Fun Stuff

For me, Fun Stuff most often involves, at least in the last several years, finding a good new home for something I wasn't using. In that regard, this has been an excellent week, indeed. I cleaned out my bead drawers and bagged up all the beads I'd somehow collected that were Just Not Right. Just not the right color (and omigod, there were some butt-ugly colors in there) or the right size (I don't need huge honkin' beads because those don't really work that great sewn onto clothes, not unless you're creating armor or something). So I gave away a bunch. Lest you feel sorry for me, thinking me currently beadless, here are a couple of the newly-organized and weeded-out drawers. The green beads:

The blue beads:

The purple beads.

You get the idea. It goes on. I'm not even going to show the drawer with all the silver beads I collected when I was doing Galaxy in Grey. So don't cry for me, Argentina: I still have some beads.

Then, to make up for the three new pair of Birkenstocks, I got rid of three old pair. I kind of cheated, though, because I dug out one pair from under the seat of the car. You know how you put a pair of reliable shoes in the car in case the shoes you're wearing lose their tiny little minds and begin to try to kill you? Or maybe you break a heel? Well, these old Birks, the first pair I ever bought (about 25-30 years ago) had been in there since the days when I actually owned Heels & Other Foolish Shoes. I don't own those any more so don't need Spare Shoes in the vehicles, Just In Case. So I took those and a pair of old brown suede Bostons to Goodwill and gave a really groovy woven leather pair to my friend Julia, and that kind of makes up for the new ones. Man, it's tough being this disciplined about shoes and bags and clothes and stuff. I felt bad about letting those old Birks go; after they got old and funky, I painted them with gold and purple and green Lumiere paints, and they were groovy+. But OK, here I'm going to make a confession: I wore these shoes a lot when we traveled—all my old Birkenstock Arizonas—and they'd get dirty in New Orleans and sweaty and maybe gross, depending on where I'd worn them and how careful I'd been about where I'd stepped (in Texas, for example, if you're not watching the ground where you're walking, chances are great that you're going to step in some cowboy's tobacco spit, which is beyond nasty (think phlegm, tobacco, and wintergreen all mixed up in a lovely, chunky stew). In The French Quarter, it's mostly flattened-out invisible horse droppings and pee that you've got to think about. Anyway—before I disgust us all any more than I already have—the shoes would get iffy, and there was no way I was putting them back in the suitcase to bring them home, so I'd wash them. In the bathtub. With soap and water. And you know, the first couple times you do this all is well. The shoes are fine, they have nothing horrific on the soles, the sweat from your delicate little flower petal toes is gone, all is well.

But, yeah, you know how it went: after several years of doing this, it began to show. Footbeds cracked, things began to peel up, leather got funky and stiff. I kept wearing them (and, I'm guessing) washing them, but eventually I wised up and got Keen's shoes that are actually, ahem, *meant* to be washed. Like, in the washing machine. Where had these been all my life?

Hence the ancient Birkenstocks living in the vehicle. Too old and sad to wear, but too groovy to part with. Until now, when I had to get rid of three pair to make up for the three pair I bought.

Oy is all I can say to that. Oy.

But the other part of the Fun Stuff is what I made yesterday. Oh, yesterday was one of those days: up at an ungodly (for me) hour, going with The EGE to the hospital for his regular colonoscopy, and—well, let's just stop right there.

I loathe hospitals. Who doesn't, right? I mean, we're all thrilled they're there when we need them, but nobody wants to have to be there. Because this one is a county hospital (and the only one in town), it has lots of people who use it as their primary source of health care, and there are kids running around and people hacking and what look like junkies but are probably just people who've been waiting so long in the ER they're lost half their body weight. Nobody speaks English as their primary language, if they speak it at all, and there are grouchy, abrupt staff, as you'd expect, and rushed medical personnel and blah, blah, blah. But the thing that drives me insane, the one biggest thing, is that damned tv going in every. single. room. I know, I know: it pacifies those waiting, the patients, the families. It's a familiar comfort. It makes the time go by more quickly and gives people something to do and AIEEEEEEEE. I drives me completely batshit crazy. Even with Pandora in my ears, I can hear the voices on the set bolted to the wall.

OK, skip to bringing the husband home. All goes well, and he thinks he's awake. He says we can go to Starbucks, and I tell him the dr. said to bring him home and keep him here. He says he's fine, he's awake. We get home, and he kind of wanders into the house (we've both had colonoscopies before, so this routine is familiar; every time he insists he's wide awake and ready to go do stuff), and I see that one of the cats has barfed, and I need to clean it up, and the husband is wandering around, sort of bumping into things, and I yell and tell him to just lie down already so I don't have to keep watching him. And it's like having a drunken toddler: he crosses his arms and says, "NO!" and then dives face first onto the bed, as if he's playing.

And then doesn't move for two hours, at which point he gets up and says, "I don't remember getting dressed." Yeah, I laugh at him. When it's my turn, he'll laugh at me.

Plus it rained all day, so we're stuck in the house, which is weird: any day that it's decent, he's going to be out in the yard doing stuff, pulling weeds, mowing, whatever. So it was a good day to do one of those One-Day Projects. Unfortunately, I didn't take a before shot, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing and doubted it would work out. I figured it would be one of those things for which I'd have to find a new home, actually.

