Sewing

It's June! Hopefully this means that the month of rain if over. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, our urban garden has not survived this awful month, so we re-planted everything except for the tomatoes which I will buy today at the market.

Dead cucumber with new ones planted last week

I'm leaving for Transylvania in a little bit more than a month. I can't wait, although really, I think it is now time to seriously plan that group trip, starting by getting a new passport...

On the crafty side of things, I've been sewing more than knitting or weaving. I made a mistake about an inch ago in my weaving, and I can't find the will to undo that inch to redo it.

The knitting was going well, I started the sleeves, and started to divide for armholes. All was going well. Then I read AT THE SAME TIME...start shaping neck, and started to wonder if really, I was able to multitask that much while knitting. After a few minutes of trying to calculate numbers of row, and decreases on my knitting application on ipod, I had to add another thing not to forget to do:

left front, neck shaping and breathing, all happening at the same time.

I knitted like this for 2 hours while on the bus 3R-Montréal last week, but I haven't been able to get back to it since. I feel that I cannot just grab my bag and do a few rows anymore, I will need serious time to figure out where I am the next time I touch it. I could however work a little harder on my sleeves, which I will do as soon as I get the courage to do so many increases in a row (I'm not crazy about increases, I still don't feel very comfortable doing them). However, tomorrow is the World Wide Knit in Public Day, so I think that sleeves will be safer to knit at the Dek-hockey tournament I'm supposed to attend than the front-neck-breath part. 

I'm still hoping to be wearing this on the place next month...or maybe on the way back a month later...

But, really, the last month has been busier with sewing. I don't feel very comfortable sewing, even if I took some basic courses a few years ago with a dancer from my Hungarian folk dance group. I think she was very good at giving us good habits. I also sewed very intensively a few years ago, sewing 4 or 5 sets of Hungarian costumes over a weekend with 2 friends. But I hadn't touche my sewing machine in years, and remembered mostly un-sewing the many mistakes I kep making and being discouraged at how crooked everything I tried to do was.  So, even after I moved to this gigantic apartment, acquired a monstrous desk, a new iron and ironing board with the objective of starting to sew again, I had not touch my sewing machine since the move last July. But somehow, the nicer weather inspired me, and in the past 2 weeks, I started a few things.

The curtains for our main door had been on my to-do list since I visited the apartment last year

This is a future bed skirt. It is all sewn, I only need to add velcro to make sure it holds onto our fairytale bed.

The curtains took half an hour to make (I only had to sew the sides). Having everything I needed ready around me (iron, machine, needles) made a huge difference. I also noticed that somehow, even if I had not sewn in years, I now sew lines that are straighter. Maybe with age comes wisdom and patience, and with that come straight lines?

The second item is a bed skirt. My man built us a bed that is about 18 inch high. I love it, I have trouble getting onto it, it's so high, but it really feels like a princess' bed. And it's got tons of room for storage underneath. Unfortunately, this space is 1. not pretty and 2. always full of dust. So after finding this fabric at Ikea, I spent 2 hours sewing it. It looks good, and it works well again the dust. I now just have to find a way to keep in in place, probably with velcro. That too went very well, and very quickly, and everything is straight.

The last project project I worked on in the past weeks was a huge catastrophe for my ego.
I decided to make myself a skirt with some very colourful fabric I bought last year. I found a pattern that looked easy to make, and cut all the pieces of paper and fabric for what I thought was my size.

Then, I don't know why, I put the pieces to make the belt around my waist. Shock and horror, it was way too small. I went back to my papers, and sure enough, it was the size that all my other clothes are. It was even written that the belt was made to be worn an inch and a half under the waist. AAAhhhhhrrrrhhhhh! I was not even able to put it at my waist!

Before starting crying, I took a deep breath, and went to my bedroom, and tried on several clothes in that same size. Pfeww, they all fit. So I had not doubled in size overnight. Some of these clothes I've had for several years. But I really find it annoying that the sizes I wear are more and more different depending on where I get my clothes. I have clothes in S, M and L which all fit more or less the same way, and I also have clothes in at least 3 different sizes, because some sizes are made smaller, or bigger to please the crowd, I feel. Of course, nobody wants to be over size 6. But selling size 14 clothes with a size 10 or 12 tag on to make people feel better is not helpful, at least not to me. How do people order clothes over the internet? Not only I feel fat, but I also feel like someone has decided they have to lie to me because, what, I am not able to take the truth? Because if I feel big, I will not buy clothes anymore? (hum...maybe, but I still need to wear something). I think we should have a system where we are able to identify our size by the real size of our waist. Anyway, all that to say that I was not happy because now I have to redo the skirt. I will cut a new belt one size bigger, and I will undo the pleats to make them smaller, so I will gain room at the waist. 
And I will seriously re-start looking at what I eat, try to figure out ways to be  more active, stop using the way I feel in my clothes as a way to assess if my body is changing and figure out a way to "try" the paper pieces of a pattern before I start cutting the fabric. That was not a good day. :-(