Another Covid moment

This afternoon one of my sisters, the only one who still lives in the same city as my mom, posted this picture to the family WhatsApp.

It's a picture of the bear my mom has on her bed. 

This bear has been tucked away forever but has made a reappearance during my mother's nearly year long isolation in her house.

Now my mom is about as sharp, tough, and resilient as they come. She says that if the pandemic doesn't end soon she doesn't know what she will get up to next. Still the sight of this little bear, now 93 and the one my mother had as a baby, has really touched me. Note the nose darned by my grandmother, who I never met, who died when my mother was a girl.

The thing about the bear is that my mom recently knit her a new sweater. She says she is going to work on a new skirt next so the bear "looks respectable." 

Now I don't know what is getting to me more. The knitting new clothes or the thought that this little bear has made a reappearance after all these years to be a comfort.

My weekend

First the sewing.


I have, the last woman standing, finally made my edition of Vogue  1250 What a nifty pattern. Here are my back of the bathroom door shots, as my photographer is still in the middle of nowhere. I miss him a lot. Great cooks who will listen to you talk for 20 hours of a day and still love you are not all that easy to come by. Took me a while to find him.

I took an extra shot of the neckline because it really is a thing of beauty. I need to get a someone, probably my daughter, take a picture of it on me. It really looks very nice, with the control panties and the Spanx going on both, and if I stand up straight. I actually think I may wear it to my DSD (dear step daughter's) wedding instead of the Loud Dress. It would probably be appreciated.


Until I get a picture taken I can tell you that it looks just the same on me as it does on the model on the envelope, if you can image the model at 57 and having had three babies, one of them 9 lbs. 10 oz. and a C section. Cool, easy to sew, fun to sew dress.


So far I haven't seen anything in the fall catalogues that has this potential for star status. What do you think? 


I am hoping, seeing the BVM Butterick sale on now, that they will deliver something soon, or the next version of Vogues. I love an interesting pattern.


My next projects will be shirts for my DC to be NYC son, which I have been putting off because I find men hard to sew for, they can be so particular, but he loved the last shirt I made him a year ago, just wanted the collar " a little different" - can you translate that into fractions of an inch? 


I am also going to be making my daughter some knit wide leg capris, sort of gauchos, with a pregnancy waistline. She is due with #2 on October 10 but was in the at Emerg today with some definite contractions and some dilation so is off work immediately. Those 12 nursing shifts are too much in these circumstances. I am going to have to help her more when I am not working with Miss Scarlett. I know that she is feeling big and unattractive and thought some new versions of the capris I made her for her last pregnancy would help.


The other reason I have not done a lot of sewing this weekend is that Nat, my son in transit, came home for the weekend between moves. His company is actually sending him to London England for two months before he starts in New York and he decided to have a break here.


I've got to tell you something and it doesn't make me look good.


I am a little stressed with this move to NYC. I really love this guy and miss him a lot. Every day.  He is great company and if he were ever to decide to move back into his own room and reinstate me as part of his day-to-day life that would be great, but that isn't going to happen of course.


My way of dealing with it is to keep in touch with where he is and what he is doing. I got used to DC. I got used to his neighbourhood at R and 1st. and liked it. I had my own system there and was happy visiting him. DC is on the top edge of entering the south, and I love the south. The south makes sense to me. That whole family oriented, not real hurried view of the world is pretty much the way I am. I have done some high powered work in my time, but me the person is not very high powered. At all.


Now he is going to NYC I feel as if I am moving too and I wonder how I will do. I am sort of holding on to the idea of the garment district and trying to figure out what the visits will be like. He is living of course with room mates and I will be in hotels. It looks like a night in a Manhattan hotel is my seasonal fabric budget. Should I stay outside and travel in? What is the transport like? 


Man is this guy ever going to get married and have a normal house with a place where his mother can stay and set up her machine and do the mending? Will he be with someone who will give me jobs to do and make me feel like part of the family? Middle aged mothers think these things, but never say them. In the meantime how sophisticated do I have to be?


He will be back in the States and at work there at the beginning of October. Then I better get down there and get myself a relationship with New York.


In the meantime off to make maternity pants.

The exciting and the boring

First of all let's start with the good stuff. 


Here's a shot of Miss Scarlett in the swimming cover-up I made her. Note the accessories even the trailing blankie. She always has accessories, just like her mother and me.

