Knot Tops Fascinate Me

The next podcast episode should be posted some time this morning.

I picked up this Burda pattern yesterday when I was in town:

I love knot tops. I just like the way they look and fit. I took the instructions out of the pattern envelope and puzzled over them, but I suspect I’ll have to make the top to understand how things go together. (Also, Burda instructions tend to be—ahem—brief.) This pattern is new, so there aren’t yet any reviews on the PatternReview.com website.

We’ll see if I can squeeze out some time this week to make this.

I also stopped at the blueprint copy shop and had them print out some patterns for me. I went on a bit of a pattern-buying spree last week. I bought the Sinclair Skye Shorts and Skort, the Juno zip-up jacket, and the Linda twist-front top. The Linda top and the Burda top look similar, but the construction appears to be quite different.

I also had the copy shop print the Declic top from Atelier Scammit and the Summer Caye pattern from Love Notions. The Declic top is a free pattern. Karina, at the Lifting Pins and Needles YouTube channel, did a review of this pattern last week. Karina and I have the same fitting issues—she is 5’8” tall—and we like the same clothing styles, so when she recommends a pattern, I tend to listen. I bought the Summer Caye pattern on her recommendation, as well, because she gave instructions on how she adjusted the rise on those pants to fit her. I suspect I’ll have to make a similar adjustment.

I have plenty to keep me busy this winter. And that doesn’t even include the quilt patterns I want to try. I really want to make a curvy log cabin quilt using the Creative Grids ruler.

Joann Fabrics was a mess yesterday. It sounds like many of the stores are down to skeleton crews of two or three employees, all while being expected to carry the workload of twice that many. I felt bad for the young woman at the checkout counter; she was trying to accommodate a customer who was unhappy about a pricing issue, and there were six of us waiting in line. The only other employee in the store was at the cutting table, and that line had several people in it, too. These corporate decisions to cut staff but attempt to provide the same level of service are idiotic.

Our fire department also had to respond to a terrible fatality accident yesterday. A cyclist was hit and killed, and when I got home, the husband told me he had been one of the first firefighters on the scene. (He just happened to be driving that way to get to a job.) The way people drive around here is maddening.

I follow Dave Collum, the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell, on Twitter/X, and yesterday, he posted this:

I have this terrible feeling that we are witnessing the early stages of the Fourth Turning and somehow many of us thought we could watch it from outside the splash zone: "Oh. It will be bad but I will be OK." That's not what Fourth Turnings do.

The husband teases me about thinking that I am going to watch the apocalypse on TV in real time from the comfort of our living room, but I think that’s my coping mechanism when things start to feel like they are spiraling out of control.

Speaking of the TV—we ditched Dish Network last year because all we have been watching is YouTube Premium. We also bought a new TV to replace the one we got in 2008. We have an antenna on top of the house, but it never was able to pick up more than a couple of channels. On a whim, I scanned the channels from the antenna with the new TV and lo and behold!—it picked up over a dozen digital broadcasts, including the networks from Spokane! I doubt we will watch much network TV at this point, but the husband was able to watch the Steelers play the Browns last night. I went to bed and read a book. I am done with the Browns.

I will like having the option to watch some of the Spokane channels, however, especially during football season.