Project 8: Black & Brown Shirts

These are now my favorite shirts ever. They're made from thick, thick linen which I would have never splurged on for myself. Lingoman's mother, however, provided the means as a Solstice gift (gods bless her) so I had to do it! Did that sound convincing?

I intended to try an experiment in mass production by doing all the cutting for both shirts, then all the sewing but I just couldn't. By the time I finished cutting out the pieces for one shirt I was done with that activity. So, I made them sequentially.

The silver-colored Celtic knotwork buttons on the black shirt actually came from my local fabric store, not from a specialty source. Pacific Fabrics rocks.



Lessons learned this time out:

• Linen is loosely woven and moves but you don't have to panic. If it moves while you're cutting and it's a little off shape it will move just as well while you're pinning and you can fix small errors
• Sew buttons on by hand. You don't save much time by using the machine and they're never quite as solid.
• Spend a few extra bucks for the nicer fabric. If you're going to spend all those hours cutting and sewing it's worth it.
• My six-year-old 1 megapixel digital camera sucks.

Là Feille Brìde: Bridget's Feast Day

Today is the second of February, which in the old calendar was the day that fell halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Among Gaelic-speaking peoples prior to their adoption of Christianity, this day was holy to the Goddess Brìd. As Gaeldom began to accept the new religion it did so at first on its own terms. The new relationship between the people and a new set of Gods had to be cemented in the proper way; with fosterage. Brìd shifted from being the triple Goddess of smith craft, poetry and healing to being the foster mother of Jesus. This was a very prestigious role in Gaelic society, which denoted the importance of Brìd to her own people.

Although I honor all the Gods, there is a special place in my heart and on my altar for Brìd. Having a special role in the transformative and restorative arts, I call on her when I need change in myself or the world around me. From tonight through the day that is the actual halfway point through Winter in the modern calendar I will make special offerings to Her in hopes that this world gets the changes it needs, and also that it wants most of them.

This is the kind of thing I meant

One of my earliest posts was a set of recommendations for helping straight people get past the Eww! Ick! response when they see same-sex couples express affection. In it I recommended going out of their way to see same-sex themed movies or TV shows and I emphasized the fact that I didn't mean pornography.

I was recently hipped by Joe. My. God. to a new music video by openly gay singer-songwriter Matt Alber. It's a great song and a very beautiful video. As a gay person in North America, I've spent my whole life switching pronouns in my head and reframing stories in movies and TV shows so that I could relate to the characters. Give it a try! It will help you appreciate the ease of being in the majority.

Dad's Fiddle Reborn

The story of me becoming a fiddler starts when I was a very young kid. There were large cupboards above my parent's clothes closet where seldom-used things were kept, and those storage spaces were the most magical destination in my young world. When I could get away with it I would find a way to get up into those cupboards and peek into the boxes that held Christmas decorations, old keepsakes and my Dad's violin. Dad studied with the first chair of the Minneapolis Symphony until the Great Depression hit in 1929 when he was 10 years old. Music fell by the wayside as he looked for ways to make money to help support his family.

The violin sat in its case for 64 years until his death in 1993, when Mom gave it to me. Becoming a fiddler had never been in my plan for life, but when I held that poor, decrepit instrument in my hands it felt like a door opened in my heart and the fiddle moved in beside the harp. I had the initial restoration done by a violin company south of Seattle, and not knowing any better, thought they had done a good job. I marveled at how incredibly difficult it was to get a good sound out of a violin and being who I am, I blamed my lack of talent.

After 14 years of dabbling at playing it I finally got to a place in my career and life where I could afford to spend a couple grand on a better violin. As it turns out, the poor set-up and repair work was at least partly to blame for my lack of progress. My new violin was a revelation. It was so much easier to play that I practiced for hours every day and my skills took a quantum leap forward.

Which brings me back to my Dad's violin. After getting my new one, I moved Dad's up to Lingoman's apartment for weekend use, but I never played it; I had been spoiled. A couple of weeks ago the radical weather fluctuations caused all the tuning pegs to let go and the bridge fell down. Non-players might not know, but the precise placement of the bridge, which is held in place by string tension, is a critical element in how an instrument sounds.

So I decided to bring Dad's violin into Lasley and Russ in Ballard to see what could be done. To my surprise, Duane Lasley thought that he could overhaul it and make it into a decent instrument. He took the top off, carved down some of the surfaces, sanded the fingerboard smooth, replaced the tail piece and tuning pegs and now it's almost as nice as my new violin. Duane tells me that it will continue to adjust and improve over time.

Well, Dad, the instrument you had to abandon at the beginning of the Great Depression has been reborn in your son's hands at the beginning of the Second Great Depression. I think I'm going to have to write a tune about that.

Almost Canadian

I spent the weekend at the Fort Worden Folk Harp Festival and had a terrific time as usual. There were about 45 harpers there who came to learn techniques and repertoire from the five presenters and also to visit with each other. There's a core group of about 30 that come every year, and as you can imagine, we're pretty good friends after 25 years. We've seen each other through divorces, job losses, deaths, diseases and suffering of every kind. We've also celebrated each other's triumphs and joys, all in the context of our shared love of music and the harp specifically.

Most of the people who come every year are from Western Washington, but there is a contingent from British Columbia as well. I make sure they get a special shout out at the Saturday night céilidh since they have to face a US Customs agent to get there. I figure they deserve at least that.

