Saturday, October 24, 2009
Dear Southington Republicans,
Posted at 8:09:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I received your "We ask for YOUR vote on November 3rd" mailer in my mailbox today. If I LIVED in Southington, I might vote for you, but I live in East Berlin!! The address on the mailer is:
Southington Voter
[my street address]
East Berlin CT 06023-1041
What is WRONG with you guys??? What a waste of money!
Sincerely,
a BERLIN voter
---
What the heck. Southington is about 20 minutes from where I live!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Posted at 11:38:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Just LOOK at this tree that's across the road from our place. It's like it's an autumn tree or something. Here's a full-sized version.
I had to go get forms for absentee ballots today, and when I looked on the town website I found out that the town hall closes at 1:00 on Fridays, so I got ready really really fast. First I had my new breakfast addiction: salty oatmeal (nice and dry and flaky and chewy!) eaten simultaneously with a honeycrisp apple. Perfect combo.
I'm almost done with the AAG! bag. I'm sewing on snaps and buttons. No buttonholes. Too potentially catastrophic. I massively want to make something with buttonholes, though!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I got an Uptown sweater today that's 54% ramie, so I looked up ramie to see what the heck it is. It's a hairy fiber plant! "Ramie has been around for so long that it was even used in mummy cloths in Egypt during the period 5000–3300 BC." It's very autumnal looking.
Posted at 11:25:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The AAG! Bag is really earning its name, and I don't mean the Anti-Autumn Gloom part. The fabric is too thick and fuzzy to use the nifty automatic buttonholer device, and I did manage to figure out how to do a manual one with some settings tweaked, but this is going to be super-risky and potentially bag ruining if I screw it up, which is incredibly likely. Buttonholes and super-thick wooly fabric are not a friendly combination. This bag is almost as scary as Halloween!
Posted at 10:50:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Do I even have the nerve??
Maybe snaps with buttons sewn on top for show is a better idea.
On the plus side, I found a dial on the side of the machine (the pressure foot dial) that I didn't even know was there, and I learned how to make a manual buttonhole.
Lots of excitement in the neighborhood today. It's our first day with the new mandatory town trash barrels, and no one quite knows how to maneuver them or where to put them.
Posted at 6:10:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Eeek. Rocky SBUX is all decorated for Halloween. I don't remember them doing that before. They also have brainstorm ideas for when to drink Via plastered all over. My fav is "getting lost in a corn maze."
Posted at 4:20:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I can't stop staring at the sky and trees. Drinking my cappuccino outside, to gaze and gaze. It's the perfect temperature out--about 72°, no wind. The sky is so blue, with swoops of pebbly bumpy-textured clouds that look polished. Gleaming stainless steel grey in some sections, luminous white in others, all abstract and spread large across the blue blue sky.
I passed a copse of trees that was so red that I said out loud, "Oh man." Others are bright yellow, and every shade of orange. It reminds me of the intensity of tropical flowering bushes along the road in Hawaii.
Just tried a new yogurt: Trader Joe's "Chocolate European Style Lowfat Yogurt." (I knew I was going to forget the name before I got to my computer, so I memorized it by the giving it the name Cesly. It's like Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest.) I liked it! Now I want more, but I only bought one container. It has a little layer of sweet chocolate down on the bottom, but I didn't discover this until after I ate the top. I think you're supposed to mix it up, but I liked it the way it was, so I didn't eat that part. The top part is chocolate flavored, but not too sweet; there's a slight tartness and a good smooth creamy texture.
Posted at 1:06:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Oh, and when I was trying to look it up online, I came across a blog all about yogurt. It hasn't been updated in a while but it still looks like it has some interesting content.
Phooey. This gorgeous, gorgeous fabric that matches perfectly isn't going to work as lining in the AAG! bag. Slightly stretchy thick felted wool outer bag + totally nonstretchy thin cotton lining is not a good combo; they just won't make friends. I guess I won't do a lining. The felted wool doesn't really need one. They are so perfect together visually, though. :-( I don't know if I'll be able to salvage anything of this, and it's torture because just looking at this fabric makes my eyes happy. I wish I had enough for a pillowcase or something.
Posted at 12:29:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Aaagh, I'm really exhausted today, for no reason. Maybe it's because I got woken up too early by noisy guys doing work (trimming?) outside. I went to the new Uptown Consignment in Southington! It was opening day. I didn't like it, though. It's no Rocky. It's also a huge pain to get there, so that's good.
Posted at 9:05:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I keep staring at the liner fabric of my AAG! bag, which is lying on my floor in a state of partial doneness. I love it SO much. I hardly have any of it, though! I can't remember where I bought it. Close to Home in Glastonbury, probably. I've had it for a few years. It must've been expensive, so I only bought a teeny-tiny bit. It looks like the way the trees do right now, how they're all different shades of orange and red and yellow and pink, with each tree in a row of trees different, so when you drive along it's a feast of color. Did they plant them that way, so each one turns a different collection of hues, or does it just happen?
