Ravelry?

I've been a member of ravelry for two years, but I really just started getting familiar with it today. I added some projects, searched for patterns, and linked some blog posts. I have a sense that I'm on to something really big, but I can't quite figure out what else to do with it.

Any of my dear readers out there want to give me some tips on how to use this exciting new tool?

Oh yeah... my user name there is mserta, if'n you want to be friends.

Garment Design: Gourmet Edition

I did break down and make myself this
sleeveless maternity dress, even though I
was 8.5 months pregnant at the time.

I'm doing the thing right now, where I'm delaying making nice things for myself because I feel the need to clean my house first, and then I don't want to make anything for my body in this size, and feel like I should save that silk noil until I've lost a bit of chub. Which is why I don't sew enough clothes for myself.

But while I was obsessing over this false choice, I hit upon a metaphor, which demanded to be blogged. So here I am, to talk about Garment Design.

Sewing for your family is like cooking for your family. Buying clothes off the rack is like buying processed, ready-to-eat food. Hey, we're all busy moms, and mouths must be fed, bums must be covered, right? (Sometimes, if you're going to a really nice store when a cheap one would suffice, it's like eating out. And that's just something you have to do every now and then.) With the decline in teaching the art of sewing - why, school systems, did you ever banish Home Economics? - people turn to off-the-rack as the staple of their wardrobe, and I really feel like this is negatively affecting the nutritional content of our dressing habits, so to speak. There is a diminished ability to express personal style, the quality of off-the-rack clothing is usually fairly poor, and changing trends can make shopping a nightmare for the choosy wearer, or one with "special dietary needs" (i.e. a larger, curvier figure, or the opposite).

This is me just making stuff up

Next comes sewing your own. Here's where I start to sound snooty - the culinary equivalent of sewing from a pattern is baking a cake from a cake mix. The patterns are designed to end up just like off-the-rack clothing. That means that they are all drafted to fit a b-cup bust size, among other drawbacks. Some will have those helpful recipe add-in suggestions on the box, such as how to alter a bust-line, or lengthening and shortening lines. But unless you've trained yourself in pattern alterations, they're not going to be very personal.

It turned into a wedding dress for my sister, which was
supposed to look like it was stitched  out of leaves.

What I mostly do is like cooking from a good recipe book. I mix and match my patterns, taking a sleeve from here, a neckline from there, use a tiered skirt instead of a straight skirt, and I lengthen everything, like I always add extra butter to my food. Sometimes I'll improvise a pan sauce, drafting a new piece or slipping in a pocket, replacing the zipper with buttons. It gives a wider scope for my ideas to take shape, and it also cuts down on the number of patterns I have to store. If I really want to make something again, I'll start by drafting my FrankenPattern onto muslin, which clips together with a big safety pin and doesn't need to be pinned to your fabric when cutting.

OK, yes, that is a zipper. I made two ball gowns in one day,
all right? I had to take a short cut.

Every once in a while, when I want something really unique, I'll just make it all up, such the Zuko costume for my son. My daughters attend an English Country Dance once a year, which requires (well, it's "optional", but we're us) Regency Era Dress, and since authentic patterns are hard to come by, I look in my Patterns of Fashion reproduction manual, and drape the patterns right there on their bodies, which is loads of fun. True cooking from scratch.

The final option is Thrifting, which I consider to be the equivalent of foraging in the wild, or growing your own food. I'm bad at all of those, so I'm just going to give it a passing nod of utmost respect.

Tune in next time for a pompous discourse on sourcing your ingredients.

Charles

I think it's time to write a little post about my son. I have a lot of children. It can be confusing, especially when even though it seems like they won't hold still long enough to count them, you can't seem to get higher than six, but you're sure I told you I have seven. Where's the missing one?

He's in Heaven. He's up at the cemetery. He's in our hearts. We've explained it numerous ways to our children over the years, depending on context. And fielded all kinds of hilarious questions stemming from the difficulty in understanding the concept of Where Does Charles Live? Is the cemetery where Charles lives? Do I have a special place at the cemetery? Oh, he lives in heaven? Can I go to Heaven and see him? What if I lived at Heaven too?

Charles is my fourth child. Almost exactly six years ago, when he was two and a half, and my fifth child was a three-month-old infant, we were walking to the store, Jane strapped to my chest and Charles in the wagon behind me. It was two in the afternoon on a Wednesday, and we were walking on the sidewalk in a school zone. A truck full of hooligans high on drugs made a bad turn at an intersection, drove up onto the sidewalk and struck the wagon. Charles was killed instantly, Jane and I were totally unscathed.

Wow. It's hard to know where to go from there. Even six years later, I have too many thoughts and feelings that I want to share to pick one out and go with it. Maybe at this point, I just want to tell you about him, and also to clarify something that I think people who know me might have been thinking for some time now:

Charles and Max, his grampa, who
we hope are back together now.

