Pockets Skirt

Well, I got the camera battery plugged in and ran upstairs for the rest of the light to snag some.. blurry pictures. It was too late to catch the dancers or the giant, roadside TV screen, so I took some of my latest sewing project instead.

Some background info.

I heart sewing, enough that I own not one sewing machine, but three (although only one of them works...so.). They are both, however, in the United States, where I - stupidly - left them.

I never, not in a million years, saw myself sewing by hand. We always had a sewing machine, a giant brick of an Elna that lasted my mother from the time she was 20 until the time I was 20, when I broke it. Eep.

Now, it's mine, and I need to get it fixed.

So, I've always had a machine, right on hand.

Until now.

Now, I'm the dork who sews by hand. Do I feel dorky? Oh, pretty much.

It takes FOREVER. For-freaking-ever.

I knit more than I'll ever sew, and knitting anything bigger than a bootie takes a lifetime, so I've learned a smidge of crafting patience in my short lifetime, but not when it comes to sewing. Sewing projects are supposed to take hours, not days!

I now have a much greater appreciation for the handiwork of all pre-sewing machine generations, and a creepy callous on the inside of my right middle finger where I am forever stabbing myself with the cheap needle I kiped from a hotel sewing kit.

Still. I am able to sew here. And that is a big deal in itself, considering I can't make a sandwich, buy a milkshake, or do a lot of other things. So, I will be grateful for that. And, all in all, it is making me a better, more patient crafter, and it is certainly improving my hand sewing skillz, which is to say.. making them passable as opposed to non-existent.

Anyway. The skirt.

I am okay with it. Not sure if I like it.

But I do that. Go through The Ten Stages of Make.

1. Have an idea

2. Gather materials to actualize idea

3. Become very excited about idea's potential

4. Have an idea crisis, in which the quality and aesthetics of actualization come into question.

5. Resolve myself to finish actualization, even it results in death, because, as Mr. Penny often reminds me, I am fickle and what I hate can quickly become what I love. You can't know if something will be a success until you actually finish it, after all.

6. Start to resent project

7. Finish project and abandon it in ambivalence

8. Find project laying around three weeks later and realize it's not all that bad after all and I can't see the crappy stitching anymore either.

OR

8. Find project laying around three weeks later and dismantle it in frustration.

That only 8. Guess I lied.

Anyway, I'm in the ambivalence stage of make.

I wanted a skirt with four pockets.

I take that back. What I really wanted, was a skirt like this one because we all know there is nothing better than little kid clothes and I can make myself little kid clothes if I want to, so there.

But it has four pockets. It's a little longer than I'd hoped, though.

It seems no matter how much measuring or math I do, things never go as planned. I tend to either abandon dreams of perfection or use/alter patterns. But I don't have patterns here.

Because I brought oatmeal instead.

Geez.

Maybe it's shoddy workmanship will start to grow on me. We'll just wait three weeks and see, I guess.

I do quite like the buttons, which my mother sent me from America. I believe she picked them up at her favorite thrift store, the one she likes to call, "The Mennonite Place". And I'm willing to call it whatever she wants so long as she keeps sending me it's sweet little treasures.

So far, I've been given vintage buttons (which included little bunches of mother of pearls, buttons my mother guards with her life, so this was quite a sacrifice for her), lots of vintage zippers and rick rack, and this sweet little old darning egg.

Maybe I'll take pictures of those next.

Vintage buttons are like buttercream frosting. They look good enough to eat! I always think they might just mush in my mouth like cupcake tops.

I'll probably come around to this dumb thing and I can always raise the hem to make it shorter.

Whatever. Ambivalence has definitely set in. As far as I'm concerned, if I never have to see the thing again, I'll be a happy camper.

Although I may just put it on simply for the buttercream buttons.....