Crazy Week

Usually I try to post on Tuesday, but I'm a tad late this week and I'm not even going to cover a project I finished last week yet. It's been a crazy week:

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Monday: We turned in our non-renewal of lease to our landlords, so there's no turning back on the move now (not that I'd want to).

Tuesday: I started cutting out a dress that I needed to finish by today (Sunday) to enter in a competition.

Wednesday: My 25th birthday was filled with beautiful flowers, food, cards, facebook messages and phone calls. Not to mention the cake Mr. Cleaver lovingly made from scratch.

Thursday: Stretched by birthday into a two-day affair with cake for breakfast, donuts with my co-workers and lunch with a friend. Picked up a copy of Alice in Wonderland at the Newberry Library book sale, and Vol II. of a beautifully bound book called Wide Wide World. Did a happy dance at the results of So You Think You Can Dance.

Friday: Spent the afternoon at the American Cheese Society's award ceremony, but sadly, had no cheese. Did some sewing. Watched Road to Perdition (it's really good - and it has Paul Newman, not to mention wonderful cinematography). Ate cake.

Saturday: Had some cake. Sewed a lot. Knitted a tad. Went to two different moving-away parties. Loathed the CTA with the fire of a thousand suns.

Sunday: Sewed some more. Embroidered the dress. Took some pictures. Uploaded them to Burdastyle and hoped I get some votes. Wore my new dress for a walk around Andersonville. Ate the last of the cake.

Did I mention I like cake?

Three Panel Apron: A tutorial

As you may recall I made a promise to a friend/coworker that I'd make me an apron, and that my first attempt didn't work out as well as I'd wished.

Well, week or two ago, I drafted out some more well-thought out plans and came up with this:

And I'm quite pleased with the final results, so I packaged it up and gave it to my coworker - who quite liked it!

I've recently gotten into posting stuff on BurdaStyle (sorta like Ravelry, but for sewers), and someone wanted to know how I made this apron. It's easy enough, so I thought I'd oblige with a simple tutorial. (Note: I only took pictures of the first half of the process so this is largely text-based)

You'll need the following:

Two fabrics, with thread to match each, as well as 10" to 20" of trim (or more depending on how you want to fancy it up).

All seams are ½ inch.

Cut list:

Main Color (in my case, the blue)

• one 21"x19" large front panel
• one 11"x19" small front panel
• one 27"x7"  waistband

Contrasting Color (in my case, the yellow)

• one 11"x13" pocket
• one 11"x19" small front panel
• two 23"x4"  ties

Press all pieces

1. With matching thread, make a ½" hem the top of the pocket.

2. Add any trim to front of pocket.

3. Pin pocket to matching apron panel with back of pocket on front of panel and baste pocket on. Press.

4. Prep ties. Hem three sides of each tie, folding over one end to a 45° angle, if preferred - if you do this make sure you make a left and a right facing strap)

5. Baste two lines of stitches inside the seam allowance along the un-hemmed side of each tie. Gather slightly.

 6. Change to main color thread.

 7. With right sides facing, stitch pocket panel to the right hand side of the large front panel. Press and finish seam.

 8.  With right sides facing, stitch the smaller main color panel to the other side of the pocket panel. Press and finish seam.

9. Hem the bottom and sides of apron body. 

10. Baste two lines of stitches along the top of the apron within the seam allowance, this will be used to gather the top of the apron.

11. Take the waistband piece and fold in half. Press.

12.  On the back half and sides of the waistband, press in seam allowance.

13. With right sides facing, place the apron body on the front half of the waist band (if you want a little extra length, you can place it shy of the fold). Adjust gathers so apron fits to waistband.

14. Sew together apron body and waistband front together. Fold waistband over the apron body and press. 

15. Slip stitch the back half of the waistband down. Do not sew the sides closed.

16. Insert tie into the opening in the waistband, with the front of the strap facing the same direction as the front of the apron. Adjust gathering to fit. Stitch opening closed, thus attaching the tie. Repeat for other side.

17. Give your apron a final press and you're done! Give to a friend or enjoy for yourself!

Please note that all patterns and tutorials are for personal use only and should not be distributed or produced for sale without the written consent of the author.

