Hi, I'm the Crazy Cat Lady. I'm married to Geek Man. We have six cats, two herding dogs, an autistic teen, my teenage brother, and absolutely no sanity. Though to be fair, not all the cats are ours; there are some fosters in the mix. Someday they might find homes, but that's slow going in a bad economy such as we have here in the southwestern United States right now. I'm a frustrated country girl trapped in suburbia, and my kitchen is my castle. I cook, sew, can, dehydrate, and otherwise make a huge mess in there, all day every day. Even though I'm always doing something, I'm also always thinking. In between all the cooking and sewing, I write stories, I watch garbage on Netflix, and of course I trade sarcastic, snarky barbs with my dear friend who lives way, way too far away. And now I can trade them with the whole rest of the internet, too! Insert evil laugh here. Anyway, I feel properly-introduced now, so let's get on with it, shall we?
You know you bake good stuff when you do the weekly grocery shopping, including restocking on a few pantry staples, and your parents come running to find out what's cooking.
I was low on supplies, so last night, I bought a 5lb sack of baking powder, a pound or three of cornstarch, a bucket of shortening, a bucket of lard, and a few pounds of butter. By this time next week, those supplies, along with some stuff I already have, will become three dozen monster cinnamon rolls, four loaves of Polish sweet bread, a dirty soup pot (because matzo ball soup won't last long in this house), upwards of five dozen biscuits, and I don't even know how many brandy snaps, but they're almost nothing but sugar and brandy and they're going to be amazing. The brandy snaps recipe can be had at The Pioneer Woman, and even though I've not tried them yet, I can personally vouch for the flat-out amazingness of all of her recipes that I have tried. Go ahead, take a peek. I'll wait here. Trust me, you'll be glad you clicked.
All right. So lots of cooking in the near future. But for now, I'm setting that aside because I've mislaid my good tartan skirt, and I've got to go downtown for the Christmas spectacular Friday night. And it's gonna be COLD this Friday night! We're expecting a low around 36 that night, and even though the event will be over by nine o'clock, it's still going to dip pretty low by then. I have no pattern for the skirt... well, actually I do, somewhere. It's Simplicity 3263.
What I don't have is the desire to search my embarassingly large pattern stash to find it, so I'm shooting in the dark instead. It's sewing. Can't be that hard. I already know from my Civil War measurements that my waist-to-floor is around 39", so I can estimate skirt length from there. Standing, it'd be around 34", but I'll be taking my electric wheelchair, so I can fudge it a little, to 30", save a buck or so on fabric, and still get the ankle-length look. And if I ever decide I want to wear it standing, we'll just tack some wide lace under there.
Of course, my waist isn't the same height all around, so I either need to use 1860s-style sewing tactics to make sure the plaid is nice and even at the hem, or I need to decide I don't care that much. Guess which I'm going to go with. Yep. It'll be a straight hem, that won't quite hang evenly on my person, and unless I put a hoop skirt with it, nobody will notice the wandering skirt length. So I know how to measure and cut a couple skirt panels. Plaid makes it even easier -- just pick a line and follow it. And I know a waistband consists of a 5" width of fabric, with some interfacing ironed in, folded over like bias tape and sewn to the skirt. Technically the pattern calls for the skirt to be gathered to he waistband, and open with a hook/eye and zipper, but I haven't got one on me, so we'll be making this waistband about 2" bigger than my hips, gather to that, and then I'll shove some elastic in to compensate for the lack of proper closure. It'll be just freaking fine.
Then after that's done, we make the shawl. Which is a fancy word for "hem up the remainder of fabric after hacking off two 31" panels and a 5" waistband, and fray up the edges to make it look good". That pattern actually comes with a pattern piece to make the shawl. Why, I have no idea. I wish I could have sprung for a full two yards for the wrap, to make a good width that would double as a sort of cloak depending on how you wrap it, but I own a decent coat, and something about food and electricity seemed more important. Next plaid flannel skirt, I'll budget for a nice-sized wrap. Because, you know, a girl living in the southwestern U.S. has so many occasions to wear an ankle-length warm skirt, you know.
Oh and let's not forget the freakishly huge pile of Christmas gifts that still need to be sewn. Seriously, the pile is huge. I'd take a photo, but I'm waiting for Amazon to send me a new camera card to replace the one that finally broke, so pictures have to wait a few more days. But the sewing pile, it towers about three feet on top of the table, and that's only about half of the fabric I'll be using, and it's not even gifts for everybody I have to give gifts to. I don't even have ideas yet for half the family. And I haven't even started my own Christmas dress. Because Christmas is still six months away, you know. That whole "December" thing on the calendar? It lies. That or my procrastination skills are just that awesome... I could go either way on that. Any way you look at it, though, I have Christmas gifts to sew for six people. They take about four hours each... one of them is going to take longer because it's based on a pattern I've never even drafted before, let alone used. And cutting things out is always a challenge, since we have a half-dozen cats, so as soon as you push one off of your fabric, two more pop up on the other side. It's like some demented whack-a-mole game. I'm pretty sure I spend more time brushing cats and fur off the fabric, than I do cutting and sewing it.
I don't even want to think about it all.
Alas, Christmas refuses to wait for me, so tomorrow's to-do list is to cut out the fabric for all those gifts. And maybe even think of gifts for the other billion people on my list. I should really make those brandy snaps first, though... I'm sure I'll feel better about the cutting and sewing once they're made. And eaten.
Especially since I just realized I sewed up the sides of my skirt and forgot to cut out and add pockets. I require pockets in my clothes. Even my ballgowns have pockets. So I'll be ripping out about 8" of seam on either side, to add my favourite pocket pattern that I drafted off a random pajama pattern, and then fixed to within an inch of its life, so that it actually fits my hand. But that can wait for morning, because right now it's time to sit down and pet a cat, or two... or six.
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