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yellow curtains

2009-07-06T21:00:00-08:00

I made new floor-length curtains for our living room picture window a few months ago.

I didn't think it would be that hard. They're just rectangles. Psht.

But, now I know better!
They are very very large rectangles. Exponential work. And in a fit of self-righteousness, I hand-sewed down 3 of 4 sides of each large rectangle which added many hours of tv watching.

Instead of going nuts on Marimekko, I got some yellow decorator cotton with a slight grid texture (extra wide) on sale at JoAnn's. For extra poshness, it's lined with cotton drapery liner. I can't remember exactly how I made them anymore, but here are the general steps:

Prewash and iron fabrics (depending on fabric type).
This takes forever because they are very large pieces of fabric.

Cut very large rectangle from curtain fabric

Cut slightly less large but still large rectangle from liner fabric (same size minus hems)

Iron in all your hem folds at this point. Everything will be double hems.
Again, this takes forever. Side hems should be ironed before the top/bottom. The grid pattern on the fabric saved me, because I don't know how else I would've kept that much fabric true.

Lay 2 fabrics together. Machine sew down top 2" double hem through all layers.
If this is not straight, everything will hang funny, though you can kind of fudge it if you hand sew the other hems to the lining. Which I did.

At this point, I then hung up the curtains and hand-sewed the rest in a sort-of-blind-catch-stitch to the liner so that it would hang straight. And so that the stitching wouldn't show on the outside. My arms got pretty tired doing the side hems. 1/2" double side hems. 4" double bottom hem for nice weight and posh look, or so say all the websites and books I found. I bet you could get away with machine-sewing this.

Top and bottom hems, hung backwards so I could work on them

Ideally, I would've sewn 4 panels so that they drape and fold nicely when closed. But 2 was more than enough for me, and I think the flat look is actually nice. Here it is in action:

Ta da. I don't think I'll do curtains this large ever again.

strawberry cream cake, part 2

2009-07-02T15:24:21-08:00

I thought the cake was pretty tasty, but with the addition of whipped cream and a strawberry sauce, it is divine.

Super easy strawberry sauce recipe from Epicurious, slightly modified: I used a handful of strawberries we'd frozen, a squeeze of lemon juice, and half the sugar (between 1/8-1/4 cup).

strawberry cream cake

2009-06-30T20:53:49-08:00

We made Sunset's strawberry cream cake

this was breakfast, so we didn't bother w/ whipped cream

Really really easy. It's made with whipping cream instead of butter, so it tastes a little lighter. Strawberries are a mix of Seascape and San Andreas (?) from the farmer's market ... the Seascape was a lot tastier.

I think I missed cherry season while I was in China though. No making brandied cherries, sad face.

sf/fantasy, part 3

2009-06-23T17:39:23-08:00

I have a bunch of books to share, courtesy of my 2+ weeks in China.

excellent
Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest - Robin Hobb
Yes, it's a trilogy I liked. The first one was the best -- it's a growing up story about a bastard child of the royal court, and his place in it. Interesting characters and relationships, politics, war, with a sprinkling of magic. The 2nd two books are him getting beaten up a lot and not learning from his mistakes. I could've done without the useless moping over Molly.

ok
Calculating God - Robert Sawyer
Philosophical story about science vs. religion, through the lens of alien visitors and an archaeologist. Quick interesting read, especially if you skim through the navel-gazing pseudo-science-religion bits. Feels a bit like college. Where by college, I mean a nerdy technical school with lots of boys that like to blow hot air at each other.

The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan - Book 1 in a kids series known as Harry Potter plus Olympic gods and goddesses
Except it wasn't as good as the first few books of HP (leaving out the end of HP on purpose). Decent adventure story for kids, but I'm not going to bother with the rest.

not so good
Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris - (Book 1 of the Sookie Stackhouse books, where the True Blood HBO series came from)
What's up with these vampire stories? They fall in love in the middle of the story for what seems like no reason at all. The characters aren't very interesting, it's only what they are that's nominally interesting at first, but it dies quickly when you find out they have no personalities. Nothing happens in this book. Except that they fall in luuuuv. And there's a sad werewolf/shapechanger dude who has no one to fall back in love with him.

Tawny Man trilogy (Fool XYZ) - Robin Hobb - continuation of the Farseer trilogy story
Only read this if you really liked the Assassin's books and want to see what happens to the characters. That part is kind of fun. The not fun part is that the characters never change or learn from their mistakes. The series also drags a bit. And I read the whole damn 3 books just to find out that, super spoiler: Fitz doesn't love Fool back in the end. AND to make things worse, he runs back to Molly! What the heck.

pretty darn bad
Ship of Magic / Mad Ship / Ship of Destiny - another Robin Hobb trilogy
I think you're supposed to read this trilogy second. Oops. I only made it halfway through the 2nd book, and I don't think I can make myself finish. The "bad" characters grate too much, and nothing changes -- the same conflict keeps repeating itself. The world she built, of pirates and traders and talking liveships was pretty cool though.

cua bing

2009-06-08T20:21:04-08:00

I was watching music videos in my hotel room (in China) when the most fascinating thing came on:

Yes, it is an entire song about shaved ice! I later found out that it's ~10 years old and meant for kids.

