Rejuvenation

Which, when you think about it, is logically the next step after reidentification.

Yesterday I met up with Florence, Helen and Lisa, for a long awaited afternoon of tea and chatter. It’s been almost two years since the first time we all met up, and so much has changed for all of us. Little shops have been opened, babies have been/are about to be born, and there’s a whole book on its way. (Speaking of which, we had a sneak peek of Lisa’s bag making book, and oh boy, you are just going to love it. It looks lovely, but even better than that it will be so useful you’ll wonder how you ever sewed without it. Really. Pre-orders in now, I insist…)

As you know, the changes for me have been vast, and though my life feels as though it has always been this way I do have a lingering memory that it once wasn’t. Having tried hard to accept the change, I was finding it harder to reconnect with the other bits of myself, and make them part of my everyday again. I think anything is hard if you are trying to do it through an effort of will, rather than with excitement and enthusiasm.

What helps, of course, is some jolly conversation, to be reminded and told of things you’d be interested in if only you knew about them. (How I missed this Joel Dewberry new line is beyond me, but sometimes I have difficulty breaking out of my old bookmarks. But if you look here I think that dogwood bloom lake would make a very pretty dress. Perhaps this colette dress. I may be punching above my weight with that one, but it looks so lovely.) Then you need a trip to a nice shop, where through gentle persuasion you may end up going home with a new cardigan (I got the light grey, figuring it would go with pretty much anything, and therefore was highly justifiable instead of shopping folly).

And what happened the day after is that I woke up and was filled with energy and decided that today was the day I was finally going to get in those cupboards. We’ve lived here for five years, and since the first days of unpacking, the kitchen cupboards have never been meddled with, so that one thing was being piled on top of another, and getting a pan out to cook dinner was becoming a precarious event. For a few months every time I’ve opened a door to one of my scary cupboards I have muttered the same phrase: ‘I’ve got to get in these cupboards’. It’s become a bit of a joke, but it’s also become a bit of a quagmire too – I could move neither forwards or backwards, because I never seemed to have the will and the energy together to get into the cupboards, and yet the idea of them being so rooted in the past and clutter was, I realise, powerful enough to create inertia where everything else was concerned.

But now the cupboards have been got in, and there is a pile of stuff ready for the recycling centre (well, if you haven’t used a thing in five years the chances are you don’t really need it), and I cleared the sewing desk of things that had been piled onto that, ordered some things for the boy’s quilt, and began to think that I will need a summer skirt. Skirts are good. Quick. Easy. Wearable.

I hope this little burst of energy and enthusiasm continues, but while we wait and see, thanks are obviously due to my dear crafty companions, who proved to be the best tonic. Onwards, to August.