I’m reading The Long Walk for my book club.
I’ve decided I don’t like expository biographies that don’t use dialogue or skillfully develop suspense or tension.
I suspect the movie is actually going to be better than the book.
That’s saying something, but it’d be hard to be worse.
I have decided that my husband needs a kilt. Never mind that he ‘doesn’t feel all that connected’ to his Scottish heritage, that he has some concerns about the (ech hem) free movement beneath a kilt, or that he has maintained, “I’m not going to wear a kilt, Shawn” whenever I asked him.
I tend to be persistent when I’ve got a notion in my mind.
So I’m sewing him a kilt. I’m not inclined to go too crazy with this, I don’t need to spend several hundred dollars, or anything. But I think he’d suit a kilt, and I mean to get him into one. I don’t expect him to wear it in public necessarily, but if he is going to change out of his work pants anyway, why not change into a kilt rather than ugly sweat pants? The pressure is subtle. “Women like kilts darling.” “You’d be gorgeous in a kilt.” “Ooooh. Look at how great this guy looks in a kilt…”
I was able to find some official Canadian provincial tartans at the local fabric store, and after considerable deliberation, ended up with a Saskatchewan tartan. I would have prefered a British Columbia or Maple Leaf tartan*, but those were not available. I thought he’d suit the tones of the Saskatchewan tartan, and while theoretically, you’re not supposed to wear family name tartans unless you’re part of the family (I read on the Clan MacKenzie website, “no one should wear a tartan to which he is not by name or descent entitled. To do so is foolish and ill-mannered, invites scorn…” Yikes!), anyone is allowed to wear “the “District”, “Caledonia” and “Jacobite” tartans.” Provincial tartans count as District tartans.
At present, I’m debating the pleating pattern. From the research I’ve been doing, it seems there are two main ways to pleat: a traditional pleating to the sett, which keeps the whole pattern (sett) of the tartan visible through the pleats, and Regimental pleating, to a stripe. Here is my fabric, roughly pinned to help decide this question. My friends on Facebook were unanimous that they preferred the Regimental, but my husband (who is now apparently resigned to the idea that I’m making him a kilt, whether he wants to wear it or not) has pronounced that he likes the traditional pleat to the sett.
It’s interesting to compare the choices. Traditional is pinned on the left. The centre and right Regimental pleats are centred on different stripes. Isn’t it interesting how different each result is, although they’re all made from the same fabric?
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Saskatchewan tartan- pleated to the sett, or 2 Regimental pleating options
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The genuine, expensive (aka $60+ per meter) tartan wools are made with a finished selvage edge, and when made to measure, they don’t need to be hemmed. Unfortunately, inexpensive polyester based tartan fabric (on sale half price at $7/m) has a rough selvage, so the first task is to hem the fabric. There are two options: machine hem or hand hem. There will be 7 metres of fabric, and I’m not particularly inclined to hand hem all that when my machine should make a perfectly respectable job of it.
Stay tuned for more progress reports! Goals for this week:
1. hem the approximately 8 yards of fabric
2. set the lining
3. pin the pleats according to hubby’s preference
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The next steps (at least as far as I figured them out so far):
4. press the pleats
5. manipulate the pleats from the fit at the hip to the narrower waist
6. hand stitch the 7-8 yards of hip pleats into position
7. baste pleats onto the lining
8. hand stitch the waist pleats
9. add apron fringe fabric
10. add waistband
11. pull threads to make fringe
12. add buckle closures (2)
13. figure out inner closure…
14. add hanging loops
15. sigh dramatically as spouse models completed kilt!
I’ve based these steps on this very helpful article!
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln
True isn’t it? It’s all in the state of mind. If you look for the blessings and good things in your life, that’s what you’re going to see. If your focus on the negative, that’s what you’ll see. Choose what to look at, and enjoy a happier life.
“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”
-Aaron Copland
I feel like I should be overflowing with thoughts on this one, but it’s just sitting here, resonance humming in my head.
Yes, Aaron.
I have been asked for my onion ring recipe. I love onion rings. A&W’s are my favorite, but the fat quantity is too excessive for me to enjoy this treat more than once or twice a year.
I did not make up this recipe, but it is really wonderful, so I will provide the link to the original website. These are crisp and tasty, as well as very easy to make.
