I sat down yesterday and wrote a list of my personal limitations: "Current Limitations to Consider Fixing/Conquering." In my thirties, this would have been titled, "Ways I'm Lame," but here in my forties I have the freedom to make lists like this one to think about and try to Get At.
#2 was "Discomfort--unease, actually--in a dress, or in high heels or in anything really pretty." (This particular limitation was listed after #1 "Fear of snakes" and #3 "Weak back." and I wrote it because I was freshly off a wedding where-at I spent 32% of my time worrying that my dress would fly over my head. I kept yanking at it like the wind was some licentious old man or something. Yeesh.)
And I frankly chalk #2 up to lack of practice. I never wear dresses. Or skirts. I don't really like to get dressed up at all. And I think I figured out this weekend that it's because I RARELY find something in the Dress Dept of Anywhere that when I put it on and look in the mirror I think, "Oh look--there. That's Me." No. I usually think, "Um. What?"
I was walking through a mall on Friday (desperately searching for a dress to wear to the wedding THE NEXT DAY) with my 21 Year Old Sister Who's Read Cosmo Since She Was 8--and who currently works for the big N department store and who is 1 of the 2 people in the world that I can shop for myself with, and I was telling her of my difficulties in the Find a Dress I Feel LIke Myself In. And then I said it out loud, "I think I'll probably need to start sewing clothes for myself."
Long internal pause.
This is, of course, a big way to solve my dillemma--especially because a) I love to remake clothes 2) there are a ka-million good places to find vintage patterns and IV) I have been watching in awe as other people do it for some time now. Plus, everyone's doing it.
There's only one tiny problem: I don't like to do it. I mean, I've only tried once actually sewing from a true pattern--and that project is currently shoved in a big ziploc on a back shelf. (Oh wait--even better: twice.)
But I'm going to give it another shot I think. My grandma sent me birthday money and I immediately went to Amazon and within 3 minutes and 4 clicks, I had purchased these two books to help me:
And then my sister gave me a fat patternmaking textbook just like the one she used when she was at FIDM. So that's my update: Destined.
Personal Limitation #4 ("Easily Frustrated by Perceived Failure") can now also be simultaneously attacked. All I need to do now get a pet snake and do my back exercises.
Right.
