Time and spare time

A cycle in my life ended last night. I was offered a big job, one that sounds very good and would require non-stop commitment for the next four years and I turned it down. It would have meant giving up every thing else I do and this means teaching, time with my family, sewing of course and most importantly it would compromise my time with DD when she has her first baby and time to help her after her year's mat leave when she goes back to work less than full-time.

In some ways it was not an easy decision. I am all for doing all you can with yourself and I think older women have to step up and show they can do it. And it would be an exciting job. But I am also old enough to know that all that glitters is not gold, that there is such as thing as enough money, and that once you walk away from those big jobs no one remembers you anyway after you have gone. This October my 81 year old mother is coming down to stay with my daughter and help with the first great-grandchild. I would miss that.

So I came home and did something I never do, I poured a glass of wine and went to bed and just sat there in the dark thinking.

And it's not that I have nothing else going on. I have wonderful students and a great relationship with them. I have new courses I am developing and when my DD calls on a day off and wants to walk the dogs to the park I can go and we walk around and talk about cloth diapers.

As my mother said to me last night, sagely, you are lucky to have a daughter who is close to you and wants you with her.

The funny thing is that walking away from this is giving me energy to put a lot into the rest of my life and work. I feel like to justify this I have to do an excellent job with what I do.

The thing with decisions is that you take your best shot and never really know until later if it was the best thing. Will I say one day that I am glad I didn't take that job, that there was a reason? You never know, life isn't like that. I just feel in my gut that there is no good reason to spend the next four summers of my life inside an office or stuck to a cell phone.

Yesterday I read an obit in the paper of a very prominent lawyer I knew. Extremely successful. The obit talked about his career and about something that his family knew and I didn't. That he studied and loved literature in university, that he loved France and that in his later years he and his wife went to Paris every April.

We had mutual friends and I remember talking to him at a party. I asked him about the law and he said to me that the thing was he hated the law and didn't like practicing it, regretted that his son was also a lawyer.

It's a balance isn't it? Doing enough with your life but not giving too much of yourself up in the process. And like all balances I am sure that it requires fairly constant readjusting.

Thank you Robin and Gwen

Returning to my blog also gives me a chance to thank Robin and Gwen for a very much appreciated Attitude of Gratitude Award. This really means a lot to me, and in recognition of this award I would like to share some things that I am particularly grateful for:

1. My sewing friends, there is nothing more satisfying and comforting than being able to share things that really matter to you with people you don't have to explain anything to. With non-sewers there is just so much you would have to say before they had even the remotest idea what you are talking about. And even then they say the strangest things like "but wouldn't it be just easier to buy your clothes?"

2. The internet and the chance to meet and talk to other sewers through sewing groups, like SG, and blogs, and now even podcasts too. Let's face it there isn't a sewing machine in every bedroom closet any more and you have to think global to make contact with sewing buds. Sewing is so often a solitary activity but as women are social people, the internet let's us do both.

3. Sewing itself. I am never bored, I am never uninspired, I always have something to look forward to, I always can do something useful, something for someone. I have a way to express myself and my feelings for other people.

How good is that?

Thank you.

I'm back

About three weeks ago a few things happened to take me out of sewing for a while, and normal life too really. First of which a big project at work got suddenly rescheduled from a due date of August 15th to July 17th. Who does this to people in the middle of the summer?

Secondly my old boss called on me to come in and help him with the media on his political campaign. I have done this for him before and I like reporters, generally they are pretty funny and really interesting people. As an aside all this stuff about media distortion of the facts is often someone who is annoyed because the media has not just reprinted or rebroadcast a pre-packaged message. I actually believe that the media is what keeps the whole process honest, and consider what democracy would look like without them. OK enough of the serious stuff.

The problem with volunteer work like this is that it turns into full time really fast and involves things like 7:00 a.m. meetings and late night calls.

The outcome was in the end that former boss got a landslide victory and although I am not a true believer type, and did this extra work mainly because I know he really is a decent guy and needed some help, I think it is going to be a good thing for the administration of the province. More than anything I know former boss's greatest strength is his common sense and I would observe that is a rare thing in pubic life, in life in general I guess, and something that is worth more than all other attributes in my opinion.

Anyway that's done and there is just the fast-forwarded project to deal with.

This has cut seriously into my essential sewing being-who-I-really-am time and I am just thankful that I got a chance to get the Wardrobe in a Week contest done at SG before all the nonsense started. I had hoped to do the June Capsule contest, I really really wanted to do that, and had great plans but my daughter is expecting the first grandchild the end of September and has asked me to make her some clothes as she is tall, 5'10", and all the maternity stuff is getting too short. So what am I responsible mother, to do, say sorry kiddo I am involved in sewing competitions and can't help you out? 

