On Shoes and Ships and Sealing-Wax

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

On Staying Awake Until Midnight

On New Year’s Eve it can sometimes prove difficult to stay awake until midnight. One starts out fully alert, but as the night wears on, it becomes harder and harder to stay awake. Suddenly it seem as though every night one had failed to fall asleep quickly throughout the year has caught up with one all at once. A valiant effort not to give into this must be made. However, this is easier said than done and shortly after this resolution has been made, yawning commences. First, one tries to ignore that they need to yawn, which then turns into an attempt to stifle it. Stifling doesn’t work and one finds themselves giving in to a continuous amount of yawning. Finally, just as one thinks they cannot possibly keep their eyes open a second longer, the clock strikes twelve, bringing with it happy New Year’s noises and bringing one back to the point of being fully awake and ready to face the new year!

A happy new year to come!♥

Monday, December 30, 2013

On “The Brontes Went to Woolworths”: A Book Review

Title: The Brontës Went to Woolworths
Author: Rachel Ferguson
Genre: Fiction

About the book…
Written in 1931, Rachel Ferguson’s The Brontes Went to Woolworths pulls the reader in the imaginings and realities of sisters Deirdre, Katrine, and Shiel Carne and their mother as they interact with the world around them.

What I think…
This is one those books that, in addition to being on the bizarre side, takes awhile to get to a point where you have an understanding of what’s going on.

Throughout the first few chapters I had difficulty figuring out that some of the people being discussed, while real, where being described in a way that the Carnes family had imagined them to be. This confusion made it challenging to get into the book at first, but you do adjust and catch on to it quickly even if not entirely.

The narration and dialogue is fast paced and a bit frenzied, although I felt this was in keeping with the primary narrator, Deidre, and the way the entire family acts. Going off of that, multiple times the viewpoint does switch over to other characters, which definitely helps clear up some of the questions that arise as you are reading. It also makes a difference when the imaginings and realities cross over. Furthermore, this aspect does result in the characters coming across as slightly annoying at times, but in a charming sort of way (if that makes any sense).

In regards to the title, while the Brontes did play a role in the story, there was a lot less focus on them than I expected, although I really did like the way Ferguson tied them into the story.

Despite all these things, though, I was rather sad when I got to the end and I would consider this a book that I’d be willing to read again.

To sum it all up…
Great novel if you’re looking for something different from the norm and like quirky books, not so great if you don’t want to keep track of imaginary lives versus real ones.♥

Sunday, December 29, 2013

On My Christmas Skirt and Blouse

My sewing elf

Final sewing post of the year! Over a year ago, I bought some beautiful green fabric with a gold poinsettia print and I refused to let this Christmas pass without using it.

Because I had about 5 yards of it there were a lot of options for what I could make, but I decided to go with a classic circle skirt with added benefit that it would go perfectly with a red blouse I had started making last month.

This skirt pattern is one I had made before, last December on the day after Christmas to be exact, and while I absolutely love the finished skirt, I do not love Butterick’s lack of labeling pattern pieces in their instructions.

After sewing the panels together, struggling to get the zipper to match the seam (despite all the pins, it kept moving), and doing some waist adjustments, I realized when I went to sew on the waistband that the zipper was sewn on the wrong side. Being a circle skirt, one might think this doesn’t matter, but at least in the case of this skirt the curve at the top of the front piece is larger meaning that it has to go in front. I ended up tiredly debating for about twenty minutes if I really wanted to go through the trouble of removing the zipper and finally came to the conclusion that: a) I really didn’t want to rip out the zipper and struggle with it all over again, b) I’ll probably only wear this skirt a few times a year because it’s a Christmas print, c) Despite efforts to avoid it, the waistbands usually get sewn on with the overlap on the wrong side, so here was my chance to sew it on backwards and not have to worry about ripping the whole thing apart to fix it! and d) I may have been wearing my other skirt backwards all year. Also, did I mention this was the evening of the twenty-third?

On Christmas Eve, I attached the waistband and did the hem before going to bed with the idea of sewing on the hooks and eyes in the morning. Christmas morning I started to sew them on, only to discover on one side of the zipper the waistband had been sewn about a ¼ inch higher…sigh…so I ripped out the stitching for about two inches, readjusted and sewed the waistband back on, and finished with the eyes. All this trouble, but the skirt was done for Christmas!!! Yay!!!