Ever since I finished my rust-colored cloak, I’ve wanted to make a second, shorter one. It wasn’t till this fall that the fabric inspiration struck. When it did, I used the pattern from the book Costume Close-up, minus about ten inches of length, to make a second cloak over the course of two days.
I used a clearance wool blend I found online for $7/yard. The lining is my old favorite, shot cotton. I pieced the lining (mainly because I cut the lining for the hood too short). I prick stitched the lining in so that that the two layers of the cloak would move as one, something I didn’t do on the last cloak. I omitted the hand slits. With the shorter length, they didn’t seem necessary.
So in two paragraphs, I just told you everything you need to know about the cloak. So we’re going to talk about something else while I show you the pictures.
These past weeks, unless you were living under a rock, the already scary, unpredictable, and unfeeling world we’ve been living in got worse. Then a few days ago, one of my teenage daughters was assaulted by a former friend over a false rumor.
A few years ago, I wrote a post about a high school classmate of mine and what our friendship had meant to me.
This fall, that classmate passed away.
He wasn’t the first of my graduating class to cross over, but he was the first that I knew well enough to feel the loss.
He had married outside of our friend circle and most of us didn’t hear about the ceremony that was held in his honor until after it had taken place. Grief circled around me with no place to land.
So, remember when I expressed fear that my recent visits to the naturopath would result in me having to give up every food I love?
Over the course of the past year, participating in book clubs at my local library, one of the things that came up was video conferencing etiquette around pronouns. One of the moderators asked us to state our gender pronouns at the beginning of the call. I went with it that first time, but I felt really uncomfortable about it.
