Fish On!

Warning! If you are all environmental and don’t believe in commercial fishing, then you don’t want to read this post. Also, if the sight of blood and gore gross you out, you should look away! Here is last year’s post about fishing.

 

 

 

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I’ll even ease into the blood and gore by showing you the fun beach pictures with the kids. Awwwwwwwww. I swear the kids didn’t wear shoes for a whole week. Well, except The Boy, he had a sore heel.

 

Ulp, getting closer to the death pictures. Both girls were all smiles until I said, “make a gross-out face!” Only one of them did it though. They were elbow deep in this pile of death only a few minutes before this picture, looking for the eggs.

 

We only caught one king and it was a tiny one.

 

 

To go fishing, you first must walk a billion miles to get into the boat. You have to walk through this thick mudflat nasty crap. We anchor the boats offshore because you are only allowed to fish from 7am to 7pm. If it is low tide at 7am, you walk out to where the boats are anchored which should be just about wet at 7am. These guys are amazing at judging distances and they always park the boats so they are actually in water by 7am.

 

Of course, the mudflats are fun for other things.

 

I used to work for Fish and Game and drove skiffs all the time up rivers. This is not much different. It’s a bigger, heavier boat but not much different.

 

Here are some of the fishies caught in the net. We set five nets this day total and you continually pick the nets until low tide.

 

We caught several hundred this day and we only fished half the day. Reds are about $2.00/lb. The silvers, chums, and pinks go for much, much less. Maybe $0.80/lb? I’m not sure about that number.

 

Most of them are reds like the one I am holding. There were a few pinks, a few chum, lots of silvers, and one king.

 

When your boat is full, like here, you take your fish to the tender (a bigger ship used to carry lots of fish). The tender weighs the bags of fish and then gives you a ticket and sends you a check later in the season. We don’t sell them all to the tender. We get our fill of personal use fish too.

 

This is the pile of fish from the personal use operation. We only only cut up the fish we are going to eat. This year, we cut up and filleted about 200 fish which feeds our entire family (like the WHOLE family, not just mine) for the year. We vacuum pack the fish and it lasts a year easily in the freezer.

 

These are fish in brailer bags in the creek. They creek is a constant 43 degrees which keeps the fish cold for a day or two until we are done filleting, packing, and getting them to town.

 

These huge blue dragonflies were everywhere.

 

 

I’ve never seen this before. This dragonfly caught a bumble bee, yes really, and ate it while laying on its back. I’ve never seen a dragonfly do that before. You should expand the picture because it’s pretty cool. It was a big meal for the dragonfly and he was so busy with it, he let us get very close to him. The kids and I crouched over him for a good 20 minutes while he ate his meal.

 

 

We’ll finish with some kid-play-fun pictures and not gore. The twins made sand-cakes, sand-soup, sand-brownies, sand-popcorn, and pretty much anything sand you wanted. They had a blast.

 

The cousins! This is how you do bath time when there is no running water!

 

More fishies!!

 

There are really fun sand hills too.

 

 

And logs to walk on . . . creeks to walk in.

 

 

Fishing site = happy kids.

 

 

On a side note: look at my subtle vignette! I’m getting better at doing things in Photoshop.

Burda Challenge July: 07-2011 #110

I just finished this dress. I’ve never thought khaki was a great color with my skin tone and this is no exception. I was thinking since I was tan, it wouldn’t be bad but, alas, I’m not a fan of this dress. It’s too bad too because it has potential.

 

The seaming is great and the pleats, tucks, and bodice went together well but still, sigh. This fabric is kind of like a laminated cotton shirting. It had a very stiff hand and tends to wrinkle if you look at it wrong.

 

This was a petite pattern so I added a cm above the bust and one below the bust to make it longer. I left the armhole alone because I like a tighter armhole. You can see in the above picture that the armhole is just perfect.

 

One thing you get with stiffer fabric is what I like to call Lady-Bits-Poof. Not cute. You can see I used a pink zipper at the side seam. This dress has great big pockets which are awesome-sauce. Too bad it will never be worn. Maybe I’ll put it in the Closet of Rebirth for a while.

 

I think I would have liked it if 1) it was a different color, and 2) if it was slightly drapey. You can’t really tell with all the wrinkles (it’s the fault of the fabric!) but I did a great job matching up all the seam lines. Getting that bodice piece to fit isn’t a walk in the park either. Ugh. Screw you blah-blah-brown-dress.

 

We just got back from fishing so I’ll post some bloody fish pictures soon. We got 240 salmon one day and over 400 the next day.

Excuse me, is that a skirt on your butt?

Boy: Hey, check out my new pants!
Littlest Sister: WOOOOOOOWWWWWW. Those are nice.
Twin Ghouls (Think: Annoying Orange): Mom, mom, mom! Hey, mom! Mom! Hey. Mom! Did we get new pants? Did we? With other fabric?
Me: Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh . . .

