Here it is: my picture from this weekend that has no recognizable people in it.

We enjoyed the conference this weekend. It was a good time to touch base with local colleagues and professional contacts. Quite fun, with good learning sessions and friendly conversations and stuff like that.

Now I'm tired. Tomorrow I'll be writing pithy blog posts about things I've learned.

I will tell you all the things I wouldn't mention in a blog post with my name on it.

Such as, my kids and my serious strategic partners flicked ice at each other and played silly games with their phones.

We were once again the cool kids' table.

There was one conference attendee who greeted our friend Fedora with obscene gestures. I never did get what was wrong with her.

One fellow wore rubber shoes with toe divisions and told me at length about his play about a slug and a saltine cracker.

"Has the play already been written?" I asked. He admitted that it had not. "Then there's still time not to write it, " I assured him.

People kept talking about bathrooms.

At one point, a whole crowd of us got helplessly giggly over this video.

Julius Caesar, after conquering Gaul, got interested in Germany. He expressed this interest by building a bridge across the Rhine. Having done this in a mere 10 days -- something engineers tell us can't be done now -- he took his legion of soldiers across the bridge, tramped around a bit, and then went back and dismantled the bridge.

This, according to the History Channel, made it pretty clear, even without Twitter, that the Romans were people to be reckoned with. "If we want to come and conquer you," this said to everyone, "we bloody well can."

I don't how it was that I never learned this before now.

I tried to do some work yesterday, but just couldn't bring myself to. I guess the idea that summer is meant for lolling around is too deeply ingrained in my psyche.
So loll I did, sewing up those pants while watching old movies on Netflix. The grasshopper at left joined me at one point, possibly intending to make a point about the ant and the grasshopper. Fiona, the dog whose nose you can see at the edge of the picture, made short work of the grasshopper.

Chastened by this example, I got up really early this morning and at least got my Aussies written for.

I finished those trousers yesterday. It wasn't difficult at all. I think the reason is that they have no pockets. After all, the legs of pants are no great effort, being just plain old tubes of fabric. The waistband of pants is no more complex than the waistband of a skirt. I've gotten quite good at darts in the course of the STP. The fly-front zipper is a bit of a challenge, but I did much of it by hand, so that was okay.

So I think it's the pockets that are my Waterloo when it comes to sewing trousers. These pants, from the pattern Butterick   5470, have no pockets, so I didn't have the opportunity to put them in upside down or whatever it is that usually makes my pants sewing such a failure.

I'm wearing these trousers, the first in my item-a-week travel wardrobe, today for church, and they're comfortable and really nice. My next step ought to be to make these trousers in all the suitable fabrics in my stash.

However -- they have no pockets. Are pants really useful if they have no pockets? For church, sure, or for sitting at a computer typing, but for real life?

Where will I put my keys? My phone? My change? My hands when I'm listening to somebody? Pockets are an important part of pants, aren't they? One might almost say that pants are just a pocket delivery vehicle.

I can't make a pair of ordinary trousers (or as ordinary as they can be with no pockets) in coffee brown polyester of the kind usually called "bottomweight" in fabric stores look interesting in a photograph. That requires skills I don't possess.

I am therefore showing them to you with my green embroidered satin top. It is embroidered in brown, so this should be a perfect combination. Also both are polyester, so they should travel well.

I don't usually use polyester at all. The brown fabric was given to me, and the green I bought online without paying proper attention to the content. Artificial fibers are supposed to travel well, though.

I did grocery shopping and laundry yesterday, went to Jo Anne's Fabrics for brown thread and roamed around the store a bit, and went to the bookstore as well and checked out current knitting magazines. I was determined to make it a non-working day, and I think I succeeded. I even made pastry, which you can see below and to the right.

Today, #1 daughter is coming over to make some bubble bath and shower gel and stuff. This is slightly easier than coloring, so it's a good project to take on when you mostly plan to talk.

I intend to make Tandoori Chicken, couscous with carrots, and Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

#1 daughter is a good cook, but she tends not to bother. I think it will be good for her to have some Real Food.

