just be.

skirt seams

not feeling so great today, so hot and tired, so i didn't make the speedy progress i'd hoped on my laura skirt today. i did get a muslin (kind of sloppily) cut out and sewed the darts and the first seam. i also attempted two finishes for the seam allowances to see which one i'd like to try on this skirt, and neither was very good. i'm attributing it to not feeling well.

the left seam allowance has just been turned back in half and sewn to itself. i've been using just a 0.5-inch seam allowance, which is too narrow for me to really sew in half very well, though it might be better if i pressed and pinned first.

the right seam allowance has seam binding sewn to it, folded over, then sewn on the other side.

again, would have benefited from pressing and pinning. duh. i'll be practicing this technique on the rest of the muslin so that i'm better at it by the time i get to the skirt.

clean-plate cleanse, day 2

so far, so good. today has been much less of a production than yesterday. leftover quinoa for breakfast with some ground flax seeds sprinkled in (supposed to have a serving of those every day), and lunch is a ridiculously easy raw soup: carrots, an apple, almond milk, and olive oil in the blender, garnished with a sprinkling of crumbs from a package of kale chips. sweet and cold, perfect for a summer lunch.

other things happening at the bernard ranch and spa: drafted a pattern this morning for my second sewn thing, another skirt based on the first but adding a yoke at the waistline with facings and adding a three-inch ruffle at the hemline. it's the laura skirt pattern from design-it-yourself clothes: patternmaking simplified by cal patch. i haven't found a photo from the book itself and (duh) neglected to take one when the book was in front of me (now it is all the way downstairs and i am all the way up here), but it's an a-line skirt of any length with a yoke of any depth and ruffle of any height and whatever level of ruffliness you want. my favorite thing about sewing, as with knitting or weaving, is the ability to choose my own adventure with each item. this particular skirt will be in a beautiful dark grey (i know: SHOCKING):

we'll see how it goes. i've gotten the pattern pieces cut out of my tracing paper:

next is to press and cut a muslin to be sure i didn't screw anything up and make adjustments if needed, meanwhile washing, drying, and pressing the grey fabric before cutting out the pieces and sewing them up. this will be my first time making a facing (there's basically a yoke on the inside and on the outside of the piece to give it some shape, flattering to the waistline) and my first time doing gathers. it's gonna be a lotta fun.™

and the other thing happening around here is the uke acquisition. mr. bee bought me a concert version of my soprano banjo ukulele, a firefly, but it turns out that the workmanship and materials on the concert version just isn't what it was on the soprano, which i adore. i emailed some photos to the terrific shop where both ukes came from, elderly instruments, and they've spent some time looking at those, looking at the instruments themselves, and speaking with me on the phone, and they're willing to send fedex to pick it up but don't have a better firefly to replace it with, so i'm trying to figure out what to do: keep the concert firefly anyway, exchange it for a different uke (if so, what? the bass i'd been thinking of for my next uke is, shall we say, unwelcome at my uke group), or return it altogether.

(edited to add photos of food and patterns!)

clean-plate cleanse, day 1

so today is the first day of a 21-day cleanse i'm doing under the guidance of my nutritional counselor, leah. i've been eating more cleanly for a few weeks while we've been planning and gearing up, but today is officially day 1. 

this morning, i made apple-and-raisin quinoa for breakfast.

the recipe is super easy: boil then simmer quinoa, chopped apple, raisins, cinnamon, and a little water.

HOWEVER. because i have to make a project out of everything, i had no quinoa already cooked. so the first thing i did this morning was cook quinoa. cooking! immediately! but no problem. quinoa is simple! rinse, boil, simmer. 

HOWEVER. see: everything is a project. strainer (for rinsing) is juuust a little too small to hang by itself across the sink. so i'm juggling that and a measuring cup and trying to fend off a very curious cat. 

quinoa is cooking, and i realize that there are no greens in this, and i'm supposed to have greens at every meal during this cleanse. so i cleverly decide that i'll also make a smoothie—maximize use of the quinoa-cooking time AND have a snack ready for late morning. i am a clever, clever girl.

so i mix all the ingredients together for the first smoothie in my new (from leah) recipe book. blend. success!

it's not nearly so grey in real life; that's ice slush on top. but you notice how it's not at all green? like you'd expect it to be if it had greens in it? that's because there are no greens in this recipe. just coconut water, agave syrup, coconut butter, cacao powder, and ice. so i set that aside and thank baby jesus for the extra carafe we have for the vitamix, and i start the *second* smoothie recipe in the book, after verifying that it does indeed have greens in it.

so the second smoothie takes apple juice, adzuki beans, an apple, kale, and ice. again: everything is a production. gotta rinse the adzuki beans and measure out part of the can then store the rest. no problem for a normal person. for me? production. i have to wash the strainer first because i made chicken last night and the sink area is therefore contaminated, in my mind. wash the strainer, fend off the cat some more because CAN OPENER OMG even though we have never fed him anything that comes of using a can opener and what the hell kind of cat likes beans anyway? i manage to get the beans rinsed, label a little zipper plastic bag, measure what i need, store the rest, and decide not to fight the cat licking the strainer clean. who knew? cat likes adzuki beans. add the whole apple and a couple of (rinsed! go me!) leaves of kale and the ice to the blender. try blending. blending fail. try the tamper. still the apple appears to be whole, but i am stubborn. i let it rest while i attend to the quinoa. measure into a smaller pot to mix with the apple and other ingredients. more fending off of cat. let the smaller pot do its thing and try more blending. i use some long tongs to feel around for the apple and decide that i'm not ready to pull the apple out to chop it quite yet. more blending, more success. more tamping. then i put my trust in the vitamix and blast it on high. high scares me. high makes me think that the motor will burst into flames and i will be found in a crackling pile of fruit and greens being licked clean by a little jerk cat.

i might have a phobia about electrical fires. i come by it honestly. don't judge.

anyway, i finally manage success with both quinoa and smoothie, put all the extras and leftovers away, pile the sink high with tools and dishes, decant the smoothies into grownup sippy cups because i am incapable of not spilling, and schlep it all upstairs. before taking any photos while anything is still out and pretty. i need to remember to bring my iphone to the kitchen more often.

so the green smoothie

is quite bright and tasty, and the quinoa is yummy, too. and really it didn't take THAT long to do all that, and i now have breakfast quinoa for at least another day, probably two, plus smoothie snacks for the rest of today.

i haz a proud. 

so far, so good.

i went grocery shopping with leah last week. pro tip: supplements are expensive. right now and until the cleanse (which starts *this* thursday) ends, i'm avoiding soy, dairy, corn, gluten, eggs, and peanuts. cooking with coconut or olive oil. the food is good, but man is it a challenge to shop (or choose from a restaurant menu--so far, no success on that one).

yesterday was the best day so far. no migraine and minimal gastrointestinal discomfort or other symptoms. i would love to have days like that more often. actually, i haven't had GI symptoms for a few days, or at least none keeping me in bed or anything. the migraines are still every day, except yesterday so far. but this process isn't aimed at solving the migraine problem, so that's okay. they just keep me from really fully enjoying days on which my GI symptoms are gone or minimal.

so thursday leah will come over for a few hours to help me cook, show me some recipes, and teach me how to use my new pressure cooker. it's very nice to have someone ready to answer questions, and she's very positive. she's also very understanding and patient. it all gives me hope.