Mood:  cheeky

All the rain has been quite kind to me garden. Unfortunately, it's also being quite kind to the weeds.  The tomatoes are growing like gangbusters, but so are the bindweeds and the crown vetch. My lillies are all popping open. The Stella D'Oro day lilies are in full bloom and the Bela Lugosi day lillies are about to pop.  The belas are quite uncommon and notoriously difficult to get established. They are finally beginning to spread after five years in the same place.

I'm getting lots and lots of peas now.  I have one patch of sugar pods and one patch of little marvels.  They are both quite sweet.  if i have enough I can freeze them.  I might supplemant my supply with a basket or two from the market, then I can have fresh frozen peas all winter.  I'm tempted to freeze corn too this year.  Last year frozen corn was expensive and not very good. With a bit of luck and a lot of work I will have a freezer full of veggies.

And now for those still reading, here's a picture of some fireworks taken on Canada day:

Whoops!  Those are not fireworks.  Those things busting out are some one's boobs!  Whose boobs could they be?  Whoever she is -she's looking might fine for (almost) 49!

And now off to my Mom's, Waterloo Square, Carry On Comics, Back Home, Downtown Kithcener, Manulife Square, and back Home again and then to Len's.  That's a lot of walking in one day!

Posted by lincatz at 10:47 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  caffeinated

I have ranted and raved many times about people who decide that their first sewing project should be a strapless boned evening dress.  And i have ranted and raved many times about people who decide that commercial patterns are too expensive and/or not required so they decide to "wing it" and come up with their own pattern.  I have also ranted that they then look for advice which, if they would have followed what I said originally -they would not have ended up in the mess they find themselves in. 

Which brings me to the atrocity above.  It's from a message board posting, the person wanted to make a strapless dress  but she couldn't "visualize" (quotation marks hers" the fabric cut outs and didn't know how the pieces would look.  There were three postings directing her to simplicity's dress that is identical to the pictures she posted,  dresses on the websites of those large mall chains from the US, Charlotte Russe and Forever 21.  One person posted the above picture saying it was a diagram of the cut outs she would need and to copy the shapes exactly.

Yeah, I can see problems already. First and foremost, it isn't drawn to any kind of scale. Upon closer inspection I see more problems beginning with the shape of the skirt, with the weird bulge on one side.  Even if your straighten the bulge, you have darts that go down to the knees.  The front and back of the skirt is the same piece, which doesn't work unless your have a body with no butt or gut, or the gut is as big as the butt.  Shaping requirements are different for the front and back. The skirt is taken in too much to fit on the midriff band, which has no side shaping.  There needs to be contouring in midriff or it won't help hold up the bodice.  The midriff band holds up the structural elements of the strapless dress, it needs to be very snug and the contouring needs to be perfect.

In the bodice, look at the piece labelled "back"  the darts are upside down! The bodice should narrow at the waist and widen across the back at the bust.  All bodies get narrower at the back waist.  The darts sown would make the waist too large and the centre back will pinch the flesh of the mid back leading to what is unkindly called "the back ass"  The front bodice is too narrow to fit on the midriff band and the darts are too sharp.  The top of the front piece should have a dart, otherwise the top edge will hang open. 

The diagram would be forgivable if the poster said that it was a rough sketch, and it would need to be made up in muslin to test the fit.  But she said that it was the best pattern for a strapless dress and it was super easy to make.  Needless to say, the person is quite frustrated by this whole experience. Yet she still doesn't want a commercial pattern with everything, including fitting instructions, material lists and everything else she will need to know.  She wants a free pattern.

Free patterns are often worth what you pay.  A simple skirt or basic shoe bag are items that required little imagination or work on my part, so I have no trouble putting them up on the site as a free pattern.  The amount of work involved in drafting and perfecting a strapless dress pattern is higher, and pattern making is a skill that is not easy, it requires time, training and practise.  Most like to be rewarded for their skill and technical expertise. That's why you don't find free jeans patterns, free evening dress patterns, or free coat patterns.

