Definitely time to sew again...

Empire-style dress design drawn for a costume history class in 2016

But not with a patterned fabric used like this batik-style one, although I just made over 2 dozen versions of this design in colorful new incarnations.

I have been falling for wonderful linen fabrics, which come also in the soft greyed colors which are my favorites, as well as brighter colors. And some of my favorite fabric designs go with some of those linen colors.

So, the parts of this picture with the patterns will be solid colors of linen, with a pattern on the front of the bodice.


Maybe one of those 2-Sprig colorings I just made. This version of the design fits more closely together, and has some interesting layouts.

You can see that these textured designs look like embroidery.  So for me, they seem more appropriate for smaller areas like a bodice front.


Time to start making something...

When I was in school the first time, 50 years ago, I used to draw the costume I was going to make during vacation, and prop it up on my desk to look at while I studied for finals. I find this drawing has the same effect. I keep looking at it.
 

Campus Is Closed 2020

Library, Sierra College, Nevada County Campus

This picture of the library on campus from across the pond is from several years ago, maybe 2013. It was the semester we lost 3 Thursdays to snow vacation. The picture was taken on Friday, the day after it started snowing quickly during class and campus was closed.

I walked home; it's only 2 miles on the wooded trail, a little farther the way I went along the roads. At class next week, we discovered I had reached home before the professor had gotten out of the parking lot with everyone trying to leave at once.

Last October, we didn't have any storms, no rain although some wind. But we had SIX power outages from PGE, the first one over 3 days. No wind here when the power was off. Supposedly only 10 days total. Everyone, including grocery stores, lost freezers full of food. Yes, some of them had backup generators; it wasn't enough.

Now, with the Corona virus pandemic, and shelter-in-place/social-distance, almost everything except grocery stores is shut down. Government offices and some businesses/restaurants are curbside pickup. I was glad to hear hardware stores are open, in case of a stopped-up drain. And I need batteries and light bulbs.

Our wonderful local independent radio station is unusually running many already recorded programs, but still keeping us updated on what is happening. And YubaNet, which we usually depend on for weather, fire, election and meetings information, is moderating regular virtual town meetings.

But schools are coping. They are shut, but at least most California districts are trying to get school lunches to kids. And some online, I don't know details. But I know at least 2 community college students who have been homeless, and certainly many more can't do online courses without the library. Over the last few years, this campus has lost the majority of its on-campus courses to online ones, and the computer lab closed several years ago.

The exception was the adult ed OLLI short courses, all I have taken for the last year, which were all in person. But since they were for older students, they were cancelled first thing. And now they are back! The 2 I had wanted to take are not, but a bunch of interesting things are available this semester on Zoom. They put that together in a month...

Old dogs are learning new tricks.

PS. Minimally Photoshopped -- I took out a garbage can.

Rexie thinking about being a wildcat...

Bob In Tall Grass/ Rexie on painted chair

For a class assignment, I was putting together some presentation slides, and found some fun things looking through my images and photos. These  two cats were similar ages, still visibly young, although not kittens anymore, when these photos were originally taken.
Bob, being wild out in the grass, has been Photoshopped, using a filter.

Pure serendipity that I found them and saw how to put them together.

Doesn't Rexie look like he is dreaming about being wild?

Latin class, Fowler CA 1944-45

This photo was sent to Grandpa (John Hubbard) by the teacher, in 1944 or 1945. She folded it to put it in the envelope to send. I Photoshopped it for class a few years ago - the original version is below, folds and all.

The students' names are all on the back. (I'll add them when I find the original again.)

I am publishing it now partly because I have been meaning to get around to contacting the school, if it still exists, to see if they want a copy. And partly because Erin at Dressaday gave a link to a project collecting fashion images of women of color, who are left out of the histories. (Of Another Fashion by Minh-Ha Pham)

And if you look at the names, there's not an anglo in this class.

So this is what high school students in California were wearing in 1944-45. I don't know if these were everyday clothes, or if they knew she was going to take the photo, and they're dressed up a little. I do know that school clothes were more formal then (judging from my experience a couple of decades later).

Colorful Bob

The original of this picture of Bob was taken when he was about a year old, visibly still a young cat, looking very alert and wild in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. Bob was maybe born in 2002. He wasn't very old at all.

I scanned the picture in, and Photoshopped it, the summer of 2006, when I was taking Photoshop my 2nd summer in school. The original is a tall young orange cat in green grass. The colors were changed with exaggerated Curves, and I textured it with a filter. One of my favorite Cafepress t-shirts has this image on it, and it makes an interesting mirrored fabric at Spoonflower. Mom liked the t-shirt.

