It turned out to be nothing

About 3 weeks ago, I felt a small lump in my right breast, right where the cancerous one had been removed 2 years ago. I got an appointment with my GP for July 13 and spent a nasty weekend prior to that, thinking dark thoughts. After she felt the lump, she referred me to the clinic at the Civic where I had my first ultrasound in July of 2008, when they found the cancer. I could only get an ultrasound appointment for this morning at 8 am.

Peter was planning to take holidays starting July 16 and he was going to bike around Lake Ontario or somewhere, while I campaigned. This lump put us both in limbo. He started his holidays anyway, so he could just hang out with me and be supportive, and we had a very quiet weekend, where we got in some nice biking and spent a lot of time on patios, thinking our own dark thoughts.

I have been thinking about the meaning of life. I have also been thinking about whether my body had betrayed me (again), what kind of surgery I would have this time and whether I would opt for chemo (again). I have been planning final trips and holidays in my head, thinking about cashing in my life insurance and RRSPs to do so, and other similarly grim thoughts.

This morning, we were up at 6 and out the door at 7, to bike over to the Civic. We got there in 35 minutes, so we were a tad early. My heart rate was up and I felt quite gloomy. When I was ushered in to the exam room, I asked if Peter could come with me, so I wouldn't have to tell him everything after it happened and so re-live a potentially negative experience. They said he couldn't come in with me. I shrugged. First a technician gave me the ultrasound and I watched the monitor while she ran the wand over me. I could see a dark lump on the screen but it looked different from the one 2 years ago. Then a very nice woman doctor (sweetly named Dr. Petal) came in and talked to me while she ran the wand over me. She pointed out the characteristics of this lump and told me that to her, it looked like it was a fat necrosis, or dead fat cells in a lump. In other words, scar tissue. It was still evolving, the scar tissue, because of the damage done by surgery and radiation and the fact that the fat lump wasn't getting any blood supply.

In fact, this is a key thing that distinguishes cancer from other tissue - it has a vigorous blood supply. And this lump had none. I let out my breath that I'd been holding for the last few weeks. She then asked the technician to go get Peter. They don't like other people in the room initially, because it is a small room and they can be distracting. But now that the work had been done, she allowed Peter in. He was relieved to hear what she had to say and she showed him what she was looking at on the monitor. She also said that she had looked at my file from 2 years ago, as well as the mammogram I had in November. She could see the lump on the mammogram (and she got out the film and showed it to me) and pointed out that it looked like scar tissue there also.

Nevertheless, to be entirely sure, I am going to have a needle biopsy, some time in the next 2 weeks. It will be one of those rare occasions when I willingly say to someone, "yes, please do stick a large needle into my chest and pull out tissue." However, I agree with her that it is probably just scar tissue and therefore, I can write this and get back to living. And running for office. And sewing. I've been a little distracted lately.

This is what I sound lke!

My first time on the radio (ever!). Enjoy:

Part 1

Part 2

(If you prefer to copy and paste into your browser the links are:
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/The_Challengers.Pt1.July08.10.mp3
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/The_Challengers.Pt2July08.10.mp3
And if you want to explore more listening options at CFRA, go here:
http://www.cfra.com/interviews/default.asp )

Camp shirt

Steaming right along, it is a "feels like" temperature of 42C (109F) here right now. Thank my dog (even though she has been gone for five years now) that I have air conditioning! I didn't use it last week when all the ACs in the 'hood were grinding away but I am glad I have it today.

In campaign news, I will be on our local talk radio (CFRA 580 AM) this Thursday the 8th, between 3 and 4 pm EDT. You can listen to it here:
http://cfra.com/listen/listen-CFRA-StW.html
Or if you miss it, I will put up a link on my web site after, or you can go here to find the link yourself.

I dressed up to go downtown the other day, to attend an info session at city hall and on the way home, stopped at a local coffee shop to have a coffee with my husband. He has a blog too and he posted a couple of photos of me with my Britex silk shirt in action!

