Moved to Oregon

I have successfully moved to Oregon, and since I am no longer in CT, it is time to rename the blog. Please visit me in my new space:

https://thepowerofquiet.blogspot.com/

~Shelley, now in OR!

Some quilt progress, and moving news

SEWING 

I started this post ages ago it seems. Time seems to have passed more slowly and more quickly than normal this past year.

One positive that has come out of this difficult chapter of history has been that the need to sew face masks got me back into the sewing room. Over the past year I’ve sewn over 200 face masks, mostly given away to friends, family, and a local community sewing group that was quickly organized to distribute face masks to groups who needed them. I sewed for the Maskateers, supporting Southeastern CT, as well as my synagogue, and friends and relatives. As difficult as this year has been, it felt good to have the necessary experience and skill to help.

Once I was back in the sewing room, I picked up other projects that had been on the back burner, like this bear quilt, a wedding present for Jeff and Julie, who have been married now for 3-1/2 years. I’m finally making some good progress. Guess it helps when I’m not doing a lot of my normal group activities.

I’m quite happy with the way it’s turning out, and all the bear applique squares are now finished. I still only have about half the number of bear’s paw blocks that I need.

Sewing has slowed down again though, not because I’ve lost the energy or the will, but because our plans have changed, and that has affected how much time I have to spend in the sewing room.

THE BIG MOVE

This pandemic and the year spent working from home has done more than bring back my sewjo. Dan has been working from home for over a year now, and has realized that he doesn’t really need to stay in Connecticut to finish out the few years he plans to work before retirement. He consulted with the powers that be, and has the go-ahead to continue working from home at a home that is not in Connecticut.

Our plan has long been to retire to Oregon, near my mom and daughter Jess, and much closer to the kids in Colorado. We have now moved up the moving date, bought a house in Lake Oswego, OR, and are preparing to put our CT house on the market. My time, therefore, has been spent purging, cleaning, packing, and making repairs and touch-up painting all over the house in order to be ready to show the house soon. Sewing is back on the back burner.

Guess I’ll have to change the name of the blog; in a month and a half I won’t be in Connecticut anymore. We’ve had a really good 25 years and there are a lot of incredibly supportive friends that I’m going to miss terribly. We do have a guest room in the new house, and I’m working on convincing all my dearest friends here in Connecticut to come visit us in Oregon.

OK, back to work cleaning and packing. Hope this house sells fast!

Shelley in CT

Cold Weather Running

 As long as the roads aren’t slick and icy, I’ll run outside throughout the winter. 

Connecticut temperatures haven’t been horrendous so far this winter, but they HAVE dipped below freezing on quite a few of my running mornings. Over the years I’ve figured out how to layer up for different temperatures and have collected enough of the right layers to get through the winter.

The general wisdom of dressing for 20 degrees warmer than actual temperatures has worked pretty well for me. Anything below 60 degrees has me wearing an earband (I have wimpy ears). When temps get down to freezing and just below, I’m running in 3 layers on top and a warm pair of running pants or leggings. At 5 degrees below freezing I add a 4th layer on top and pull out my heavy duty running tights (made out of heavyweight polartec power stretch fleece). At 20 degrees I add bike shorts under those leggings (butt cheeks get really cold!) and substitute a much heavier layer for my usual fleece jacket. A run in the single digits calls for 2 pairs of socks (wool of course) and 2 pairs of gloves.

Tech fabrics that wick the sweat away from the skin are a life saver in cold weather. Much as I love cotton in my street clothing, I do not recommend it as a layer anywhere close to the skin when running. Cotton will produce chafing. Ouch! I have one wool-blend running shirt that works really well, and I swear by wool socks year round. Everything else I run in is a man-made technical fabric.

There’s more than just the running clothes. My old running partner, Susan (who moved away years ago and I miss her terribly!) always recommended tucking in the first layer. That helps to create an enclosed pocket of air close to the body that will more easily stay warm. Quarter zip tops give me the option to open up at the neck if I start to overheat, and I can cool off without having to take a whole layer off and carry it. In the picture above, my first layer is a quarter-zip, long-sleeved wicking top, second layer is a wool-blend short-sleeved tshirt, and the heavier fleece jacket can also be partially or fully unzipped if necessary. I discovered just this year, when trying to replace my old running gloves that are full of holes, that even gloves need that little pocket of air between the glove and the skin. I tried a new pair that had a much tighter fit around the fingers and found that they didn’t keep my hands warm at all. I’ve gone back to the old gloves, holes and all, because they’ve got just the right fit and keep my hands much warmer.

Sunday’s run: 3 layers on top, approx. 28 deg. F at start of run

Through all the stress this year from the coronavirus pandemic, the presidential election and my fear that the Biden-Harris team might not win, running has been my go-to for working through the stress. It has also been my connection to seeing real people in person (safely outdoors) who are not in my household of 2 people. And we all need to take our safe stress relief wherever we can get it.