Now those images are just going to make me sad. Bob died today. I wish I had taken just 10 minutes, in the rush to get out of the house to the airport, and held him on my lap and said goodbye.

Goodbye Bob. I love you, even if I couldn't be there with you.


Many thanks, beyond thanks, to Larry who is making it possible for me to be here in many ways, including taking care of poor Bob.

Cheesecake in the Light - approx April 1990 to April 2009

Cheesecake in the Light

Cheesecake is gone. He died last Thursday. He was just 19 years old. That summer I was going to the pound, looking for my missing mama cat, and he was just the most irresistible kitten I had ever seen. (Hence his name.) He was about 2 weeks bigger than the kittens who had been born on my bed May 5. (Wake up. Squeaking by my feet. Kittens!) So I think he just turned 19.

Cheesecake, and those kittens whose mama went missing, and later Fussy, whom I got from the pound in October, all used to do something in the dark at night. They would all oodge up towards my face, kneading and purring like crazy, as if I were their mama. If one started, the others would join. I called it a purring fest.

In recent years, when only one cat got to sleep with me, he was the one. And sometimes he seemed to remember the purring fests from when he was young. It's the season when the cat starts sleeping on the bed again

In about the last 2 years he had become very skinny, but was still mobile and eating. In fact, until about 1 ½ weeks before he died, he was eating 2 cans of cat food a day. About 3 weeks earlier, the other cats killed a mouse - and before I got back with the camera to take a picture, Cheesecake ate half of it. A last memory of his hunting past.

One thing I finally found out, almost by accident, is that when they are getting weak, the easiest way for them to drink is from a drip onto a surface, like a sink or tub. I knew a cat years ago who only drank that way. We had a hot week, and Cheesecake was not sitting on his pad by the heater, but on the cool bricks. So I put him in the tub, where he used to like to be in the hot summer. And so, he was able to drink water from the drip, his last night.

I took this original photo in about the summer of 2003, and you can see he still looked young and beautiful. Then I added a layer of a pattern of light coming through one of the old windows here at sunrise or sunset, and tried different blending modes.

Goodbye Cheesecake. I love you.

Spoonflower hooray!

At Spoonflower (www.spoonflower.com), you can upload a design, and get digitally-printed yardage with your design printed on it! I only have about 114 designs sent to them so far, and have gotten some successful samples in light and medium colors. *

This is a design that started as a small dye-painted square of test fabric. Then I scanned it, Photoshopped it to get many colors, and made an array so it could print as yardage. Soon I'll order a sample to see how the colors come out. Then if that works well, I'll get a couple of yards to make perhaps a knee-length vest, lined in a teal fleece which I got for that, and then found it didn't go with the batiks I intended to use. And it will be my unique fabric.

Your designs remain private unless you choose to make them public, but no one except your self can buy them now. Someday. Unless one of your designs is chosen to be in the weekly contest, and it wins - in which case people can buy it for a week. And you would win some fabric. Right now they're printing on a quilting-weight cotton. Other fabrics later. (Update: several more fabrics now available, in different widths.)

This is a lot of fun. Click on the fabric to see some of my other designs.


*(Dark or black backgrounds with low-contrast images don't work well.)

11-09 UPDATE Spoonflower now makes it possible for us to put our fabrics up for sale, but only the ones we have ordered swatches of. So I have a couple available for sale now, and more coming. This one soon. 11-29-09 This one is now available for sale: 
http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/111479

Catching up

I intend to interpolate some posts at the approximate time they should have been made. So for anyone who has been reading, and think you have seen all my posts as they were made, this is a list of newly interpolated ones, with their dates, and the date they were added.

This image is a version of my picture of the Jack Snipe miniature narcissus, blooming in the spring. I like the posterized effect of the background shingles.

Post date - Title - - - - - - - - - date actually posted:

5/3/08 Always save some film for sunset 7/14/08

4/20/08 The lupines were beautiful 7/14/08

3/28/08 Jack Snipe miniature narcissus7/14/08

12/21/07 Papercut color updated 7/6/08

Always save some film for sunset

That's one of the things I've learnt the hard way, as here. Another is always have a camera with you, because as soon as you don't, there will be a great sunset, or something.

This picture is also an illustration of another rule I often forget: always read the fine print/ schedule/instructions before it's too late. In this case, I thought I remembered the bus schedule, but it changes at 6:00 PM. And so I was not watching when the bus came back, after I'd gotten off to take some photos. And, I'd just filled up my camera card, so I didn't have any "film" left for sunset. So I walked home, because I could get home almost by dark by walking rather than waiting an hour for the next bus and walking up the hill in the dark. So I didn't even see a spectacular sunset (since I was walking through the woods), let alone photograph it.

