Me-Made-March: some sleep-deprived rambling

Although my camera is broken and I can’t record it, I am still participating in Me-Made-March’11, albeit in a rather low key way. Without the eyes of the flickr group upon me, I have been repeating the same outfits that I wore earlier in the month. Not because I can’t be bothered, but because I have pretty much run out of new Me-Made clothes and combinations. The challenge has certainly brought to my attention the limitations of my me-made wardrobe (or, in fact, my wardrobe in general) as I knew it would, but if my camera was still working, I probably would have got to it and made a few more things to wear. Instead Rata and I have had a rather trying week of fever and sleeplessness (chickenpox?), and when she stayed at her Poppa’s on Saturday night I got started on making books instead.

I have been keeping an eye on the flickr pool though, and thought I’d share some highlights and new discoveries. Candied Apples had a very cool outfit on Sunday, which made me wish that Minnie Cooper made yellow shoes. There are a number of very kind and dedicated members of the pool who seem to comment on just about everyone’s photos, and from these regulars I discovered Carolyn (a very talented maker in Perth) who pointed me in the direction of her tights tutorial. Well, now you mention it, I went to a garage sale last weekend and came home with the perfect zigzag fabric for a pair of tights. I’ll be following the tutorial to make the feet but my method of making leggings will save me from a lot of stabs to the leg. I’ll just cut them out with lots of fabric left at the ends to play with.

Other highlights have been Buttontree Lane and Lazy Stitching: each of them pitching in for the Antipodes with style and punch! Two favourites from colder climes I have encountered through the flickr pool, but who don’t seem to have blogs, are High Wire Act and Hilary. Miss High Wire Act pulled off an amazing double plaid combination the other day which clearly I am still thinking about. Hilary is a magical person who writes lovely encouraging comments on everyone’s photos and has some killer outfits of her own. Plus, she took a photo of her cat. I like it when that happens. Oh, and I mustn’t forget crab & bee, another prominent source of encouragement to many in the flickr pool.

I’d have really liked to comment on more people’s photos, but every time I click on the pool it seems more people have joined! I have, however, enjoyed the broad range of styles and combinations and the opportunity to see what people have made for themselves. I’m feeling really quite inspired to make things – re-energised even – but for now my sewing machine is on the floor and my table is dedicated to cutting paper.

But in other sewing news, I have acquired for myself a fantastic cupboard for my stash. It has come from some government department and has a multitude of A4-sized shelves, probably for letters. Most are quite short, but around the sides are some bigger cubby holes and the doors even have a key! It has come from someone’s garage and is quite dirty, plus it doesn’t quite fit where I wanted it to go, necessitating a massive rearrangement of my sewing room. BUT when all that is done I hope to be able to unpack all my fabric and have a bit of room to move my elbows in there. The possibilities of how I might arrange my fabric in that cupboard have kept me awake at night with pure GLEE!

I will certainly have to find a new camera before that part of my life is done. You are really going to want to see how an archives-type person would arrange their fabric in the perfect circumstances…

Read Full Post »

Goodbye, Holloway Road!

In trying to spruce up my blog and make menus for each of my interests, I discovered how to import all of my Holloway Road Gluttony blog posts so that everything is here at Sunday Crafternoon. Yay! Once (or if) Nicole does the same, I can delete the blog and pretend Holloway Road never happened and that I’ve lived in Paekakariki forever.

So now, if you’re looking for a recipe I made last year, it’s all here. Especially here. I still can’t quite believe that cake didn’t win me a cake mixer. Although, I have since learnt that cake mixers, even red ones, are affordable if you stop buying sweets and save all your pennies…

(The photo above was taken while making Palagi Pani Popo last year. The post has well and truly performed its public service duty as when I put it there you could not google a Pani Popo recipe and thus I have helped a few people have heart attacks, given its popularity. It may be worth adding that I have not made the recipe since, nor do I intend to any time soon…)

Edit: ARGH! In other news, my camera is broked! How am I going to complete my Me-Made-March Mission without it? My cellphone is also bust, so I have been guiltily coveting those iPhone contraptions even more. Maybe I should take a hammer to my Mac and then really I will have no choice but to spend money I don’t have in order to play with the Hipstamatic application doo-dackey-wotsit. Funny, isn’t it, how you can be totally practical in most aspects of your life only to have a blowout of principles in another? Okay, make that three or four blowouts…

