On my way home soon

I feel badly for neglecting this blog, which I enjoy, but a lot has been going on. First of all I have been away visiting my mom and two of my sisters and nieces and nephew in Winnipeg. It has been a very good visit but I had to leave when Rascal got really very sick, with pancreatitis it turned out, very bad and very scary. This has involved about six calls home a day to my dear spouse for extensive phone discussions about his bowel movements, refusal to walk, the vet, the IV etc. This may have been brought on by some garbage he got into who knows. He seems to be much better now with my DH up early every morning to make him a special breakfast and send me emails with subject line "our boy." We have a wonderful vet who tells us that this could be chronic and we are going to manage it with diet and care.

This is incredibly stressful and I have gone through several pet illnesses with various dogs and you maybe have to be a family that has always had animals to understand how this really is a family illness.

So that's part of it and the rest involves a bit more pressure to take a different promotion at work and the conflicting issues that brings.

With all this going on it has been nice to spend some time with my family and my mom. I have spent my adult life in different cities and sometimes countries than my family but we have been very close. I talk to my mother, all the distance apart, at least once a day, so you get the picture, and my mother is the model of a long distance grandmother to my kids who really could not be closer to her than if they had grown up on the next street. That is quite the achievement on her part.

My sewing has traveled with me.

One of my sisters here is incredibly creative and she is always doing things that I hadn't thought of. At the moment she is crocheting rugs, they are so beautiful, and she asked me to bring fabric scraps for her to add to her supplies.

If I had scraps.

Ha. This was a wonderful opportunity for me to let go of some fabric that was making me feel guilty - it didn't grab me any more but that didn't seem reason enough to throw it out - that would have been like throwing away cash - but by giving it to her I could let it go guilt free. Very liberating.

So I arrived with a huge suitcase of scraps which once I had moved them into her house, left me with an empty suitcase to fill with new fabric.

Which I did, but not with my usual garment fabric because I had been sent on a mission.

September First Grandchild arrives and my DD has decided to use cloth diapers (to eliminate the 4,000 that one small bottom can deposit into the landfills apparently) and diaper covers, either knitted "soakers" (my mom had a 1942 pattern waiting for me when I arrived, I will have to post pictures for laughs when I get home) or sewn diaper covers.

I have discovered that there are more hits for cloth diapers that for Michael Jackson on the internet I swear and it has taken us a while to digest it all. I actually used cloth diapers for both of my sons who seemed to get screaming red rashes if there was a disposable in the house but it's more complicate than that these days. We are doing "pre-folds" which, if you are as not up-to-date like I wasn't means they stitched with extra layers in the middle third between two layers and serged top and bottom. These are being sold around here for $3-$6  diaper with the ones they call "all-in-ones" a waterproof diaper cover with the diaper layers sewn in for $25 each and the diaper covers ( basically pants that wrap to the front and fasten with velcro or snaps) for $12 each.

If you are of my generation and sew this is outrageous. What sort of person would pay $25 a diaper? This IMO is nuts, and finally finally I can make my sewing pay, after decades of spending probably more to make my clothes than buy them.

So off to the local Winnipeg fabric outlet where, guess what I found? - diaper flannel for $1.80 a meter, waterproof fabric for the diaper covers, fleece to line the covers with (pictures, many pictures will follow once I get back home and into production) and amazingly I also found 100% wool fleece meant for hospital bed covers ( good for preventing bedsores actually and excellent for baby changing pads and mattress pads ( when I had my first in Australia I learned to appreciate the value of wool and sheepskin for babies) 150 cm. wide and $12.95 a meter. This was thrilling to me as we had seen some little changing pads made of the same stuff in an upscale baby shop for $35 for something the size of a turkey platter.

Of course afraid that I would never again in my life come across so much useful stuff, and banking on my daughter's apparent fertility, I bought 20 meters of flannel, enough supplies to make about 60 diaper covers and 3.5 meters of this fleece stuff.

Air Canada not being the sports they should be, I am now going to be massively over weight and what this will cost me to ship home, these bargains I have bought, is a piece of information I will keep to myself.

I will just leave you with the great fabric prices I snagged.

I don't know if any of you other sewers felt this when your kids were little, but I never was able to dress my kids as well as I wanted to. The precious designer duds were out of my price range and I didn't have the time, bringing the three of them up, even though I sewed constantly for my kids, to make all I wanted . I truly regret not being able to make more neat clothes for them when they were little, and too often stuck to the knits pants and tops I could put together while Mr. Rogers was on.

I think I have a second chance now, and it feels pretty good to be sewing useful again.

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.