As we were packing up to leave on Sunday morning, one of the Canadians, a dear woman about my age, pulled me aside because she wanted to tell me that she thought of me as "almost Canadian." I thanked her, and told her that my Dad was from Ontario and she responded with "O, then you are Canadian!"

Over the last seven and a half years of being in love with a Canadian man, I've been exposed to lots and lots of anti-Americanism from his friends and family. Usually when this happens, at some point the ranters will say "Oh, but we don't mean you, Seumas, you're not like other Americans!"

There's a part of me, naturally, that stiffens at that moment. I am like other Americans. Lots and lots and lots of other Americans. I've learned, however, to hear comments like that in a different way. If I take a step back I can hear something more like "you're nice and I like you."

Being accepted by people from other nations as "not like other Americans" is an opportunity to change that stereotype.

So, to all my Canadian friends, I want to say thanks for giving me the chance to show you what other Americans are like. Thanks for letting me learn a little about what it means to be Canadian. I hope I continue to earn your friendship and understanding.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

My main client is the U.S. Federal Government. It's been a great gig, which has provided me with loads of great experience and opportunities. You may not know this, but many of the people who do the work of the Government are actually contractors like me. In some ways this is good, but it also creates some strange situations. Federal managers supervise staff who are not their employees, and their actual employers are usually off-site. When there are performance management issues a complex ballet ensues. I got to see one of those today in all its glory.

An employee of a contractor who was in her probationary period wasn't working out as hoped. The Federal manager responsible for her work, who happens to also be my client, let us know this since I and my team are partially responsible for computer network management and security. Today was supposed to be her last day, though she didn't know it yet.

12:30pm

The Federal manager (I'll call him Teddy Bear) tells the young woman (Crazy Eyes) that she must attend her company's staff meeting off-site. She argues with him, but eventually agrees to go. Her employer was supposed to meet with her afterward and tell her that she was fired.

3:00pm

Teddy Bear walks into my team's work area and asks us if we've seen Crazy Eyes. We haven't. Apparently she never showed up to the staff meeting at her employer's office. We are informed that her network login has been disabled, as well as her government e-mail account.

3:05pm

Teddy Bear pokes his head out of the door to our area and sees Crazy Eyes headed down the hall. He leaves.

3:12pm

Crazy Eyes comes into our work area and tells us that she can't log in to her computer. We tell her "Go talk to Teddy Bear." She leaves.

3:22pm

Teddy Bear comes back into our office and we ask him if he has talked to Crazy Eyes. He hasn't. He tells us that he has phoned her employer, who is on his way into our offices to inform her that she isn't employed there anymore. In the mean time, Teddy Bear tells us to re-enable her network login.

3:24pm

I and two of my team mates step outside for a refreshing cigarette. As we are finishing, who comes barreling out of the building but Crazy Eyes. She doesn't say anything, but give us a head-held-high-crazy-eye grin as she walks by.

3:27pm

We send a representative to give the news to Teddy Bear that Elvis has Left the Building, but he's not in his office. On his chair, however, is a key with post-it note attached "office key - email to explain - Crazy Eyes."

Someday we're going to write a situation comedy called "Dot Gov." This is going to be in the pilot.

Project 7: Charming Hat

My McCall's 4002 caftan pattern includes a hat, which I've wanted to try for a while, and since there was a little fabric left over from the Princely Caftan, I gave it a whirl last night. It was hard to keep things on an even keel going round the top of the crown! I'll give it to Lingoman next time I go up to Vancouver - at least he can use it to keep his long luxurious hairs out of his face while bouncing about the apartment.

Project 6: Princely Caftan

Another present for Lingoman! I took another step forward in terms of not following the pattern this time. It (McCall's 4002) called for the facing to be on the inside, but I thought it would be better to have it on the outside. I've made this caftan before and even though when following the directions the facing is tacked down in three places on the inside, it still flops out of the neckline and is a general pain.

Off to the fabric store! I bought some nice medium-weight muslin for the body. It's smooth and strong and when you get close to it it shines a little. For the facing I bought a yard and a half of Waterford Irish linen. Jet black and as thick as canvas.

Reversing the facing necessitated having the two halves of the front reversed so that the open seams would still match up between the front and facing, so I had to come up with a way to finish that seam. I considered doing a flat-felled seam down the front, but that would have been off-center (ick). After thinking through other options I settled on making a strip of the black linen and encasing the raw edges.

Since I had gone that far with adding decorative bits, I went just a little further and instead of hemming the sleeves and bottom, I made linen cuffs. It looked pretty darn spiffy at the end!



Lessons Learned

• I tried and tried to get the thread tension right so that the black and cream threads locked in the middle and weren't visible from either side, but I never got it right. On the inside of the garment the locks with the black thread are right there.
  
  
• Attaching the side-seam pockets went better, but they are still slightly too low. I also somehow got one of the side flat-felled seams the wrong way around.
  
  
• Found the right method of cutting out fabric pieces for me.

Following the advice of Paula Pay-la-Renta, I bought a roll of thick transparent plastic sheeting and laid it down over my paper pattern pieces. I held it flat with a piece of glass (borrowed from one of my end tables) and traced around the pieces with a sharpie. Next I cut the plastic pattern piece out, and punched holes in the plastic where my match-up marks go.

Now I can just spread the fabric out on my project table, lay the plastic pattern piece out and then hold it all flat with my glass fabric weight. I trace the plastic piece with a fabric pencil as I pull the glass away and when I'm done, I have a perfect result. Next I put the fabric on the cutting mat and use my rotary cutter to zip around the lines.