2019 Maker’s Bingo

Last Christmas, I dusted off my sewing machines and got reacquainted with them by making some simple dresses for a friend’s little girls (both of whom I would declare are the two most delightful children I have ever met. I’m sure it’s entirely coincidental that they are also the two most appreciative of the things I make them.) It was such a great feeling being in front of my machines again that I really wanted to make more time for the simple pleasure of making things with my hands. I decided to join in on the #2018makenine challenge hosted by Rochelle of Home Row Fiber Co. because I thought I could use the inspiration and motivation. To my surprise, I did complete most of my Make Nine projects and made several more things in addition to that. Seeing as I suspected I would abandon ship mid-year, I’m pretty good with how it went, but in this new year, I’m going to change it up a little.

I think I’d like to have a little more latitude in choosing my projects this year instead of laying out a list of nine projects at the start of the year that may lose their shine in several month’s time. I still don’t want to be completely rudderless, so I decided to draw up a Maker’s Bingo Card with 24 possible projects I can choose from (all using stashed fabrics or yarns, because, yeah, to my shame, I have more than 24 projects’ worth) and one (traditional) “Free Space” for an unspecified project of my choice. Am I going to regret giving myself too many options once I get mired in indecision? Maybe, but this year, I haven’t got a list of nine must-make items, just a lot of stash and a few gaps in my wardrobe that I’d like to fill, if the opportunity arises.

I’m still deciding how I want to fill out the 24 squares, but here’s a possible card:

aMusingyarns_2019MakersBingoCard.jpg

So far, I have some specific projects, some general ideas for projects, and some specific stash (mainly just skeins of sock yarn for easy, portable projects). My criteria for drawing up this list was that everything on it would be made with fabric or yarn that I already have. I’m continuing my efforts to reduce my consumption, so the plan here is to identify items that I could really make use of but that don’t require me to do any real shopping beyond small notions or possibly patterns. I don’t urgently need all 24 items on this list (and I seriously don’t think I’ll make even half of them, if that!) but some of the projects are really more about expanding some of my skills in addition to making useful items. I haven’t picked out any specific patterns this year because although I know it could potentially save me a lot of time, again, I just want the flexibility of choice.

I’ll still be following the #2019makenine tag on IG because I think #makersbingo is going to be as lonely a hashtag as my #mendormodifynine which even I couldn’t trouble myself to keep up because it would have necessitated taking photos of fairly boring things.* If, by some chance, Maker’s Bingo is of interest to you, here’s a blank bingo card for you to print and fill in. Of course, it’s a pretty simple thing to sketch on paper so you can always just draw a 5x5 grid of your own in your own style, but for those of you who prefer low-resistance, this is for you!

You can list anything you like. For example, you can just identify a yarn or fabric (or whatever material your particular making hobby uses), specific patterns, general categories, techniques, or clearly defined projects and arrange them anyway you like in the grid. You can even cut small samples of fabrics and yarns and affix them to the card, or sketch a design in the square. I tried to make sure that none of my potential projects overlapped with another square on the same grid, such as having a specific yarn in one square and a project like “mittens” that might be made with the aforementioned yarn. I suppose making multiple cards could help with avoiding overlap. For instance, one card could list fabrics or yarns and another could have patterns, or techniques you’d like to practice. The goal is to call bingo this year so more cards could increase your chances!

Now that’s done, I should probably stop avoiding making actual New Year’s resolutions for 2019. So far, I’ve got: buy less stuff and keep a real-time record of which WIPs my various knitting needles are buried with or else I’ll have to keep buying more stuff.

UPDATE (jan-06): It didn’t take long for me to realise I could use a few more free spaces on my personal bingo card. My revised card along with some further thoughts on how to play Maker’s Bingo with friends and/or in conjunction with other make-a-longs you’re participating in this year can be found in the post: More on Maker’s Bingo. Also, I have added another blank card with extra free spaces and I now have a tab in the top right corner for all the printables I make available on this site!

