Hence the Blog

Of course, since I started this blog to encourage myself to write, I spent most of my day off cutting out fabric for an entirely not historically accurate mid-1700s man’s frock coat, cut for a woman. Think Pirates of the Caribbean, and you will get the general look.

While I love researching and making historically-accurate clothing, sometimes you just have to work with the fabric you can afford and make something just for fun. With that in mind, I’m making the coat out of a completely synthetic black satin covered with metallic gold embroidery, which I found online for a reasonable price. Because I wanted to be able to use my multi-size pattern to make several different-sized coats, I traced all the pattern pieces for the size I wanted onto non-woven interfacing material—time-consuming, but hey, I figured…saving money, right? No, not really. I probably spent more on the interfacing than it would have cost just to buy another pattern on sale somewhere. Living and learning.

I should probably state right here that I’m a generalist with way too many interests and a library to match. I’m in love with -ologies—geology, cosmology, biology, anthropology…but could never settle on one. Therefore, I do a lot of reading. I have worked as a cook, bookstore clerk, cancer research lab tech, camp counselor, carpenter’s apprentice and accountant, geophysical technologist, and one or two other jobs that are escaping my memory. I currently co-own a small company for which I write very boring reports. For fun, I read all kinds of stuff; write stories, songs and poems; sew, knit, weave, spin and dye—and a little of just about anything else you can do with fiber; and play a small number of musical instruments more or less competently. And more, but it gets embarrassing/disheartening to think about all the pursuits I've been so excited about, and worse, bought the equipment for, gotten fairly good at, then moved away from. All of which is to say that I like to learn new things and don’t ever become a master at any of them. And I certainly won’t be filling any galleries or concert halls.

Hence the blog.

I don’t intend to be very biographical in the future. The whole point for me is to have a place to share the products of my imagination and my hands. But maybe I just won’t be able to help myself. I will probably want to talk about ideas from time to time, or even post the occasional opinion. We’ll see. Anything but solitaire.