A Road Less Travelled

For those who are interested in making your own duct tape sandals, I have created a tutorial here. Please do let me know whether it’s helpful, if the wording is clear, and all that sort of thing.

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, cats and dogs, bugs and wildlife– We, the creators and proprietoresses of A Road Less Travelled, are pleased to announce the grand opening of a Frequently Asked Questions page. If you direct your attention to the right side of the screen you will no doubt notice the page. No, your other right.

Find the answers to questions you have always wanted to ask us. Find the answers to all the question you never thought to ask us. Find some answers to questions you really didn’t care to ask us. Or not.

Do enjoy and if you have a question you would like us to add just leave a comment with your name, rank, serial number and question. Thank you for your time.

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 Today I refurbished my duct tape sandals. Just a replacement for a frayed ribbon and a few strips of duct tape for the worn spots, and they’re good for another season. This year I even thought to use a drop of clear nail polish on the ends of the ribbon. Now my sandals could go for years on half a roll of duct tape.

Laugh if you will, but it feels good to have my feet in my duct tape sandals again. Decadent soul that I am, I even have plans to make a second pair in a different color. Ah, summer…

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 Yesterday I made my first real attempt at patternless sewing. (The nightgown and apron don’t count because they aren’t real clothes, and the funky skirtaloon thing I made once doesn’t count either. Just because, that’s why.)

 In less than three hours I cut a neckhole in the middle of some fabric, cut it out with big sleeves and a flared skirt, sewed up the sides, and hemmed all the rough edges. Now, I’ll grant you it’s not going to win any fashion design contests, but it’s very wearable. Yes, more than just wearable–it truly is very wearable because (a) I said so and (b) it has no glaring errors that annoy me when I when I wear it.

  The best part is that I actually enjoyed making it instead of merely enduring the process in order to achieve the finished product. I could get to enjoy this whole idea of sewing. That’s rather an odd thought for me.

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 It all started with a simple haiku-related question over dinner with the Ben-Ezra’s one night. Seth said, “Look up renga”, so I did and–once I figured out how to spell it–I was off on wild crazy renga adventure. Or something like that.

 Renga is japanese poetry written by a series of people. I thought this was cool, but how would I actually find a whole group of people who wanted to get together and write a japanese poem? Hence the blog.

  I know readers of this blog who are fully qualified to contribute to renga, and expect that several more here would be interested and capable enough to write a verse or two. At the very least you can read what we have so far and leave nice comments about it. (You did want to leave nice comments, didn’t you?) If you need it, there’s more explanation on how this works here. So here you go: have at it.

The Renga Blog 

  

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 I put together another Squidoo Lens, this time on Patternless Sewing.

 When I was twelve, a thirteen year old friend started teaching me to sew. We didn’t get very far because life got in the way, but we did make a nightgown in a way that very much appealed to me. She cut a rectangle for the skirt, gathered it, sewed it to a rectangle for the top, eyed up a neckline, and added sleeves she’d cut using a T-shirt for a pattern.

 This always seemed like a simple, reasonable way to make things. But when I found out that this was the realm of the experienced seamstress and an impressive ability, I was afraid to try it much on my own.

 That is, until a couple of days ago when I decided that was silly and sewing without a pattern would probably suit my sewing style much better than using a pattern. So I did a google search and started a squidoo lens on the subject. One of these days I’ll get around to doing some sewing…

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So there I was, balanced on a chair scraping wallpaer border off the wall with a barbecue spatula when the question wandered through my head. “What did I do in the past that put me here? Was there some event that shaped a future for me that included scraping wallpaer border off the wall with a barbecue spatula? Was there some way I could have avoided this fate?”  On the other hand it is an addition to my ever-expanding resume. ‘Nanny, playground equipment, chef, can peel wallpaper border if properly equipped with barbecue spatula.’

