Since I was planning a day filled with lift that bale tote that barge physical labor, I decided to skip the gym yesterday and cut out my Easter skirt instead.
Here are the cut pieces. You can see the pattern (Simplicity3845) which is intended to make it into that sort of two piece dress cum suit where the top, while being a blouse that matches the skirt, can also be a jacket with other pieces if called upon to do so.
These are pieces #2 and #3 of the SWAP II plan.
You can also see the fabric of the finished jacket — piece #1 — which I will wear with this skirt if I do not complete #3 by Easter.
If it should happen that I do not complete #3, then I have the question of what to wear with pieces #1 and #2.
I have a dark blue blouse from SWAP mach I, which is the most likely answer to that question, though Blessing assures me that it won’t look like Easter at all, with so little contrast.
However, there are some other possibilities.
Here is the green silk charmeuse I was telling you about.
When Blessing was suggesting a yellow shell, I thought of this, because I already own it. It is a bit shiny for church, isn’t it?
I also have these two prints from the fabrics for SWAPII.
On the left is a stretch sateen, and on the right a cotton batik.
I had planned a tunic from the batik print, and a shell from the paisley. Neither offers the level of contrast that would really make me look like I had upended an Easter basket over my head, and actually, neither is likely to be more quickly finished than the planned #3. I don’t have enough TNT patterns to rely on them for the entire SWAP, as is recommended.
And finally, I offer you a cinnabar shade of linen.
It doesn’t work with my SWAP, and it gives the suit fabrics a bit of an industrial flavor, doesn’t it? Can’t you see this color combination in a mid-80s office? Not a private office, but that central office where the plants were, and people waited, and all the accessories were Danish plastic by Ingrid?
Are you old enough to remember that look? Perhaps not.
#1 daughter was telling me that she was feeling old. She is 23, so you can all start laughing right now.
But there is more. She feels this way because she has it on good authority that an asteroid will crash into the earth in the year 2037. April, in case you want to mark it on your calendar. Since we have so little time, she figures, there is hardly any point in making plans.
I have to admit that when someone says that since it is 5:30 there is no point in beginning a project today, I have to bite my tongue. You can get a lot done in thirty minutes, or five minutes for that matter. I have no sympathy for the teachers who are already beginning to say that there is no point in trying to teach anything this year because the kids are on the downhill slope already — I don’t hear any kids saying that. So of course I can’t be expected to enter very wholeheartedly into the idea that since we have only 30 years to live, we might as well not get going on anything big.
It may be too late to begin building a cathedral, but you can do an awful lot in 30 years if you set your mind to it.
Here’s something you can do in 30 minutes. You can sew up a simple skirt.
Here it is, with the machine sewing done, waiting for a press and the handwork.
This is the great thing about the TNT pattern — that is, the “tried and true” pattern with any fitting alterations already made, which you already know how to put together. You can just sew it up, since all the time-consuming stuff like fitting and trial and error of construction has already been done. This is Simplicity 4950, and it is really easy. I made it before in a gray microfiber, and this is a lilac linen/Tencel blend which feels every bit as good as linen normally does, but is not supposed to wrinkle quite as aggressively as linen normally does.
And, once I had sewn it up, it occurred to me that the Jasmine sweater I knitted last fall might have an evening shadows over the desert effect with the skirt, though I think it would clash horribly with jacket #1. So I will have something springlike to wear on my way to the choir room, even if I don’t complete the top.
Having sewn up the skirt, I went off to work and put in 8 hours of hard physical labor. Today I will finish the skirt, cut the top, and get on with my knitting.
I am not concerned about the asteroid. If it is determined to crash into the earth, it will have to do so without my help.
By 2037 — in fact, well before 2037 — there will be a technology for nudging that asteroid into a different path so that it will not smack into us. The technology already exists, in fact, although the details of its use remain to be worked out. Please reassure #1 daughter. However, I agree with you one hundred percent that having only 30 years left (or only 30 minutes left, for that matter) is no excuse for not getting something done during that time.
You’re going to look splendid for Easter.
Even if we don’t nudge it, it still only has a 1 in 10,000 chance of hitting us, and we’ll know by 2029.
I am reminded of the young Alfie Singer in Annie Hall, who refuses to do anything because the universe is expanding and eventually the world will end. “What’s the point?”
Have you or your readers (ozarque, here I mean you) read Lucifer’s Hammer?
Daughter #1 is 24.
Ihaven’t read Lucifer’s Hammer. How bout the rest of you?