An amazing day.

Homemade chicken noodle soup. Kitty cuddles. Clean doggie snuggles. Learning at work. Friend generosity. Chicken coop. Warm house. Conversation and beer. Gas stove. Wine. Happy. Red dress almost sewn. Far away friends. Nearby friends. Compost. Music. Dreams.

PS. I burned my scarf a little bit while I was cooking. oops.

Moths ruined my Valentine's Day.

Of all the bugs in the world, the one I dread most is the cloth-eating moth. With the amount of wool I have in my life it makes perfect sense, and for a while I had been vigilant about freezing or washing every new/old piece of fabric, yarn or fiber that came into my life. There were lavender sachets everywhere, I'd vacuum regularly, and fiber was stored in lidded bins to help protect their lovely state of fluff.

And then I got lazy and learned a sad lesson the hard way.

Feeling a bit pitiful and very single I decided I would celebrate this stupid love holiday by sewing myself a new dress. Who needs a companion to have a good time when there's a Bernina to keep you company? Feeling inspired at 10:00pm last night I pulled out my pretty length of fabric destined to be a new shirtwaist dress --5 yards of chequered wool in various shades of purple and blue-- and as I unfolded it to lay on the ironing board I spied bit of light shining through where light should not be. If you've ever had moths in your fabric stash you will understanding the immediate sinking feeling in my gut. Upon closer examination there were too many holes in the fabric to warrant counting and were mottled throughout the entire piece. A total loss in terms of garment production, though might be useful for other small projects.

I couldn't be positive the fabric, a thrift store find, hadn't come to me this way but I suspected it hadn't been damaged to this extent. I almost always examine fabric for spots, damage, or peculiarities prior to purchase, AND I had already reached for this fabric before but decided to launder it prior to use. That was about a month ago and I'm quite confident I would have noticed this during the first, second, or third time I handled it. And of course... if one piece of wool has been eaten what's the likelihood of the others having similar damage?

The night's agony only grew as I pulled various pieces of fabric from the bins. A beautiful black and white striped wool that I'd hoped to turn into a skirt? Holes on all the fold lines. A tan wool herringbone with a soft hand that might have been a jacket or coat? Pin-holes all over two pieces, but the other two pieces survived, as did its dark brown sister wool in the same pattern. A piece of striped cotton that was stored next to the wool? Also eaten. There are numerous damaged or destroyed lengths of fabric, however, most of my newer yardage survived unscathed which leads me to believe the moths were living the closet where I had stored my fabric for the past few months. Any longer and there would have been more damage so I count myself lucky to have found it when I did, or at least lucky for now. I've yet to inspect the wool yarn (loads, truly. LOADS), raw fiber (alpaca, angora, and romney fleeces), and processed fiber for spinning. 

One of my knitting comrades came to my rescue, offering an entire upright freezer for my use. I took advantage of her offer and filled the entire space with wool-- the silk had been stored separately and within sealed plastic bags. The cottons and linens were mostly untouched, and all of my washable fabric was sent through the cycle today. 

I like to think of lessons learned when something horrible happens, and in this case it served as a good reminder to wash/freeze new purchases before storing with the rest of the stash, but also to reduce the stash overall. There's no reason to have this much fabric, yarn and fiber stored in my life when I'm always complaining about the amount of stuff I have to store and haul when I'm moving. Production needs to happen, STAT.

Signing off to create...

Let's call this a welcome home breakfast.

*singing* Hot cereal, yum, yum, yum. Hot cereal, you make me so happy! With your delicious bits warming my old lady tits, you make me so happy!

Oatmeal
A bit of melted butter for extra YUM
Home-canned pears with that sugary syrup on top
Hazelnuts, chopped and dry-roasted
Coconut milk, just a drizzle, for SUPER YUM

Yum is the word of 2013. Also, look what my housemate has hanging in the kitchen. I KNOW, RIGHT?! Gurl, this is home, sweet home.

You can find a better image of that pretty print by Mimi Williams at her website.

I'm going to go dance for a second because the sun is shining and I gotta keep my spirits up while I can... there's about 27,000 hours of cleaning awaiting my hard-working hands at my last place. Weeee!

An exciting move.

Friends, the time has come again for me to relocate and I'm SO excited about the new place I'm calling home. I interrupt this moment of box packing and car loading to bring you this...

Columbia City!

