I’m writing a post for today about The Dress, but first there’s something I want to get off my chest: I don’t write this blog as often as I once did, or as often as I want to.  I know that some of you (particularly those who come to read at the site, rather than using a feed) are noticing the difference.

When I started this blog I was on an extended holiday between careers, and now that I have found a new vocation there’s an awful lot of work and retraining going on.  Because that vocation is sewing and designing, many things I do and make are relevant to the blog.  On the other hand, I’m balancing 3 days of paid work with 2 nights in school, at least 1 day a week of homework, a business in startup, managing a household while my fiance Dan finishes the hardest year of his own studies, and making a wedding for 90 guests happen.   Let’s be clear: I’m not complaining in the least.  I chose this (well, everything except the extra housework part).  But weeks will go by before I get the chance to sit down and write a post.  My hand quilting, too, is packed away for a little while.

In mid-February my course ends and we’ll get married.  Soon Dan will be a real human being again with the capacity to cook dinner and vaccuum occasionally.  Till then, I’ll be here when I can and I hope you stick around.

Enjoy.

It was my birthday on Wednesday, and what could be more exciting than finding oneself featured over at Modish?   I am afraid I may have shocked my co-workers  at the Library with my little yelp of joy!   And then, the very next day, Polka Dot Rabbit took one of these cushions home from the Little Shop of Handmade and blogged about it.  Birthday happiness!

Liz Grotyohann from Cosa Verde made the picture magic above.  Isn’t she a dab hand at mixing and matching photos?  I need Liz to come over to my house and decorate with her eco-friendly finds.  I think I’d be a better, happier person if she did that!

Bought this morning on Etsy from redlightstudios.  They’re so freaking cute I might just die of cute.

Picture post!  Yay!

Wendy was the winner of my Sew, Mama, Sew Giveaway, helping me out with some great advice for my little business venture.   And she showed perfect taste once again when she sent me this gorgeous creature print for a custom wrist wallet.

I lined it with red Kona cotton, to match the cut of fabric Wendy chose for her button.  I love the sense of chase, the hunt and play between cat and ball.

And she’s also kind, sending me just enough of this fabric,

to make this.  So pretty!  I have it sitting on top of my sewing basket so I see it whenever I walk past.

Thank you, Wendy.  I hope your wallet makes you feel as happy as this little flower is making me.

If any of you Melbournians reading this live near Carnegie, or travel along the Pakanham/Cranbourne line, check out a great new shop opening  11am Wednesday.  The ‘Little Shop Of‘ sells only gift items made by hand in Melbourne and Victoria, costing under $50.  It’s so cute, furnished with owner Bec’s market finds and housing her studio out back.  And it’s right next to the Carnegie train station.

(The studio, late at night before a big delivery to this new store…)

The web site as it is now shows Bec’s handmade jewels but will expand to show prints, gift cards, baby clothes, softies, my vintage sheet cushions (hooray!) and more.  You’ll be able to shop online or pop in anytime from 11 till 6, which makes it a great stopover between work and a birthday party or a visit with some little ones.

Enjoy!

Speaking of the lovely Hayley (see last post), she’s Etsy’s featured seller this week!  Have a read here and a look at her wonderful creations!  Be slightly intimidated at the fact that she creates these amazing clothes out of factory offcuts and thrift store finds, with a two year old in tow!

Hayley’s work is also on the cover of Handmade Melbourne this year.  As for me, I couldn’t be more excited that we wound up studying together   — of which more later.

Let’s talk about clothes!!  Specifically, drafting patterns and making glorious original clothes!

I found this course whilst idly Googling a few days ago, and hours later I was enrolled in the last-but-one place, Tuesday and Thursday nights.  What’s even more exciting is that my Etsy friend Hayley saw my Facebook update, and hours later she was enrolled too!

I’ve got almost all the stuff required (there is a loooooooong equipment list and I’ve had to re-purchase many items I already have in the ‘domestic’ version) and I can’t wait!  It starts tonight!  Bounce bounce bounce… it’s going to be quite a change from grad school.

A bit of a relaxed blogging day is in order: enjoy the awesomeness that is my Mum and her knitting needles.  She made Dan this Dr. Who scarf for his birthday, and he won’t take it off.  Some days I come home and he’s wearing it in a heated room.

So of course I had to buy him some jelly babies!  (For those of you who are not nerds: click here for the scarf, and here for the show.  Tom Baker always carried jelly babies in his pockets which, like the Tardis, are bigger on the inside.)

So here’s a blog post I have been trying to write for months: seems like the most momentous things are the hardest to blog about, and the last thing for which time can be found.

I’ve quit my PhD and I’m now sewing and designing for a living through Pins and Thimbles.  There it is, I’ve said it, outside safe, alternately worried and excited conversations with friends.  Phew!  Lest you (by ‘you’, I think I really just mean my Mum) panic, I am still working part time at the State Library.

I have a new job description, though I can’t decide on one perfect word: dressmaker, small business owner, designer, crafter.  All of those things.  I’ve also moved Pins and Thimbles off the kitchen table of our now-full share house and into a small studio space in Brunswick’s commercial heartland.  At 34 Breese St, it’s surrounded by Lebanese bakeries, discount stores, wholesalers, grocers and builders all carrying on noisily 24/7.   Here’s what it looked like on my first day of moving:

So, what’s the deal?  I finished an MA a couple of years ago, for which I sweated blood.  I was going to be a career academic.  That was the ruling passion.  Had been for years.  Somewhere along the line, amongst sickness, family dramas, and the growth of a committed and supportive relationship, I rediscovered other passions and the academic dream lost some of its gloss. 

I also remembered why I started studying Literature in the first place.  I was going to be a costume designer, but I’d decided I needed to understand the plays if I was going to be the best designer out there.  Even at 18 I didn’t lack for ambition or a work ethic.

So I took some leave from study, and a couple months ago I I tried to go back but the drive isn’t there.   And PhDs — my lord, you need to want it badly to get past all the rewrites and crazy hours and feeling like you’re not as smart or hard working as anyone else in the room.  Not to mention the long distances from friends and family even when they need you or you need them, or the uncertain years on casual contracts.  When I felt the burning need to write and to study, that didn’t bother me, it was all part of the lifestyle.  Now it just makes me feel tired.

It’s taken me a year of faffing around and worrying and changing my mind up and down and sideways to decide that I just don’t want the PhD enough.  Not now.  Someday.  Because I want something else.  And I want it so badly.

What I want now — every day, from the moment I wake up — is to create and to sew.  And to build something entirely new, my own business.

This is the studio from the outside: a rough diamond, no?  It’s up to me to make my 4×5m space cosy and beautiful for clients.  I feel up to the task

On the first night, an approaching storm, seen from my second storey window.  I love rain storms and I’m taking it as a good omen.  Given these terrible years of drought, how could a rain storm be anything less?

And finally:

Every new business needs a bouncy Maneki Neko and some organic peppermint tea.

This has been a rambling post, and there’s no use apologising.  Ten years of training as a writer and I still don’t feel able to sum up this change into neat paragraphs.  I certainly don’t have some pithy statement to finish on.  It’s too big and too complicated for that.  I’m content, though, to wake up in the morning, excited to get going once again.  To think, today I’m making somebody the skirt that will show her how lovely she is, or even just, today I’m choosing colours for a web page. 

Web page is on the way, and this blog will move when it’s finished but I’ll give you lots of warning.  Meanwhile you can become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Pins-Thimbles/191376465244 or follow me on Twitter and I’ll follow you back: http://twitter.com/pinsandthimbles .

Have any of you made huge life changes like this?  I’d love to hear your stories and chat in the comments.