The weekend just past, I decided since it was supposed to not rain all weekend, I would finally get the two big area rugs out and wash them.

I do it the old fashioned way, on my hands and knees, using dishwashing soap and a brush. I now have rug burns on my knees but it was worth it. I hung them on the chain link fence to rinse them and then let them dry. It was an all day job.

I am still resisting the purchase of new fabric and trying to use up my stash. I had a large length of this very soft, drapey rayon left over after I made a dress out of it (which is now too short to wear given my age and has gone into the Sally Ann pile) years ago and I determined that it would make a nice addition to my "camp shirt" collection. I have been using this Simplicity 9210 pattern for years, to make a loose, short sleeved shirt that I wear untucked (although I can tuck it in if I want). I call them "camp shirts" because I got the moniker from old LLBean catalogues.

These are four in my collection - I made the purple flowered one last. Yeesh! I see it was in 2007. I guess I didn't get much done in the last two years. But, we all know why. Never mind!

Since it is old, left over stash fabric, I refuse to buy new thread. I got out all my threads that were remotely reddish and I am going to use them up.

Here is a close-up of the facings and loops that I sewed at the start and if you really look closely, you can see different colours of thread. I agree - who will notice!

All new stuff!

I can't believe you guys keep coming back to check on this blog! You are amazing. And here is your reward!

First of all, let me say that I have been blogging (although not here) since about March, when I decided to run for city councillor here in Ottawa. My web site is at http://juliaringma.ca/
and the blog is at http://juliaringma.ca/?page_id=69

I need some more traffic over there! And if you live in College Ward in Ottawa, vote for me! Or tell anyone who lives there to vote for me.

Let's see... I also put up a whack of pix at Flickr, about my Florida trip. It's in two sets and often, the individual photos have captions and commentary that are sometimes amusing. They are at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliar/sets/72157623372064884/
and the second set is at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliar/sets/72157623481897656/

I've been reading and reading about urban planning and city stuff and politics but I also laid out that gorgeous piece of silk I bought at Britex on our California trip. Britex even has a Facebook site! I'll have to send them a photo for their site, where customers make stuff. Oh, speaking of Facebook, you can find me there too, at my political "fan site" at or just search for Julia Ringma. I have always said I'm the only one on the planet with that name combo and now that I have decided to become a public person by running for office, I guess I can tell everyone who I am! Not that I ever really hid it.

Okay! Back to the silk. There are different weights and textures of silk and this stuff is the kind that makes you think you could eat it, it is so scrumptious. I only had 1 and 5/8 yards so I determined I would make that little pullover top with no buttons and no seam down the back.

And a few hours later, here it is:

I picture it under a jacket, while I am sitting at council meetings. And yes, I need to iron the hand stitched hem!

So thanks again for hanging in there. For the blogs I follow that have infrequent posts, I have learned to love Google Reader, as it will tell me when there is finally a blog entry to read.

Florida pix

Just a tidbit for while I am away... if you are so inclined, you can check out my growing collection of holiday snaps at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliar/sets/72157623372064884/
There are 90 there now but every now and then, I add a few more.

Enjoy!

Just before I go

I have decided NOT to bring the new linen outfit I just made. Not because I haven't decided on the buttons (although, I am pretty sure I want to do covered buttons). But because I am leaving tomorrow and I want to take a minimum of fuss outfits with me and you can't say that linen is no-fuss. So I will go through my tried and true clothes, like the kind I took to California with me in August. Only I will bring more layers and long sleeves to Florida! If it gets hot, great. But even in California in August, on the coast I was wishing I had more things with sleeves.

I finished the robe and now it is packed. If I blog on this trip it will be to juliaringma.blogspot.com as that is the default I set my EeePC to just now. I'd better go finish packing! Thanks everyone for your comments!

PJs and robe

Almost there!

I finished the top first.

Here's how I finished the seams. The one on the left is "wrong sides together" and sewn in about a 1/4 inch seam. The one on the right has been trimmed down to about 1/8 of an inch.

