Monday! gah! How do you sneak up on me so fast? I’m going to be fifty in record time, the weeks are flying past so quickly.

So weekend report: success! accomplishments! and so forth. I got started on the V1170 skirt out of a black stretch cotton twill, finished cutting it out and got cracking on the assembly. I was shocked and awed to learn that I didn’t have a black 7″ invisible zipper, so by the time I stitched the pockets onto the skirt front at 10:38 on Saturday night and in doing so miraculously ran out of bobbin thread, I decided to call it a night.

Sunday we spent being good consumerists and buying things, including but not limited to speaker wire, underpants, and shelves for all my beautiful, beautiful shoes; then we came home and smacked up said shelves.

So first off, holy cow I have a lot of shoes. Old news, nothin’ novel to speak of, no duh allison; but don’t they look *fantastic* up there? Gawd where the hell is beautiful sunny weather with no chance of rain, because it and my most excellent metallic-acid-green-leather clompy-to-end-all-clomping-wannabes have a hot date scheduled ASAP. I love those things (although our downstairs neighbors might have words to another end) and am looking forward to coming up with fun outfits to pair with them.

Secondly, plaster walls are sort of a pain, yes, but more to the point they require traversal of a hairpin-sharp learning curve: which is to say, We are at least learning. (Read: oops.)

I also decided that I want to pair up my striated-orange-blobs stretch cotton with a bottom contrast panel of the VWL navy ribbon faille into view A of M5991, but without the slanty side pockets–just regular ol’ side seam pockets. I am afraid of slanty gaping at my hips, so I’m hoping to avoid it by going less fancy with the pockets. Except for the two strips of the navy ribbon faille, I still have to cut all that stuff out (and figure out exactly what I want to face the hem contrast with, and whether I should underline the orange-white cotton or just line it), but I’m sort of excited about it. And it’ll be way easier for me to shoe-shop my collection for a perfect complement now that they’re all on display! wooo!

Next time: I’ll try to make some progress on the V1170 skirt, and maybe the blouse too (those tie-ends for the sleeves are a royal pain in my ASS) and, well, one day I’m going to have to officially finish that zebra-print wrap dress: buttons on the cuffs and beltloops, stat!

I sought, I scoured, I found; I debated and rationalized, backtracked and obsessed; ultimately I actually splurged–and now I wish I hadn’t. Or at least I wish I had bought a size smaller in that super excellent houndstooth nephys black patent wedge. I am afraid to say that they’re too BIG, because then I’ll have no good excuse for returning them. The other ones, the espace mygne heels (the memory of which I clung to for years), are very WAY too big, in a farcical ‘yeah there’s no way I can keep these’ kind of way, so those won’t be hard to part with. Also they only had them in brown, which I can pass on, and the only reason I jumped on ‘em was because the 10 magically reappeared and they were still crazy marked down to like $36. But houndstooth and patent platform wedges? dare I send them out of my life, when it took so long for the two of us to meet? I … don’t … I don’t know!

Anyway.

In other news I am rocking out another bowling pin; it’s been hanging out in the hallway for about four days now. I’m not sure if I have anything even inspiring me yet, in a finite sort of way. I mean, I’m always got about forty-five ideas rollicking around the ol’ grey matter, but nothing that’s emerged as a ‘Eureka!’ kind of thing just yet. Maybe that’s the way it goes? like I’ve got to cradle the scratched up plastic-coated wood bebeh in my arms before it speaks to me? What do y’all think? any fun ideas you ever wanted to see on a bowling pin?

