A BIENTôT À PARIS!

Last blog post before I leave for Paris! I am getting SOOOO excited! I managed to make one last pair of pants to go in my travel wardrobe...

I used my 

"Trifecta"pants pattern and a gorgeous cotton/silk blend cross-dyed fabric

from Marcy Tilton.

I am pleased and highly relieved that my foot is much better and will not slow me down in Paris. I went twice a week for three weeks to my chiropractor who specializes in sports injuries, and he performed the magic!

Teddy has continued to dominate our lives...he is growing so tall, and he 

LEAPS at the counters in the kitchen in the hopes of getting up there. Luckily, when we built the house, we added several inches to the height of the counters.

We'll be safe for a little while...

Here he is, flying back from a run on the (covered) pool.He seems to like it equally, with or without water...

Even though we haven't gotten lower temperatures in our area, the trees and vineyards are turning colors and my thoughts turn to heartier fall dishes.

I made "Drunken Beans" from a recipe from Rancho Gordo and they were wonderful!

This morning, I started a new-to-me recipe;Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with

Caramelized Onions and Apple Confit. I chose not to use my Instant Pot, but to do it in a Dutch oven on stove-top and then in the oven for 2 1/2 hours.

Here are the onions, caramelizing...

and here is the pot coming out of the oven. I'll serve it with wide noodles and roasted delicata squash. YUMMMMMMMY!

No, he didn't get any, and yes, it was a fantastic 5-star meal!

I've done my travel wardrobe planning a little differently this year...here are the "finalists" from which I will choose:

Let me know what you think of this way. Now the hard part comes, deciding which items stay, and which have to go.

I will be joining up with Patti's Visible Monday, so come on over and say hi!

I probably will not blog from Paris; I'll have only my iPad and very little free time. I think I'll 
follow Shams' example and post pictures on Instagram instead. I'm mhoutz4 if you want to
follow me.

TTYL

YAY FOR SEWING MOJO!

The sewing mojo chez Houtz has been strong lately! I made another Paris Piece,
a very textured silver tunic to go with many of my already-sewn jackets.

The pattern is my old friend B5526, with added pockets and a stand-up ruffled collar. Shams from Communing with Fabric chose the fabric for me, a textured synthetic from Fabrix several years ago.

It enhances many of the fabrics in my Paris Wardrobe-to-be, so I made it so that I could use it as a layer, as well as on its own.

Here it is under the Minoru

under the Giant Houndstooth jacket I made for Portugal

and under my knit vest from last year

I'm very pleased with it!  Here is a peek at the new hanging rack I got to put the Paris wardrobe possibilities on...more on this later.

After I finished that, I went to work on my "Franken Pant" pattern, which is 
Marcy Tilton's V8929 plus my custom pattern from Lynda Maynard. I'm trying to get the combined patterns (that's the Franken part) to the point that I can cut them out, serge all the edges and sew them together in a day. The first one was a wadder, the second ok, but meh...and here's the third one in a stretch cotton from someone on Etsy...

o

It gets better every time! While I was doing all this sewing, I listened to the
final two books of Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes trilogy, Finders Keepers and End of Watch.  They're pretty good...I've not been a Stephen King  fan in the past, but I enjoyed Mr. Mercedes so I decided to follow through on the last two. After those, I started Barkskins, Annie Proulx's new book. It's loooooong and fabulous. I'm about ⅔ finished. All these audio books are available on Audible Books.

Before I bring you up to date on the puppies (I know some of you are mostly interested in them....!) here's a RTW outfit from Sun Kim that I had to have...

I've already worn it several times and I love it!

Our beloved housekeeper gifted me with this awesome charm "bracelet" for my birthday...her sister made it and I'm so touched by it!

It's a spool of thread, a button, a dress form, a measuring tape, a thimble and a pair of scissors with a rose. Love it!

And one more thing...there were quite a few questions after my last post about  my raincoat...here are some answers...

I didn't line it or add inside pockets as I wanted it to be as lightweight as possible.
I did not shorten it.
The top in "the wineglass picture" was the top of this Alembika outfit that I bought in Oregon

...

The sheer sleeves belong to my "Sleevey Wonder"!

And HERE are the latest pictures of the puppies...(they are English Cocker Spaniels, blue roan, and we're only getting ONE although Dave has been wondering if we should get TWO
NO I said...

..

I have a very cute video of them tussling with each other, yipping and GROWLING...
I'll try to up load it.

Well, I tried twice and I couldn't get it to work... 

I'm headed over to Patti's Visible Monday...come see us!

