À la Super Eggplant, currently I am…

Watching: Every old episode of NCIS–ha! I started at season 1 at some point in December and now I’m up to season 11. I’ve got to say the post-Ziva episodes are…not great. But I had forgotten about Ellie Bishop and I really like her, so we’ll see.

Reading: I am in my usual “attempt to read every book that will be in the Tournament of Books in March” flurry of January reading. I had already read “Sharks in the Time of Saviors” by Kawaii Strong Washburn (LOVED IT! Mythic) and “Transcendent Kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi (didn’t love it, recommend her previous book “Homegoing”!). I have now also read “Deacon King Kong” by James McBride (so good! lots of slapstick while still going super deep) and “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett (fabulous). I started “We Ride Upon Sticks” by Quan Barry last night. It’s entertaining but a little uneven.

Listening to: I am re-listening to every single piece of music I bought in 2020 because I KNOW you are eagerly anticipating a report back on my favorite albums. I think I’m in March right now because I keep getting distracted. But it’s on my list to finish up this week!

Writing: Lesson plans. 2021 intentions poems. Not much really. 🙂 Heh.

Eating: I’m still cooking at TON from Chrissy Teigen’s cookbooks (Cravings and Cravings: Hungry for More). I like the second book better, partly because I got it first, and partly because of the font/layout (HA!, seriously). This weekend I made Jok Moo already and am whipping up some scalloped potatoes in a bit.

Drinking: Lots of bubbly water, which means…at least I am finally drinking water?* I still don’t love it but I probably drank 8x as much liquid in 2020 as in any year previously. Mostly I’m drinking mini-Cokes to help with my tummy which is in a bit of disarray. *For those who are unaware, I detest the taste of water. And yes, it has a taste.

Knitting: I just redove into a sweater that I started in January of 2018 (Lemongrass by Jojo Locatelli) using some Rowan Magpie yarn. Maybe 2021 will be the year I finish it! 🙂 The back and front are both done and it’s time to start the sleeves.

Quilting: I made a mini quilt for my mom’s bday, and I am finishing the binding on four mini-friendship log-cabin quilts for Secret Club. Feeling kinda productive quilt wise, frankly, since I also made six placemats (very mini quilts) for a friend in December!!

Sewing: I have the fabric ready to be cut out for three more Farrow dresses. But I want to finish up my quilts in progress first!

Focusing on: Trying not to freak out too much about how my job is planning to force us back to F2F teaching before we can get the virus… Trying not to focus on my impending death by coronavirus contraction via public transit as I have a 45-minute bus ride each way… TRYING.

There’s a lot going on around here, despite not leaving the house for 11 months at this point and being very miserably alone for 99.9% of the pandemic. What’s up with you????

À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…

Watching: I just finished a rewatch/watch of One Tree Hill (I had only seen some of the first few seasons) and now I’m rewatching Firefly, which as you may know will hardly take any time at all. 🙁 I can’t figure out what I’ll watch next!

Reading: I’m about a third of the way through “Theft” by Peter Carey, which is definitely fun so far. I read quite a bit of Peter Carey back (BACK) in the day.

Listening to: Completely bingeing on Maggie Rogers “Heard It in a Past Life”, but also really obsessed with J.S. Ondara‘s “Tales of America.” It’s so good!

Writing: Sexy daydream poems on the bus, in the duplex form created by Jericho Brown (whose poems I’m obsessed with!).

Eating: Suddenly finding myself in sammy mode, I’ve been making nice big fat ones with ham, turkey, provolone, pickle slabs, roasted red peppers, giardinera, tomato, spinach and a little mayo. Oh yum they’re so good.

Drinking: So much lemonade I think it might be giving me acid reflux. Ha!

Knitting: Ah, nope. 🙁

Quilting: Also nope.

Sewing: Just made another tunic! And two more cut out. Let’s keep that momentum going…

Focusing on: Not spending any unnecessary money. Not bringing work home. Not staying at work beyond the hours I get paid for.

