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