2014's top 5 Highlights

Continuing with the lists... I was originally intending to lump the last 3 topics into one post, but this particular category ended up being pretty wordy. So I'll spare you the mega-post.

The new category this year is "Highlights", which is pretty much anything not sewing-related going on in our lives. I don't know about you, but sometimes I find it hard to share life stuff on here, mostly for fear that I'll bore people. So this seems like a pretty good way to keep it real! (Of course, I have actually talked about some of this stuff on here...oh well.)

1. Travel. This was a really good year for that, and I'm really enjoying that I can say that I went fabric shopping in both New York and Paris this year! And there was also my girls' geekout weekend in Atlanta for DragonCon. Aside from those three trips, Doug and I took a day trip down to Washington, D.C. for our first anniversary, which was also a lot of fun, and I also got to spend a day hanging out with some of my cousins down at the Delaware beaches. That's been a tradition since I was a kid, and I'm glad I found some time to go down this year, even though I wasn't able to stay overnight at all this time. (The picture is me and Doug at the Eiffel Tower, because why not?)







2. I got a piano this year! Both of my grandmothers have been trying to downsize their belongings recently, because it's getting difficult for them to live on their own since both of my grandfathers passed away in 2013. So one of the big things going on in my family right now is that my parents are building a new house, and both of my grandmothers will be moving in with them in the spring. My mom's mom had two pianos, so she asked me if I wanted one. She actually gave me the bigger one! So this is a baby grand that my great-grandfather originally purchased in 1928. It's horrendously out of tune, which I'll need to remedy at some point, but I like the family history behind it, and it's been fun brushing up on my other instrument. I took piano lessons for about 7 years when I was a kid, but my parents didn't want us overloaded with too many extracurriculars, so once I got to 7th grade, they asked me to choose between continuing with the piano or the flute, which I'd been playing for about 3 years by then, for my music lessons. Obviously, I picked the flute, though I still played the keyboard at home for fun when I could, and I also had to take one semester of basic piano as part of my music degree. (Which, since I already knew how to play scales and stuff, I basically spent learning the "Linus and Lucy" song from Charlie Brown specials. The professor didn't care as long as we tested well.) The other thing connected to this is that I'm actually teaching one beginner piano student now at a local school, in addition to the flute. So in the long run, this could be a very good thing for my music teaching career.

3. In the category of non-sewing/knitting hobbies that I don't talk about on here much, I am still scrapbooking. The Project Life system has turned out to be a really good fit for me--I can save photos without feeling like I have to make a layout for everything, and the pockets make it really easy to finish pages quickly. I still do "real" scrapbook pages from time to time, usually for bigger events. And I still use my older supplies, usually in the form of cutting down big pieces of paper to make cards when I don't have a color I want. But aside from still needing to write in a few notes and paste down a few pictures, I'm basically done with everything from the wedding to our first anniversary. And I already have some stuff in an album for year 2 as well. That's a nice feeling.

4. Meeting writers. As if I didn't have enough to do to keep myself busy, I've always loved to read. And I got to meet two of my favorite living authors this year! A couple of friends and I went to see Brandon Sanderson at a quasi-local bookstore signing, and I briefly got to meet Jim Butcher when he was signing books at DragonCon. (I was wearing my Belle costume at the time, and when he saw me next in line, he sang one of the lines from her intro song: "Look there she goes, that girl is so peculiar..." So that's a fun story.) One of the friends I went to Atlanta with is a published author herself, and she introduced us to another writer friend, Diana Peterfreund. I bought two of her books and read one on the plane on the way home from Atlanta. I have yet to read the second, but I quite enjoyed the one I read, so I'm sure I'll get to it before too long.

5. Family stuff. Being able to say I've been married for a year was pretty exciting for me, since I wasn't sure I'd ever get married in the first place. And, of course, what's been mostly occupying my brain lately is being pregnant with our first child! (And all the nausea that goes along with it, which is sadly still going on. I thought the second trimester was supposed to be better!) I'm sure this will be occupying a LOT more of my attention for 2015.

What about you? Anything exciting going on for you this year?

an American fabric-shopping in Paris!