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  Last night I was working on a project and listening to a sermon from Ecclesiastes. The pastor, Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, asked his congregation if they had ever thought about their funerals, about who would be there and about what those would say.  I said, “Oh, yeah, I have” and Crystal said she has, too. We started talking about how we want our funerals and I said I want one like my mom’s. There were so many people at my mom’s funeral that the church couldn’t hold them all. And it wasn’t a tiny little building either. I estimate the building could seat about 130 people. And there were people standing in the back, there were people downstairs and there were people outside listening at the windows because they couldn’t even get into the building. That is cool. And that’s the kind of funeral I want.

Which is the reason I was working on the project I was working on. I was sewing clothing for a purse.

I was talking to a new friend of mine the other day and she showed me her purse. It is a good shape and a good size and it’s red. The only problem with this purse is that it has a pin-up girl from the forties on the front. Holly, my friend, likes the purse and she just makes sure she carries it smutty picture in, but I started wondering if there was something I could do about this distressing purse. We started joking about sewing clothes for the girl and making them detachable so you could change her clothes and make her color coordinate with your outfit. By the time we were designing accessories a little voice was piping up in my head. The voice said, “Why not?” I laughed at the voice and it said, “Okay, fine, but why not?” So there I was last night, making clothes for a purse. And I realized I was making these clothes because I can, Holly can’t and I want her to remember me if I die first.

I know I don’t have to worry about people out there remembering me. I don’t have to make anything that will last beyond me that the world can look at and remember me as some great person. But I do want my people to remember me. If I will be remembered as the crazy person who sews clothes for purses, tells wacky stories and makes you smile when it’s gray then I will die a happy person.  And I know that if I am going to get the funeral I want I need to pour myself into the people God has put around me. So today I’m sewing clothes. Maybe tomorrow it will be another project that only I can do because no one else is crazy enough to take it on. And if that’s what my life is like from here to the end that wouldn’t bother me a bit. And if people get up at my funeral and talk about the stories I told or the days I made them smile then I say that funeral would be near perfect.

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1. Do a Google search for eggplant parmesan. Click on the first recipe you see, think “Oh, that doesn’t look to hard.” and go in the kitchen to wing it. 2. Decide to start slicing zucchini even though there’s plenty of time before supper. Bread and fry it, pausing occasionally to shoo children out of the kitchen, tell them what you’re making, and then explain that it’s “just like zucchini parmesan except we’re out of parmesan cheese, so it’s zucchini parmesan without the parmesan. See?” Make sure you also bread (but do not fry) your fingers as you bread the zucchini. 3. Take the leftover tomato paste out the refrigerator. Throw it in a pot with some water and spices. Brown and add ground beef since you went to all the trouble to defrost it quickly back when you didn’t know what you were making for supper. 4. Notice that it’s now time for supper to be served and the zucchini parmesan without the parmesan still needs to cook for twenty minutes. Preheat the oven. 5. Layer zucchini, tomato sauce, feta cheese (as a parmesan substitute), and the last of the mozzarella cheese (which isn’t nearly enough) in the pan. 6. Let it cook until you can’t stand it any longer because it’s past time for supper. Serve it, ignoring that a few of the zucchini slices aren’t quite soft. 7. Watch as Moriah, Peter, and Samuel enjoy it, Toby eats five helpings of salad, and Elsie somehow leaves clean zucchini on her plate and eats everything else off of it. Watch as the dog eats all the scraps and begs for more. The dog eats zucchini? Overall, a smashing success for zucchini parmesan without the parmesan!

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No, no, not two saris. It’s warm enough just wearing one; can you imagine wearing twelve yards of cloth all at once? What I mean is I’m going to try again. Yesterday I tried wrapped clothing (the term sari is really too specific) and kept thinking up ways to make it better. It was staying okay, but it was just drooping a little and surely I could fix that without too much trouble…and I’d end up re-wrapping the whole thing until I got fed up with it. But today I wear my six yards of cloth as something that looks a bit like pantaloons–Theresa says it looks like the longyi worn in Burma–and I will not adjust it except in case of emergency. I like the idea of wrapped clothing and I will enjoy wearing it. I refuse to contemplate otherwise. Did I mention that it’s very comfortable?

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