On learning new things

I am writing this from northern Florida where we arrived yesterday. We will be here for two weeks and then off to Tennessee for a month while DH goes back to work.

Packing my projects up for six weeks to myself was quite an ordeal. Just deciding what to take with me was a huge crisis. I decided that after a whole winter of working too hard I had to be careful not to just fill the car with unfinished should-do projects (those wool work skirts stayed home). So in the end I decided to bring all my blouse fabric and patterns to perfect fit, three summer dresses that are cut, fused and serged, my DC son's shirt pattern and fabric, all my bra making supplies,  the bolt of fabric he had waiting for me in DC for curtains, and patterns to trace. I also packed all my sock yarn and my Getting started with socks book. Oh yes and a roll of tracing paper.

In the end my husband had to go out and buy a car top carrier to get it all here, and of course I might pick up the odd yard or two while I am down here.

And I am finally going to have time to blog.

So here is the progress to date.

Socks: 

We agree that my gauge was too loose in my first pair. 

The Dr. Seuss socks.

DH has kindly summed it up this way  "They are great socks, they feel like they are going to fall down all the time but they don't, amazing." So I went down a full mm. size in my needles next time and made one sock (cast on New Jersey turnpike, grafted the toe in Baltimore) that I had intended for one niece with size 9 feet but now

 are going

to go to her 10 year old cousin. These are some pretty firm little socks, pictured here in Kroy stripe sock wool, unblocked. I should be working my way through sock two except I sat on my nice little eco bamboo needles (the same time I put my knee in my sandwich checking on Mr. Rascal who we think hurt his shoulder chasing a ball at the side of the road in New Brunswick) and they now look like those mangled satay sticks you scrape off plates after a BBQ. Promise to pick up some more and at least finish this pair, and to buy steel needles.

I have also been experimenting (if you can call knitting three socks only in an entire lifetime experimenting) with the cuffs. Because I have a horror of knitting Dr. Seuss socks, even though that is exactly what I have done in 2 out of the three, I am reluctant to do a stockinette stitch leg part. I would like to build in rib to hold these things up. So the first pair had k2 p2 legs, but I think those look a bit lumberjackey, and the tighty tiny pair had regular k1 p1 rib, but that took forever so in the pair I have started now in this nice Opal sock yarn I am following Ann Budd's advice (it seems I am no better at reading instructions as a knitter than I am as a sewer - BTW that checking your gauge/tension thing is pretty good advice - I realize that this is the knitting equivalent of pre-treating your fabric ) and am doing a k 3 p1 

which looks stockingnette but has rib spring.

Also thanks to Claire for putting me on to good advice about not getting those gusset holes. I have followed this up and Youtubed my way through some more tips.

I have hope about this next pair. I have hope.

Finished socks and future knitting

Well here they are the first pair of socks, my maybe wearable muslin socks, (something that may make sense to you sewers) full of mistakes and obviously the totally wrong gauge. Followed the pattern but obviously have to go down a full 1 mm. in needle size next time. Also did one foot on dpn and one on small circulars and one foot is bigger than the other of course but I can't remember which is which. Will have to be very careful about gauge next time. I took me about an hour to graft the toes from a book. Interesting that I love hand sewing when I sew but hate using a needle at all when it is with yarn. I love anything seamless as a result.

I also have to figure out how to eliminate the holes at the ankles when you turn the heel.

Despite the fact that these are technique-wise about as skilled as a first home ec apron, I am very pleased with myself and am looking forward to making more on our car trip south.

One thing that interests me about planning projects is that my taste changes. Things that I thought looked cool look so dated to me a few years later and things I swore I never would wear I decide I like. This is an argument I think never to purge the sewing room too carefully.

Take vests.

I have always hated vests. Maybe the 80's did me in or all those sewing shows where we all wore those decorative boxy vests. Wearable art non-wearable garments.

Lately though I have been rethinking this. I was a cold winter here and I spent at least an hour everyday walking dogs and coming home chilled. Often I wished I had something warm for my core that still gave me arm movement and you know that spells vests. I have also realized that a lot of the blouses and shirts I wear fall and spring could work too in the winter with a third layer. The problem of course is that a lot of my shirts have 3/4 sleeves with cuffs and these get really lumpy under a cardigan.

