Monday Outfit: Necessities

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Good morning! I hope you had a delightful weekend – ours was busy but happy. What you see above is a small segment of K’s wardrobe, “small” being the operative word here. There is a dresser stuffed with more knits and pants/shorts/skirts, and at least one large basket brimming with K’s outfits, waiting to be laundered.

It’s becoming a situation. A quasi-problematic one.

I’m all for slow fashion, but I have a feeling that I’m slapping that whole concept in the face and upside the head (have I written that before? I feel like I have). Admittedly, the pile-up is due to the fact that Japanese patterns are inherently generous in sizing, and in some cases, she’s still able to wear clothes I made two years ago. So that’s both good and bad. Good because longevity is totally sustainable and cool. Bad because then I feel guilty for making more clothes that are not strictly necessary (the necessity ship sailed a long time ago for me, I realize, but I do think about it. Sometimes).

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If it were up to me, I would sew up fanciful, vintage-inspired-yet-modern outfits made out of linen and double-gauze every week. However, there are times when I have to be practical. Faced with the increasing number of wedgies K seems to suffer through, I sighed with resignation and pulled out the underwear pattern she loves so much. Don’t get me wrong, the pattern is awesome — if somewhat boy’s briefs-esque —  and the fit is amazing. K has declared them the most comfortable underwear ever. It’s just that it falls under the dutiful/pragmatic section of my patterns like pajamas and long sleeve tees that are fun but not as fun as, say, a dress with multi-directional stripes or a reversible coat.

undies-take2-1So I’m making undies again. I have a bin that is chock full of knit scraps, and K has chosen these below (she said she doesn’t like the butterflies or the gold dots, which is a tad hard to see up there, but I think she’ll end up loving them):

undies-take2-2And this incredibly plain, nude-colored one is also one of her picks, currently under construction:

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Here are a few others fabrics I’m planning on transforming to cute underpinnings. K loves stripes.

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It seems that the pattern is no longer for sale, but I just discovered that Anna of Noodlehead made the darling-est versions without the front panel – must try!! I also must get my hands on more whimsical knits – those dogs are fantastic! Have you sewn any underwear lately? I think it might be time for me to attempt grown-up ones very, very soon…

Happy Friday + Randomness

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Happy Friday! I sketched this illustration while thinking about the poem K wrote below. I have it taped above my sewing table, and she also made that “I lov u” note for me using a stencil book.

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Wondering by K

I wonder about the sky
I wonder how birds can fly
I wonder as I watch the world go bye

I wonder about stars
and the planet mars
I wonder how I last
and the wonders of the past 

 

Isn’t she a wonder? I love that she included that little rhyming aside, “Have a good time with rhyme!”. KCL are her initials, by the way. I know I am repeatedly posting these little notes by K, but I’m just in awe of her developing writing skills.

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Relentlessly, the topic of my chest keeps coming up. As I leaned over to tuck K in the other night:

Mama, I don’t want a perfect view of your boobies. Put them away.

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Have a wonderful, wonderful weekend, friends! On our agenda: lots of snuggling, our weekly brunch at the local cafe, an American Girl Doll birthday bonanza for one of K’s friends.

It’s the final phase
I need to complete my book
Diving into it*

*So I always say that I might be scarce here, but I just like to put it out there to make me feel better in case I do miss a post here and there. If there’s one thing I love more than creating picture books, it’s blogging.

 

Sewing for Me: The Easiest Top

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Picasso and Mondrian would be proud of me for my abundant usage of blue and color-blocking. I’m calling this the easiest top ever because it’s literally four rectangles plus two ties. This top was part of my pre-spring plan, and hey, it’s solidly spring now and I’m finally ratcheting up my sewing mojo to make the plan a reality.

After all that body-hugging business with the Lady Skater dress, I’m back in my comfort zone and frolicking in loose, hospital/maternity garb. Here’s what the top looks like in the book:

tsukute-kitai4Here’s the back of my version:

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Isn’t the fabric lovely? It’s a Nani Iro Muji — and I think it’s a gauze, but it’s not double-gauze. The texture is absolutely luscious. Light and floaty and ethereal. It already came color-blocked, but the white edges were along the selvage so I had to cut the skirt/lower bodice section cross-grain.

It’s pretty hard to mess up four rectangles, and I believe it took me all of one hour from start to finish (no pattern to trace!). The other key factor that made this effortless was that I used the selvage for the sleeve edges and hem. Perfect.