And then, also, there is sewing: I have not done a single finishing stitch on those V1098 pants and I still don’t know if I want bound inside seam allowances or to line them. I wish I’d put some pockets in there somewhere, but … I guess I could still slash the back and sock one in there. I did manage to move the snaps on my zebra dress over and I finished hemstitching the facing to the bodice and I picked out which buttons I want on the cuffs–but I think I might want the buttons to be superficially attached and for the cuff closure to be accomplished via a small snap. Oh and then I also decided I want a blouse AND a skirt from the new Rachel Comey V1170 pattern, so I got all my pieces traced out in their respective sizes and the blouse has already been cut out. I grabbed a piece of thin-ish, drapey and soft bright royal blue rayon from ye olde stash (which of course I don’t have a picture of) that I think will be comfy and offer a lovely *pop!* to my black and white summertime ways. The back calls for buttons but it’s a pretty loose blousey fit, so I may alter that decision at some point when it’s closer to being done. Or maybe little pearly snaps? would that be weird? is it possible for anybody out there to have half a clue what the hell I’m talking about when there is Not One Single Picture! to accompany all this mess of rambling? Maybe I’ll see to that over the weekend. I’ve also been going a little nuts with buying fabric lately, too: now I have actually been sewing some of it up, and I do always look for stuff on sale, but I’m very often battling the urge to click on the “Proceed to Checkout” option and make that admitting click. I just bought a box o’ stuff from fabric.com, one of which was a long-lost Vera Wang Lavender Label print, a navy blue polka dotted silk chiffon for a whopping $2 a yard. That one was gone pretty quick, but I managed to score it (along with a few other things that would, you know, push me up to the $35-mark so’s I could get free shipping). There’s a current wishlist shopping cart full of stuff I have at two other online spots, and I’m sorta fighting the urge … perhaps I will return on Monday to share with you how I fared! (And to share some photo love.)

Like, you know, whatever.

So there have been some changes all up in the life in the seven months since I pretended I have a blog. We sold our house and moved out of it, got a quick and awesome intro to living close to downtown and being able to walk places, developed the initial strains of awesome stamina by carrying 463 heavy-ass boxes up a big flight of stairs, and hauled butt to host our Annual New Year’s Eve Super Party less than a week after having moved in completely. And now? Now it’s time to not have to uproot any more; to relax when we want to without feeling guilty about not getting a thousand things done every night after work; to get back in the habit of a Full and Complete Life Under a Single Roof, for real. And it’s been pretty awesome: I’ve been sewing, I’ve been listening to music I totally forgot I had, I’ve been spending money on fabulous fabrics, I’ve been wearing fancy shoes that’d been packed away for months. And I even heard a rumor that I was going to think about not being such a patsy when it comes to my poor neglected VP. My poor, poor various pants! Also we need to get you a better design honey, I know.

So, to look forward to: projects. I actually managed to get a smidgen of sewing stuff done at our temporary digs (though you’d never know it): I finished the Wicked Witch skirt for Hallowe’en, finally finished the sleeveless floral print blouse, and started *and* finished a slim-fitting skirt with a back flounce from the midnight-blue wool crepe I got from Asheville last January. Those three projects are all done and I should probably write pattern reviews for them, because I do like having a big fat number next to my profile name on PR. I’m also super close to being done with a long-sleeved wrap dress, the 1976 Simplicity Jiffy 7705, and I’m more than halfway done with my first ever (!) pair of real pants, from Vogue 1098. For these last two projects I have used up actual amounts of stashed fabric, which is sort of awesome in two parts: it was gathering dust already, and now it’s not, and I know at least the 7705 is a pattern I’ll make again in a nicer fabric. Which means more room will be created in my cedar shelving options to accommodate NEW PURCHASES AW YEAH. I have also resolved that I must sew more dresses, because they kick ass, and also that I need to be more hands-on with trying out my vintage patterns.

I also need to attempt greater timeliness with taking and actually uploading pictures, as is evidenced by my total lack of photographerial involvement with this post. I mean, Lisa is cool! she looks like Blossom! ‘Sall good.

Let me first say to my nineteen-year-old self, who (if I understand appropriately the whole time-space relativity thing in addition to how the interwebs work) will be soon reading/has already read this post, that I apologize. I know you used to stay up all night for the shit of it and read random books in the undergrad in some slightly precocious way of approaching college educatedness; I remember well that you used to work a job until 11:45 or midnight and only afterwards would go home to eat dinner and do your homework and watch either infomercials or random programming on public television while you deciphered meaning from elementary-school-level russian dialogues for at least the next three hours; and, yes, I too was there! when you halfway slept on a crappy wooden framed dorm lounge loveseat for approximately 82% of your sophomore year so you wouldn’t have to listen to your cranky roommate complain about the light being on in the room after ten or eleven at night. So, I totally concede that it’s sort of odd to be coming forth with this business, and even I didn’t anticipate it, but it’s also really true so just brace yourself, okay?