So I have been wondering about vests and wondering if I made one or two if I would still hate them.

I my planning mind are one sewn (Burda 7494) and three possible knitted vests, including this one from Knitty ,  (would be faster than sweaters and would give me more new techniques to try out), the free patter chunky cable vest which is a free pattern from Lion Brand, and the gold cowboy vest from the latest Knitscene.  Due to midsection issues I am not sure, no actually I am sure, about short tight vests so I am thinking of these.

What do you think?

On not making it harder than it is

I have been thinking of simplicity a lot lately.

In two and a half weeks I am off to visit Florida a bit with my mother, sister and niece and then Rascal and I are going back to Tennessee with DH for two weeks to chill out while he works. This will be my first time ever of being a stay-at-homish wife when I wasn't doing it with kids.

So I have decided to pack along some sewing projects. Of course the first round of this involved about 40 backlog projects which I realized would just be turning my holiday into work and I finally narrowed it down to two patterns for blouses/shirts to perfect and some fabric to work that through on, and my son's fabric and pattern for a shirt.

I am committed to working through a full slate of TNT this summer.

Since I am a fabric sewer I would get so much more done, with less stress if my TNT collection was fully developed.

Which brings me to pants. 

About a year and a half ago I made a series of pants that fit, finally (see really old posts). Well I decided that that pattern has run its course. With pants styles slimming down these pants just seem too wide for me, lots of fabric flapping around the leg, particularly around my thighs. So last weekend, realizing that with all I have to do at work before I go that my time was very limited, I went shopping.

What a downer that was, and a good reminder of why I sew. Like a lot of women of my age, or any age for that matter, my middle is no longer my best feature. It is an area I want to minimize not accessorize.

Well the trouble with pants I decided is that they are designed for men, even if they are made for women. Do I need a fly? No? Do I need back pockets with flaps to carry my wallet in? No. Do I need angled pockets at the front to keep my change in? No. Do I need elaborate closures with big heavy hooks right at my navel in the waistband? No. Why would I wear this and why would I spend precious sewing hours fussing away at making these little bulk addition details?

I must have tried on a hundred pairs of pants and even the ones that had the slimmer legs I was looking for completely deteriorated by the time they hit the waistline, which in most cases was still too low at stomach bisecting level.

In desperation I finally went to a work wear chain I never shop in and tried on these pants, which are made of a stretch woven and have a "revolutionary comfort waistband" - read a contoured waistband with the stretch cut cross wise of course,  not interfaced, with narrow elastic stitched into the top waist seam like a stay. What was different was that the waistband seams were at centre front and centre back which kept the side seams particularly smooth. The pair I tried on were made in a nasty harsh fabric, pull on pants without the fly and they fit perfectly.

With my decreasing waist to hip ratio they pulled on and fit smoothly just fine - the stretch in the fabric was just enough. These pants were also on sale and at $22.00 I bought them and took them home. I ripped them up before wear could stretch anything out of shape and traced off a pattern. 

Remarkable to see how much more shape in the back than the front and how simple they were in construction.

This weekend when I should have been doing other things I made up a pair and they too fit absolutely perfectly. I will post pictures this week when I can get my daughter to take them. Rascal and Birdie aren't much with the camera.

Imagine that a perfect pants pattern finally just as long as I use stretch wovens. And no more sewing time that I would spend to make a pair of pjs.

This has me thinking now of how often in my life do I make things harder than they are. If the fabric stretches I don't need a zipper. With pants I can buy and rip apart I don't need 37 different pants patterns to buy and try. With some reliable TNT patterns I don't need to fret about fitting something new every time I sew.

Of course now I still need to buy some more fabric ....

I realized I didn't get as far as ambitions

Last night I sat up and watched three episodes of Mad Men, given to me by my son who doesn't need his silver polished, and worked on sock number two. Oh and BTW that son also emailed me and asked me to make curtains (I detected the hand of his sister in this and sure enough she had said to him "let mom do something for you" but then again they are the next generation of a big family of do gooders/interferers) and I am pretty pleased about it anyway.

