Starting Out

Crazy things go through your head when you're doing a 10K in 28-degree weather, with a ~20 windchill. (Although ironically, not, "I really should go back inside.") 

Sunday's thought?

"I really want to make that dress."

For reasons that I can't explain -- maybe it's body related, maybe it was grad school, maybe it was just "I can't focus on anything that isn't work, school, or not going crazy" -- I'd lost my sewing mojo.

I haven't sewn for close to a year. I've knit, but it's all been pretty pablum.

Sure, cables and basic stitch patterns look nice, but they're not really mind intensive. I don't have to think while I knit those, and instead, my brain wanders to all sorts of dysfunctional places and all sorts of not-too-fantastic depths of the Internet ether. 

And what I've learned over the past year of pablum knitting and not sewing is multipronged:

1. I need to find that balance between no stress and OMG ALL THE STRESS, because whoa, do I not do well at either opposing end of that spectrum.  
2. Brains and bodies are weird, and food is weird, and fitness is weird, and the recovery process doesn't actually help make any of that less weird. At least not yet.
3. But at least I can dress myself while my body is being all weird and I'm fixated on what stares back at me? And I know how to plant a seedling, and I'm pretty sure I'm a better cook than my dietitian.
4. Finishing a thesis, graduating, and dealing with a so-called relapse doesn't mean that I've stopped liking things. It's just made it a little harder to find that path back to figuring out what I've liked.

So back to Sunday.

I really wanted to make a dress. I wanted to remake a dress that was getting pretty worn at the elbows, since it was one of the earlier dresses I'd made, and I wanted a nice knit dress that fit my current size.

I found the pattern in my stash before I went out, and as luck would have it, I had three yards of fabric in the right weight, and the right width. And in the back of my head, there was Therapist 3.0 saying that we needed to find me a distraction, and what did I think about starting a blog. 

I'm not generally a believer in signs from the universe, but something remarkable happened when I got home from my run, tossed some laundry in the machine, and went up to my craft room to start the dress.

Julia Child happened. 

And it was the French Onion soup show. 

Julia. The French Chef. My craft room. A dress. All at the same time.

Things that I love. Or loved. Or used to love. 

Then MST3K on a different channel later that night, and they were mocking one of the 50s educational shorts that I adore. (Although MST3K on Create would really have been something to behold.)

Thanks, universe, for giving me a Gibbs smack.