July 2004 Archives

I've been a bit quiet lately. It's been rather hot, and frankly, I haven't been in the mood to really do much knitting or spinning. Every day, it's work, then come home, unwind a bit, fit dinner for hubby and me, watch a bit tv, and go to bed. Lately, though, I've started to think about kntting again, especially as I have many projects not yet finished. Bruce bought several boxes from Walmart that would be perfect for organizing these projects. And, thus, saving my precious circular needles from getting bent in that wire basket in the rack.

While browsing my jurisdiction's website, I came across a couple photos on this page titled Metropolitan HERMAN guest of Tikhvin City Officials - the first two photos. I think the costumes worn in the first photo are typical to this region of Russia. As for the 2nd photo . . . well, I'm not sure what the inspiration was - probably an attempt to modernize the Russian costume . . .

While checking up on the blogs I follow regularly, I came across a link to this new online publication - Handspinners. It looks a like a good one - I'll definitely be keeping it bookmarked.

It just occurred to me that I will need a shirt to go with the sarafan. There's a pattern by Folkwears that is titled Shirts of Russia & Ukraine, #116. However, it does not look exactly like the shirts in the Prokhudin-Gorsky photos. And in any case, these seem to have more of a modern taste, and what I'm after is authenticity. It grated on my nerves to watch The Six Wives of Henry VIII that aired last year because these costumes just looked so amateurish and looked like what a fashioner designer would come up with if they had to create a line based on the 16th century fashion.

Another possibility would be the Roumanian Blouse, #103. This seems to be more authentic, with the wider fullness of the sleeves. The neck is a bit low, but I think I can figure out how to alter this part. I'll need to study more photos, see if I can get a closer look.

Earlier this year, when Bruce had spare time due to being inbetween jobs, he cleaned up the garage, and he built this for my boxes of dyes, equipment, and boxes:

Isn't this clever?

I just haven't been in the mood to do any knitting. I guess it's the summer heat that gets into you. Especially when you live here in DC metro area, with all those humidity.

Lately, I've been thinking about sewing. I've just been too busy with stuff. Plus, I've just never gotten around to finding a sewing class. I don't really like driving in the dark, and I'm too worn out by end of the day to really concentrate.

Now, I have several sarees, and I bought pre-made cholis at an saree palace. The drawbacks to these cholis are: fit, and color. Cholis are supposed to fit tightly, but these cholis that I bought are made with a certain body type in mind and one part is too loose, other part sits lower than I'd like. You know how that goes - like how clothes are designed with 5'6", slender women in mind.

I got this pattern from MomWiz (Bazaar Beledi). It seems to be a very basic one, with 3 bodice cuts and two sleeves. It comes in just one size - M/L, or 10-14 Ladies size I have a feeling that I'm going to make alterations to this pattern. I traced a copy onto alphabet paper that I got at G Street Fabric.

Here's the front, in one piece:

And the back, two pieces:

And the sleeves.

I've got muslin, which are supposed to be good for prototyping whatever you're sewing. It wouldn't do to cut up that expensive silk you got off eBay for 40 dollars per yard.

So here's the back piece:

And the front piece:

Yesterday I went over to G Street Fabrics after work to look for Folkwear Pattern 134
- this one is more authentic, and I want to see how this one stacks up against the pattern I got from MomWiz. But, alas, they did not have this in stock. I ended up ordering it online and I'm hoping it will arrive early next week.

Meanwhile, here's what I bought:

I got the Gaza Dress, Russian Settler Dress, and Afghan Nomad. I'm looking forward to trying all of these. The Russian Settler dress would be great to wear for the church bazaar. This one ends just above the ankle.

However, the more authentic way is to wear it floor-length. Here's a photo of dresses in a museum, which Prokhudin-Gorsky took on one of his photographic expedition throughout the Russian empire before the Revolution - three costumes typically worn by women in different regions of Russia. These would have been worn by married women from monied families.

Here's another example of what would have been commonly worn by peasant women: woman in Perm province hacking flax.

In addition, I bought the book so I could learn how to alter patterns to make clothes to fit my body. And I don't even now how to sew yet. Well, not quite - last tme was back in junior high school.

