...sort of. I was going to do Gillian's 5 things roundup, but then I decided to steal Oonaballoona's collage idea and grey out the makes that didn't work out so well. And then I thought: since this blog isn't just about the stuff I make, usually, why not do an entire year in review? I've done some fun stuff this year, and I haven't gotten around to blogging it all yet, but this would be a good way of remembering where I went and what I did.
So that's what you're getting, with some reflections along the way, minus the pancakes. You can see all my makes at Crazy Stuff I Do; most of the event posts are In ProgressTM.
The biggest thing to celebrate is a year a successful cohabitation with the DC! I'm still not sure what I did to deserve him, and I'm very excited to announce that Lucy has stopped hissing at him. Plus? He brings me tea and does the dishes. Often. And unasked. He's all-around awesome and I'm a lucky lady.
Ahem. On with the remembrances. Do you need me to tell you it's probably going to be a long post?
January
I started the year with my Gravity Well dress, which I finished in time to see Musical of Musicals: the Musical! on the second of the month. Off to a good start, I thought. I spent the rest of the month, make-wise, carving the giraffe spots to stamp on silk (which I will do this January), although I did play around a bit with fusing plastic, making these card pip earrings for a game-themed dance I wound up not attending. The month was very cold, so biking involved many layers and neoprene, and I did actually finish sewing the biking flares into my eyelet dress (although I had to wait until May to photograph them, because did you see that biking picture?).
February
Birthday month! I started the Sew For a Change challenge by decluttering a tonne of things, then had a special birthday fortnight. We started with the Tea Festival at the Reference library, then we went to the aquarium and somebody got a new ukelele and dinner at Geraldine's. We had tea at Casa Loma, had my usual birthday sushi (and cake from my students!). I finally saw Frozen and Gravity (weird double-feature), then we took in The Great Upheaval at the AGO. A week later I tried making my own masterpiece at PaintLounge with somewhat less success. Project-wise, I continued carving stamps and started cutting out my secretary dress.
March
March brought another successful Errandonnée, in which there were temperature extremes and lots of food. Also, Nerd Nite. Jour de macaron is usually a big round-the-city ride for me, but for reasons the only I way I could celebrate this year was popping into a nearby bakery after school. In between catching up with friends and binging on Miyazaki dvds (oh, and that work thing), I made a Lady Sybil cloche to wear to the Downton Abbey costume exhibit at Spadina House. Unfortunately, the applique took longer to applique than I expected, so I didn't finish it in time. Or at all. The exhibit was great, and so was Particle Fever (about the LHC) which we saw later, but the cream tea we had downtown afterward gave us food poisoning, which was less fun. I also decided to underline the secretary dress with a fancy technique and stalled out, so that picture should be greyed out.
April
April found me bringing my evil Dolly Clackett plans to fruition. I realized that the lab benches in my classroom are perfect for cutting fabric and pdf patterns, which has seriously cut down on the amount of time it takes me to sew stuff. It's a bit of a pain lugging the fabric, pins, and shears back and forth, though. Of the four Anna variants I made, the favourite has to be the That Million Dolly Look Macaranna. It gets a lot of positive comments every time I wear it. Sadly, both v-neck Annas gape -- the Death is Now My Neighbour enough that it bothers me, the LGRAB dress so much that it's unwearable, so they are hanging on the Bookcase of Shame. (The Down in the Electric Avenue dress is also there because I need to bind the zipper edges.) I also made Dolly Clackett shoe clips with varying degrees of success; I'll blog about them once I've worked out the bugs. I even made some pompom earrings, which are totally ridiculous.
May
This month was quite active for me because Me-Made May had me running around to a bunch of places to take appropriate pictures. It was also a month where I had something going on every weekend, which is fairly unusual for me. I played my concert Kala at CoffeeHaus, made another set of Dolly Clackett shoe clips, and finally made my V8728 wearable for Sew For Victory (although I haven't worn it yet because I need to finish the seams and self-belt, but I don't want to grey it out because I can wear it, honest). I presented at Google Camp, finally made my grey linen Thurlows wearable, celebrated Catja's birthday, which allowed me to finally finish Aged P's westie. (You might think that would be a theme, finishing things, but you would be wrong.)
