Navel Gazing (Belly Button Staring?)

All the upheaval in my life at the moment have gotten me thinking about the future. Not just what I want to make and wear but who I want to be. Where do I want to be in ten years.

It's a rollercoaster of joy and depression, and I definitely haven't come out the other end yet but every time something like this has happened to me I've come out of it wiser but a little bit more separated from what I think of as the expected route. If it keeps up at this rate I'll either end up like Bill Gates or the movie stereotype wise crazy homeless person.

I'd prefer the Bill Gates one.

When you're looking for a job you find yourself in the weird position of trying to sell yourself. What would make other people want you and want to be around you. Are you a good leader? Can you type? Heal people? Burp the alphabet? What do you have to offer someone else that's so good that they're willing to pay for it?


I often think of myself as someone with a lot to offer but no proof of it, and that's what I'm trying to change at the moment. I'm trying to be social and it's a new thing for me. It's hard and confusing and people don't make much sense.

I spent some of yesterday sending off applications for volunteering positions, doing fundraising and simple admin for charities, to see if anyone would take me. I even sent off one for a Young Carers support group that I used to get help from as a teen. I'm starting to understand that my actions and my history are the only thing that people have to judge by, they can't see what they need to just by looking at me.

This may not be a big revelation to you, but I've been catching up from behind for a long time now. Things like this come from theory of mind, your ability to understand what other people think and feel, and I've always been lacking. I believe I'm high functioning autistic, but arguing with doctors and getting a test is so much personal interaction and hard work for something I already know, just to prove it to other people who may just mentally label me 'retarded' or rude and move along.

Autistic spectrum disorders mess about with the temporal lobe.

I've learned a lot with my intellectual mind that other people were born with, I rarely accidentally insult people any more any when I only have to deal with one person I'm almost normal, but if there isn't instant feedback I could live my whole life without understanding. I'm starting to think most people fall into this trap.

I think we consider what people will think of us in the short run far longer than the big picture they get. We consider first impressions and often don't think beyond that. Don't get me wrong, first impressions are important, but if you sell yourself as something you aren't then trying to keep it up might well destroy you. You need to present yourself as a condensed, polished representation of yourself, not a totally new person who'll dissolve when the pressure of real life hits. I'm starting to see that more and more lately.

If we want to change the way we are perceived in a radical way, we have to change ourselves in a sustainable way. Find a new passion if you feel like a one trick pony, learn to take a bit more joy in life if people think of you as no fun to be with, and maybe stop expecting people to 'see through to the real you' when you don't even try to look at it from their perspective.

And, of course, learn when not to care what other people think.

Undocumented Progress

I did really well this weekend and got all the pieces for McCall's 6614 traced off, but since I left my camera at home there's no pictures. Imagine a big pile of pattern pieces curled up to look like scrolls and you're there.

I went to see the people at the jobcentre today and signed an agreement saying how much I had to do towards getting a job. For those of you who don't know, to get the benefits, a whole £200 a month, you have to spend 35 hours a week looking for work and making yourself more employable. That's 7 hours every work day sending off job applications and practicing my touch typing. Heck, at this rate I might be employable at the end.

Obviously that cuts down on sewing time, but if I find someone willing to pay me for 40 hours of my week then that'll be well worth it.

My Relationship To Food, Part 2

I'm guessing my last post was a bit boring. Don't worry, this one should be a bit more relevant and the next one is about a dress, so we're back to the sewing.

Recently new (or new to me) research confirmed what most people know, that dieting may work for a little while but your chances of putting the weight back on and more besides is very high. It turns out that your body seriously resists loosing weight, which makes sense if you live in a hunter gatherer society and not having enough calories to maintain yourself is a very bad thing, but humans weren't designed to live in a world where food was abundant and eating too much was more of a threat than eating too little.

Dieting makes you obsessed with food. Your brain telling you louder and louder that you NEED food and no amount of mental strength can hold up to that onslaught. To make it worse, your body has an idea of what your normal size is, and it's much easier for it to go up then down. Once it's gone up it gets even harder to get healthy.

Currently some scientists believe our best option is to develop better appetite suppression drugs and combat our cultures obesity problem, but that's a long way off for most of us. Until then I need another plan.

