Catching up

OK, well, what's the latest?

For a start we have had some company and more to come. This is a very good reason not to sew.

One of our star visitors was my step-daughter who came home for a visit from Nottingham England where she now lives.

There are many reasons why I am proud of her, but one recently is how she turned her life around from the usual young lifestyle of partying, not a lot of systematic exercise and eating not all that sensibly. Her story is best told in her own pictures:

A strong girl on the inside she has gotten very strong on the outside too. Does a lot of crazy weight lifting and is eating a full but clean diet.

She is also incredibly funny and smart. And a smart knitter.

I did some moaning about my not so fair fair isle vest project, where I broke the record for stubborn stupidity having knit and ripped out the same row 5 times, and she took one look at it and pointed out if I put in stitch markers every repeat I could catch my mistakes before they took off.

Like everyone in the world knows this but me. 

Hopefully I will finish this unit pretty soon. Right now I feel like one of those Japanese soldiers they used to find in Pacific islands 40 years after the war had ended because no one had told them they could go home.

More stubborn than smart. I'm that kind of knitter.

Other than ripping out that same row and cooking for a lot of folks, I have continued on my pillow mania. 

There is now no place to sit in my house unless you dump about four pillows on the floor. Yes, pillow making is the ultimate in no brain sewing, but I think I need to give it a rest now. 

Even the dog has learned to throw them off the chairs so he has room to lie down. Tell me how a dog who after 9 years of failed training in just about every useful area, can figure out in about two minutes how to throw a bunch of pillows off the couch right across the room. 

This is just one of the mysteries of life along with why any body would spend this much time trying to learn to knit a fair isle vest when she doesn't actually wear vests.

And yes I did some sewing. 

My last picture for this evening is my youngest at his birthday bash last night. He has a hat I knit him on his head and the wear-to-a-BBQ shirt he requested. He has just finished a major renovation of a duplex he is going to rent out and so I figured a house shirt made sense.

He has asked that next time I involve him in the fabric selecting process. That must mean he really liked it.

One of my beautiful boys, no longer little any more:

Now what I am going to sew next?

Slow day sewing

The last few days I have been divesting myself of considerable sewing supplies. After having lived lean in the supply department in Florida I realized that my ought-to-dos, piled high, were getting to me.

I have collected so many potential projects that no matter what I made I always felt I was behind.

This is stupid.

So I decided to pass on the things that I didn't actually enjoy making, no matter how high my hopes have been, no matter how many components I have collected. I have found a taker for my embroidery threads, for many expensive mail order patterns, for a half ton of lingerie fabric and findings. 

I have kept all good fabric, dress fabric and patterns that are TNTs or have that potential.

Why was I cluttering my sewing brain for so many decades?

The bottom line is that having so much around me that didn't totally excite me was getting in the way of enjoying what I was actually sewing and enjoying sewing.

I love to sew dresses, and some skirts, and tops. I find bra sewing annoying, too many little pieces and slippery fabrics with 1/4" seams and I haven't embroidered anything in about five years and have no desire to.

I did one soothing, and virtuous thing though. I did get caught up on one of my ghost-from-the-past projects. I made pillow forms today, lots of them with stuffing I had saved forever. I also finally fixed a cushion up that matches the pattern on the couch that a  dog chewed off so long ago that I can't remember the last time I dusted the urn with his ashes in it at the back of the cupboard.

The pattern on the couch has faded, but the cushion now looks bright and brand new.

Of course I have covers to make for these pillow forms next and I will. Soon. I have decided my chairs need a whole lot of cushions. 

I was shocked to read the other day that designers like to put a cushion every foot and a half on seating which means we have been really uncomfortable all these years and didn't even know it.

Pillow form sewing seemed to be about all I could handle today since I only had a few hours sleep.

