When All Else Fails... Puppies!

I can't believe how dependent I've become on this whole computer nonsense. Damn newfangled technology! At this point I can't download, upload, or print anything, and I can't access anything on my desktop, including my photos.

There is hope! I have been led to believe that even now, new components are winging their way to me, prepared to improve my life immeasurably with their unimaginable processing speed, unlimited storage space, and magical powers.

In the interim, I remembered that I had these on facebook: puppies!

I wish you lots of puppies and other good things today. Hope to be up and running again soon.

Katrina

What Would a Goddess Wear?

When I started this blog (not even three months ago!), I was in a state of uncertainty about my appearance as it related to my age and that nebulous concept called “style.” It’s been a joy and a revelation to become acquainted with all the hundreds of wonderful sewing and style bloggers out there; women (mostly) of every age and background, all interested in looking good for themselves and creating beautiful garments. What a huge help it’s been to discover all the over-50 style bloggers who have gone through the same confusion I was experiencing. I am just so proud and pleased with our generation of women, taking all that post-feminist angst and transforming it, finally, into all the power and confidence that all the previous generations fought for. We are goddesses.
Goddesses can still be confused though. Apparently I’m not the only one, as the topic of dressing for our age arises repeatedly in these very blogs. Last week, Pam of Over 50 Feeling 40 recounted her own realization of a gap between her age and her personal style. The responses to her post showed that a lot of us are still struggling with that gap.

I am still puzzling over the idea of whether we define ourselves, and thus create our style, based on what is around us. I’m probably repeating things I’ve said before, but for most of my life my style has been directed by where I was or what I was doing: college (all three times) – jeans; finance career – suits; corporate – the dreaded “business casual.”

Now, without any daily activities to define my look, I’ve ended up with no look. To be honest, my style or whether I have one doesn’t really matter. I’d planned a wonderful new career after my “retirement”, but that never did happen, and due to health reasons I probably will not ever have a full-time job to get up and get dressed for.

In fact, I don’t have much reason to leave the house except for the occasional run to the bank or pet store. I make myself go out at least once a month to visit the botanical garden or the museum or just tour around the lovely old neighborhoods. Once in a great while I have lunch with friends or a dinner date. I could have one dress and that would be enough for an entire year of social activities. I could get by for the rest of my life with only one suit.

At this point, five years into retirement, I could even be one of those people who wears sweat pants every day. (Hmm… elastic waist…) But that doesn’t set well with my love of color, art, fashion and creativity! Not to mention my acquisitive nature, little magpie that I am. I always want to be touching or seeing or making something new and colorful.

Color!

At one point in my confusion of several months ago, I posted this question to the blogoverse: “What does age-appropriate mean to you?” (in regard to clothing.) I love the common-sense response from Anita of Sew Vintage Sew Fun:

“To me it means wearing anything that I feel wonderful in! If I have to pull it down, pull it up, or otherwise adjust it every time I move, then it's not for me.”

Smart! She’s not obsessing about what category her clothing falls into, she just goes with what fits well and feels right. I’ve had too many garments that prevented me from walking with my long stride, or from sitting comfortably, and others that I had to constantly hitch up or hold on to.

Patti of Not Dead yet Style is all over this topic, and her opinion is that with our wider experience and deeper self-knowledge, women our age are both better equipped to make wardrobe choices and more comfortable in those choices than we were when we were younger.

I want that to be true, and I agree many women of our age have excellent personal style and seem perfectly comfortable with it. I, however, still feel slightly unmoored and it may be that I’m trying to force a direction or category on myself when it is totally unnecessary. The good news is, through all these wonderful “style at a certain age” blogs, and my own experimentation, I think I’m finally starting to focus in on a style, or a set of styles that a) I love to look at, b) I feel comfortable wearing, and c) are enjoyable for me to make myself.

Anna Sui

To my eye, the things that are best for me are long, flowing garments that are slightly fitted around the shoulders and waist to give shape, but mostly skim the body with graceful waves of fabric floating over the lumps and bumps of age. Goddess dresses, I like to call them. (Appropriate, right?)

Duro Olowu

As was probably obvious from my obsession with caftans, I’m drawn to ethnic, bohemian, peasant and gypsy styles, things that are draped and gathered and layered and long, but lightweight and full of movement. Yes, I'm a genuine product of the Age of Aquarius. The wrap dress is the perfect shape (not to mention adjustable!) except for its annoying tendency to fly open at embarrassing moments. I also love the modern silhouette of the shirtdress, as long as it has a full, long skirt and a defined waist. Anything in a maxi length will make me happy, and peasant styles are great as long as I stay away from lacy frills.

So, after a lot of projects that didn’t work for me (the pencil skirt, the bombshell dress, the boxy tee, the loose chemise), and some that did work (the flared skirt, the long shirtdress, the fitted blouse, anything in knit), I think I can start to focus on sewing styles I’ll really love to look at and wear.

