Heartbreak, sewing and new starts

Where do I start?

We have been home for almost two weeks. 

An hour before we drove into the driveway we got a call from my youngest son to say he had broken up with his long time girlfriend. The girlfriend who was living in my house and filling  it with her transplants.

I really like this girl but the family saw this one coming. Different directions.

What it meant to me immediately though was a heartbroken very nice girl in my house when I arrived home. To make a long story short she stayed with me for a week and a half. I did everything I could to support her. It really, really tore me up to see her heartbreak. But at the end of the day it became clear to her that living in my son's childhood bedroom crying and having the mother of the guy who broke her heart make her tea wasn't the best way to heal.

I am sure she will be just fine. I expect I will hear from her from time to time in the future. She really is terrific, but the right guy for her is just not this guy.

That happens.

Between you and me having someone that sad in the house wore me out. You want to say, listen hearts are stronger than you think. One of the best things about getting older is knowing that, but of course you know that only because when you were 25 someone broke your heart and there are no shortcuts. When you are older you can see the humour in even the really terrible things, if only fleetingly, and you are better able to take care of yourself. For instance if that had been me I would have sat myself down and started ordering fabric - that always helps.

In fact when all this was going on I did some sewing. I made a knit straight skirt and this top:

The Madeleine from Stylearc.

I was pretty pleased with it (pictures pending, my photographer is out of town right now) and wore it to an extremely weird event where two former politicians who have each written books stood on a stage and accused the other guy of lying. I was supposed to be moderator.

How do I get mixed up in things like this?

At any rate here is my in the outfit sitting down. 

Pictures are interesting.

I realized that all that extra fabric bunches up when you are not standing in your bathroom admiring your wonderful sewing in the mirror and I have since taken in the side seams and tacked up the wrap a bit since I wore this then. That's what I will show you when I get the shots snapped this weekend.

Anyway here I am dumpy on the stage:

Finally I was so sorry to hear Nancy Zeiman is dealing with bone cancer. My daughter who is a paediatric oncology nurse always says that the reason folks get nearly all cancers is just bad luck, but I was so sad to see that this is something Nancy has to deal with. Hopefully her treatment will go well. She certainly is one tough cookie and so many of us are rooting for her.

If you haven't seen the statement she put on on youtube here it is

Sewing with Nancy was such an important part of my life when my kids were small. Catching that show was a highlight of my week - a time when I got to concentrate on something that interested me. As soon as they could walk my kids knew that when Nancy was on mom wasn't going to do anything for you until it was over. Not get you a bandaid, make you lunch, rescue you in the bathroom.

In fact I can remember standing with the three of them in the grocery store unwrapping a book from Nancy I had just picked up at the post office she had sent me because she had used one of my hints on the air. My hint was actually published in the book and I was thrilled. To my little kids this made me a star because they sure knew how important Nancy was.

You know I was probably far prouder at that moment than I have ever been at anything else I have done, the world reflected in the picture above included, maybe particularly.

The things that the world thinks are important or impressive so often aren't the things that really matter to you most, you know, but only you know that.

I heard from an old boyfriend this spring, a source of a broken heart 40 years ago. We have both gone on to happy lives, me with Leo, he with Stanley, and I am so happy our friendship has returned to us. In fact I am sending off all those photos from years ago to him. They have his mother and a brother he lost in them and those belong to him not me.

In one of his messages to me he wrote that he had read my blog and was happy to see I was still sewing, because "sewing was always in your blood." I found that someone remembered that about me enormously comforting in a tough week.

All this is in my mind because yesterday I think I may have found the person who could replace me at my job. As of the end of August I am leaving full time teaching and going to be doing only a course or maybe two some terms. I love my teaching but need to open myself up to the projects that have been waiting for me.

It feels good.

Crochet

It turns out this two month stay in Florida has been about two things: teaching my classes and learning new things.

One of the new things is golf. 

My husband would rather golf than eat (he once did 72 holes in the rain after a course was closed and they said he could keep playing). I like being outside and particularly enjoy the Florida landscape. When many outside the state think of Florida they think Daytona and high rises, but we stay in a small place where nothing is more than two storeys and the locals still far outnumber the tourists. 

The lushness and the wildlife make the visit for me.

I decided this year however to start working on being a good golfer. 

You see I started to think about sewers I know who have sewn for a long time. Some will say things like "I have sewn for thirty years" and then complain that things still don't fit. 

I have finally figured out that having done anything for a long time does not mean expertise, in fact it can just mean repeating the same mistakes a whole lot of times. In fact some of the best sewers I know are young women who really worked at it over a short period of time. 