Footnotes:

*My mend or modify project actually was mostly a successful endeavour for me—I just couldn’t make myself photograph everything because I am highly resistant to photographing myself. However, I plan to continue with this project and I’m going to make more of an effort to document it because I sometimes feel like I’m just talking about what I bought and what new things I made, as if having more new things is a goal in itself. My real goal is to balance my making hobbies with my efforts to consume less by only making what I need and making the things I have last as long as possible.

#mendormodifynine

I've been quietly participating in the #2018makenine challenge and I am sort of surprised by how nice it is to follow along on Instagram.  I give a little mental hurrah! for every finished project I see in this feed because I know part of what that finished project would have entailed and the resulting spark of happiness it brings.  I like knowing there are people out there making joy.

I mentioned in a previous post that my #2018makenine is pretty unambitious, at least comparatively.  I have all the materials and patterns in my stash already so there isn't any time being spent on sourcing, some of my projects are WiPs, and several others are of the small and simple variety (which is not why I have suddenly taken an interest in sock knitting).  (See previous post.)

However, the operative word is "comparatively".  As far as I'm concerned, my list presents a decent challenge for me since I am good at making lists and not so good at making time.  It probably doesn't help that I seem to lay down multiple obstacles to my making of anything for a variety of reasons, one of which is guilt--the guilt that I "should be doing more important things".  Which is entirely true, but if I actually got right down to doing those important things instead of finding some other unrelated task to work on (such as blogging or surfing), I'd probably have time left over to indulge my love of knitting and sewing, right?

Anyhow, I've been seeing lots of pants and Ginger Jeans popping up in my IG feed and it got me thinking that indeed, I really could use a pair of well-fitting pants and/or jeans.  Pants are a bugbear if you don't have the body of a runway model.  I am not at all trying to suggest we'd all be better off if we'd only been born with a "better" set of genes.  What I mean is that there are so many ways a pair of pants won't fit a female body, and that most manufacturers, in all their wisdom, have chosen their average proportions from the rather narrow segment of the population we have collectively deemed "better looking than the rest of us".  The rest of us just have to squeeze in or cinch or resort to wearing long cardigans or all of the above.

If you've ever attempted drafting a pant pattern for yourself, you would know just how many measurements and calculations are required and unless you are a master pattern drafter, you still have to tweak and tweak again and then some.  But sewing experience isn't at all necessary to have intimate knowledge of the fact that pants are hard to fit.  Trying to buy pants off the rack is a bit of a nightmare for a lot of women and I suspect that's why so many of us have a predilection for bifurcated garments with spandex.

Also, this is the reason I own an entirely ridiculous number of RTW pants.  And why about 80% of them don't get worn.*  I don't sew my own pants anymore (see previous paragraph) so I buy them (entirely too often) but so, SO rarely do they ever fit straight off the rack.  At the very least, they will require hemming.  I'm under average height and since pants usually come with a little extra inseam to not exclude the reasonably tall people among us, I have to hack off a good chunk so that I'm not sporting donuts around my ankles or tripping over my own feet.  (Nowadays, I just say no to flares, for my own safety.)**  But, in truth, many don't even get hemmed because in my heart of hearts, I know that I won't likely wear them because they are bunching a little too much somewhere or sagging a bit elsewhere.  Of course, I don't make that admission until it's well too late for returns or exchanges.

And this is just the pile that I want to start with.  The required modifications here range from simple hemming to over-dyeing to something just shy of a miracle.

And this is just the pile that I want to start with.  The required modifications here range from simple hemming to over-dyeing to something just shy of a miracle.

You'd think that a three-way mirror and my own good sense would have prevented me from repeatedly making this mistake, yet here I am with very few pants to wear and far too many pairs in my closet that are almost wearable.  Clearly, the answer to my troubles is not more shopping.  For a moment, I thought the answer was to buckle down and make my own pants, but every time I open my closet or that particular dresser drawer, I see that stack of clothes (and let's be clear, it's not just pants or just RTW***) which, with a few hours of work and a perhaps a little creativity, could become useful, contributing members of my wardrobe.  Which is where the #mendormodifynine hashtag comes in.