First, though, I have the second round of church. In the early service this morning, the Children's Minister said, into the microphone during the Children's Message, "I don't want to show everyone everything I've got." This may be the first occasion on which those words have been uttered during a Children's Message. She was sitting down on the steps at the time, so I guess it was just a case of stream of consciousness speaking, but it still caught my attention.

The message was about enthusiastic prayer, and the children entered right into the spirit of the thing. It has been in the 100s for some time, and they have a lot of pent up energy from being kept indoors, probably. Can't blame them.

I don't seem to have any energy to speak of, pent up or otherwise. After the family lunch and crafting session, I plan to loll around some more, reading detective novels and probably not even sewing.

In our last thrilling installment about Extreme Money, we saw the financial players gathered around the economy they had created out of debt and bravado like the scene in Peter Pan where the whole audience just has to clap if they believe in fairies. If they clap, then Tinkerbell lives.

However, in this case, people quit believing in fairies. The guys who had bought stuff with other people's money, and in so many cases with nothing at all, since they were borrowing money from people who had borrowed the money from other people and so on, either cashed out in time or went down with Tinkerbell. Unfortunately, many of the Lost Boys were banks and Tinkerbell was the global economy.

The author reminds us of all the other economic bubbles in history, and suggests that this was just another bubble, a bit of extreme money that rose and burst and fell while the real economy kept going beneath it in the usual way. #1 daughter has always had that position about the recession of 2006-2010: it didn't, she said, make much difference to most people. It just gave excuses to those who had been greedy or lazy.

Two thirds of our family got laid off during that recession, and sure enough, we're all going ahead with our lives just fine. My husband went back to the same job with a pay cut,  my younger daughter got a better job, my older daughter and I went into business. We have the same house, the same lifestyle, the same occasional money worries.

There were other people who suffered more, and I'm not prepared to say they were all greedy or lazy. Extreme Money looks, though, at the ones who created the bubble. The book reprints a striking email apparently sent by one of the players in the drama, in which he says that he's not worried at all about the future. He says that he and his cronies are used to working hard and being aggressive, so they figure they can teach or tend gardens or check people out at Walmart just fine when their jobs end. "We don't have to worry about our jobs," he snarls to the masses of people suffering in the recession he and his kind created, " because we'll have yours."

I didn't go get the book to make sure that I quoted that correctly, I admit, but that was the gist of it. Are you thinking of Marie Antoinette right now?

It's a pretty exciting story.

I'm putting pictures of the ebooks we've been working on into this post, because I haven't made anything else new since last time. These are pretty cool, right? Today, as soon as I finish this post and my smoothie, I'm going to go out and get brown thread and groceries, and sew up a pair of pants. I haven't had much luck with pants in the past, frankly, but I'm feeling optimistic. I have no reason to feel optimistic, I admit, but that doesn't keep me from doing so.

Speaking of which, I have a bunch of bids and proposals and stuff out there, and my regulars are beginning to wake up and stretch and send me little bits of work to do, so I'm optimistic about that as well.

With any luck, we'll have had a little slow spell just long enough to get my summer class tidied up and our ebooks done and our teacher resource site cleaned up for back to school, and will have our usual steady flow of work again just in time to pay the boys' tuition for the fall.

#1 daughter's plan is that we'll keep a little slow spell in the summer, during which people will buy stuff at the educational site while we go on vacation. How cool would that be? I figure we can come back with excellent stuff for the education site (we've done FreshPlans Goes to the Museum, FreshPlans Goes to the Zoo, FreshPlans Goes to the Battlefield, FreshPlans Goes to the Rodeo -- why not FreshPlans Goes to the Beach, FreshPlans, Goes to the Dude Ranch, FreshPlans Goes to Big City Restaurants...) and make it tax deductible. I'm seeing super cool travel videos with important educational points of some kind. We'll practice in Rome.

You've been wondering how Extreme Money would tie in the global economic downturn, right? Well, it seems to have been all about the housing.