After I iron the seam to one side, then I iron it "right sides together" and stick a few pins in to hold it in place, with the stitching running along the fold. Then I sew another 1/4 inch (or maybe 3/8) seam, with the right sides together, encasing the raw, trimmed edges.

I couldn't do a French finish on the crotch seam of the pants because it bends sharply. Here is a french seam (the lower one) compared with the seam that I sewed a double line of stitching on. I am pulling away the threads that fray madly. I will trim those but they will continue to fray whenever I wash the pants, until they reach a kind of stasis. C'est la vie.

Speaking of the pants, here they are before I have installed the elestic/drawstring combo through the waist casing. They look huge! And they look like those silly basketball shorts. Sorry if anyone reading this admires basketball shorts but I think they look silly.

Here I have completed the drawstring waist and tied the strings in a bow. They'll sort of look like culottes when I wear them, I am thinking.

See how madly the cut edges of this fabric fray, even when I've hardly handled them.

I haven't finished the robe yet but I thought I'd bundle all three pieces up to see how small they will pack. That was the point of this exercise after all - to make something that packs up pretty small. I am happy with the size of this bundle.

Sewing the robe and PJs

So I cut out the robe and PJs and now I am doing the preliminary work - making bias binding, turning drawstring tubes. I have decided to finish all the seams by making French seams, except for the centre front and back of the PJ shorts. This fabric is quite ravelly and there are really fine threads that appear everywhere on cut edges. I wouldn't like the look of the insides of the garments if I zigzagged the raw edges to keep them from ravelling, so I am going for the encased French seam. I am also putting the shiny and smooth side inside, next to my skin. While it looks like the nicest side, since hardly anyone is going to see these things, I am choosing the feel-nice over the look-nice.

Interestingly, even the robe bands don't call for interfacing so there is zero interfacing in this outfit. I guess that will allow it to pack even smaller. Which addresses Heather's suggestion about what fabric to use - I am going with this thin stuff because it packs light. Your suggestion would definitely be warmer but I am hoping Florida won't be too cold in a week! Dog forbid we should have a hotel fire.

The linen outfit and then PJs and a robe

What a klutz! I accidentally deleted a set of photos at Flickr (I still don't know how I did that) and they all disappeared from my blog. So I had to edit the last entry and stick them all back in there.

I would like to thank all those who have already commented on my last entry - you guys are great! I can't believe you are still lurking after all those months. And I have to say, I felt guilty for not blogging.

Rose, it is interesting that you used the word "neighbour" because I AM going to be in Florida in about a week and a half! Since my parents are at the wheel (literally), I probably won't be dropping in, but I'll think of you as I drive past DeLand! I am hoping the parental units want to spend some time on an Atlantic beach but really, anywhere is great. I also bought the Lonely Planet guide to Florida and am already making notes in it. DeLand is on page 387. :) I think I want to get further south and am still voting for the Keys.

Back to the linen: So the jacket calls for a bow in the back and while I don't think it is twee (I do love the girls over at Go Fug Yourself), I also don't think I am going to put one on this jacket. Maybe if the fabric was plain and draped a little more.

I put the collar on opposite to the instructions, so that the hand sewing of the facing would be underneath the collar, as it lay on the jacket when worn. Look at those tiny stitches! I've still got it.

This is the jacket inside-out and if you click on the photo and make it as large as possible, you can see that I have flat felled the seams. I didn't do what I often do, which is the modified flat fell, because then you would see strips of the right side of the fabric. I thought the inside of the jacket would look better if it all looked like the wrong side of the fabric, instead of with little patterned strips running all over it.

I also decided against using seam binding of any kind on the hems. Instead, I folded over the raw edge of the hem and then folded up the hem and hand sewed it in place.

Again, you'll have to make this photo larger, but I topstitched around the neck and armholes on the dress, to keep the facings in place.

It's just a plain, sheath dress but that style works on me.

Here's the little jacket. You can't see all the fabric that is in the body of it but the hem is practically a half circle. Now I just have to decide on buttons. The pattern calls for four and I am okay with that but I am wondering if I should make covered buttons in this same fabric?

