28 April 2012

Late to the PJ Party!


Despite the racket you are all making at Karen's Pyjama Party I managed to sleep until almost noon--in my defense, I as up when the party started still wrestling my PJs into being. But I'm here now enjoying the festivities and trying to catch up. Thanks for inviting me, Karen!

1. The jammies as of this time yesterday:
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I'm using Butterick 6837 because I own it, OK? The fabric is quilting cotton that must have been $1.99/yard at FabricMart, otherwise I can't account for it being in my stash. Close up it's fairly pretty but back up a few feet and it's a kind of muddy brown. A dead simple make, complicated only by my propensity to pick up essential tools (scissors, tweezers, elastic) and drop them into some other dimension where they hide for hours at a time then reappear when I've given up looking for them. Oh, and I took Karen's advice to achieve crotch awesomeness by stitching from the seam intersection, but failed to give any thought to how this might work on a serger. But here they are, already broken in with a night's (and morning's) sleep.

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Pay no attention to the hobbity woman in the middle of the picture--look at my beautiful bougainvillea and plumbago!

As for reading material, my bedside is littered with crossword puzzles, sewing books, London Reviews of Books, Ulysses (still and probably forever), and law school textbooks. Plus this:
Cover
My history with Dorothy Dunnett goes way, way back--I read the first three (of six) books of The Lymond Chronicles while Dorothy Dunnett was still working on the fourth and had to wait, haunting bookstores and libraries through high school and college, for her to finish the story in 1975. Now Lady Dunnett has a huge international following, but then I was all alone in my obsession. I waited impatiently for her to write some more historical fiction but after several years I gave up. I graduated from law school and had my second child in 1986 and was far to preoccupied to notice that The House of Niccoló, a prequel to my beloved Lymond Chronicles, had begun to appear. I didn't learn about this series until all eight volumes were published, Lady Dunnett had died, and an idle search on the World Wide Web brought it all back to me. These books are wonderful but extremely dense with historical detail and literary allusion, complicated plots tightly woven into fifteenth-century politics and trade, demanding (and rewarding) intense concentration that I seem to have in much shorter supply today than I did forty years ago.

What was the question?

18 comments:

  1. lovely pjs. these party is great way to meet other talented sewist xx

    http://houseofpinheiro.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/pyjama-party-live.html

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  2. I adore the Lymond series, not so keen on Niccolo. But then maybe that was because I was in the opposite situation to you - I had to wait for the Niccolo books to be published and my attention wandered, while the Lymond books were all already available when I read them (just had to wait for my turn at the library).

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  3. heheheh I think your sewing tools go to that dimension were all the singleton socks and mismatched teaspoons go to. Nice pyjamas!

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  4. Very nice comfy looking PJs, and I think it's usually best to get to a party a bit late... Your sewing tools are probably going to the same fun sewing place that my small essential pattern pieces (waistbands, pockets and flys) head to :-). They do seem to come back eventually...

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  5. Lovely bougainvillea! And the PJ's look super comfy. I'll have a look out for those books, thanks for the recommendation!

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  6. Your pyjamas look real comfy, and I love that print. Hmmm, the book series sounds very very intriguing, thanks for the recommendation!

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  7. OMG, i swear i must've make my PJs from the very same cotton fabric as yours for the party, also from FabricMart!!! hehehe... check this out: http://farsland.blogspot.com/2012/04/good-morning-usa.html

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  8. I love your pajamas! The photo is great too: did you notice that the pajama pants are similar in color to the wooden fence and the tank top to the flowers? It's like camo for the backyard!

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  9. Love those $1.99 fabric deals! And I'm glad you were rewarded by that idle search... I hate finding a good author and then waiting and waiting while nothing comes out. I mean, I completely understand that writers aren't machines, but I know I've forgotten about things I've liked!

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  10. Oooh, I'm so glad you posted this, I'm unfamiliar with this author and I'm intrigued! This has been so great for reading suggestions.

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  11. Thank you so much for your gorgeous comment on my blog yesterday; it really made my day!

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  12. Terrific PJs. Perfect for a night of reading!

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  13. I have not come across these books and needing to get myself reading more ( I find I am not a voracious reader at all now I am much older) I shall have to look the author and series up.Thanks!

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    1. I'm so glad you said that about reading and getting older. An awful lot of the books I've "read" lately have been sewing books, and mostly I look at the pictures!

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    2. Yes..thank God for picture books!

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  14. Goodness I am late to this post but I couldn't let a chance to connect with a fellow Dorothy Dunnett fanatic pass me by. And one who prefers Francis to Niccolo just as I do!

    I came across her when only Game of Kings and Queen's Play were written - way before they were called the Lymond Chronicles. It was h@ll waiting for her to write the rest of them, wasn't it? Niccolo is as interesting as Francis but there's just something missing.

    Oh man. I could talk about this forever. I don't personally know a soul who has read them besides me though there are plenty of her devotees out there on the ole interwebs.

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    1. Welcome fellow fanatic! Where are you located? We'll have to call a meeting of the Thady Boy Ballagh fan club!
      Here is a review of both the Lymond and the Niccolo books written as the latter series was finished. Enjoy.

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  15. Forgive me if this repeats. My first attempt at a reply to you seems to be lost in the ether.

    I am in Kansas City where there are apparently more DD fans that I would have suspected. She stopped here on a speaking tour many years ago and the event space was packed.

    Did you know that Karen of http://sewingbytheseatofmypants.blogspot.com/ is also a devotee? I found that out when she blogged a couple of years ago about visiting Bruges / Brugge. I was (and still am) envious.

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