Yeah, that happened! There's a lot more I could say about my trip, but we all know you're really here for the fabric chatter, right? Of course right.

Several people were kind enough to give me recommendations for places to check out, via Twitter. Specifically Sonja and Sarah--thanks, ladies! I knew I would have to limit myself on how many places I could visit, since I'd be dragging Doug with me, so I ended up picking one recommendation from each sewcialist.

First up was Les Coupons de Saint-Pierre. I'd been forewarned that this place was one you'd have to dig through piles, but I've been a thrift shopper since I was 13, so I have no problem with that.

To be honest, I could have spent hours in this part of town alone--there were so many tables full of fabric sitting outside multiple shops, just begging to be noticed! For a girl who only has a handful of Joann's in her entire state to pick from, this was a dream! But for the sake of my long-suffering husband, I restrained myself. Yes, there was a lot of digging to do. All of the fabric is piled onto tables by type, in 3-meter cuts--there was a huge pile of cottons, a section for linen, a part with leather hides, a huge section on the one side of the store for "silks", etc. (I put the silk in quotes, because upon closer examination, I deduced that the sign probably meant silky and the biggest pile was actually polyester. All of the labels were in French, of course, but I made sure to look up the words for the different fiber types before I left!) So I bought 3 pieces of fabric here. When we were walking to the metro, I spotted a fourth "coupon" on an outside table that I couldn't pass up, so we quickly bought that as well and kept moving. I forget the name of that shop, but it also had "Coupons" in the name, and looked to be pretty similar.

Here's what I ended up with, from left to right:

1. A fine-wale corduroy, covered in embroidery and sequins. This was on the 5 Euro table outside the store. My first instinct says jacket, but since I already have a brown corduroy jacket, I'm pondering a fall skirt. A Beignet, maybe? French named-pattern for a French fabric!

2. The piece on the side of the road I couldn't leave! It's a thin jersey, and I do so love brown and teal together. I think this could be very nice as the lately-released Muse Jenna cardi, though I don't have that pattern yet. 4,75 Euros.

3. A denim with a slight amount of stretch. I liked the cross-hatching in the weave. These will eventually become jeans, of course. I'll have to decide whether to make them skinny, since that's pretty much the only pants I saw anywhere in Paris, or give myself another pair of bootcuts.

4. An ITY floral jersey. This color scheme is odd for me, and almost completely outside of my palette, but something about it called to me. I don't know what this one will be yet, but it's not like I have a shortage of jersey patterns. I'm open to suggestions, though!

All together, the cost of these fabrics was just under 30 Euros. Which made the whole shopping trip cheaper than almost every single meal we ate. Those cafes are expensive when you're buying for 2! Even for just sandwiches!

The second store I visited later in the week was La Drougerie. I didn't end up buying any fabric here, because there was only a small selection and it looked like mostly quilt-type cottons. It was also sold by the meter instead of the 3-meter cuts, so it looked like that would add up quickly. It looked like the big draw here was the yarn--it's the first thing you see when you walk into the door, and dominates the whole first half of the store. There's also a room to the side where you can browse beads and buttons and trims, and again, I could have spent a lot more time here.




I decided to limit myself to just a small yarn purchase here, since the yarn is sold by weight. It's a good thing I came armed with fiber translations, because as usual, there's wool in almost everything! But I did find this super-soft linen/bamboo blend. It's called Kaleido, Ravelry has it categorized as fingering weight, and I ended up with about 330 yards. So probably enough for a hat or a lacy scarf or something along that line.


Finally, I did do some crafting while I was gone! This was mostly done during times like airport layovers and sitting in the hotel room at night-- I was originally thinking to knit on the plane some, too, but for both of the long flights, I ended up in the middle seat with not a ton of elbow room. This is the Unleaving Shawl from Knitty, which really looks a lot more like a scarf than a shawl and highly increases the chance of this actually getting worn. And it's a really simple pattern, unless I'm so tired from flying for 8 hours straight that I screw up the pattern and can't figure out how to backtrack and fix it. (Yeah, that happened once. Hopefully it's not too terribly obvious. I really should not knit anything other than straight stockinette when I'm super-tired.)

