The week after sewing camp, as I was slowly finishing up the Forager vest I started there, I saw a movie set in the early 1900’s in Hawaii.
For the first 20 minutes, it featured this little guy:
He’s so cute I want to squeeze him but I’m sure even if I wasn’t a stranger, he’s old enough that he wouldn’t let me.
Do you see his clothes? They are tattered, yes, but they also look like they are handmade. So beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. The many Japanese migrants in Hawaii during the movie’s setting wore these beautiful blue and white clothes. They tended to wear layers and multiple blue and white patterns at once, and it was stunning.
I determined to hack the Forager Vest into the vest above.
I started listening to Americanah on the commute to Sewing Camp. Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and clocking in at just under 17 and a half hours, I figured I’d speed it up to 1.25 like I usually do for my audio books and cut the listening time down a bit.
That lasted for less than a few paragraphs of the first chapter.
I was doing some sewing research on patterns when I came across a blog. The person behind the blog was a sewist and knitter, but also, I discovered, had just released a new book. I usually stay away from suspense novels because they tend not to be great for bedtime reading, which is when much of my pleasure reading happens. They are hard to put down and they mess with your head.
But a maker who writes books? And blogs about knitting, sewing, and writing? I was intrigued. I could tell from the blog that the author was doing some of the same hard, good work I’m doing as I enter the mid part of my life. So I requested R.H. Herron’s Stolen Things from the library.
Daylight Savings Time is the worst.
Last year, we stumbled upon a lantern making workshop at our local library one Friday in the middle of fall and the kids made lanterns. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was part of the library’s participation in a community event that has occurred in a local park for the past four years: The Lantern Parade, which occurs the Sunday of the weekend of Daylight Savings Time.
This year, I saw the lantern making event at the library ahead of time, and we went on purpose. The description of the workshop on the library’s website explained the lanterns were intended for the parade a couple of days later, so the plan was to make the lanterns, then take them to the parade later in the weekend.