So final conclusion, sewing patterns are like everything else in life: You get what you pay for.  And when an expert tells you to save frustration and aggravation by using a commercial pattern, listen to us!

Posted by lincatz at 11:29 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  lyrical

Do you know who Edward Bulwer-Lytton was? He was the writer who first wrote "it was a dark and stormy night" a line endlessly parodied by Snoopy as he attempted to write the best novel ever written by a dog.  Some say Bulwer-Lytton was a great writer, other say he suffered worst from the most wretched excesses of victorian prosery.  This is the man who talked Dickens into re-writing the end of "Great Expectations" earning the eternal wrath of literary critics for screwing with a masterpiece.  These critics fail to mention that Dickens's original ending sucked even worse than the changed ending -no one has yet come up with a suitable ending for that story.  Nevertheless, his egregious excesses of ego assisted him in earning the title of "worst writer ever"  Until Danielle Steele came along.

To be fair, most writing from his era is florid and overwrought with phrases, clauses, prepositions, semi colons dashes and ellipses-es. He wasn't alone in his excessive reliance of Adjectives and Adverbs over nouns and verbs to tell his story. He is the one who took it to the extreme turning sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into exercises in page turning. He holds a place in the hearts of bad writers everywhere.  No matter how poorly we construct a sentence we take comfort in knowing that he has done worse...far worse.

To honour Bulwer-Lytton's dubious place in the history of English Literature every year there is held a contest in his honor.  Writers are invited to write the single worst opening line of a novel.  No novel -just the opening line.  The winners of the 2009 contest were released this morning and here they are: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm  

my personal favourite is the runner-up in the adventure category:

In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's first and only hot air baboon ride.

Tony Alfieri
Los Angeles, CA

The purple prose category brings us the usual including this little gem:

The gutters of Manhattan teemed with the brackish slurry indicative of a significant though not incapacitating snowstorm three days prior, making it seem that God had tripped over Hoboken and spilled his smog-flavored slurpie all over the damn place.

Eric Stoveken
Allentown, PA

And one final dishonorable mention:

As Oedipus watched his mother gracefully glide across the great hall, he felt a stirring in his loins which he immediately regretted but then quickly dismissed, for he knew if these wanton desires for his mother were wrong then someone would have named the condition by now, thus proving once again that where his emotions were concerned there was only one description for Oedipus . . . complex.  

There is a quiz in which you are asked if a passage was written by Charles Dickens or by Bulwer-Lytton. The average score is about 48%  I got ten of the 12 correct which gives me a score of 83%, and after i checked B-W for one I immediately remembered the passage came from David Copperfield so if I would have taken my time instead of rushing I would have ended up with 11 of 12 correct.  Which is pretty damned good, way ahead of everyone else.

To be fair, once you understand the differences in the writer's style it's far easier.  Dickens writes word pictures that are evocative and can be visualized in the minds eye, they are places and feelings that we all share.  B-L tends to write heavy as lead WORDS WORDS WORDS that go nowhere, do nothing and leave the reader wondering what the hell the writer is trying to say.

Mid-Victorian era writers were unnaturally obsessed with stormy weather.  It's easy to understand why if you look a bit beyond the world of literature and culture: Much of this was written when Krakatau volcano's eruption gave Europe several years of poor weather.

And that's all for this stark and warmy day, when the only thing heavier than that humidity is the weight of unresolved romance on my...oh fark it!  I can't write like that!

Posted by lincatz at 10:46 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Today is special!  We have two special squirrel stories: one from the local newspaper and one that features boobies.

We had a bit of a squirrel issue says person with Kitchener Wilmot hydro. We didn't lose our power, that's way on the other side of town.  The article never said if the squirrel was regular or extra crispy after its adventure.

The detective sat amazed as the woman continued the conversation while tucking the squirrel into her cleavage.  And there's video of both the squirrel and the cleavage.  George Costanza approves.  Surprisingly, there's video with this story!  The woman and her three friends were all set free.  Now for obligatory LOLsquirrel.  This one is a real corker!