I'll be living in a cute neighborhood in South Seattle, within walking distance of the lovely businesses (mmm... Tutta Bella. mmmm... Columbia City Alehouse) that make up Columbia City. I can bike/walk to light rail, walk to my friend Hanna Banana's house, and go to brunch at Geraldine's Counter. And the best part? I'm going to have an awesome housemate! Are you ready for the best roommate lost and found story ever?

In January 2012 I attended a tuna canning class hosted by Slow Food Seattle and when I was ready to blog about the fun experience some google work about other tuna canners led me to the blog post by Renai at areyoumyghost.com, because she had attended the same class. Cool! But how funny and small the food world is... because I scrolled down and saw that one of her previous posts featured my marmalade! I left a comment, and soon we began an email conversation about canning and possibly meeting up for an exchange of delicious homemade goods but it simply never happened. And then we fell out of contact for exactly 361 days...

You see, I've never felt settled in my current housing situation. When I moved in here it was possibly on a temporary basis, to be discussed later about making it permanent and signing a lease, and this house served its purpose-- getting me relocated to Seattle. But I've never felt at home and -- the horror-- I haven't even canned a single batch of goodies or sewn a garment at home in over 4 months. I needed a change. I hopped on craigslist to see what the world was advertising and I came across an ad that made my little heart go pitter-patter. What's that you say? A house with fruit trees and garden space? There's a spare room that you plan to use for sewing? You love cooking? You are on the board for Slow Food Seattle? You enjoy canning? And your blog address is what?!?! AreYouMyGhost.com!

We reconnected! We emailed! And now we're roommates. We're going to live together happily and harmoniously and our kitchen is going to knock your freakin' socks off.

PS. THERE IS A SEWING ROOM OH MY GOD MY LIFE IS SO AWESOME THAT I CAN'T STOP TYPING IN CAPS

2013 BABY!

Almost there.

I am so close to finishing this sweater I've been knitting. SO close-- only a bit of blocking on the last two pieces and seaming (lots and lots of seaming). Hallelujah!

Pause: Let's eat brunch. Aebelskivers.

Aebleskivers with powdered sugar

What a delightful breakfast, a light and fluffy pancake ball, a dough delicious and healthy. Using this aebleskiver recipe from Solvang Danish Days, I cut the entire recipe in half and substituted almond buttermilk (1 c almond milk, a tbsp-ish splash of cider vinegar) in place of cow's milk, since I never have that on hand. The half recipe made 36 small aebleskivers, 4 batches from my pan.

Aebleskivers, plain.

I invited my roommate to join in my trying a new food. Sadly, I had NO jam on hand since I've stored all my canned goods in a friend's garage for safekeeping while I'm transitory, so we ate them with powdered sugar and real maple syrup. Delicious.

Aebleskiver pan, cast iron

This beauty of a pan was one of my silly/awesome goodwill finds from my summer in Poulsbo, WA, a small town with a history of Scandinavian immigrants and traditions. I also found wooden-heeled clogs, a krumkake iron, more on that later. I gave the pan a small scrub, dried it on the gas range, and added a little butter to each spot on the pan before pouring in the batter. Following tradition, I turned the pancakes using a metal knitting needle and found it got easier with each subsequent batch. The pan became more seasoned, along with my skills.

'Twas fun. Merry Christmas! Any special treats making their way into your home right now?

A thrift store wedding dress, pre-restoration

While perusing the racks at my local goodwill earlier this year, I came across a number of vintage wedding dresses on display for reasonable prices. My hand and eyes have a knack for easily spotting high quality textiles, and when I saw the lace body of this dress hiding behind the gaudy sleeves and bow I knew an atrocity had been committed. THE EIGHTIES.

A peek inside the dress confirmed my suspicions. What was once a classic lace sheath dress, probably from the late 50's or early 60's judging by the label, had become a fancy costume with sleeves as heavy as an average newborn. I vowed to return this dress to its former glory and it didn't take much to remove the sleeves and bow. All that's left is hand sewing the armsceye's to finish the raw edges of the lace, underlining and lining. Some close-ups of the sleeves and their deconstruction follow.

Shoulder strap and sleeve

The lining had been unpicked and restitched to cover the sleeve seams.

Raw edges galore! That fluffy sleeve had so many layers that they added an anchor to keep the bodice attached to the bra straps, otherwise the weight of the sleeves would pull it off the shoulders.

I'm sad the dress isn't quite my size-- a few inches too large in the bust-- but I'll probably give it a good bleaching to remove the yellowing in some spots, and then give it a shot on etsy. It's a high quality garment that simply needed some attention and restoration.

I love thrift shopping.