Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Making do.
Like I said late last week – although we stayed home for our last bit of summer holidays – we were sure busy with all the canning, socializing, and whatnot. Today I am back at work and don’t have the wherewithal to write much – so I’m posting here a few photos of the sewing and crocheting I’ve completed since last Saturday. I am missing one photo – a winter beanie that I finished last night – but otherwise I am pleased to show off all that I have gotten done on the textile front in the last few days. My next projects include a scarf to go with the hat, and a brown tartan jumper which I have got all cut out and ready to sew. This week I hope.
I had quite a lot of fabric leftover from the cherry halter, plus a yard of black twill kicking around – so I made a set of four pillows to use in the backyard – where we have some uncomfortable seating! These pillows were super simple to put together and I highly recommend this as a form of using up scraps. Tutorial at Cluck Cluck Sew.
On Monday, I finished this denim and cotton dress in the midst of a crazy pouring rainstorm. Sadly, I have no great photos of it, but it is one of my favourite handmade pieces of clothing so far. The pattern was really simple to follow, and I added some ties at the back to give it a little more shape. This dress looks better in real life than in this photo.
I started this cowl a couple weeks ago to use up some leftover cotton (from a shawl project) – I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to wear it until I attached the button – and voila! A perfect piece to fit under a winter coat or over a collarless jacket. This is for fall wear as I would rather have wool in the coldest months…. but it’s super soft and these are some of my favourite colours.
With the fabric leftover from the denim dress, I made this pair of sprocket pillows for the new trailer (photos forthcoming). It’s a bit drab on the inside, what with the brown decor – so I thought these would make a nice start to sprucing up that wood paneling a little.
And finally, this scrap scarf backed in thrifted wool is one of my new favourite things. I have tons of fat quarters and scraps that could be used up this way and I’m thinking this type of scarf would make simple Christmas presents. They take less than an hour to put together – and this looks so fabulous on me! I also am really glad to have found a wearable use for this fabric.
So that’s it! I was noting the B. after finishing the scarf that I finally feel like I’m in a place with sewing where I can visualize stuff in my head and have it turn out the way I thought it would – which is a whole new level of competency. In the last year I’ve learned a lot about structurally making things work using interfacing, top-stitching, and facings which has given me a whole new level of competence when it comes to putting stuff together. Although I’m starting grad school next week, I am hopeful that having Mondays off work will give me the time and space I need to keep building these skills. It seems the longer I am at a job doing the ephemeral (digital development), the more I crave the satisfaction of tactile work.
Sunday Morning Sappho (1)
On first reading, I think the best possible way to encounter Sappho is lying abed on a lazy, late-summer morning and taking the fragments in with as much languor as the scene implies. So beautiful and brief. So desirous and ruined. One pictures Sappho not as a great beauty but as a woman driven by her passions and worried by nightmares. So little focused on the physical, her writing seems to come directly from the place of feeling – and what little survives of her writing stokes our desire to fill in the fragments. Images of the erotic and natural worlds combine in such fragments as:
Eros has shaken my mind,
wind sweeping down the mountain on oaks
and
To what should I compare you, dear bridegroom?
I shall compare you to a slender sapling
Though Sappho is also taken by beautiful crafted things – embroidery, purple silks, perfumes – all difficult to obtain and luxuriated in when they arrive:
Handkerchiefs
purple scented
from Phocaea
expensive gifts
Each description of place, person, and thing evoking a sensuality that still resonates even after two thousand years – as do her fears
When you are dead you will lie forever unremembered
and no one will miss you, for you have not touched the roses
of the Pieriean Muses. Invisible even in the house of Hades,
you will wander among the dim dead, a flitting thing.
which remind us that despite all our wars, ideologies and modern technologies – the human essence remains unchanged over time. And despite the fragmentary nature of Sappho’s remaining work, she reminds us of the full spectrum of passions that we have access to and have always had. Rather than the plasticized sex sold on television 24 hours a day, it is worth remembering that it can (and should) be so:
Eros once more limbslackener makes me shudder
sweetbitter irresistible creeping
Cramming it in.
You would think that being on holidays and all I would have lots of time for blog posts. But this is simply not the case. Since returning from Victoria we have thrown a dinner party, I finished sewing a dress, drove to Keremeos and back in order to buy 300 pounds of produce and spent two full days canning (with more to come – ack!). Oh – plus I’ve knocked two more books off my reading list for grad school (which starts in two weeks). I’m hoping to get some time to write a post tomorrow – after helping out at the labour council office with some tech problems and running around to wrap-up my holiday errands. Saturday I’m planning to go to Canada Place for the Jack Layton funeral gathering. Makes me wonder how I fit my life in when I *am* working.
Orcas.
It is really amazingly touristy in Victoria’s inner harbour in the summer. This orca topiary has at least five people in front of it taking pictures at any given time during the day.
Amusing myself.
I am at a union convention hosted at the Empress Hotel in Victoria this week. Random photos will be forthcoming.
Red Cedar 