I totally dig getting up way early in the morning.

Now, I’ve only done this for the last two days, so my opinions might change, but getting out of bed before six in the morning, today and yesterday, has totally allowed me to have an amazingly different kind of day. I got out of bed, and had a cup of tea or coffee and then boom! into the sewing room. I pinned things; I sewed seams and even pressed them; I adjusted the waistband for fit for crying out loud. I mean, productivity! it was amazing! And I actually got stuff done, and then was at work (work!) right on time! and I didn’t even forego showers or teeth-brushing! It was like, pow! All of a sudden, I had this swath of color in my morning that hadn’t been there before. Now, granted, I found myself alarmingly SLEEPY at like 8:30 last night, but I held out a bit (thank you, birthday cake!) and wasn’t even in bed all that too much later than normal, like 10:15 or so. And after yesterday morning and last night and this morning, I’m totally almost done with the knockoff skirt. Which I’m naming the Tristis skirt, after the latin name for an American Goldfinch, because it’s all yellow and white and silvery grey and black, and also because I dig on the goldfinches what come to sup at our feeder.

I’m planning on working on it some tonight, and then tomorrow morning, and I am really quite confident that I’ll be able to wear it to work by Monday. No wait, this Monday! More photos to follow, accompanied by excellent choice/s in footwear (even though I’m not sure what top I’ll wear with it).

So I’m doing the Pin Projekt again this year, and now more than ever, I am aware of how much I like stuff. Bright colors, shiny textures, quirky shapes, hidden treasures, infinite detail, sunshine and buttercups, raspberry filled and sugar coated, more, More, MORE! I am so in love with stuff that it’s a wonder I can find the time to wash my hair once a week. It is no wonder, then, that I have confirmed my love for Liza Lou by mimicking her meditative beaded style: that’s what I’m doing to the pin this year. It’s turned out to be a remarkably satisfying medium, because while heaven knows I love the knick-knacks and baubles and shiny details, I can also appreciate the minimalist touch.

Like this totally lovely Kline Necklace from Persimmon Jewelry. This is the kind of thing that can call out to me as sonorously as a lime green bakelite ice-block necklace, but it’s a little more subtle. The tone is there and the pitch exact, but the equalizer’s set to a more nuanced ear, if you will. I think I’ve been working under the “more is more” guise for a while now, and it’s just sort of occurred to me that subtlety could be afforded in a multiplicitous* way, like how Liza Lou does with her millions of blades of beaded grass. So I can have my millions of facets and be subtle all at the same time! I love it! And thanks for the good word, Grosgrain!

*dude, I know this is not a word, even according to the damn encyclopedic OED, but it sounds better in my Word Pony of a brain than (the admittedly rare, if not obsolete) multiplicious. I WANT IT.

The pin is coming together much better than I had hoped, and while my lower back is not happy with me having crouched over a desktop for many hours this weekend, it’s making me want to pursue this method of ornamentation in a major way. I’ve been really focused on sewing the last couple years, and while I’m getting better and I have been missing it a lot these last few weeks, there’s some aspect of my Mondo Craftiness that isn’t been satiated quite satisfactorily with the needle and thread. I think I’ve always wanted to be able to draw, and sewing just doesn’t really approach that method–which is why I’m such a nerd for rubber stamps and embroidery floss and, thanks to jumping into something completely new for me, beads. Although I stand by the goodness in my original of sewing the beads onto a fitted shell for the pin, that method was SO not working; which is okay, because I really just jumped into doing it totally blind and had no real method figured out for making beady progress or gauging the appropriateness of my method-of-sorts till I’d already invested a healthy number of hours into it. Having started off with that, though, I feel pretty good about getting into other projects of sewing bugles onto fabric. Kind of how I feel comfortable playing around with the excess in a sleeve cap, turning it into darts or tucks or pleats or whatever, because of that time I just flew by the seat of my crafty-pants and half made it up as I went along.

I tell Beck all the time that she’s got these great instincts, but I think I overlook that I have some pretty good instincts too. I just need to be more open and nurturing of them.

I know! You’re here for me to talk about shoes today! Well let’s get up on it, then.