Bob has been around much, much longer than Charles. Of course, anxiety, guilt, sorrow, and the whole package are Meat and Potatoes to Bob, and he's grown strong on them, but Charles' death wasn't Bob's birth. If anything, it's provided me with more tools to defeat and shut out Bob than any other event in my life. Which is weird, and I'm not even sure I can explain that.

Since this is a craft and depression blog, I'll tell you something that makes me sad, something I don't think I've ever mentioned to anyone before (so what better place to air my secret than The Internets, where anyone can see and it will be here for all time): I never made anything for Charles. He was my first boy, but he was a surprise boy - that is, going by the ultrasound pictures, we named him Jane and had a bunch of pink stuff ready and waiting. So the pretty flowered baby blanket I crocheted for him stayed in the closet, the baptism bonnet with lace somehow didn't get finished, and when Easter Dress Time rolled around, he got a new shirt from Target. He didn't even like dressing up, and he was only old enough to go Trick-or-Treating one Halloween.

Four children turned out to take up a lot of my time. That was when my making-things-thing started to tail off a bit. For example, I used to make Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs) for my children and Godchildren during Lent every year, with their initials and the year on each one. I think I started one for Charles when he was two,

determined that he should have at least one, but I didn't finish it; over a year after I started it, the egg carton tipped over in the closet and the egg popped, and everything in the carton had to be discarded, very very quickly. So, when I take up that hobby again, the first egg I make will be in his memory.

This is a photo of me that appeared in
the local newspaper coverage of
Charles' funeral - hundreds of
people were there.

Now I feel like I should end this post with something positive and lovely, but I'm kind of coming up blank. I have a new reflection from this year's Easter Season, though. During Jesus' Last Supper prayer, he says "No greater love has any man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends." I was sad, at times, that I didn't have even one second in which to try and save my son, even at the expense of my own life. People would say "wow, it's so lucky that you and Jane survived!" and I took it as graciously as I could, even though everything in me wanted to retort "Oh yeah? Lucky for whom?" I've never in my life been suicidal, but there have been long, long stretches of time where I wished I was dead.

And finally this year it clicked into place for me. One doesn't have to die in order to lay down one's life. Lucky for whom? For my children who were still with me. For Paul and Silas, who weren't born yet. For my husband, who may not have been able to take the loss of two children and a wife, but who bore up under the heavy loss of a son, with the help of his wife.

And for my friends. For all the people I love, I don't just die. I lay down my life by living it.

I finished my Shawl!

OK, I have a bit of time now. I finally finished the lace stole/shawl/scarf thingy, and I LOVE IT. It had a life of its own, as all art projects do - it doesn't look like the picture in the book, and I had to change some things as I went, but that's the fun of it, after all. Where's the adventure if it all goes according to plan?

The big thing that made me laugh at myself while working on it was this: all along, I knew the pattern said "work lace chart 31 times." Anyone see the problem here? I imagine at least some of my readers will. As I got closer and closer to the 31st pattern repeat, the more that number, Thirty-One, grated on my nerves. It's prime. It's all pointy and angular and weird. It's not Thirty, which is a nice round number, nor yet Thirty-Two, which is an elegant power of two, and twice the square of the first square. But Thirty-One was what was writ. What's more, I ran out of my second ball of yarn at almost precisely the halfway point, and I only had four, so I worried about lengthening it. But I knew in my heart that that prime number would bug me every time I put it on.

Teresa agreed to model for me.
Isn't she pretty?

So after careful row counting, I decided to bump it up to Thirty-Two. There I was, practically *finished*, but I had to add the extra pattern repeat, for the good of my soul. And the good news is, I had plenty of yarn left. I'm using it to make tiny crocheted snow flakes, because it is sparkly.

The other thing of it, now, is that I have nothing I can wear with it. So this blog is going to have to move away from the Knitting Department and into the Garment Design and Construction Zone. I want to make something navy blue, maybe. It's tricky - a dark color will show up the lace best, but as I discovered over and over (but I guess never really *learned*, since I kept doing it) while knitting, black and mohair aren't a smart combination. I looked like I have a very affectionate long-haired cat.

I began this stole just before Ash Wednesday, which was March 9. I finished it yesterday, so it took me 72 days. In between the start and the end, I also made two hats and a baby sweater. (here's a photo or two of the second hat. It's baby-sized.)

I'm alive again!

PS - if you want to see the pictures in more detail, you can click on them to view them in a full-size slide show.

Placeholder

I'm in a hurry, so here's a picture:

Hey Bob, am I a good Blogger or a bad Blogger?

...or is the proper term "Blogress?"

So I haven't written anything in ages. Thing is, I'm a choir director and organist and homeschooling Mom. that means May is Hell. Well, no, because it's also awesome, but I feel like I need to just get through it. First Communion Masses, weddings, graduations, Confirmation Mass, plus all the usual stuff. At least with Easter being super late this year, I have until June to plan for the last four Big Feasts before the choir takes a break for the summer.