It's about application.

So I had this sort of epiphany after yet another wild shot, that I didn't want to be golfing this exact same way for 20+ more years. I don't want to be one of those women who can golf only with their husbands.

My ambition is to be good enough that I can join in on the Wednesday night scramble where they put you with anyone and you just golf. 

You see they have a buffet for the players after the scramble every week. I have seen them setting up the tables through the window.

It looks pretty good.

The second thing I decided to do is really learn to crochet beyond making crooked dishcloths. I really like any kind of knitted top because they are so comfortable and you don't need to iron them. 

Trouble is I am a really slow knitter. So slow in fact a lady in the waiting room for bloodwork even offered to show me how to knit faster but unfortunately her number was called before she could do that.

I figure in the snippets of time I have available I am good for one sweater a year, which is a pretty depressing number when you consider I have 400+ patterns favoured on Ravelry.

Then I heard crochet was faster.

That was it for me.

I have never really liked the look of crochet however which was a bit of a problem. Then I figured out that crochet culture seems to have involved a high proportion of really stiff polyester yarns and a lot of orange and brown stripes. However the newer designs (you seem to have to look in the crochet magazines to find anything fashionable) are much better.

So I started.

So far one top in three weeks made between teaching and golf and another is halfway there. 

The fast thing is true.

Mind you what I am making is not loopy hole free and it is super simple, but I am starting. I figured if I hadn't just gone on and worn things I had sewn even with the mistakes I would never have kept sewing. 

You have to just do it.

So here is my first project, essentially two giant dishcloths sewn together, but at least the sides are straight. It hasn't been blocked but here it is:

Not a masterpiece but the main thing I enjoyed doing it.

That really counts.

Dupioni

Here we go as requested:

Here we go. Slightly more wine coloured in real life than this shows on my monitor.  How about $45 for all 5 yards plus postage. 45 inches wide.

Ha

Funny story.

My husband read my post yesterday and said he actually liked that dress, it was the other blue dress he didn't.

So I really appreciated all your comments and you are right, I will be raising the neckline and changing in the side seams a bit next version. I think it has potential and I am going to be looking at other wrap dress patterns as suggested too. A wrap dress is just too multi-purpose, dress up and dress down, not to be figured out.

Since you're asking here is the other blue dress my spouse was not nuts about, despite having seen me wear it before without comment. Navy pique cotton and in this picture a little wrinkled from sitting:

And here is the detail of the back zipper, set below the neck a few inches in the seam for a neat neckline finish, since the dress can go over my head when I put it on due to the wide neckline:

And here is a shot of the facing, one piece which I love about this pattern:

Finally on the out of control wedding fabric buying front I have found a solution to my dupioni issue involving how to do merlot when you are working with a fancy lace layer for the top that has that slight bright pink thing going on.

Got a real nice sort of dark, dark pink swatch from Mood and that works so I am redefining Merlot to sort of a Beaujolais, maybe even a screw top, almost a Zinfandel in a dark room, almost to a box wine - the kind that you take out the silver bag out of the cardboard and squeeze out one last little bit into a coffee cup so the kids (who are now full adults) won't know mom is drinking while she is doing the dishes after Thanksgiving. (All those who were raised in the responsible Canadian Prairies will not need to have this explained.)

Which now leaves me with, among other things, 5 yards of dark red, sort of merlot, Dupioni with a slight black under sheen when you bend it (you know how dupioni works). 

Make me an offer.

Slip on Suzie

To explain myself here is the Slip on Suzie faux wrap dress I made from this StyleArc pattern:

I am always a bit wary about wrap dresses. In my experience they tend to unwrap if you live in a windy place like I do most of the time, or fall open at the Christmas concert when you sit down which is not an optimal grandmother look IMO.

This dress has a closed skirt at the bottom, no wrap, and goes together in an hour if you don't spend three hours trying to figure out how to overlap the various pieces to get the wrap.

I bound the neckline rather than turn and stitch because I am chicken and like to use my hands to head off disaster.

I had read several pattern reviews that said this dress was too low (probably is here too) so I made it in a size smaller than I usually wear to get the fit on my bony shoulders and added to the width from there down. It is my general policy to alway fit the smallest area first and add - always more successful than trying to take something in when the core fabric has already been cut away.

Here are two shots taken on the old RV site and not accessorized at all. If I were a better blogger it would be, but I am sort of waiting on my lunch and getting ready to go golfing.

This really does need a necklace and maybe a belt. The spouse, who rarely offers fashion comments unless you count "what am I supposed to say?," tells me this is not my best look which probably means too bare at the neck and too wide in the middle, which actually describes me so this is not really a surprise.

