People who sew

amaze me.

I had to make a pilgrimage to Hancock Fabrics today, in search of a piece of cloth I could turn into an impromptu Abigail Adams hat. (The oral presentation for which I was creating said hat was scheduled for today, not tomorrow, which I discovered when I got home from the store, but oh, well. They rescheduled it.)

So I bought a piece of eyelet (that white stuff with lots of little holes in it), and although I was disappointed not to find a fabric with holes big enough that I could string a piece of ribbon through it without cutting additional holes (like I said, I’m a minimalist crafter), I walked up to the cash register satisfied with my burst of maternal creativity.

And then I noticed that the person behind me in line had six gigunda-spools of blue thread.

“For my serger,” she said when I inquired why she needed forty miles of thread. A serger, she then explained (which was very kind), is essentially a sewing machine on steroids.

Since my single previous sewing-at-home experience cost an estimated $350 (sewing machine, lessons, fabric, pins, etc.) and resulted one crooked check jumper that kept falling off my daughter’s left shoulder, I long ago decided sewing is something best left to the professionals. And I have never made it through an entire SPOOL of thread, much less one of those fishing-reel-sized wads of cotton this woman was buying.

So I asked her what she did with all that thread.

“I make clothes,” she said. “I usually find a pattern and make it in a cheap material, just to see if it works. Then I redo it using the expensive stuff.”

That’s right. She sews it once — kind of a trial run — and then RESEWS it when she’s sure she got it right.

I cannot IMAGINE doing something like that. In fact, I can’t think of a less pleasant way to spend six months. (Because that’s how long it would take me. For the first run.)

I guess I’m not a seamstress. As tempting as those colorful fabrics are, I long ago decided it was much cheaper to buy my clothes already made.

And today, instead of writing, I dug around in the dirt, mulched, and hung up two balls of Praying Mantis eggs. Apparently mantises can catch mosquitoes. We’ll see. Dinner was sauteed tilapia with chimichurri sauce, a Mediterranean cut salad, and a nice glass of Pinot Noir. The quality and quantity of my cooking is inversely proportional to the quality and quantity of my writing, I’ve found.

And I still haven’t figured out what to do about my coffee house…