Two shirts

My home improvement mojo deserted me this week. I'd been working slowly, tediously, on sanding and filling and repainting our baseboards and trim downstairs (most of which seem to have suffered the teething of repeated litters of puppies)-- one of those true labors of love projects. I mean, who else but a certified crazy house-lover would repair baseboards? But after soldiering through the dining room and most of the front room last week, with a head cold, my motivation deserted me. I wanted to sew. 
Every year I do this. I tell myself, after Christmas, that I'm not going to get bogged down in Winter Sloth, that I'm going to keep on keeping on, It's just winter, after all, and I shall tick off a project a week until spring. And then I fall completely off the wagon. Remember last year? Erm, yup. Maybe winter is just meant to be slow and a little sluggy and at times deliciously idle. 

And at times, at least, deliciously sewy? I told you I was feeling sewy. Wednesday, I sewed almost a whole shirt; Thursday, I finished the one I'd begun and sewed another right on its heels. 
And lo, for I believe this is the first time I've sewed something not a skirt that I'm going to actually wear! 

Maybe I should replace my burgeoning winter 2014 home improvement list with a simple resolution: get better at reading patterns. Get garment sewing confidence. Feel as empowered with my pins and Gingher shears as I do with my chef's knife. 
I sewed these shirts back-to-back not because I was head-over-heels in love with the pattern, but because I felt like I needed to build, immediately, on the lessons I grasped sewing the first one. So I did. It was good. The first one felt scary and infirm. Terra incognita. The second one was competent.
(But someone still needs to explain to me why the design only worked when I sewed the yoke to the back OPPOSITE, not RIGHT, sides together. What the WHAT?) 

Okay, so I might never not need my seam ripper. I can live with that. Tonight Patrick is playing in Norwich, and I'm tearing into a dress pattern. Home improvement be damned, I just want to sew.

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