo been on vacation for the last week while my stedad and cousin were visiting.  I think they had a great time.  I had a good time.  We did a side trip to Chattanooga, which I’ll post pictures from as soon as I get them off loaded from the camera.  We saw lots of good music.  Ate lots of good food.  Drank lots of good wine.  I sort of feel like I need to eat raw vegetables and brown rice for the next week to recover.

I have a list of like 700 projects to finish. Am overwhelmed.  Will start tomorrow.  In the meantime I made myself new pajamas today.  And went to the grocery store.  And caught up on the best show ever, Modern Family.  Small achievements, but better, I guess than spending the whole day watching TV, which I was tempted to do.

Oh, and now, as I type this, we are having a classic WTF Nashville? moment.  Fireworks.  Randomly.  On a Thursday at 9:30 pm.  I’m not joking when I say this happens all the time.  Better yet, I just checked all the local news sources and there’s no comment on what event coulld be happening to cause this.  Libelle also was asleep.  Alas our cool E.Nash location means the fireworks always sound like the start of a new war.  *sigh*

It seemed the fireworks were over, but now low flying helicopters.  Nashville is definitely not the place to live if you have PTSD from being a war zone.  Or if you want to sleep on a week night.

Um, I can’t even remember what I was going to write about now. We will assume the fireworks are because it’s my momma’s birthday today. She deserves at least that much celebration.

Final autumn dress (the previous ones are here and here).

This is the before:

Rhinestone buttons, ill-fitting bodice, awkward sleeves. But gorgeous fabric.

And after, with a few adjustments:

Took in side seams and bust darts, removed and re-set sleeves, shortened sleeves and skirt length, changed buttons and belt. I actually won’t wear this with fancy stockings and shoes, but rather with a flats and boots.  The angle is weird here too, camera low and tilting up, the dress looks shorter here than it appears when looking at it straight on.

I need to find a halfway decent photographer who wants to pad out their portfolio taking pictures of things I’ve sewn.  I am a really crummy photographer.  Although I suppose setting up the camera and using the self timer like this doesn’t really work out for anyone.

I just ate a very healthy dinner.  I slept for 10 hours last night.  Now I need to take my vitamins and drink about 3 more glasses of water, sleep 8 more hours and hopefully be all back to normal.  Rock star weekend seriously took it’s toll on me.

I did manage to finish a few projects and take a couple pictures.  First up is my new winter coat.

It’s wool, and new with the tags on.  Apparently from Italy and cost 119 euros.  I got it for $15 at a thrift store.  I am very pleased with this.  It’s purple!   (Also how cute are my boots?)  I do need to shorten the sleeves on it a bit, but otherwise, seriously, how awesome, right?

I also finished a couple dresses.  This one is a midweight blend, shirred at the waist, with pockets.  It’s designed, hopefully, to work under a cardigan in the fall and maybe over a turtleneck in the winter.  It only barely resembles what I had imagined when I started shopping for the fabric, but I’m pretty darn happy with it.

I have one more dress finished, though not yet photographed.  I made a lined jacket for a friend.  Which really was just me taking his jean jacket and one of his sweatshirts and sewing them together, but it came out pretty well I think (we’ll see when I give it back to him tomorrow).  I did most all of my mending over the wekend as well (just have a pair of pjs that need a little altering left to finish).  So I’m all ready.  I have a VERY ambitious list of new projects to start, many of which are already cut out.  I am feeling ready to get started now that I’ve finished my fall wardrobe.  Although I am pining for a pair of grey boots like these.  I know, I know, I really do already have enough pairs of boots, but look how pretty!!  And affordable.  Unlike these, which are my dream boots (in green, so impractical, price and reviews also make them impractical, but so GORGEOUS).

Gmail is advertising to me: “Learn How To Kiss A Girl In A Way That Makes Her Melt In Your Arms” presumably because I was quoting Cory Branan lyrics back and forth with TimmyMac? Hard to say. Also I’m pretty sure you can’t learn how to kiss on the internet. I’ve often wondered if it’s something that one just inherently does right. I mean, can it be learned at all?

I might consider trying to make something like this. I’m not actually sure I would wear this, but it’s called “Willamette” and something about the fabric and cut makes me think of summers at the beach with my Gramma Marge (who lived in the Willamette Valley–Mid-Valley– for those of you not in the know). I actually can’t decide if I like it or if just calls to me in some nostalgic way.

I stumbled on this posting the other day and am now actively fantasizing about winning the lottery and buying a this gorgeous riad in Marrakech. I mean check it out, it’s a steal. We should all just pool our money and go. I know things can’t make me happy, that I have to find it in myself. But I bet it’s WAY easier to look inside yourself when you live in a place that looks like that.