Read Full Post »

Me-Made-March 16th and a new garden bit

My garden is quite exciting – things are actually growing! And although there are still evil white butterflies hanging about, none of my broccoli or Brussels sprouts have been eaten! (Maybe it really does work, spraying wormwood tea on their leaves…) Carrots and radishes have been sown today (I nearly wrote sewn there) and a whole new bed has been dug over today:

So, while my outfit is nothing special, that spot in the bottom right is where my garlic will go this winter. My dad’s birthday is on the winter solstice, traditionally the day you plant it, so I think there’ll be a wee garlic planting party. The last time I planted garlic I was 37 weeks pregnant and couldn’t do it myself, so I stood there handing cloves to Louis to ram into the soil. Something we learnt from that exercise is to only grow the big cloves – eat the rest – because only the big cloves grow big heads of garlic.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here – it’s only just turned autumn! And in the backyard I’m sure the temperature is never below 25°C. All I had to do to make this bed was to lift up a VERY old weed mat and pull out a few bits of that evil kikuyu grass. Then on went my precious pile of seaweed, some large dead leaves (a tree that always sounds like rain) and some grass clippings. I feel a mammoth soup/chutney/bottling effort coming on to make a nice layer of vege scraps. Then a few bags of compost (cheat!) and we’ll be away sailing…

Oh, I really like my garden…

Read Full Post »

Me-Made-March 10th

Apologies for the out of orderliness, but in all the excitement of the weekend I forgot I had taken a photo.

10th (it was worth the wait):

Me-Made peacock skirt with Me-Made bow top… in need of a wee stitch behind its wee bow to hold it back in place. Fare thee well, absent stitch, wherever you may be…

Oh, now I remember Thursday: I ate a lot of Marshmallow Slice and procrastinated pretty much everything. Wait, did Rata go Me-Made?

Yes. Reindeer dress: Check. Flower for your old mum: Check. Mother-daughter pattern-off… oh yes.

Read Full Post »

Me-Made-March 11th, 12th and 13th

Oh boy, what a weekend! I will try not to tell you everything…

(What was I wearing on the 10th? I know it was Me-Made, but what was it? Oh, now I remember… it’ll have to be a separate post…)

11th:

Me-Made skirt (well, sort of: I cut it out and designed the pockets and Imogen overlocked the fabric and sewed it up in exchange for a Me-Made notebook. Here we are driving to Auckland in a teeny tiny car… crammed with five people.

12th:

Louis’ Aunty Helen turned sixty this weekend, and to celebrate her son threw her a party at his house. I mean, mansion. By the sea. With a view to Rangitoto Island. Here I have managed to find the sunlight as it was filtered between mansions on this millionaire’s row. I found everything extremely amusing: the waitresses who looked like hookers, the swimming pool, the bridge over the swimming pool linking the two halves of the mansion, the lush carpet which showed you EXACTLY where I had trod in my jelly sandals, all those bathrooms…

…and the waiter who ignored me for a good five minutes because he knew I wanted a mojito and he couldn’t be arsed making one. I got my own back by pouncing just as the speeches ended, and while he made them as the queue formed, the man behind me asked for one too… and so did the woman behind him. And if you are a fan of the show PARTY DOWN, an exact copy of Roman was there.

All this amusement kept me entertained well past my bedtime, and Rata stayed at home with her Oma so her ma and pa could stomp on the nice carpet to JT til pumpkin. And cheekiness aside, it was a lovely birthday party for an extraordinarily lovely woman.

13th:

And here is the dress I actually wanted to wear to the party, but as it is still summer in Auckland, the heavy drill with the soft kinda plushness to it was set to smother me. Still, today it was my only clean clothing (you pack light when you pack into a teeny grandma car) so on it went for our flight home. WHICH WAS TERRIFYING. I’m never flying again. Or eating anything other than plain boiled vegetables for the rest of my life: mojitos and rich food equals Perpetual Fullness. Ooh, I think I’ve found a solution to world hunger…

Read Full Post »

Om nom nom, or not?

