Me-Made May: Week 2

Left to right: 

Green Cookie Book dress, Liberty dress, Pots and Pans blouse with denim skirt, Yardley's dress, Red twill skirt, Bluebird dress, denim skirt

Another week gone!  It has been a pretty weird week, weather-wise.  Damp and cold, mostly, but a few warmish/humid days here and there.  Yesterday it got close to 80 with lots of humidity, but today it is back in the 50s and damp.  It is supposed to rain later, and the next few days will be cold again.  

I think you can see from this week and last week's photos that I've more or less sorted my transitional weather footwear.  I always struggle with what to put on my feet during these in-between seasons, because it is usually not the right weather for boots, but too cool yet for open toe sandals.  I cycled through a lot of options in March and early April before settling on these two pairs: a Birkenstock open-backed clog in taupe, second-hand from ebay (and a fraction of the price!), and an open-back strapped clog from Dansko in oiled brown, also second hand from ebay.  The Birks are fine, I guess.  I find the footbed feels strange, but I suppose I'll get used to it in time.  The Danskos are fabulous, as usual.  I can walk the 2 mile round trip to school in both pairs without pain, which is my primary objective with footwear these days.

They are perhaps not the most attractive shoes, but they are functional and comfortable, and I don't worry about blisters or arch issues when I wear them.  Cities are hard on footwear, so I need something that will hold up to the beating that my shoes take on the daily.  I've never been one to sacrifice comfort for fashion, but as I get older, I have even less patience for shoes that feel bad on my feet.

As for my handmades this week.  I had begun to think that my denim skirt was getting too big in the waist, but a cold wash and line dry seems to have fixed that right quick.  The Petersham interfacing really seems to snap back with washing.  I'm glad I didn't go to the trouble of unpicking the waistband and fiddling with it.  It may still need taking in this fall, but at least I can wear it through the end of this rotation.  I'm finding that having only two skirts this rotation is a bit limiting.  I think three is really a better number for me.  I've also had to rotate out a few pieces from beginning of the rotation and that has made this rotation feel kind of small.  I'm considering sewing an 11th hour Dottie Angel frock in another faux-Liberty lawn to add in for these last few weeks.

The Ivy League dress had issues right from the start, but it appears to have shrunk a little in the wash, and now fits rather badly through the shoulders and arms.  It was a little short to start with, and now is really too short to wear.  As a result, I'm thoroughly out of love with Michael Miller's fabrics--I've made about four or five things with them over the past year, and I'm just not impressed with how they hold up, how well they retain their size, and wrinkle; even sewing with them hasn't really been that great because of how the fabric is printed and the colors processed.  The blues in particular are not dyed through to the wrong side, so any unpicked stitches tend to create a run in the fabric that really shows.  

I'm sad to report that the pots and pans blouse is not holding up very well to wearing.  The risk when making up vintage fabric is that it will be brittle and strain at the seams.  The blouse is very loose and unfitted, but it is starting to pull and strain just under the arms.  There is a small hole in the fabric just under one arm already, and the other side is looking like it might do the same thing, so I think I will need to retire the blouse.  Perhaps I can make it into something that isn't a garment that will still be nice to look at.

I'm also sorry to report that I've gained three pounds since Bright Week, and while I know it is probably water, given the statistical unlikelihood that I've overeaten enough to gain three pounds of fat in a week and a half, I just feel gross.  I'm still tracking calories, trying to be careful, but I admit that I gave myself a bit of extra leeway during Bright Week that might be catching up with me now.  

I still have 15 pounds to go until I get in range of my goal.  I have a moon-shot goal of 25 pounds, but I would be happy if I hit the 15 pound mark and stayed there.  Truthfully, I'm not exercising enough.  I haven't really felt well since October, and my energy levels have been pretty bad since my food life took a hard hit late last summer.

I think I'm just frustrated with how limited my food life is, even when it should be a time of feasting.   We threw a Bright Week party with BBQ from a local place, and I really couldn't eat much of what we had on offer.  It made me kind of sad, even though the party was a lot of fun (we crammed about 45 people into our house, including about 18 children under age 10!). I have stomachaches and nausea constantly, and I frequently feel like my chest is on fire from the reflux that comes with my various GI conditions (I take a pretty high dose of medication to control it, but it appears to be breaking through anyway).  I've had some meals where I just throw caution to the wind and eat something healthy that I'm not supposed to have, but I always regret it afterward.  My doctors seem to have abandoned me to my fate.  I'm rather discouraged about the whole thing.  I'm trying to view it in light of the ascetic life, and see it as part of my spiritual path, but sometimes it gets the better of me.

But anyway.  I'm being morose.  Forgive me.  I think I will feel better if I can just get some things ticked off my to-do list this coming week.  My husband wants me to rebuild the guts of one of the toilets and I'm a bit nervous about it.  I e-mailed my dad about it to ask him some questions, and I'm sort of hoping he just tell me to call a plumber.