Occasionally, on a particularly stressful week, I’ll look at my watch at the end of the run and discover that my pace was a good 20-30 seconds per mile faster than usual. Not planned or pushed for, just a result of my need to run through the stress. The Sunday after the riot/attempted coup at the Capitol, all 3 of us on the Sunday run ran noticeably faster than usual. Feels better to know that it’s not just me.

With any luck though, stress levels will go down once we have a working White House with a competent administration and get the country vaccinated. I am hopeful.

Shelley in CT

A Retrospective

I have started writing this blog post in my head many times over since my last post in February 2020. Then Covid-19 hit the United States. I was stressed, (along with everybody else on the planet) and spending much of my time sewing masks to donate so that I could feel like I was contributing in some small way. So I didn't even get started on the blog. Then George Floyd, Breonna Taylor et. al., politics, more Covid, more politics, etc., etc. I don’t have the insightful words to address all of that, so I won’t, other than to state that Black Lives Matter and science and facts matter. But this blog is not about world events, so I am going to go on with my blog, focusing largely on knitting, sewing, bookbinding, running, and whatever other creative projects I work on. 

My original impetus to write a post was to a finished project, a knit-along shawl that I began in October 2019. My, that was such a long time ago. 

The Mystery Knit-a-long was Stephen West’s Starflake. I started it late, and was behind the group at every clue, but I did finally finish it in spring of 2020, and am quite pleased with the result. The brioche was a challenge. I ended up pulling out and reknitting portions of it when I made mistakes, though I eventually figured out how to just pull out a select number of stitches to fix a mistake. 

I had registered and paid for a knitting retreat with my best knitting buddy Iris, sponsored by my (somewhat) LYS, the Mermaid’s Purl in Wickford, RI, scheduled for March 20. You guessed it, the retreat didn’t happen. It was postponed a couple of times and now is on the books for December 2021, and in the interim, Lizzie the shop owner set up a knit-a-long for the would-be retreaters. That pattern was Olive Pink, designed by Casapinka (who had been scheduled to teach the retreat workshop).

I don’t have a picture of this one on a body, just these 2 pics of the blocking. This yarn, Jilly and Kiddles Fancy Sock, was luscious.

In the midst of all the sewing and knitting, I got in some bookbinding. I serve on the board of a local charity, Healing Therapies Thru Sharing, in southeastern CT, and we have been gathering items for an online auction fundraiser. I handbound a couple books to donate to the auction. We are still collecting items and hope to go live with the fundraiser this spring.

One of the positives to come out of this terrible year has been that I’ve found my sew-jo. It started with masks (yeah, big surprise there), but those masks gave me a feeling of at least helping to contribute, and got me back to my sewing room. Over the past 10 months I’ve sewn upwards of 200 masks, mostly given away to friends and family and the local Maskateers, a group formed to make and give masks to local medical workers and community groups who need them  I’ve tried lots of different mask patterns, and am so thankful for all the generous sewists who have posted tutorials online for us all to follow. 

Only 1 patttern piece for this one, not bad for glasses wearers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9CNyNDtIM&list=PL1z2EqZrgzMWETwF3ZH8TG68tsFTQMR9Q&index=8&ab_channel=MarcyHarriell

These are the shaped masks that I make for the Maskateers. 

This last one started as the Zippy pattern, which uses zip ties as boning to hold the center seam out away from the mouth https://zippyfacemask.wordpress.com/blog-2/ but I found the sides still caved in when I breathed. So I added another zip tie horizontally across the center of the mask, problem solved! 

Since I was back in the sewing room, some clothing projects started calling to me. Over the summer I made 3 short sleeved tshirts, 2 raglan Closet Core Ebony Tees

and 2 short sleeved Plantain Tees from Deer and Doe (free pattern on their website).  In the fall I made a long-sleeved Plantain Tee (not pictured). I’m watching tutorials on Craftsy to learn how to make a FBA (full bust adjustment) in order to get a better fit, and will redraft my pattern for the next make. 

There has been one more high point for which I have this terrible year to thank. When everything went into lockdown in March, an old friend and former dance teacher, Leslie, offered a jazz dance class via Zoom. I contacted her, as did my daughter Jess in Oregon, and we started taking jazz classes together online, from Leslie in Berlin Germany. As the months progressed we would take class together every week, with other dancers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and in several states here in the U.S.  Poor Jess had to be up 8 am in her time zone, and the Europeans had class at the end of the workday. Now we stay on Zoom if there’s time after class and chat for a few minutes. It has been an unusual way to make new friends during a worldwide pandemic.

My end-of-year “make” was my 2021 planner. This year I managed to print it and bind it at least a week before the new year began. I used some fabric that I had purchased in order to make a summer dress (but haven’t even started it) for the cover. The bookbinding is becoming a little easier. I still consult notes so I don’t forget any steps, but I’m becoming more and more confident in the process. I’d like to be able to teach bookbinding at some point, maybe as a community class offering or a youth center workshop. 

And so I move into the new year with hope for our new administration, the rollout of the vaccines, and awaiting successful new COVID treatments. 

Shelley in CT