While the rest of life speeds up, Norm goes retro

I have a problem. The more I have things I need to finish, the more projects I choose to take on. It can be seen in the many WIPs in my yarn cupboard (not to mention the things sitting around the rest of the house, as my knitting ADD has outgrown the cupboard). It can also be seen in the fact that my kitchen isn't much farther along now than a couple of weeks ago when I posted pictures. I could blame the weather (wettest spring on record here in my neck o' the prairie), but the truth is, I decided to knit in public, and it took a lot of time.

While my kitchen cabinets remain doorless, and the walls remain paperless, I signed on to knit at an event celebrating my town's sesquicentennial (that's 1859, in case you didn't feel like doing the math). Never happy to do something the easy way, I decided to make a dress for the occasion. This is a bit of a silly idea, because I am not an experienced seamstress, nor have I even sewn more than a button onto anything in well over a year.

But I had the idea in my head, and would not be dissuaded. Of course I had to start out by spending a week trolling the internet for ideas of what to sew. Then I realized that any real pattern would set me back $15 or more, not to mention that my procrastination precluded me from really ordering one anyway, so I asked my mom to help me out. She took a blouse that fits me and drafted a pattern from it (talented family members are a must, when daring to craft beyond your skill level).

I managed to follow her directions and ended up with a bodice that fit (although not quite period-appropriate), and then decided to do the skirt the way a gal would have done it 150 years ago. I ended up with a sore hand and shoulder from pleating all 135" of the top of it, then hemming the other end and attaching it to said bodice, all by hand. It sure was fun, though (no kidding). The apron is a pillowcase, gathered and sewn to a band of old tablecloth. Luckily, I can whip up an apron pretty easily, so that was done last-minute with a minimum of cursing.

In the end I ended up quite pleased with myself. The garden plants I bought last week may still be languishing in their flats, the kitchen may be unfinished, the dining room is still unusable, being filled with the kitchen's misplaced bits and bobs and shelves and glasses, but I got lots of compliments from people who saw me yesterday. And then I went grocery shopping in the dress -- I figured if I spend an entire week making something, I'd better get some mileage out of it!

I'm such an attention whore. Sometimes I think that's why I craft things at all.