We waited too long to take our annual cherry blossom bike photo, but that didn't really matter because brunch! Lots of brunch! I made these "Rhumba" earrings, but they keep falling apart on me. I believe a soldering iron is in my future. I was smart this year and didn't plan to make a lot of items during one of my busiest months; in fact, I didn't plan to make any new items except those earrings. I decided on a whim to make the cream Swoon scarf-neck cardi and Lekala skirt, but they are easily the items I've worn the most this year. Sometimes going on impulse pays off! I like that the way I've been doing MMM with the photo prompts ithas forced me out of my apartment to do things I keep meaning to do, like bike the Railpath, have brunch during Kensington car-free Sundays (where I bought that hat -- I've worn that hat a lot), and visit Market 707 -- street food sold from refurbished shipping containers. Brilliant!
June
This was the month of unofficial sew-alongs. I was busy with exams and marks and projects for most of the month, so while I did sew my "floral" Belcarra, three pairs of Measure-Twice-Cut-Once Mary knickers, the wavy Tiramisu, and the Sorbetto hack 20s underdress, I didn't get any pictures taken in time to actually post them to said sew-alongs. Oh well. At least we had the Gatsby garden party at Spadina House and commencement to show off some of them. We celebrated the end of the school year by seeing Spamalot and by my binging on my Lizzie Bennet Diaries dvds and the Secret Diary of same.
July
Rather productive month, all told. I had ambitious sewing plans and fun events to wear things to. We saw Chasing Margaret Flatwood, Slut, and Love's Labour's Lost at the Fringe Festival and Ari's planetarium talk in the same week. I finished three Belcarras, a white linen Anna top, and grey linen Thurlow shorts. The next week was my Oonapalooza eyelet Belcarra and sheer maxi skirt and the Toronto sewists meetup at the Bata Shoe museum. We saw the Monty Python Live (mostly) simulcast; I attempted to make an Alma but my broad shoulders defeated me. We went to the ROM, and then abruptly ran out of steam for the rest of the summer.
August
In the beginning, and for most of the month, nothing. Truly. We didn't even make it to E's cottage this year. Whatever the summer equivalent of hibernating is, that's what I did. Near the end of the month, I slowly came out of it. I won tickets to see The Complete Works of Shakespear, Abridged and started getting ready for the new school year.
September
I wore my Belcarras for eight days, just like the Beatles, although I missed meeting up with Vicki and Catja. We saw Wicked and visited with friends. The third week was crazy for me: I had a school function, then Dîner en Blanc (for which I finished my white linen Gabriola), then the Tweed Ride, followed by the Book of Mormon (for which I finished my bronze cardi). We had tickets for the adults-night Science of Rock'n'Roll exhibit at the Science Centre somewhere in there, but we decided to pass. At the end of the month, we did a pre-coffeeneuring run out to Etobicoke for the Early Music Festival. Oh, and school was also going on.
October
Not too many pictures here. We had a lovely Thanksgiving at my cousin M's. I spectacularly failed to keep my anti-UFO pledge and persistent illness kept me from completing the Coffeeneuring challenge. We did get out to see Life, Death, and the Blues and then switched gears to see "An Evening with Jane Austen" at the Heliconian Club and I Furiosi's "Heigh-ho, Heigh ho" (songs about work). My second and last coffeeneuring outing was to the Brickworks farmer's market, and the fall foliage was glorious. I recovered long enough to go to a surprisingly useful PD session. Unfortunately, I got sick again, losing my voice the next week. Not as much fun, that.
November
No pictures, although we went to see Arcadia (armed with cough drops and Buckley's) and I bought most of my Christmas presents at the One-of-a-Kind show. I finally, finally sewed the buttons on my Saturn cardigan (and might even take pictures of it someday soon). I had a lot of school-activities: supervising the Homecoming Dance (I don't know why we still call it that, since the alumni don't come back), going to STAO and other worthy PD days, and Google Camp, this time as a relieved participant. I bought a Kala kiwi soprano uke because I missed my green baby and tuned the concert uke to a low G. I was still sick, for the most part, and tried to concentrate on staying on top of my marking and getting well again, neither super successfully. I didn't produce much except mucus and phlegm. You're welcome.