We had a big family dinner (12) last night and I was too tired to start my marking when I had finished cleaning up, so I went to bed at about 11:00. Of course once I was in bed I lay there thinking about all the marking and my sewing room and what else I needed to liberate and the next think you know it was 4:00 a.m. and I was still awake.

The internet says if you are awake for no reason a whole night because you have things on your mind you need to see someone about all that stress.

Where am I going to find someone I can sit down and say "I was trying to decide if I can line a grey coat with black and the next thing you know it was 4:00?"

Where am I going to find someone who understands that this falls under the category of racing thoughts (I can feel my blood pressure going up right now. What about red? Too cliche?)

Anyway I just got up at 4:00 had a tea and some cereal and all my marking was done by 7:13.

Which left me the whole day, but not enough energy to do more than pillow forms.

But it was meant to be.

I don't think that chewed up cushion should have to wait another ten years.

Anyone else ever have a night like that?

Do you need more stuff? Help me have less.

This message is probably for within-driving-distance readers.

I have massive amounts of machine embroidery thread (rayons and cotton) and lingerie fabric, lingerie elastic, wires and findings I have bagged as part of the "clean this place up so I can move" campaign in my sewing room that started when I went down there and started folding fabric the other night.

I am also looking at some StyleArc patterns that are in a size I am not and some classic sewing books.

If any of these things are of interest to you, why don't you shoot me an email?

What I am sewing now

First of all thank you so much for your supportive messages. It meant a lot to me, I felt so helpless and it was good to have my peeps reach out.

We are getting organized again. You carry on. My daughter's mom and baby group sent her a lilac bush so she can see it bloom every year this time and as one of the girls wrote " it was in full bloom last week." I think that really helped, something she had hoped for and fought for will not be forgotten.

Last night she started sewing again, a baby blanket actually, to be sent to a woman in New York who is going to a baby shower.

Today I decided what I am going to be doing next two.

Two projects that are different for me. The first is a retro shirt for my middle son who has a birthday on July 4th. He wants something funky and retro to wear to BBQs, and boy can his mom deliver that. This is the pattern I am going to use:

I have also been inspired to make a summer purse. 

I have been immune to date to the bag making craze but am inspired a bit by my daughter's own cool bags and all the links to patterns she sends, me I decided now is the time.

I have lots of purses of course but the old leather or even straw bag looks a bit formal with the shorts at the garden centre, or tearing around and throwing a bag in between two car seats in the back, or on the floor of the reno my son is working on and I am helping clean up.

I need a utility number. 

With lots of pockets for all the things I keep losing. I have resolved to stop unloading my entire purse on the counter in front of every cash register I meet.

Here is the pattern I have decided to use. My only regret is that I don't have immediate access to the garment district so I can get some neat, not garment looking, zippers.

I am actually pretty excited to be going out of my garment sewing comfort zone:

Stay tuned, real tuned.

What will I sew now?

We are home now and doing the long unpack.

After a difficult week my daughter lost the baby. There is no other way to say it. I feel so sad for her, she tries so hard to be good about everything, but this was tough. But she is too. One of my sisters once said that we are the kind that don't fall apart even when we want to. When we want to.

Do you know what I mean?

I think perhaps only women really understand this.

But you know today was a sunny day and she and the little girls came over and they walked around the back yard making grass and stone soup, like kids have done for generations, and made us laugh. 

You just have to trust.

Yesterday morning we went out, she probably should have been resting, and well we brought her a new summer wardrobe. She had different plans for this summer but you know you just have to regroup and feeling better on the outside is a start. 

I know there is a vanity is all the time we spend thinking about what to wear, I know that, but there really is something about new clothes that helps. Of course they don't actually fix anything but they make a difference. 

Maybe it means if you get up and get dressed you are moving forward. I don't know.

I remember my favourite all time movie scene in "Men don't leave" where the father has died and the mother takes to her bed and the kids are sort of panicking. A family friend who was a nurse I think, Joan Cusack who was wonderful, comes in after the mother has been in bed for days or weeks maybe and the kids are living off cereal or something, and Joan Cusack, picks the mother up out of that bed (Joan Cusack looks pretty strong) and throws the mother who is screaming and swearing at her into a shower, and says enough, you get dressed.

