Monday, June 24, 2019

Goodbye, jeans! Hello, cocktails


I made my first pants re-use item. Remember, I am ceasing to wear pants, and so I was going to upcycle all my old pants and shorts. I do not exactly have sewing skills so finding an initial project was a challenge. But I did it!

I made a Denim Ice Crushing Bag. The inspiration came from online. From the site The Kitchn.

The recipe required a minimum of sewing which, any normal person would use a sewing machine, but I could not get either of my sewing machines to start, so I hand-sewed it. That is my handiwork up above.

I sewed it out on the porch, in my long dress. I felt a little nostalgic, I have to say, cutting up these old jeans. They were vintage Calvin Kleins and they had been with me a long time and let me tell you this, they fit me again after all these years, and I looked pretty good in them, too. But they were ripped -- naturally and unfortunately, not on purpose the way all these fake ripped jeans are. I am really not a ripped jeans person. Plus I am hereafter not wearing pants. So, goodbye jeans.

Hello ice crushing bag!

Do read the little writeup on the Kitchn. It is funny. Plus the bag was a present. I gave it to the priest who advised that we stop wearing pants. A bunch of us gals got together and decided we would give him something made out of our now-cast-off garments. We have been laughing and laughing over it. The challenge in this situation, of course, is to find some craft that is not girly. Googling around you can find a million things to make out of your old jeans but most of them are girly.

My friend Amy made the priest a beer caddy. Well, her daughter sewed it. They are amazing and my ice-crushing bag had nothing on the beer caddy. The beer caddy even came with a Buffalo bottle opener! They fitted it out with one.

Impressive as the beer caddy is, I think the ice crushing bag should prove extremely useful.

I am going to make myself one! Out of the other leg.

Cheers!


Tuesday, June 18, 2019

No more shorts -- I'm maxing out

My clothing adventure continues.

The long dresses are not a big deal. I love maxi dresses. However it is a big deal that shorts are out, and also I am supposed to be covering up and not going sleeveless, which is something that, darn it all, I love to do.

Normally when I walk in the park, I wear shorts. What to do? I wanted to go for a walk in the morning.

What happened was, I was rifling through my closet and this pink maxi called to me, just a long pink maxi with tie-dyed white trim around the bottom. The label is Izod, which impressed me when I picked it up heaven knows where. But I have never worn it. It is too skimpy on top, was the reason. It needs something over it. But I never tried to find something to go over it until now. Because now, I have to.

I found a pink striped top which looked kind of nice. But then I hit on this denim jacket, this flowered denim jacket I had found at Amvets. I had never worn the jacket either. It is pretty as all get out but it never seemed to go with anything. I tried it on over the dress.

Hmmm, I thought, studying it. Too wacky. Not me.

I was going to take it off and try something else but right at that moment Howard appeared.

"Wow," he said. "Nice outfit! That looks great."

Howard does not compliment my clothes as a matter of course and I loved that. Then he said, "Want to walk in the park?" He does not normally walk in the park with me either. He usually has to get on with the workday.

So I felt happy as a puppy being taken out walking. I put on sneakers with the dress -- what the heck, at this point. Then the dress and the jacket both left the house for the first time. The dress is very long so I was holding it up so as not to fall over it.

Howard had the idea to take my picture on the swings.


I was so happy with how things went that I kept this outfit on all day. Sneakers and all. I had to go to the chiro and run some errands. All day long people complimented me! The receptionist at the chiro told me my outfit was beautiful and said she wanted to shop where I shop.

I had a blast!

The jacket got a little bit warm as the temps approached 80 degrees but it was cotton so it was not too bad. And you know what, I'll take it.

My brother George has joked that whenever the Catholic Church gives you rules there is a reason for it and you would do best to follow them. I was thinking, things do seem to work out.

At least it did today!

Monday, June 17, 2019

Mowing and glowing


Today I bit the bullet and cut the grass with the hand mower. I have been doing this for a few weeks now! But today I did something that raised the bar.

I mowed the grass wearing a skirt!

It is like Ginger Rogers doing what Fred Austerlitz did only backwards and in high heels, as the old joke goes.

I wore a skirt because I can no longer wear pants and that includes shorts. I got through it. One thing, though, it was a little harder at first than I remembered it. I almost gave up. Then I got to thinking, there is something about wearing a skirt that makes you a little more relaxed, a little less inclined to sweat and hard work. I had to get past that.

The job gets easier the deeper you get into it. Half way through the lawn you are feeling better. Two thirds of the way in, you get happy. Triumph is in sight.

Here is a beautiful song by Gustav Mahler about cutting grass.



It does not begin until 40 seconds in but it has a translation, is why I used this video.

