I have not been working on the jacket, although I have thought about working on the jacket and for now at least the problem is not lack of time, but lack of motivation and energy. Blame my sinuses, all four sinus regions are fairly blocked up, although today I was informed that the blockage is dissipating, and I actually do feel a little better, as long as I don’t move quickly, listen to loud noises, or change the elevation of my head (bend over). I am even contemplating riding the exercise bike at home because I think I can do that without causing my head to move too much (as long as I don’t ride so vigorously that I bounce up and down on the bike). Of course I don’t yet know if I will be able to inhale enough oxygen to sustain any kind of effort on the bike. The prolonged sluggishness, not just the sinus pressure, is affecting my state of mind.
I used to just get an annual head-cold. Now I get an annual sinusitis attack. I think I would rather have the head-cold.
And so, since sewing requires thought (which seems to hurt my head) and moving from sewing table to ironing board and back, I have been less than inclined to sew. Besides the decongestants make me drowsy, not the best time to be operating machinery with sharp pointed objects running at high speed.
I am not worried. November already looks better than October, which has been blacked out in the calendar and stricken from memory .
In order to entertain myself I have been filing my Burda WOF magazines, which have been piling up in an unruly fashion since I subscribed a year and a half ago. I contemplated various ways of saving them, but in the end went back to the technique I used with the old Burda International magazines, and in fact most of my sewing patterns.
The pattern paper and the instruction pages go in a manila file pocket, as do all my other patterns. I don’t save the actual magazine, but I cut favorite photos out of the magazine and paste them on the outside of the folder for inspiration. That way, if I am just flipping through the files for inspiration, I see my favorite garments in photos, and the line drawings are readily available right inside each folder.
I also scan the line drawings into the computer and print them out on a half-sheet sized page that fits into my old filofax which I now use as a pattern notebook. You can see the notebook sheets on the left in the photo. All patterns are filed in the pattern catalog drawers by company and number, in my notebook the patterns are filed by type (blouses, jackets, etc) or all the pattern magazines are grouped together with copies of the line drawings. The new Burda WOF is much easier than the old Burda, which did not have an index page with the line drawings, and I had to trace each individual drawing onto onionskin paper to add to my notebook.
Sometimes I do think this is a lot of work, but I enjoy just sitting down with the notebook and looking at my pattern catalog, and I like keeping the pattern envelope or directions with the pattern as well. I have friends who put the pattern envelopes in three-ring binders and file the patterns separately but I like my small half-size notebooks better. The space in my notebook is overflowing and I have to get a new one, but I haven’t found one I like lately. The half-size notebooks used to be widely available in France with four rings, and I love those, but I haven’t been back lately and I haven’t found a source here in the States. I suppose I can’t justifiy a trip to Europe just to buy binders.
I have often over the years thought it would be nice to convert all the pattern information to a database, which would include the drawings or photographs of the pattern and the line drawings as well as yardage information (all this information is in my notebook), as I don’t always carry the notebook around. It is just too cumbersome. A database could be downloaded to my Palm for quick browsing if I found myself at a fabric source. But in the end, I usually know roughly how much I need for a jacket or pants or a dress and just buy that "average" value. Certain patterns take odd amounts though, I may do it someday, as much for the fun of doing it as anything else. All these patterns have been scanned into the computer after all so it is just a question of putting it all together.
But in the end, I like looking through my pattern book far more than I like looking through a database on the computer, or on my palm, where it is even harder to see the details of a picture. So perhaps this plan is best left in the realm of dreams a little longer.