For various personal reasons I have not been blogging lately, but several people (I'm looking at you, Rosanne!) have told me they miiiiiisss meeeee!  So here are some random updates to tide you over until the next scheduled post (a long research-y one will go live on March 25th) or the next time I write one (not sure when that'll be). 

Stuff is never just stuff.  Stuff is, as my brother put it, ideas.  Every item I own is an idea I've had, about who I am or want to be, what I want to do, what I value, fear, or need.  No wonder I've found that getting rid of items clears my head marvelously!  My room is slowly but surely becoming an oasis of Karen in a world of not-Karen, which is a relief.  My true desires and priorities are coming into focus, and my to-do list is shorter and more imperative.  I hope to have this process done by the end of the year so I can start 2019 with a clean slate! 

Today I'll post about two harder, sewing-related purges: my pattern collection and my historical costumes. 

. . . at least be purgative! 

You may recall my sew-from-stash resolution at the beginning of this year.  You may also recall that I did a bit of stash busting since then, but not early as much as I wanted.  And all year I've held off on buying new fabrics (with one exception) because I still had stash to bust!  Then, midway through October, my pile of fabric (as well as mental clutter, disorganization, and personal stuff) reached paralyzing point: I could neither move forward nor back until I cleared something out.  I felt overwhelmed by my to-do list, the guilt-trips attached to my things, a feeling of paralysis and creative inertia, et cetera. 

Talking with a counselor helped bring me to this point.  Until I started looking at and naming my emotions instead of avoiding them, I didn't realize how much I was motivated by guilt, and usually needless guilt.  (This isn't fabric-related... the fabric was just a symptom.)  Even my perfectionism breeds guilt: when my imagined standard is perfection, then I can hardly start working, and un-finished projects lie around the place, reminding me of "failure".  Thankfully, I have wonderful friends who mustered to support me with prayer, phone calls, and ideas.

When I am avoiding a task, I'll often procrastinate by doing other, easier tasks, to give myself a false sense of accomplishment.  It doesn't work, as I still know I'm avoiding the thing that needs to get done.  Recently, I sat down and wrote two lists of sewing projects, my "Hafta List" and my "Wanna List".  My Hafta List is neither long nor difficult, yet it's been keeping me from my Wanna List for too long, and in the meantime, I've been blogging, because writing a blog post is a pleasant distraction and an easy "accomplishment".  (This was, in fact, one of the reasons I resisted the idea of blogging for many years... I knew I could become addicted to doing it, and use it to avoid my life instead of living it.) 

I desire to break this pattern of procrastination, and to be able to blog again as a pleasant side project.  So I'm taking the month of October to power through my Hafta list, and in the meantime am not allowing myself to blog.  I'm also barring myself from other time-wasting activities that I use in the same way.  When I'm done my Hafta List, I can do my Wanna List, and that'll give me fresh things to blog about! 

So for the next little while, there will be no posts here.  You can expect a post to go live on October 22nd, but I wrote that ages ago and it's simply in the queue.  I'll be back to posting regularly sometime in November! 

As you may recall from my post about ball gowns, I was looking forward to the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, mostly for the clothes!  I said then of Ms. Markle's dress that I hoped I would "either love of hate it.  The worst would be boring."  As the date neared, I remembered that Royal weddings in England are generally an excuse for fantastic hats and fascinators, and I got excited about those, too. 
 
So the day came, and I gussied myself up with fantastic fifties hat and floral dress, and co-hosted a tea party for other Anglo-philes!  We shared the savory course at the table, then loaded up our tea-plates and moved to the TV to watch the recording! 

A tutorial, today!  Sometimes you need to iron a garment with gathers; if you put the iron right on top of the gathered area, you'll cause creases and make the area flat instead of full, so you need a different technique.