For a while now, people have been selling financial products, basing the price on the faith that people in the future might pay more for them. No objects were involved, not even money, and all the players understood that they were playing. Electronic claims for wealth flicked back and forth, but it all mostly affected the very people who were making it all up in the first place. X borrows money from Y to buy stock A, and when stock A goes up a little bit, sells it and earns enough to pay Y back with a little interest, and still to keep a little profit. The price went up because more players have bought stock with borrowed money for the same purpose. No real world things are being sold and really not very much real world money is involved, because it's all being done with debt. It's like an electronic game of hot potato, and the losers are the ones who get stuck with stocks they can't pay for -- but they just default, declare bankruptcy, and get back in the game.

Then mortgages became one of the things being played with. I'm inclined to think that the houses were the problem, since they exist in the real world and people actually want to live in them. But people used borrowed money to buy houses, and in some cases they flipped them, paid back the debt, and made a profit. In many cases, though, they couldn't pay, lost their homes -- and the lenders had houses. They didn't want houses and didn't know what to do with them. The game got clogged up with real stuff.

It all fell down.

I'll let you know what happens next. In the meantime, having completed the Summer Top Project, I've decided that I will continue sewing a garment a week and end up with a travel SWAP for my trip. I'm including some tops from the STP and probably won't actually take exactly these things with me (I don't think wool skirts pack that well), but my fabric collage turned out pretty well and I'm going to give it a shot. I'm also working on Italian with Rosetta Stone, and as long as we only need to talk about children, cats, and eating, I'm going to be fine. However, since I'm only on lesson 2, I assume that I'll gain more facility before I leave.

Extreme Money has moved on from ontology to economics. The big question over the past couple of centuries, apparently, is about whether an economic system can take care of itself or not. There are those who believe that the occasional recession or depression, like forest fires, is needed to clean up the economic ecosystem. The weak are removed and what's left is stronger, which is better for everyone.

There were certainly elements of that in the recent economic downturn here. Walmart took the opportunity to clean out poor performers who might otherwise have stayed on board forever, doing little, and other companies probably did the same. People lost jobs and moved on to things that suited them better. It was like the Google Panda update.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that part of a government's job is to keep the economy stable. These folks felt that there is now enough knowledge about economics that we should be able to predict and control market fluctuations. Allowing people to play fast and loose with money -- and there's a lot of that going on -- causes extreme peaks and valleys in the economy. The peaks make the governments look good, so they tolerate them even though they lead to the valleys.

It was interesting to me to read about how much of the cut and thrust of high finance is entirely about money, and not about business at all. Apparently, people buy a company with borrowed money, squeeze enough cash from that company to pay off the debt, and then sell the company again at a profit. For the five or ten years during which the debt is being paid off (and investors may not even wait that long to sell), the company is run at minimum cost and maximum production.The authors suggest that this can be good for a company, making it clean up its act. However, this isn't a long-term view, and companies that experienced this often go under completely and get sold off in bits.

So much of modern finance is like this, at least in the U.S., that we end up with much of our economy being completely separate from anything we produce -- anything with value at all, in fact. Our economy is now based almost entirely on people's faith that people in the future will pay more than people in the present for financial products like bonds and shares. I didn't know this. Apparently, the butchers and bakers and candlestick makers are almost completely insignificant in economic terms. This doesn't sound like a good thing.

#2 son is studying economics, so I plan to discuss this with him once I get far enough into this book to feel as though I really get the idea.

The picture here is of summer top #10, completed. This brings the Summer Top Project to a close, with ten new summer tops for just under $60.  Financially, nothing at all compared with a leveraged buyout, but at least I produced something.

I'm reading a book called Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk. I'm not going to say that this is the ideal summer reading book. In fact, if I had a trashy novel on hand, then I might not be reading it at all. Nonetheless, it's an interesting book. It begins with the idea that wealth used to be based on real things, like land and gold (which, while it may not be useful, is rare and has a physical presence) but has now become a matter of faith.

That is, stock in AOL was only valuable in that people believed that other people might, in the future, be willing to pay more for it than the current people.

