the kick ass vest
Here is a vest I made from the leftover silk I purchased for the bedroom curtains a few years ago, and a pair of pants that was regular $180 but on sale for $5 during a street market. The pattern was a free one from burdastyle. You just print out the pattern on your printer paper and pin it to your fabric. The internet sure is an amazing place.
Now that Ben and I can attend church together, both of us dashingly vested* , I can die happy.
*you see what I did there? ETYMOLOGY, amirite?
voting time
Quilt no. 2. The colours are not terribly accurate but I figure that will just add to the excitement when it looks different than the little paper cutouts do.
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feeling like an 80 year old
I did something traumatic to my back last night. Haven't the faintest idea what it was. All day yesterday it was slightly worse than it usually is (which for the past month or two has been not too good). Then after some time spent, er, on my bed, I tried to get up and discovered a new and particularly vicious sort of pain quite unlike what I have had before. WebMD says it may be a herniated disk. I tried not to read all the horrifying and incurable other possibilities like ankylated spondylosis (which is a fantastic name! though I am not sure I spelled it correctly).
So, I am home today. All the literature says you should not rest more than a day or two, if that. I'm going to try and do my regular core exercises and go out for frequent short walks. In between I am completely incapable of leaning forward more than a couple of degrees. I have to wash one hand at a time, leaning the other hand on the counter to support myself. Sitting down and standing up involve bracing myself heavily on anything close by and making grunts of pain. I am discovering that there isn't really such a thing as a comfortable position. My movements strongly remind me of my 87 year old paternal grandmother. This is not really how I anticipated feeling at the age of 27. It makes me wonder why I bothered not taking up smoking, trying to maintain a healthy weight and a reasonably active lifestyle, faithfully doing my core exercises, etc.
In less cranky, self-pitying news, here are some pictures of food:
Here's our Canada day menu. It was intended to be entirely red and white and we mostly succeeded. Not pictured: meringue cookies and custard which were served with the raspberry sauce for dessert.
That's a mango salad Ben made. It was tasty and also beautiful.
lydia's birthday
As usual, we had Soup/Salad supper last wednesday, which happened to be the day before Lydia's 26th birthday. So I made a card to wrap on top of the journal which features in my previous post, decorated my cupcakes, and delivered them to her in flaming glory. We enjoyed using (or at least I enjoyed making people use) the Pick your Nose cups Brier gave me this year for MY birthday.
sundry photos
Dinner tonight: potato salad (with our own parsley!), and Ben's special recipe of fried cabbage, apple, and in this case, back bacon, though it is also delicious with smoked tofu. Flavoured with grainy mustard. Limes were not consumed for dinner: they are for lime-poppyseed cupcakes on Wednesday. I love these plates! Green stuff looks so good on sea-blue plates. Sadly every few months I break one of the sea-blue dishes. I am a force of destruction :(
A present for a dear and wonderful person. It's a journal cover made from recycled leather and I hope if she ever goes on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, she takes it along. Aren't limes great!?
in which Ben and I discharge any latent parental urges we might have via tiny plants
We went to the garden centre last weekend and picked up some containers, some highly frustrating railing clamps (which were only installed through maximum patience and ingenuity, as well as some rags and tie wraps), potting soil, fertilizer, a potted norfolk pine, and chives, rosemary, lemon thyme, mint, basil, and parsley! Here is Ben performing almost the inaugeral herb harvesting (I had sneaked a few while doing my dawn back exercises in the preceeding days).
Sarah's superior knowledge of plants is making me freak out: Norfolk pines don't like to be touched (how do they feel about a loud and anxious kitty rubbing and biting them?) basil doesn't like temperature changes, it is easy to overwater rosemary, etc. Fortunately, accidentally killing herbs through neglect is not punished with jail time in this country.
Bonus: our other child substitute, doing something cute with a bowl of mints:
In Which I Truly Become Mennonite
I have begun work on a quilt as a present for my coworker. After a miscarriage and several years of trying, she and her husband are finally expecting. In general, I do not find babies terribly interesting until they are old enough to sass me, but I am thrilled for her. Hence, a baby quilt.
Given the other crafts I do, it's a bit surprising I haven't made a quilt before. But without a sewing machine I was worried about keeping my seams accurate. This might be a total disaster, but I am hoping that keeping the top very, very simple I can ensure that it will at least be mostly gape-free. If it works out I will use the rest of my material to make a quilt for MCC.
It's not fully Menno in the sense that at least half of the materials were purchased new. But I still only spent $13.55 so far, so I think that kind of frugality has to count for something. I gazed longingly at the fancy left handed fabric scissors at Dressew, but came virtuously home without and painstakingly cut out squares with our useless kitchen scissors.
Unfortunately, I have now come to an impasse. Do I make a nice little nine patch design or do a sort of psuedo-colourwash? (It really is a bit more colourwashy than it looks here; the colours are absolutely unlike the photos.)