She was a little hoarse yesterday having spent the day before having her inaugural terrible two temper tantrums. My daughter was worried she wasn't doing the right thing when Miss S hit the floor a few times because things weren't going her way. Like all grandmothers I said what we all say, "She is just like you. You wouldn't believe the temper tantrums you used to have." 


In fact years ago one of my former neighbours, a nice retired nun, told me that she was once on the verge of calling Child Services because of the screams that came out of my house one day. It turned out that my daughter, at age two, had been having a meltdown because there was a wrinkle in her leotards (tights to some folks). No matter how I tried to straighten them out there were wrinkles at her knees and that drove her crazy. It was all about the accessories even then.


Actually IMO Miss S's TT are not that bad and an hour or so sitting around on the steps looking at bugs does the trick.


Of course the reasons for two year old temper tantrums are well-documented. Being tired of being bossed around, wanting to exert control over your environment, the difficulty of transitioning from one life stage to another.


Personally I think we should bring legit temper tantrums back for other life stages.


Wouldn't it be easier if you were allowed to have the terrible 42s ("don't mind her, she just doesn't have five minutes to herself"), the terrible 52s ("she's just gone blue in the face because she has totally used up her patience with dumb bosses") and the terrible 62s ("She just wants to do it herself. That's just normal at her age.")


I think we would all feel better for it, and I don't know about you but there are days when a time out seems particularly attractive.


Now speaking not necessarily of attractive, but certainly of necessity, I have made two new skirts in the last couple of days. 


I am going to need these for teaching summer school and they are the kind of project that the best thing you can say about them is that they are done. Here they go, one linen skirt showing attractive, just worn, linen wrinkles (I held back on the meltdown this time) lined of course. That's about all I can say about this.

And a slightly more interesting version in black and white stretch cotton sateen:

Doing the skirts of course made me realize that despite all the fitting traumas and potential to discover once again that what you knew would not suit you in fact does not, I really am a new pattern sewer. I like to do something I haven't done before. I like surprises. I prefer sewing as an adventure as opposed to production sewing (I have decided I won't get white shirts 4-10 made unless I work with an exciting pattern).


Well that's just me.

On kids and letting go in general

One of my biggest challenges of being a mother is getting my head around the fact that they grow up and go away. 


Yes. I know I know. 


I do think. I do know that this is natural, important and necessary. Just sometimes I think to myself, you know I was perfectly happy when we all lived here together. More than happy to tell the truth.


So. I know this is the way things should be, but sometimes it has been difficult to be as smart and as cool as I know I should be.


My DC now to be my NYC son has been the test of this. In some ways I know this kid has been on his way to New York his whole life. He is that kind of guy. In fact I can't imagine him living here in this city. I actually can't even picture it.


Of course you don't just have to see kids move on, or move out of your life. This happens to good jobs, maybe your work life entirely, to partners, husbands, friends, your animals, and to places. 


So this is where I have come to be with all of that.


I don't believe, despite the best of advice, in letting go. I don't think you should let things or people you care about go. If they are in your heart, all the time, I think you should let them stay there. 


But what you have to do is let them loose. Loose to go on to their next stages. Loose to keep being who they are.


So where does that leave you when you feel left behind sometimes?


Two places.


The first is you have to keep up with where they are now, make sure your attachment is to the present, not the past, person. I am on my way to NYC as soon as this guy is ready for visitors.


The second thing is to keep doing what you did when you were in that stage of your life. What gave you enjoyment then will still deliver. I remember an elderly lady telling me she still made a decent dinner for herself every night, and planned a menu, even when she didn't have anyone to cook for any more but herself. I know a few women who stop going places when there is no man around anymore. You still are the same you, you still have the same life.


In my case sewing is something I have always done, through all my own stages, through all the times I had to let someone or something loose. That sewing chair is where this person still is and always will be.


Does this make sense?

Repurposing

Like most women my age I am going through the transition of having my children go out on their own, sometimes far away from me. For those of us, and that would be most of us, who have the fleeting feeling sometimes that the best time of our lives was when we and our children were living together in a sunny and safe cocoon of simple routines, when we wonder if that was our best zone, and maybe it's gone, I think it is important to remember all the families we are part of in our lives.

After all if I had stayed totally enclosed in the family I had my own happy childhood in, I would have missed the family I started myself. And if I try to hold on to a certain version of my children now, I will miss my place in their new lives and new families. Sometimes the best of us has to be cut up and sewn in usefully as pieces in something else, like a new quilt, or like the buttons we cut off good old coats and save until we can use them again.

