Spice Cake Everyday Skirt

 Hey, look!  I made something I don't hate!  This is, to be perfectly frank, nothing short of a miracle.  I've had a LOT of sewing fails this month.  A lot.  So much so that I've nearly decided to stop sewing for myself and my girls for a while.  (I probably am going to stop for a while, but I'll get to that later).

But!  I made a skirt!  That fits well!  That I like to wear!!  It is just my basic Everyday skirt, size medium, with 1" added to the length.  This time I changed the pleats to mimic how the pleats on the Washi dress fit (and also my failed Simplicity skirt).  I think it is probably my most flattering iteration yet.

Word to the wise, however.  If you make your back elastics too short, the front of the skirt will poof out in hugely unflattering and frump-inducing ways.  (Ask me how I know).  My original elastics were 10"--I have no idea why I thought this was long enough, but they were elastics I had pulled out of something else and thought they were okay.  Oof, no.  So I added about 2" to the ends and now it is just right.  Poof-factor gone.

A side note.  I know some people like a lot of volume in their clothing, and poof factor would be a plus for them, but I do not.  I find that a lot of volume swamps my frame and just looks bad on me.  I also find as I'm getting older, that poofy clothing feels too "young" to me.

So less poof.  This fabric is from the Kaufman Essex line, which is the cotton-linen blend, rather than the Brussels line I prefer which is linen-rayon, but I loved the color so much I decided to go for it.  It is a little stiff, but I imagine it will soften with washing/wearing over time.  The drape is decent for the fiber content, and it doesn't wrinkle that much.  

I made a 1" waistband because I'm finding that the 1.5" waistband called for by the pattern wants to roll on my figure.  I'm very short-waisted, so wearing a high-waisted skirt with a high waist band doesn't usually work for me.  I did do two lines of 1/2" elastic in the back, and while the front and back widths don't quite match, I like the fit and feel of this better than the 1" elastic.

I like this outfit a lot.  Which is saying something.  I'm trying hard to find myself in my body, and to be comfortable in my clothes.  Not just literally comfortable, but "this feels like me" comfortable.  I've really outgrown the styles of my 30s, and I'm sort of stumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out what feels right to me on the cusp of 40.  

I will say that I've been taking up all my hemlines on old makes as I feel better in shorter lengths right now.  I could perhaps lose the extra inch I add to this pattern, but this length still feels fine to me.  It's a weird place to be--trying to figure things out.  I'll get there in time, I suppose.  Or I won't.  But that's okay too.

This one works.  

Thrifting

You ever stand at the cusp of a moment that you know is the beginning of some kind of change?  But you don't really know what?  December 31 was such a moment for me.  We spent the holiday with some friends of ours in New York state, just over the line from Connecticut.  It was a marvelous few days, in a rustic setting, and there was a lot of unhurried conversation and general relaxation.  Our friends did a little dance party for the kids before we put them to bed (probably not the best idea, but it was New Year's Eve), and after, as most of the adults sat up and talked, I had a strong feeling that I was at the start of something.  I still don't know what that is, but I can feel it--change is coming.  I'm kind of holding my breath, waiting for whatever it is to happen.

For the past 18 months or so, I've been hard at work on my second novel (no news there).  This book has taken a lot of work, particularly emotional work, because of the nature of the story.  The characters go through some pretty tough things, and in order to write that journey, I had to travel that road with them.  Sometimes it felt like I was never going to get to the end of it. 

In January, I worked to some self-imposed deadlines, and then to some exterior deadlines, as I pushed to get the book to the point that I could pass it off to my three beta readers.  This meant not only a lot of polishing of the text, but I had to cut the novel from 170K words to 102K.  It was painful!! 

My goal was to get the manuscript to my readers by mid-February so that I could spend Lent working on query letters to shop the novel around, and also start developing my next book (I have three or four good ideas bubbling on the stove, so to speak, but have to develop and/or research them). 

