I don’t mean it feels like a chore, I mean it quite literally feels like what I do all day. Opening a laptop, getting things in order, importing things, writing something, checking it works, publishing it, is pretty much 100% of my job (in a roundabout way) – and the very concept of doing a blog post these days makes me go ‘nah, I’m good.’ However I just paid my renewal fees so really I should be publishing at least once every six months!
I have seriously considered wiping my website from the face of the earth. There are some loading problems with my galleries that I can’t figure out how to fix…it needs constant updates and maintenence. I’m not a front end developer, I’m in devops, and the abstractions on the host for this website are, again, something i could work out and play with but MY GOSH IT’S JUST LIKE WORK.
So i missed the end of year round up. I don’t really mind all that much.
What did I do last year i’ve not talked about?
Here is me in London at the “Jeff Waynes War of the World Experience” which is frankly, something that if it’s still on and you are in London, why are you not doing it? The music alone should take you to it.
We were in London for a bit and oh! the museums, art, and wonders we saw! We then went to Shropshire and checked out industrial revolution sites (Ironbridge, Cromford, Manchester), and i finally got to see Hardwick Hall which is very tudor and full of embroideries and tapestries. While overseas I made a small squirrel embroidery which I now use as a pincushion.
I spent much of last year creating fabrics: reworking clothes, crocheting and embroidering. I got back from overseas and realised I felt depressed by all the clothes I’d accumulated during covid and had been slouching around in. I work pretty much 100 from the lounge room now. I stopped wearing dresses at home and I had a wardrobe full of them, I also have put on weight and couldn’t fit into the tops of many of them. I hated everything i had to wear.
Now, part of getting ready for the trip was working out how to take a cut down set of clothes with me that would fit in hand luggage: so I sourced some t-shirts from op shops so i could do the travel capsule wardrobe. That was successful and gave me an idea… when I got back I spent considerable amount of time going to op shops and getting new (to me) clothes. It’s astonishing what you can get in op shops! So many new with tags items! Lots of things didn’t quite fit so I altered them.
I worked out that i’m longer in the torso and taller than standard sizes and lots of dresses are and always have been comically short; if the dress fits width-wise i can guarantee you the waist will be somewhere hovering between my bust and waist. I wear dresses that are fitted to the wait and flare out. It’s fairly easy to unpick the bottom of the zip, detach the skirt, add a band of a different fabric around the waist and a wide strip on the bottom of the skirt, and it lengthens it. Pick a fabric that compliments or contrasts the fabric of the dress, and it looks very intentional. Done this a number of times now. I have also bought dresses that wouldn’t fit to make into skirts, and chopped the tops off many dresses I already owned, added a waistband and zip…. and now i can wear them as skirts.
So lots of sewing projects were done this year that are not quite blog post worthy, but I am getting dressed up for work now in nicely matching clothes and I am wearing jewellery again too and what it does for your self esteem!
I can also recommend working in a team that is freindly and supportive. That helps too!
I included a pic of some of the squares in my last post, but I finished enough granny squares and made up my poncho, which has been far too hot to try on so here’s a pic of the bundle of fabric that I totally couldn’t be assed to even drape on a chair. I’ve not worn it yet. It’s summer here.
I went on-call at work and for 7 days at a time I have to carry my phone on my person. Which means pockets to some but I don’t tend to wear clothing with appropriate pockets and i don’t want to wear a shoulder bag, so I made up a pocket which I sling on my old big leather SCA belt (I also don’t wear belts but I’ve had this one since the larping in the 90s I did) – and i did a quickie embroidery on each side of the bag (quick cause it was wider canvas).
Am I still obsessed with furbies? Probably, yes.