If a sewer can't understand making new things, who can?

Weddings and life

I can just tell, two weeks before the wedding, that this is all going to cut seriously into my sewing time. Not that I mind, I am very excited about acquiring the world's best son-in-law, about my daughter being so happy, and about the weekend long family reunion, now extended to another family that I really enjoy, that this event has been designed to be.

We are of course also having our challenges. The 50 potted plants that the bride decided to nurture all summer and put on the tables for centre pieces have done what plants sensibly decide to do this time of year in Nova Scotia, and shut down. They have all been moved in for restorative work but we might have to implement plan B as soon as we determine what plan B is.

And the hair stylist who was booked to come and stay and do hair has suddenly decided to "leave the industry." So two weeks before the wedding no hairdresser. I have spent the morning on the phone to rural hair salons trying to line up a replacement. When they stopped laughing and being sympathetic they told me everyone was booked.

I was able, finally, to find a fellow though who is free, will do a trial run next weekend, and will travel to the lodge on the day to do the hair.

Mom saves the day again.

Of course I haven't told her yet that his regular job is on a military base ...

Now when the going gets tough, the tough start sewing in their minds. Which is what I have been doing.

I have decided to work on pant fitting until I get a decent pattern. I will be framing up the details of that project while I bake today.

Later.

Good for your heart in the morning

My son in London sent us this clip this morning. Did my own heart good and worth sharing I thought. You may have already seen it, if not here we go to a Link

London, fabric and families

Back home again after my trip to London to see my 24 year old son who is working there. Of course there were fabric related activities integrated into the visit. My first of these stops was at Liberty's of London. Years ago when I first went to Liberty's you walked into the main floor and all around was fabric. Gorgeous fabric. Times have changed at Liberty's though as they have in so many areas of the sewing world. These days the fabric section is very small, only half an upper floor of a large department store full of fashion, home furnishings, and artwork. The other half of the fabric floor is now occupied in fact by a great knitting section (knitting really is where the energy is now for so many younger creative types) and some quilting fabric, Amy Butler in particular. I was tempted by the Amy Butler cottons, but as a Canadian version of a midwesterner it just didn't make sense for me to go to London to buy her fabric. 

What I did pick up though was some lovely cotton lawn, pictured here at - three meters for the Canadian equivalent of about $120. Crazy I know but it was historically important for me as a sewer to do this. Of course this fabric won't get cut into until I have perfected a decent blouse pattern for next spring.

The fabric caused me some problems coming back into the country at customs. The nice lady at the customs counter couldn't accept the fact that I had paid that much for a tiny package of material and it took quite some time for me to explain to her that I was going to make a blouse, what Liberty of London fabric meant to me etc. Her eyes sort of glazed over when I got to the part of the importance of making a muslin and possible patterns I was considering and she finally let me through. Not a sewer.

I am happy to report that my son is doing very well. He is working as a financial analyst, really difficult and stressful in these times and if I would say anything it is that he is working too hard. He has always been a really lighthearted social guy and I saw not so much of that this trip and lots of young male focus on succeeding. I understand this in my head but really hope things ease up for him. Part of me just wanted to take him home but the time for that is past and he is doing what he needs to do now. If you have ever done it let me tell you that it is not an easy thing to get on a plane and leave one of your children in another country. He has his life to live now but I am going to have to figure out how to find a role for myself in it that works.

He was great to me the whole time I was there. Did the nicest thing he could have done which was to introduce me to his friends, show me where he worked, lived, shopped, and the streets he walked. One of his friends that I met was a woman not much younger than me he works with. She and her partner have looked out for him and I really appreciate that.

Next week my school starts again and for the first time I will be teaching only first years. What I guess I can do now is help out someone else's child as they make their own transition into the next stage of their own lives.

I have a friend, a man I used to work with, who in a moment of absolute honesty told me that if he had his way he would have a big house and all his family would live in it together until the kids got married. Of course he can't do that, none of us can these days, but I think if some of us are honest we wish we could. My children would be horrified.

If there is one thing in my life that has sometimes made me sad is that I have not had the people I care about closer. I have a sister in one city thousands of miles away and my mom and other sisters even farther away. I have good, good friends I see only rarely because of distance.

I remember an old Charlie Brown cartoon "I have too many goodbyes, I need more hellos."

OK enough of this. Back to sewing.