Sewing WTF? (2)
Shifting my centre of gravity.
It is not enough for me to buy a sewing machine. It is not enough for me to buy three books on the basics of using a sewing machine. It is not enough for me to have a seam ripper in two sizes. It is not enough for me to have the self-healing cutting board and two types of rotary cutters as well as snippers and three types of scissors and a set of pinking shears. It is not enough for me to have the see-through rulers. It is not even enough for me to have found an excellent source of interesting fabric on Vinted.
It is not enough, all this sewing stuff because, as ever, my need to know how and my impatience to know now form a toxic cocktail of urgency, where none actually exists.
And even though I have all the things, I have not yet sorted my mise-en-place, by which I mean I haven’t sorted out my workspace. Anyone who worked with me after my first couple of chaotic years of lawyering will remember me as incredibly organised. In my all or nothing way, my desk was either 100% tidy or it was chaos. And desk chaos = lost docs = panic attack = the worst word you can say to a lawyer: negligence, so in the end my mental health chose order over chaos. Not only that, but the lighting was always bespoke. The big light was never on because that would be an abomination and also I would just take any offending fluorescent tube out of its fitting. Even in open plan.
I digress.
So I have a bit of an itinerant sewing caravan going on for a few weeks, which is deeply unsatisfactory until I consider the room of doom over the garage. The one where old furniture is in a halfway house before either the dump or the charity shop.
I have not used the room since 2021 and then it was only for six months during the pandemic when I tried to use it as an office but I couldn’t get the wifi to work. And the Velux window has been open for who knows how long, without me knowing and frankly I would like to put the whole room in a skip. Even the rattan is mouldy. Who knew?
It stinks. I think I might die inhaling some deadly spore because I’m nothing if not dramatic so I open the windows (this is the end of March so it is still freezing and wet) and wash down the walls with disinfectant, wash the faded rug, with its separate over-carpet of dead insects, suck up approximately a million dead flies with the Henry hoover attachment of death - oddly satisfying - especially the ones nesting in the door frame and I burn a few smelly candles which change the smell by about 2%.
Let me tell you that Rose Geranium and mildew is not a combination that is going to feature in Diptyque any time soon.
It takes two weeks before I can sit in the room for more than an hour without worrying or feeling nauseous.
I get a house clearance company to take the sad and smelly furniture and I do three trips to the council waste recycling hub. Even now there are numerous just in case paint tins and a spare clothes dryer which is too good to get rid of but for which I have no real use.
I am determined not to do my usual and overdo it so I try to use things that I already have in terms of cupboards and tables. That plan lasts for about ten minutes as I order a new folding picnic table from Amazon for £25 and some nasty plastic drawers. You can imagine the quality. I already have some old steel cabinets from Ikea, the fronts of which keep falling off.
I know that the day is coming when I think fuck it and work out how I can kit it out in a more stylish way and yes I have already prepared for that and all the components of it are sitting in a folder, ready to go. But I am trying not to give in to my baser desires and I am doing the best I can with what I have got. We both know that won’t last.
But I do have the red monster, back in use for the first time since 2020. This thing has been with me for around 30 years and has been hauled round every office I have ever worked in. It has been resting on the floor in this room, dusty and unloved, biding its time.
I bring up some more furniture from the downstairs garage, old tables I used for gardening and some things I failed to restore, plus my computer desk. This is a Frankenstein’s monster of a room, a patchwork of a space, a gathering of things given a second life, a new purpose, a new chance. But I don’t realise that yet. I think I’ve just made a space to put my sewing machine.
Taking up the guitar over the past eighteen months has fulfilled a lifelong ambition. Yet, alongside learning to play, I’ve noticed a familiar pattern emerging. The books, magazines, sheet music, accessories, tools, and all the paraphernalia that support the journey have gradually spread throughout the house.
It’s never just about the guitar itself. I become fascinated by the entire ecosystem that surrounds it. Learning, researching, collecting, organising, these become as much a part of the hobby as the hobby itself.
Perhaps this says something about my personality. I’ve come to realise that I’m rarely someone who is half in. I’m either completely immersed or not involved at all. Moderation has never been my natural state. When something captures my imagination, I throw myself into it wholeheartedly, embracing every aspect of it. The downside, of course, is that enthusiasm has a habit of taking up physical space as well as mental space.
The guitar is simply the latest example. Before it were other passions, each accompanied by their own books, equipment, and endless curiosity. Looking around the house, I sometimes think the clutter isn’t really clutter at all...it’s visible evidence of a life lived through deep interests rather than passing hobbies.