I know I’ve been in absentia for a while. I did post my pictures of my Seattle trip. I don’t know have much to say about it. It really was a grand and lovely trip. The weather was gorgeous. The company was fantastic. The food was great, as was the beer. I’ve been a little homesick since I got back and I keep dreaming about the ocean. Also I’m pretty proud of the pictures I took on this trip, though I think they are an unrealistic portrayal of the city. It’s that beautiful, just not that beautiful every day.

I am freaking exhausted.  Staying up until 4 am pretending to be a cool rock chick will do that, I guess. Fun night, better day (despite the hangover) showing the PNW boys Nashberg.

Fall still seems to be raining it’s way in.  I’ve gotten pretty used to Indian summers here. I guess it’s still possible.  It’s just been so overwhelmingly grey and insanely wet for the last week.  The air tastes like despair.  I have been here, in the sun, for so long now that apparently it takes only a week of grey for SAD to set in.  Luckily a good day of bright Southern sunlight can knock it out.  Now if only the sun would come out.

Libelle and I went shopping yesterday and I got an amazing wool coat, Italian, with the tags still on at the new Goodwill for $15.  I am smitten with it. It’s purple, but not too purple.  I like autumn all right, though I lament the loss of summer.  The coat is so wonderful that I think I might actually make it through winter.  I will try to take pictures tomorrow.

I lost my evening reading random personal blogs that Google Reader recommended me.  Usually it recs me sewing blogs or something clearly related to other blogs I read (like music or local news) but I got these two random ones.  One a girl who seems lonely and sad, but maybe doesn’t realize how pathetic she comes across (lots of writing about the boyfriend she misses, even though they broke up a year ago and she hasn’t spoken to him in seven months, ugh, so sad).  And another is a sort of hipstery dude in Brooklyn, but he posts kind of interesting art, and these hilarious (possibly unintentionally so) one line movie reviews, so I might follow him for a while.

Then I was thinking about how these blogs are nothing but weird windows into people’s lives so I went back and read my own entries from the last three Septembers.  And I guess since this blog is sort of about nothing, it is also a weird little window into my life.  I was reminded that I get really homesick every September, so it is excellent that I am going out to visit this week (omg, I need to pack).  And there’s odd little entries like this one that make my life seem interesting.  I guess my life is interesting.

I was contemplating some meme where you put all your past addresses into Google Earth and post the pictures of them, but then it seemed oddly morbid. Still, here is the house I grew up in.  It is part of what makes me interesting.  This pictures makes me happy.  Maybe it is because it seems so sunny.

The Placebo version of this song was on the premiere of Vampire Diaries (which so far doesn’t suck) and reminded me of how much I love it.  I have probably listened to it six times tonight.  It makes me feel lonely and happy at the same time.  This video is clearly dated though still incredibly lovely.

Kate Bush – Running up that Hill
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This live performance is also dated, but the emotion in it is fantastic.

I am covered in mosquito bites from walking around Spring Hill cemetery this morning.  I hate the word “upcycle.”  I am tired and achy.  I should be in bed.  Instead I am scrunched up on the love seat eating a sandwich consists of wheat bread (the cheap, crappy kind that is like brown white bread), tartar sauce (better than mayo on sandwiches) and havarti.  It is kind of trashy and incredibly delicious.

Hey all my lovely PNW pals,

I will be in town next week (ack, I need to pack!) and although I am very booked (busy jetsetter’s lifestyle) I would love to see you.  To this end there will be a party to compact all my socializing.

Here are the promised pictures of recent sewing projects:

Autumn plaid blouse.  Made from a reproduction vintage cotton, that has a lovely weight to it.  Grey/black/cream/brown plaid that hopefully will go with everything.

White blouse.  The first thing I made on the new machine.  Shown here with my fantastic shoes and purple handbag.  (Vanity pics of shoes and handbag because my mom asked to see both.)

Rainy day dress!!  In cotton that looks like PNW drizzle to me.  Ribbon detail on neckline. Dress is fairly structured, fully lined and was definitely harder to make than I thought.

Up close of the ribbon detail and the fabric.  It’s “homespun” quilting cotton, made as reproduction fabric from 100 years ago or so.  Lovely uneven grey stripes.  The ribbon is just pleated grey grosgrain ribbon.

I have one more dress to make for Fall/Winter (f only I can find the fabric) and one more blouse (if only I can find a pattern).  And more pictures coming soon of things I made for someone other than me.