Sew, Sallee: From Mending and Hemming to Actually Making Things

This is my new friend: A Singer 9960 Electronic Sewing Machine.

During one of our semi-annual clean-ups, my husband threw out an ancient Brother sewing machine that I had for thirty years. (And I think I bought it used.) The old machine was able to do a couple of different straight and zigzag stitches and buttonholes, if I remember correctly, although I never tried the buttonhole part. I had used it to mend seams and hem pants and that's about it. But still, I wasn't too happy when I'd learned he'd tossed the thing. Actually, he put it out on our curb with a "free" sign, something he does frequently, so hopefully it went to a good home. But what was I going to do if I needed to mend something?
Merry Christmas! He bought me this new, slick, beautiful machine that does absolutely everything! It has 116 different stitches, including 30 some utility stitches and 80 plus decorative stitches. Oh, it does embroider, but only free-hand, darn! Speaking of darning? Yes, it does that too! But the question is, what is a girl who only mends and hems going to do with a machine that was put on this earth to make beautiful things?
Enter Craftsy.com. I happened on this website while I was looking for sewing lessons. I thought there might be some place local that I could go and actually learn how to sew, or re-learn, rather. I did sew when I was a teenager. But that was a long, long.....well, you know. Guess what? Finding sewing lessons in a classroom with a live teacher is not so easy. There are a lot of teachers that will do on-line classes. But the great thing about Craftsy is that once you buy a class, you have access to it forever. You can keep going back again and again, and believe me, I do. And they have everything from beginner to advanced classes. The first class I took was on making a tote bag. A simple bag to take shopping. Well, simple, yes. But lined, and so I learned how to line a bag. That was not a little deal for me.

The other great thing about Craftsy is that they have kits that you can buy that include patterns and the fabric. The two dresses below were from one of those kits. The shorter, white one, is the fabric that came with the kit. The red and white striped dress was fabric I bought at Joann's and used the same pattern, but with longer hem and sleaves. I have since taken a total of nine classes, from a tutorial on different kinds of fabric to how to make bras. I'll do another post on that one. It was pretty interesting.

Anyway, I am going crazy with my new machine and really enjoying the results. And learning a lot. Usually, from my mistakes. And I am making my share of them, so my seam ripper is becoming my second best friend. But I figure it's like hitting the ball into the sand trap. The more times I have to hit out of the sand, the better at getting out I get. And the harder I try not to get into trouble in the first place.
The other thing I was pretty surprised about is that there are precious few brick and mortar stores left that sell sewing fabric and notions. I live close to a Joann's which is about the best one around here. But I am finding a lot of great sources online. I'll share those links in my future posts as well.

Enter: Peanut Brittle

How did I do on my 10 day No Sugar Challenge? Truth? Well, about five days into it, I found the peanut brittle. I had bought it over the holidays as a treat. But this Christmas, unlike most others, I was very disciplined about watching what I was eating. The good news about that? I didn't gain any weight over Christmas. The bad thing was I kept the unopened box of peanut brittle and one day I just happened to find it in the cupboard. Perhaps I should have tossed it then. Or never bought it in the first place. But it served a good lesson. I didn't toss it, I opened it. I ate four or five (ten?) pieces before I even came up for air and then I came to my senses. I stopped. About an hour later, I felt bad. Really bad. I don't think I got any rush from eating it, but I certainly crashed an hour later. Beside that one incident and (oh by the way) wine a couple of times like I already confessed, I did well. No sugar. It wasn't easy. But overall, I'd give myself a B- for the ten day challenge. Maybe I'm too easy on my grading system? Perhaps. But I'm not stopping at 10 days. I am going another 10. And this time my goal isn't to be perfect, but as close as I can be. After a lifetime of failed dieting, I'm going to try a new approach. At 63, there may be a lot of things about aging that are a pain, literally. But here's one that is very refreshing and almost comforting. It isn't about wearing a size 6 anymore. Its about health! So, my new approach is not that I'll lose weight to get healthy, but rather that I'll get healthy, and then, perhaps my body will return me to a healthier weight. And a new path, charted by doctors like Dr. Robert Lustig of UCSF Medical Center, who have fingered sugar as the poison and, as he points out, a whole host of players at the table of blame:

1.The Health Insurance Industry, who will hound you to lose weight, but not pay for the process, because they point the finger at the individual.
2.The Obesity Profiteers (like Weight Watchers), who make $117B a year off of fat people. They do want some of us to be successful to hold our pictures up to the rest of us pathetic souls. But they really don't want to solve the problem for good.
3. The Commercial Food Industry, who took all the fat out of our food and pumped it full of salt and sugar to make up for it. Now HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is in almost everything because it's a cheap way to get processed food to taste good. And sodium is pumped up in soda (and then more sugar added to mask the salt) to make you thirsty so you have to supersize your drink.
4. The Government, who told the food industry to take the fat out to begin with and continue to blame the individual...oh, and subsidize the corn growers so they can continue to pump more sugar into the food supply.
5. The Medical Community, who keeps telling us to eat broccoli, beans and wild salmon, and exercise until we drop (but in the dark, please, or we might get skin cancer). Red wine is good for you....oh, no, bad....oh, no good, really. But all things in moderation. Reminds me of the French who believe all things in moderation, especially moderation!
6. And us, the individuals, who either give up all together and become fat activists "Big is Beautiful" or just keep beating our heads against the wall, feeling worse about ourselves because we are such failures. Oh, and there's one other outcome for the individual, the saddest of all: those that go to Biggest Loser type boot camps where screaming meanies will publicly humiliate them while networks rack up the big bucks.