While on the prowl for more sarees to add to my collection, I came across this interesting description of ikat weaving as practiced in Orissa, India - Sari Safari - Odissi Sarees. I was fortunate enough to see a demonstration of this technique at the Silk Road festival couple years ago at the Smithsonian Institution. The attention to detail and the painstaking care taken in creating the patterns is just awesome! Maybe someday I'll learn to weave like that - I can dream, can't I?

Sorry about the formatting . . . I'll be fixing this soon as I get a chance . . .

Okay . . . here's how the garden looked like in middle June . . . first up, a broad overview of the left side of the garden. Forgot to take another of the right side.

I planted kale, two or three kinds of broccoli, lettuce, and spinach. Only one kind of broccoli is really flourishing; the two other just seems to have "gone AWOL". Since the weather has gotten warmer, the lettuce is bolting and so it will be time to dig these up and move some of the spinach plants over so as to make more room.

Further down, you can see that rosemary bush in the corner. Can you tell that I love rosemary?

Okay, here I have spinach growing, as well as red and yellow onion. The onion will be ready to harvest in early fall, then I'll be planting more onions to grow during winter. Oh, and here are the obligatory basil.

Here I have the Roma tomatoes growing. I bought two vines, which should ensure lots of tomatoes. Still haven't turned red yet but there sure are a lot of these growing. I'm going to be making lots of canned tomato sauce, hopefully, if mother lets me borrow her canning equipment.

A close-up view of the tomatoes waiting to ripen and be turned into pasta sauce.

I planted Brandywine tomato, two cucumber vines right here. Beware - cucumbers can grow, and grow, and grow. I've had to ruthlessly prune the vines to keep these in control. Mother's waiting for that first ripened tomato from this vine.

On the left side of the back yard, here are the clematis vines growing on the fence. And I've planted flowers - nasurtium, echinacea. Also, I planted red and green cabbage. I love cabbage, especially when you cook these in olive oil and season with salt and pepper, and a bit of paprika. I've heard that nasurtium blossoms are edible. I'll have to doublecheck on this before eating any, though.

Here's another view of the clematis growing. Remember the moonflowers that I had growing last year and quickly took control? Well, these died over the winter and are no more. What a relief.

I got Iceberg climbing rose bush from this outfit where they sell roses from the root. Not grafted in. It's supposed to make for a more vigorous rose. Last week I planted flowers that I had started from the seed. I'm hoping these will survive the transplant.

Here I'm growing artichokes. It looks like it is going to be next year before I'll get the flowers growing in.

And here are the flowers growing. See these tall plants with large leaves? No idea what these are, but I think these are datura from last year. These seem awfully invasive since they're growing all over the place on that side, certainly not what I intended. I think I'm going to be removing some of these this weekend.

More pictures coming up later this week. I will be more diligent in posting, or else I get 50 lashes of noodles.

I hope y'all had a good day yesterday. Bruce and I spent the day over my parents after picking up Aunt E. (father's friend), and another family friend on the way home from church. It started raining while we were in DC and never stopped raining the whole day that we were in Lanham at my parents' home. I was gobsmacked at the amount of the rainfall - I had been so looking forward to walking around a bit in the backyard to look at the flowers and other plants. There was even a period when the sun was out and it was pouring and father made a comment about that folk saying. :-\

Fortunately, it had stopped by the time we went home and we were able to catch the fireworks going off across the street. It seemed to us that they'd started early, or maybe I got the time wrong. Oh, well. I'm sure it will be better next year.

I've been having so much fun playing around with my new PowerBook. It's really sweet - I went with the 15", superdrive version. I decided if I was going to spend a bundle of money, I might as well go for the better of the two 15" models. I'm even looking forward to fooling around with the iMovie. My parents have a bunch of old home movies in which I'm the star and the plan is to eventually get these transferred to DVDs. I *might* post a clip or two up on my website. I certainly don't want to just put it all up, knowing how things can quickly get out of control. There will be heavy censorship, deliberately keeping any of the scenes where I'm caught stealing or posing buck naked as a defiant 5 year old off the Net.

Bruce is off to work today (he's finally landed a temp-to-perm position), so I'll be heading over to Yarns International later today to look around, especially since they've gotten a whole bunch of books in and they're having a sale.

Now, I must get back to work writing up that blog about the garden that I've been meaning to do so and putting it off.