It was a lightweight gray linen Cynthia Ashby shift/tank dress, ankle length, that I bought last year (second hand, third hand, whatever). I had thought to use it for layering, or I wanted to save it, or something. Frankly, I have no clue what I was doing when I bought it. Grey? A tank dress? It was funky, curved out at the hips and too tight in the chest, and let me just say: made to fit someone whose hips are that wide and chest is that narrow? I don't know what they were thinking.

The problems: too tight in the chest, weird fit from the hips down, too long, not wide enough to sit in cross-legged (a requirement for me). The neckline didn't lie flat and was pucker-y and the underarms had to be lowered. I started messing around with it—just took a pair of scissors and began cutting. I decided to use the part I cut off for pockets, and then I thought I'd make a gore on one side to give more room to sit, and I screwed that up (I don't really have a clue about making gores beyond one video I watched too long ago and don't really remember). I had to redo it, and then I thought, hey: I can cover up the still-slightly-problematic part with the pocket. The pockets are different sizes and different heights, and that's because I needed them to function that way. I hate construction that's all complicated and deliberately wonky just for show, but I like it if there's a reason.

So I worked on this throughout the rainy grey afternoon, and as soon as I was finished, I put it on and took a nap. And, surprise: I LOVE it. I didn't think I would, but it's comfortable (no longer hobbling) and has great movement when I walk (I like things that kind of billow and move as long as they don't impede the walking, and, yeah, I play with them). I'm wearing it now with—whoa—black leggings and a long-sleeved black t-shirt because that's just how rainy gray days make me feel. Even though it's not rainy today, it's still kind of grayish. Plus this is what I slept in.

Please ignore the bins. I finally finished cutting up all 30 years' + of jeans and getting them all nice and neat, and now I need to re-lable the bins and get them back in the storage building. Also please ignore the wrinkles: I slept in it, and I've been wearing it pretty much ever since I finished it.

Below you can see the gore. Once I re-did it and hid the tiny bit of funkiness at the top point, I'm pretty pleased with it. It's part of the hem I cut off, turned at an angle and sewn in.

The back, so you can see the asymetrical-ness:

Since it's light-weight linen, I didn't want to use a binding and just turned the edges under twice, kind of rolled but folded. The edges were originally serged (I think that's what they did), and in some places I left that—on the hem, and on the tops of the pockets I made from the cut-off hem.

Smaller pocket over the gore:

Larger pocket placed to fit above the side seam I opened up:

The purpose of this post, besides sharing something that was fun for me and is just cool to me, is, as always: you can do it. If you embrace a sort of funky, loose aesthetic (and why wouldn't we all?), you can make stuff work. I was musing about this to The EGE last night when I was telling him I had to do this post to prove my point of If I Can Do This, Anyone Can Do This, about how once you realize that things don't have to be pressed and perfect and symmetrical and measured, you can make things work. To me, as long as it's not sloppy (no fabric glue, nothing safety pinned or worn just basted), as long as it's sturdy and functional, it works. I got a fabulous black tank dress on Saturday, handed to me by another woman who was shopping. She said it looked like me, and sure enough: it's perfect to layer over a tank top in the summer, very light and airy. She didn't buy it because she doesn't wear linen because she grew up being taught you had to starch and press linen. Women tell me this as if it's a badge of Having Been Brought Up Right, like knowing not to wear white shoes between Labor Day and Memorial Day (you're supposed to wear them only between Memorial Day and Labor Day) and where to put the fish fork when you set a formal table, sometimes with a tone that suggests that if I hadn't grown up in a barn, raised by wolves, I would know this, too. I smile and tell them my mother never wore linen for that same exact reason but that I got over it.

I remember being in a psychology class in graduate school where the professor showed up one day in a skirt that was a mass of wrinkles. I was appalled and wondered what had gone wrong in her life that day that led to this horror, but then I realized that she just didn't care. She was running a research lab and working on that project and teaching and grading papers and having a life, and you know? Whether or not her clothes were wrinkled was probably way, way down there on her list of concerns, if it was even a concern at all. And why should it be? What do wrinkles mean, anyway? A loss of IQ points? Slovenliness? An inherently trashy life? Women who refuse to wear linen because of the wrinkles will go out in deliberately shredded jeans that cost hundreds of dollars and artfully messy hair that's meant to look as if they just rolled out of a weekend in bed, with flip-flops (that many of us were not allowed to wear except at the swimming pool). Search for "messy hair" or "messy bun" on Pinterest and find dozens of deliberately messy hairstyles.

Yet really cool women, women who wear clothes even I like, refuse to put on linen because it will get wrinkled. It's a puzzlement to me. I'm guessing they hear their mother's voices in their heads. Time to change that channel, then.

I still haven't re-created the expensive vest, but I'll get to it. I've spent some time mending things (not artful mending, but necessary mending of t-shirts and things) and finishing up some stuff and working on the old silk jacket, and once that's done, then I'll start on new stuff. Every once in a while I just have to slow down and get some little piddly stuff out of the way so I can think.