Random thing: This morning, the creamer at a nearby cafe had only the words "Coffee White" on it. I decided not to use it.

vancouver is delicious

2009-05-22T17:59:18-08:00

Both places we went to on the day trip to Vancouver/Richmond were delicious.

Kirin Restaurant: Dimsum one step up in taste/quality. Get the luo buo gao in little clay bowls, har gao / shumai, and definitely the sticky rice in bamboo leaf. I could have eaten several of those. I'm not sure which location we went to, but it looked like this from the outside (no street view there yet, boo hoo).

Shanghai Top Cuisine: went there just for the xiao long bao, and they were great, had a lot of tasty broth inside (and cheap). They used very thinly sliced daikon for the dumplings to sit on ... first time I've seen that. Also had good simply prepared dou miao.

Thanks to Y for driving our butts around to these places.

cow and goat

2009-05-13T19:29:54-08:00

At lunch today, someone had stuck little plastic goats and cows in the cheese so you could tell the different squishy cheeses apart.

drawn from memory

lavender prop. 2

2009-05-12T19:36:21-08:00

After ~6 weeks, 1 of the original 3 lavender heel cuttings remains. It is looking a bit scraggly, but still has a tinge of gray-green life to it.

The original plants are in bloom and I took only a few clippings -- wanted to leave most of it for all the honeybees and bumblebees buzzing around.

veggie garden update: may 2009

2009-05-10T12:45:25-08:00

Dry-farmed tomato experiment:
Put in my 2" seedlings in the ground this morning and gave them each a whole watering-can's worth of water to begin the experiment. Then while I was researching, I found out that early girls are hybrids so who knows what kind of tomatoes will come out of those plants. Oops -- I guess we'll see if they survive the no-watering thing.

Another resource I found: Oliveto community: Dirty Girl tomatoes. Looks like it only works in places where it's foggy, so maybe I'll try watering once a week for the next month, then once a month?

Failed to start from seed: basil (sweet and purple), chives, alyssum, perilla, cilantro, sage. Bah on both me who cannot water regularly and the squirrels who like to dig holes.
Successful sprouting: early girl gen. 2 tomatoes, moon+stars watermelon, lemon cucumber, fava beans.
Gave up and bought plants: sweet basil, perilla, green zebra + real early girl tomatoes.

Maintenance:
Gave the cherry tree its 1st year late-spring haircut. It is scary to be chopping off so much, but that's what the experts say to do.

sf/fantasy, part 2

2009-05-06T20:57:27-08:00

A new excellent book I just read: His Majesty's Dragon, by Naomi Novak. Imagine the Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons! It's a very charming book with a very charming dragon, though there's plenty of death (it's war after all).

I liked it enough to read the next two books in the series, Throne of Jade/Black Powder War, both of which were pretty good. Not going to chance it with books 4-6 though. According to the Amazon reviews, it starts to ramble and end on cliffhangers, which I HATE in a book. Maybe we need modify rule #7with the "Out of Gas Corollary": If by chance the first half of a series IS good, the next half most certainly will not be (Harry Potter, I'm looking at you).

I read it on my shiny new Kindle. Yay for S! When people ask me if I like it, I'm not quite sure what to say. There are certainly many things wrong: serious interaction design problems, missing features, DRM/walled garden, creepy screensaver images that don't match the product design (ew, where'd they find those portraits of Lewis Carroll, Steinbeck, and Oscar Wilde). But, it is really really convenient, and that trumps most things. Holding books open for hours is hard work! And that is why Randall Munroe of XKCD proves yet again that he is super awesome.

every-so-often poster: travel dymaxion map

2009-04-29T21:47:34-08:00

I'll trying designing never-to-be-made poster every once in a while.

For this period, it's a travel map of places I've been. I was thinking that the dining room wall needs a really really big poster or print of some sort. It'd be too expensive to get something printed at a nice quality, but perhaps I could use pen and markers to draw something on a large roll of nice drawing paper. And update it every time I went somewhere. Therefore the line-arty style below.

totally traced the country shapes from this site

It's a dymaxion map / fuller projection, which I think is really neat because it minimizes distortion while keeping landmasses whole. And Antarctica looks like a cute little puff off to the side. Created by buckyball's Buckminster Fuller. (Asia was a bit wonky though, it took me a bit to recognize Korea.)

simple pleat shirt plan

2009-04-24T18:50:08-08:00

What I'm planning to do first with my sloper once I get that stupid sleeve properly drafted, using a sheer white zebra-stripey cotton I bought a long time ago.

I think the slight asymmetry might be interesting. But it might also make bust bits look off-balance.

sf/fantasy, part 1

2009-04-13T21:40:05-08:00

Let's see how this regular blog posting thing goes. For a little variety, today's topic is ... reading!