It doesn't get any better than a spider squirrel! 

Posted by lincatz at 11:27 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

If I haven't mentioned, I'm looking after my niece's spider over the summer.  Her name is Rachel, the spider that is, and she's a Mexican Red Knee Tarantula.  She's got a lot of personality for a spider! And a whole lot of girth for an insect! She's got a bit of a foul temper at times, other times she seems quite happy.  While we are eating she hoists her front half up against the glass and watches us.  Sometimes she'll just sit by her water dish and glare at the crickets.  One of the crickets was quite noisy, chirping non stop all day.  When the noise stopped I went to the tank to see what was up and Rachel was sucking down a nice juicy cricket.  She targeted the noisy one, it seems.  After it appeared that she was grooming her fangs and pedipalps and then slicking back the fur on her thorax and head.  At one point I looked in her tank and I breathed a little too hard when over the screen. She hates any breezes and the breeze I made while talking made her absolutely freak out.  She sat in the middle of her tank wither her head and thorax raised and half her legs poised for attack.  She stayed like that for over an hour before she finally calmed down.

So I've been reading a lot about tarantulas.  People either love them or hate them, there's very little in between.  The red knee is one of the most popular to keep as pets, as are the rosies and the orange knee.  Here's the wikipedia article about the red knee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_redknee_tarantula  and here's a little picture from Google image search:

Rachel isn't quite this big, but she has the exact same colouring.  Isn't she cute?

In other news I'm making a couple canvas shopping bags that I'm going to paint with mushrooms.  One will have a giant bolete as the centerpiece and the other will have a big morel.  They are for the mushroom guy at the St Jacob's Farmer's market and Mrs Mushroom guy. I'm going to trade them for some mushrooms.  He's getting a sleeve tattoo of hundreds of different mushrooms on one arm. It's really cool!  I can whip out a bag in no time, it's all straight line sewing, and painting shouldn't take long as i have more mushroom sketches than I know what to with.

And that's all for today.  Now I'm going to do some gardening before it start to rain and then I dunno...paint some shrooms?

Posted by lincatz at 11:00 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  mischievious

Our family has some big news!  Dan is planning on moving into an apartment of his own.  He'll be moving in the beginning of August.  He's busy getting a whole bunch of stuff together for the place, kitchen things, living room things, etc.   My brother mike is also getting an apartment of his own in September and my mom and dad are tentatively planning on selling their house and moving into a condo in that fall. So many changes!  I don't think I can cope.

Oh yeah, Our grocery bill will be only half of what it is now. And there will be one less person to pink up after.  I think I will cope just fine.  Ben will move into his brother's room and Ben's room will become a walk in closet or perhaps a library.  I think we should combine his closet and ours into one large closet and then his room can have one wall turned into built-in floor to ceiling book shelves.  We could also put in a desk and turn it into a small home office. Yeah...I think we will cope quite well when Dan leaves.

It's a big step for all of us.  It will be interesting to see how the next six months unfold.  There will be changes for all of us ahead.

Last night was Amy's graduation.  The dress was absolutely stunning on her and it was well worth all the work. She looked just like the sketch I did!  The ceremony ran about half an hour longer than it was supposed to...but what graduation doesn't run overtime?  Dave's university graduation was almost four hours one hour was for some guy getting a special degree for his work in pure mathematical theory as it pertained to the motion of galaxies and the stars within them, mixed up with Fermat's final theorem and a bit of what has lately been known as quantum theory and string theory.  So after she took me around to meet some teachers and others. Amy and I look very much alike, and we're quite similar in other ways too. Good ways.  When they were talking about who was about to win the English award the second they said "has a flair for drama" I KNEW it was Amy.  Then when they called her "the school's own Bellatrix LeStrange" I think everyone knew it was her.  That's a character in Harry Potter, by the way.