TTYL
SaveSave

POSSIBLE PARIS PIECES #1 and #2

As I've mentioned before, I am going to Paris in November with Marcy and Kathrine Tilton (squeal!)My friend Shams is going, and possibly my friend Joan.
As you and I know full well, I could simply use the wardrobe from my recent trip  to Portugal...it worked well, I loved it, it was fall-in-Europe, etc. 

BUT

I would miss out on one of my favorite parts of travel...MAKING A NEW

WARDROBE...

so here is the first key element of the wardrobe...it's the Minoru Jacket by Sewaholic which I auditioned here 6 weeks ago. You will notice I am changing

my color scheme a little   by using a claret red. I fell in love with this French

Jacquard from Emma One Sock...

Linda didn't have quite enough for my jacket, but my dear friend Shams had

bought the last yard on the bolt and generously let me have it! THANKS, SHAMS!

Isn't that a gorgeous color? The fabric was quite light weight, so I interfaced the whole thing with a medium weight fusible from Fashion Sewing Supply. I will still need a heavier coat/jacket but this was the fabric that sparked my creativity.

I also made the turtleneck top, a modification of V 8691,an OOP pattern by Katherine Tilton. The fabric is a silky double knit from JoAnns.

(showing off my roses and wisteria a little...)

I wore the jacket to a funeral yesterday so that I could assess its wearability...

It got an A+!

We have been blessed here in our valley with a really superb year for wildflowers...the first in several years. Friday, Dave, Paddy and I took a

picnic up our local mountain, 10 miles from our house, and enjoyed the beauty.

This is known locally as "Grass Mountain" and right now, it's glowing neon orange from the poppies (and lupines, which you can't distinguish here)

Such a beautiful place...Dave and I spent the New Millennium Eve here,
toasting the end of the century with a bottle of champagne.

HOWEVER, there is no gain without pain, or something like that...and we have both been suffering from horrendous allergies all week. Luckily I recovered by

the weekend, as my eyes had been looking just like my friend from Papua New

Guinea, here...

Here's a photo of Paddy, me and the roses (and the sunspots)....

.

I will be hopping over to Visible Monday at Patti's Not Dead Yet Style in a few hours...come on over!

TTYL

MEOW!

I'm not sure whose hide this is supposed to be...

but it would surely be fearsome to come upon the owner in the jungle...

This lightweight jacket isThe Minoru Jacket, by Sewaholic Patterns. My friend Shams recently made this and I fell in love with the pattern, particularly the collar. This is an audition for a pattern to use for a Paris Coat; I used a cotton
stretch jacquard I bought some time ago from Emma One Sock.

I made a few changes to the pattern, eliminating the hood, the sleeve bands, the elastic at the waist,and darting the shoulders rather than gathering them. I also lengthened the jacket by 4 inches, added fish-eye darts, front and back, and added two zippered welt pockets. I lined it with a lively polka dot.

The jury is still out on whether I'll use this pattern for the Paris Coat...I'll wear it for a few weeks and see what I think.

Enough people have expressed curiosity as to my "saving" the Cutting Line Designs Light and Shadow Vest  in my previous post, that I decided to explain what happened and how I fixed it...non-sewers may skip down to the Food Porn...

 The pattern consists of a right front, a left front, the back and the cowl collar. The two fronts are quite different in order to provide the asymmetrical shaping.
The problem was definitely "operator error"...even after close to 70 years of sewing, I still need to be aware!

 The fabric, a striped silk dupioni, looks the same on both sides. I cut each front out as indicated, and (I thought) labeled them with pieces of tape as I do when
using fabric that is identical on both sides. 

 One of the joys of using Cutting Line Designs patterns is the written instruction, 
which is always clearly written, illustrated and covers all details. Per the instructions, I serged the hems of the front pieces, folded up the hems, mitered the corners and used Steam-A-Seam to fuse the hems. Then I top-stitched them. When I started to join the two fronts to the back, I realized I had somehow hemmed the left front on the right side of the garment. And since I had serged, mitered, hemmed, fused and topstitched, I couldn't undo 
my work. So I covered the error with bias tape, added the same tape to the other side and to the back, so it looked (unless you were too close) like it had been planned!

My Instant Pot got more of a work out lately; for Valentine's Day dessert, I made this

It's a Meyer Lemon Cheesecake made in the pressure cooker...and it was

VERY GOOD...we seldom eat dessert, so it was a treat!

I also used the I.P. to make the herbed beans in this recipe...

Roasted Halibut with Herbed Corona Beans...also very good...

And tonight, we are having 

Swiss Chard with Borlotti Beans (Verdure con Fagioli). I am working on using

up my Bean Club beans!

A few more days in my studio, then DD and DSIL are coming up for the weekend. Yay!

I'm linking up with Patti's "Visible Monday". Come on over!

TTYL