Also got a call this morning from the wife of one of my middle son's friends to say that yes they had been in an earthquake in Indonesia but were fine. With only one in the group who is married, this girl got a call to say we're fine, can you call all the mothers? No internet where they are. My nerves.

Back to my socks. I have looked at enough socks online to realize that they are generally smooth and beautiful and mine are not. I used 3.5 mm. needles as per pattern but like Bee Bee realize this is too big. I did ribbing all the way down for this first pair because I know DH isn't going to wear anything that falls down and that does pull it in a bit but the foot is still a bit loose. Put the all finished but the toe one on my own foot, in between admiring the clothes on Mad Men and being pleased to see women who actually had hips more than 40" dressed to be beautiful, and realized it is on the border line of being too baggy.

I have a pair of 2 mm. needles and can try them next but really they seem like pins, but I think if the stitches were tighter it would all look neater.

Of course I have been reading as much as knitting and am interested in the magic loop and toe up that Claire has posted on her blog. I have tried the small circular, which I saw someone use at a party, but a lot of the sock shaping, heels, gusset and toes have to be done on dpns and I am getting pretty comfortable with those. As I said in a comment I had a brief experiment with knitting small on large circulars but really felt like I had the loops of a garden hose spring around me. Also interested in the toe up but have to decide if I like decreasing more than increasing (I think I do).

All lot of thinking of variations of course for someone who has yet to actually make a real pair of wearable socks.

The interesting thing is why this interest in knitting after a whole life of sewing (oh and Bee Bee I have a couple of Jelly Rolls I don't know what to do with too). I figure there are several reasons:

1. It's good tired work. I am finishing what I intend to be the last big overtime phase of my career and at 9:30 at night when I stop I don't have the energy to start doing some careful sewing. You can actually get something productive done slumped in the husband's Laziboy, or propped up in bed with two dogs lying on top of you.

2. It is a good space filler. You can knit while you are on the phone, in the car when you arrive early at an appointment, in the doctor's office and in my case even when you are online with a headset on in a conference call or teaching an online class.

3. It's a new thing to learn (see previous post) and there is a possibility that I can watch myself get better at it. I have made 8,000 skirts in my life I am sure and they pretty much turn out reliably the same way. This is my first pair of socks and surely the next pair will be better.

4. Yarn stores are now the way fabric stores used to be. Full of cool stuff and beautiful materials. Compare the quality of the environment of your average Joann's or Fabricville in Canada to the local IYS. Cities that don't have one real fabric store left often have 2-3 really cool yarn stores.

5. Young women knit. I like being around cool young people (why I left corporate/public life for teaching) doing neat things and not age-segregated into a group where everyone looks just like me - although there are younger sewers coming up and I am so happy to see that.

6. Small easy projects, hats, scarves, mitts and yes even dishcloths can be made out of wonderful materials and look beautiful.

Which brings me to a major sewing revelation.

At the beginning of April I am heading out. Rascal, DH and I are driving down to St. Augustine Florida for two weeks, one of which will be with my 82 year old mother, my deaf sister and her 10 year old daughter. They have never had a Florida type holiday and I am looking forward to this. After they go back to Winnipeg DH and I are going to have a week to ourselves and then are driving to Tennessee where he will go back to work and I will hang out a bit. I haven't had unscheduled time in my life alone in the days since forever.

Obviously I am going to take projects to sew and since I am driving we can take at least one machine.

So I sat down in my sewing room yesterday morning and started to go through my patterns. One idea I had was that I could take a bunch of patterns that need tracing and a few things I have planned on making. This whole exercise got pretty upsetting fast when I saw how very many patterns (each in their own way representing a lost ambition) I had bought and had intended to make in the last year and hadn't. It made me feel so far behind before I had even started.

I even went on Patternreview and if other people didn't love a pattern, I just threw it out. So I thought about it and thought about it and realized I love to sew but not all of it. I decided there are pattern sewers, wardrobe sewers, and fabric sewers. I am a fabric sewer.