Don't think so, so today it is down to the new sewing room my dear husband has helped me set up in the basement to make her some knit culottes. Followed I hope by some tops, maybe this is going to be my June capsule, who knows.

I just know that I don't feel normal when I can't sew and after all the intensity of the last month or so, need to pull all the pieces of myself that have been spread out in too many different places with all this work back in to myself and get resettled.

A few small extra things to post then it's walking Mr. R and down to the basement to forget my pressures and the stresses.

Off sewing

Thank you all for the wonderful comments and links to other posts. I case you are wondering where I am right now, it's off sewing. My work is busy right now but I have none the less joined up on the Wardrobe in a Week contest at Stitchers' Guild and am deep into trying to develop some true, TNT, to be slotted into the list below. I am making some hopefully blog worthy notes along the way and hopefully will be posting those next weekend.

In the meantime off to do buttonholes before my who-called-this-on-a-Sunday work meeting.

Back to you, happy sewing.

Sharing my notes

It's lunch now and I have just left an hour long session on "An analytical framework for re-engineering learning design".

These are my notes:

You can never have too many basics.

That's it.

See I am learning things at this conference.

Yes it's all about sewing.

On my pattern patterns

I am writing this in a hotel room at a pretty heavy duty conference my work has sent me to. Very interesting but my brain is a little numb but one of the great things about an obsession like sewing is that there is always a place you can go with your thoughts that is still fascinating, even when your mind is not up for much else.

The truth is that between seminars I have come up to my room and done a little recreational pattern surfing as my version of "the break."

Of course the combination of online shopping and a piece of plastic in my purse is very tempting and I have done the odd "cancel order" and some reality checking and honest appraisal of who I am and what I really do.

This is how far I have got with that tonight.

Reality check #1:

Style change faster than my ability to keep up to them in my sewing. My purging of the unneeded has continued at home since my last post and one of the things I have uncovered is my extensive collection of impulse buy patterns. Thank God there are so few sewing shows anymore, those were the worst. See anything made up and I was convinced that buying a pattern was the equivalent of acquiring the garment.

Repeat a pattern is just a pattern - on its own (add time, effort and of course fabric) it does nothing immediate to add to a wardrobe. If intentions were clothes I would not be having my regular wardrobe crises. At least fabric, wild patterns excepted doesn't date while you neglect it like patterns do.

Reality check #2:

If you are a busy person with things like a job and an involved and involving extended family with their own animals, projects and conversational and other needs, there really isn't a lot of time to fool around with new patterns. The part I love is the fabric-stitching-pressing-wearing part, not the flat-pattern-measuring part that involves a calculator and trying to figure out what 7/8" is divided by 4 and then wondering if that little amount really makes a difference, and then finding out that it really does - or moving the bust point on a blouse 1 1/4" down and then going through 17 sewing books looking for the fast and easiest method to move a dart down, wondering if you really should just be making that dart bigger - all of which you can do - except that by the time you have done it there is no time left to just stitch.

Which is the part I love.

So this is why I am a sewer of multiples. Once I have made that investment I want to collect as much interest as I can, stretching out the part I like as long as I can, and shrinking the time spent altering, and pattern tracing - I forgot I also find that as annoying as it is necessary - to as small a proportion as I can.

Which leads me to:

Convention wisdom.

I was sitting this morning in an excellent keynote speech where one of the themes was that people don't need more information they just need better information when I thought "Of course that's it. What I need is not more patterns but better patterns."

I am sure that my institution would be delighted to know that they have paid for this convention so I can come up with sewing insights - but after all everything is about sewing isn't it? Eventually.

And that means really finally working through what patterns if I had them, and they were all perfect, I really would use a lot and jump right to the sewing and stitching when I needed to sew and needed to have something to wear.

So here is my own essential pattern list, as prosaic as it is:

1. A good T shirt pattern. I started with this because I actually have it. Long, 3/4 and short sleeve. Fits, fun to make. Ottobre pattern.

2. A cardigan pattern. No check mark here but I have one I can use, also in Ottobre if I traced it out and redrew the neckline to a V or crew, don't like the scoop in the picture. If I had this pattern and a short sleeved T shirt I could have a twin set which I could make up in all the large yardages of wool jersey and other knits I bought in that one winter I decided that all I was ever going to wear was knit dresses, until that mood passed.

3. A shirt, with a collar on a stand and a band. The real thing, but this time one that fits. In my line of work a good shirt and a straight skirt stand in as a suit equivalent. Thank goodness. Easier to sew and machine washable.

