Catchup!
I noticed recently I've been all tell and no show recently, so I decided to throw up some pics to show y'all some of the stuff I've been up to!
Sewing
I've made two dresses and one shirt recently. Right now I'm making a dress for a friend and after that will make a sort of casual skirt I can wear out or to work.
Here's one of the dresses. It's Burda pattern #7798, in some kind of fabric I got from the Sewing Studio. I preshrank the cotton fabric, carefully tailored it to my frame, sewed and tore back and resewed and consulted my Singer Sewing Guide and pressed all the seams and followed the selvages and all that other crap. I am incredibly proud of how this came out and wore it to visit my Grandfather on Father's Day last weekend. It wore beautifully, I got lots of compliments on it and it was nice and light, even in the heat.
Fabric Detail
In case you haven't noticed or don't see me often, I've been slowly inching away from wearing black or grey every day. It's not that I never wear those colors any more, it's more than I got bored with them and wanted to try some other stuff. I've been into a lot of brown and green recently, and given time and enough fabric coupons will probably wind up looking like I wandered out of the Hobbiton's version of the ghetto.
Gardening
Here's one of the two bouganvillea I planted on either side of the front door. I only found out afterward they grow like mofos and have huge thorns. Which is fine, but that fact has been repeated to me by anyone I mention this plant to, and so I felt like it should be known. Big Thorns!
The colors are so festive! And I put them in little beds and surrounded them with tumbled rocks. They're both very small now but will look much better by the end of the summer.
Here's the armillary I was waffling about a few weeks ago. It's made of steel with a powder coated finish, and we had to drill holes in the bottom so the water would drain out. It's one of my favorite things in the backyard, I just love it. That's my mandevilla- it's a sort of vine whose flowers smell like burnt sugar.
There's a teeny, tiny lizard in this photo. Comment if you can find him!
I love the Georgia O'Keefe-ness of the unopened flower buds. With all the rain recently it's been growing like mad- I have it in partial shade under a huge oak so it gets the late afternoon sun.
Here's something that was growing by the front door but which I moved to the backyard. I have no idea what it is, but the flowers and overall shape were neat.
Biking
Here's the interior of the Irish Pub Nathan and I have biked to for bigass Irish breakfasts on Sunday mornings.
It's called Scruffy Murphy's, and while they have food and such the rest of the time, on Sundays from 11:30-1 you can get their Irish breakfast, which is maple baked beans, eggs over easy, sausages, toasted bread, roasted potatoes and other stuff I am probably forgetting. We usually have too much fun biking afterwards to notice the heart attacks we're having from such big, greasy crazyass breakfasts. But we only do it about once a month or so.
The only thing about SM's is that you can ONLY get the Irish Breakfast during that time, there's nothing else available from the menu. And they don't serve beer until after noon, so it's more like a really late breakfast. This is me not complaining about this.
Nathan's bike.
He got it last weekend off of Craigslist to replace the ancient Mastodon-bike he had been riding. It only cost like 60 bucks! He had to replace the chain and clean it up, and I think he's going to replace the rear cassette because it's a bit worn. But apparently these are nice bikes to own!
You can also see our crappy charcoal grill in the above picture.
Grilling
Which is how Nathan prepared this. . .
. . .delicious, albeit meaty feast. I only ate half my steak and had the rest for lunch the next day. He did this all by himself because I dropped a table on my foot in the kitchen and was out of commission. He can cook and does often, it's just that normally one or the other of us cooks our regular dinners but on special occasions we like to do stuff together. Alas.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.
I thought it was broken at first, because it hurt quite a lot and I heard/felt a crack. It still feels a bit sore when I squeeze my toe, but otherwise works fine. I'm still wearing my Five Fingers and running, biking, and lifting fine. In fact, you can see the weird tanline my shoes give me. And ignore how curved and funny looking my toes are, they've always been that way.
So that, and some other things, are what I've been up to. I have photos of the zombie walk, other things I've made, and places I've been, but it's late and I'm tired. Hopefully this was enough to show that while I haven't been posting as much, I've been reading and getting up to all sorts of shenanigans!