So I still have the burnout velvet that I was thinking of using. Note: it was so hot yesterday that the poor girl would have melted in the burnout velvet. I also have the stretch lace with the Aurora Borealis beading, and some of the other trims, and i think they would be perfect for a new black cocktail dress.  I also have some black aurora Borealis hot fix crystals in 20, teardrop and 60 sizes, so the dress can really sparkle.  Ill make the bodice fitted like a basic sheath with a shallow and broad V in the front and the skirt will be twisted, gathered and quite full. I also have three sewing machine threaded with plenty of black thread and the coolest place in the house in the basement...

After the graduation my brother came over and took out camping trailer away.  We haven't used it since Ben became far too long for the beds inside.  There are still a few (a lot) of repairs needed on the canvas.  I hope it's roadworthy long enough for a trip to where-ever.  Probably should have an expert look at it, it's been sitting for several years  and I hope it's still okay for the road. So far Steve says there are no problems, but all he did is drive it to his place. 

When I got up this morning I had fifty comment waiting for me.  Was it something I said about jello salads, which generated over 400 comments at one point?  Was it the entry where i said phentex yarn slipper looked and smelled like ass, which still generates hate mail?  No, it was for fifty separate entries, and all of them were this:

Good credit history student have got a main target to achieve higher study. Money plays good rolls in their study because money completes the necessities of the higher study that’s why the requirements of money are increasing very fast, how ever the student who have got the bad credit history, they don’t achieve the higher study, due to lack money and they don’t pay the asset to the avail the loans.

...with a link to a website that ended in the .ru suffix.  Yeah, I'm going to go for a loan from an ad that isn't even written in real english, just bad babelfish english. The infuriating part is that it took half an hour to delete this spam crap one by one.

And that's all for today. I have to brave the heat and do some work outside and get a few groceries and then recover from heat stroke.  Later!

Posted by lincatz at 10:40 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  special

It's finally summer!  It's been warm and humid for three days now.  happy happy joy joy. 

I finished Amy's dress and delivered it yesterday.  I hope it fits fine and looks fine.  I hope she likes it.  i think it looks nice.  At the end i was getting to the part where I get all fussy and freaky-out about little things and I have to stop fiddling with it and touching it because that's when disaster can creep in.  I admit the hem was freaking me out.  I had it on the form and it looked straight, then on a hanger it looked crooked, then I measured it with the tape measure and it was fine, then I hung it up on a different hanger and it looked okay...then i put it in a bag because I was totally freaking myself out.  There comes a point when i no longer can "see" a dress.  It's hard to describe, I see seams and hems and facings and necklines and gathers and details, but I lose the picture of the entire dress.  Then I get hooked on one detail, or I see two little stitches as being wrong...then I start to freak myself out.  So when that started I put the dress in a bag and stopped looking at it.  My SIL wanted Amy to try it on, but I said we had to get going because I knew I was in the middle of that freak-out stage.

So if there are any major problems, I can go there this evening and fix them up.  I tossed some leftover fabric and a few bits of the leftover trim into the bag.  The purple jaquard was easier to sew than I expected and the crinkled black was far more challenging than I expected.  But that's the way it works.  The only real potential disaster was the purple loose weave couldn't hold a curve, even with stay stitching.  It tended to stretch anywhre there was a curved cut.  The neckline came this close to being a disaster, but i had some elastic edged trim the pulled the neck back inot shape.  Unfortunately it raised the neckline a bit, but she is only 14 so she doesn't need too low a U-neck. That's the part that concerns me the most.  And the fact I initially cut it two sizes too big and spent tons of time making it smaller. Her midriff is barely 25 inches, so the midriff band needed to be less than 25 inches, not more.

I cleaned up the sewing room and now i can finish the long t-shaped tunic top.  And i have a pir of denim cargo shorts cut out.  It's lighter 10 ounce denim, one step up from chambray.  I need denim shorts and the ones at stores right now show off too much of my late-forties thighs.

But for today i'm leaving the sewing room for a while.  i need to do some outdoor work and Ben is going to mow the lawn. That's Ben's new job; mowing the lawn.  Dave is allergic to grass, so we decided this was a good thing for Ben to learn.  While he mows I will hoe the garden.  I said HOE the garden, now ho' around in the garden.  There's a difference.