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I get sad every time I see the chicken coop that’s in the background. The former occupants (three hens) became dinner for raccoons, and it just isn’t the same without them clucking around our yard.

Anyway, I already have plans to make this top again with a silk I’ve been hoarding, and I just might be able to share it next week! We shall see…Many thanks to my my capable photography assistant, who couldn’t help but photobomb time and time again. Notice anything different about K?

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Avocado Chocolate Cookies

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I keep a loose sort of blog schedule — every Friday, I list out potential post ideas for the following week and most of the time, I don’t follow the schedule at all because I’m always way too unrealistic and wait to create my post the day before. I’m pretty much a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal. On rare occasions, I will list the same topic over and over, carrying it through several weeks without making it happen even though it’s completely doable. These avocado chocolate cookies are an example of that.

I’ve been wanting to make these cookies for months. I love avocados. I love cookies. I especially love healthier options for sweets. I have all the ingredients for this recipe at all times (avocados, coconut sugar, egg, cocoa, chocolate chunks, baking soda and water). Seemed like a sure winner, yet I couldn’t muster the energy to make them.

Part of it was because I knew it would be yet another challenging photography project. Here’s what I mean:

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I tried all sorts of things to make them look less cow-pat-esque, but what can I say?

Just as I thought, the recipe was so quick and easy, and within half an hour, I had 18 cookies cooling on my rack. Having had success with avocado chocolate frosting before, I assumed I would adore these. They’re not bad, but some tweaks are in order. I wasn’t sure how much 50grams of chocolate chips would be (I don’t have a scale) so I tossed in a 1/2 cup. Should have added more. Also, my avocados weren’t totally ripe, and this was an issue. There’s a distinct guacamole aftertaste, which, for an avocado aficionado, isn’t such a problem, but it’s definitely weird in a cookie. So super ripe avocados are necessary.

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The recipe does state that these taste better cold and after chilling overnight in the fridge, so I’ll test that out tomorrow morn. I just had my second cookie, and you know, they’re growing on me. Guac-cookies they may be and a little odd, but they’re palatable. I like that the batch I made doesn’t use any flour, and coconut sugar is supposed to be a decent sugar alternative, but out of curiosity I might try this recipe next – this one sounds promising! I’m still trying to cut back on sugar, but sometimes chocolate is mandatory, don’t you think?

Giving Back

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My first job out of graduate school landed me in jail. The brisk and humiliating body search. The clang of the barred door. “What have I done?” I thought, numb and disoriented.

I’d committed no crime, at least none that I knew of, and certainly none that would put me in the slammer. Somehow, though, at age 27, face covered with adult-onset acne, I stood toe-to-toe with glaring, orange-clad inmates.

What I had done was find employment with an arts non-profit in the Bay Area. I’d been accepted into Peace Corps, but at the same time, I got a job offer as a director of operations for a theater company that had made a name for itself with innovative collaborations involving the San Francisco County Jail and at-risk youth, and I just couldn’t pass up the offer. The pay was the pits, the benefits laughable. But I’ve always been a dreamer and overly idealistic, and I convinced myself that I could help more in my own country than in Central Asia through the Peace Corps. And truth be told, living in San Francisco was on my bucket list, and I rationalized that I could go dig ditches in third world countries when I retired.

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In retrospect, it was probably the most character-building experience I’ve ever had. Its uniqueness came in multitudes. The non-profit organization was housed in the Center for African and African American Art and Culture (CAAAC as it was known back then, but they’ve since modified their name slightly). The center was in a part of town where people instructed me to never walk alone at night. I was one of three non-black people in the entire building. Clearly, my new employer was hell-bent on diversity, as his other employee was also not of African descent (a Caucasian Yale grad with an amazing knack for grant-writing. A super nice guy, by the way). The vibrant environment resonated with music (including a lot of rap) and dancing and glorious art.

It was also the only workplace in which my boss would show up in a zoot suit. He favored metallic blues and purples, though my personal favorite was the gold one. He wore many hats — sometimes literally — as executive director, theater company head and father figure to masses of displaced children, but most notably, he was a saxophonist and tap dancer. And he performed both simultaneously. In contrast to his wild outfits, he was a reticent and quiet man, pragmatic and kind.

