I have spent all morning playing with the stuff on this site, adding to the sidebar, figuring out how to make the photos do what I want them to do, moving my blogroll, whitening my teeth… (What? I multitask.) I want to make some bigger changes to the look of things, like making the banner look like MINE, like maybe changing some colors, but I haven’t figured out how to do that stuff yet, and it may have to wait until I’m actually in the same room with David, breathing down his neck and saying, “No, not that color, THAT color.” Won’t that be fun for him?

So the new blogging platform/look is getting there.

I am also focusing on getting to a few other places in the next little bit. I’ll be doing some traveling over the next month. I leave bright and early Wednesday morning for Moscow (the small, close-minded, boring one, not the big, fancy Russian one), where I’ll be attending the opening of Dave’s final directing project. He’s almost gradumicated. Woot! Anybody want to buy a cozy three bedroom house on a nicely-sized lot?

Then the week after, or thereabouts, I am taking advantage of an amazing deal on Southwest. For $200 round trip, I am flying to Boise for five days. I’ll get to see the ‘Rents and my brother and sister-in-law, along with MY NEPHEW.

For these travels, I will be utilizing BOTH of Chicago’s airports. I was going to take the El, it being cheaper and public transit and all, but it’s over an hour to O’Hare, and almost two to Midway, vs. driving 30-45 minutes. I think it’s worth the parking money. Especially since my flight on Wednesday leaves at 8:30 am, which means being at the airport at 7, which would mean leaving here by 5:30am were I to take the train. Um, no.

Plus, Chicago has this tendency to give 2-3 days’ notice about street cleaning, and that means putting something up on Friday for a move on Wednesday, and I wouldn’t be in town to know to move the car. Paying to get it out of an impound lot would cost more than parking at Midway for six days, not to mention the potential damage caused by the tow and the time lost in getting there and paying for it. Ugh.

So airport parking in the farthest reaches of the economy lots it is.

Due to all these factors, posting may continue to be sporadic here at Sallyacious for the next few weeks. I will have access in Moscow, but possibly not in Boise. And I fully intend to have lots going on in both places, which will most certainly curtail my writing time. But we’ll see. maybe I’ll surprise y’all and post daily from both locations and an airport or two.

Though I will say that you’re most likely to get more updates if you follow me on Twitter.

Sunbeam Sharing

Sleepy Old Lady

These are some of my test shots from the new camera. I’m also trying to figure out how to make this whole photo uploading thing work. Since Wordpress seems to upload things in a specific (read backwards) order, which I don’t necessarily want.

My Workspace

Note that I have an assistant when I work. Often, I have multiple assistants, some of whom insist on sitting on the chair, the table, the artwork. This makes for some exciting moments, like when I need to remove a cat from a not-yet-dry piece while not also getting the paint on my hands on her.

Sorry. Been busy. Trying to move to a new blogging platform. Having issues. Kicking and screaming and throwing things. And then I’ll be doing some traveling. So expect things to be pretty spotty here for a bit.

Happy Holidays.

I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself, worrying that I would be spending Thanksgiving completely alone, eating a cold can of beans over the sink, feeling unwanted and unloved. Well, okay, not really. Had I spent the day alone, I would have made reservations someplace REALLY NICE and tried to make the very best I could of it. Though I wouldn’t have enjoyed the alone part all that much.

Instead, though, I was lucky enough to be invited to join the Guzman-Barron family for their celebration. And so I got some wonderful food and the warm welcome of my friend Isabel and her parents and siblings. The meal was absolutely perfect and delicious, and the conversation was delightful. Her nephew Sebastian is definitely the second cutest three year-old in the world. (Sorry, Isabel, but I see the Very Cutest three year-old in two weeks.)

I feel so fortunate to have friends like Isabel, and to have been able to share the afternoon and evening with her and her family. I am indeed thankful for the opportunity.

Old platform was no longer doing it for me, so Dave transported me here. I’ll spend the next week or so kicking the tires, shaking things down.

But it’s on my other computer. Because I wrote it at the laundromat. So I’ll post it later.

Is the number of words I have written in my odd, confused and most likely final NaNoNovel in the last two days. It’s why I haven’t posted here. I spent most of the day yesterday in the local coffee shop and most of the day today at the Inn of Chicago, where they kindly donated a conference room for the Illinois statewide write-in. That was a tremendously generous action on their part, and I know I’ll recommend them to people visiting the city.
Anyway, I’m tired of typing, so forgive me if this is all I post today. And tomorrow and quite probably Monday. I’ve got some other (good!) stuff going on in my life over the next few days which will most likely preclude writing anywhere until after it’s all over. But we’ll see.
In the meantime, have a lovely weekend.

Detail One
One of the other things I did on Tuesday was complete this project. It’s a birthday present for a friend. Whose birthday was three weeks ago. I haven’t given it to her yet, and she doesn’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t read this site, and even if she does, she is waaaay too busy this week to read it. That, I know for sure.
I started this project in SEPTEMBER. That’s right, I began it in plenty of time for her birthday. And then one thing after another went wrong with it. Seriously. Anything that could go wrong with this project, did.

