This weekend I’m going to a mindful mending retreat. Between spasms of social anxiety, I’m looking forward to it.
Really, mindful mending is something I’ve been doing all summer.
At first, my stitches were really uneven. I stabbed myself with my needle regularly. My sewing is still nothing like the perfect stretches of straight, even stitches that you’ll see if you search online for sashiko stitching, but it has also noticeably improved since I started.
I’ve made five pairs of pants using the Arenite pattern, and I saw on Instagram that Meg of Sew Liberated had made one of her pairs of pants into shorts. I was looking for a couple of quick makes before our trip to the Cayman Islands, and this Arenite shorts hack came together in just a few hours.
I listen to audiobooks sparingly, and I don’t particularly like reading books Everyone Else Has Read. The Chaplain got Becoming, by Michelle Obama, on his audiobook app. I eyed it, noting that it was 19 hours long. That is a long time. And Everyone was reading it.
I’ve been struggling with writer’s block lately. I’ve only been posting about sewing and reading because those things are easy to write about. How did I make this thing? I can tell you. What did I think of this book? I’ll let you know.
The other things on my mind are much harder to articulate.
Sunday passed with news of the two newest mass shootings, one of which appeared to racially motivated. (I say appeared because I have not gone back down the rabbit hole of news articles related to the shootings since I read two initial NPR articles).
I felt like I couldn’t just post as usual the next day, but what could I say or do? I wanted to load my kids in our truck and drive down to Washington, D.C. I wanted us sit as close to the White House lawn as they would let us and remain in silent protest until someone DID something.
This is a choose your own adventure post – for posterity, I’m going to include the instructions for how to make this skirt in the post, but if you aren’t interested in the details, feel free to scroll for pics instead.
We had a wedding to go to recently, and Three asked me to make her something. I’d picked up some traditional African block print fabric this spring and thought it would be the perfect thing to use for a skirt for her.
I kept this pretty simple – it was an afternoon wedding, and I started the skirt that morning.