Here is one thing that cracked me up as I pushed the mower back and forth on the front lawn, glowing. (Horses sweat. Men perspire. Women glow.)

The other day I bragged to Howard that my arms were getting stronger because I had reason to believe that they were. I credited my Aqua Fit class at the gym. I could not think of anything else I had been doing differently.

It was not the stupid Aqua Fit class.

It was this lawn mowing!!

Well, one thing I will have to do is do it every few days, not every few weeks.

You cannot have too much of a good thing!




Sunday, June 16, 2019

The pants reuse project

At Mass today we were advised that it is better if ladies not wear pants. They are unfeminine. They lead to various ills.

End result, as we say here in Buffalo, I have a couple of boxes' worth of pants and jeans I need to reuse.

This is not the end of the world for me, far from it. I only wear pants about once a year anyway. For some other ladies it is a much greater sacrifice.

But for some reason I have ended up with a lot of pants. I just took a whole bunch of them to Amvets last week because I got skinny enough for them to fit me, only to realize that I did not like how they looked. I hate when that happens!

I am not in love with jeans because I find them hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Plus I just have problems wearing pants. I do not have things that go with them. I have trouble putting an outfit together involving them. Now, take away my maxidresses, and we would have a problem. But as things are, I can live with this.

The only question facing me is, what to do with these pants? I cannot exactly throw them out.

And so I have come up with a catalog of things I want to make with them.

One is rag curtains, for my back porch.


You can get away with stuff out on a porch that would look really weird inside the house! So that is where my new rag curtains will go.

And there is that awesome wine bag at the top of this post that I found in this list of crafts you can make from jeans.

People make this unbelievably professional-looking things. I need something simple because I have a lot of other things going on.

However another thing on my list is an artist's bag. I will have to invent this because I have not found a picture of one. There are tote bag ideas out there I can adapt.

So ... curtains, wine bag, artist's bag. Also I want a sketchbook cover. I can craft that to match my artist's bag.

It is going to be no picnic at first to start cutting up my pants. But once I get going I will be all right with it. Other gals at church are going through the same thing. We are thinking we will have a contest for the best reuse.

Cushions are a no-brainer. I can use those on the porch.


Those two look a little advanced for me but I can manage something. Howard gave me a sewing machine once and we also have a dandy ornate early 20th century Singer.

I am thinking of making the porch a theme of this project. I need to furnish it somehow now that it is all renovated and ready to go.

Oh! And a bulletin board. You can cover some kind of board with the fabric from your pants.

Jeoffry has no problem re-purposing a pair of shorts.


One way or another I, too, will make use of these garments.

I cannot part with them!




Monday, June 3, 2019

'Yucky, yet functional'


I continue to glory in having the nation's largest art supply store right in my own back yard.

It is home to the nation's largest art supply scratch-and-dent department!

Today I went to Hyatt's, as the store is called, and picked up an, ahem, portfolio.

I have all kinds of sketchbooks of various sizes I work with including a gigantic size, 18 by 24 inches. Well, it is gigantic to me. For my birthday the other day Howard got me a drawing board big enough to fit one of those sheets, so I will be doing more work within these generous dimensions. And when I am through with something, now I have somewhere to put it!

Because today in the scratch and dent department of Hyatt's I found a portfolio that is that size.

Normally these portfolios cost $40 to $60. But not in this case!

Mine was $5!

"Yucky, yet functional," read the tag.

That is one thing I love about this place.

All 24 sleeves -- there are 48 pages -- are in great condition. There was a problem with the bottom of the spine. A bit was chipped away. I do not care. I can use this at home to store my art and if I ever want to take it out somewhere so people can go through it, I can shrug prettily and say, oh, it gets a lot of wear. People are always turning its pages and sometimes they turn them a little too eagerly. That is what I can say.

Upon getting my yucky, yet functional portfolio home I got busy. I grabbed two pieces of art that have been kicking around the house forever and put them in the first sleeve. These are two drawings that are not my usual style. This is going to be a diversified portfolio!


Then I turned the page and slipped in the Turgeon Brothers Cheesecake recipe I am honored to display on the website They Draw and Cook.


It is great to be able to store things like this before they get wrecked.

Now I want to go on and fill up the rest of this portfolio. It really does not take up a lot of space. I will just stand it up somewhere and when it is full I will crowd in a few more things, as we tend to do here in Buffalo, and then I will get another one.

I will have a hard time getting a deal like this one, though. This one is special. When I was leaving Hyatt's they offered me a bag.

"No, thank you," I demurred. I added: "It's already beat up!" And we all got a laugh out of that.

Scratch and dent.

Two of the most beautiful words in the English language, that is for sure.