The Roma tomatoes are doing quite well.  Everything is a little behind, it's bee far too cool and damp for a lot of the veggies that require sun, but the lttuce is doing well.  i have to pick some later today.  I will give everything a nice cool mist and by five or so it will be ready for picking.  i don't like picking in the morning because that when some insects are busy, I hate finding earwigs in my salad.  The Roma tomatoes are quite bushy, and many of my marigolds are blooming. 

And that's all for now.  I need to get other things done!  Later! 

Posted by lincatz at 11:53 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Finally! Summer Weather!  The weather is supposed to be sunny and warm for the next five days. We have had lots of pleasant days, it's been like three months of early May.  Finally we are getting some real spring weather.

Yesterday the sun was blazing hot, yet the wind was somewhat cool.  We went to Victoria park to participate in the Multicultural festival.  I have never seen it so full of people, we could barely move because of the crowds.  There was lots of food, including giant sized dinosaur turkey legs done on the barbecue. One leg was enough for two people.  There were lots of arts and crafts available, I got a painting from Western African artist  and Ben got a couple of things from an Egyptian art booth, a gouache, gold and silver leaf painting of real papyrus paper, and one of those carved and hammered silver plates.   I did something stupid, I didn't put on any sunscreen until we got there and I ended up with a slight sunburn on my face and shoulder. Dan's girlfriend put on sunscreen everywhere except the tops of her feet and she got a sunburn there.

After my mom had a huge dinner with in-laws, outlaws, and a couple of people I haven't seen in over fifteen years.  A good time was had by all. 

On Friday I went off to my niece's for a dress fitting and we ended up spending over two hours alone yakking up a storm.  It was quite nice.  I think there are some surprising similarities between the two of us, like someone cloned me.  That was really nice and I hope we get a chance to do that again sometime.  I used to chew the ears off a few of my aunts and i found it really helpful growing up to see life from a different perspective than my parent's.  My aunt Ruth was very helpful when I was a teen, so was my aunt Linda and Margie. She was once called big Linda and I was little Linda.  it's sort of reversed now.  She's the one that I have described as being as chic and as elegant as Audrey Hepburn, petite, large eyed, and the kind of pretty that doesn't go away as she gets older.  my niece and I covered a lot of ground and got a chance to talk about a few things that I have wanted to discuss for a long time.   So we spent most of Sunday joking that we were far too opposite, not in any way alike,  and hated each other.   

After i went to the mall and got a couple pairs of shoes: I got these in the turquoise Click here!  I'm wearing those right now.  And I also got a pair of black high heel sandals which were clearance priced and no longer on the website.  There are suede and have a fringed ankle strap, sort of hippy and dress at the same time.  I'm going to add my own glitz to them.  I asked for something that would look good with a Stevie Nicks type outfit and the girl pointed them out right away! At the Bay I got a gift set of Calvin Klein's Eternity Summer limed edition fragrance with perfume, shower gel and body lotion in a chic semi-metallized white bag (which is about to be painted in pastel colours) that also held a Bay gift card for 15$.  (recession again, adding value to try and get people to purchase luxury goods.)   Every year many fragrances are re-tooled into lighter versions for summer.  A few of Calvin Klein's are considered classic and are made is such small numbers that they soon sell for a small fortune on places like E-bay.  This one is already being re-sold in markets where it's sold out.  It smells wonderful and it doesn't give Dave a headache.  I also got a couple new bras from LaSenza, one seamless ultra soft and one "beyond cleavage" so I can demote a few flop-alongs to the " only for days I'm not going anywhere outside" pile.

At the shoe store I decided that as atrocious Gladiator sandals are when the sit on the shelves, they are even worse when worn of the feet. Unless you want your feet to look like you are carrying an extra thirty pounds of weight on them. The biggest surprise in the mall was that I actually liked a couple shirts at American eagle, and that the denim shorts look very good on me.  And then i remembered that I despise American Eagle as brainless conformity and soul sucking sameness.  But the two shirts were really cute with watercolour pastel flowers in pale pink and blue.  But i didn't buy them.