Good night!
Sewing
I've made two dresses and one shirt recently. Right now I'm making a dress for a friend and after that will make a sort of casual skirt I can wear out or to work.
Here's one of the dresses. It's Burda pattern #7798, in some kind of fabric I got from the Sewing Studio. I preshrank the cotton fabric, carefully tailored it to my frame, sewed and tore back and resewed and consulted my Singer Sewing Guide and pressed all the seams and followed the selvages and all that other crap. I am incredibly proud of how this came out and wore it to visit my Grandfather on Father's Day last weekend. It wore beautifully, I got lots of compliments on it and it was nice and light, even in the heat.
Fabric Detail
In case you haven't noticed or don't see me often, I've been slowly inching away from wearing black or grey every day. It's not that I never wear those colors any more, it's more than I got bored with them and wanted to try some other stuff. I've been into a lot of brown and green recently, and given time and enough fabric coupons will probably wind up looking like I wandered out of the Hobbiton's version of the ghetto.
Gardening
Here's one of the two bouganvillea I planted on either side of the front door. I only found out afterward they grow like mofos and have huge thorns. Which is fine, but that fact has been repeated to me by anyone I mention this plant to, and so I felt like it should be known. Big Thorns!
The colors are so festive! And I put them in little beds and surrounded them with tumbled rocks. They're both very small now but will look much better by the end of the summer.
Here's the armillary I was waffling about a few weeks ago. It's made of steel with a powder coated finish, and we had to drill holes in the bottom so the water would drain out. It's one of my favorite things in the backyard, I just love it. That's my mandevilla- it's a sort of vine whose flowers smell like burnt sugar.
There's a teeny, tiny lizard in this photo. Comment if you can find him!
I love the Georgia O'Keefe-ness of the unopened flower buds. With all the rain recently it's been growing like mad- I have it in partial shade under a huge oak so it gets the late afternoon sun.
Here's something that was growing by the front door but which I moved to the backyard. I have no idea what it is, but the flowers and overall shape were neat.
Biking
Here's the interior of the Irish Pub Nathan and I have biked to for bigass Irish breakfasts on Sunday mornings.
It's called Scruffy Murphy's, and while they have food and such the rest of the time, on Sundays from 11:30-1 you can get their Irish breakfast, which is maple baked beans, eggs over easy, sausages, toasted bread, roasted potatoes and other stuff I am probably forgetting. We usually have too much fun biking afterwards to notice the heart attacks we're having from such big, greasy crazyass breakfasts. But we only do it about once a month or so.
The only thing about SM's is that you can ONLY get the Irish Breakfast during that time, there's nothing else available from the menu. And they don't serve beer until after noon, so it's more like a really late breakfast. This is me not complaining about this.
Nathan's bike.
He got it last weekend off of Craigslist to replace the ancient Mastodon-bike he had been riding. It only cost like 60 bucks! He had to replace the chain and clean it up, and I think he's going to replace the rear cassette because it's a bit worn. But apparently these are nice bikes to own!
You can also see our crappy charcoal grill in the above picture.
Grilling
Which is how Nathan prepared this. . .
. . .delicious, albeit meaty feast. I only ate half my steak and had the rest for lunch the next day. He did this all by himself because I dropped a table on my foot in the kitchen and was out of commission. He can cook and does often, it's just that normally one or the other of us cooks our regular dinners but on special occasions we like to do stuff together. Alas.
Gravity is a harsh mistress.
I thought it was broken at first, because it hurt quite a lot and I heard/felt a crack. It still feels a bit sore when I squeeze my toe, but otherwise works fine. I'm still wearing my Five Fingers and running, biking, and lifting fine. In fact, you can see the weird tanline my shoes give me. And ignore how curved and funny looking my toes are, they've always been that way.
So that, and some other things, are what I've been up to. I have photos of the zombie walk, other things I've made, and places I've been, but it's late and I'm tired. Hopefully this was enough to show that while I haven't been posting as much, I've been reading and getting up to all sorts of shenanigans!
Good night!