Internet Searches: old women in leggings

I check my statistics on WordPress’s admin page and there I find the search terms people have used that has brought them to my blog. It lets me know what people are interested in. You all check your stats, don’t you?

Well, this search term I didn’t really want to know about: old women in leggings

I guess I should be a good sport. But ewwwww.

There’s creepy folks out there who are NOT interested in sewing their own leggings or embellishing their boring linen summer dresses but I didn’t want to know about these idiots people. Now these shots are getting hit regularly and maybe I’ll have to hide it from public viewing.

Kinda funny, though, in a sad sort of way.

450 Posts

According to WP my last post is number 450. And I forgot to mention it. Just the same way I have forgotten to celebrate the blogiversary every year.

And I was married for almost 20 years before I finally confirmed the exact date for our anniversary. That’s OK, Husband didn’t know for sure either. We’d just try to go out for dinner sometime during the estimated date.

I don’t know why.

This calls for a glass of wine! Join me?

Slow Gardening

10 days of cold weather and way too much rain have made working the soil impossible. I had to tear up my beautifully laid out garden to put in a drainage ditch

It didn’t save some of the tomato plants I’d bought. I didn’t start my own seeds indoors this year. RIP goodly tomatoes!

But today it’s over 70 and I pulled the last of the carrots. They’ve been in the ground way too long.

I am not happy with this year’s crop of carrots. They were too small in winter and now that they reached size they have started to grow a hard core. So much for Nantes Coreless carrots packed in the Ferry Morse Planting Strips. They are rather disappointing. I’ll go back to hand planting my old way and not try to winter over the crop.

I have more tomato plants and some green and hot peppers to put in but will have to wait until the soil dries out more.

I planted Diva cucumber seeds today and dug and transplanted the Zeyphr squash plant seedlings that I started in April. The peas and sugar snap peas seemed to have survived well but I don’t know how the garlic will react to this soggy land. Most of the lettuce seed washed away and will have to be replanted.

Shoveling Mud

After 2 days of cold rain, flooding in the garden has threatened to drown the new peas, lettuce, zephyr squash and newly planted tomatoes. The garlic aren’t supposed to have poor drainage either, not ever.

I took a couple of hours this morning to dig trenches to drain the water. When I laid the rows out this way we were in a drought cycle and I was focused on holding rain in the rows by leaving the grass in between the rows. Now I have had to drain off the lake that each row became.

What a mess! As I worked the trench filled up immediately and water rushed to the back of the garden. Here the rush of water is down by half of what it was. And even now, hours later there is still water running through the trench.

Gaely GoLightly, The Hunting Dog, got into the action by deciding that little particles swirling down the trenches were something that she must capture. She dove right in to her job and worked along beside me. Westies are pack animals and we do everything together

Westies are bred to “go to ground” after varmints and love digging in the dirt. No lie. This Westie loves water, too. Bath time!

She didn’t want one and she really hates being photographed. Clean Grumpy Dog

And The Dog don’t pose neither.

She’s so helpful! If I could just teach her to run the vacuum.

Tricked! Things Are Not Always As They Appear

There’s been some discussion about the appropriateness of honesty and critique of sewn garments shown on the internet. My position is that photos and even eyeballing from a distance IRL (in real life) cannot show the salient points needed in the analysis of anyone’s garment making efforts. Here’s a story to illuminate my point:

Sunday evening Husband and I took the Dog for a walk at the local woodland lake park. It was around 6pm and the woods were damp from a light drizzle and beginning to get dark.

Then, something came into view that shattered that dusky softness.

(Please indulge me: I didn’t have my camera with me so I returned the next morning to get documentation to share this story. The light was that of the impending dark so you will have to imagine that night is falling.)

The woods were lush as we walked along the trail

when we were startled to see a Mourning Dove in an odd position and motionless on a low tree branch

By its position I thought the Dove seemed in serious distress and I didn’t want to cause it further angst by getting too close

My eyes couldn’t make out why there was a red spot on its neck so I got this close and stood completely still. A healthy dove doesn’t have red spots on its neck. I could only think that it was wounded by gunshot or had a parasite or had suffered a viral attack of some kind. Bird virus? Oh NO!

Husband and the Dog went to get the car and see if they could find a Park Attendant to help and I stood, silent and keeping my distance, waiting to see if the bird changed positions. Nothing happened for 20 minutes or so but finally my team members returned without finding anyone in authority that might have a way to handle a diseased or injured animal.

We got a bit closer from the opposite side

and finally our eyes were able to pick out the hanger eyelet on the top

Yup, it was a decoy! I had been carefully guarding a DECOY. What I had thought was possibly part of an injury was simply some leaf litter that had fallen onto the red spot

We’re not hunters; we hardly expected a plastic bird clipped to a tree branch

We laughed and laughed, so relieved that we were not watching a Mourning Dove die in the woods.

You can imagine that I was very glad Husband had not found a park employee to drag back to see my humiliation!

So, jumping in to make an analysis of the proper fit or hang or suitability of a garment is something I would really, really hesitate to do. It’s been definitely proved to me that my eyes can’t be trusted to discern an ultimate reality. I certainly wouldn’t want something I said, rightly or wrongly, to adversely affect the future work of any anyone.

I’d love to hear what you all have to say!

Following Flikr: How to Follow a Non-Blogger

Do you have a fabulous online favorite person who doesn’t write a blog but chooses the much simpler format of putting up photos of their work in a Flikr album?

Did you know that you can follow a person’s Flikr pictures? Sure you can!

Just click on the person or group’s “photostream” and copy and paste that URL into your news and blog aggregator .

It should look like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/XXXXXXX@XXX/ The first 7 X’s are numbers and the last 3 are a mix of alphabet and numerals.

That’s how I’ve been following Ann Rowley, the winner of the Great British Sewing Bee, for the past three years. I don’t miss a photo and can keep track of all the lush projects that she publishes for public viewing there

Each picture will be treated as a separate post.

Much easier than trying to track all the entries in a message board or writing or reading a whole blog.

Here’s the Stitchery’s Flikr URL http://www.flickr.com/photos/77314006@N00/

Garment Making in Bangladesh

Today someone in Dhaka, Bangladesh, searched The Stitchery for “shirtmaking” posts. It reminded me that yet another disaster has befallen the largely female work force in the garment factories there.

According to Reuters, Bangladesh is number 2 in the world in apparel exports.

Yesterday, April 24 2013, an 8 story building that housed an indoor market, a bank and 5 garment factories collapsed 20 miles outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The numbers vary: 250 dead, 2000 pulled from the rubble alive, 1500 injured, 1000′s unaccounted for.

The 9th floor of the building was still under construction and had been certified as safe only the day before when large cracks developed. The owner of the building has been arrested and locals are calling for him to be sentenced to death. Some of the garment factory owners are also being arrested.

My heart is breaking for these low-paid employees. Shirtmaking shouldn’t be this dangerous!

Edited April 28 The building owner has finally been detained, he was not arrested immediately because he could not be found after Tuesday. And he said the building had been inspected but the police report that they advised the building was unsafe. There are also reports that 2 of the factory owners forced their employees to go to work. Politics and avoidance of responsibility make reporting almost impossible.