Getting dressed, and dressed up, means something.

I remember too that when my mother, who was an only child, lost both her parents the year she was sixteen, she went to live with an aunt and uncle. She always remembers the summer she was sixteen as the summer all the aunts sewed for her, making her a new wardrobe, and they put a red rinse in her hair too.

She can still tell you what those outfits looked like.

And for me when everyone went home tonight I went into my sewing room and spent a little time refolding some of my fabric thinking what I should sew next.

I really need to sew.

On the road again

We are in Maine now and closer to home. My daughter's early pregnancy is not going well and we are trying to get home as soon as we can. Nature will take its course I guess but the little girls are busy and I know they really need help over there. We are on our way.

I have written about this before but the differences as you drive north are striking. My husband is now on disk 9 of 400 of a recorded version of "Team of rivals" and I am reminded that this has been true since Lincoln.

I see it too from my window. The trees are shorter and the temperature drops despite the fact the sun is up about two hours earlier than Florida. This has to do with the fact the earth is round apparently and the physics have been explained to me in great detail by someone who should keep both hands on the wheel.

The bright sorbet colours of the clothes are gone now and I am seeing navy windbreakers, grey pants and sensible shoes. Last night when my husband ordered Thai dinner they asked "what kind of protein would you like with that?" Words that I am sure have never been uttered south of the Mason Dixon line in a takeaway line up.

A long way from "would you like gravy on those biscuits?"

On the highway we passed a horse trailer with the "code of the west" on it. The line I remember is "never pass up a chance to rest your horses." 

I have done that now.

My sister Nancy is a genius

One of my sisters is famous for her spontaneous problem-solving. She is a creative person and sometimes she just gets an idea, a good one, out of the blue.

"I don't know, it just popped into my head," she says.

Take Christmas.

O.K. if you are male you are now rolling your eyes, but women, involved in large far flung families like ours, have this in the back of our minds 12 months of a year.

The thing is if you care about people you want to show that, and get it right.

Another issue of course is that there are a lot of us and the younger set has many different financial obligations. The things that come with babies, mortgages, working and trying to get a career on track. That pretty much uses most of the cash and all of the time.

What got to me was this Easter my son-in-law lay on my couch after a great, funny dinner and said "I like Easter so much better than Christmas. No pressure and everyone just has fun."

This got my daughter and I thinking.

So my daughter called Nancy.

A few years ago we went from everybody sending everyone a present to drawing names, except for the kids under 18 or adults over 80 who of course need a gift from everyone.

The name drawing worked for a while but really, depending on the name, it could be hard. If you haven't seen anyone in a while how do you know what is in their closet, on their bookshelf, or in their kitchen?

Putting an Amazon gift card in the mail was fine, but it didn't really feel like a connection.

And connection, in a meaningful way, is what the whole object of the exercise is.

Enter Nancy and her brilliant idea.

O.K. here it is.

We maintain the 18 and 80 rule.

However for the rest of us each person prepares one gift that gets given, by email, to everyone on Christmas morning.

That gift is the instructions for something the giver does particularly well.

A sharing of themselves and what matters to them.

For instance:

My husband may do a video of his home-made yoghurt routine.

My brother-in-law who was once actually interviewed by CBC on his famous oatmeal may tell us how to do it.

My deaf sister could give us an ASL (American Sign Language) refresher.

I might do a seminar on hemming jeans and sewing buttons (the right way).

Nancy, who is a florist, could show us how to arrange flowers so they don't look like a bunch of stuff dumped in a vase.

You get the point.

So imagine this. 

Christmas morning you open your email and, in our case, there will be a multitude of messages that really share some of that person with you.

Now isn't Nancy so smart?