I conquered yet another recipe in Ladies, A Plate: A Second Helping yesterday: Marshmallow Slice…

(Those are, for the record, my two most favourite Crown Lynn patterns there – the slice definitely looks nice with the brown Melody, don’t you think?).

It was my first attempt at a marshmallow, ever, and while I think I’ll be trying the variations on the recipe and avoiding the chocolate layer in future (tu meke!) it does look rather pretty. It took me a while to work out how to cut it, and in the end I sliced it lengthways in the tin, pulled it out carefully with the long, thin fish slice and then turned it on its side to cut.

I can’t decide if I like it or not, so the second tin of it will be travelling north with us tomorrow to Auckland. Along with some Lemon Bars from the same recipe book. I don’t know if Louis’ auntie’s birthday is a bring a plate affair, but I like to take things places and will use absolutely any occasion as an excuse to bake…

Read Full Post »

Me-Made-March 7th, 8th and 9th

7th:

Me-Made top from the archives: the polka dot braces top, with a pair of braces sewn at the back and clipping to pockets on the front. I made it from my bodice pattern of 2002, made to fit me at university (and generating an A for the finished top, for the record). But the pattern disappeared sometime around when we moved house last year, and I am LOST without it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

8th:

I don’t have a photo of my own Me-Made oufit yesterday (a very old corduroy skirt for a messy messy morning at Playcentre) but Rata was workin’ this delightful combo on the beach yesterday at the beach! She wouldn’t stand still when I tried to photograph her, seemingly unwilling to be any small distance from me and running to me – probably for shelter from the wind. The hat was her old dad’s when he was wee, the leggings were made by a local lady who also makes THE BEST UNDERPANTS YOU WILL EVER OWN (she’s my hero, and possibly deserving of her own tribute post) and the painting apron made by me for getting paint on (instead of the rest of her clothes). While it looked pristine, the apron was secretly too cool to get paint on it but I put away my crazy mother tendencies and soon enough some very attractive paint splodges came to the party. It was funny though, trying to make something plain and then coming out with something cuter than if I’d done it deliberately. Such is life.

On another note, I do not own a handbag, and have no idea how Rata came to know what to do with the bag her shoes came in.

9th:

Favourite (can you tell) skirt worn with the belt from my shift dress and a fabulous vintage shirt left behind the couch by a friend when she moved out of our house. It has its own belt but it doesn’t fasten, so every time you bend over it pops open. The front has a cute detail where it seems to have been ribbed lengthways by folding the fabric and stitching very close to the edge. That technique must have a name…

About five years ago I added triangles of fabric inside the arms as I was tired of not being able to lift my arms up. I did it by hand when I was many, many miles from my sewing machine (on the other side of the world, in fact) and frankly I’m surprised those stitches are still in place.

There’s quite a mess behind me. It’s called ‘Making Marshmallow Slice and not cleaning up immediately afterwards.’ The feeling I am experiencing as I type is called ‘Realising Louis said he’d be home early today and I should probably get to it.’

(I am really looking forward to eating the Marshmallow Slice, let me tell you. If it has worked, I think it is a feat worth blogging, so watch this space.)

Read Full Post »

Me-Made-March 4th and 6th

4th:

Friday’s earthquake made me very unenthusiastic for having my photograph taken. That lack of enthusiasm continued into Saturday, when I didn’t even attempt a detail shot of my circles skirt. But I do like this combination of me-made peacock skirt with those emperor penguin leggings quite a lot. I think I’ll be repeating that one again sometime…

6th:

Me-made Peggy dress and yellow leggings with the wardrobe staple Glassons cardigan to hide the top of the dress, which I am seriously considering cutting off. I only wear this dress like this, so I think it’s be more useful as a skirt. But every time I go to address this with the scissors, I chicken out though.

Read Full Post »

Another earthquake…

We’ve had our second 4.something earthquake here in the Wellington region in a week. It shouldn’t really be anything to report given the devastation currently unfolding in Christchurch, but we’re all on edge at present and this little flurry of shakes is not helping!