So it’s hardly breaking news that I’m all crazy for the shoes. I scour the interwebs for ridiculous amounts of time in search of deals, images, nostalgic waxings and general opinions of typically snootier and/or funkier brands ‘n’ styles. So in honor of myself, basically, I’m going to start talk, talk, talking about some of my own experiences. Which brands are crazy expensive but actually worth it; what I’m currently stalking for real v. for pretend; whether or not you can wear four-inch sandals with tights in the winter; brand generalizations based on my having actually tried out more than one style; that sort of thing. I do write reviews of shoes I own on places like shoes-dot-com, endless/amazon, zappos, et cetera, but sometimes, in reading reviews of shoes that I don’t have and am curious about, I am less than satisfied with what other folks have had to say. It’s like I really just want myself to have written all about it already, so I’m basically just doing that. And instead of blathering on about what “that” is GOING to be, let me start blathering on WITH IT.

Have you ever seen something so perfectly embodying a modern-day Wilma Flintstone? This is a decadent pair of Marsells, an über fancy Italian brand that no doubt appeals to the upper upper crust of trust fund kids that like Fluevogs, but don’t think them expensive enough for their lifestyle. They’re hard to come by and even rarer seen out in the wild, although in that latter respect my co-workers are obliviously lucky. I picked these up at yoox, which is probably the most reliable place I can count on (and recommend) to find a pair. They were very much marked down, although still close to c-note, and while I hadn’t exactly been stalking this pair and I wasn’t sure about that beige-tinted grey color *or* the ankle-ties? I figured I could always return ‘em. Chances to score this kind of fantasmagoria aren’t too common so I went for the gusto. And good gravy, am I ever glad. These pups are stellar: they’re funky, they’re chunky, they’re pretty comfortable as far as fancy shoes go, they’re made within an inch of staying here on the planet and not ascending into Valhalla, and they’re MINE. MMMMMINE! I say they fit pretty true-to-size: a euro 40 is a good 9-9.5 ‘Merican and the width is a pretty good medium. They’re not padded, and my front ball-of-foot takes a bit more pressure than she likes if I wear them out all day, and the heel counter is pretty average (which, actually, is just a hair big for me). These are a great neutral color that doesn’t match my skintone (why I just can’t dig on that taupe-beige-nude phenom) and they’re light without being white (which … no, I just can’t wear white shoes without significant presence of other colors, like black and yellow). Plus I’m all about mixing grey into my funky color combos, and it works with pretty much every neutral shade you can throw at it. Black? it’s like a snack! Brown? let’s go to town! Taupe? it sure can cope! Uh, Navy? you know it, baby! So: yes. Grey is A-OK.

The Rehash:

Brand: Marsell
Style name: ???
Season/year: who knows. they’re ‘current’ again at yoox, but they’re at least a couple years old.
Availability: yoox, luisaviaroma, ebay
Fit: tts, avg. width
Overall pros: excellent personality & styling, good heel height, made immaculately
Overall cons: super expensive, hard to find, no real padding
My score, 1 (low) to 10 (high): solid 8.

That, in essence, is what I want to provide for random google searchers who really wanna know, if they can, how a certain style of shoe fits and whether or not you can find it online anywhere. It’s limited of course by my terribly fickle tastes and also my extraordinary cheap tendencies, however much it might be enabled because of my amazing sense of style coupled with galavanting around on my Word Pony. Minor caveats, particularly if you’re like a representative of net-a-porter or zappos couture or something, is that I will totally write up a review of whatever you want if you send me a pair. Hell, if you just lend me some Barbara Buis or Max Kibardins I’ll even cater to stupidly arbitrary word counts and find rhyming schemes that work with specific words, up to and including “interuterine.” (Which I mention only because of that time Rose and Dorothy wrote a song about Miami.)

Till next time, y’all! Wear shoes that’d make me proud.

So this is good. It’s still just mid-January, and I’m sticking to some blogness and still thinking with soft, kind thoughts about my New Year’s Resolutions. I had a nice spate of days off from work immediately following the New Year’s holiday, and I rather would have liked to get some hardcore headway made on…uhm, something. Honestly, there’s a lot of time-heavy projects that could use some attention from me: cleaning up the sewing room; weeding out fabrics and patterns (plus clothes and shoes) that I’ve moved beyond; better organizing my paper ephemera stuff; inventorying all my rubber stamps; and probably about two dozen other umbrella-level tasks. But noooo! I had a weiner sore throat that was actually a grody bacterial thing and I had to go to the doctor and cough a lot instead of sew, or clean, or sit on the floor with piles of stuff completely surrounding me, like I’d built a fort to retire in. While I didn’t get anything productive done that week, I did tweet a haiku that pretty much summed it up.

