Fly Away with Me

Thirty-thousand feet up in the air a circle of sunlight on a plastic tray table transports me further than the plane I'm in ever could, to a time and place lodged in the happiest corners of my memories, where I keep Christmases and home-comings and everyday bits of my childhood that make tears well up in the corners above my smiling cheeks like dewdrops in the creases of a daisy.

The warm beam hugs my small frame as I lie on the floor, stocking feet swinging in the air, chin perched on tiny  hands above elbows planted in rough gold carpet.  The crowd from the tv screaming behind the roaring white noise of jet engines and oxygen circulation systems, as though even an Airbus can yell, "go Pack, go."  My mother cheers.  The man behind me snores. I ask my daddy for some more popcorn.  I take another sip of my hot tea.

The bright light creates rainbows on my paper at the edges of the window's shadow, rainbows on the golden carpet fibers enthralling my curious young eyes.  I glide my hand, smoothing the paper, watching a hundred dazzling, sparkling stars dance and twirl on the plastic wall and someone else's seat, my aging eyes behind corrective lenses still enthralled by the magic splendor of prisms in the sun.

Outside, the dark ridges of the Appalachians flow under a sheer veil of mist as a river winds off in the distance. Outside, the world is brilliant in the gleaming white of a Wisconsin winter, clear and cold.  Skies of the brightest blue.

I am grateful to be tucked inside, in my sunbeam, warm and glowing, from the love around me, from the memories inside me.  In my mind.  In my heart.

For Rain or Shine

“Mommy, can we do the umbrella class at Bungalow?”  “Well, ok,” she said, neither of us realizing what we were getting ourselves into.  I don’t know what we thought making an umbrella entailed.  A couple hours?  Some scissors?  Magic?  Well, it turns out to be a little more than a couple hours,  a little more than some scissors, and no magic.

The hardest part was choosing the fabric.  I had a concept in my head, but nothing was singing out to me, and the fabrics I kept finding myself drawn to didn’t match a thing in my wardrobe.  Mommy, however, little over achiever that she is, found her fabric right away.  She was a good deal of the way into assembling her umbrella before I had my fabric selected.

Mommy chose two complimentary fabrics: a cute  print on white with 1950s-style Parisian women doing things around Paris, shopping, sitting at a cafe, standing by the Champs Elyse or near the Eifel Tower; and a large grey polka dot on white. 

I chose a black and white print of cityscape silhouettes, people in business clothes going here and there with briefcases interspersed with large round clock faces and park bench scenes. I liked the modern, busy city feel of the images combined with the old-fashioned simplicity of black & white.  It seemed perfect for a busy city like D.C.  I had some trouble choosing a complimentary fabric, but eventually went with a black, grey and white flower on a variegated pink background.  I hedged a bit, looked at lots of fabrics, and pretty much just went with this combo because I was tired of looking and race-horse Mommy was on her third lap.  And being the little trouble-maker that I am, that wasn’t enough.  I decided I wanted a binding along the bottom and picked black with small white polka dots.  Mommy and the lady helping us, Peggy, cut the polka dots into strips and ironed it into double-fold bias tape.

First step to making umbrellas is to cut out your 8 panels.  Then – here’s where things seem a little backwards – you hem them each individually.  Since I was putting on binding instead of hemming, I had to sew each bias strip onto the bottom of my panels while Mommy hemmed hers (well after Mommy hemmed hers cuz I’m a slow poke).

Next, you sew all the pieces together, being sure to leave an opening at the top for the umbrella post.  You also make a strap to wrap around the umbrella and hold it closed and stitch that onto the umbrella.  It turns out those are the easy parts.  Then, you put your machine away and take out the hand needle.  Oh boy.

The umbrella frame is kind of scary on its own, like a giant pokey spider.   It comes with 9 parts to be assembled onto the frame, 8 little metal tips and 1 cap.  The metal tips are sewn onto the umbrella covering and then lock onto the ends of the metal frame.  The tips are sort of like little metal tube socks.  At the top end, there’s holes in the metal across from each other for stitching the tips to the umbrella.  It’s a little tricky at first, and it helps a lot to safety pin the tips to the umbrella covering and slip onto the frame first, then slip them off the frame one-at-a-time to sew individually, removing the safety pin after a few stitches.  The really cool part about this step is you get to see how your umbrella’s going to look!

We had to go home before I got to sewing on the tips, but Mommy was able to finish her umbrella during the class.  After she sewed on all the tips, Peggy helped her glue the cap onto the top of the umbrella.

Next, Mommy sewed each seam to the umbrella frame.  When she got home, she added a button and button-hole to the closure strap.