I'm setting this challenge for myself, not to necessarily mend or modify nine articles of clothing in 2018, but to use the remaining nine months of this year to practice.  To practice the arts of mending and modifying and to practice the new decision-making processes that I want to develop when it comes to consuming, hoarding, and discarding material things.  I want to use that time that I practice to think about how I came to have the current consumption habits I have and how I can modify those behaviours to reflect my ideals and my concerns.

When I think about my thought processes for deciding what I wanted and subsequently, what I bought, I'm starting to see how many lies I had to tell myself and how many conclusions I avoided making to justify all those things.  But this challenge isn't about the mea culpas or atonement, although they kind of figure in a little bit because I can't help myself. It's about learning how to go forward with what I have, and learning more about how I can make better decisions as a consumer.  I'd like to make #mendormodify something that I do as a matter of course and not just a single-use hashtag on IG.****

Footnotes

*Full disclosure, not all of that 80% have a fit issue. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I don't stray far from the path of trendiness.  You'd have a hard time getting me to enter a public space wearing a pair of low-rise, whiskered jeans circa 2005

**This isn't really a footnote on the text.  This is just the point in my editing where a few mistaken keystrokes erased about two hours of writing and editing and I uttered a litany of curses upon the House of Squarespace for their evil wysiwyg editor.  Until I reluctantly admitted that it was entirely my fault--this time.  But still, it was way too easy to accidentally erase all that work.  When will I EVER learn to write all the text in a different app, one that has a revision history???

***I don't like to claim that I make my own clothes because they fit better or are nicer than RTW because the evidence (which is jammed into the farthest reaches of my closet) proves otherwise. Sure, I have made items that I love and use, but I have also sewn and knit a number of garments that never made it out the front door.  A few of those are going into the "modify it" queue this year.

****I don't expect this hashtag to catch on since I can safely assume this blog post will just take its place in the food chain of the internet somewhere between plankton and krill.

(Not the Heisenberg) uncertainty principle

It took me a long while, but I eventually learned to never say never.  Things can change.  Circumstances, ideas, and above all, people, can change.  Or at the very least, if a person isn't opening her narrow mind to the infinity of possibilities, she can rephrase her sentiments.  For example, a knitter who would once emphatically proclaim: "I would never knit socks" might instead say something like, "I'm not really a sock knitter", thereby introducing the possibility, if not the probability that sock knitting might happen in her life.  Likewise, another knitter might have spent the last decade firmly entrenched in the belief that project monogamy was essential to that project's completion and also that any other path led straight into the abyss of eternal startitis.  Yet the turn of the new year has that knitter toying with the idea of starting all the projects all at once just to test the validity of that theory, because, hey, why not? and let's be honest, not a lot of knitting got done in all those years.

But that has nothing to do with me, I'm sure.

Let's talk about my recent knitting and the projects I have going.  In the fall, I cast off my first ever bona fide socks.  That's sort of a lie.  I have knit a pair of "cabin socks" as a gift and a lifetime ago, I knit a pair of hiking socks (that could stand on their own, which was helpful because no one was prepared to assist them).  What I have never knit until now is socks out of fingering-weight yarn, i.e., socks that were theoretically wearable inside a pair of shoes.  And now I have.

After that, another pair of socks happened because the first pair was supposed to have been for me but didn't end up fitting.  I learned that -10% ease is way too loose for my liking and in the interest of self-preservation, I just knit a longer foot and presented them to my partner, who also likes a snug sock.  Why waste a perfectly good sock toe and a few inches of stockinette by frogging, I asked myself.

It's a good thing I got over the frogging aversion because otherwise, this second pair would also not have fit me or any adult I know.  I'm glad I made the necessary changes because I'm pretty pleased with these socks!  It's only been in the last year that I really came to appreciate wool on my feet after randomly buying a pair of wool socks to make it to the free shipping threshold for an online order.  Am I about to become a sock-knitting addict?  Jury's out (buying more self-striping sock yarn).*

It didn't take me long to cast on another pair of socks, despite having already started multiple projects since 2018 got going.  Lest you begin to wonder, I am not really a sock knitter.  Really.

