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

Handbound Planner for 2020

Every year as the new year begins, I am ready for a fresh start. I don't really do resolutions, but I do try to begin as I mean to go on. It's a good time to reassess.

One of my favorite things about a new year is a new planner. I'm an old-fashioned girl and like my paper planner book, and have tried several different styles. (Yes, my name is Shelley and I am a planner geek!) In my old age I have become rather particular, to the point that I began to consider making my own, and maybe putting it into a small 6-ring binder. Then I thought I could bind it as a book (and make use of those bookbinding workshops I’ve taken) and get exactly what I want. That sounded like a lot of effort. Was it really worth it? I kept hunting for the perfect planner.

Well, no matter how hard I looked, the perfect planner wasn't out there, so last year I started playing around with Microsoft Word to design what I wanted. I still wasn't sure I'd follow through with printing and binding, but really, why not? So halfway through last year I printed 6 months of planner pages, and bound them into a book, and I used my planner happily, but kept finding typos (the downside to using Microsoft Word is having to create each page separately).

The next obvious step was to up my game and try programming my pages so they’d generate themselves. When I had worked at the publishing company, way too many years ago, we used a program called TeX to set our pages. That program has been built upon and is now freely available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. With the tutorials available online, I was able to relearn how to use it, and spent many hours programming a layout and coding to generate dates for the planner. Last year I was able to bind a book with weekly pages for July through the end of the year. This year I have the whole year in a bound book. Ta-da!

sewing the text block

July-December 2019 and the full year of 2020

weekly layout over two-pages

the planner in action

pretty end papers

grosgrain ribbon bookmark

My younger son gave me a punching cradle for Christmas/Hanukkah (for punching the sewing holes in the signatures). He had mail ordered it, so I waited for it to arrive before I put the planner together. It was a real treat to have such a nice tool for bookbinding. I used scrap fabric to make the book cloth. Although I didn't have it bound and ready to go on January 1, it was finished about a week into the new year, and I declare it a success!

Pertinent details: I used 24-lb 100% cotton Southworth resume paper in white, folded into signatures of 4 folios (4 pieces of paper folded in half, creating 16 book pages). The paper is a nice texture and I can use fountain pens in the planner without too much bleed-through to the other side of the paper. The upside is that it's available at Staples and is affordable. The downside is that the grain of the paper runs the wrong way. Ideally, the paper grain should run parallel to the spine, and with most printer paper, the grain runs lengthwise, so when the paper is folded the grain runs across the width of the book rather than parallel to the spine. It hasn't caused problems.

This project has given me a little more confidence in my bookbinding abilities, and I’ve already started work on a few more books. These are sketch books and blank books, and eventually a book with watercolor paper for my daughter.

I would like to put out a big thank you to all the bloggers and YouTube video creators who so generously shared their knowledge with the world. I made good use of online tutorials and videos to learn new techniques as well as to jog my memory when putting together the books.

Looking forward to more bookbinding practice this year.

Shelley in CT

2018 in Review

2018 was clearly not my best year for blogging. I did manage to do a few interesting things since my last post in July though, so here are the highlights:

In late July my daughter Jess moved out to OR in hopes of finding a decent job in a friendly city and state. Her instincts were good: she was able to set up a couple of job interviews within 2 weeks of arriving in Oregon, and had a good job offer before the end of August.

In early August Dan and I flew out to Oregon to stay with Mom and join her and all of my siblings, their spouses, and most of the grandkids (everyone except my oldest who couldn't get away from work) to spread Dad's ashes. It was a good weekend spent together and sharing memories.

I was able to take a knitting cruise on a schooner (!!!), the J&E Riggin, out of  Rockland, ME, along with 2 knitting buddies, Iris and Elizabeth. It was a 4-day cruise along the coast of Maine, great food and company, a little bit of knitting instruction (socks), and a great way to really get away. The knitting instruction was for socks without a pattern. I only managed to knit most of one sock, and fear I haven't written down what I did for that sock in order to knit the second one in the same size. Hopefully when I finally get around to finishing the pair I'll be able to read my knitting well enough to make a reasonably well-matched pair.

While I was cruising, my daughter Jess and son Jeff flew out to CT and they, along with Dan, drove my car out to Oregon for Jess to have. Jeff had limited time available to help and wanted to be back in CO for his first wedding anniversary, so they drove straight through from CT to Cheyenne, WY in about 30 hours in order to get him back home in time.

In September Dan and I took a vacation to Stowe, VT at the Trapp Family Lodge. Wonderful, relaxing week and great hiking.

Started a new job as part-time office manager at a Synagogue office and had to leave it due to a flare-up of tennis elbow (from the computer work).

Dan and I flew out to OR for Thanksgiving this year. First time I've had Thanksgiving dinner with my side of the family in over 20 years!

Managed to do a little knitting anyway (my arms are recovering, and I'm diligently doing my stretches and exercised from physical therapy) and finished a cowl and continue to work on my cardigan. The pattern is called Conic, designed by Lori Versaci, and turned out great! The cardigan I'm working on, Pour Moi, is also by Lori Versaci. The back is finished and I'm working on the left front. As my arms improve I'm hoping to get more knitting done so I can actually wear the cardigan this winter.

To finish out the year, I sang in Christmas concerts, had 2 of three kids home for holidays, and am looking forward to a busy 2019 finishing more knitting, sewing, and quilting projects!

