An Orange Kind of Day

I started with a 25# bag of carrots and ended up with 19 pints and a couple of containers of carrot sticks for snacking:

A few carrots that didn’t make it into jars went into the sausage and lentil soup we had for dinner.

I am glad to have the carrots done. I am going to wait and tackle the rest of the pumpkins next week. I need to do some sewing today.

I tried so hard this year to prioritize sewing over some of my other responsibilities, with mixed success. I don’t want sewing to be the reward for crossing everything else off my list. It should be at the top of my list. I would love to teach more classes and do more with the podcast, but finding the time to do that is difficult.

I said to the husband that I go on road trips to get away from my responsibilities here for a bit, but being away doesn’t give me much opportunity to sew, either. I joked that I need to tell everyone I am going away for a week but not leave the house. People will assume I am not available and I’ll have uninterrupted time to work on my projects.

The husband got to spend time by himself over Thanksgiving and it was good for him. When people find out that I travel without him, the reaction is usually one of horror. How could I leave my husband at home over a holiday? Easily. He doesn’t like to travel and he loves the opportunity to spend time in his shop crossing things off his to-do list. Why would I want to make someone I love miserable by forcing him to do something he doesn’t enjoy?

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I am going to cut out hoodies today and I am also going to cut out the pieces for the Kanoko tote bag from Waffle patterns. I pulled a chunk of gray waxed canvas out of the stash for that one. My initial assessment is that the design is very similar in size and style to my beloved travel tote, but I need to make one up to compare. If it ends up being a good pattern for that kind of tote, I want to make it in a bonded nylon, which is a fabric similar to that in the original tote.

And I was thinking about the Arare Pullover, also from Waffle Patterns:

The suggested fabrics are cotton poplin, denim, canvas, gabardine, etc. I wonder if this also could be made in a bonded nylon? The bonded nylon is not stiff—if I use it for the tote bag, I will have to add some kind of interfacing. I just don’t know. I haven’t worked with bonded nylon enough to learn its idiosyncrasies.