This is insanity. The problem according to Dr. Lustig is not the obesity. Twenty percent of obese people are perfectly healthy. On the other hand, an estimated 40% of normal weighted people are sick. The illness is called Metabolic Syndrome. Metabolic Syndrome is caused by our diet (which also happens to make many of us fat). And for that, there is a path to health. According to Dr. Lustig, the path is cutting the sugar and exercising, not because exercising will help us burn calories but because it will help balance our hormones. I already exercise. I will keep it up. And I will continue to cut the sugar as I continue to research this huge national (and personal) problem and try a new approach to turning it around.

Challenge; Day Three

How's the sugar challenge, you ask? We had friends over for dinner last night. The menu included steak, potatoes, grilled broccoli with mushrooms and salad. I skipped the potatoes, since I am already trying to cut down on carbohydrates in general. And since I love to cook and can control the menu, steak, broccoli, mushrooms and salad were all wonderful and very satisfying. I even put a little butter on my broccoli which I haven't done in twenty years, at least. My husband, however, stopped at Marie Callender's and bought a cherry pie (my favorite) and vanilla ice cream (my other favorite). Honestly, it wasn't that bad saying "no" to the dessert. But I'm only three days into it and so still very motivated.

In the last post, I recommended two books. Dr. Lustig is also featured in a UCSF TV series called: The Skinny on Obesity.  This is a seven part series, but the episodes are generally under 15 minutes each. Really, you can find a few minutes here and there to watch this. This is not just important if you are overweight. This is not an epidemic, but a pandemic, affecting all of the developed world and mostly our most precious asset, our children. I know I sound like I'm on a soapbox....well, maybe I am. And if you are not overweight, consider TOFI: Thin on the Outside; Fat on the Inside. According to the medical experts that are in the forefront of the fight on obesity, 40% of all normal weight people are getting fat on the inside. Forty percent and on the increase!!!

So was I completely successful? Well, that's debatable. I did have a couple of glasses of wine. So I looked this up. During fermentation, the sugar in wine is broken down into alcohol and yeast. The residual sugar in a glass of dry red wine is about 1 gram. Spirits is much less. So I guess martinis are in order......do I go too far? FYI, beer has no sucrose in it at all. The sugar in beer is maltose, which, apparently we metabolize just fine. Understanding how we metabolize sugars was also an eye opener, and helps explain why sugar really is addictive. According to some doctors, more addictive than cocaine or heroine. More on how we metabolize sugar in my next post.

And as for the wine? Well, I'm taking it one day at a time. I never claimed to be perfect!!

The Challenge

What a difference three months can make. In October of 2014 there was a lot of hoopla surrounding an initiative on the November ballot concerning a tax on sugared beverages in Berkeley. I, for one, thought this a ridiculous idea. But perhaps not for the reason one might think. It's not that I don't think sugared drinks are harmful, but rather, because I thought why stop at drinks? Why stop at sugared and not include those sweetened with artificial sweeteners? And, to be honest, there is always a part of me that gets a bit concerned when we try to legislate healthy behavior. But more on that later.

In September, I read a very fascinating book entitled The Big Fat Surprise. Written by Nina Teicholz, a journalist, I found it fascinating and it simply rang true for me. She pointed to a lot of research that suggests that it was actually the government's push for a low-fat diet that was actually the catalyst for the obesity epidemic we face today. Her point was that as the food companies reduced the fat from our foods, they added sugar to make the processed food palatable. Because Ms. Teicholz is not a doctor or trained nutritionist, she came under some degree of criticism. So I kept digging.

Enter Dr. Robert Lustig, Chief Endocrinologist at UCSF Medical Center. Dr. Lustig, in his book Fat Chance, echos much of what Teicholz claims. Sugar is the real culprit. In his book, as well as several YouTube videos, and even a full length documentary entitled, Fed Up, Dr. Lustig explains the science behind the claim and why sugar is really poison to our bodies and is making Americans not only obese, but very sick.

Fed UP

Google his name. Follow the links. There are several really good summaries in video form if you don't want to read the books. But in my opinion, these two books by Lustig and Teicholz should be mandatory reading for every parent, school administrator, doctor and every person that has ever struggled to diet and exercise with minimal to mediocre results. You will now understand, scientifically, what you have known in your heart for a long time. You do not eat more than your thin friends. You are not a gluttonous sloth whose terrible habits have made you fat. You have been filling yourself with poison that has made you fat.