I pick my kids up tonight and I know that as soon as I show The Boy his new pants, the three sisters will be all over me about their new pants. Because, of course, he can’t get something without them getting something. The conversation above is totally made up, but I know in my brain of brains, that this is what tonight will sound like if I didn’t make them something too.

So, I made them pants with skirts attached. The black fabric is the black Nike Dri-fit fabric. I still have about 10-15 yards but I’m keeping it all for myself and the kids! I know it’s only July, but it is already starting to get chilly (48 degrees this morning!) and these pants will be perfect for this weather. I used my KwikSew pajama pattern 3234 and I extended the legs just a smidge to make up for there being no cuff. Then, I made a circle skirt and attached it with the pants.

 

This is for the littlest one. She wanted a longer skirt with pink! Mom! PINK!

 

When I got my new (old!) Kenmore, I realized there was a stretch straight stitch on it. I have used this stitch in the past but haven’t used a newer machine in forever so I had forgotten about it. It’s a great strong stitch and you can use it for knits because it stretches. I used that stitch on the hems, to reinforce the crotch, and the waistband.

 

Here you can see the reinforcing stitches. If I don’t stitch an extra seam here, I find that my vertical serger stitches (CF and CB seams) start to unravel. I assume it’s because the horizontal serger seam cuts the threads on the other two seams.

 

Here’s the skirt for one of the twins. It’s glitter pink animal jersey knit. She’s gonna go ape.

 

Here’s the skirt for the other twin. She’ll love that it’s a sassy mini-skirt. But, of course, mom would only let her wear this with pants underneath.

 

This is a gray sparkle sweater knit. This is what I used on the inside of the Jalie cardigan I made a while back. I just used the natural tendency of the knit to roll to make the hem.

I have something fun coming up. But, and it’s a big but. We just had a lot of family fly in last night so we’ll be busy for the next two weeks or so. I’m hopeful that I’ll get some time to sew.

p.s. Someone a while back asked me to put a “Subscribe by Email” link on my blog so they could follow along. I done did it for You People.

Excuse me, is that Dim Sum on your butt?

Boy: Hey mom, wouldn’t this fabric be funny as pants?
Me: What? This fabric?
Boy: I think it might be funny.
Me: What kind of pants? Like pajama pants?
Boy: No, duh! Like pants for school and then everyone can say, “Hey! You have Dim Sum on your butt!” and “Wow, you’re sweet AND sour!” and “We will, we will, wok you!”
Me: Uhhhh . . .
Yelling Boy: Clap, clap, STOMP. Clap, clap, STOMP. We will, we will WOK YOU, WOK YOU!
Me: Pajama pants only and no wearing these to school.
Boy: Gee, mom, you really need to rice to the occasion.
Me: Har, har, har. Did you hear what I said about not wearing these to school?
Boy: Wait, mom, WAIT, this is a good one . . . . Hey, these lights are bright, can we dim them?
Me: Dim sum?
Boy: Drat.

And thus, Jalie 3243 came out of it’s envelope again. My son asks for me to make him so little that when he asks for something, I usually get right on it.

 

These are just basic pull-on pants with pockets. I used size M for him.

 

There are two pairs and I photographed both of them. Why? I don’t know. To show you the differences??

 

The pockets are a nice touch. They are hard to see here and maybe not quite big enough to be functional. I should make them bigger on my next pair but that’s just inviting him to stick crap in his pockets too.

 

Hee, hee. Duck sauce.

Burda 06-2013 #110 - My June Burda Challenge!

 

How much fun is this dress? It’s knit, it has ruching, it’s metallic. I knew when I saw this dress, I would have to make it.

 

I made it without the sleeves obviously. And oops, you can see a tiny glimpse of my bright blur bra strap. Oops! The pattern went together smoothly as all Burda patterns do. This pattern started at a size 36 so I downsized it to a 34 like I always do. I thought there would be more drape on the crossover section on he bodice. When you look at the magazine model photo, it looks like it would be a bit loose and drapey but it’s not. I know it’s really hard to see the gathers. 

 

 

Here’s a better picture to show the gathers.

 

How much fun is this fabric? It’s from the swap meet. It looks kind of flashy but when I put on a sweater and flats, it looks good in the casual mis-matchy kind of way that is popular right now.

 

Here you can see the side seams. They have clear elastic in them from the hem to the armpit. Since this dress relies on negative ease to fit, I knew those poor seams would take quite a bit of stress. This just helps to reinforce them.

 

Here’s the bodice. The cross that goes under the top section is only a partial bodice piece.

 

I know it’s hard to see but I outlined the partial cross part in red. Another interesting part of this pattern is that both the left and right side tops are finished with self-fabric facings that are just folded down.

 

Kid photo-op! Love that girl!

 

And a crazy boy!