I did meet my deadlines, and my manuscript is with my beta readers, but I'm at loose ends.  After having such a large portion of my creative space occupied by these characters and their story, it is strange to have them gone.  Sort of like saying good-bye to a long term houseguest.  I mean, I know I'll have to work on the manuscript again when I get it back later this spring, and there is still the arduous task of shopping the book around, but I'm no longer stitching the story from whole cloth.  I'll be doing alterations, to get the fit right. 

All that has meant that I've put sewing on the back burner.  The way back burner.  I find my sew-jo is kind of missing action (although I'm knitting tons, so there's that).  I have two dresses I'd like to make for late spring/summer, but that is all that is on my sewing list at the moment (and frankly, the dresses are optional).  I'm dithering about patterns unsure what to use, what will fit me best and suit me.  I  find myself reexamining my style, considering what suits me and flatters my today-body during this season of my life, which is one of almost constant churn (and lots of toast).

My winter clothes are mostly shop-bought or thrifted, and while I felt bad about it initially, I realized that there is a finite amount of creative energy in myself, and I've channelled most of it into the book, and the rest into my knitting.  In this cold season, that is a better use of my time. 

One of my goals for this year is to deepen my routines and rhythms, so that I don't have to think so much about them--I'll just do them.  This isn't a particularly profound goal, but it does mean a bit of mindfulness about how I spend my time at home, and about being emotionally present with my children.  They are moving into new stages, and that means different things for me as a parent. 

I know that these next few years are going to be a lot of churn for everyone and I want to make sure that my relationship with my kids is strong enough to get through it with them.  My goal is not to prevent their mistakes or save them from them, but to accompany them in their struggles, as they find their way to adulthood.  I hope to give them the tools to make good choices in their lives, and to build a foundation that they can lean on as adults, but I can't force them or control them in their choices either.  That has been an interesting lesson to learn, and one that I will need to continually remind myself of as they mature.

In a related matter, I've thought a lot these past weeks about what it is to love.  I think love is a radical acceptance of a person where they are, as they are, who they are.  Not to try to change them to suit yourself, just accompanying them on their journey, while you are on yours. 

This is a difficult lesson to learn.  I have special needs kids, and there is always in me the impulse to try and make my kids seem "normal" so that they won't stick out or be made fun of.  But that isn't who they are, and trying to deny that reality doesn't help anyone in the long run.  It's uncomfortable for me to be that radically accepting and loving.  But I know that I need to work more at it within myself. 

A lot of blather about not very much, but sometimes I find it helpful just to put this stuff down, if only for myself.

The Weather Out There

Before I lived here, most of the places I lived saw four pretty distinct seasons.  Then we moved to the East Coast.   The weather here is something else.

This one is totally true:

I think we might actually be in the spring of deception, but it is hard to tell.  Ha!

Yarn Along: March

~knitting~

I already blogged my latest Carbeth, but I also finished the hat I started in February, as well as the Isla shrug.  Unfortunately, the hat came out too big, and my attempts to felt it smaller didn't really work.

 My first make with this hat pattern was in super wash wool, and putting it through the dryer did the trick, but the Wool of the Andes yarn on this version didn't really seem to change size at all.  I guess if I'm going to keep making this pattern, I'd better stick with super wash wool to get the fit I want.  How perfect is that color, though?  I'm tempted to unravel and start again except now the yarn is felted, so I think it would end up being a Job, and I don't need that right now.

The Isla shrug is also just okay.  I can't quite figure out how to style it with separates, but I think I will like it with a dress when it is not quite as cold as it is right now.

I also cast on a Stokey cowl pullover because I liked how my first one fit, but didn't love some things about the yarn.  So far it is going quickly--I knit a good chunk of the back over two days' time.

~reading~

I finished Sarah Ruden's Paul Among the People in one big gulp and highly recommend it.  She is a classicist who takes on the Pauline epistles in order to properly contextualize them in their polytheistic pagan context, and the results are remarkable.  She parses a lot of words that we view through a distorting lens of Puritan thinking about such things and really tries to understand what Paul meant and how the intended audience would have understood when he was writing.  

