I have a painful eye infection. For some reason, trouble with my eyes, and headaches as well, feel more like a central problem. That's where I am, so a problem with my eyes or my head doesn't feel like something I can overlook and keep on in spite of.

I'm saying "infection" because I think it's blepheritis, something I've had before. As I recall, the treatment was hot compresses and waiting for it to go away, so that's what I'm doing.

Also, feeling sorry for myself. And grading papers. I think I will be skipping church and rehearsal today, since I feel as miserable as I do. However, #1 daughter is on her way back up from the capitol, where she went to interview for the high-powered Canadian job she has been offered.

We're intending to have a grand cooking session so we can have food for the week for our two households.

Last weekend we had a big reshuffling. #2 daughter came to visit. #1 daughter had a birthday celebration and also came back to work for me, resulting in a much calmer week (of course I was also sleeping in till 5:00 or later, so that may be part of it as well). #2 son left for his college. #1 son and I started back to school as well, here in our county.

#2 daughter and I had a sewing day. She's making this dress of chocolate brown satin. In fact, she has a set of glamorous origami-styled sheaths and a jacket planned. She bought a bunch of menswear-with-a-twist fabrics at the Hancock's MLK Day sale, so she has a camel herringbone with metallic gold sparkles, a black and mahogany houndstooth check, stuff like that. It's going to make a beautiful work wardrobe, and then she can pull off the jacket and go out to dinner.

I made the jacket below. Note how it has no buttonholes, topstitching, collar notches or any hard parts. I didn't even have trouble setting in the sleeves. It's a Sewing with Nancy pattern. I plan to make it again. If I had the skills, I could redraw the collar piece (it's just revers, I think, if I'm using the word correctly, rather than a proper collar) into a different shape and make it look quite different.

Even without those skills, though, I think I could make it in a drapey solid with the attached sash and it would look different.

I finished it over the course of the week, and you can see it below (wow, it needs pressing, doesn't it?). I think it works well with the teal wool suit I made last year, so I believe I'll make a matching skirt so I can swap back and forth. If the skirts are the same shape, that ought to work. Neither of these jackets came with a skirt in their patterns. The teal skirt is a basic pencil skirt with no waistband or pockets or anything. Very nice with the new jacket.

The new jacket fabric is a tweedy wool with a bit of a check effect in a blue green, caramel, and brown mixture that I'm completely failing to capture here. The green is like a mallard green or bottle green, not very obvious in the fabric until you put the same shade up against it, at which point it comes up very brightly.
 
 I'll try again from another angle -- okay, this might be better. 

It's a classic look, short enough to work well with skirts but good with pants as well.

So this week I think I will sew a blouse in blue-green cotton to go with it, and perhaps also the matching skirt.

I have some caramel colored wool that would make a nice skirt, a dark brown fabric suited to pants, several blouse lengths in various blue-green shades, a sturdy jersey in aubergine, and some jacquard linen in a shade of burgundy that looks very good with the other colors.

In short, I have the makings of a SWAP, if I can be disciplined about taking the time to sew. I do have some work to do today, plus housework and errands, but I'm optimistic.

Here's the other pattern I'm thinking of using. The jacket in the photo above was made from a Vogue pattern, not from this one, though the styles are similar. If I use the pants and skirt patterns from this ensemble,  they should work well with that jacket.

Then I could also make one or both versions of the jacket in a dark brown or charcoal gray.

Note how having finished ONE sewn item (apart from pressing it) makes me imagine that I will be able to sew up a whole wardrobe for myself?

But if I do one piece a week, I'll be able to do just that. There are 11 pieces in a classic SWAP and 11 weeks from now is merely the beginning of April. Then I could switch over to warm weather clothes and have another complete SWAP before it cools off in the fall.

It could happen.

This is a picture from #1 son's trip to New Orleans. I didn't go. In fact, I didn't go anywhere between semesters, and now I wish I had, since school starts on Tuesday. For me, on Wednesday, because I don't teach on Tuesdays. I've really been questioning whether it's wise for me to keep teaching. On the other hand, I'm committed to the spring term, so there's not much point in agonizing over it right now. 

Remind me to leave town over spring break, though.