My plan? Vegetables. I'm thinking I'll pack the fridge at home with bags of carrots and celery and when I feel just a little bit hungry and I get tempted I'll grab some and munch away to my hearts content. I have absolutely no idea if it'll work but it's worth a try and even if it doesn't it'll be much more fun that eating pizza and hating myself for it.

My Relationship To Food, Part 1

I'll be the first to admit that I have issues with my weight. I was one of the big kids at school, or at least I felt like one. I wasn't huge but I hung around with skinny girls and small girls and that kinda skewed my sample.

I ate for emotional reasons mostly. I didn't know how to ask for attention or connect with people emotionally so I always felt left out and neglected. It wasn't the fault of my parents or friends, I just didn't know how to ask for what I needed.

I thought about dieting, but I had very little control over what I ate. Mum made breakfast, packed lunches and big dinners. We were told 'you won't get your dessert until you've cleared your plate'. School dinners were even worse, because we had to take a certain amount and got in trouble for not taking the amount they thought we needed.

I can't leave food on my plate, but I don't know if that's nature or nurture. When I was young I would fight for what I thought was rightfully mine because I always felt short changed. Give me the option and I will choose more. Give me a buffet and I will eat until I puke. Literally.

When I moved away from home things got a little better. My first flat was in a village with no food shops. Restaurants? By the bucket! Need a bridal shop? Have three! But it was a mile bicycle ride to the supermarket for food I could take home. My dinner was a chicken breast and a serving of rice, cooked with a carton of chopped tomatoes and at least two kinds of frozen veg. Breakfast was a simple bowl of cereal and I barely ever found myself going back for more. It was paradise! I don't know what I weighed but I had a healthy relationship with food.

In my second flat it was harder. The shop around the corner sold biscuits quite cheaply and it was easier to binge than to cook. Plus my bike was falling apart so going to get a weeks shop usually involved walking. Frozen food defrosted and fresh was expensive. I turned back to junk food.

I can't pretend that boredom and loneliness wasn't partly to blame as well. I wasn't seeing family as often or getting out as much and was feeling depressed watching my brother go down hill. The highlight of my week was going to roleplaying games where sweets and fizzy pop were the norm. I deluded myself into thinking I was being healthy if I hardly ate the rest of the week.

When I was loosing weight through the beginning of 2013 I attributed it to slimfast powders and force of will, but I think I was partly wrong there. Sure, it helped, but I think what really got me through was my snacking. You see, I love carrots. I love them, and you could get a 1kg bag of ugly and weirdly shaped carrots at the local supermarket for £1. Whenever I snacked, I started to snack on vegetables and I could eat whenever I was hungry. I think that was the key. If I tried to hold back through willpower then I just got hungrier and hungrier until I went and bought a bag of cookies with that same one pound.

As the year continued, however, I got depressed again. I stopped leaving the house and the boyfriend moved in. He couldn't live on salad. We agreed to try and get healthy together, him being quite overweight, but every time he went and spent £20 he didn't have on junk food or bought a footlong subway I gave up a little. It was like he was saying he didn't care as much as me. I don't take it personally now, I see it for what it was, but when he complained about the healthy food I made it hurt.

I want to get my love of healthy, yummy food back, but moving into my parents house means I'm going to have to think long and hard about how I'm going to move forward. I'll talk more about that in part 2.

Ten Questions To Ask When Sewing For Other People

Many sewers and bloggers will tell you that sewing for other people is a slippery slope. You start sewing on a button and then the next thing you know you never have time to sew anything for yourself.

I'm not such a believer in that. Yes, if you say okay to every request for clothing from people who don't understand how much work you'll either end up putting it off, hating them for stealing all your sewing time, or garroting someone with a yard of printed ribbon, but you just have to set your boundaries before you begin.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Can they do it themselves? If someone who has the skills to sew something but asks you for help they may have a good reason. If they need to get a petticoat sewn but they're making the wedding dress to go over it and darn, where did all the time go? then that's more understandable than if they just got DVDs for the new series of [insert program you don't watch here] and they just have to watch it RIGHT NOW!

2. Could they and would they learn? If it's something really simple, could they just learn how to do it themselves? If they come to you every time they loose a button then it'll probably be a lot quicker to teach them how but if it's something like complicated embroidery that you enjoy doing it might take longer to teach them the skills they need to get it right than to just do it. 

