I’m suffering from winter doldrums at the beginning of summer. This is crazy. And depressing. I shouldn’t still be wearing sweaters and jackets in mid June. I know I keep harping on about Mother Nature, but it’s impacting my enthusiasm for Me-Made June. I wore the same outfit two days in a row. Are you shocked?

I have lots of nice dresses and skirts I want to wear, but I don’t want to be uncomfortable, and wearing those things would mean I’d be cold. So, no thank you.

Day 14:

Day 15:

I added a hand-knit sweater to liven things up a little.

And because I’m so incredibly intelligent, I decided to tackle a difficult project while suffering from the blues and a bad case of I-can’t-do-its. Needless to say, assembling my spinning wheel did not go well. Robert had to bail me out when he got home from work.

It’s all put together, but I need to sort out the brake band. I kind of sort of cut it by accident in a few spots. Don’t ask. It was stupid. And maddening.

P.S. I owe many of you emails and haven’t been making the rounds to my favorite blogs. I’ll get to them soon. I promise!

If you were to judge by my recent posts, you might think all I did was eat, breathe and dream about sewing. You’d be almost right; however, I have been squeezing some other things into my days recently. I had ordered a spinning wheel from New Zealand–a wonderful Ashford Traveller, which I had been waiting anxiously for. Time dragged on. I got a call and was told my spinning wheel was on a ship stuck outside San Francisco. Then I got a call and learned that the boat had finally made it into harbor, but my spinning wheel hadn’t been on it. Finally, the manufacturer churned out another one and had my spinning wheel flown over to the states. I was ecstatic when I got the box in my hands. I took it home, put it in a corner of my sewing room and contemplated how to best finish it.

And then I contemplated it some more.

Weeks passed.

Finally, I took the thing out of the box, gave it a light sanding and started staining it. One of these days, I’ll actually put the pieces together–and spin some yarn.

As I stained the wood, I was mesmerized by how it changed from one minute to the next. Light-colored bare wood to sticky wet wood, a shade or two darker; and then, as it dried, a nice glossy honey-colored wood.

I’d like to try transforming something with my sewing as I have been transforming this wood–respecting it’s qualities, but changing it somehow to make it more functional and possibly even better than it was before. As it happens, I think I have the perfect dress to try this on.

This dress was one of my mother’s favorites, but since it no longer fits her, she gave it to me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit me either. Too bad! It’s made out of lovely fabric and has some pretty details. Look at this collar:

And these shoulders:

Nice, right? I know I want to refashion it somehow. I’m just not certain how to go about it. I don’t yet have a vision of an end product. Should I take in the width somehow? Cut it up and turn it into a blouse? If you had a piece like this, what would you do with it??? An inquiring mind wants to know