I'm trying to be more businesslike, to have more creativity in my daily life instead of only in my work, and to take care of myself. I realize that this is the same list of goals as last year's, but maybe they were just goals that take longer to accomplish.

#2 daughter is coming down to visit today, #2 son leaves tomorrow to go back to school, and we're going to celebrate #1 daughter's birthday when she gets back from Baton Rouge. This is therefore the end of the holidays.

Beginning next weekend, I plan to have Saturday Sewing Day. For the sake of my wardrobe as well as for the sake of getting some creativity back into my daily life. I might try to finish last year's SWAP, or I might start a new one. I haven't kept up with fashions this year, so I don't know whether there are new trends I ought to try out or not. Maybe I'll roam around the sewing blogs and see.

I've had a rough week. Not a bad week, but it sort of went on for a long time and had lots of stuff in it. My husband's 4:22 alarm clock is probably the main thing, frankly. I always end up sleep deprived and Not at My Best when I have to get up with him that early.

My new website had some tech compications (a freak accident with a server) on Monday and then on Tuesday a former client had a problem. It's kind of a sad problem, really. He left me and The Computer Guy, who had  made him a beautiful website and written (me) and planned (TCG) a fine secondary website for him. He took my content and our concept to a bargain "web designer" who not only gave him an inferior site but also messed up his fine site that we built him. So Tuesday was filled with frantic emails from him, his wife, and finally the "designer" asking for help.

We sent him the original files, but apparently his new person doesn't know what to do with them. This is a sad tale, I know, and I am sorry for the guy, but also I spent a couple of hours dealing with the issue for him, while trying (and failing) to get my paid work done. The total time was a couple of hours, but since it was in a series of interruptions over a period of two days, it was more intrusive than that suggests, and I didn't get all my work done.

It isn't right for me to ignore my current, paying clients to send compassionate but essentially worthless emails to a former client who isn't paying for the help. It isn't good for my business and it isn't fair to my current clients. The guy still doesn't have a functional site and I spent Wednesday catching up from the emergencies of Monday and Tuesday.

I'm a sucker for emotional appeals. That's the true source of the problem.

Thursday was a normal workday, but 12 hours and 40 minutes long (according to Toggl). Yesterday I took time for a lunch meeting with #1 daughter. Now that we don't live in the same place, we've decided that this will be our means of keeping up to date. I also took time to go see the IRS and buy food in order to avoid having to call out for pizza all the time.

So what with all that stuff happening, I'm working today. I have to get my online classes ready, and check my campus email. I like teaching, but I dislike everything else about it. The hourly rate ends up being lower than my normal rate, and there's all this grading and following rules and filling out forms and going to meetings... Could I sound more bratty, petulant, and unreasonable?

I'm not really feeling bratty today, though. I have fun things to do and I plan to do things like baking and knitting and taking a nap. I did some housework already, and read a bit, and a little time spent doing stuff I don't like will probably be good for my character.

I'm updating links for my new website. This is sort of meditative. It's lots of routine stuff, with occasional bits of exciting mental activity and many small hand motions.

Just like archaeology. I'm sure that's what you were thinking, too.

I don't do this very much any more. #2 daughter is our official linkbuilder. However, this is unpaid linkbuilding just for the firm, so I'm doing it.

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon knitting and watching a marathon of Bones. I think I may repeat that. I had dinner with my family and we discussed issues in sociology, and I may repeat that, too. I made Silk Fountain Hoods (you can see one here, though not one of mine) for several female family members, and now I want one of my own. I can't take a picture of mine because #1 son took the camera to New Orleans.

Back to the salt mines now. Or possibly to knitting.

Happy New Year!

I have a new website. Apart from that, I don't think I have much to say about 2010. I didn't meet my goals from last New Year's, apart from getting more reasonable amounts of sleep some of the time. I worked a lot. I had fun. I don't think I did anything especially interesting or had any major events, though some of my family members did. I knitted a couple of sweaters and pieced a quilt. I launched one wildly successful website of my own, was chosen as a Google Earth Influencer, launched a bunch of reasonably successful sites for other people, complicated my churchgoing, enjoyed some great music,

We're planning an exciting year for 2011, though! I hope you are, too.

If exciting is what you want, of course.