You can find the recipe HERE. They’re called “Simply the Best Onion Rings” and they really are fantastic. I didn’t bother making mine as rings- just sliced them. It was simple. Give them a try!
I come to bed nursing hurt,
determined to keep to my side.
My crushed heart needs
the solace of loneliness, as I obsess
on the sense of abandonment.
Wishing, “Don’t go.”
I go myself.
A journey of anguish
centered in my soul.
I’ll rest perched on the west side
looking through salt water.
You sleep on the east,
spine set up against the mountains.
Between will be a desert that I will
not
cross.
.
I crawl between the sheets
and my feet haven’t left the floor
before I am entwined within your arms.
Pulled unceremoniously across the divide
wrapped tight in determined embrace.
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There will be no fight on this landscape.
This was written from a prompt for Gooseberry Garden on Feathers, Fidelity Figment and Fables.
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Your name is faithfulness.
Time stretched the fidelity
and you left that future,
For years t’was fueled
by the fervour of adoration,
and the declaration of forever.
Faith dripped
faintly
across forever
and fell
in fragrant furrows
of fallow hope.
Well, novelists are a conscienceless lot. Those of us who deal with history tend to be fairly respectful of such facts as are recorded (always bearing in mind the proviso that just because it’s in print, it isn’t necessarily true). But give us a hole to slide through, an omission in the historic record, one of those mysterious lacunae that occur in even the best documented life…
(Diana Gabaldon in the Author’s Notes of An Echo in the Bone p. 1103-4)
I have taken a break from working on Grace Beguiling in order to focus on Grace Awakening Myth, but when I read this remark in the notes, it made me laugh. I have enjoyed hunting through historical records, and finding just enough holes to fall through. Those hollows are the where the most interesting parts of the story breathe their own lives. I am looking forward to getting back to the 14th century and exploring beguilement.
I have to make it through the myth first, though.
Today one of my students was singing show tunes to himself as he packed up at the end of class. As I placed the musical, and we got talking, I told him this story. It occurred to me that I haven’t shared this one with you all.
When I was about 8, my parents took me to the Banff School of Fine Art’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. I remember the excitement of driving from Calgary to Banff, I remember falling asleep in the car on the drive home, and I remember loving the music. We bought the album, and I sang those tunes constantly. I particularly loved “Far From the Home I Love” which is sung by daughter Hodel as she goes to Siberia to join Perchik.
When I was in grade seven, our school mounted a production of Fiddler on the Roof. Auditions were announced. I wanted to be Hodel. I went down to the drama room, heart pounding, and discovered that grade 9, Richie Eichler was going to play Tevye. My heart stopped.
My little trio of friends called him the Maharaja, because he was always surrounded by a harem of girls. He was funny, kind of goofy looking, and we couldn’t quite figure out what the attraction was, but we were in awe of it, nonetheless. At least, I was. I was petrified of auditioning in front of Richie Eichler. He didn’t know me at all, of course. There was absolutely no reason for my panic, but I was paralyzed. I couldn’t do the audition.
A few months later, I sat in the audience and watched the girl playing Hodel butcher my song. She couldn’t sing at all, and so she recited it like a poem. It was a knife turning in my gut. I could sing. I could have brought the audience to tears with that song. I sing it with tears pouring down my face even today. It’s the kind of song that the audience is crushed by. I felt guilty. I was angry with myself for not having the courage to go through the audition, because I would have gotten the part, and I would have been good. It was a painful lesson. I decided the next opportunity, to act in Fiddler on the Roof, I would audition for Hodel.
You may be able to guess what happened. I never found another production of it. Now I could perhaps play Golde, but I will never be able to play young Hodel. I had one chance, and I lost it.
Stupid.
I have won many other auditions over the years, and had the opportunity to sing other roles, but the role that sparked my star-struck dreams was never to be mine.
Damn Richie Eichler! Damn my pointless fears!
Never let your imagined worries stop you from taking hold of your dreams. You may not get a second chance.
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PS. As a matter of trivia for Grace Awakening fans- The real Lloyd played trumpet in the orchestra for this production. I remembered him quite distinctly playing in the band for Fiddler, when we met officially for the first time a couple years later as teen volunteers at Kelowna General Hospital.
Shawn L. Bird 
do November 18, 2011
Tags: postaday2011
Worth some pondering, this one. So often we focus on the complications, that we forget to take advantage of the possible components of any problems
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