 

 

Voila!  A beautiful umbrella.

 

Mommy’s going to spray hers with waterproofing so that it can actually be used as an umbrella.  I want mine to be a parasol for the hot D.C. summer sun, so I’m not spraying it with waterproofing.  I originally wanted to add lace to it, before I picked out my fabrics, and am still toying with the idea.  But for now, here’s my parasol.

 

It wound up perfectly matching the outfit I had on that day, the polka-dotted side of my wrap skirt and a light pink blouse with black and white spectator stilettos.  Goes ok with my suit, too.

Apparently, the Okapi Says “Meow,” Too

People seem to always think my Halloween costume is a cat.  At least this year, it was only one person.  There were a lot of interesting guesses: cat, reindeer, giraffe.  The giraffe was actually the closest.  And I’ll cut them some slack; a lot of people don’t know what an okapi is, unlike a zebra.
So yes, this year, I was an okapi.  My second-favorite animal, after a giraffe.  Okapis are actually the nearest living relative to a giraffe.  They have shorter necks, but very long tongues.  Look ‘em up; they’re pretty neat.

Here’s an okapi.

Okapi CC-BY Charles Barilleaux, available on Flickr.

And here’s me dressed like an okapi.

As is the custom, I made my own (um, custom) costume.

I ordered a brown sweater dress from Amazon, figuring at least when I’m done I’ll have a nice new sweater dress.  I wear my sweater dresses a little longer  than was suitable for okapi-making, so the first thing I did was tack the hem of the dress up quite a bit.   (Right: actual length of  PattyBoutik Women’s Cowl Neck Long Sleeve Knit Dress.)

I had ordered women’s brown tights and white leg warmers from Amazon as well, but the leg warmers were cream and the tights were dancer-leg brown, so neither of those worked.  I decided to go with an old pair of brown tights I had even though I was originally thinking I wanted something thicker.  They worked.  (Left: Okapi legs.)

For the bottom of the legs and the forearms, I used little girls’ tights.  I got size 12-14 for the legs and toddlers’ 2-4 for the arms.  I cut the feet off (and hemmed them and sent them to Munchkinhead) and cut leg lengths suitable for their purposes.  Then, I cut rings out of the rest of the leg.  It worked really well.

For the bum stripes, I used the top of the toddlers’ tights because they had the cable-knit pattern all the way up to the top, unlike the girls’ tights, which had a sort of control-top looks-like-tightie-whities thing going on.  I hand stitched the whole thing with big stitches in back so it’ll be  easy to remove without snagging the dress.  I sewed the bum stripes with the dress on my dress dummy to ensure everything would stretch correctly once on me.  First, I sewed the top down on the full piece.  Then, I cut one stripe, sewed it’s bottom and the top of the next.  Then cut the next stripe, and so-on and so-on.  (Right, above: Okapi bum stripes in progress.)

The bum needed one more thing after that, a tail.  I bought some chenille, fake fur and quilt batting at Jo-Ann’s.  I cut a wide strip of the chenille, making the stripes in the fabric vertical.   I cut a matching width of  batting and basted the two together.  I cut a piece of fake fur about two inches long and basted that to the center of the bottom of the fabric and batting.  I folded it in half, including the fur, and stitched across the bottom and up the long side.  (Right: basting and stitching tail.)

 Then, I had to turn the tail.  This was almost as difficult as turning a Barbie sleeve, and on top of that, I could hear my friends @tromboneforhire and @jackgibson laughing hysterically in my head.  Eventually, I got it fully turned and sewed it to the top of the bum.

Lastly, I needed headwear.  Mommy and I realized while looking at photos of okapis and the stuffed okapis in her zoo, that okapis have horns.  I needed horns and ears.

For the ears, I found giant brown pipe cleaners at JoAnn’s.  Who knew such things existed?!  (Probably Munchkinhead…)  They were super easy to bend into the right shape and wrap around a brown headband.  I have enough left to make a nice monkey tail if anyone ever needs one.  (Right: Ears in progress.)

For the horns, I used another  brown headband and Styrofoam cones covered in brown felt.  I tacked the felt to the cones with small pins and used scraps of felt pinned to the bottom, around the headband, to attach the cones.
 

I found out the day before Halloween that only male okapis have horns.  I wasn’t ready to give up on them because 1) they took some effort, and 2) the cones were expensive!  I had to buy a pack of 6 for $9.  One of my coworkers saved the day by declaring that it was fine, I was just a transgendered okapi.

One thing I know for sure, I was a happy okapi.

Okapi with her friends at their Halloween party.