My back hurts. I feel like curling up and reading a book.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
It was so nice out today. 70° and sun. Got an iced single bohemian at Klekolo World Coffee and drank it while walking around outside. Then I put more money in the library meter and walked through the church parking lot, over to Main Street Market. I hardly ever go there anymore, since ION Market moved (except to go to ION restaurant, but that's at night, when everything else is closed). But it was so nice out that I felt like a walk, and it was good that I did, because I got the whole scoop on ION Market and what's going in their former location! I asked a saleslady at Echo if she knew anything about what they're doing at the empty and papered-over location, and she talked to me for about 15 minutes! I think she was really bored and liked having someone to talk to.
Posted at 11:45:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
She told me that it's going to be a market that sells local New England products, with a cafe and deli in the back. That sounds like it has potential! I really like the idea of the local New England stuff, kind of like a farmer's market. The cafe is a good idea, because you can go there to get a coffee, then browse around. They REALLY need something in there, to draw business into Main Street Market. All the other stores are really suffering with it empty. She said the projected date when it's going to open keeps changing (maybe before Christmas, maybe not), so I'll have to check every once in a while.
She also 100% agrees with me about ION Market's new location and how awful the new store is. She went on and on and on about it! It was so great, because Dean doesn't believe me that it's horrible, but this confirms it. She said everyone thinks so, so it's definitely not just me. Most people she knows won't even shop there anymore. She commiserated with me about how "messy" (her words) it always is, as if they aren't finished setting it up yet (even though it's been open for over a year), with partially unpacked boxes half-blocking the aisles, so it's really difficult and annoying to navigate, and how half the time when you want to pay for your groceries there's no one at the checkout area. And how the prices have gone up insanely. (As I told her, I don't mind paying a little bit more to support a local business, but it's kind of crazy. I don't look that closely at food prices when I shop, but this is really noticeable.) And she said the new parking lot is horrible and the upstairs tenants take all the spots, so there's never anywhere to park (I haven't had a problem with this... but I probably go at an off-time), but meanwhile there's usually practically no customers there. Yep. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. It's too bad... ION Market is a Middletown institution! :-(
I just dreamed that my mom was making the most beautiful pancakes. I didn't want to wake up, so I could keep seeing more of them. They were of sea horses and blue whales, exquisitely colored and perfectly shaped, all nearly identical, using geometric shapes that put together created incredibly realistic animals (like a Charley Harper design). The sea horses had a tiny sausage eye. She was making them for breakfast and Bethan Thomas was at my house. I could hardly bear to eat one. It was so creative and fun, and just astonishingly lovely.
Posted at 11:28:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I worked on the AAG! bag a whole bunch this evening! I finished the entire outside, including the strap. I just have to do the lining and the buttons. Because it's made from felted wool, the construction is completely different from my other recent bags. Well, not the basic layout, but how it's actually physically put together. It's so fun and weird sewing felted wool. Dean says it's officially called my "sweater bag." Very true, because I designed it to stay true to its humble sweatery beginnings, and kept a lot of the sweater elements intact.
Posted at 12:20:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I did a lot of hand sewing again, which was totally fun. The thick wooly material just eats up the thread and it's easy to hide the stitches. I used the machine for the long edge seams, though, and it handled them beautifully even though all the layers together are really thick.
I love LOVE the fabric I'm going to use for the lining. It may be my favorite fabric EVER, pattern/colors-wise. I hope it performs well as the lining (doing the lining last is so backward, but that's how I made my first bags, so I know it will work). I wish I could use it in a more visible spot, but it's very lightweight, so it's really not durable enough.
Sorry for all the teases. I will show photos when it's done.
I guess that's all. Oh yes, and I got the new kelp forest stamps today! They are fantastic. Anemones, urchins, lion's mane nudibranchs, and even anchovies!
I also locked my keys in my trunk at Shaw's, but Dean drove out right away and rescued me. :-) I only had to wait about 25 minutes. That's the first time I've EVER done anything like that! Good thing it was just my keys and not my Treo. I put them down when I was rearranging the stuff in my reusable grocery bags (because I never like how the baggers pack them!) and then slammed the trunk without remembering to pick them back up first. Aagh. But, zero Suder, because Dean is my hero!!! He even talked to me on the phone while driving over, so I wouldn't be all lonely waiting. :-)
They had honeycrisp apples at Shaw's today, too. I snagged a bunch! The ones at Big W are from Washington state, but the Shaw's kind were from New York. They are both good! Honeycrisp apples are the most expensive kind of apples, but they are so worth it. I am addicted, and I don't even like apples that much, in general. Honeycrisps are barely even in the same category as other apples.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
That was the best sleep ever. I feel so good, so relaxed and refreshed. My back is happy! I'm alert and sparkly. Mmmmm.
Posted at 2:42:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Additional Actual Good Things About Autumn:
#12. Salty oatmeal for breakfast.
#13. Honeycrisp apples at Big W! (Best apples ever. Super crisp and crunchy and juicy, perfect sweet-tart taste. Not mealy at all. Great consumed along with salty oatmeal!)
Dean turned on the whole-house humidifier yesterday (after I whimpered a lot about how dryyyyyyyy it is with the heat on) and it feels SO much better! Mmmmm amd more mmmm. Whole-house humidifier = ♥! That doesn't count as a good thing about autumn, though, because it wouldn't be necessary in the first place if not to cancel out a very bad thing about autumn. It counts as a good thing about Dean, though!
Lying half-awake in my chaise for hours with the rain falling against the window = best thing ever.
Posted at 2:09:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