A pattern sewer is someone who sews for style and does it very well. The wonderful Erica Bunker is a great example of a sewer like this. These sewers wait for terrific new patterns and produce their own meticulous versions. The technical Chanel jacket sew-along sewers are probably closely aligned to this group too.  I think that at various stages of my sewing life I was one of these sewers too, and glad I was for a while because that's where I picked up some of my skills.

Then there are the wardrobe sewers. These are the SWAP power houses, the ones who think a lot about clothing, are deep into reading about style, core wardrobes, and must have lists. This group are also good shoppers, make sure they coordinate have jobs that require them to look good on a regular basis. I was definitely a wardrobe sewer when I had an intense job where I was often in public and often traveled for work. That's when I discovered the importance of building a wardrobe around a small palette, that's when all my bottom garments were in black. I don't think I could have afforded to dress well for work any other way. Stitchers' Guild is a good place to find these sewers.

And then there are the fabric sewers. Now all sewers are somewhat in this category of course but these are the sewers who stash big time but most of all just love to work with the fabric. In educational terms I suppose you would categorize the pattern sewers as visual learners, the wardrobe sewers as text based learners (they plan and intellectualize) and the fabric sewers as the tactile learners.

This is why I think I am a fabric sewer:

1. When I think of my all time favourite garments it is the fabric I remember not the style.

2. The number one reason I hate to shop for clothes is that even the things I think are nice when I get up close and most particularly when I look inside and read those little labels I am just so disappointed to read 100% polyester or even 30%. I can't bring myself to part with my hard earned dollars for a harsh hand or something that I can see a little sheen on when I hold it up to the light.

3. Nothing makes me happier than something that presses really well.

4. Nothing hurts me more than wasting a really nice fabric on something that is out of style too soon or on a pattern that really didn't deliver. I mourn fabric I have sacrificed this way for years.

5. I hate messing around with pattern fitting, that is the doing the dishes part of sewing as far as I am concerned. That's why when I get a pattern that works I immediately make up multiples.

6. You can change your mind a 100 times about a pattern, and what you thought would look good last year can be so dated this year, but good fabric is good fabric forever.

7. Good fabric makes you happy when you sew it and happy when you wear it. 

I think every sewer at some juncture has to come to terms with the gap between the sewer she thinks she should or wants to be and the sewer she really is.

So this is me:

What I really need is a good set of TNT and for those to be updated/replaced as necessary about every 2-3 years. (Skirts can stay but say pants profiles or collar styles need updating).

If I have to have a goal, apart from fabric acquisition, this would be it:

1. Straight skirt for work (have this)

2. A line skirt (last weekend's skirt was very good however the navel level waistline makes me feel unsteady - I am making a linen version this week with a good old solid waistband)

3. Blouse for work - with sleeve variations. Made a nice one last summer but feel it is too tight across the bust which I have already altered, think I will retrace this Ottobre pattern one size bigger.

4. Camp blouse - casual warm weather blouse (have a Palmer and Pletsch to do that comes highty recommended)

5. Cardigans- long one from this fall's Ottobre and Jalie's sweater set for something more fitted.

6. T shirt - to make up a sweater set think I am going to trace one size larger as per #3

7. Updated pants- am going to try Jalie's classic trousers, well-reviewed and see if I should narrow the legs

 Dresses I can alter as I go, they are so easy if I do a waistless style and I have a good basic sheath to work from for reference.

If I had this in place I think I would be pretty happy.

On muscle memory and dealing with my ambitions

I was reading some random article that was really about something else this week about muscle memory. The quick and too-simple explanation of this from what I understood, was that once you do something enough your brain builds little default messages to your muscles so you can do things without having to think about them when you do them. This is why our mouths know how to move to say words without having to think about it every time we speak (and this explains why when you try to pronounce a word in a foreign language it feels like you can't force your own mouth to do it even thought a two year old in that country can do it so well. It also explains why we have accents in other languages - our old English speaking muscle memories get in the way and don't give up). Which explains why sometimes it may seem as if it is too hard to learn new things, too much training gets in the way and all that new muscle teaching hurts. That's the down side and why older people can both be so set in their ways and also, as the flip side, can have a facility with something they have done all their lives that it just takes your breath away. Think of a group of over 75 church ladies working the kitchen, or watching a grandmother crochet. Or me threading a sewing machine.