Then I Photoshopped this picture to look as if I'd seen the sunset.

There's no such thing as "normal" weather here...

More than 20 years ago, shortly after moving here to my grandfather's house, I heard from a local orchard owner, in a gardening class "More years than not, we have spring here in January & February, and winter in March and April." And more years than not, in the years since, that has been true. This year is the exception that points up the truth of the rule.

It is snowing. Again. Twice last week I walked home from work (early) at night in the snow because the buses had stopped running. Others who depended on cars had had to leave lots earlier, or not get home, because it required chains to go downhill from here (2500ft). This is my only day off this weekend. It was not supposed to snow today, just rain. It is supposed to snow tomorrow.

That's the other rule I learned during my years of working outdoors here: "If they say it will snow at this elevation, usually it won't. If they say it won't, often it will." That's been true both ways several times in the last 2 weeks.

But the "no such thing as normal weather" you ask? Well, you might think of "average" weather as normal. But here, average is made up of an El Niño year, and a La Niña year, and several drought years. There is no year in which we have weather equal to the average of all those.

In a drought year, we have lots of beautiful days in January & February, gardening weather. (We can't dig in our red clay soil when it's too wet, unless we want red clay bricks.) This year, we did have a couple of chilly sunny weeks before the snow started.

The year I moved here, it was too wet to garden every day off I had from mid-February though May (El Niño). The year my sister died in March, after I got back here, all of April was cold, snowy, hailing, not just the first few weeks. The apple trees didn't bloom until May, a month late.

No such thing as normal weather. But I miss my favorite days of the year, gardening weather in January & February.

This picture has been Photoshopped, but only to bring out what the eye can see that the camera doesn't; the brilliance of the Geranium blooming on the windowsill against the snow outside; the texture of the screen, pixellating the image; and the color of the trees in the snowy landscape.

Photoshop Fun

This is Dovey, the black cat, in tall bluegrass, with the delicate seedheads showing. Dovey, and her brother Lovey, were feral kittens, trapped when they were several months old. Because Lovey was petted as a kitten at the feeding station, he is much tamer; he loves to be petted & combed, and to hop up on my lap. Dovey wrecked the vet's office, and bit him. She does like to be petted now, but only on the feeding table, at mealtimes. And she comes when she is called, if she's not busy. Otherwise, she is still pretty feral.

The original photo has been changed in Photoshop to this high-contrast image, using a filter. Photos that work best for this technique have good contrast, with variations in texture. Choose your background and foreground colors, then try out the filters, especially the artistic & sketch ones, to see which work best. For different images, different filters will be better.

Happy Day 1892

An email from my Mom reminded me I meant to share this picture I retouched in Photoshop class last summer.
Happy Day was Grandfather's first cousin. The info is from the back of the picture in Grandpa's handwriting. I kept the charming old photographer's card, and added a leather frame scanned from the cover of the album. Click on the small pictures to go to the full-size image and download it. (On a Mac, just click on it & drag it to your desktop.)

from her email: " If you do a google search on "TOWER HILL CEMETERY, BRIMFIELD
MASSACHUSETTS"
you will find an interesting article about the Hubbard House. That
is the original Hubbard homestead which I once visited with my Dad.
The house had 3' wide boards hand hewn on the walls! Yes, New
England must have once had big trees!

I remember my Dad talking about visiting the farm in
summertime. He mourned having no brothers and sisters but played
with his cousins Harriet Day and Gladys Day Deland in the summers
when they visited together at Brimfield. Dad grew up in Chicago."



Isn't she a beautiful little girl. And those interesting ringed eyes. Of course I had no idea of what colors her hair or eyes were. From the photo not blond or black or dark brown. So I used light brown hair like mine was as a girl, before I started working outside and it decided to be blond. And for those ringed eyes, they could be light blue or hazel. I've seen a picture of someone with ringed hazel eyes, & I had a cat who had blue ringed eyes. So I used light blue like Grandpa's and my eyes. Well, brighter than ours.

There're a lot of blending modes used to get the metallic and pearlescent effects on the headband and beads. And just getting rid of all the mold spots took a lot of doing. It was a fun project, but very time consuming.

Bats in the bedroom

It seemed like an appropriate day to show this. As you can see this is the same room as the picture from Saturday. And you can probably guess that it's Photoshopped too, as was the textured image from that post.

But it's pretty real, all the same. The sunset light pattern in this image was cast by the old float glass in the window, and photographed just to the right of the sink you can see. Sunset doesn't seem like an impossible time for bats.