And it was right on, 100%. I’ve been thinking on overstimulatedness for two solid weeks now, how that pummels me into feeling too barraged to move much less cut out fabric and sew it up. I’ve got so much stuff that is great stuff, I mean just terrific, but there is a LOT of it, and I too easily feel like I’m carrying it all around with me and then it has ABBA-heavy dance parties when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. And I think that, with a more atmospheric-point-of-view, that’s what I really wanted to address (if not chip away at) with my new year’s resolutions. But in a sense, I’ve always got some kind of sore throat, so to speak. I watch television or bake cupcakes or drink beers and prowl ebay for marc jacobs heels under $70, and the end result is that my desire to Do Stuff gets overhauled by, perhaps, my more latent desire/s to not Do Stuff. Or at the very least it’s surpassed by my Doing other Stuff that has far less tangible results. Although … I do have like half a dozen pairs of MJs.

Which is to say, that the “sew more” thing I barely touched upon in the Offical Resolutions post? can be further broken down a little somethin’ like this.

1. Finish things. I have got to start doing a better job of this. There are some projects that I start out real excited and happy, but something unforeseen sneaks into the works and then I stuff it onto a shelf and completely forget about it. Now, I don’t only do this, I mean I have actually finished things, but too often I worry that I’ve picked out an unsuitable fabric or cut out the wrong (or unadjusted) size and instead of working on it, I scrap it. And instead of actually scrapping it, I just accumulate it in a defunct zone. So for ought-nine? I wanna get some stuff Done.
2. Sew with my other machines. So I have two whole sewing machines, a Babylock serger and an older Bernina, that I have not even touched except to move them out of my way. I’m still cranking out some time with Bettes, my plastic-fantastic singer purchase from mal-wart, but if I’m going to be doing hardcore awesome projects with kickass fabrics? Maybe I need to upgrade to a machine that’s worthy. Or at least more worthy–I mean, they’re sitting right in front of me.
3. Try new things. Yes yes, you hear this one all the time, and I do try new things even without positing it in a banter of making new year’s resolutions. But really: bound buttonholes are, like, so my style. I just need to crank some out to make sure. Also I wanna: make some non-pajama pants, sew with silk, sew up a vintage pattern, use some of my excellent button stash, finish up tweaks on a muslin and then actually SEW it, and sew a coat or a jacket. And, though I may change my mind on that last thing, I don’t think the cape will count.
4. Buy less cheap stuff. Sometimes there are prints, be they floral or abstract or vintage-y or wacked out or what have you, that I simply cannot pass up. I will accept that in myself, more or less, but for real: I have a lot of solid color, totally boring cheap stuff–and that’s no good. If it’s cheap? there has to be merit otherwise. And if it’s a solid color kind of thing? go for the good stuff, because it’ll make me happier in the long run. It sucks to have a finished garment start looking shoddy after a couple months because you cheaped out on the fabric. (Now, with this example in particular, I’m fine with owning up to having used a cheap-o fabric; the only reason I got something wearable out of that project was because I’m so stubborn ’cause the pattern was not for me, and that was my first time sewing a knit, and so on.)
5. Blog more about it. It’s nice to keep track of stuff I’ve done, especially if I don’t have to sit down staring at a blank piece of paper trying to rack my brain for things I have accomplished in, well, for example the last year. I totally did things in 2008, but you wouldn’t know the half of it if you only looked at VP. So for oh-nine, I want to be better at keeping track of things: including regularity and pictures. I will attempt to lure myself into accountability to myself, but not by being such a hardass (though that’s going to be a super challenge). Uhm, we’ll see how it goes.

I also want to get this site looking the way I want it to, so if you’re not reading this in a feed reader? Bear with my fickle sense/s of likes and half-organizedness.