I have two happy updates:

One, I am on pattern repeat number 29 of 31 on my lace. It is nearly done! It is also a lot warmer than I expected it to be. It already stretches from one elbow to the other, and it is as soft as a cloud.

Two, I attended my last session of therapy, at least for a while. My therapist says he'll miss me, but it is a long drive, and I just go there to talk about how well things are going and how much happier I've been. So, until things take a turn for the worse, I'm all done with that.

So, yes. Not much of an entry, but I feel like it was a milestone I should mention.

On Easter Dresses: or, Why Do We Tear Each Other Down When We Could Build Each Other Up Instead?

When I was a very young mom, with no car and few social skills, all the women I knew were either single college students or the wives of my only-just-former college professors and had busy schedules and a million children. As a result, I was alone, a lot. My husband had two jobs and was trying to finish college himself, so he had only so much to give me, and my baby was All Things Miraculous, but even she couldn't talk in full sentences until she was 18 months old, plus she is an introvert. She didn't like even mamma getting all up in her space.

So I learned how to sew.

It was an uphill road. Being the clever person that I am, I assumed I knew better than the pattern designers, mostly because I didn't acknowledge things like grain lines, and my early efforts were mostly Lessons Learned The Hard Way, and not actual usable pieces of clothing. But because I was lonely, bored and desperate, I kept at it. I probably learned twenty or so lessons The Hard Way before I produced a single thing I could use or wear.

One of the things I have continually dedicated myself to over the years is the creation of Easter Dresses. I love Easter, and all the things it promises. I didn't have the budget to make it more special than Christmas in the same manner as Christmas, so I had to get creative (my specialty!) and one of the ways was to make matching dresses for all the girls, beginning with my first and myself. (I stopped making dresses for myself after two, though.)

Easter Skirts

As my skills developed, the dresses got nicer and nicer. My adorable three little girls all had completely different coloring - a blond with grey eyes, a redhead and all that that entails, and a dark brunette with alabaster skin. My approach was to find the same print in different colors, and make dresses from the same pattern. In later years, when they started to have vastly differing tastes in clothing, I went exactly the other way, and started choosing a color palette, and making them totally different styles of dress. But I kept it up, year after year, even if it meant doing everything during Holy Week. It is a project that means a lot to me.

Well, one year my ever-expanding repertoire of skillz reached the stage of including smocking, thanks to one of my crafting gurus - Maureen, who also helped teach me to quilt and has inspired me in so many other ways. I was pregnant and feeling sick during Lent, so I spent many hours curled up in my chair, hand-smocking some muslin panels. It's probably the earliest I ever started on dresses, and it took a lot of time, but the results were deeply satisfying, and I dressed them in t heir smocked dresses whenever I had an excuse.

One day I took them to the library, because our wonderful dear children's librarian had asked me specifically to show her my Easter Dresses. In we filed, splendidly arrayed in smocked dresses and little white gloves and straw hats with matching ribbons. (Hey, when you go to that much trouble, you take it all the way, right?) It was Story Time Day, so a lot of other moms were there, and one said to me "Please don't tell me you smocked those dresses by hand." So proud of myself, I told her that I did.

She said "I hate you."




Looking back on it, I know why she said it, and she meant to be funny, I'm sure. She was tired, she had that difficult blend of older children that keep you running and tiny babies that keep you up at night, and she is also a woman that loves beautiful things - she grows a lovely garden in the spring - and not enough time to fulfill that love. She didn't know what I gave up to make those dresses, because it's not like I go around showing people pictures of my mountain of laundry or the unswept kitchen or the uncategorized piles of papers and books... I sacrificed to make this a priority. I knew she didn't mean it. But wow, did it hurt. In fact, I'm sure she's forgotten the incident completely. (Hey, it might be you!)




The Thing is, just as we don't see those background sacrifices, that different ordering of priorities, we also don't see what kind of power our words can have. I carried that "I hate you" around for a long time in my heart, believing that I must have done something wrong, that my creative drive was somehow blameworthy because of the things I let go. I often lock myself into a place where I'm "not allowed" to make anything or buy anything until I've done X amount of housework. It never works. In fact, one time I actually got my entire house clean AT THE SAME TIME but still didn't sew because of the guilt block. Every time I sat down to make something, I felt badly. That "I hate you" became the Voice of Bob. He was right on top of that one. Alongside "You never finish what you start," it's one of my most deeply rooted Bobisms.


I'm working on it, though. I'm learning to let myself be, to recognize what people mean when they say things like that. And I'm trying to be very, very careful about what I say when I wish I could do what someone else can do.

My beautiful Audrey, recycling dresses from
last year. This year, I actually DIDN'T MAKE ANY,
and my lovely Helen wore this dress.