There are just too many ways to get complacent about earthquakes. If nothing else, this earthquake of February 22nd in Christchurch has put to rest that silly notion of ‘The Big One’.In September, Christchurch was thanking its lucky stars that ‘the big one’ had come in the middle of the night, and that no one was killed as a result of this timing. Sure, a lot of things had been damaged and everyone learned a new word (liquefaction), but lots of people assumed that it was just because Christchurch was not the city that came to mind when you thought of earthquakes, and thus their buildings were founded on complacency. Not true – the now concertinaed Pyne Gould building was strengthened sometime in the last decade, according to the Listener, but it is pointed out in the same article that retro-strengthening older buildings is not done to the current earthquake-proof standard that new buildings must be built to, and the percentage of the strengthening done is set by local government bodies. So, assume nothing! Does anyone know what the standards all these older buildings are being strengthened to in Wellington? Can you look around and tell me which buildings have been done already? Probably not – there is often an older building being demolished somewhere, and one of the reasons usually cited is that the building required strengthening that was economically not viable. So there’s nothing to say that if you were in the CBD in Wellington, you could just hold on to a parking meter and enjoyed the view. You can try to protect a building from an earthquake, but there’s really no way of saying how it will behave until the earthquake happens.

Then, of course, we look at what happened to the suburbs of Redcliffs and Sumner in Christchurch, with rocks falling from cliffs and…. well, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Imagine a 7.something earthquake in Wellington after a week of rain! With houses atop those hillsides. Lots of fun, I’m sure. Look up some pictures of the Inangahua 1968 earthquake for an idea of how houses dissolve into the hillside.

Having an emergency kit is a good idea (mine has, so far, some candles, matches and 3 litres of water – I never thought I’d say this, but we need to drink more fizz) but not so great if your house is squished between two others at the bottom of the street. At our old house, the emergency kit was under the stairs, less than five metres from a bank, at the bottom of a valley. Yay.

In Paekakariki, built on a sand dune, our gardens will probably be subjected to liquefaction and damage to houses will likely be as a result of that. Our water supply will be obliterated, and lots of rocks will no doubt fall from the hills behind us onto State Highway One.

This little video is an excellent demonstration of just how liquefaction works, if, like me, you were a little mystified. I think it’s really clever.

Read Full Post »

Me-Made-March 2nd and 3rd

March 2nd:

This is a wee top with a bow made sometime last year (and blogged about, as I recall) worn with some well-loved shorts from H&M, purple tights, stripey socks (with a hole in the toe, lo!) and the red polka dot gumboots Rata dragged out of the cupboard and insisted I wear. Personal stylists, hey? Gotta love ’em, especially when they’re cute to boot (‘Boots!’)

March 3rd:

I dolled up and went to Paraparaumu today, the town I like to call ‘a large carpark with nowhere to walk). I went to the opshops and, in keeping with my sixties outfit, bought two bottles of gin. I’d love to tell you all about how I’m going to be sitting in the sun for the rest of the day sipping G+T’s but it’s for making damson gin. So, six months from now I’ll be sipping something delicious. Future alcohol! I found this too:

I’m guessing it’s for indoor golfing tournaments, but Rata will have hours of fun inventing games for it.

Today’s dress is a recently (ie. yesterday morning) finished project, so I should talk about it. I don’t remember where I put the pattern for it, so I traced around the pieces of a dress already cut out from that pattern but not sewn up (soon! soon!). Even when I go to use a pattern events conspire. I still haven’t found it, but that’s hardly surprising given the state of that part of the room, now on the internet for all to enjoy! I intend to line the dress with something light – or make a slip to go underneath – as it seems to want to cling to any layers you put underneath.

The belt was pretty simple to make and I can tell you how to do it… sort of… it’s just a length of fabric folded in half with pointed ends. You fold it over at the point where you want it to meet, punch some domes to hold it in place, then do some sneaky stitching between the folds to hold them down.

I think both these blue fabrics are double knit – they seem pretty old as fair as their composition, quality, pattern and general feel of goodness. Whatever they are, they were a pleasure to work with, and by far the easiest fabric I have ever sewn with.

So, now… what am I going to wear tomorrow?

Read Full Post »