Yesterday, I was cleaning out my drawers. I’ve been trying to finally lose this weight I packed on while having my children, and over the ... read on, Fisherboy »]]> I am continuing on with my obsession of bags. For some unknown reason, I cannot get them out of my head. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like bags, and typically don’t carry them, so why I’m obsessing over them right now, I cannot figure out. I’e been drawing designs like crazy, and my poor sewing machine is getting a workout.

Yesterday, I was cleaning out my drawers. I’ve been trying to finally lose this weight I packed on while having my children, and over the last couple of months, I’ve been dropping it like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve lost 20 pounds (okay, well almost anyway – 17 to be exact) – as anyone who’s dropped weight will know, losing 5 pounds is roughly equal to one dress size, so I’ve lost basically 4 dress sizes. All of my jeans literally fall off of me when I walk around the house. (Right now I feel like some kind of gangsta because the crotch of my jeans is currently between my knees – but it’s the only clean pair of pants I have in the house at the moment!)

So deep in the bowels of my jeans drawer, not only did I find a few pair of jeans that are amazingly huge (and there’s absolutely no way I will ever wear them again), but I also found a pair of old favorites. They were the jeans I loved to wear while I was preggers with my last child. They were pretty much worn through, but they were a pair of faded jeans with this really pretty design of embroidered flowers on the thigh. I don’t know why I never tossed them, but there they were – and suddenly bing! I had an idea for yet another bag.

I started making this bag yesterday, around lunchtime, and I finished it around 10 hours later. (Hey, I had little ones to take care of and dinner to make!) As with the first bag that sprang from my head, I don’t consider this to be a great work – but I learned a lot in making it. This was the first time I actually properly added a gusset to a bag (the previous attempt was very sad and I made things really hard on myself) – and I realized what I’m doing wrong with the gusset. This bag – as well as the first one – has a gusset that’s too narrow. It keeps tipping over. If this were just a regular run-of-the-mill purse, I think it would be fine. But I need ot keep in mind what I’ll be using these bags for – because in loading them up with yarn and books like I have been… well the gusset just needs to be wider. I run at about a 4″ width, and I’m thinking I need to go up at least double that.

I also added elastic to the inside pockets this time – but I made a mistake: I stretched out the elastic (just a little bit) because I wanted the pockets to always lay flat against the sides. I should NOT have done that. Now the strength of the elastic pulls the sides in, and I think this contributes to the bag tipping over because the strength to hold it up is compromised. (I have noticed, though, when I stuff the pockets full of junk, it seems to regain it’s balance a little better.) What I should have done was make the elastic exactly the same width as the bag, and made the pocket wide, so it could expand if it needed to.

And finally, I’ve learned that – at least in this case – when I want to do “gathers”, I don’t need to cut the pieces at an angle. The cut pieces for the front and back were all triangle-shaped, because I wanted the light-colored sections to “poof and gather”, and it would result in a triangular shape. However, by cutting the pieces in triangles, i ended up making it quite a bit flatter than intended, and there’s definitely no “poof”. What I should have done is cut the dark pieces as triangles (like I did) and left the light-colored fabric as regular rectangles, and allow the “gathering” to straighten out the sides and create “poof”.

Other than that, though, I really like how this turned out. (You’ll see the “needle roll” I made out of leftover fabric in the second picture – I also saved the pockets to sew together to make a notions bag – that’s not in the picture though.) I’m definitely learning a lot from all of this “trial and error.”

But I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with all of these bags I’m making! Maybe I should start having giveaways or something…

I will admit that ... read on, Fisherboy »]]>

Leonardo da Vinci - Study of Human Skull

Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and inventor, and it was said he was a great genius. The Boston Museum of Science (as well as many others, but I figured I’d give you a real reference!) said that “Leonardo’s interests were so broad, and he was so often compelled by new subjects, that he usually failed to finish what he started.” This little factoid about da Vinci is why my husband thinks I’m a genius, and why every boss I’ve ever had thinks I’m incompetent.

I will admit that I do have some similarities to Leonardo da Vinci, as I’m sure a lot of other people have (I love my hubby, and he’s so sweet, but just because I have a few similarities doesn’t make me a genius): I start a lot of things and never finish them. I get swept up in learning something new, and if something else new comes along before I finish new #1, I’ll drop the ball on it. I’ve always done that.

I’ve always said that if I could choose my perfect “dream job” for myself, if I could do anything I wanted to do, without any limits or restrictions, my perfect “job” would be to become a permanent student. As the illustrious Trent Reznor once penned: “I wanna go everywhere, I wanna do everything… I wanna do something that matters.”

Yes, I left out a little bitty line, because that particular one doesn’t really apply.

There is so much to know and to learn, I just don’t know how anyone could ever want to stop. I love learning new things. I love trying things out. And honestly, I don’t mind failure. I learn the most from my failures. Although I’d love to “do it right the first time,” I never expect I will – I always expect I’ll fail the first time. That’s okay with me.

Right now, I’m finding myself on a creative streak. I think it’s because I’ve finally finished all of the at-work projects (that were supposed to be completed October 1) and I truly find myself finally enjoying my sabbatical. I have a lot of time on my hands – and as expected, at first I had no idea what I was going to do. So I started cleaning. That didn’t last long (I have 2 kids under the age of 6. They sort of followed along right behind me and messed up what I’d just cleaned.), so I started focusing on my knitting projects. Which led to sewing projects.

Last night, I was up until 1am, sketching out bag designs. I’ve become bag-obsessed over the last month. My sketchbook is becoming filled with ideas, and I want to make them all. I was going to fabric sites on the internet and picking out fabrics and notions I wanted to use in my designs. (I so wanted to hit that “add to cart” button on one of them…) My husband is becoming worried about the size of my “stash” – both fabric and yarn.

Now I’m a genius with an addictive personality. (To which I said, “At least it’s not alcohol or gambling.”)

What gets me is, I hate bags. If you ever met me on the street, you would see that I do not carry one. I haven’t since high school, when I had two purses stolen, right off me. (Oh, and a third that was taken from my car. And the one at the hotel bar – that a year later my driver’s license was returned to me, but all my credit cards and cash were not.) I carry the necessities in my pocket. I’ve yet to be pickpocketed though, which is probably why I feel safer with it in my jeans than I do in something hanging on a strap off my shoulder.

And yet, here I am, designing them in my little sketchbook – over and over. I can’t get them out of my mind, and I want to make every single one of them. But then what the hell would I do with them?

Then we move back to knitting. OMG – patterns are like sex to me. (okay, maybe not like sex…. more like chocolate, I guess.) I go through pattern after pattern and wonder, can I knit that up in a night? Then I start trying to do someone else’s pattern and find myself altering it. Not for resizing or anything, but seriously changing it into something brand-new. Then again, I find myself wanting to knit everything I see – but what would I do with it all?

So I stop, and wait, and sketch, and wonder.

And procrastinate.

Right now, I’m at the point in my creativity where the proverbial smoke comes pouring out of my ears. I have so many ideas right now, my hands are developing carpal tunnel from trying to keep up, and I’m burning paper by sketching so fast. And the procrastination comes in because I don’t know where to begin, nor do I know what I would do with all of it once I’ve finished a project.

You know. If I do.