Here is another shot, that verifies the need for a belt or maybe a another look at Stylearc's other wrap dresses that have more shape, and might give me some.

The truth is I kinda just like this dress myself. I see this design as a real basic, great for travelling, good for accessorizing if you weren't in your flip flops in an RV park, and timeless in that you can keep wearing it until your daughter says "mom you always wear that dress."

My photographer thinks maybe I need blog reader feedback since his didn't impress me and in the meantime I am thinking of this two alternate patterns in the quest for a classic wrap for this not too classic sewer:

What do you think?

Multi-tasking update

Yes I know I have been a lousy blogger. 

Truth is the last year has been exceptionally busy and I have taken what they call some me time since my last class of the term ended at the beginning of the month.

When I go home life picks up the pace again, and I figured if I felt I needed this break I did.

Of course my idea of a break has been to do something different rather than nothing at all. 

My days involve golf with my husband, a long beach walk, maybe a bike ride and about four Daisy walks. I have also been doing illustrated below, note the multi-tasking - canning some mango chutney (I am working on my own recipe) and crochet.

I actually find crochet more fun than knitting but maybe that's because it's faster and because I am learning something new. Pretty much I can sew anything I decide to do and can figure out most knitting but that's not the same as trying to understand something different, which I find energizing.

Here is what all this looks like in an RV:

I think it is safe to say I am turning into one of those women who just get nuttier as they get older, and apparently at top speed.

You know I also do some political commentary on the radio, this week it has been talking about the budget. I am always glad listeners can't see who is speaking, or what else is going on around them. One of the great virtues of radio.

On the sewing front I am ramping up for the wedding sewing and spending a small fortune ordering in the wrong fabric. I will be able to open my own special occasion store when all this is through. It all started with a sales lady at G Street who convinced me that beaded lace with a sort of shocking pink undertone (which attracted me like a moth to the flame even though I am committed to an outfit in merlot) would look great over the right colour of wine dupioni. Sort of an add some sparkle idea.

The thing is the right shade of dupioni (which either I am spelling wrong or spell check doesn't sew) is pretty hard to come by if you are doing your shopping from an RV with some help from the nice man at UPS. Plan B is if the latest shipment from Mood isn't it I am going down to Winn Dixie and buying some wine coloured dye when I certainly will become the only woman dyeing beaded lace this week in the park.

On a more encouraging note, and I haven't checked the horoscope yet, it appears the stars have aligned and Vogue actually spit up the exact pattern I need for the girlfriend's dress, the light purple one posted a while ago. Here it is:

I was considering doing my regular uncharitable review of the new releases (see picture at the beginning of this post, I certainly am well-qualified as a fashion maven, right up there with my qualifications as radio personality), focussing on those that appear to be made out of napkins from some hotel dinner dance event, but I have decided to give them a break this time around since they have saved my life with this one.

Thank you Vogue.

Babs gone AWOL: flypaper thoughts

• The good thing about teaching online is I can work when I am in Florida
• The bad thing about teaching online is that I am working when I am in Florida
• Full-time this visit
• Might be reviewing that for next year
• Great visit with the son's future in-laws over Easter
• He has brought new friends into our lives
• Made a Slip on Suzie once I realized it was not summer in Maryland
• Made two standard sized muslins for the flower girl dresses
• This way I can try them on four little girls and see how the basic pattern needs to be adjusted
• Let's have a shout out for public libraries
• I belong here and they are amazing
• Where else in life are there so many super helpful people trying to give you a good time for free?
• Moved RV parks
• From the golf cart crowd to the bike riding crowd
• More room to spread out
• More our crowd
• Becoming friends with my dad's best friend
• Weird stuff happens as you move along
• Amazing how many things don't matter anymore
• Was decided in DC that I will be wearing merlot to the wedding
• As in fabric not being sloppy with the drinks
• I can do that
• Lady in G Street most helpful
• Going for a long skirt thing and a beaded/lacey top
• That way my head won't explode with the fitting
• No point in having a mother-of-the-groom with an exploded head
• Everyone else is taking dancing lessons for the reception
• My chances of getting the husband to do that are slim to none
• He is of the generation of men who think dancing has to do with facial expression not foot placement
• I usually disguise my rhythm by dancing with the kids
• Those four flower girls are going to come in handy
• Folks will just think I am an ace grandmother 
• Corelle dishes are unbreakable until they break
• Then we are talking a million shatters
• Started on a second crochet top
• Just got to watch the how to sew it up video
• Still snowing at home
• Not here
• Off I go