Sewing, take two.

Yesterday I spent a really lovely rainy afternoon listening to music, drinking iced green tea, and re-teaching myself to sew. I was working with a rainy-day gray linen and looking-forward-to-sunshine yellow eyelet, and it was perfect. Kind of. I talked to the sewing machine, the needle, and the fabric when, at various times, they all refused to do what I wanted them to. I yelled at nothing in particular when the tension would get messed up and there'd be a big knotted mess of thread, but then fixed without me knowing what I'd done to fix it. There was a huge pile of strings next to me when I finished.

 

But the first project turned out- better than I expected, even- and I was encouraged enough to start a second, a skirt for my sister-in-law's wedding on Saturday. Fast forward three hours, and I had to quit and go to bed, because I had a I had a boxy apron instead of a springy skirt, like I'd hoped. The longer I worked, the more frustrated I got and the less I knew what to do to fix it. I'm hoping that with a day of separation I'll be able to look at it anew, and won't have to go buy a skirt last minute.

I think I'm a pretty good cook, but where I need a lot of work is in baking. I almost never bake anything, and when I do, it's nothing fancy, nothing especially delicious. My friend Ben gave me a sourdough starter that dates back a hundred and fifty years, or something crazy like that. On Sunday I tried my first batch of sourdough bread, and it was bad. Mediocre flavor, terrible texture. I'm going to try again tomorrow and hope for something more like this:

And less like the spongy brick I threw to the compost pile without even finishing a piece.

I'm looking forward to warm summer nights with fruit and freshly-baked bread for dinner.

Failures

Haven't had the best results in the crafting world lately: a tank top I tried to sew, thinking bias tape wouldn't really be necessary (and of course it was); a summer dress that, no matter how much I tried to fix it, always looked like it was maternity; and skinny little zinnias I've been growing in my windowsill that just keep getting taller and taller, but never fill out or get adult leaves (my mom laughed when she saw them).

One of the more disappointing failures were the Maitake mushrooms I was trying to grow. From the start, they took much longer than they were supposed to, and even though they went through every expected phase, they took so long that they started getting moldy before ever totally maturing. We saved a handful of almost-mushrooms, and we'll see how they taste.

Some Maitake well on their way to being ready to harvest.

I've also failed to follow through on a lot of the embroidery I've started lately. One was a Ukranian-inspired flower embroidery for my mom for mother's day. The other, an anatomical heart for my dear friend Drew's birthday. Both have been sitting around my house, untouched for the past week and a half.


Not everything has failed lately. The garden is starting to do well, we made some pretty yummy salmon for mine and my brother's birthday dinner, and our house has been full of pretty bouquets of lunaria, iris, muscari, and penstemon. So I'm still optimistic that I can crank out some things that I actually like.