4. A blouse, convertible collar because who always has the energy for a collar stand and a sleeve placket? And besides not all fabrics are crisp enough for shirts, I know I have boxes of stuff like that, and it would still work in a blouse. Long, 3/4, short and no sleeves. This would be very useful.

5. A straight, straight skirt. This means a gabardine skirt with lining, darts the whole deal. Although I think ideally it should have some little waist elastic at the sides or something because my waist is unreliable, or at least I am. I swear in 40 years of sewing I have only ever made waistbands that are too tight or too loose. Enough already.

6. A straight skirt with some sort of pull-on waistband because the fabric is a stretch woven - I know it can be done - a yoke with the elastic in it at least at the top, because I have seen it in the stores. Stay tuned on how I work this out.

7. Pants for stretch wovens (can I do something like #6 in the waistband - don't see why not, apart from the fact I don't know how to do it). Trendy leg shape would be good, I have decided at this convention that a lot of women of a certain age like me wear pants with dated leg shapes, like boxy legs, or even tapers. Have decided that this may be as significant as old-fashioned glasses on your face.

8. Real pants, trousers - for wools etc. the sort of pants that you line. Ditto on a little bit of elastic in the waist though.

9. A camp shirt. I know these are not really stylish but boy are these useful for not-at-work-wear in warmer weather with jeans, capris or shorts. My most worn garment, still in circulation is a cotton camp shirt in really great fabric that I made about 18 years ago. You would think that anything that I had worn that much for so long would have been a garment I would have duplicated wouldn't you?

10. A sheath dress. I have this and it fits - thanks to Wild Ginger, although I need to lower the too high jewel neckline.

What is missing from this list are casual pants and jeans - I can buy these for not too much and  with a reasonable fit and jackets and coats. Jackets and coats I have decided are in a special category which is;

1. Easy to fit, I am not talking blazers of course but cropped or stylist like jackets loose enough that they are not complicated to fit and of course the same goes for coats. I have decided against the classic coat until I change my mind. A coat can afford to be a bit stylish I have decided because you wear it so much that by the time it goes out of style it will be at the end of its life anyway. A besides if people are going to see you in something a lot it might as well look current - straight skirts, T shirts and blouses can quietly go on under things for years and sort of blend in.

So what does this all mean? I need to focus on getting this list in place before I start buying up any more other patterns. There are a couple of sew-alongs in SG that I am going to do as a focus for some of these patterns and see how I go.

Because after all what I need is not more, but better.

Why I didn't sew this weekend

My youngest son has moved out and before I can say "empty nest" he has acquired a border collie puppy and signed me up as babysitter while he works evenings on the weekend since he is still a student. His new place of residence is as a boarder at a married  friend's house at the beach where he will be lifeguarding again this summer. A perfect arrangement for him and a good friendly home for a new puppy. The thing is the beach is more than a half an hour away from his job, and me, so grandmama is handling the weekend puppy sleepovers. His name is Birdie and he is completely adorable and semi-housetrained. Rascal and I had a pretty busy weekend puppy sitting (Mr. R is snoring loudly from the couch as I write this) but having to run into the room every six minutes to say "No Birdie, outside, outside" made me give up entirely on starting a new project.

Completely worth it and much more compatible with my new obsession which is decorating. It appears that if you wait 55 years to get into decorating it can get intense. All that backed up picture hanging and furniture arranging pouring out all over the house, quite unexpectedly.

There is a history here. All this of course was probably set off by the last bird leaving the nest (although I just realized that I have had a Birdie fly back - life is undoubtedly hitting me over the head with a two-by-four again so I can figure this out - there will always be someone who needs me, or at least the old someone's needing me in a different way) and by the trauma induced by an evening spent at my sister's in-laws' staggeringly perfect house.

That visit made me come home and think about my own environment. Truth is I have a cute little house but for some reason I have never done a lot of serious decorating. It occurred to me today to wonder why, since I suddenly remembered that in Grade Seven in one of those what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up essays that I wrote that I was going to be an interior decorator. Haven't remembered that in about 40 years.

What happened?

Well for a start when I was 21 I met and shortly after married a guy who was older than I was, and was also an architect. The fact was my taste was not developed, his was certainly developed. To cut a long story short in a marriage that lasted a pretty long time I never bought one thing for my house. Nothing. Not a coffee cup, not a spoon. My architect husband knew exactly what he wanted and that was what we had. For all that time I slept in black or grey sheets, looked at white walls, sat on thin grey couches and tried to fit all our stuff into tall, narrow black cupboards.

I think you get the picture.