What’s up with you? 🙂

À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…

Watching: Right around Christmas, I saw someone post a list of all The Office (US) Christmas episodes and needed to watch them. But watching one of them made me want to watch the next (in that season) episode so eventually I just went back to the beginning and started an entire rewatch. But I got to mid-season 6 and all of a sudden there are a million things I’m not loving in this season. So I think I may be done with that. I did borrow the first two seasons of Game of Thrones from my dad so I’m going to start that tomorrow probably. (I watched some of the first season when it first happened. I had (ages ago) read the first four books.)

Reading: I’m reading A Terrible Country, by Keith Gessen (as I told you about in Rooster update #1) and tonight I started All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders for bookclub. It’s pretty charming so far! I’ve missed the last two meetings of the club, which sucks because it is one of the few things that consistently brought me joy in 2018, so I have GOT to get back there!!

Listening to: all the new albums I bought myself for Christmas! Loving the latest albums from Janelle Monae (it’s basically a Prince album), Kasey Musgraves (I didn’t like it for the first two listens, but then it stuck its little cheery claws in me), and boygenius which is just an EP so you can listen to it a million times in a row over and over and still only use up like an hour of your time! 🙂 I am also listening to a lot of podcasts since apparently me being home a lot = me doing the dishes a lot. I am still loving West Wing Weekly the most, with Armchair Expert probably a close second (although I like it a lot better when Dax isn’t super friends with the guest, those episodes aren’t as good). I tried Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend this week, but I don’t love it.

Eating: I am currently obsessed with this roasted carrot salad from the Chrissy Teigen Cravings 2: Hungry for More cookbook I can’t stop talking about. I used baby spinach instead of baby lettuce and left out the lime zest (but included the juice–because I never have limes although my fridge is never without RealLime, and RealLemon for that matter). It’s got avocado and sunflowers seeds and it’s just really, really good.

Drinking: my weight in hot drinks. Oregon Chai, hot chocolate, apple cider… I feel like I’m putting the teapot on every seven seconds trying to keep myself warmly hydrated over here. I am going to be one dehydrated mess when school starts again next week and I can’t drink anything because I have numerous hours between bathroom breaks.

Knitting: I started a Winston sweater, Jane Richmond’s latest, in on-50%-off-sale Wool-Ease thick and quick. I’m hoping that will be a zip zip quickity finish and then I can get back to the sweater I’ve been knitting, or rather thinking about knitting and mostly ignoring, for most of 2018.

Quilting: Nothing as of right now.

Sewing: I am planning to make another sweatshirt-y version of the Lou Box Dress 1 this weekend out of this awesome bubblegum fleece that Silvia bought me for my birthday last year. I need to make at least three or four more winter-specific dresses (I have plenty of fabric in the closet that should work for this!) as wearing the sleeve-less dresses I made for this summer with a cardigan over them isn’t really winter-level warmth!

Focusing on: Letting myself soak up this rest time (only three days left and I work on Saturday so really only two!). I have slept 11-12 hours multiple times over this break. I can tell I really needed it!

What’s up with you? 🙂

Modern indie sewing patterns.

Sewaholic – The two Renfrews I made (so far) were so easy and so much better fitting with less adjusting than anything I’ve made from commercial patterns since really developing more of a figure than the stick straight skinny girl who sewed for herself in high school and college. I want to make LOTS more of her stuff!

Grainline Studio – I have the fabric picked out for a few woven Ts and I’m really intrigued by Archer especially after she posted so many photos and videos in a sewalong on her blog.

Hot Patterns – I should make the pattern I already bought from them before buying more but there are so many I’m intrigued by.

Victory Patterns – A bit retro and somewhat goofy but I do look forward to making this. When I get back to having time to sew. The month of July, I guess.

Sew Liberated – Kinda obsessed with the Esme top these days. And I want an Ashland dress as well.

Make It Perfect – I’m obsessed with the waterfall blouse and the poppy tunic. And I’m pretty sure I bought that versatile wrap skirt pattern at a fabric store in Chicago a long time ago.

Megan Nielsen – Where you find the ubiquitous Darling Ranges dress. None of her patterns seem quite me yet but I like to keep an eye on them.