My New Favorite Outfit

I am excited:

Why am I excited? Because I made this entire outfit myself.

Remember back in the day when I said I have this dream of hand-making my entire wardrobe? Well, I just got one new favorite outfit closer.

Seriously, I love this outfit, like the time between washings is too long and I find myself sneaking the shirt out of the laundry basket in the morning before shamefully slipping it back in, because it does, in fact need to be washed.

I made the shorts right when ye olde camera died a few weeks back, and the shirt shortly following that. 

These are my first pants/shorts I've ever made ever (as in I skipped that whole making a drawstring pajama pants step). The pattern is Ruby from burdastyle. 

The great thing about the pattern is that is was free, the bad thing was that I had to print out and tape the pattern together.

Also, not always the clearest instructions. I couldn't figure out one part in particular, so my front welt pocket, well, sucks. I kinda knew if would going in and briefly considered leaving it off, but I decided I wanted to challenge myself. 

I know they're wrinkly, I took the picture after wearing them. Same with the shirt below.

The shorts are pretty basic - a lightweight blue woven material I got one sale, which I really like, but does stretch out after a few wears and needs to go through the dryer to regain its shape. I made the pocket out of some yellow gingham for a bit of fun and as not great-looking as the pocket is, it is a great place to hold my lens cap. My favorite bit though, is the buttons.

I think buttons are such a great way to add flair to something, and I think that without the button on these shorts (not to mention the teal ones on the shorts) I wouldn't like either of these pieces quite as much.

Shirt is pretty basic. The body of the shirt was from the pattern included in Sew U, the sleeves were made following the cap sleeve tutorial (just not gathered) on Wikstenmade. I was a pretty quick sew, though I am still having some trouble with the collar stand/band. If anybody has some hints for that, I'd love to hear em.

So the collars a bit funky, and some of the inside seams didn't finish as nicely as I'd like, but I still really like this shirt and plan to make a number more of them, as soon as I finish some of the other projects I have cut out, and then I'll have a new even favoriter outfit. ;)

p.s. -later this week, an apron tutorial!

Zoo Day!

So to finish up our 4th of July weekend, Mr. Cleaver and I headed to Lincoln Park for the Green City Market and the Lincoln Park Zoo on the 5th (and yes I know there's still Sunday, but that was dedicated to the Men's Wimbleton Final). Having finally gotten the memory card for my shiny new Pentax K200D, I thought this would be a great opportunity to take it out for a spin.

This is the one picture I took at the Market:

But before you worry about not getting a chance to use my camera much, I took over 650 pictures at the Zoo. Don't worry I won't make you look at them all. (I edited it down to 40 on my computer in any case).

Because we were going directly from the market to the zoo, we didn't want to purchase a whole lot of stuff and couldn't really get anything perishable. We did pick up some rosemary and a half-pint of raspberries, the latter of which served to perk up that overly dry birthday cake.

We picked a perfect day to go the zoo: the weather was gorgoreous and nearly all the animals were awake an active.

The trainers came out and played with the seals:

[wp_caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="357" caption="Della the Grey Seal"][/wp_caption]

The big cats were alert, if not on the prowl:

[wp_caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="334" caption="Tiger Tiger Burning Bright"][/wp_caption]

The chimps people watched:

[wp_caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Keo the Chimp"][/wp_caption]

And the polar bears swam:

and swam:

and swam:

(I took about 100 photos of the polar bears alone - I though it would make a good subject for my "In Motion" photos for the swap.)

It was also a great day for knocking stuff off our Chicago-to-do list: we hit the Green City Market and we rode the carousel at zoo and as you may or may not know, my love for carousels knows no bounds.

 

We've got about 6 or so things left on the list, which is good, because we've finally set a moving date : the week of August 18!

If you're interested in seeing more of our day at the zoo, you can check out my flickr set here.