So that's all for the weekend.  I have work to do now, there's re still a few things that need planting and I have a couple dressmaking details to finish up. And in the evening I'm going to sit outside and enjoy some fresh air and do some sketching.  Later!

Posted by lincatz at 10:24 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

The dress is going quite well.  i have all the main units sewn together and  basted together for a fitting. I go for a fitting this afternoon and then I can do the finish construction on Saturday.  It should (i hope) be done on Sunday.  If it isn't it will be finished Monday and i will deliver it then.  There have been a few "now how am i going to do THAT?" moments, but no "okay, now I'm screwed" moments.  Here's a picture of part of the dress on my dress form.  keep in mind that the dress will be worn by someone shorter smaller and much skinnier than me

 And it will also be trimmed of loose ends, especially the braid trims, and it will be laced up tight under the bust, and there will be a good pressing in the near future.

So there's a cookbook on line called "the Forme of Cury" it dates from the 1400's, before the New World crops changed cooking forever.  There are no potaotes or corn,  But plenty of stuff we don't eat any more.  Like grewel. porpoise, roo brothe and rape in potage.  And funges!  Which you pare and dice and seethe in a good brothe with saffron.  http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC055small.html  The letters are old english, meaning there are formes we no longer use such as: Þ  which is the thorn, prononced as the hard voiced th as in this and seethe, also the ð which is called eth and is the soft unvoiced form of th, as in birth and death. There's alos the tied letters of fl, and the for of s that looks like an fancy script form of f. there's also the tied fh, which is prounced as an unvoiced sh.   These recipes are not what ridnary people would eat, these are dishes fit for a king.  King Richard the second to be exact. Her's the start page of the book: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/

This recipe book is proof that a food fad that has arisen lately is bogus.  It's called the hundred mile diet and it states that people in the past were healtheir because all their food came from a 100 mile radius of where they lived.  This simply isn't true.  Even in the 1400's there was a robust trade in food products, from fruits to sugar to grains such as rice.  The more exotic the food, the more likely only the very rich would eat it, but there were many options for even the peasants. In the Americas there was a healthy trade in all manner of foods; potatoes and fruits from South america would be traded for  grains and sunflowers form the plains and beans and squashes from the the great lakes area.  Trade flourished, not one north american native lived on a hundred mile diet.

The second falsehood is that these earlier people were healthier.  Wrong.  40 was considered elderly.  They had stomach problems we can't even begin to imagine from attepting to digest food that we no longer eat. Their diet lacked many vitamins and nutrients that we take for granted.  many suffered from nutrient deficiencies, and that included the rich as well as the poor.  it's just another silly fad.

And from the booke: Nota- The Loyne of pork, is fro the hippe boon to the hede.  There's also a way to make panne fondew, frying bread in oil or grease and then dipping it in red wine.  And then it gets weird.

And that's all for now.  I have to shower, pack up my bag with the dress and stuff and figure out which bus goes to where I am going.  I think it is the 9 I want. They have all their schedules on line and in PDF fomat, so I can print any route i want, which I am doing right now!

Posted by lincatz at 12:13 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

The dress is going well.  Today I'm doing the skirt and basting all the pieces together. Friday i will do a fine tuning of the fit and then Saturday will be an all out sewing day.  On Sunday everything will be finished. I hope.

Good thing it's Bent raining the past few days, it inspires me to stay inside and work.  When the sun is out I'm more inspired to go out and dig weeds or plant things of go downtown and soak up the urban atmosphere or or...you know what i mean.

We lost or electricity for over an hour this morning.  There were hydro trucks driving slowly through the neighbourhood looking up at our poles.  Sometimes they would get into their little baskets and get lifted up to the top of the pole, the guy would shake his head and then be lowered. I think I know what happened.

But now the power is back, and the hydro guys are enjoying a nice lunch of char-broiled squirrel.  And i am going to start sewing!  Later! 

Posted by lincatz at 10:34 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink