Adventures in Paradise

Young Indiana Jones - A Tribute to a Friend

This has been a rough year - I lost my closest Navy friend and running buddy in April and then in August I lost one of my closest high school friends.  Steve was an odd bird, and so were his group of friends, some of whom had been together in the tiny parish school they'd attended since pre-school. I transferred in mid-sophomore year, so it could have been a lonely place for me. Thankfully the school was welcoming and so were the students - I fell in naturally with this group, most of whom I remain in contact with today, including my high school history and math teachers. The group I fell in with was mostly a geeky bunch of kids...into sci-fi and fantasy and other out of the norm things. Steve in particular stayed out of the norm, completely submerged into historical reenactments from Roman times to Vietnam....things I never even knew existed for the most part. He could knit, sew, and do odd things like nalbinding in the name of historical accuracy. He contributed hats to Hats for Sailors every year since it started in 2010. Costuming was a bit of a passion, and it was always fun to see what thing he would come up with...even to his co-workers at places like Apple and Wizards of the Coast.

This past July a friend from DC was in the area and I met up with her and her tour group (with their permission) when they toured Pompeii and posted a series of pics including this one:

He commented at she might need "tiny Indiana Jones kit" and that he "might know a guy".  Less than two weeks later he was gone, thanks to esophageal cancer. So, there was no other choice for Halloween, was there?

I give you Indiana Jones - the toddler years. The bull whip (yup, it's real) and fedora were Etsy purchases and the cross body bag came from a street stall on a trip to Florence a few weeks ago.

The shirt is the Oliver & S Sketchbook shirt with an inch added to the body (note to self: if you add to the body, you have to add to the shirt placket, too.) The fabric is a pretty basic muslin bought on Amazon to use for toiles, but it was the only suitable color I had in the stash and there was no suitable inexpensive material that I could find in the fabric stores or markets here.

The pants are also Oliver&S, the After School Pants, in brown Kona Cotton, size 18-24m. These pants run super slim and these will only fit if the Puppy is wearing underwear instead of Pull Ups and not for much longer. The 2T is a better fit even though it's a bit big. But for Halloween, these are fine and I count them as my muslin for future iterations of the pants like the corduroy ones in the previous post.

Mom was in town for two weeks, and in between trips to Florence and Venice, I managed to finish the shirt and hem the pants and con her into a short drive to Herculaneum (aka Ercolano here in Italy) for a quick photo shoot. So...young Indy in action supervising archeological reconstruction, reading up on her source material, and then kicking back after a job well done. By the end of the afternoon, she was done...no more hat, bag, or bull whip. But I can think of no better tribute to my friend.

Good bye Steve. You never grew up and I know that you've moved on to the next big adventure. P will grow up knowing about you.

A Cake!

Not a lot of sewing going on around the house, because have I mentioned that the Puppy has more clothing than a supermodel? Maybe Princess Charlotte has more, but it might be neck and neck.  And despite my attempting to stop clothing being given as a gift, there's always something that people just can't resist. (And when I open the package, I can always see why.) And, the Puppy has enough of everything so gift giving is hard and clothes are small. I'm pretty half-hearted about saying no to clothes. So...no sewing recently other than repairing raveled sweaters and fraying ties on sun dresses. Also no knitting because it's HOT here.

But in a search for the Smitten Kitchen strawberry cake recipe that flew around the interwebs a few years ago, I poked around and found a recipe for an Italian cake that sounded right up my alley with pound cake texture and citrus flavors.  She reviewed a recipe, then posted a link to the Ciambellone cake recipe from Caffe Marchio. The picture on the cafe website is gorgeous. Mine looks nothing like it, but it sure tastes amazing. I had a helper.

She helped pour the pre-measured dry ingredients and stirred them together. (No, she isn't tattooed, she had to have at least make it to double digits before I'll allow that...she got markers from Nonna for her birthday and decided that her body makes a better canvas than the paper does.)  She cracks eggs like a champ, so I'd have let her do that this time, but she's developed a toddler's unwillingness to let go of things, so she just holds the eggs in her hands and says "E mio! E Mio!" and refuses to actually crack them.

She stirred away happily while I prepared the Bundt pan and washed up the first set of dishes. Then perched on her new step stool (the best birthday gift she got,  IMHO and I'm not the one who bought it), and cleaned up the mixing bowl after I'd put the cake in to bake.

I did not prepare the Bundt pan well enough. I think the Pam spray mentioned in the directions may be essential because vegetable oil smeared around the pan did not do the job.

I got it out and glazed, after learning that some dissolved sugar is a good substitute for corn syrup. The inside looked much better than the outside.

I'd eaten a few bites of the cake when the Nanny returned home and pronounced it "Meravigliosa!" and asked for the recipe. Not too shabby even if it isn't pretty. More importantly, this is the first cake that has gotten the Puppy Seal of Approval. No idea why I decided to do Mamma and Me cake baking when she doesn't like cake, but this was worth the risk. One thing I'm just realizing is how truly transitional this age is. She looks like such a big girl in the cake making pictures but boy does she look like a baby again just a few hours later eating the cake.

 

Birthday Style

I knew I wasn't going to be able to do anything for the stripes theme for Project Run and Play, because I spent that week in Lisbon for work. I thought about bringing something to hand sew, but I rarely have free evenings when I'm traveling - too much of what I do relies on developing and maintaining relationships, so there's usually dinner out somewhere. But the same apparent chest cold that kept me from running on the day that I took the pictures for the Puppy's kitty dress, kept me from going out, too. I'd get to the hotel from work around 5 and instead of changing to head out to meet colleagues, I slept until it was time to go to work the next day...13 hours interrupted by coughing fits all night.

I got back home and promised the Nanny that I would see a doctor on Monday when I got to work. I did...and the chest cold turns out to have been pneumonia. Which it turns out, is utterly miserable, and lasts a lot longer than I'd expected. I didn't have any plans for "personal style" week, and didn't have the energy to do anything anyway. Then I got a glimpse of the Puppy snuggled into a soft, double gauze swaddle during nap time and saw her in a soft, floaty white dress. My style of choice for her is clean and classic, but modern - this suits both of us well, I think.

This is a repurposed swaddle of hers, one of the few that isn't patterned. There are several that I may repurpose in the next two years because I love this. It's the Oliver&S Pop Over Sundress, with a slightly altered hemline, so it's a bit of a handkerchief line. It's hard to see in this, and my energy level is pretty low, so I'm not going to re-take the pics. 

There is red mini Pom Pom trim at the bodice and red top stitching. I'm still working on good top stitching, but I'm pleased with most of the top stitching on the bodice and ties. She was born on the 4th of July, about an hour before the fireworks, in Washington, DC, so she is doomed to patriotic birthday photo shoots until she starts having a say in the matter. Ditto patriotic birthday dresses, but this one is pretty subtle and really takes the accessories to make it clearly a 4th of July dress.

She loves this pinwheel, leftover from her first birthday photos, but still doesn't quite get how to make it work. She'd be happy for me to make it spin all day, but that's not going to happen right now.

In other brain washing news, she is the daughter of a Sailor. I gave her this bear that sings "Anchors Aweigh" a year and a half ago and it is her stuffy of choice. Born on the 4th of July, Navy theme in her head from before she could speak. My plan is fool proof right? 

Cat Cat Sundress

When I found out that I was not only pregnant, but managing to stay pregnant (a real struggle) I went a little crazy with fabric shopping. I had PLANS, I tell you. Handmade bassinet and crib sheets, her quilt, baby clothes. But I was working 18-20 hour days for my first two trimesters and still training for half marathons and circus on the weekends. Not to mention the all day morning sickness I had up to the morning I gave birth. 

So...not a lot of sewing from what is now two years ago stashed fabrics. And she's getting big enough that soon the half yard cuts I bought won't make dresses. This week's Project Run and Play theme is sewing from your stash, and I happen to keep a handful of stash fabrics out on my cutting board as "next in line" prompts. One of the pieces in my stack was a half yard of knit fabric printed all over with cats. The Puppy's first word was " cat cat", and she's obsessed, even though Harvey doesn't always appreciate the yelly, smelly (not any more), grabby (also not anymore) Puppy as much as she does him. 

I've wanted to try shirring, and nothing says little girl summer like a shirred sundress. I loved mine as a kid, and she's only got one, that is more of a tunic than a dress because it's a 12 month size from last summer that I couldn't bear to give away (it's the elephant print one in the circus pictures from last week.)

This, BTW, is her expression when she is not going to move from this spot. Even a little. Because I want to climb back up the ladder over here. 

