Why There Wasn't a Weekend Project: The Truth About Obsession

I try, oh, I try, to have a Weekend Project as often as possible. It's good for me, and I hope it inspires other people, too--that you can do something cool and fun and creative even if you have A Day Job and a ton of other stuff to do and can do projects only on the weekends. Cos, you know: "weekend project" makes a lot of people think of gardening and rearranging furniture and organizing spice racks, and while all of those are surely really wonderful uses of your time (she felt compelled to say, sweetly, and without snorting too loudly), I mean, really: there's so much more.

So I try. But sometimes I just can't do it, and here's how come. When I say I'm obsessive, sure, that means I tend to latch onto a worry and hang onto it for dear life. It means I tend to mull over things--or at least I used to, back before I realized that not having a memory could be truly useful in many, many ways, thankyoujesus! But it also means that when I come up with an idea I like, I tend to get a little carried away. I lose all sense of perspective, and I--well, here: let me show you what I mean. Picture, thousand words, blahblahblah, right?

Here's the first Swirly (thank you for the name suggestion!):

I made it by hand for a weekend project. I liked it a lot, but it wasn't Perfect--there were things that needed to be tweaked. So of course I started another one right away. You knew that already. In the process of gathering the shirts (I typed "shits" and am sitting here laughing like a goober. Good grief. I need to grow up) for this one, I had to go through a lot of other shirts, and since I was also dyeing a bunch of stuff, having finally given in and ordered dye, well. I sorted shirts and made bundles for more of these:

 Yes, I fully realize this looks like something dug out of the hallway in the house on an episode of Hoarders. Mine, however, do not smell of cat pee and are not covered with mouse droppings, so there. Mine are newly laundered and sorted, nyah-nyah-nyah.

 In fact, you can even see how I wrapped each bundle with the base shirt, securing it with the sleeves. Hoarders are NEVER that neat!

These take up kind of a lot of room, as you might imagine. Room in my brand-newly-painted studio, where I don't want piles o' crap. That would be OK, of course, if I were zipping through Swirly #2 as quickly as I did Swirly #1, because then I'd be finishing one every couple days, and by now, I'd have Swirlies instead of piles of t-shirts.

That is not happening. Because, of course, I had to tweak the whole thing, and here's where we are now:

It wasn't enough to have the panels, as I did on the first one. Oh, noooooo. I decided the panels needed gores. Remember: all of this is being stitched by hand. One. Stitch. At. A. Time. I have doubled my work on this one. Oh, yeah: I also think the bottom needs to be stitched, which means alllllll that fabric around the entire bottom is going to be rolled and whip-stitched. I should buy stock in DMC.

Oy.

I love this one I'm working on now, and I can't wait to do the blue one--the base for it is a short-sleeved zip-front hoody, and it'll be way fun to see how that turns out. After that, though, I'm going to have to work on something else for a while because, man! This is getting tedious. It would be so, so much better if I had a group to meet up with at Starbucks--I could get a ton of work done there. As I might have mentioned, it's almost impossible to do long stretches of handwork at home. Because I work here--and live here--there's always something else to do. I'll be stitching and go, "Oh, yeah: I need to ________!" and will jump up to go do it, and then I'll do something else, and something else, and an hour later I'll come upon the pile o' stitching and a cup of cold coffee. Or--as is even more common--I'll sit down to stitch, and the next thing I know I'll be covered in cats. Not cat fur. Cats. Moe thinks that if I'm sitting down, it's so he can sit in my lap and be petted. And how can you say no to that? The EGE says, "Just make him move," and we both look at him as if he's speaking Urdu.

The only way for me to get a lot done is to go somewhere else to do it. Since we're not taking road trips this year (because of The Windows. Duh. There's a couple years' worth of Traveling Budget right there), that really cuts into the stitching time: I get a TON done on the road. Not so much sitting on the daybed.

So today I've got to do some book "review" (not really reviews; just cool little peeks inside) videos for CreateMixedMedia.com (I don't post them here, so you'll need to go there to see them once they're up--instead of doing the whole upload-to-YouTube thang with them, I send them to another editor at the site and she formats them for CMM--long story that you care nothing about, right? Just me explaining why there's stuff that doesn't appear here on the blog), and then I'm hoping I can figure out how to sit still long enough to get some serious stitching done because I have all these projects--not just the Swirlies, but a ton of other ones--I want to do. And then share. And then think about and tweak and go from there. i set up a table this morning and tried to organize them all, and I swear that right this minute, there are enough altering and re-fashioning projects to keep me completely busy for at least the next two years--and those are just the ones I have ready to go--that doesn't count stuff I've vaguely thought about or stuff I might do to use up some fabric or something. That's just garments and bags for which I've already pulled the fabric and leather and floss and beads and everything and already know where I'm going to start (if not necessarily where I'm going to end up, which is always a total mystery). I need to get busy! I also need to quit going to BJ's and Goodwill, where I always find something fabulous that sparks a whole new slew of ideas. Like the heavy linen shift I got for $2.49 at Goodwill on Sunday. Heavy linen--I swear it was made from a really nice tablecloth, but it has a tag, so it wasn't homemade. I want to dye it and then cut it off to tunic length and the rip out the side seams and insert panels in another color and then~~

See?

I need help, is what it is. Oh, not help to get over my obsessions--I LOVE this!--just help to get me to focus and sit still (my biggest problem) long enough to get some serious work done every day. I have no problem getting The Real Work--the writing and stuff--done. That's not a problem. But stitching? Heaving the big sigh over here.

So I have to finish this Swirly #2. Someone come sit with me, please, and talk about something--anything! I don't care as long as it's not politics!--while we stitch, OK? Or draw--you can draw or whittle or clip coupons--I don't care! Just talk to me so I'm compelled to sit and listen, politely, instead of jumping up to go sort books to take to the Senior Center (I took a load of slightly-outdated (Lion OS, for instance) computer books to their library on Friday and need to go weed out some more)~~

OK--I'm stopping now. Really.

Thanks for coming by~~XO