Projects Lately: Many Gym Clothes, Few Pictures

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

I finished a hiking parka a couple weeks ago and need to get some pictures of it before all the snow melts in the mountains…but in between ambitious outwear projects, I’ve been sewing up a ton of spandex for the gym.

I made some neon tiger Super G Tights (as seen in this post) and a Solo Tank with an order from Blue Moon Fabrics:

I sewed up the orange “Memphis Milano” print in this pic into another pair of Super Gs and have been wearing them a lot (yet have no pictures of them on):

I got even more neon from Spandex World and made even more Super Gs and my first sports bra!

This is the Embrace Sports Bra and it’s even easier to sew than a regular bra. I found I needed to size down to get the compression I wanted but the un-layered option is super quick to make and almost a dead ringer for this ready-to-wear one.

And I have this print on the way for more tights (probably the Greenstyle Inspires with added patch pockets) because sewing spandex is fun and wow, once you realize you can make a pair for about $25, you kind of go crazy.

PS–this isn’t a sponsored post (lol, I don’t even do affiliate links) but as you noticed from all the links to Greenstyle patterns, I’m a big fan. The fit is perfect, they’re super functional (I lift heavy things, run, jump, and sweat a lot 4-5x a week in their patterns), they’re size-inclusive, and there’s a lot of support with sewalongs. If you want to try sewing activewear, you can’t go wrong starting with them.

Sunday Fun Day

By in Skyler

It was a big day over here at Chez Cat Hair: It was SUNNY and we got a visit from my NEPHEW and we took him to a PARK. A great time.

Kiddo has enviable upper body strength (and also he is closer to a teenager than a little kid now, how did that happen wtf):

Of course I had to join in on the “ninja warrior” playground circuit:

Related, this is the truest thing I’ve seen on the internet:

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. Expanding on the “We’re alive and we’re lucky but we’re not ok” thought from yesterday: Anne Helen Petersen writes about the impact of collective loss and trauma:

…we have endured nearly a year—a year!—of sustained, slow-motion collective trauma. Some days might not have felt recognizable as such, but our brains are very adept at flattening trauma, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, into something survivable. We have borne witness, in some way, to deaths in our close community, in our homes, in our online circles, in our kids’ schools—to half a million American deaths and 2.56 million deaths globally. We have lived with some level of fear, for ourselves and for those we cherish, for a year.

And then there’s all the other, compounding trauma. Depending on your situation, you have endured unspeakable loneliness, deep anger at those who couldn’t be bothered to care about others, enduring financial precarity, and the feeling like your body is, quite frankly, disassembling under all that’s being asked of it as a parent, worker, partner, person.

 

2. Here for this: Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome 

The impact of systemic racism, classism, xenophobia, and other biases was categorically absent when the concept of imposter syndrome was developed. Many groups were excluded from the study, namely women of color and people of various income levels, genders, and professional backgrounds. Even as we know it today, imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in both women of color and white women. Imposter syndrome directs our view toward fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work.

 

3. My feelings about the time change:

Pandemic Anniversary Poem

By in poems

I guess this is the day a year ago that the WHO declared a global pandemic, so… happy anniversary? My circle of loved ones has been so, so lucky–no one has gotten sick, my dad is fully vaccinated as of Monday, a friend’s husband who works in healthcare is also vaccinated, Doc got his first shot this week. I’ve been fine working from home and just miss outfits and restaurants.

I’ve been lucky. We’ve been lucky. We might not collectively be OK, but we’re alive. Over half a million Americans and over 2.5 million globally didn’t survive to miss restaurants and see the light at the end of the tunnel with a vaccine.

This is for them.

 


(web text here)

Thinking About Fashion

By in fashun

I’ve been saying, “I miss wearing outfits” for about a year now but I wasn’t able to articulate why very well, or explain why putting on an outfit I used to wear to the office to work from home just isn’t the same. So this Vox article was really enlightening for me: “To all the clothes I’ve loved before: Reconciling the sweatpants-wearing me with the fashion-loving woman I was just a year ago is an existential crisis like no other.”

…dressing up at all feels futile when there’s nowhere to go and no one to see. Style, after all, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Clothes are a form of self-expression, but they are also central to our identity because they shape how others see us, says Carolyn Mair, a behavioral psychologist and author of The Psychology of Fashion. […] “We have a sense of identity ourselves by what we’re trying to project, and our identity is also reinforced through the feedback of others,” Mair says.

This may help explain why, while fashion may not rank high on everyone’s list of what’s been lost during the pandemic, for some it has felt like a significant blow.

As pandemic losses go, the loss of outfit appreciation is a minor one. But as my therapist tells me, two things can be true at once: it can be a minor loss in the bigger picture and it can be something I really miss and mourn.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Dream vs Reality

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

Winter dressing has always been hard for me, even when I left the house. My winter WFH wardrobe has been not-really-matching joggers and warm tops and I was so, so tired of all of them. So I wanted to make a spring equivalent of all my summer jumpsuits that made me feel so pulled together: A sweatsuit.

I did debate just buying one from Big Bud Press–they’re ethically made in the US, they’re hand dyed, they looked high quality. But I didn’t want to deal with the high demand nor trying to find my size, nor did I really want to spend $200 on sweats.

So I found some mystery French terry on Fashion Fabrics Club and used the Greenstyle Brassie Joggers and their newest Bianca Pullover for the hoodie (a great pattern; I will pretty much buy and make anything they release at this point). I coverstitched the hell out of it and was really pleased with myself….

…until I tried it on.

Granted, this isn’t “modeled” but…I just don’t feel cool, like I thought I would, and I’m trying to figure out why. Is it because my fabric was thin and soft and so it feels like pajamas? Is it too drapey and lightweight so the hoodie just feels big, vs stylishly oversized?  Is it that the tie dye is a print, not an actual dye? Am I just Too Old to wear something like this, even at home?

I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but as an outfit, this wasn’t great. So I’m thinking of it as a wearable muslin test of that hoodie pattern, in which case it’s a great success. And of course, it wasn’t $200; just a few hours of my time.

Monday Music

By in music

I heard the tail end of this on the way home from the gym this morning on the community radio station here. Produced by George Harrison, from an album considered by Ravi Shankar “to be among the best works of his 60-year career,” it also, as the kids say, slaps:

I know I’ll be grooving to the whole album today.

Always Good For A Laugh

By in Uncategorized

Friends, the last few weeks have been rough. The pandemic wall, spring fever, not enough help at work….everything is such a slog right now. I’m deeply uninspired for any posts here, too, but these are the three videos that will always, always make me laugh. You might need them, too.

NAILED IT:

 

It me on the ice:

 

If the last year had a theme song:

Sock Report

By in knitting

I’m losing some steam on the Year of Socks and only got 95% of one finished in February:

I switched to Addi FlexiFlip needles for this one and really like them, even though they’re not making me noticeably faster.  (My slow progress could also be because I was too fried to do much of anything after work last week.)

We’ll see if I can get the other sock done this month and then move on to lighter weight socks for the rest of the year.

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