And all the bats were photographed on the same night last summer, standing out on the porch roof, while they were flying around the bedroom next to this.

It was 2:00 in the morning. I was in the computer room. Suddenly there was a bat swooping from the hall into the bedroom. It had come upstairs from the porch, where a screen was off. Rather than dodge through a hall full of a swooping bat, I thought I'd go out onto the porch roof to open a window to let it out. Unfortunately this brilliant idea meant that the light in the bedroom was still on when I opened the window. So by the time I got back out there with the camera, there were several bats in the bedroom, swooping into the hall and back…

How many can you see? Except for the close-up, all the pictures were taken at the same distance, near the far wall of the larger room, as you can tell by the shadows. And how many species do you think? Three at least…

Wearing wide-sleeved dresses 1

I made a comment over at Dressaday Oct 4 about wide sleeved dresses. I'll reproduce that here, and then elaborate. I was looking for my Photoshopped version of this picture to illustrate. (I had cut it apart to put into an oval frame, and had to Photoshop it back together.) The comment is referring to the great dress by Kit LaCroix, posted at Dressaday, but is appropriate for this one too.

"My experience with wide sleeves is that if they are short and wide like this, they won't be causing many problems (except not fitting into narrow coat sleeves—fold them back over your shoulders). They aren't down to the wrist, so they won't be near enough to get into trouble.

As for long sleeves, the medium width ones are the trouble, whether it's wide cuffs or wide sleeves. If they are about 10 inches wide, they will be trailing in the soup & knocking over wine glasses. I think wide cuffs on tight sleeves might remain a problem no matter how wide too.

But the sleeves which are really wide and open at the wrist, once they get past about 2 feet wide, are caught by the edge of the table and stay out of the way nicely. Three feet or 4 feet wide, trailing down to the ground, no problem. And lots of fun to wear and choose contrasting linings for.

"But", you say, "what about over a campfire, eh? Ah ha, gotcha." Well no, actually, around a campfire, you wind them around your hands and use them as built-in potholders! And if you need to get these longer ones out of the way, fold them open back over your shoulders and tie the ends behind your back, or tuck them in your belt. True documented medieval practice."

I found the wrist-length wide sleeves useful too when practicing foil fencing. If I made the novice's typical wide gestures, instead of the proper narrow turns of the wrist, the sleeve would tell me so by winding around my wrist. (As an aside, for anyone who wishes to fence in a dress, the flare of the skirt needs to be at least 120 inches. Do a full lunge, measure the distance apart of your feet, double that and add more. And, a narrow-at-the-waist but flared-at-the-hem skirt is much easier to move in than one which is just gathered at the waist and straight-cut.)

One summer in Oregon, the coolest thing I owned was a light-weight cotton dress with flared skirts and long pointed sleeves. The day I found myself snapping one of those sleeves for a flyswatter, the way some know how to do with a dishtowel (I don't), I decided I had been living in the dress too long!

Oh yeah, I forgot, that's me in the photo, a long time ago.

The three-legged cat falls off the roof

Lovey on the railing

 I just spent three hours catching the three-legged cat! That's Lovey, whose shoulder was injured by being carried off by a bluejay when he was a feral kitten. The lady who heard the kitten screaming ran out threw rocks and the blue jay dropped the kitten. I got him after he was trapped. He was a pettable-only-while-eating cat for a while, but with me, indoors, he is totally friendly, pick-upable, comes when called to eat, rolls on the floor to have his stomach rubbed, hops up on my lap and purrs. When he is upset, he reverts to wild. And, apparently being loose in the wild outdoors is enough to turn him wild again.

He fell of the roof! Well, I had just put him out on the porch, and he and Buddy got in a fight and rolled right off. I heard the commotion and looked out and saw the other cat looking over the edge. When I went out side they both ran away from me - well, Lovey hopped. That's how he gets around. Buddy showed up at the door later, and came in for dinner with a little coaxing. (He was feral too, but learned early to come through a door when called.) Lovey found the porch mid-evening, but when I tried to call him in, he left, and spent the night outside. It was the first really rainy night and morning of the year, too. And he didn't show before I went to school this morning, or when I came home mid-afternoon. There are coyotes living just down the hill, so I was worried.

I called again about 5:30, and I guess he was thinking it was dinner time, because he showed up. And after calling awhile, and approaching very cautiously, he came towards me - closer, closer - I moved my hand and he ran. After that I was just trying to herd him to keep him from vanishing again down the hill. There was no getting close to him. Finally, at almost dark I gave up. Left the basement door propped open, and went in to feed the other cats.

