Butterick 5533 quick shots

Here is this jacket:

Now on me in the yard in jeans grabbing dogs and not doing the leaves as intended:

I am not really styled here, unless you count wind and dogs, but this is a lined corduroy jacket and this is exactly how I will be wearing it.


I will write some detailed technical notes tomorrow (got a few assignments to mark before I go to bed) and there are definitely some thoughts I would like to pass on with some detail shots, for the benefit of anyone else who might want to make this.


I have one other thing I would like to share tonight.


I got a long detailed email over the weekend from the woman who was my first important boss. She is now 80 and her email was full of her activities and the long list of people she was driving, buying groceries for, supervising their healthcare, visiting, moving, packing and unpacking. It made me tired to just read it.


This woman never married and had a great career where she totally micro-managed us. She once sent me out to buy new panty hose in the middle of the day because the shade I had on were not the right match for my dress. I kid you not. 


She was also the first person we called at midnight one night when a group of us had gone out to socialize/dinner and had left an industrial prototype (one of two sent to North America for testing from the factory in Europe) in a car in the parking lot - where it was stolen - undoubtedly by a competitor - and she actually, somehow, managed to keep the bunch of us from being fired. I would have fired us.


This woman was, and is, a powerhouse.


Reading her email this weekend, and seeing how she has moved from a very useful work life to a very useful retired life, I had an insight and this is it:


It is really important how you spend the older half of your life. It is your one chance to show that you paid any attention at all in the first half, that you did more than just let it all go by. How you are when you are older is your best demonstration that you didn't just have things happen to you, you learned from it.


When you are older, and how you do it, really is your evidence of your life's work.


And doing it in a red jacket is probably a good idea too.


More on this pattern later.