Lousy Photo, But You Get a Sense of the Overall Size
This is a fiberlace stole. They’re a pain to make. A. Pain. Gorgeous, but a pain. It had been long enough since I made one that I had forgotten just how much of a pain they are, but I remembered a short time into it. This is my eighth. The first two, David sewed for me. So they were less of a pain from my point of view. Number Three I made for me, so I’m willing to put up with some of the imperfections. Number Four turned out badly and had to be scrapped entirely for a number of reasons. Numbers Five, Six and Seven were less of a pain because they were slightly smaller (scarves, instead of stoles) and because I was in the groove. I sold two of them. The other is still available. This, Number Eight, is by far the largest one I’ve made. Which added to its pain quotient.

Additional Lousy Photo, but Gives a Good Idea of the Over-All Look. Plus, Cat for Scale and Interest. And, Yes, That IS a Homemade Scone on My Desk.
On paper, fiberlace items seem like they’d be simple, easy, and a lot of fun. And the first part is. You pin a ribbon to a piece of watersoluble interfacing that you have lightly spritzed with quilt basting spray. (Emphasis on lightly. That stuff doesn’t wash out. Guess how I know.) That’s the border of your item.
(Issue number one with this particular stole: I didn’t have pins. I brought the sewing machine, all of my fabrics and fibers and thread. But not straight pins. I had fourteen of them to pin a stole five feet long and ten inches wide. Yeah. So I had to figure out where to buy pins. But I put the whole thing together with the fourteen pins I did have before I went to the store. )

Detail Two
Then, you trail a mix of fibers back and forth in various patterns between the ribbon edges. You can do stripes, loops, zigzags, it doesn’t matter. When you feel like you have enough, gently lay another layer of watersoluble interfacing on top of it and pin it to the scarf layer AND the bottom interfacing layer. You should pin these things through the ribbon, placing the pins roughly an inch apart, possibly more. Trust me, you do not want anything to slip.
(Issue number two: Through some kind of brain fart, I managed to pin this the wrong way, with the pins running parallel to the ribbon rather than perpendicular to it. AND I spaced them too far and ended up pinning more on the fly as I sewed it. You’d think I’d never done one of these before.)

Detail Three – You Can See the Stitching
Once that’s done, you sew it. Start with the short dimension and simply sew lines back and forth across the scarf, about ¾ of an inch apart, from ribbon to ribbon, stopping about halfway across the ribbon at each turn. Once you’ve done that (and it takes forever), do the same thing going the long way. And when you’ve finished with that, sew all the way around the scarf on the ribbon to be sure it’s all going to stay together.
I warn you, this is tedious beyond all belief. You stab yourself with pins as you turn it back and forth on the machine. You have to roll it up to make it fit as you turn it back and forth on the machine. You worry that the fibers are getting rearranged as you do all this rolling and turning. And they are, but it’s really going to be okay. Anyway, this scarf took over an hour to sew, not only because of the size but because of the other issues I dealt with along the way.
(Issue number three: Where do I begin? First my bobbin ran out, even though it was full when I began. Then my thread broke. More than once. Then my bobbin ran out again. And while I was refilling it, IT BROKE. My fucking plastic bobbin BROKE. Half of the top snapped right off. But only once it was mostly full of thread. So I had to rewind all that thread back onto the spool and start over.
When one of those things happens, you have to go back to the ribbon to start over, you can’t just begin in the middle of the scarf, the stitches won’t hold. So not only did it take TONS of time, but the stitching around the edge looked TERRIBLE.)

Detail Four
Once you’ve finished the sewing, fill your clean sink with lukewarm water and shove the whole thing in. Give it 20-30 minutes to dissolve. Swoosh the scarf through the water occasionally to be sure the interfacing is all getting wet and loosening. Drain the sink, rinse the scarf gently under running water to get rid of globs, make sure you’ve got rid of any globs that are sticking to the sink (that stuff dries hard) and refill the sink with warm water. Soak for another 10-15 minutes, swishing occasionally.
After the second soak, add a little bit of Woolite or Ivory Liquid to the water (a teeny bit), and swish the scarf around to be sure all of the stuff is off. Then gently rinse it in running warm water and wring gently. (At this point, I like to lay the scarf/stole on a bath towel that I roll up and squeeze to get as much water as possible out of the scarf so it won’t drip.) Hang to dry.
Once it’s dry, trim all of the bits that stick out past the edge of the ribbon and you’re done.

Trimmed bits. That All Came off This Stole. Well, Not the Kleenex
But remember my lously looking edges because of all the sewing issues? I couldn’t give that scarf as a present. So I went to Vogue Fabrics (OH. MY. GOD. LOVE Vogue Fabrics) in Evanston and found some double-fold satin binding in exactly the right shade of red. This was my third trip. Because for trip one, which was the day of my friend’s birthday party, I lost the scrap of red I needed to match–I’d put it in my pocket before I left the house–and left the paper with the scarf dimensions at home. Visit two took place before they were open, and I didn’t have time to stick around and wait. Trip three was successful and also involved brunch beforehand at the Lucky Platter, which was tasty, and a stop in at the wonderful Chicago-Main Newsstand before I got back on my train.
But by the time I got the trim, I was deep in the the funk that gripped me for much of October, and only on Tuesday night did I finally find the courage to pin the binding to the scarf (90 minutes of work) and sew it on.

Shiny Trim
Finally, it’s ready to give to the Birthday Girl.
These scarves are beautiful. They’re delicate looking and soft and warm and just stunning to look at. If they weren’t such a lot of work, I’d probably make more of them. But it’s going to take me a while to get over the pain of this one. No matter how gorgeous it was in the end.