December
December started off with a fun physics PD session, then we upped the SCIENCE by seeing Bill Nye. Live. The DC's friend C managed to surprise him (with my help) with tickets to Tafelmusik after delicious Peking duck. We tried visiting the Distillery's Christmas Market, but went on a Monday which wasn't terribly clever of us. I took the DC to the AGO to see the Michaelangelo exhibit on his birthday, then to Geraldine's again for yet more duck. I showed my quirky side at school on the last day (and played my kiwi Kala in a spirited teacher version of the Twelve Days). No Sing-Along Messiah this year. I had some time during vacation to make a bunch of presents, in particular the tree pendant for the ladies, plus my usual Irish creme liqueur, nutella, and clementine marmalade (this time with pectin so it doesn't run off the bread). I wish I could say that I spent my holiday wisely, catching up on UFOs and clearing the Bookcase of Shame, but alas. Someone gave me an e-reader for Christmas and I was otherwise occupied; my three-month non-sewing streak is unmarred. Also, I wasted four days fixing a mistake on my Rosemary sweater. But I did make a pair of earrings to wear with my Gravity Well dress on New Year's Eve, which bookends the year nicely.
So there you go. When I started this post, I thought this year was not as productive as last year because I haven't done anything much since September and I wasn't the same crocheting and jewellery-making machine. But looking at this post, I see I've made 7 dresses, 2 skirts, 1 pair of shorts, 7 tops, 2 cardigans, 3 pairs of knickers, 4 pairs of earrings, 1 pendants (+4 copies), 3 viable pairs of shoe clips, 1 hat, 1 decidedly odd reindeer hair ensemble, and 1 dog. That's a total of 35 items, and doesn't include the three major projects in progress. True, 6 of those have reverted to PIP status and a bunch more are technically UFOs (the bookcase of shame has gotten much shame-ier), but I also brought 3 of last year's major PIPs into... well, one of them is completely done and the other two are wearable. Look, I'm not so good with the finishing details, okay? Ahem. Out-and-about-wise, I saw 15 musicals, plays, and concerts, went to 13 events, gallery shows, and museums, and rode to 6 neighbourhoods in a touristy fashion. And even though I've gone back to being a bit of a hermit since August, we did manage to visit with friends quite a bit this year. That's not too shabby considering I took a few months off to be sick.
I'm not trying to be boastful; I tend to be a bit negative about what I do because I keep seeing all the Things Still To Do, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I did do this year.
Onward. I'm not into making New Year's resolutions, but there are a few things to work on. Number one is clearning the Bookcase of Shame. I also want to document all the things I do; not necessarily for public consumption, because I know you don't want to know about every movie I see or talk I go to, but so I can look back and say "Oh yeah! I did that!"
Also? I really plan to make jeans.
So that's what you're getting, with some reflections along the way, minus the pancakes. You can see all my makes at Crazy Stuff I Do; most of the event posts are In ProgressTM.
The biggest thing to celebrate is a year a successful cohabitation with the DC! I'm still not sure what I did to deserve him, and I'm very excited to announce that Lucy has stopped hissing at him. Plus? He brings me tea and does the dishes. Often. And unasked. He's all-around awesome and I'm a lucky lady.
January
I started the year with my Gravity Well dress, which I finished in time to see Musical of Musicals: the Musical! on the second of the month. Off to a good start, I thought. I spent the rest of the month, make-wise, carving the giraffe spots to stamp on silk (which I will do this January), although I did play around a bit with fusing plastic, making these card pip earrings for a game-themed dance I wound up not attending. The month was very cold, so biking involved many layers and neoprene, and I did actually finish sewing the biking flares into my eyelet dress (although I had to wait until May to photograph them, because did you see that biking picture?).
February
Birthday month! I started the Sew For a Change challenge by decluttering a tonne of things, then had a special birthday fortnight. We started with the Tea Festival at the Reference library, then we went to the aquarium and somebody got a new ukelele and dinner at Geraldine's. We had tea at Casa Loma, had my usual birthday sushi (and cake from my students!). I finally saw Frozen and Gravity (weird double-feature), then we took in The Great Upheaval at the AGO. A week later I tried making my own masterpiece at PaintLounge with somewhat less success. Project-wise, I continued carving stamps and started cutting out my secretary dress.