3. How much do you really like this person? Are they your brother's colleague's cousin once removed or are they your favorite child? There's a reason they call it a labor of love, and it's not because you just adore patching holes in trousers.

4. How long will it take? It makes sense that you need to be very invested in someone to make them a huge beaded ball gown but you might be happy to sew a button on for a friend every now and again. Either way, it's a good idea to make them aware of how long it'll take before you start. If you're going to spend an hour sewing buttons on then make sure they know it's not a ten minute job.

5. How much difference will it make to them? Will this have a big enough impact on their mood or standard of living to make it worth the effort? Fixing a cherished childhood toy will be remembered a lot longer than fixing the zip on a cheap, rarely warn dress. If someone is depressed or having a terrible day or week or even month then one act of kindness can mean a whole lot more than what you put into it.

6. Is it important to you to have a say in how they dress/present themselves? If you want to sew for someone so you can change their style then you're probably heading for disappointment, but if you just want them to stop looking homeless then it might be worth a try. I'd quite happily put the hours in making my boyfriend new trousers if it meant the general public wasn't exposed to his boxers every time we went out.

7. Will you enjoy the project? Is it something that you'd do just for the fun and the experience or will it be a hard slog with very few rewards? If you'd be happy to sew something just for the practice and the artistry that goes into it, like an embroidery sampler, then why not make it to fit someone who'll love it?

8. Is it something you need to practice? You can always use sewing for others as practice for something you want to get better at. If you always wear stretch fabric skirts but you want to add fly zippers to your skill set then make something for someone who'll actually use it.

9. Are they easy to work with? Simply put, if you're going to spend most of the project wanting to strangle them for changing their mind or never being happy with the results then it's probably safer for everyone if you stop before you begin.

10. Are they willing to do or give something in exchange and will it be worth it? This goes back to making sure they know how long it will take. Are they happy to do something that requires a similar commitment of time and energy for you (after taking into account your answers to the last nine questions) or pay enough to make it worth it? If you make a complicated evening jacket in exchange for a hug or a fiver and the cost of the materials you're probably going to feel ripped off.

The reason I'm talking about this is because I spent about an hour this morning making a pair of my boyfriends shorts wearable for the day ahead. The button had been pulled off, ripping the fabric when it went, and in the heat of mid-July a pair of shorts are almost a necessity.

If I hadn't had a huge button purchase to feel less guilty about then it probably wouldn't have gotten done, but I'm also in the process of building up good karma at the moment anyway. I've mentioned before that my boyfriend is good with video editing and the like, and I have ideas for making and including videos and graphics in my blog and I'm going to need his help.

If you want to know how I fixed the rip, just have a look at the picture below!

Is There Such A Thing As Crafters Block?

I can't help but wonder if crafters get their own equivalent of writer block. Dread when you look down at a blank piece of felt or just a terrible frustration at the fact that nothing turns out how it looked in your head. Maybe you've felt this before?

I don't have crafters block, I just have a stupid amount of work to do and nowhere to cut my fabric. The person who I think has contracted this terrible affliction is my boyfriend. He's given me permission to talk about the problem here.

The first time I met my boyfriend we talked about our crafty habits and dreams. He was a Concept Design and Special Effects student at the local uni and enjoyed editing videos, drawing, making sculptures and lodes of other fun things. We commiserated about his course not going that well and a lack of support from tutors and I told him about my dress making.

Since he finally dropped out of uni though he hasn't had any creative energy, or much excitement for anything really. When he draws he scribbles over them or rips them up afterwards and hasn't completed a piece of digital art in months, which isn't helped by his rather unsuccessful attempts at getting commissions.

When he's in a mood it saps my urge to draw or sew or create, especially when he's in such a funk he just curls up in bed for hours. When he has to go to his job in an off-licence and I'm staying at home to sew he'll make snide comments, and I know it's because his job is soul destroying but mine isn't much better.

I don't want you to get the wrong idea. He's a lovely guy when he's not in a funk and it doesn't happen all the time, but I know he's not happy and when he's not happy I'm sadder.

I even went to the extent of drawing to try and remind him how much fun it is (plus it quelled my guilt about buying expensive pens then not using them). He just told me he couldn't draw a feather that good (nonsense).

What do you guys think? Have you ever dealt with someone else loosing their energy? I'm tempted to talk him into going to the doctor to talk about depression. I'm just worried, that's all.