One other fun sewing-related story from the trip: Doug and I had just gotten on the metro later in the day after dropping off my fabric at the hotel, to head to Notre Dame. There were two older ladies in the seats near the rail we were holding onto, and one was telling her friend (in English) about something having to do with a silk-cotton blend and the pattern she was working with. So when there was a pause in the conversation, I asked them if they sewed, they answered in the affirmative, and the three of us got to chatting about sewing clothes! I didn't have time before our stop to ask their names or where exactly they were from, though I'm guessing America based on the accents (or lack thereof, to my ears). But they did like my Cooper bag that I was carrying, and had heard of Colette when I replied to their question of what pattern I'd used. It's amazing that I could instantly find someone to talk to in a random subway on the other side of the world because of sewing!

If you do want to see travel photos, I have a small selection up on my Instagram. I still need to sort through the photos on my SLR, and when I uploaded those and the ones on my phone this morning, I have over 700 photos from the week! But I'm also going to make a Flickr album of my favorites, mostly to make it easier to upload and print. After all, this is exactly the sort of trip that makes me want to dig into my scrapbook paper and play!

New York, New York!

I feel like I have so much catching up to do right now! I finished two more Thurlows late last week, and still need to take pictures of those. There's the latest Wardrobe Architect study. And then, over this past weekend, my husband and I went to New York City! His birthday was yesterday and mine is later this month, so we thought a little getaway would be a fun way to celebrate.

Our hotel, as it turns out, was in the Fashion District, since we arrived via Penn Station and that was very close by. So that means our hotel featured things like this artwork made entirely from spools of thread! There was also some kind of sewing workroom directly across the street (though several floors down), which I could peek into every so often and see what they were working on. That was pretty neat.


We did do a lot of the typical touristy things, like Times Square and stopping into the Empire State Building. We went to the NY Public Library and the American Museum of Natural History (the one from the first "Night at the Museum" movie), and spent some time in a big NHL store, because he's a big hockey fan. But what you probably care about the most is that he let me go to Mood!


He even held my coat for me while I was shopping. He's the best. Though I think he was a little overwhelmed--he's seen it on TV while I've been watching Project Runway, but I don't think he quite expected it to be quite so jam-packed with fabric!

We didn't see Tim Gunn, for the record. Or Swatch. But I did see a bag of his dog food on a shelf by the register.

I know this picture is a little blurry, but I'm posting it anyway because it makes me laugh. ALL THE FABRIC WILL BE MINE!!! Precioussssss fabric.... Ahem.












So what did I end up with, you ask?

I made up a careful game plan before I left home--while I did build a travel allowance into my Stash Diet pledge, I wanted to be responsible, so what I decided to focus on looking for was 3 yards of some colorful lining for the winter coat I already have outer fabric for, and some notions for a Cooper bag, which I also already have fabric for, and can't get anything locally.

Aaaaaaaand I didn't buy a single thing from that list. They didn't have the bag notions, and the only lining type stuff I could find was all solid colors--everything else was too sheer and would likely get shredded quickly. So I'll just get some polyester silky print at Joann's sometime instead.
This is what I actually bought. There's 3 yards of each piece. The top one is an embroidered cotton that was in with the eyelets, black on either ivory or light tan. (I haven't seen it in the sunlight yet, and it's looked different depending on the lighting.) The bottom one is a lovely soft knit, I think maybe an ITY. I probably should have looked more closely at fiber contents, but I was too busy looking for prices, to be honest! (It was $14 per yard for both pieces, which is a little higher than I usually pay, but how often do I get to go fabric shopping in a fabric district?)

I already have a loose game plan for both pieces, too! For the embroidered fabric, I'm thinking a fairly casual jacket that I can throw on over either t-shirts or dresses, probably with some kind of contrast (read: black) collar and possibly cuffs, if it's 3/4 sleeves. (Which I'm strongly considering, since the fabric seems more suited to warmer weather layering anyway.) As for the knit, definitely some kind of dress, though I'm not sure what sleeve length to do, if I make it with sleeves at all. I just need to figure out what patterns to use!