Next: PJs! And a robe. My last bathrobe was a long corduroy thing that I made to wear at university in -- wait for it -- 1975! Yeowsers. Since I will be travelling with my folks, I thought I should have at the ready, a robe, because you know there is going to be at least one time where I am going to have to wander around in the night. At home, I don't even bother with PJs, never mind a robe but this isn't home. What if there was a hotel fire or something? Anyway, I wanted fabric that was light weight and yet patterned so that you couldn't see through it. I got this polyester that folds up into a small bundle so I can keep the packing light. I am going to put the shiny, soft side in and the less attractive dull side out.

Here is my robe pattern - the very one I used in 1975! It cost $1.35. I'm thinking I won't even put pockets on it to make it as small as possible when folded up.

I used this PJ pattern a couple of years ago and made shorts and the B view top for a summer bike holiday. I am going to use just the pants (shorts) in the same "leopard" print as the robe.

And I am going to use my trusty, tried-and-true Vogue tank top pattern for the PJ top. It doesn't have facings - just bias strips around the neck and armholes. My goal here is to have something I can wear to bed at night that will cover me up and yet not be restrictive or too hot (I am hoping Florida will be warm!) and the matching robe in case it is a bit cool. All of which should pack up into as small a bundle as possible.

I'm back sewing linen

I would like to thank all my die-hard fans who keep checking this moribund blog and wishing me well in the comments. Not only am I not dead, I am doing great! But I have not been sewing since July and so I haven't blogged since then.

In July, I sewed up a cotton jacket and skirt outfit for my trip to California.
You can read all about the trip here if you like.
There is even a photo of me wearing that jacket (I paired it with a dark blue denim jean skirt that day) in this entry, meeting with a fellow dog blogger (not a sewing blogger, sorry!) that day.

Of course, I trailed off the end of that travel blog too, and have not written about our last three days in San Francisco, where I bought a couple of remnants at Britex Fabrics, a very cool store. I even became a fan of the store on Facebook, even though I may never get back to SF. But they have a fun "button du jour" on FB and as you may know, on FB, you can ignore whatever you like!

I was thinking I would make nice tops to go under jackets, with these silks. The gold on the left is a stiffer dupioni type silk and the print on the right is a soft, charmeuse silk.

In the meantime, I never finished that "gala dress" I was making. It just failed to inspire me in any way. But since I have my "rule" about not making a new thing until the current thing is finished, I stared at the unfinished bodice hanging on my dummy, week after week. I only went into my sewing room to iron shirts and darn socks. I tried my hand at writing some stories (I am still working on those). I decided I was not willing to go back and teach only 6 hours a week.

In November, one of my neighbours fell while running and broke both ankles, so I volunteered to walk her dog for her every night. Then another neighbour went in for a total knee replacement and I volunteered to walk her dog every morning. So I've been doing that. The one with the broken ankles has healed up nicely and she has taken over walking her dog again. The other has a younger dog and I am still walking him for exercise around the park. It gets me up in the morning, I get a little exercise and then Kathleen and I sit and have coffee and solve the world's problems.

Then, at Christmas, my parents announced that they were going to drive to Florida this year and stay for the month of February. They were going to just drive down and see where they would stay, once they got there. They are really good travellers but Dad is 81 this year and so I piped up, "What would you think if I went with you and shared the driving?" In fact, they seemed to brighten right up and said they thought that was a great idea. So I am going to Florida for a month!

When am I ever going to have this opportunity again? Maybe never, so I jumped at the chance. Some people might think I am a little crazy for wanting to spend an entire month with my folks but we get along great when they come to visit here and we are all pretty low maintenance. I told a girlfriend about it and she told me that she had gone to Spain some years ago, with her parents when they were in their 80s and she never regretted the memories that she made, especially now that they are gone.

So I decided I needed to make a travel dressing gown but first, I fished some linen out of my stash and I am making a dress and jacket. Not sure if I will take them to Florida, as linen wrinkles but I am halfway through them now, so there you go.

