A year ago my sister gave me some fabrics and asked me to make her pillows. The fabric didn't all match, so it took some time to find pieces for the backs. A year on, I've managed to sew a single pillow and two pair (the sumo print pillow has a match, too).
I have no idea where the print fabrics came from, but when I went to find a match for it (chocolate linen), the ladies at the fabric store went crazy for the sumo wrestlers.
I used Kwiksew 3844 (a pattern meant for knits), and the Grainline tutorial for flat bias necklines, to make, not one, but three tank tops.
The fabrics I used were a left-over purple silk, a funny stretch satin print, and an orange chiffon.
Claire and I spent 8 days visiting Barcelona, with day trips to Figueres (Dali museum!) and Sitges (oh la, the Mediterranean!!!!!).
Top three favourite travel moments:
1) The bike tour we took with Fat Tire Bike Tours our first full day there;
2) A day in Sitges (one day on the beach and I am so tanned);
3) The pintxos we ate, the cider and rosado we drank, the hilarious British couple we met, all at a fantastic Basque-style tapas bar we found in the El Born district.
In addition to Girls Like Us, which I had started long before we left and which I finished on a train ride from Figueres, I packed Your Voice in my Head (Emma Forrest, 2011) and Babette's Feast (Isak Dinesen, published as a short story in 1958).
I read Your Voice in my Head on the beach in Sitges, lying on a lounge chair, facing the sea, trying to stay hydrated with bottle after bottle of water. It is not a typical beach read, but in a way, reading it under the most brilliant white sun was the best way to read it.
My travel companion, Claire, and I had planned a second trip to Sitges before our flight home the following day. I read Babette's Feast in a Starbucks in Barcelona, where we took cover from the rain, trying to save the day with a latte and free Wi-Fi. Babette's Feast is a lovely short story (turned movie), which I finished before I finished my drink.
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (2010); The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith (2002); Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (2010); Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards (1988); and Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller (2008).
Girls Like Us was the second 1970's music scene biography I read this summer. I began it a few weeks ago and just finished it on a train ride last week, breaking up the reading with many magazine and newspaper articles in the interim. It inspired me to buy a copy of Carole King's Tapestry at the record store yesterday, an album which topped charts for more than six years and won four Grammy's in 1972. Carole King was the first solo female artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and the first female to win the Grammy Award for Song of the Year. Tapestry is still one of the best selling albums of all time.