I'm nearly done with Handywoman by Kate Davies.  It is wonderful.  Kate Davies is the pattern designer of the Carbeth, and many other wonderful knitting patterns, but she also writes books, and this one is about her experience of having a stroke at age 36 (ten years ago) and how she's worked through it all.  It is a marvelous book.  

The book brought up a lot for me, since I had a stroke-like neurologic event in January 1999 that affected my whole left side. The whole thing was terrifying because I didn't know what was going on--just that my body was out of my control, and no one could tell me why.  It was two years before I could walk without my left leg visibly dragging and I could grip things normally with my left hand.  I had new and scary symptoms crop up over the following months and no one could tell me what was happening.  

After reading Kate's book, I realized that the debilitating fatigue that dogged me for a number of years after was probably neurologic fatigue, which is just a whole separate beast from the sort of tired you get from not sleeping well.  I think too, that a number of falls I took in the couple years after were directly related, although I didn't realize it at the time.  

Mostly, I can't believe it has been 20 years since it happened. I'm still kind of upset about how indifferently I was treated by the medical community (my family doctor not included--he was the one who advocated for an MRI and other diagnostic tests, but I was in college eight hours away at the time, and it was far far too late by the time any testing was done).  

There was the small town ER doctor who was annoyed at being called to duty at 11 p.m. on a Friday night when I showed up, scared out of my mind and unable to use my limbs properly.  He did no tests, called for no consults, gave me no medicines, just a pat on the head and sent me back to the dorms with a mutter about flu.  There were the people at the clinic in town that gave me antibiotics two days later but also declined to test me for anything else.  

When I had a scary resurgence of symptoms in January 2016, almost certainly brought on by chronic stress and sleep deprivation due to Birdie's health problems, the neurologist I saw only shrugged and suggested not very gently that I get psychological help.  Thankfully, the symptoms resolved themselves a few months later, and I'm more or less back to what my own neurologic baseline is now.  

I'm trying very hard to forgive these people, as Kate forgave the doctor who shockingly misdiagnosed her at first, and almost certainly made her recovery more difficult.  

I also made good headway into The Power of Silence, and while it is good, it isn't really a whole book's worth of material.  It probably should have been edited down to a long pamphlet or article, as so much of it is repetitive.  That said, I've dog-earred a couple pages to return to for later contemplation.

In other book news, I quietly re-released my first novel with Amazon Kindle last week.  The book has been lightly edited and the cover updated.  It is available in paperback as well.  I wrote it ten years ago, and while I've learned a lot as a writer, it was still a fun story to write. It is an historical thriller set in Holland during WW2.

~sewing~

Another Washi dress, what else?  I realized that my green Washi dress from the fall goes perfectly with my Jade Carbeth, and wanted something to wear with my newest teal Carbeth too.  

So off I trundled to the latest Cotton+Steel offerings, and found this lovely teal number.  The colors are absolutely my jam, and I'm super happy with it.  

Apologies for rubbish photos--it is super cold today, and I was short on time this morning when the light is okay.  So you get indoor photos taken at my kids' school.  Take my word for it that the bodice is exactly the same as my other two Washis from the fall.

~watching~

I've been rewatching stuff lately, because not much appeals to me, but I must write about two movies that I cannot stop thinking about: Silver Linings Playbook and A Star is Born. 

The latter film seriously blew me away.  It is just that good.  Bradley Cooper amazes me.  His singing voice is really wonderful, and the story line is so beautifully wrought.  

I am not a Lady Gaga musical fan, but she was so good in this film, and her singing as Ally is soulful and lovely.  I bought the soundtrack too.  My only question about the story is this: when Ally begins to be managed by a professional, her sound changes a lot and becomes a lot more manufactured ("pop" if you will).  I wondered whether that was a deliberate choice/commentary on what it takes to succeed in the music business: that you have to give up your sound and what makes you unique as a vocal artist in order to "make it" or whether that was just not on the radar.

Lent starts for us on Monday, so we are having our Cheesefare Week now.  Bring on the butter and pancakes!

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!