Fourth of July Festivities

When you walk in and hear, "Food's here, Irish is in the front room, klezmer in the basement, oldtime on the front porch - oh, yeah, and shape note in the kitchen," it is likely to be a good party.  (Okay, maybe i have weird criteria, but give me food and a chance to play some tunes, especially with people who are better musicians than i, and i'm a pretty happy camper...)

So this year, we'll be going back to Marc's, to wander happily from genre to genre playing music, chatting, and munching.  I think the blurring of the sounds between the different musical styles is a good an illustration as any of the "melting pot," and therefore a tremendously appropriate way to celebrate an American holiday.  Some years, the music's good enough that we don't bother to leave for the fireworks.

New uses for old sewing machines

A few months back, i helped my grandmother move.  She was moving to a smaller place, and one of the many things she planned to leave behind at her old house was her ancient Kenmore sewing machine.  Now, i'd never sewn on this machine, but it was in the room i'd stayed in when i spent summers at her place as a kid.  I kinda liked the cabinet.  And she told me she'd bought it with the first money she'd earned from her first job, sometime around 1939.  (Now, from the model number, it looks like it was probably manufactured a bit later, something like 1947, but Grandma is 88, so we'll cut her a little slack on the chronology... and maybe that was a different machine.)

Anyway, i wasn't about to let it stay behind.  So we had it loaded onto the moving van, and then it went from her old house to her new apartment to my parents' place, and eventually back down here, the heavy old machine having been removed from the cabinet and wrapped in an old blanket for protection on its travels.  I'm still trying to create a spot to wedge it into in the sewing area, and as the machine has waited for a permanent home, the cats have found it a prime sleeping location.  Eliot demonstrates:

 

And Winston does likewise:

 

The CSA report, week 1

We signed up for a CSA (that's community supported agriculture, for those who haven't encountered it before) membership this year.  This is a good thing, because as much as i'd like to grown my own, i'm not very good at it.  Also, there's that living-on-a-wooded-mountain thing: i have little sun, but lots and lots of rocks.  Big, honkin' rocks, in fact.  So it's a good thing that Stoneybrook is close by with their CSA program (nice folks - i play music with a few of them from time to time).  Last Wednesday, we got our first weekly box of veggies: red leaf lettuce, kale, chard, garlic scapes, collard greens, yellow squash, and zucchini.  I've been racing to use it all up - and make room in the fridge - before Wednesday, and our next box.

So the chard and some of the garlic scapes went into some fried rice, i made kale chips (promising, though the recipe i used was too salty), and the lettuce was easy to go through in salads and sandwiches (i have a little left, but i had some from the farm market on hand when i got the CSA lot). I used more garlic scapes in place of green onions in a marinade, and grilled a little more than half the squash and zukes with some local beef tonight.  The collard greens still need to be used, but at least they're not too bulky.  The remainder of the kale will probably go into a revised version of those chips, and i'll figure out something for the last of the squash... there's at least hope for getting the refrigerator closed when i bring home tomorrow's box!

Summer frocks

A little inspiration from the July 1940 issue of McCall's:

A new toy...

Sewing machines come to live with me.  I'm actually not certain of the exact count at the moment.  I had a machine in college, a fairly stripped down junior-model Singer.  When i worked at G Street Fabrics, i bought my first vintage machine, an old Singer slant with all the attachments.  Others are ones that someone was going to junk, and wouldn't i take it?  I usually do, hoping i can maybe pass it to someone who can use it.  Recently my grandmother was moving, and planned to leave behind the Kenmore machine she bought as a young woman.  Yeah, it's at my house now.

And there are others.

So i hadn't really planned to buy another machine anytime soon.  But at the auction today, there was a lovely old Elgin treadle machine, in its cabinet - in need of cleaning, but relatively intact.  And there wasn't a whole lot of interest among the assembled crowd; a Domestic in a very Art Deco-ish cabinet had just been passed over without a single bid.  And i had a bit of room in the Jeep...

I'm tickled to have a treadle machine join the herd.  The friends i know who have used them have often come to prefer them over electrics, and i'm pretty sure i'll like the control at slow speeds for fussy bits, where i'm always nervous about nudging the pedal a little too hard, and it's also nice to have the off-the-grid option.  Photos to come, but field testing will have to wait for a serious cleaning and oiling, and possibly a new belt...

What do you love to sew on?  Do you prefer a different machine for vintage projects?

Literary kitty

A bit of fluff for a rainy Monday: Fitz catches up on his reading.

Aprons and caps

The Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts & Sciences (you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of the name) published a number of little instructional booklets on dressmaking, patterns, and various types of garments, throughout the 1910s and 1920s.  They're the work of Mary Brooks Picken, who wrote staggering numbers of books on sewing and fashion over the course of her long life.  I've gathered copies of a few of the titles, and thought i'd share some of the pages from a 1922 volume, Aprons and Caps, which opens with the explanation,"Bustles, hoop skirts, and boned bodices come and go, but aprons, like table napkins, seem always necessary."

One imagines she would nod in approval at the renewed vogue of the apron after its near-extinction.