Shelley in CT

Go West Young Man!

 I'm a bit late getting this up on the blog; this all happened last month. Warning: this is a long one with lots of pictures. You will notice that I really enjoyed looking at all the farms we passed en route. Feel free to ignore them if they don't interest you.

The next step in Jason's journey to adulthood was starting his first real job after graduating from college. This involved moving from Connecticut to Colorado, and taking a car with him. We determined that we could drive it in 4 days without necessitating marathon driving sessions, and if we traded off the driving it would be doable. We looked at traffic around New Haven and through New York and found that an earlier start just meant more traffic at morning rush hour. Our first day started at a very reasonable 8:30 am but meant that we were driving until 6 or 7 in the evening.

Lunch!

at a rest area

Pennsylvania

into Ohio on our first day on the road

Boy with Rest Stop

We found a friendly Hampton Inn in Ohio, where we stopped for the night. Our home crew, my helpful hubby, got online while we drove, and made a reservation for us in Ashland, OH, just off the interstate. We didn't do any sightseeing along the way; we didn't have time for that. Our hotel location choices were based on how far we could reasonably drive in a day and where there was a Hampton Inn (clean, inexpensive, and free breakfast!) fairly close to our route. Having someone at home setting up those hotel reservations greatly simplified the trip (Thanks Dan!).

second day brought us to Indiana

Day 2 took us from Ohio, through Indiana, Illinois, and into Missouri.

Farm in Indiana

Another Farm in Indiana

many miles on I-70 West

Farm in Indiana

Moving on to another state.

Woohoo! another state line!

Bourbon, MO (no reason for the picture, I was just tickled by the town name)

Farm in Missouri

We ran into a minor difficulty when the car's AC started to weaken as the day wore on. Outside temperatures were in the 90s so we had been running the AC pretty much constantly since we started our drive that morning. By afternoon, the air came out cold, but even at the highest fan setting it wasn't moving into the car to cool us down.  We were very glad to come to the end of our day's driving and an air conditioned hotel room!

We stopped for the night in Rolla, Missouri. This part of our journey took us along historic Route 66. I would have loved to explore a little bit of the area. Honestly, most of my impression of Route 66 comes from the song, and from the movie Cars. Jason was on driving duty when we got off the interstate and drove along the smaller Rte. 66 to get to our hotel. That portion of it, in Rolla, MO, was curvy and very hilly, and difficult to drive on with any confidence. Jason had very strong opinions (and not favorable ones) about driving along that route. The surprise highlight of Rolla was a little sushi place that came highly recommended by the hotel clerk. We filled up on sushi and noodles and slept really well.

Day 3 took us from Missouri into Oklahoma, where we were planning to make a detour to Norman to pick up Jason's stuff from his college apartment. We started the day a little earlier to take advantage of the cool morning air. We made a point of NOT using the AC in the car, but cracked the back windows to get some of the cool air circulating in the car. That kept us comfortable through the morning so that we could turn on the AC when the afternoon started to heat up.

Cows seeking shade (they're the little black areas under the trees)

hay!

more cows in Oklahoma, cooling off in the watering hole

Farm in Oklahoma

more driving on I-70 West

We got to Norman, OK in time for lunch, packed up all the bags and gear from Jason's apartment, and he turned in his key.  We even had time to visit a few of Jason's friends who were in Norman through the summer, before we had to get on the road again. Stopping to see friends brought unforeseen advantages. They passed on a couple of small USB fans that we could plug into the ports in the car (they were small and didn't move much air, but every little bit helped!) along with an old styrofoam ice chest. We stopped to buy a bag of ice to put in the chest, which we left open near the fans in an attempt to cool the air in the car. It wasn't as good as a working AC, but it kept us from melting into 2 miserable puddles as we drove north to our hotel for the night in Guthrie, OK.

hotel in Guthrie, and an air conditioned room!

dinner in Guthrie. Cheers!

Last day on the road. We left REALLY early, 5:30 am, so that we'd be driving through more of the cooler morning and not as much in the heat of the afternoon. We left before the free breakfast opened up, but we had leftovers from the last night's dinner that we heated up in the hotel room microwave, and the kitchen had coffee out early (thank you thank you!) We loaded up our cooler with ice from the hotel ice machine and we were off.

Oklahoma morning Sunrise #1

OK sunrise #2

OK sunrise #3

Oklahoma landscapes were just beautiful. As the sun came up we got to see a lot more farms, cows, and big lush green fields of corn, though the corn was not yet as high as a elephant's eye!

made it to Kansas!

Oklahoma terrain was very flat and very windy. We found that Kansas was even windier! There were long sections of the drive where the car was being constantly pushed sideways. The big semi trucks on the road made me very nervous, as they sometimes swayed back and forth in the wind.

Kansas wind farm

Kanorado, town on the border of Kansas and Colorado

By the time we reached Colorado we had to turn on the AC. Thankfully, it kept us more or less comfortable until we reached our destination in Denver, my brother-in-law's house, in mid-afternoon. It was such a relief to get out of the car and unpack.

Mission accomplished! Jason had arrived, and still had almost a week to orient himself, get the car AC fixed (!), and start in on the process of getting his CO drivers license, car registration, figuring out the work commute, banking, etc. It was definitely an adventure.

Shelley, now back in CT