The book is giving numerous examples of cases throughout history in which people treated money as an object of faith rather than as actual wealth, and the bad ends to which those people came. It's early on, so I don't know what will happen next, but I'll keep you posted.

Summer top #10 of the Summer Top Project is coming along nicely. In the picture above you can see the yards of bias binding I cut from the fabric, and at the right you can see the top with some of the binding completed. I plan to wear it to a party on Friday night.

This is yet another top made with Butterick 5470. This is in fact the fourth such top I've made. They're cool and summery without showing any bra straps, and they're floaty and therefore don't cling, and they look respectable under a jacket, too, which isn't true of T-shirts, however much we wish it were.

But I probably can't make any more of them. I'm thinking about making the pants or jacket from that pattern, though. Once this top is finished, I will have made 10 summer tops for the STP, and that's enough. It's time to move on.

Accordingly, I went to Jo Anne Fabrics and looked around. I was surprised to discover that they have a really nice selection of fabrics.  Since I don't have a proper plan yet, I resisted the urge to buy yardage and instead bought some 99 cent fat quarters in all sorts of colors and patterns. I think I can use them for a gift for #2 daughter, whose birthday is coming up.

While doing the handwork on summer top #10 and contemplating both #2 daughter's birthday gift and what I should make next, I watched a TV show called Dirt. Netflix has raised their prices, so I feel that I should use their services as much as possible in order to continue feeling as though I'm getting my money's worth. This could mean that I both pay almost $24/month and also use up lots of time watching TV. Still, it is over 100 degrees outside, so what would I be doing instead? Cleaning house? Shopping? Reading about the financialization of finance and the influence of the Chicago school of economics?

Exactly.

Today I will of course go to church and I must blog for my Aussies, but then I wouldn't be at all surprised if I didn't watch the remaining episodes of Dirt while binding and hemming.

Google Camp is going to put us up at a 4 star hotel on Via Nazionale. Apparently there will not be cabins and lanyards. #2 daughter is coming along.

We'll be leaving three months from today. I need to learn KML and Italian (well, actually, the languages so far represented among the campers are English and Dutch, so I guess KML is more important than Italian). I'm thinking about my fall wardrobe, too, though I think Americans in Europe should probably always wear jeans and T shirts. Maybe my Google T-shirt would be the thing.

However, I have only one top left for my STP, so I'm thinking about fall sewing anyway. At the moment, I'm contemplating this Vogue Wardrobe pattern, 1100, which seems suitable for fall in Italy, as well as for client meetings and classes, which are what I would mostly be doing in it, realistically.  

In three months I could also lose a few pounds, save up a little shopping money, improve my skills at photography, and write lots of blog posts ahead so I won't have to work all the time I'm in Rome.

There is a book about sewing a travel wardrobe (out of print, but people have talked about it in the sewing blogs) which advocates making a coordinated dress, jacket, pants, and skirt. Presumably you also have to make a blouse, so this pattern would be perfect. I figure I could use linen and rayon challis, so I would be wrinkled all the time but look as though that were intentional. I could also make the jacket in this Italian silk houndstooth fabric I have, this showing respect for the country I'm visiting.

This is the international color palette for this fall, so I could even follow the color suggestions in the pattern as long as I made the dress in Honeysuckle Pink instead of red.

What are the chances that I will actually do this? Hmm...

Summer top #9 of the Summer Top Project is completed, and very comfy in the oppressive heat we're currently having. I can't quite decide what pattern to use with that embroidered satin, so I knitted yesterday instead of sewing. I also did some work, went to the farmers market with my husband and bought lots of nice vegetables, did the grocery shopping, hung out a bit with #1 son, talked with #2 son, and finished building the file cabinet for my office.

Really, my husband did most of the work on the cabinet. This is not because I'm lazy, but because he can't stand to have it done as badly as I would do it. In fact, any time I take a bit of initiative and do something in the building line, he has to take it apart and redo it because I've done it so badly. I therefore just hang about and provide moral support.