I am all for being responsible for myself and the outcomes in my own life. Sometimes, you need to be educated to make that possible. And the education that the government and the USDA and FDA have been feeding us has been ALL WRONG!! Now, finally, I think there is a path forward.

I am taking the no-sugar challenge and cutting out all sugar for 10 days....hopefully more, but let's start with 10 and go from there. In the meantime, check out the links in this post. I urge you.

BTW, twenty years ago the public went on a campaign to get the government to regulate tobacco. Many of us, myself included (and yes, I was a smoker), were incensed that the government was going to try to regulate what was good for us.  Guess what? I finally caved and quit smoking along with hundreds of thousands of others world-wide. I am totally grateful and I am a hell of a lot healthier because of it.

Now let's tackle obesity.

The Secret of Stone Cottage

The new Mick Malone Mystery is now available for Kindle and in Paperback on Amazon.com.  The Secret of Stone Cottage takes Mick back to Scotland for his latest adventure. 

I had a lot of fun writing this one, including doing research on Tarot Cards (anyone want a reading?) and many of the mystical stone circles in Scotland. The more I read about these incredible man-made monuments, the more intrigued I got about what they were actually used for.  It has been over thirty years since I first visited Stone Henge near Salisbury, England. And there was an even more primitive stone circle in Avebury, England, a village only ten miles west of where I lived. Next to the stone circle, Avebury is a charming village with many activities that display what life was like in rural England many hundreds of years ago. Well worth a visit if you are ever in that neck of the woods.

In the middle of the circle, is a pub, the Red Lion. The locals, here, will tell you that the stones are identical to a ring of stones on Mars, lending fuel to the theory that these monuments were built by ancient aliens.  Well, honestly, there is a lot of evidence that makes this theory viable.

But back to the book. Mick and Jock are unraveling not only a current murder but also the disappearances of young women over the past twenty years. Detective Sergeant Galen Cullen joins them on another adventure, this time, based in the Aberdeenshire countryside.

Available in paperback and kindle versions. If you do read it, please let me know what you think. I am always interested in reader's feedback. Or better yet, please review it on Amazon. I would really appreciate your help to increase the number of reviews I have.

Thanks again to all of you that continuously send me good wishes. I really appreciate the support!!!

Regensburg and Kelheim

After another night of cruising, and more locks, we arrived in Regensburg which is a very interesting medieval city.  Another walking tour....sore feet but good for us since they feed us so well....through the narrow cobblestone streets, to see the ancient buildings and life along the river.

 And of course, another beautiful church, this time St. Peter's.

 We are learning much about the history and how south of the river was "civilization" brought by the Romans; north of the river were the barbarians. The oldest bridge in Germany is the Old Stone Bridge built in the 12th century. Unfortunately, this bridge is under renovation, so we couldn't cross it, but it was very interesting, nonetheless.  All along the bridge there are signs of the high water of the floods of 2012, when all the residents spent months cleaning up mud after the flood.  Where you see the plaster was washed away on the gate house shows how high the water was.

Near the bridge is the oldest restauraunt in Germany as well, the sausage house which is still in operation today (the green building).

After a great tour of Regensburg and lunch, we took a bus about thirty minutes outside of town to a small village of Kelheim. This was a village of very rich merchants, rich in the salt trade and breweries.  After a visit to another beer garden, we took a small boat down the Danube narrows where the river cuts a deep gorge and is only 80 meters wide to Weltenburg Abbey, where six monks still live and brew beer.

Atop the hill as you sail into the narrows sits a magnificent building, Independence Hall.

Nuremberg

From Prague we were bussed to Nuremberg. I must say, we were not looking forward to four hours on a bus, but we were pleasantly surprised.  The bus was only about half full, allowing everyone to spread out. It was very new and comfortable and the countryside in Czech Republic and later, in Germany was beautiful.

In Nuremberg, we boarded the Viking Idun for our river cruise down the Danube. If you are thinking about doing a river cruise, don't think twice.  The long boats are great, rooms nice, and service and food outstanding.  After a nice dinner and good night's sleep, we headed out the next morning for our tour of Nuremberg.  I must say, I was a bit sobered by the ruins of the Nazi stadium and meeting halls. Our guide was very knowledgeable and told the story of how Hitler was able to influence so many young people due to the dire economic circumstances that Germany found itself in after WWI. The Nazi party and flags and symbols are all illegal in Germany today.

After a sobering start to the tour, we were taken to the old town, to see the castle and look out over this pretty city.

In the afternoon, we returned to the boat for lunch and to start cruising through the many locks in the Main-Danube Canal. It is eerie and interesting at the same time, to sail into a huge concrete lock and then have the back door close and the lock fill with water.....slowly, slowly rising to the next level.