I see now that during those years sewing was even more essential to me. I understand now, and didn't then, that all the need I had for colour, design decisions, and individuality was diverted into my sewing, and it was in my sewing that I think the person I really was kept growing.

And when that person became a single mother, my energies went, not into decorating, but things like finding a good job to support us all, and bringing up my family. I did start to pick up a few pieces that I liked, all of it very bright, but there was no plan and along side it all the kid's stuff just kept piling up.

The kid's stuff still kept growing after I remarried and became a mother of three and stepmother of two great girls. We married at the end of the high school years beginning of college, and so a lot of what I did in this house was move somebody's stuff in and somebody's stuff out, shift boxes to make room for surf boards, move book collections from one room to the other, give up a sewing room to make another bedroom available, move single beds out and double beds in. To add to this my second, and I have to tell you very much my best husband, does not shall we say, have much of a design sense. 

An example. 

For some reason he has got interested in those electronic frames that rotate pictures (if it is a gadget he loves it) and actually, no word of a lie, was all set to put an old computer monitor on the mantle connected by an orange extension cord across the floor - with a multi-media slide show of family pictures - "I figured you'd love it - see pictures of the kids all day" and for the life of him couldn't see what I thought was wrong about this idea. Heart of gold, but really Rascal has more asthetic sense, a lot more. A lot.

So for the last number of years I have been doing  far more cleaning up than fixing up, and there was not much time to think about my space. I was still in the service industry phase of my life, still full-time, not part-time, not until very recently.

Well, all that has changed and looking around I realized all that my house says about my life and myself. To me a great and beautiful house was some place I visited, not some place I lived in, and I realized that I was still living around other people's decisions about my space, observing but not participating in my own immediate environment - just working with what I had to work with.

When I thought about decorating, I thought I didn't know where to start.

Well I was wrong about that. You see I figured out that all those years I was not participating in decorating a house I was actively, OK continually, thinking about clothes and fabric and style and things like core wardrobes.

A house, I realized this weekend during Birdie duty, is nothing more than another wardrobe, and pretty much the same rules apply.

Think about it. 

A home, like a wardrobe, has to work for your lifestyle, express who you are, and require exactly the amount of upkeep you are realistically able to give it. Like acquiring style in a wardrobe, style in a house requires knowing who you are, a lot of thought, coordination, accessorizing, and some sort of colour scheme. It has to be based only on the fashions that really suit you, not just trends. Things have to go together but not be too matchy.

It has to fit. It has to flatter. It has to make you feel good about yourself.

See, I know more about this than I thought.

So for the last couple of days I have been treating my house like some sort of SWAP project. I have been purging the things that no longer fit or are out of style (asked my DH to price a dumpster for the driveway), all the things that are not me and taking stock of what I have.

And like a wardrobe I have realized that I have more than I realized, and that so much can be done by moving things around and making new outfits for these rooms trying this with that for a change. Rather than leaving things where they were for example I have been putting things that were of the same colour schemes together, letting things go where they belonged not where they lay. The small pictures and beautiful fan wall quilt from my daughter's pink  girl bedroom out of a cupboard where they have been stored and into the bathroom with the grey tiles and soon to be pale pink walls. My son's terrific black and white photos in frames in the white bathroom upstairs, drawings from another child who did a couple of years at art college (before he switched to accounting) and pictures of my parents and family where I can see them when I lie in bed at night. Personal things in the space where I think most about my life, where I am going, and where I came from.

My DH has recently painted our big bedroom pale blue and yes I did make drapes but the walls have been looking large, bare and cold. I realized though that I am not the only sewer in my family and remembered that both my grandmothers where amazing needlewomen and so I have gone down to the basement and opened the boxes with their handwork. Gorgeous linens (spouse #1 didn't like anything like this - too decorative, so it got stored) and I have the small silk whole cloth quilt my dad came home from the hospital in (pale blue on one side, pale salmon on the other) to hang on one wall and an intricate mohair shawl, like a spider's web, made for me actually when I was christened to hang over the bed. There are so many other beautiful pieces - I am going to have to think of how to display them in other rooms.

And I will have to post some pictures.

So in some ways I think this has been a significant weekend for me. 

First of all never underestimate what sewing has taught you that can illuminate other areas of your life.

And secondly, and this is one I sometimes forget when I am having one of those "Oh-my-God-how-in-the-hell-did-I-ever-get-to-be-55" when I was just, so recently 35, it is never too late. 

Never too late to find out that there is more to you than you thought, that you can do the things you couldn't, that you can find a new interest, and a creative one at that.

And lastly, just when you think the party's over, you never know when a Birdie may show up in your life.