Clothes are Hard (and so is life)

I think the post title says it all.  Also: Lent is hard.  I feel like my life is hurtling by at breakneck speed lately.  It's been one thing after another, really.  I can't seem to get my feet under me.

I suppose that is why my clothes seem all wrong.  I was excited about my spring rotation for the first few days and then the novelty wore off.  I seem to process my inner discomfort in whatever covers my body.  Take this dress:

You might remember it from last spring.  It was a little different then.  Earlier this month, I experimented with adding in-set sleeves to my Eggplant Birch dress (as it was scheduled for the block anyway.  I figured if I messed it up, it wasn't a big loss).  The Eggplant Birch sleeve hack was mostly a success (but an undocumented one), and I decided to try altering my Painted Roses rayon next.  I've never been happy with it as a short sleeve dress, and really wanted more long sleeved dresses in my closet for spring.

So.  The sleeve hack on this dress went better than on the Eggplant one because I figured out a few things on the first try that I righted on the second.  But I'm not sure I like the result.  I think my main problem with the dress is that I don't like my black cardigan very much because it ends at a weird spot on my hips, but it is the only warm layer I have that goes with this dress.  I've been unsuccessful in finding a long line replacement and don't really want to knit one just now.

I think I need to take the elastic out of the sleeve casing as well, as I just don't like how it feels.  I did the same on my Menagerie dress and was much happier with it by day's end.  It's an easy fix, thankfully.  I ended up taking this off and wearing something else yesterday.  I'm doing that a lot lately--putting on three outfits before settling on something for the day that doesn't make me feel nuts.  I don't like it.

I'm slightly frustrated with myself and my body lately, which probably contributes to the problem.  The five or six pounds that I put on just before the start of Lent has stubbornly refused to budge and I can't really figure out why.  I'm ground down by ten months of constant foot pain (that has gotten worse since starting physical therapy for it), and am starting to think that it will always be this way.  The kids have been a near-constant challenge since December.  So there's that.

I'm not sure if I will wear this dress, to be honest.  I'm not going to alter any more of my rayon dresses for now (mostly because I wanted to keep one short sleeved one for the end of the rotation when it tends to warm up a bit).   

I find myself craving some different clothes, but I don't know what, exactly, since I am uncomfortable in anything shorter than my knees and I don't like pants.  My proportions are just mumsy enough to look weird in the straight-up-and-down silhouettes that are trendy.  

Maybe I'm just craving a different me.  

The bright spot in my closet is my Mille Fleur dress, which seems just right to me at the moment.  I bought some spruce green jersey to make another one, and want to experiment with some dark gray ponte for a skirt.  I'm thinking about sewing for the girls' summer wardrobes too--I was given some fabric by a dear friend who was destashing that will make some nice dresses for them.

Ponchik requested a cupcake dress for her birthday in May, so I have some fabric on order for that (it was suprisingly difficult to find cupcake fabric for her dress--so much of it was either a weird color for a dress, looked too photorealistic for clothing, or was just plain ugly).  Hopefully she likes what I ended up buying.  I'm considering cutting down my Octopus dress for her since her beloved birthday dress from last year is too small now.

I got an e-mail from Hawthorne Threads a couple of days ago about Cloud 9's new double gauze line.  It is gorgeous, and the floral print is especially pretty, but I hesitated a long time over ordering and in the end decided to wait.  

I made two dresses last summer out of double gauze, and I wore them a lot, but I find every year that summer stymies me.  (And looking at the photos, I find I like them again, go figure).  I always end up hating everything in my summer rotation.  This has a lot to do with the weather, as I wilt in the heat, and never am happy with my clothes as a result, but a bit of it is some undefinable thing about hot weather clothing specifically.  I don't like to have bare arms and shoulders or knees, and the cultural visual norm for summer is all of those things.  So I never quite feel like I fit.

I suppose it is time to just experiment with some things and see what sticks.