I am using Vogue 8146 for the first time. The jacket is similar to the other swing-back jacket I made out of linen here. It is also unlined. And the dress is virtually the same as a McCall's pattern (8017) that I used for years and years - just a shift with some darts.

I have this big hunk of very pale green linen and I had thought the print and it might go together but not really. They don't clash, but it's not a brilliant match.
Back here I also made a dark navy linen skirt and short, unlined jacket and I think I had in mind that all the pieces would mix and match. The embroidered linen is quite different in texture from the other three, lighter weight linens but I think I may be able to to some switching of skirts.

There is something about that swing, pleated back that I really like!

I decided to sew quite quickly, in spite of it being a new pattern. I am finishing some edges with a simple zigzag fold.

But I should have used pinking shears on the long edges of the dress. I am not going to flat fell those seams (so I can let them out or more hopefully, take them in, if my weight changes) so I have had to zigzag all down the edges to prevent raveling. I also decided not to line the dress, as it sort of defeats the purpose of linen being cool. I will probably wear a short half slip if I feel there is any possibility of seeing through the fabric.

So there! I am sort of caught up to date with you, my readers. I am sorry I haven't blogged in SO long and there'll be another dearth of blogging while I am away in February. And in case you are wondering, yes, my long--suffering husband has to stay home and earn a living. But I will email him and Skype when I get internet access so the time will pass pretty quickly I think. All the best to you-all!

Not about sewing so much...

I'm kind of bummed. As you know, all last winter, I lay around the house feeling like death warmed over from the chemo. It was while I was lying on the couch, watching reruns of "The Dog Whisperer", that I conceived the idea of a reward holiday. I said, "I want a reward for going through this slow motion hell and I want to go to California and meet Cesar Millan!" And so our trip to California in August was born.

I wrote Cesar a letter, explaining my circumstances and wondering if I could meet him, or just his dogs if he wasn't going to be there. I wrote it on real stationery with a fountain pen, so it would stand out as well as look sincere. If nothing else, I AM sincere! I wrote it on the computer first, so I could redraft parts, so I'll include what I wrote at the bottom here. I had even seen that episode with the teenaged girl who got to see him about her dog because she went through the Children's Wish Foundation and since I am way too old for that, I determined that I would grant my own wish.

After a while and no answer, I went to his web site and to the "contact" page and sent my letter as an email. It was interesting that the contact pages asks for fewer than 500 words and I had only written about 360 to begin with (it was small stationery). At the contact page, there are drop down menus to identify the subject matter of your inquiry. The first one I choose was "The dog psychology centre" and the second one that arose from that had "Can I visit the D.P.C.?" as an option.

The next day, I got this response by email:
"Thank you for contacting the Dog Psychology Center. This is an auto-reply.
We appreciate your interest in Cesar and the dedicated staff at the Dog Psychology Center. Unfortunately, at this time, the center is not open to the public, and no visitors or tours are permitted on the grounds."

Well, I do understand that he must get millions of inquiries every year and that there are lots of crazies out there (I have seen some on his show!). But this is why I am bummed, because the entire impetus for going to California (as opposed to say, Spain to watch Lance on the Tour this year) was to see Cesar and tell him how much his show meant to me last winter. *sigh*

Here is my original letter:
"I am writing to see if I may visit the Dog Psychology Centre and meet you. I checked your web site and there are no "public tours" that I can see, so I realize this sort of visit would have to be arranged particularly for me.

This last winter, I was having chemotherapy for breast cancer and I found myself lying on the couch every day at 5 pm, watching "The Dog Whisperer" on the National Geographic channel. I'd seen all the shows before but I watched them again anyway because I love the message that is in each episode and I think you are a genius when it comes to dogs. I also had finally come to understand what you mean about the energy that people have and how it affects dogs. When I was first diagnosed and I told people, I would often feel a wave of negative energy coming off them, in the form of fear and pity. It was very interesting to see how I became so attuned to feeling energy and that's when I clicked with your message in the show.