Ought nine y’all! Hoe-lee! In light of it still being January, then, I want to talk for a sec about New Year’s Resolutions. See, I’m not real big on making them: I tend to be of the opinion that I don’t need some new page on a calendar to interest myself in doing better. I don’t hold at all tightly to vaguely romantic notions that a new year will mean the turning over of new leaves, that something as arbitrary as a chronological numeric assignation to the position of the earth and the sun and the greater cosmos will result in me, all of a sudden, saving enough money and getting in physical shape stellar enough to become an astronaut, or something. Nuts to that; let me do my own thing ’cause it’s working for me so far.

Ahem: that said, get ready for my “but.” BUT I think I’ve done a good job the last two years with sticking to my repeated resolution of wanting to sew more. In 2007 and again in 2008, I did just that. I increased my repertoire of abilities and finished projects, I devoted more time to getting better and sitting behind the machine, I became more comfortable in feeling capable at this hobby. So for 2009? Same goes: I want to sew more. Also this list of eighteen additional resolutiony things:

1. Stop buying so many damn pairs of shoes.

Now this is not to say that I will hop on the rehabilitation wagon for shoe addicts–I just need to stop buying so much stuff that’s cheap and may or may not fit me. I have superior and discerning tastes: I need to start spending that way (uhm, # of times not amount per se).

2. Start sewing with the good stuff.

For real. What is all this awesome fabric doing languishing? who am I saving it for? why do I not have a mustard yellow wool skirt or a polka-dot trench coat or a damn goldfish dress yet?! and so on.

3. Make more art.

Mail art, fabric art, photo art, cupcake art, guerilla art, wardrobe art, acrylic paint on cereal boxes art, yard art. Art art art! I’ll even try to post more to VP in terms of how this will be actualized; I want to do some collaboratory stuff with my best buddy Brian, in Chicago, and my best lady Beck. Speaking of the latter, I may cop her experimonth style and come up with a couple projects where I do some stuff every day for a calendar month. I’m toying with the following ideas: getting up at 5:00 a.m. every day; do some art every day; watch a new movie every day (though that’s an awful lot of movies).

4. Eat better.

Which is to say, more regularly. Lunch is good. Not eating for 20 hours every day, four or five days a week is a lame habit.

5. Relax, dammit.

Allison: remember this? remember sitting on your butt and having a nice beer and just vegging in front of the telly for a bit? Grab hold of that frame of mind a little more often–it’s good for you. Unclench the stress and antsy mood in favor of giving yourself a break sometimes. Like, a lot of times.

So there it is. My official list of 2009 New Year’s Resolutions. Whether or not I’ll actually stick to them remains to be seen, as well as whether or not I’ll actually post anything on the ‘Pants about it all, but, you know. One day at a time.

(Update: jesus effing christmas. I should’ve guessed that BIG BUT in a blog post’s title would unleash the spamly floodgates, but SHIT man. No more comments, for real. Sorry for the two-point-four people out there who care.)

But the season is Fall. Lovely Autumn, with your changing leaf colors and crisp sunlit days! The change in the air is always so inspiring for the sewin’ room, wouldn’t you agree? Here are some things that I think would be nice to have, and probably even nice to sew. Will I make with the sleepless nights and fruitful sewing activity this Autumn? Hard to say: “a smidgen bit” most likely; all the way up to “some” would be nice; “all” is, like, totally not my procrastinating (and telly-watching) style. Still, come windowshop with me!

I’m all about a structured shirtdress, and this tweed is awesome. It’s very coat-like in this more substantial fabric, with lots of buttons, a double-breasted front closure, button-closeable-flapped patch pockets, self-fabric belt and shoulder epaulettes really copping the ingredients of a traditional trench coat. And it is described as a “coat dress,” so even the manufacturer says you can wear it as either, but … whatever. In that respect I can look at wrapdresses as bathrobes, right? It’s way cooler as a 100% dress than as a coat, says me. If you look at the biggest possible view, you can see the multiple gores of the skirt, the waistline seam, and the armscye princess bodice seams which will all make fitting this thing way easier. I mean, you won’t be wearing a pair of pants and a blouse underneath this thing, so you definitely don’t want traditional trench coat ease in this thing. Pattern possibilities: New Look 6815 if you give it a seam at the waist and fudge the skirt into a multiple-gored one and add a bit to the center-front pieces to get the overlap down pat. (Of course, the back has a shaped upper yoke and a center pleat running the length of the bodice which is chopped up into four pieces itself, but … I just don’t feel like playing around in photoshop that much just now. Maybe (read: probably) later.)

