I did not have the end of 2022 that I was expecting - and I am eyeing 2023 with a great amount of suspicion. I am, however, a bit geeked it’s a year of the Rabbit (that’s my jam).
I don’t like to talk about challenges in my life while I’m going through them. I have a lot of good reasons as to why that is.
Some of what I’ve been dealing with has had me focused enough on other things that I still haven’t written that piece about ‘The Fool’.
Part of my silence is that is I’ve been slingin’ words for cash-money only. It’s hard competing with robots. Since I last wrote here, I’ve written something like 20k words, which is a pretty exhausting amount, when you get down to it (realistically, with the way I write, I wrote 80k words to get those 20k - I can be a fierce editor / rewriter).
During my substack silence, I did publish a few articles on my Medium that made a lot of waves - waves that I could feel and ultimately caused me a bit of lab-related nausea. The ‘TL;DR’ is I finally used my Tableau skills on that data. The graphs that resulted were QUITE eye-catching. So the large project that STILL doesn’t really pay demands MORE. It’s insulting, given everything else I’ve been dealing with, and it’s particularly insulting now that I’ve poured work and some tears into it. It got emotionally worse for me when things came to a head on my birthday weekend - and Oregon recalled 20,000 cannabis products.
It’s been a ride since then. My notes are fuckin’ interesting. This last push also caught the attention of a big player - at least my words about the situation did.
Anyway, while all the lab stuff was boiling over and taking more and more of my time and attention (it just .. doesn’t stop), I did manage to get some creative work done.
I sewed Darren a beautiful yoked shirt in a sturdy cotton flannel with blingy lime green snaps for his 50th. He loves it so much that the second I was finished pressing it, he grabbed it from me and has been wearing it since. It also features 3 yards of piping.
I’ve not really gotten a great photo of it, this will have to do for now. Bonus: rainbow (and Mr. Cujo!).
It does have those great yokes, etc. - I used the same pattern I had drafted before. Since this flannel is particularly nice, sewing it was a true dream. It’s like it wanted to come together. Thanks to all of my mathemagic last time, the collar really worked well (once I remembered what I had to do). I figured that this is a better picture of the shirt than other ones because it has Darren in it, including in his Idiocracy shoes.
I also managed to knit myself a lovely little shawl out of a skein of yarn I splurged on for my birthday. I never would have bought it if I knew how December would end, but that’s neither here nor there, is it? Here’s the shawl in all its glory - it’s a quick knit, Study Hall by Sarah Schira in knitty. Bonus? Pattern’s free. I made a few modifications: instead of using the four-row stitch pattern in the spine, I dropped the stitches (scary) and picked them back up with a crochet hook.
Awww yeeeeeeah.
I don’t commonly wear shawls over my shoulders, but I do often wear them around my neck like this. Keeps the chill away. I’ve been tempted by the very ubiquitous-to-the-knitting-world ‘Evenstar” but I don’t have the beads. I’ve also been thinking about taking my fiber arts skills back to the — spin to weave a cloth I sew by hand into a kirtle — but that’s a really huge project that has to start with: What color? I have some ideas that truly excite me, but again - it’ll take a lot of work and it’s not something that gets completed very quickly.
I’ve been watching a lot of ‘Great British Sewing Bee,” and I’m feeling really inspired to sew - but I’m also somewhat stuck on considering what my next sewing project will be. Since I’ve fully converted to the antique treadle machine, I find their struggles with the older machines both relatable and humorous.
I promise it’s not that hard, but I’ve also spent years using a treadle for spinning.
I find the power that I have with Maggie - that I can stop mid-stitch (exceptionally handy when stitching corners), and that I understand VERY well how all of the machine operates — gives me a lot more confidence than the magic box that some sewing machines have become. Since I sew full-time on Maggie, I’ve given my other one to Darren, who can use it in his leather pursuits. When I was showing Darren how to thread the Singer 4423 I passed to him when I found my machine, it took me a second to reacquaint with all of its powerful bells and whistles. Those come with a catch. Machines like my Singer 4423 aren’t made to be fully repairable. Especially not if you compare them to one of the older machines you can find in a thrift store. Today I saw a beautiful old ‘White’ machine from the 1950’s that still had years of life and service to give for a steal at $25.
There’s a lot around us, that have years of life to give. Even things that might be broken, or worn out looking. It just takes a little bit of ingenuity.
I guess the TL; DR is that I’ve had a strange stretch of time.