4th of July

The City of Chicago, traditionally schedules their Independence Day fireworks for 3rd of July, and this year I found out why - they couldn't compete on the 4th. It was as though every father on the North Side of Chicago was competing for the Cool Dad of the Year award - and Mr. Cleaver and I seemed to be only people along the Illinois side of Lake Michigan without a personal arsenal of fireworks. On the Forth, as we grilled burgers and sweet corn, we were treated to the cacophony of whizzes bangs and pops of hundreds of firecrackers and small fireworks. As the evening grew darker, the serious displays began. We saw at least three separate private displays of large-scale fireworks, more or less, continually shot off for an hour and half, and that was before the big show started just behind our backs. 

As it turns out, a golf club located on the block adjacent to our apartment building sends off Fireworks on the 4th, as well as the first and last days of summer - and their display was a real treat. Mr. Cleaver and I agreed that these were on par or better than the Portland or Napa fireworks (our respective hometowns). 

There were in a couple fireflies joining the fray and adding a twinkle or two of their own.

All in all, it was a pretty perfect fourth.

Can't Say It Wasn't Memorable

Okay, so this weekend was so chock-full of wonderfullness, that I'm going to have to break it down into several posts over the next couple of days. We'll do it chronologically, starting with Thursday.

July 3 :

Mr. Cleaver's birthday.

The day dawned and I did NOT want to get out of bed, I was so groggy that I was the worst wife ever and forgot to say Happy Birthday to Mr.Cleaver - who after about 10 minutes decided to jog my memory. Oops!That said, as embarrassed as I was, this ended up low on the totem pole of things to go wrong that day.

As I headed off to work, Mr. Cleaver was hunkering down to watch Wimbleton on the laptop, only to discover that our internet wasn't worked, only to call our service provider and discover that the phone wasn't working wither (same company). Mr. Cleaver is probably the first to admit that he's not the world's most techno-savvy guy, and was quickly frustrated, especially when it looked like neither phone nor DSL would be repaired for a few days.

Fortunately, I was able to come home a little early from work, due to a co-worker's going-away party. So I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some ingredients for the birthday cake and the manliest looking flowers I could find for my guy.

Well, the flowers perked him up and so did my present. We also decided to go to our favorite fancy restaurant to dinner, so things were looking up. I started working on the cake, and frosting so it could cool while we were out to eat.

The cake fell a little in the center, but otherwise, seemed to be fine. We walked up the street to the restaurant only to find it boarded up and smelling of smoke. Yes, our favorite restaurant had burned down. At this point, really, we just had to laugh. And eat Chinese, which was nearby and also very good.

When we got home the internet seemed to be momentarily working and we discovered that the restaurant had caught fire in May and didn't look to be re-opening anytime soon.

I set to assembling the cake and it seemed - well -dry. I did a quick check of the reviews on epicurious and discovered I had forgotten to include 1 cup of water.

[wp_caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="How Many Candles?"][/wp_caption]

Well, this was just perfect. Again, we could do nothing but laugh, and despite the dryness, enjoy the cake. I can't say anything about the cake itself, having not made it right, but Mr.Cleaver and I both think the frosting is to die for, so it came out all right. (It also didn't stop us from finishing off the whole thing by the end of the weekend - fresh raspberries help cover a multitude of sins).

In the eveing we headed down to the lakefront to try and see if we could catch any of the City of Chicago fireworks (they always do them on the 3rd, more on that in the next post).

Not exactly what I would have wished for my husband's birthday, but you can't say it wasn't memorable.

My New Go-To Chocolate Frosting from Nana Edie's Devil's Food Cake

• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Bring sugar and cream to a boil in a heavy saucepan, stirring constantly, and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add chocolate, butter, and vanilla, stirring until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally. Chill frosting, stirring frequently, until thickened and spreadable.

I can't post pictures of my own...

So my new camera has arrived, but unfortunately, the memory card was shipped separately, so it is for now unusable and I am at the mercy of the United States Postal Service - hopefully it'll get here by the end of the week and then my blog can have new photos again!

Speaking of photos, I would encourage those of my readers with an interest in photography to sign up for the "Scent of Water" photo-swap. I have participated in the first two rounds and have received lovely photos like this one:

from SleepyNeko for the "Simplicity" swap.

and this one:

from ferry girl for the  "Reflections" swap.