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I actually had two bosses, and the other one was a firecracker who kept me on my toes. She invariably burst into rooms, her red hair glowing, commanding attention with her gravelly voice and dramatic turn of phrases. A stage actress by training, she was fierce and bold and inspiring – a lioness. Legions of young actresses sought her out to train under her. Her life mission was to work directly with female inmates, extracting and crafting their stories, then teaching the women how to perform these stories and to heal themselves.

That in and of itself was pioneering, but what raised the stakes was that the performances were held outside of the prison cells at a public venue. The shows starred the incarcerated women themselves, and some of these women had committed murder. Not a group to be messed with. A large part of my role was to coordinate all aspects of this public performance from booking the venue, working with the Sheriff’s department to ensure maximum security, dealing with city ordinances and endless bureaucratic red tape, and interfacing with the women in the jails.

High stress. Funnily enough, one of the hardest tasks for me was to organize the post-performance gala. We had no budget so this required soliciting for pro-bono help and free food. Basically, I had to beg. I begged one of the moms of the afterschool program I oversaw to cater the event. She looked at me dubiously and asked, “Did you say 200 people? How you gonna pull this off with $100?” Somehow I convinced her, and I went around imploring restaurants, shops and bakeries to donate food. I beseeched stationery stores, florists and party shops to lend us decorations and platters and champagne flutes. My love of Trader Joe’s started then because they provided almost all of the ingredients and beverages for the gala, gratis. I am a woman filled with pride and begging is antithetical to my nature.

In the end, the performance culminated in success. Many tears were shed, excellent reviews written up, and all the rest. But the gala was my pride and joy, a thing of pure beauty. I remember taking all the foodstuffs to the caterer the day before the event. “Girl,” she said with a look of wonder, “You NICE, but you ain’t a pushover.” Very few words have made me as happy as those. I hold them dear, as a personal motto. The caterer did a phenomenal job with all the TJ supplies, whipping up mini puff pastries, pint-sized crab cakes, crudites, dips and an enormous array of mouth-watering food. She even made a gorgeous cake and the whole set up was fit for an exquisitely tasteful wedding.

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I wish I could say I had a thriving career as an arts administrator, but I didn’t stay at the organization very long — I lasted about a year. Mostly it was because my heart couldn’t take it, and I was burnt out. I was too young, too naive, too disappointed by the injustice. Yes, the organization and programs helped many people, but it was such a small percentage compared to the constant recidivism, of the endless revolving door of crime, despair, abuse. Mothers addicted to crack would stumble into my office to randomly drop off young malnourished children, barely stringing together a coherent sentence. It broke me seeing and taking care of those kids. I lingered many, many extra hours in the office for them.

I also don’t think I was whole enough myself to withstand the sorrow and distress that my job entailed. At the same time, I was afraid that I would become desensitized, which was something of a commonality in that line of work. Even after I quit, I continued to volunteer for literacy groups and assisted homeless shelters and substance abuse programs, but I knew that these were under the umbrella of “safe” volunteerism, the kind that kept me at arm’s length, away from direct involvement and emotional commingling. I could put in my couple of hours, paint a wall for habitat or tutor a kid once in a blue moon and call it good. The sort of charity work I observed the well-heeled doing when I lived in Los Angeles: the auctions held at four-star hotels, the sunny afternoons spent picking up a few pieces of litter while wearing designer gloves. I’m not saying it’s wrong and I’m not trying to judge, because I think any form of a helping hand is admirable and necessary. In fact, growing up with immigrant parents, my family had very little money and though I didn’t know it at the time, I was a beneficiary of those well-heeled folks on many occasions. And I am grateful.

I guess I just felt like I wasn’t doing enough to be of service after I left the non-profit. Defeated that I couldn’t handle the hard stuff. I’ve been thinking about those days at the theater company a lot lately; I faced adversity and joy and hope and hopelessness and foibles and strengths. Oftentimes all at once. I want to give back again — the dreamer and overly idealistic self is still there and I’ve noticed the void of service acutely these last few years. Sure, I’m trying to juggle family and regaining my health and cobbling together some semblance of work, but I sense that I’m presenting this weird life in which all I do is sew pretty clothes and draw cute pictures and compose dorky haikus and talk endlessly about myself. Can I contribute something worthwhile and do those things? Well, wouldn’t that be grand? I’m not sure how to make it happen yet, but the idea has lodged into my thoughts…

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P.S. If you’re curious about the organization I worked for, it’s still around! Idris and Rhodessa are amazing!