Colette – As with Megan Nielsen, I’ve yet to see a Colette pattern that really rang my bell, but I did buy the Laurel shift one as I’m somehow still convinced that a hippy curvy person like me will somehow find a shift she likes. Not sure why I still believe that.

Made by Rae – Mostly kid patterns but when she does do adult stuff I really like it. I mean I like the look of the pattern, so far the one I’ve made I don’t wear much.

Jamie Christina – I want that raglan lo-hi hoodie with a little less differential between lo and hi.

April Rhodes – I bought this pattern recently but I don’t think she’s developed anything else yet.

À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…

Teaching: Sixth-grade language arts! It’s just a maternity leave position and I 100% acquired it via nepotism…but hey I am getting paid to be a teacher for roughly seven weeks (only 2 left) and that’s better than if I hadn’t gotten any teaching this semester at all, which is what is really looked like was going to be the case.

Reading: A very very LOT of things. Thank you, full-hour morning commute and sometimes-longer afternoon one. I’m just about to start Bitterblue, book three in Kristin Cashore’s series (books 1 and 2 were wonderful) and I can’t wait!

Watching: I just did an epic rewatch of all four seasons of Everwood in just a couple of weeks. I had forgotten how whiny whiny OMG SO WHINY the first season is but it does get so very good after that and it’s really worth watching S1 so you have the entire Amy/Ephram story at your fingertips. The Bright/Hannah stuff from S3 to S4 is still oh so very awesome as well. I still have a couple episodes of Awake and Once Upon a Time to finish out from the past season waiting in my Hulu queue. And I really want to watch Tiny Furniture (on Netflix) now that Girls is getting such buzzity buzz. (Not that I’ll be able to watch that. Did I mention I finally got all the way rid of my cable some months back when it became clear I would not have a teaching job? [I had gotten rid of all the awesome channels back when I quit my job to go back for MA #2.])

Listening to: Kishi Bashi “151A”!!!. NPR’s Stephen Thompson just kept recommending it over and over on what seems like every podcast I listen to and although he is not my favorite person on any of those podcasts I finally gave it a chance and holy toledo it is just beautiful. So beautiful! Dang, I guess I might like you after all, Stephen Thompson.

Eating: A metric tonne of berries. Blue, black, straw, rasp… I am berrying it up over here.

Drinking: Magic Hat Elderberry, Magic Hat Pistil, Shiner Ruby Redbird, Lefthand Good JuJu (probably my very favorite these days), Fat Tire Shift… There’s more in the fridge but I am too lazy to go look. Suffice it to say, the options seem to be particularly plentiful and yummy these days. Hopefully for you as well. 🙂

Knitting: Technically I am testing a design for someone but it took me forever to even get started so I bet all the other testknitters will be done before I’m even halfway through. There are a couple other things on the needles but I haven’t looked at any of them in ages and by ages I do really mean many months.

Quilting: Just finished a doozy. Have three baby tops ready and waiting to be quilted. Hopefully I’ll get to those right quick so I can make another one for ME ME ME.

Sewing: About to make a second Renfrew (short sleeved and V-necked this time) and then going to do some ‘muslins’ of skirts (but not out of muslin!) and see how that goes.

Getting: Not much sleep. 5:40 a.m. wakeup call means I have to really try hard to curb my nightowl tendencies and sometimes that just doesn’t happen. Speaking of…it’s 12:45 and I’m getting picked up at 8:45 tomorrow to drag some stuff to Goodwill. So I’d best be on my way to bed right quick now. Laters, yo. 🙂

Sewing Blogs

So I might be stuck right in the middle of one of those “I AM GOING TO SEW EVERYTHING!!!” frenzies and here are some blogs that are inspiring me to stay up super late shuffling through patterns and fabrics and ideaboards and…

Make Something
Made by Rae
Grainline Studio
True Bias
Little Betty
Sew Well
Dana Made It
Soozs
La Petite Josette
Tidy Tipsy
Vivat Veritas
Tansit-Isis Sews
Be Mine
Savory Stitches

(I will add these all to my links page eventually, I just haven’t had the time)