Of course, you can still expect to be entertained by plenty of poor decisions, beginner sewing mistakes, and unexpected results from my sewing room.

Katrina

Images source

A Victory of Sorts

First let me confess that I’ll be posting ahead for a few days due to those computer problems. If my entire system collapses, at least my blog can go on temporarily without me.

So, the month of November is over, which means that National Novel Writing Month has ended. I just wanted to look back on it to see if there are any lasting impressions.

After 30 days, which included 2 complete rewrites, a full day dedicated to closet cleaning, a holiday, a half day of watching talking-dog videos on youtube, hundreds of hours of television, short bursts of sewing, 11 migraines, and 43 haiku, I did finally managed to get slightly past the 50,000 word minimum.

It surprised me a bit that I had so much trouble forcing the words out, since in the past I’ve had trouble stopping them. I’ve always been excessively verbose in my writing. In writing classes I was always the one having to pare down the 17 pages I wrote for a ten-page assignment. The first novel I wrote started out around 121,000 words and I finally got it down to about 95,000 after months of editing. I usually just have so much to say that I can’t stop.

In this case, I’m afraid I didn’t really have much to say. I had the idea of the story rolling around for a few years, but as I mentioned a few days ago, it was really only a short-story-like glimpse into a person’s life. I tried to help it along by adding a lot of backstory, an additional character, and just generally embellishing everything, but it’s still as flat and lifeless as one of my uninspired collages.

The good part is that since I’ve got it all out of my head, this particular character should go away now and stop taking up space in my head. Maybe someone new and much more interesting will move in! We’ll see. I have a good start if I ever want to make it into a short story, so I don’t feel that my time was entirely wasted. Plus I’ve documented much of my writing excitement-waning-into-disillusionment here on the blog, so if I ever get tempted to do something this silly again, I can remind myself why it didn’t work out.

On the global level, the end of NaNoWriMo is actually very exciting. While I seem to be genetically predisposed to a lack of enthusiasm about my own accomplishment, the fact that approximately 2.9 billion words were written by something like 270,000 people in one month is beyond impressive; it gives me a lot of hope. Literacy is clearly not dead yet, and books (in whatever form: paper, digital, as yet unimagined) will be with us for some time. It is an encouraging sign that that many millions of individuals around the globe felt strongly enough about their own vision, their own message, or their own story, to temporarily turn their lives upside down and tell it.

Well, that’s that. Next, resolving the computer problem is an unavoidable priority. Sewing’s up after that, and holiday preparations. I still haven’t mailed those cards out!

Hope to be back in blogland with you all soon,
Katrina

And Now, For Our Next Challenge

Geez, it’s always something.

In September I was complaining about the heat. In October I couldn’t stand the migraines. November had NaNoWriMo. For December, you’ll get to read all about my computer situation.

Back when I was trapped in the gigantic corporate maze I was part of a “team” and we had a “mission” and were so very “proactive” about meeting our “personal improvement plans.” Gag. We learned that there were no problems, only “growth opportunities.” There were no disasters, only “challenges.” Also we used “finger quotes” all the time. LOL

So I present to you my challenge of the month: both of my computers are about to quit. I have a patchwork system made up of a 12-year old desktop computer with a slightly newer monitor, a 5-year old laptop, and an array of antique printers, scanners, etc, all linked to my wireless network installed 4 years ago. The laptop was a lemon from the start and has had so many parts replaced there’s nothing original left. It’s been getting slower and slower and sometimes the screen just never comes on at all. The desktop has been reliable all these years except for being overwhelmed by the vast amounts of data weighing it down. Now it freezes up when I turn it on. So far this week I've spent hours just trying to get one or both of the things to boot up. I’ve done defrags and virus scans and system checks on both, and there is no noticeable improvement.

You’ve guessed where this is going – I need a whole new system. The idea of going to computer stores strikes even more terror into my heart than dealing with auto mechanics. At least with cars, I can bring the Piemaker along for a reasonableness check on what they tell me. With computers, I’m at a complete loss. All I know is I want something that can hold a lot of pictures and that travels fast on the great information highway. That type of naiveté is likely to net me a system twelve times the size, complexity, and cost of what I actually need.

So I have to try to force myself to buckle down and start researching computers. Yuck! Then once I have a better idea of what I need, I have to start comparing prices, which may involve going into actual stores. Bigger yuck! Of course at some point I will have to spend a huge sum of money on the whole business, which is the biggest YUCK of all!

As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “it’s always something.” (I miss you, Gilda!)

I do see the bright side, which is less frustration in my daily computer activities (once the whole mess is installed).

In closing, if this blog goes dormant for the next few days or weeks, at least you'll know why.

Katrina