This round's theme is "In Motion," suggested by yours truly! (So I'll have to come up with something good).

To see some more of the talent in these swaps, check out our flickr group, where you can also find instructions for joining the swap - and don't procrastinate - sign-ups close on July 7th!

If you have any questions about the swap or have decided to sign-up, let me know!

Camera Down!

So I finished both of those projects I teased in my last post and then in the midst of photographing them, the image sensor in my camera died. So it's shipping off to Canon tonight for a possibly free repair and I'll get it back in 7-10 business days after arrival at the Canon repair place. Until then I'm pretty much working camera-less, except for the one on my laptop.

However, the US Goverment did decided to send me a little check, with which I may be purchasing a digital SLR...

Quick Catch Up

I try to be a good blogger and post at least once a week, twice on a good week - but last week that just didn't happen. 

So here's a quick catch up on what I've been up to since last we met:

• I've watched two more documentaries on Everest (for a total of three) and am starting my fifth book on the subject.
• I went to a REM concert at the United Center.

(photo via marcusglimer)

• I went to the Printer's Row Book Fair and saw a recent library science grad win the Define-A-Thon

(photo via pantagrapher)

• I went to the sale at Vogue Fabrics and am stashed up for at least five projects. 
• I went to my knitting circle and continued working on the pattern I'm devising. 



• My  knitting circle decided (jokingly?) that it would be a great idea to make a calendar of knitted bikini's that we each designed. I started a Ravelry group for it - and started sketching some designs, because I think it's fun - even if no one else intends to do it.
• I cut out one sewing project...



• and started putting it together. 



• I worked a rental with nearly 800 patrons on three floors with three front of house staff (not fun).
• I watched Chicago do really well at the Tonys
• I helped strike a set.
• I spent 7 hours in meetings.

And that's about it - I mean, I ate and slept and went to work in the midst of all that, which was a crazy, yet really fun week and half. So I hope you'll forgive me for not posting!

I Have a Problem

You know how they say that married couples start to look like each other? Well at eight months of marriage, it's a little soon for that, but there are definitely things I've picked up from my husband, like an appreciation for REM and baseball, and now, he's penchant for obsessions.

By obsessions I mean that he will get really interested in a particular subject and read and watch everything there is about that subject for about two months. A few months ago it was the Mafia: several seasons of The Sopranos and three or so books on the mob. He's currently into the World Series of Poker and has been reading about poker players, watching WSofP on YouTube, and playing online poker on Facebook.

I admit to having often kidded him about this, and of course, now I am doing the same thing about Everest. A few months ago we picked up a second hand copy of Into Thin Air, and last week, being in between books, I decided it would be a quick read - and indeed it was, as I couldn't put it down. Then Mr. Cleaver informed me that the Frontline episode "Storm Over Everest" was available for viewing on their website (until 6/13 at least), so I watched that and read every interview excerpt on the site, and then I went to Wikipedia, which led me to other sites, which lead to me other sites, and you get the picture. And then I went to the library today and ending up with the stack to see here.

The thing that intrigues me about Everest is the 1996 season in particular, because there are so many gaps in each version of the story I've looked at so far. Jon Krakauer admits in his book that things that he was 100% sure about were later proven to be untrue, and the Frontline film makes a very clearly goes out of its way to not mentioning several people on the mountain, to the extent that it makes it seem as though they were'nt even there and from what I've read so far, Anatolli Boukreev's version is clearly written only to bite his thumb at Krakauer and make himself look good. The activities of the numerous sherpas on the mountain and their views on the whole thing are also surprising absent from all accounts.

All of this, coupled with the obvious lapses of memory/coherence from lack of oxygen/hypothermia and possible deliberate omission of events, leave a very swiss-cheese tale. And to me, makes it into an intriguing mystery, I'm not likely to solve, but it's a fun trip, so I'm going to let this obsession run itself out for a while.

In other news, I received a lovely little package from Bitter Betty in the mail today, containing an awesome wood-handled tracing wheel I won in a give-away on her blog. Thanks Betty!