He heard me doing that, and cried from outside. "Aren't you going to feed me too?" I took a dish of noisy dried food out, and he hopped right over to eat near the porch, but wouldn't let me closer than 4 or 5 feet. So one time he spooked, I moved the dish up onto the porch, and after a while he came up there to eat. He still wouldn't let me near him. It was very dark by then.

I felt my way down the stairs and collected a lot of large empty plant pots and barricaded the porch stairs. That worked, sort of 'cause he can only hop. Then I turned on the porch light, and took a can of cat food out on the porch, and popped the top. He came right over to it to eat, but still no touching. So I took my book out, and sat there. He would eat next to my hand, but not be touched.

So I put the can of cat food just inside the open door, and when I sat down again, I was a little too close, and he got scared. Luckily he didn't jump off the porch. He went over to investigate the food, went in the door, started to explore - and I leaped up and shut the door on him. The hall doors were all closed so he couldn't just vanish in the house. He was scared and tried to run, so that was a good idea. So I went and got Cheesecake (the other cat), and opened the doors to where I wanted him to go. But after he and Cheesecake said hello, I guess he decided he was indoors now, and he let me walk right over and pet him and pick him up.

So I took him into the room where he is used to eating, and put him down, and the food - and he rolled over on his back to have me rub his stomach… Tame inside, wild outside.

The picture is a painting-style image of Lovey on the porch railing in a characteristic pose.

Peacock Album

Over at Dressaday I said I would write more about wearing wide sleeves, but it's not going to be tonight. Since I failed to find a photo I can use in my files, I'll need to wait for daylight and photograph a dress or few.

Meanwhile, here's a bonus image, just because I came across this one while I was looking for a version of the costume pic. Did this in Photoshop class last summer. The images are made on a scanner. Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to get fabric like this? I can print on 8.5x11 pieces of fabric, of course. I'm thinking of taking two of these (with the second one reversed) and putting them on the bodice or yoke of a dress. Full-length, maybe dark peacock blue?

Or I know - I think I still have some very dark green panné velvet, with a diamondish textured pattern. If I scan that, I could use it as a background for the peacock feathers, print that, and use it on a dress made of the green fabric. That would be fun.

I added the images from the last 2 posts to some t-shirts and things at Cafepress. I like the flowery Mead tote, and there are some tees as well. And the three dresses without the background went on some tees, including these new colored infant tees. This design, though it looks good on blue as well as white, would probably have to be for non color-coded kids. Not too many people would put pictures of dresses on their little boys. But as someone who hated pink, even as a kid, I wonder if some would like the blue tee, as well as pink & white, for their little girls.


I'm experimenting with overdying the printed Cafepress tees without ruining the design. So far it's working very well, and I'm liking the dusty muted colors I get because of the technique I'm using. If only the warm dyeing weather had lasted a few weeks longer. Most years I'd have another two to four weeks, and in the last few years this has been prime dyeing and dye-painting season. Every afternoon after work or school for a month. The leaves for leaf-dyes haven't even started to fall.

A Flowery Mead

The flowery mead(ow) was the medieval ideal for sitting out in the garden instead of grass. They made garden seats with flowering low herbs growing in them, like thyme. This picture, which you can tell was created in Photoshop, since it is symmetrical, also follows a medieval pattern design style which might have been used on an embroidered or woven tapestry. So it seems to me to be an illustration of an idealized flowery mead.

You can also see that it's what I used as the background for the assignment in the previous post. In fact, I had a lot of fun creating a symmetrical picture which I knew would be covered up. (Although I think it will make a fun journal cover picture, and it will probably appear as one soon in my Cafepress store.) These wildflowers were photographed in Bridgeport CA in spring 2006.

What brings this to mind is that with the cooling weather, suddenly I realized that it is bulb-planting season. And that reminds me of the most successful bit of gardening I ever did — a flowering lawn. My attempt to create the look of this picture. It has old-fashioned violets, which have a fragrance strong as wine in February — they can be smelled from the roof 3 stories up! And lots of little bulbs, which start blooming in mid-January and finish in late May.

Soon I'll post some pictures of the real flowering lawn, and list my favorite little bulbs. But for anyone who wants to do it now — choose small spring-flowering bulbs which can tolerate summer water and grow in your zone. Plant them in early fall, while it's still nice to sit out on the lawn, if possible. And as for distributing them in a natural-looking way, don't bother doing anything fancy, like throwing them. Just dig out a weed and stick in a bulb.

Those with perfect weed-free lawns need not apply. Well, they wouldn't want to — they'd be putting poisons on the lawn to kill the flowering invaders.

(If you can't see this picture, let me know — I used a PNG for this image. I'll post a link to a JPG.)