So here’s a sewing conundrum: the sweater dress. Not only is it a conundrum in the difficulty of caring for, finding a good pattern and fabric for, and then aren’t sweater knits sort of a pain to sew anyway? I’ve also got to decide between BCBG’s shawl collar-midriff band combo and the inimitable DvF’s three-quarter-length sleeved keyhole mandarin collar wrap option. My brain is facing a meltdown, I tell ya.

When I was in the sixth grade, one of our projects for language arts class was to teach our classmates how to do something. It didn’t matter what it was, it just needed to be something written out in steps in the most clear (and preferably concise) manner so as to convey what it was that was to be accomplished and how you were supposed to manage it. And I had the hardest damn time trying to decide what I could teach people; the only idea I ever managed to even scribble on a scrap of paper was how to be good at math. (Granted, this was way before I met up with calculus, and I was partially convinced that I should be an accountant or something similarly mathly when I grew up. The joys of the tapering off of adolescence! After my first semester of college-level maths I abandoned that mess but quick.) I was too embarrassed to even list out steps for Achieving Math Prowess, or whatever I would’ve called it in my painfully precocious way, and I never actually turned that project in. Not sure how I avoided it, but at this point I’ve got my bachelor’s degree plus I could teach people how to sew a flat felled seam if Mrs. Lindsay ever reads this and cajoles me into doing a make-up report now that I’m almost damn thirty.

But part of being thirty, for me at least, is being able to fake some maturity and play Stuart Smalley with yourself: to be able to re-hash things that made you feel bad when you were a kid, and give yourself a break. To say it wasn’t stupid to try to teach people how to be good at math, but more than that, to really believe it wouldn’t have been stupid. I’m still sort of tripping over that, and maybe I always will because I, you know, never did that project, but this same theme revisits me all the time. I see it at work, with my friends, with my hobbies: this crazy, eyeball-popping perfectionism that I have to HAVE in order to feel OKAY about doing anything at all. I’m especially conscious of how much I do this with sewing-related activities, both actually sewing and procuring stuff with which to actually sew (fabric and notions and patterns, good grief).

And now, for the *ahem* MEAT of the situation.

I’m going a little crazy lately with … well, I guess a lot of stuff, but let’s focus on sewing business. I keep buying fabric, and patterns, and buttons, and books, and magazines, and notions, and tools, and all kinds of STUFF. I even hired out a Cedar Specialist to create a shelving solution for the fabric that has taken over the top of the hope chest, because it’s been too full to fit any more fabric for over a year now. It’s not for having a lack of inspiration, in the form of any possible variable, it’s just that I’m suffocating under the weight of Possible Perfection. I’ve got all these vague, washed-out pictures in my head of what the perfect dress in that one fabric could look like on me, and there are Two Main Things totally, utterly, completely, balls-to-the-wall wrong with that scenario. First, they are vague, fuzzy, underexposed and off-center pictures that I only have a kinda sorta glimpse of because I’m trying to be all natural and organic in my VISION. Just let it come naturally! don’t force it! let it be, man! and et cetera. And you know what? It’s deceptively and crazy-ass difficult to draw fantastically intricate and clean detail from the sweeping thoughts that surround a first impression. That mess is hard. Monks and shamans and hippies work their whole lives to get good at that, and even when they’re a hundred years old they’re still not perfect. Which leads me to the Second Main Thing wrong with trying to get work done based on intangibles: it works, for a split second in your head, because of its intangible nature. That dress looks perfect on my frame and those colors are stellar with my complexion because I’m taking the most sweeping glance at it imaginable. I’m not breaking down any of the hundred parts into how it might work in reality, so that all the details I could possibly want are already present, I just have to squint to make them out. Unfortunately, this kind of defeats the purpose of leaving the house in the morning; if I want otherworldly perfection, I’m going to have to start taking a lot more hallucinogenic drugs and, for my more materially pressing concerns, regularly happen upon brown paper bags full of twenty-dollar bills at the bus stop. In the meantime? I have just got to get some FBA techniques down pat and start sewing up some dresses.