March
March brought another successful Errandonnée, in which there were temperature extremes and lots of food. Also, Nerd Nite. Jour de macaron is usually a big round-the-city ride for me, but for reasons the only I way I could celebrate this year was popping into a nearby bakery after school. In between catching up with friends and binging on Miyazaki dvds (oh, and that work thing), I made a Lady Sybil cloche to wear to the Downton Abbey costume exhibit at Spadina House. Unfortunately, the applique took longer to applique than I expected, so I didn't finish it in time. Or at all. The exhibit was great, and so was Particle Fever (about the LHC) which we saw later, but the cream tea we had downtown afterward gave us food poisoning, which was less fun. I also decided to underline the secretary dress with a fancy technique and stalled out, so that picture should be greyed out.
April
April found me bringing my evil Dolly Clackett plans to fruition. I realized that the lab benches in my classroom are perfect for cutting fabric and pdf patterns, which has seriously cut down on the amount of time it takes me to sew stuff. It's a bit of a pain lugging the fabric, pins, and shears back and forth, though. Of the four Anna variants I made, the favourite has to be the That Million Dolly Look Macaranna. It gets a lot of positive comments every time I wear it. Sadly, both v-neck Annas gape -- the Death is Now My Neighbour enough that it bothers me, the LGRAB dress so much that it's unwearable, so they are hanging on the Bookcase of Shame. (The Down in the Electric Avenue dress is also there because I need to bind the zipper edges.) I also made Dolly Clackett shoe clips with varying degrees of success; I'll blog about them once I've worked out the bugs. I even made some pompom earrings, which are totally ridiculous.
May
This month was quite active for me because Me-Made May had me running around to a bunch of places to take appropriate pictures. It was also a month where I had something going on every weekend, which is fairly unusual for me. I played my concert Kala at CoffeeHaus, made another set of Dolly Clackett shoe clips, and finally made my V8728 wearable for Sew For Victory (although I haven't worn it yet because I need to finish the seams and self-belt, but I don't want to grey it out because I can wear it, honest). I presented at Google Camp, finally made my grey linen Thurlows wearable, celebrated Catja's birthday, which allowed me to finally finish Aged P's westie. (You might think that would be a theme, finishing things, but you would be wrong.)
We waited too long to take our annual cherry blossom bike photo, but that didn't really matter because brunch! Lots of brunch! I made these "Rhumba" earrings, but they keep falling apart on me. I believe a soldering iron is in my future. I was smart this year and didn't plan to make a lot of items during one of my busiest months; in fact, I didn't plan to make any new items except those earrings. I decided on a whim to make the cream Swoon scarf-neck cardi and Lekala skirt, but they are easily the items I've worn the most this year. Sometimes going on impulse pays off! I like that the way I've been doing MMM with the photo prompts ithas forced me out of my apartment to do things I keep meaning to do, like bike the Railpath, have brunch during Kensington car-free Sundays (where I bought that hat -- I've worn that hat a lot), and visit Market 707 -- street food sold from refurbished shipping containers. Brilliant!
June
This was the month of unofficial sew-alongs. I was busy with exams and marks and projects for most of the month, so while I did sew my "floral" Belcarra, three pairs of Measure-Twice-Cut-Once Mary knickers, the wavy Tiramisu, and the Sorbetto hack 20s underdress, I didn't get any pictures taken in time to actually post them to said sew-alongs. Oh well. At least we had the Gatsby garden party at Spadina House and commencement to show off some of them. We celebrated the end of the school year by seeing Spamalot and by my binging on my Lizzie Bennet Diaries dvds and the Secret Diary of same.
July
Rather productive month, all told. I had ambitious sewing plans and fun events to wear things to. We saw Chasing Margaret Flatwood, Slut, and Love's Labour's Lost at the Fringe Festival and Ari's planetarium talk in the same week. I finished three Belcarras, a white linen Anna top, and grey linen Thurlow shorts. The next week was my Oonapalooza eyelet Belcarra and sheer maxi skirt and the Toronto sewists meetup at the Bata Shoe museum. We saw the Monty Python Live (mostly) simulcast; I attempted to make an Alma but my broad shoulders defeated me. We went to the ROM, and then abruptly ran out of steam for the rest of the summer.
August
In the beginning, and for most of the month, nothing. Truly. We didn't even make it to E's cottage this year. Whatever the summer equivalent of hibernating is, that's what I did. Near the end of the month, I slowly came out of it. I won tickets to see The Complete Works of Shakespear, Abridged and started getting ready for the new school year.