Now the part that really interests me about this though was the possibility that it is possible at any stage to build new little neuron pathways in your brain to build new muscle memory. Improvements are good and the new piece for me was that if I struggle to learn something new, it's just because I have so many super duper muscle memories already built in that the new stuff is going to take time to push that all over and fit in some new pathways.

Don't you love what I can do with science?

All of this made me decide to stick with new skill learning and not to get frustrated if it was a lot of work.

Which brings me of course to my sock knitting. I have just decided I am going to learn to knit socks. As has been previously identified I am very interested in doing things for my family and the way I see it everyone has feet and socks aren't a sometimes thing, they are an everyday thing, and a person who would be knitting good socks would be doing something useful. (If anyone else out there grew up on the Canadian prairies you will understand without my explaining why usefulness is in there deeper than even muscle memory - it's almost prenatal where I come from).

The only problem with this of course is that I don't knit, not really.

So here illustrated are my first almost finished DH socks. Parts of these socks have been ripped out and reknitted so often that the stitches in place are almost fluffy with fraying, the cuff of one is also sort of coffee coloured because I was so involved in trying to reknit the heel on one (I can't remember if DH has pointy heels, I hope so) that I threw the other one onto the bedside table where it landed, cuff first, in a cold cup of coffee.

The only thing that is keeping me going (apart from the fact that the process is kind of interesting) is my memory, mental not muscle, of how it was when I learned to sew about 45 years ago. I remember an awful lot of failures and weird outfits (I could write a how-not-to dress book) for decades really but somehow I kept at it (I think because I really love fabric) and eventually things started to turn out. Often.

My assumption is that my next pair of socks will be better. Or maybe that will be a the pair after this one. I only seem to be able to absorb one improvement at a time.

What I have learned this far is that having the right number of stitches on the needles and keeping the exact specific number of stitches on the needles that they tell you too really matters.

A lot.

Unlike sewing where you can always make up fixes or at least hope it will look better when it's ironed, knitting is pretty precise.

Now I wonder if my brain can grow those channels.

Editing

I just re-read what I wrote this morning and wondered if I should take it down. That silverware story when I see it in print really embarrasses me. But maybe I should leave it as it is to remind myself what a dingbat I can be.

Who knew that when your kids grew up you had to do it too?

About time, I think, about time.

On A line skirts and silverware

I had a great time in the States and am back at home now alone in the house with the two dogs doing the last six weeks of term. (Youngest son is surfing for six weeks in Indonesia, yes I know the tsunamis, if you have a prayer list put Ben on it, I already have my mom and dear mother-in-law on the case, what can you do? Kids drive you crazy).

I loved Tennessee and once I was down there and met the folks DH is working with and understood that the work was very interesting and that they needed him I felt better about him being there. He really enjoys his career and this is the most interesting thing he has ever done. I also think Southerners are terrific and very much in some ways like people here on the East coast of Canada, very polite and pretty laid back.

I also had a great time in Washington with my middle son who now lives and works there. He too is doing great and I can really see he is in his element. The fact is his element isn't here anymore, nothing personal Mom, and in fact if he could live in New York he would. He told me that if he can he would just like to stay in the States because that's where he's happy. He has outgrown this place.

All perfectly reasonable if you are a 26 year old guy but not the kind of statement that brings out my best behaviour. I have, in middle age, developed a wonderful ability to start crying at any time, and the rule of sons is You Never Cry. However I did and of course wish I hadn't. I just kept having these old images of him.

Anyway the thing that bothers me most is that this kid doesn't really need me right now. That is hard for me. I am a doer, I sew, sometimes I would rather be in the kitchen at a party doing the dishes and talking to one person that out in the front room making small talk. I would rather walk your dog than sit and have tea. 