I like science fiction and fantasy, but it's getting really hard to find good new-to-me authors. The town library has a pretty large selection of sf/fantasy so I figured I'd systematically work my way from Z-A. Word of advice, don't do that. There's an obscene amount of terrible books out there.

So far, nothing has disproved Jocelyn's SF-Fantasy Golden Rule #7: Nothing written to be part of a multi-book series is any good.

excellent
Startide Rising - David Brin
Interesting characters and view of the future with dolphins, chimps, and humans as newly introduced to galaxy's intelligent species. Nice explorations around language and basic natures, and the dolphins make great little whistle-y poems!

War for the Oaks - Emma Bull
Yay, a good non-traditional fairytale story with interesting characters. Set in modern-day Minneapolis.

good
Finder - Emma Bull
Fun and interesting characters in an interesting world. Sort of a mystery plot.

Marooned in Realtime - Vernor Vinge
Another good novel from Vernor Vinge. Really a mystery story, with a bit of a messy ending. Interesting story about tech and its effects on society and characters.

ok to bad
Midnight at the well of souls - Jack L. Chalker
Interesting, though at the end, it was kind of like, what was the point? About a "world" separated into mini-worlds each with their own inhabitants. One of those "here's this cool world concept I thought up" but with decent characters. There seem to be a ton of books in this series, but I didn't bother chancing Rule #7.

Sundiver - David Brin
The one before Startide (the dolphin one). Not as good, characters not as engaging.
Uplift War - David Brin
Eh. The rest of the series. Rule #7.

Archangels series - Sharon Shinn
Interesting at first, but it was obvious in the first book what the thing with the angels was ... and it then took 3 more books to reveal the big seekret. Every single book was the same weird romance story. My excuse for reading the whole series was that I'd borrowed them all after reading the first one for an international flight and had no other choice. Rule #7 wins again!

terrible. horrible. so very very bad
This Immortal - Roger Zelanzy
Only read first chapter, couldn't read anymore, it was that boring.

The Galactic Gourmet (A sector general novel) - James White
Told stiffly and main character was personality-less. Twist for second half of novel could be figured out from a mile away, it was painful to slog through.

Rift war 4-book series - Raymond E. Feist
Train wreck of epic proportions. I already reviewed it here. Rule #7.

Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore - David Brin
Yes, the same guy that wrote the cool dolphin book above. Although the overall story was interesting (alien races getting along on a planet, but challenged by outsiders), constantly flipping through 18 characters' points of view made it impossible to engage and made reading a chore. Set in same universe as the other ones. Rule #7. I couldn't finish the trilogy.

Ringworld - Larry Niven
Supposedly a classic. Won all sorts of awards. Inspiration for all ringworld books to come. But omg bad. Written by a man. Basically, here's this cool world I thought up. I'll make people slog through it just so I can describe it, and throw hot girls at the main character so they can have pointless sex.

just not my thing
Mysterium - Robert Charles Wilson
Full of unresolved weirdness about religion and nuclear physics. Mostly about being under martial control in an alternate world.

To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Wilson
Read several years ago because of online rec's that it was hilarious. But it wasn't. At all. Or at least to me.

That makes it about 4 good to 17 bad. Guess who hasn't read any sf/fantasy for the past few months?

propagating lavender

2009-04-12T22:45:26-08:00

Another experiment I'm trying is propagating the enormous lavender bushes in the back yard that have the most amazingly deep purple wands so that I can stick them in the front. Here are the instructions I followed for doing it via a heel cutting, mostly because it said that you could use honey instead of root hormone (which I don't have).

L to R: pick a non-woody bit to yank off; leaving a bit of heel; dunk in honey; stick in dirt; one week later 1/3 dead

I wonder if crystallized honey is ok to use. It's now been 2 weeks, the remaining 2 are looking really droopy, but the tops are still sort of silvery colored and plump, so maybe they're ok?

Today's project was pulling up enormous amounts of thistle from the back yard. My arms feel like they were attacked by a thousand tiny cats. In the process, I unearthed 4 pavers 2-3 inches down that must've been part of a path. I felt like I was digging up treasure ... I really really wanted to mess up everything in the area to find the rest of the pavers. But I didn't because I was tired.

again with the sleeves

2009-04-10T15:26:06-08:00

One year later, I'm ready to tackle my sleeve sloper again. I really want to get this thing done so I can start using the sloper for fun stuff!

I started over from scratch, since the draft I have has been cut up and taped together too many times, and the sleeve it makes is not quite right in mysterious ways. (On the right below)

First attempt is on the left, using the class instructions. You can see right away that the sleeve cap is too shallow and the sleeve is too wide -- same problem as when I started last time.

I looked it up on the web, and the handy vintage sewing info site has thorough sleeve instructions. It uses an underarm measure which the class didn't. That reduces the shallow sleeve cap issue, though now the curve circumference is too long for the armscye. You can see in the middle that it's almost the same proportions and shape as the old beat up one, so that's promising.

Here's another I found on the web, less fancy (no elbow dart, no wrist curve), but it looks like it should work ok.