So there I was, lying on the couch, enduring until I finished my treatments, and I turned to my husband and said, "when I am done this, my reward will be to go to California and meet the Dog Whisperer!" I know kids can get such things through the Children's Wish Foundation but as someone past 50, I will have to give this wish to myself. Now we have booked our tickets and we will be spending some quality time with wine and food in Napa, seeing San Francisco, driving down through Monterey and ending up in Los Angeles on August 17-19. I am hoping you will be in town at that time because I would love to meet you. But even if you are not, I would like to visit the Centre and meet some of the dogs I have seen on your show, like Junior, who must be fully grown now!

Please let me know if it will be possible for us to visit the Centre in August."


I'm only posting this because I'm a bit blue about the results of the inquiry and I hope by getting it off my chest (pun?) it will make me feel better.  It would have been great to visit with Cesar, or his lovely wife, or Daddy or Junior. I know, I should just get a dog already! Soon...

More sewing shortly!

Gala dress muslin creeps along

Here are the French seams.

First you have to sew the pieces together, wrong sides together, with a seam allowance of about 1/4 inch. Then you trim the raw edges down to less than 1/4 inch. Then you iron the seam and fold the pieces with the right sides together, encasing the raw edges.

Then you sew the seam again, at about 3/8 of an inch, so you get the full 5/8 seam allowance, with the right sides together, so you end up with the raw edges enclosed in the seam itself.

Here's what it looks like, finished and pressed, from the right and the wrong sides.

The bodice is gathered where it meets the midriff and from what I learned with the prom dresses, I now gather by hand. I simply sew a long, running stitch along the gather line and it is just easier to gather up than a machine sewn line.

The bodice also gathers into the yokes that form the shoulders. This is the back, which has a Vee where the yokes meet the gathered part of the bodice. I've got one of the yokes up and one down, just to show the construction a bit.

I am also noticing that I am going to have to be a lot more picky when I make the real gala dress. I put the ruler in the photo because the stitching line is supposed to be 5/8 inch (1.5 cm) from the end of this point on the yoke and from each edge and I am out of alignment. I think I will have to make accurate tailor tacks on the real dress, to ensure that the dots all line up.

This looks like a jumble of pieces (there are three) all coming together at one point.

Here is the bodice with the yokes coming together at the gathered parts from another angle. This time, I have got the yoke facings sew on as well, so now I have all sorts of pieces all converging.

I have sewn the yoke facings down by hand on the inside. This is what the bodice looks like, draping on the judy, from the back.

Here is the bodice from the front. It looks like the Vee in the front will be quite low. I am not sure if this will be too low. For this dress (muslin), should I wear it, I may have to put a triangle of fabric in the front, like a camisole - or just wear a camisole under it. I am now thinking of how I would alter the pattern to prevent this from happening when I make the real dress. I can't just hike it up at the shoulder seams because then the midriff will be too high. I want the seam line where the midriff meets the bodice to be right at the bra band line.

The gala dress muslin

Remembering the 52 people killed in London on this day, 4 years ago.
It rained on and off all day too, which I always find appropriate. And since it was raining, I didn't even go out at all. I got some reading done and then I cut out the muslin. It was easy because I didn't cut a single layer but allowed the fabric to be double thickness, saving myself a lot of time and fussing. And I didn't use pinking shears, as all the seams will be finished in some way.

Then I fused on the interfacing to the yoke and midriff. I may go with sew-in interfacing on the actual dress, depending on the fabric. I often find fusible interfacing eventually bubbles in some fashion. I looked at the over-all colour of the fabric and decided on the ocher colour for the thread and zipper. It was a toss up, really, but I figured the ocher colour was the most muted and least likely to stand out.

I have started to stack up the pieces to be sewed together. You can't really tell from this photo but the instructions call for french seams and I have pinned the pieces together, wrong sides together. That always goes against the grain (whoo, all these sewing metaphors!) as the pieces are usually right sides together. I have to double check each one before I stick it under the needle and get going.