The downward climb did give a good shot of the matching bloomers for underneath. She's potty training now (her choice and timing) so they can be worn over a diaper or not. I drafted them from a pair she has - one piece with just side seams. I haven't figured out the fit completely, but these are wearable and now I'll just have to tweak a little bit once she's completely out of diapers.

There was enough to make a couple of hair ties, this one I finished with a lettuce hem and ties around her pony tail. Toddler hair is so fine that everything started falling out almost as soon as I got the elastic on. 

For those with an interest in history or literature, this is Lago d'Averno, thought to be the entrance to the underworld in Dante's Inferno. It's also my weekly running route - if I loop around it twice and around the smaller but less safe Lago di  Lucrino I can get in a little over five miles. 

Watermelon Sweater

I own a ridiculous amount of yarn (and fabric), but I'm also not going to turn away someone who says "hey, have some nice yarn for free", especially when they're friends and don't really know what they're doing around yarn. I ended up with four skeins of sock yarn (Knit Picks I think), two each in pink and green. I'd figured out recently that two skeins of sock yarn is no longer enough for a full sweater for the Puppy, so I figured I'd make good use of it while I had the time. Add a transatlantic flight in January and lots of travel in between (not the DC trip....flying with Puppy means no knitting time). I managed to finish this sweater just as the plane pulled up to the jetway in Berlin last week.

The green accents make her look like a little watermelon. I thought about duplicate stitching little seeds on the sweater, but that ended up being a little more work than I was up to at the moment. It's a modified version of the Starlette sweater, which I love. This is my second Starlette (a repeat, which I never do) but with real ribbing instead of the garter ribbing called for int he pattern because the garter rib didn't add enough structure in the yarn I used on the first one and it stretched out so quickly I had to sew some ribbon to the neckline. No pockets on this one because I forgot to put the stitches on hold and by the time I realized my mistake, I just didn't care. And one big button instead of two or three. It holds just fine and the Puppy rarely wears her sweaters buttons anyway. (Like mother, like daughter.)

It's a size 2, which is bigger than she needs, but she's not going to be wearing this regularly for several months since summer in Naples is HOT. But it will be a breath of summer in the cold of December and should fit her well then.

She seems pretty happy with it, and while it's not my colors, it incorporates one of her favorites - GREEN! My little one isn't in the pink phase yet, though she has plenty of that color scattered through her wardrobe. She loves green and purple and blue, and there don't seem to be any colors she dislikes. She wears a uniform to school, so no peer pressure about color choices yet, which I like.

Baby Blues

This week's Project Run and Play's featured color is blue...which is perfect for me. Still haven't sewed many things for the puppy and some of it isn't clothing (sheets, quilt), so I'm pretty limited. And oddly, I've sewn a lot of black and white in clothing for her. The advantage of being able to impose my preferences on her while I can, I guess. And there's the blue striped PJs I just made, too. But the first article of clothing I ever sewed for her was in a deep Navy blue corduroy with daisies scattered around.

It's the basic dress from the Oliver & S Building Block Book with long sleeves, in the 6-12 month size. I'd definitely make a few changes were I to sew the same dress from the same pattern again. I added the white mini pom pom trip to the collar when I realized just how dark this dress was, and I think I'd still add it, but this time during construction and also to the sleeves, and I might add some piping at the waist. It was the first time I'd constructed a placket and I had a devil of a time with that. It doesn't sit quite right. It had to sit in the dresser for a while because I made it when she was tiny, but she grew into it in time for fall in Naples, so it's first real outing was to a Chestnut Festival in Montella, a mountain town to the west of Naples.

The 6-12 month size was a perfect fit at 16 months but she's just a bit too big for it now. Thankfully, my honorary granddaughter (child of one of my Officers from DECATUR) is a winter baby, so this will go to her next.  More importantly, she was totally comfortable running and playing in the dress...hence it's slightly rumpled state.

My Puppy can be quite the charmer when the mood strikes, and it struck hard that day. She was ON. The friend I was with said, "one day we're going to take her and walk ahead while you look at the people are her and see how they react to her." Then I pulled this pic off the camera...

Italians LOVE kids, especially babies, but this kid was on fire that day, even without a nap. She engaged with anyone who would engage with her, usually with kisses and waves.  I love this pic because even though the placket is a mess, you can see the buttons down the back, which come from my old button collection, which means they belonged to the Puppy's great-great-grandmother at some point. They're well-used, so probably from the 30s, maybe the 40s at the latest. They were a perfect match for the centers of the daisies.