Promises, Promises

The pattern made me do it. Or the graphics. Secondhand patterns cost so little, I'll buy just about anything. Each pattern envelope promises delicious possibilities. I've almost given up trying to understand why I buy some of them, but nostalgia, desire to make the pattern, and whimsy play a role.

Here's one I very much wanted to sew from the eighties.  I love the tweed body and black velveteen feet. But making fifteen and eighteen inch sheep requires commitment, tweed and dowels, and finding dowels was not easy in Manhattan. It's much easier in Ohio, but I've lost momentum. This pattern should belong to someone who will make sheep.

Shari Lewis enlivened  many a dead Saturday morning when I was a kid.  Lamb Chop made a guest appearance in March 1956 on Captain Kangaroo, and had her own show by September, with her friends Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy. By 1960, The Shari Lewis Show had replaced Howdy Doody. In the 1986 Simplicity printed Shari's Lamb Chop pattern. For awhile I thought I'd be making this puppet, but the pattern is just another bit of paper ephemera for me.

Can you say FAD? Butterick, long the poor woman's version of impossible fashions, took a stab at being plebian in the 80s and came out with patterns for Cabbage Patch Preemies and Troll clothes. I found these in 2nd hand shops, unused and possibly unloved. I sewed up a few Miss Martha versions of the soft sculpture dolls, and sewed up a few Cabbage Patch kids for Xavier Roberts' booklet for Plaid, but apparently was never called on to provide clothing for a cabbage patch Preemie. I dodged the bullet there, and with the Norfins. The only trolls I ever owned where the ones that came from coin operated machines in Woolworth. They were small enough for Barbie dolls to play with.

All of these treasures are for sale in my etsy shop.

The (Miami) Valley of Temptation

I have been led into the Valley of Temptation (AKA Goodwill Outlet of  Miami Valley)and my resolve not to buy anything at all crumbled, faded and was swept away as the sheer muchness of bin after bin of merchandise washed over me.

I can forgive myself for buying paperback books. At $.69 a pound, they are so easy to buy, read,  and recycle that it hardly counts as breaking my vow of No New Stuff. One must READ, after all, and the 17th time one reads a book, some of the luster is gone. Most books don't hang around my house after the first reading.

And I might perhaps be forgiven for falling in love with absolutely gorgeous wool tweed suiting in tans with a pick of green and several picks of other colors, adding up to a warm and flattering tan. Surely a fabric lover could forgive my helpless tumble into fabric lust the second I touched the wool. I resisted mightily. I put it back. I picked it up and measured it: 4 yards, enough for a suit.  At that point, I was lost, but still fighting against it.  A person planning to move to Texas does not need to buy wool. A person planning to move to Texas should be selling off all the wool in her stash, because Texas has, at best, 6 weeks of winter. For that, corduroy is good enough.

And maybe buying vintage patterns, most of which I plan to recycle into my Etsy shop,  tinyseamster, is understandable. One must have merchandise, but really, I have enough vintage patterns to keep the shop busy for a year. Seventies graphics kept pressing my buttons. I did not NEED new stock; I lusted for it.

I wanted the Vogue/Butterick kitty pattern, a duplicate of one I own and from which I have made many a kitty. I bought a pattern because I had had its lookalike, in a much smaller size,  in the 70's. I bought another because I had wanted it in the 70's. I bought Jones/NY, Halston, Kenzo. I bought a pattern because it would fit me and could be made quickly of scraps and remnants.

   By rights, the only thing I should be doing, all day and every day, is sorting things into "keep" boxes and "toss" boxes.

 I should not even have noticed the little dolls. There are still 30 dolls to be sewn for in the box to be given to charity. Clamoring at me from within a blue plastic bin was vintage Jem and the Misfits, and no, I can't tell you which one. Another was Tinkerbell, dressed in a crocheted schmatta, but still Tink. I cannot explain putting  two dollar store dolls into my cart, not at all. I don't understand it myself. 

Nor do I understand why my friend pounced on odd dolls and waved them in front of my face. I should not buy things, I said as we walked in. Why, bless her enabling little heart, did she increase the temptation? If I failed to spot a doll as I walked through, that's good. Why did she call attention to a multi-jointed big headed doll with inset eyes and the ability to wear wigs, Liv. 

I'd read about her, decided I might want one when I got to Texas because even a $14 doll was not currently in the budget. Once the doll was in a bin, under my hand, and costing less than $2 per lb., there was a physical need to own it. Why does that doll have a hole in the back of her head? Because the wigs have a popbead stem that goes in there. Clever. I also ended up with a redheaded Moxie Girl, an $18 doll with pop off shoe/feet. She's the successor to the Bratz dolls, slightly less trampy but still with a bizarre shape. So what if she's wearing unmatched boots?

 I console myself that this lapse into consumerist GottaHaveIt only cost $8.

Let the Sorting Begin!

The SIL hopes I am making progress in sorting and preparing to get rid of things. Hard to say. While moving things in the garage in hopes of someday being able to put the car in it,  I discovered 6 boxes of LP's, only one that could be considered mine. I must go through them, and then see if I can borrow a machine  that makes CD's of LP's. Don't talk MP3 to me. I have an ancient boom box that still plays tapes and CD's, and I know how to use it.

Sewing projects that have been limping toward completion for months and years are marginally closer. The sewing machine has refused 3 times to make a buttonhole on the jeans, or they'd be finished. I've discovered possessions I haven't seen for years and cannot bear to part with. I have the same number of boxes in the basement but some are half empty. I've begun destashing patterns for doll clothes and soft toys and am trying to make sense of how to list them for sale in various places. I can stand to get rid of some needlework books from the 70s, but there is no market for them. Sigh.

I still have more paperback fiction than I have bookcase space. My solution to sleepless nights is to find good reads that I've already read, read about 30 pages and fall asleep. This does not work with new-to-me books. I know I have to get rid of books. Some I will never find again, and must keep. Some I reread on a yearly basis. Gotta hang onto them. I guess I can get rid of things that are currently on most library shelves, and easy to find at 2nd hand bookstores. I guess. Some reference books were so hard to find and acquire that the idea of donating them to Planned Parenthood's annual book sale causes physical pain. Better to sell these, I think.

I know I've taken things to Goodwill. Each time I go, I take  a minimum of 3 overstuffed trash bags of things that could be used and sometimes boxes of trashy books as well. A couple of charities make a point of asking for donations and making it easy by picking up things set on the porch and marked with their initials. I've been locating items from a craft stash dumped on me 10 years ago when a couple left Dayton, and giving it back to them now that they are back in town.

 It sounds like progress, but it doesn't look like it. There's room for the car in the garage, but not enough to open a door and get out of the car. Every room has keep/sell/giveaway boxes and overflowing trash cans. And new stuff still oozes into my life.

Longtime resident neighbors are moving out, and insist on giving me bits and pieces when I help, and it's fabric and trims, and I am incapable of refusing. There's curiosity, you see. What are other people throwing away? And there's acquisitive lust: that kind of fabric has not been produced since the 1960's. I have collected bits of vintage fabric for years, planning to use it in reproduction clothing for vintage dolls. And I do use it. Just not at the same rate I collect it.