September
I wore my Belcarras for eight days, just like the Beatles, although I missed meeting up with Vicki and Catja. We saw Wicked and visited with friends. The third week was crazy for me: I had a school function, then Dîner en Blanc (for which I finished my white linen Gabriola), then the Tweed Ride, followed by the Book of Mormon (for which I finished my bronze cardi). We had tickets for the adults-night Science of Rock'n'Roll exhibit at the Science Centre somewhere in there, but we decided to pass. At the end of the month, we did a pre-coffeeneuring run out to Etobicoke for the Early Music Festival. Oh, and school was also going on.
October
Not too many pictures here. We had a lovely Thanksgiving at my cousin M's. I spectacularly failed to keep my anti-UFO pledge and persistent illness kept me from completing the Coffeeneuring challenge. We did get out to see Life, Death, and the Blues and then switched gears to see "An Evening with Jane Austen" at the Heliconian Club and I Furiosi's "Heigh-ho, Heigh ho" (songs about work). My second and last coffeeneuring outing was to the Brickworks farmer's market, and the fall foliage was glorious. I recovered long enough to go to a surprisingly useful PD session. Unfortunately, I got sick again, losing my voice the next week. Not as much fun, that.
November
No pictures, although we went to see Arcadia (armed with cough drops and Buckley's) and I bought most of my Christmas presents at the One-of-a-Kind show. I finally, finally sewed the buttons on my Saturn cardigan (and might even take pictures of it someday soon). I had a lot of school-activities: supervising the Homecoming Dance (I don't know why we still call it that, since the alumni don't come back), going to STAO and other worthy PD days, and Google Camp, this time as a relieved participant. I bought a Kala kiwi soprano uke because I missed my green baby and tuned the concert uke to a low G. I was still sick, for the most part, and tried to concentrate on staying on top of my marking and getting well again, neither super successfully. I didn't produce much except mucus and phlegm. You're welcome.
December
December started off with a fun physics PD session, then we upped the SCIENCE by seeing Bill Nye. Live. The DC's friend C managed to surprise him (with my help) with tickets to Tafelmusik after delicious Peking duck. We tried visiting the Distillery's Christmas Market, but went on a Monday which wasn't terribly clever of us. I took the DC to the AGO to see the Michaelangelo exhibit on his birthday, then to Geraldine's again for yet more duck. I showed my quirky side at school on the last day (and played my kiwi Kala in a spirited teacher version of the Twelve Days). No Sing-Along Messiah this year. I had some time during vacation to make a bunch of presents, in particular the tree pendant for the ladies, plus my usual Irish creme liqueur, nutella, and clementine marmalade (this time with pectin so it doesn't run off the bread). I wish I could say that I spent my holiday wisely, catching up on UFOs and clearing the Bookcase of Shame, but alas. Someone gave me an e-reader for Christmas and I was otherwise occupied; my three-month non-sewing streak is unmarred. Also, I wasted four days fixing a mistake on my Rosemary sweater. But I did make a pair of earrings to wear with my Gravity Well dress on New Year's Eve, which bookends the year nicely.
So there you go. When I started this post, I thought this year was not as productive as last year because I haven't done anything much since September and I wasn't the same crocheting and jewellery-making machine. But looking at this post, I see I've made 7 dresses, 2 skirts, 1 pair of shorts, 7 tops, 2 cardigans, 3 pairs of knickers, 4 pairs of earrings, 1 pendants (+4 copies), 3 viable pairs of shoe clips, 1 hat, 1 decidedly odd reindeer hair ensemble, and 1 dog. That's a total of 35 items, and doesn't include the three major projects in progress. True, 6 of those have reverted to PIP status and a bunch more are technically UFOs (the bookcase of shame has gotten much shame-ier), but I also brought 3 of last year's major PIPs into... well, one of them is completely done and the other two are wearable. Look, I'm not so good with the finishing details, okay? Ahem. Out-and-about-wise, I saw 15 musicals, plays, and concerts, went to 13 events, gallery shows, and museums, and rode to 6 neighbourhoods in a touristy fashion. And even though I've gone back to being a bit of a hermit since August, we did manage to visit with friends quite a bit this year. That's not too shabby considering I took a few months off to be sick.
Onward. I'm not into making New Year's resolutions, but there are a few things to work on. Number one is clearning the Bookcase of Shame. I also want to document all the things I do; not necessarily for public consumption, because I know you don't want to know about every movie I see or talk I go to, but so I can look back and say "Oh yeah! I did that!"
Also? I really plan to make jeans.
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