The fact is what does a 26 year old guy need a 56 year old mother for? Right now not much. I sat in my hotel room and figured this out. It is that right now he is working out a good life for himself and there really isn't a role in it for me. Probably shouldn't be either.

He and I are and have always been very close and this is something I have to work through. You see I help my daughter a lot, I babysit, I do her errands when she is home sick, and I do things for my surfer son too. While he is away I am taking care of his dog and I have a list, for example a summer course I have to enrol in for him. I don't want to be in the middle of their lives, and I am not, but I am needed and have a role. 

Which leads me to the silverware.

My son has been eating off some cheap plastic cutlery but found the previous tenant had left a large wooden box of old silver. While I was there he asked me how to clean it and I told him he had to get some Silvo and that I wanted to clean his silver for him. He of course told me I was crazy and I didn't come all the way to Washington DC to do his housework (man I would have paid him a $100 for the chance to get down on my knees and do his floors, you wouldn't believe the dust I saw on those baseboards too).

I will now turn this over to his conversation with his sister, as reported by my daughter who found the whole thing hysterical:

D: How was your visit with Mom?

S: Great but she had a complete nervous break down in Bath and Beyond.

D: How so?

S: She was clutching two bottles of Silvo and she grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go and her eyes filled up with tears and she said through clenched teeth "You-have-to-let-me-clean-your-silver." Completely lost it in the store.  Even wanted to take it all back to the hotel with her and clean it at night. Like she wouldn't look like a crazy woman going up the elevator in downtown DC with a box full of silver and two bottles Silvo.

S: I don't get it. She is such an intelligent woman, so smart and funny and then she goes just nuts. This isn't who she is.

Well I am sharing this story so the next time you go berserko  with one of your children you have a very high standard to judge your own behaviour against. I think I have set the bar pretty high here for a performance by a poorly adjusted needy mother.

Obviously I have a little work to do here. Somewhere along the line I had the idea that I was going to get smarter as I got older. Unfortunately it appears that in middle age you have to learn it all over again and in fact the challenges and learning aren't going to stop. 

Damn.

But obviously I am going to get this together. No point in taking a great relationship and eroding it because you can't adapt. Not going to do that.

I have been thinking about a family member who has always referred to my children as coming from a "broken home" even though that was a long time ago, even though I have very happily remarried. (Thank you mom for always saying, "no that's a healed home.") This same person has also said on several occasions that she wondered if this son moved away because of the disruption of the divorce, as in if their dad hadn't left he wouldn't have either. It has been really hard on me wondering if I blew it.

But you know it's not about me at all, it's about him and really he just is happy with the life he is making for himself.

All mothers should be this lucky.

Which brings me seamlessly to the issue of an A line skirt.

When I got home I got a bit of a flu and rather than doing more work, work that had piled up while I was away, I decided I needed some restorative sewing, but nothing too demanding.

I had read somewhere in one of the library borrowed style books that every woman should own an A line skirt. Well I haven't owned or worn one since high school. I have been making just about every other style of skirt since and mostly wear lined straight skirts with a back vents to work. I actually hate sewing those skirts. I hate sewing back vents, I find them fussy, and these skirts are something I make because I need one, not something I want to sew.

I also realized that as of the end of this month I am taking three months off and won't be needing any new work clothes until the middle of the summer.

So I dragged out my old Ottobre's and found a pattern for a basic slightly A line skirt that had received great reviews on Pattern Review and found some old corduroy that I had bought for I don't know what a while ago ( a bag?) I also have not sewn corduroy since high school.

I cut it out and did the zipper, seams, darts and lining last night and hope to finish this today with an invented elastic faced top. The pattern calls for Petersham which I have used before and didn't like - a bit like wearing a tape measure around your waist all day IMO.

I have nothing that will go with this skirt, being trapped in black and grey for years, but will see how it goes.

Oh, and I forgot. My son did say that he would be interested in me making some shirts. I have a few nice pieces from Michael's in Baltimore and amazoned David Coffin's shirtmaking book yesterday. Must start some shirt research of my own too.

It's a start on the road to recovering some of my common sense, I hope. But I sure want to make those shirts pretty great.