Frumpy pants to flirty skirt, good news, and congratulatory boots

Says I to Husband, upon looking at the photos he's just taken of my new skirt, "Why didn't you tell me that my sweater was buttoned wrong?"

Says Husband to I, "I didn't notice."

But it's a cute skirt, isn't it? I made it yesterday from some flood-length trousery jeans that were really spiffy in theory but which looked tragically frumpy on me. Just really sad. I think they were made for someone with much more generous, shall we say, rear-end proportions. Which normally I have, but over the last little while, due to various factors (into which I shall not go at the moment), my formerly-ample arse has all but vanished. If there were one part of my body from which I would choose to lose inches, it would not be my rear end. You know why? Because sitting on wooden chairs when you have a bony arse is no fun. And I like sitting. And we have wooden chairs. No wonder skinny people are always running and climbing things and standing on their heads and going to the gym and doing interpretive dance and stuff. They can't sit down! 'Cause it's unpleasant! I'm looking forward to the return of my bum one of these days. Until then, jeans with no back pockets are not an option.

So anyway, I cut the legs off maybe two inches below the crotch, opened up the inseams, trimmed off the crotch curve and re-stitched the seams straight. I cut four strips from one of the remaining legs, made them into a sort of tier to add to the very-short body of the skirt by stitching them togther (angling the seams that would join at the sides to make a slight A-line), finished them off with bias tape so that the hem wouldn't be all bulky, and did some topstitching to match the original detailing on the jeans. I couldn't find proper jeans thread in the right shade, but you really have to look closely to determine that the topstitching at the bottom of the skirt is a smidge thinner than the topstitching at the waist, and really, who's going to do that? It's not perfect, but I like it well enough for it to end up in regular rotation, which is more than I can say for many of my more experimental refashions.

Unfortunately, my sewing machine seems to be skipping a stitch every now and then, so I'm going to have to sit down and give her a good clean-up and tinker. I don't think it's anything that some much-needed maintenance won't solve.

The bit of good news I got is this: my poetry manuscript has been shortlisted for the Fresh Fish Award, which is an annual literary prize here in Newfoundland. I'll bet you didn't even know I had a poetry manuscript, huh? Yeah, I don't like to go on about it, but in real life, I write poetry. There, I've admitted it. Anyway, I submitted my manuscript for this award, and I made the shortlist! Very exciting business. I did a radio interview with the other two nominees at the CBC studio yesterday; they'll be airing it on Weekend Arts Magazine on Sunday, and they do stream live but if you're anywhere west of Newfoundland you'd have to get up heller early to listen. If the interview makes the podcast, I'll post a link.

On top of that, I've just received a grant from our provincial Arts Council to begin research on a second collection of poems. Yay! So I can write poems and buy groceries at the same time. It's nice not to have to choose.

So I bought myself some nice boots. To celebrate. I made a cake, too, but that's gone now. The boots should last a while. I did buy them new (I never, ever find cool boots in thrift shops), but I got them from a locally-owned boutique, and not some multinational outlet store, so I feel good about it.

And the sun is shining! Hooray! I'm actually standing in one of the raised beds in my front yard in this picture. I'm hoping to tear it up and put in some vegetables in the spring, but I'm not sure it gets enough light early in the day. I'm trying to figure if there's anything that will grow well in mostly afternoon light. It's a decent bit of square footage, and I love the idea of veggies in the front yard. Right now, it's a jungle of various ground covers, including something that smelled really good when I stomped around on it in my new boots. If anyone has any experience gardening in a spot where you only get sunlight in the afternoon, drop me a line, will you?