When I bought this skein of fingering weight BFL last year in this super-charming "Dalmatian" colourway by Ancient Arts (another fantastic Canadian dyer) it was to make a hat, but I tried casting on for a hat, ripped it out, started again twice more and finally concluded that this yarn just wanted to be socks.  Who was I to argue?

All this knitting has unfortunately caught up with me so to give my wrist flexors time to recover I'm taking a break from knitting and starting on my #2018makenine sewing projects.  (Aside from a couple home decor items, I haven't sewn in the last few years so this is really exciting for me.  Although, I'm not sure if the more exciting part is the fact that I now have a room in which I can actually do some sewing and not have to pack everything away at the end of the day so that we have somewhere to eat and can sit down without fear of getting stuck by errant pins.)  I happened across the Make Nine challenge for the first time just last month and I really loved the idea partly because it was like a year-long Summer of Basics** challenge and partly because following the #2018makenine tag on IG has provided a nice dose of sewing inspiration.  I've been out of the sewing game for so long that I'm pretty unfamiliar with what's been happening in terms of the range of independent pattern publishers and fabric sources available online.  Seeing what people are choosing for their Make Nine gives me a nice little snapshot of what's going on and I really enjoy seeing people tackling their projects with such enthusiasm and confidence.  I tend to hesitate for way too long before starting (or not starting at all) because I'm afraid of screwing something up or ending up with something that doesn't blow my mind away.  But disappointments will happen and it's just a part of making.  If I have any New Year's resolutions (besides the requisite commitment to stashdown and to start exercising regularly), it's to ignore the what-if-I'm-not-good-enough-fears that stop me from attempting things and just START already.

But, I'm a fan of baby steps.  My #2018makenine is pretty tame.  I have all the materials and patterns for nine projects that I'm totally stoked about making so I don't have to spend any time (or money) on acquiring stuff.  (Truly, I have all the materials and patterns for much more than this, but I think nine projects in a 12-month is plenty ambitious for me).  The projects I've chosen are not super-complicated, they are all things I really want in my wardrobe, and a few of them are already cast on or cut out.  (WIPs are fair game too, right?)  This means I've got way more projects in active rotation*** than I've ever had before.

It never occurred to me before this year that having several projects going at once might actually be more efficient if you are someone who is easily distracted when something about a task becomes frustrating or boring.  You just switch gears and pick up something else that's also on the go.  Something's getting done and it doesn't involve Train of Thought or mindless surfing.  (I used to think that if I didn't start working on an entirely different project, I still had every intention of tackling the project at hand and toiling through the difficult stages--so I would do something noncommittal, like play a game on my phone or surf, but it would be weeks before I came back to it because life only offers you so many hours to spend on a hobby.)  Which is why I'm experimenting with starting multiple projects without finishing something first.  I can't deny that this feels a bit like skipping dinner and raiding the dessert table.  Which is to say, I'm really enjoying this strategy at the moment but I fear there may be consequences.

Footnotes:

*My first two pairs of socks were knit with Striped Turtle Toes by Turtlepurl Yarns, an independent Canadian dyer based in New Brunswick.  The first colourway is "Beekeeper" which I purchased at The Knit Cafe and the second is "Comic Strip" which I found at Eweknit (both are fantastic shops in Toronto, but if you are not in Toronto, Turtlepurl's Etsy shop is well stocked).  I think I may have given this whole sock knitting thing a whirl because I enjoyed these self-striping colourways so much and I needed an excuse to buy them.  Not exactly in keeping with my stashdown goals, I know, but my guilt is somewhat assuaged by the fact that I knit two pairs of pretty fun socks as a result.

**My Summer of Basics wasn't exactly a success or a failure but it did get me to narrow down the infinite list of possible projects and I actually started (and completed!) a couple of projects.  A real triumph for a perpetual procrastinator.

***This is not to suggest that I never had a huge pile of WIPs languishing in a corner.  However, if I ever put aside a project to start something new, I had pretty much sentenced it to permanent exile.  If it didn't get frogged or chucked, it's still sitting in a box somewhere.  (Sorry, Mom.  I really do mean to come by and deal with those.)