wienerdog tricks.

This Happened To Me

I went upstairs to Ro last night when it was dark--after work, after dinner, after dishes, after kids, and decided to sew. I have about 31-gazillion projects sitting in various piles within a leg's reach of my desk but didn't want to make them. Not in the mood--so I picked up a handful of plaid polyester and just started cutting and sewing and attaching a zipper and then GUSSETING. And then this happened:

 

It was wanting to be--in my CREATIVE ENVISIONING OF IT--some sort of ditty bag. Right. Instead, it is a plaid morphy squid-ish thing. I think I might name it . . .

• DELIRIOUS POSSIBILITY (I'm sure somebody has that sewn on a couch pillow somewhere)
• WOMAN COOKS & EATS CRACK THEN SITS DOWN TO SEWING MACHINE WITH DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR
• SLEEP-DEPRIVATION STUDY IN OLD PLAID
• DON'T DRINK AND GUSSET (I swear I only had like two sips of sauvignon blanc)

And I will name it because it will, in fact, never be more than Art since it turns out to have no function whatsoever--what with the zipper opening into nothing and all. Right.

 

In the spirit of telling the truth even when what I make is fabulously ugly and unsuccessful, I'm sharing here. 

There's nothing I love more than diving in without a pattern  (yes, irony since I like to write them; but you know what--I like to write poetry too and I never read poems. Hmmm. Talk to therapist about this behavior pattern.), but sometimes I lose my way. This happened to me last night. Apparently I should have just watch THE OFFICE.

Lucky for everybody, I never do this in the kitchen. Thanks to her and her, nobody starves or chokes around here. So that's positive.

 

The One I Didn't Take

This is the picture that made me realize the truth of it:

Because when I buttered both sides of the bread and cut out the middle and cracked that farm egg into the middle, I knew I'd pulled together a moment. I snapped the shot. This is it: camping for us. Outside. Eating. Pretty Egg. Fire. Perfectly seasoned cast iron pan. And I knew immediately that I'd put it up here for you to see. A little picture of why I love love love to go camping with my fam.

Then I flipped the thing and it busted into a million ugly egg bits. Super unattractive egg bits flecked with weird cast iron burned-ish sorts of spots. A dark, unscrambled scramble.

And I didn't run for my camera.

And somewhere in the middle of not taking the picture and serving the destroyed Egg in a Basket to my Man Spouse I realized the truth: I don't always tell the whole truth on this blog. Don't worry, I didn't cry or anything, but I was struck by how much of that Love of All That's Just Right creeps into my life and then proves itself here.

So I'm going to start posting my failures. That makes it sound like I'm going to say a bunch of really uncomfortable stuff about what a B I am to my kids and my Man Spouse, but I'm really just talking about taking scintillating photos of the backwards hem I just ripped out of a polyester nightie I'm trying to pull off out of a pretty small piece of slinky polyester. 

And now that I typed that I realize that this might not sound like inviting fodder to you. But I think it will be. Watch for reports of the imperfect, because this is where my life is leading me--down a road of imperfection that I want to celebrate and not miss.

How Mr. T. and I Are Actually Very Much Alike.

Okay, not in the wardrobe. Generally speaking, I say no to tube socks and cut offs. But since I watched this video, I haven't been able to shake it.

I mean, yes, it's funny. Who doesn't want to see an enormous man sing a poorly-written kid song during the early eighties? I know I never want to miss it.

But then the thing that's really been getting me is how NERVOUS he looks. I'm sorry, I just think the man looks like he's in complete pain. And I haven't been able to shake the sense that Mr. T. was bamboozled into this gig. And so I'm asking myself, Why do it, Mr. T.? Why not stick to saying mean-sounding things to flatly-derived characters in crime scene comedy-dramas? Why branch out to tell-them-how-it's-supposed-to-be kids music? And why the oddly-dressed backup singers? And did you write the song? And who talked you into it?

These are the things I would ask Mr. T. if I had a chance to chat with him about that particular turning point in his career. (I could go find him now, but of course, he's busy.)

What does it have to do with my current sewing life? Well, um, sometimes I shoot for something out of my range too.

Exhibit A:

 I used this:

And here's the problem: I love making aprons (and lately, as you already know) totes. These are wonderful projects that involve increasingly fancy combinations of STRAIGHT lines. In this particular shirt project (which I took on because, well, I got overexcited in Adult Ed Sewing), I tried tackling: collar, sleeves, fake 70's placket, invisible back zipper, darts . . oh, and all with slinky polyester. It was, in short, just too much for me to tackle yet. 

And so me and Mr. T.: the same. Good at some things. Not everything.