The file cabinet matches the new desk desk . Both came in boxes and then needed to be put together. If you have the skills, this is a great way to save on new furniture, but it does require skill. It's like having your sewing cut out for you -- definitely faster and easier than having to cut it out yourself, but by no means ready-made. We've been working on it a bit at a time for most of the week.
Here's all the filing that has to be done.

It's a good thing I don't use paper much, or   I'd really be a long way from having my office ready.

I think I need to go through all these files and make sure that I actually need to keep the papers, and also that I know where they all are.

The other thing I did this week, besides working, was to start attending cardio pump class with The Empress and Mrs. Brown. I hadn't seen The Empress in a year or so, and haven't been to an exercise class in longer than that. I was having fun till we got to the squats and planks, and then I really wanted to quit, but didn't.

I'm planning to go three times a week till the new semester, at which point I'll have to change my schedule and won't be able to go with friends any more. Presumably by then I'll be in the habit and won't have trouble continuing on my own.  

Work has slowed down a bit. More accurately, my class ended, which frees up 15 hours of work time for me. I don't know whether work slowed down because I was teaching all those hours, or if perhaps it's good that I've been teaching all those hours because my other work slows down in the summer.

Either way, Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was all about grading and paperwork, but then we got going on some internal projects. I'm doing ebooks for our educational site.

#1 daughter ran some numbers and calculated that this could be a profitable product for us, so we're risking the time and money involved.

The thing about a service business is that you can only increase the income of the business by working more hours. The thing about a product is that you have to put in the time and money for design and production up front, in hopes that it will pay off.

We'll see what happens. I'm enjoying it, but whether we'll be able to pay the boys' tuition next month remains suspenseful.

The other notable thing this week is that I've now been at Xanga for seven years. Clearly, I should have just paid for a life membership instead of paying year by year. When I started here, I had just learned the word "blog," and now I am a professional blogger, writing every week about things like home security systems and software. Amazing. My own blog has certainly suffered.

Following an extremely lazy weekend, I have top #7 of the Summer Top Project on the left, and the major seams of top #8 finished, as you can see below.

Today I have to grade papers, calculate final grades, and turn all the stuff in. At some point soon I probably need to print them out and take the up to the Next County and sign my fall contract.

I enjoyed my summer class very much, but I am definitely ready not to teach for a bit. In fact, even though I just had a three day weekend complete with rodeo, farmers market, socializing, and  Philly/sewing marathon, I am actually ready not to work for a bit. This won't happen, but I seem for some reason to think that there should be hiking, water, and hammocks in my future.

In fact, there will be analytics reports, articles on public health issues, and possibly the launch of our latest website. Also lots of blogging.

These are all good things.

The Empress invited me to join her at her exercise class MWF mornings bright and early, and I will certainly do that. Also, I am at my desk in blue jeans and bright summer top, so there is a sense of summerishness.

Just a few years ago, summer was a mad time of very hard work in back to school retail, so I'm not sure where I'm getting  this mental image of summer as a time to relax and commune with nature.

Possibly I'm going back in my mind to my youthful summers, or summers with my kids when we mostly went camping.

I'll finish up top #8 this week. I was drawn to it by its complex pleats, which are lost in this batik quilting cotton I've made it from, and I made too large a size, so it ends up looking more like a smock than a blouse. A summer smock will be fine with me, though. I might make this one again in the right size, in a solid color so the complex pleats will show.

I still have my embroidered satin left, and I think that will be the end of the Summer Top Project. It has definitely been a success; I'll have nine summer tops for just about the price of one  RTW (okay, I know that it's possible to buy summer tops for $10, but the ones I contemplated in catalogs were all in the $60+ range. Since it's a hypothetical blouse, I might as well choose one I like). I used four different patterns, not counting the utter failure of the Hot Patterns Dolman, and they all went pretty well. I spent some time not working, and watched a whole bunch of lawyer shows via Netflix, thus becoming more knowledgeable about pop culture. I got better at pleats, darts, and gathers, too. All around, a successful project.