Beautiful sewing-love friends on Hive!

The house is full of new-old clothing and fabrics: at least 4 large sacks came through the doors this weekend; there were already large stores of woolly and felted items, silk and cotton, linen and sheet life - but now... now we have acquired a veritable cornucopia of colours-textures-potential, and we're taking a pause - writing - to gather the focus and inspiration for all the new projects that our hands are itching to sew...

My past week has been super-blessed with the most divine female creative company: I trundled down to the valley in the night last Monday, to meet my first ever Hive celebrity from the train station - not just any old Hive blogger, but the brilliant, divinely-talented, wise-about-life and most gorgeous soulsister, @kesityu.fashion !! I've settled into my self and my work this week, in a way that only very-high-quality female cultural-interweaving can support.

We've been bonding and laughing, cooking, buying 50c garments, making epic plans for new dresses, visiting magical pastry shops in the mountains near the snow, drinking local wine and talking into the cooler evenings... Alongside another straniera-in-Guardia, who is house-sitting one of the Americans' palazzo-e-gatti, we've alchemised quite a triangulation of sharing. This is such a vital aspect of the creative cycle (that I have been parched for!!) - it's like a cauldron, or perhaps a coven: the bringing together of feminine creative power, and the building-up of our collective identity-strength-direction together.

This is why the oppression of the feminine is so very very aggressive in our modern world: because it has to make an immense effort to try and separate us, keep us in competition - whilst simultaneously, at any moment, one or two of us can open up and connect our visions and ... BOOM ... we change the subtle fabric of the world, just by sharing stories, feelings and ideas.

Now it is Monday again, and I wake up oltra-excited to make things - but equally FULL: full of new energy, feeling and possibility: there is almost too much BUT I sense too that this is the new normal: I am being challenged to accept MUCH MORE, instead of working with almost-zero resources and with just a few bits and bobs, making do and mending.

I love this stepping up of my relationship with the world! A lot of my life seems to have been incredibly effort-full just staying afloat, just scraping by, scrabbling for attention and trying to be heard about the white-noise of the mainstream.

It really feels at times, these days, like all of reality is shifting, and that the outer world FINALLY is aligning much more with my inner world; with my knowing that we are multi-dimensional beings rather than mechanical ones, the synchrony and ease of harmonious interrelationship with all things,comes beautifully....

With the company of these fine women, I'm able to feel subtley into the mastery of my decades here, as I refer to older anecdotes of when I was crashing around in chaos.... Thinking about - wow - what it really IS to have all these skills and all this confidence, accumulated through the challenges, all these decades; and to be able to take my time in each thing that I make, instead of rushing into the next thing, then the next thing, without stopping to let it all catch up with me.

My beautiful guest and I have had these priceless moments where we pick up a garment - they're all drying around the house - on washing lines and coathangers, doorknobs and chair-backs - and we keep finding another one snuggled away at the edge of somewhere, which improvises a vision of a new thing.

I feel like this is what I would have loved art school to be like: slow days of prioritising eating and resting, quiet moments looking out at nature and musing by the fire - then the clear call of an action coming from that easy knowing of just being in one's own body, one's own rhythm, one's own flowing identity and momentum.

I've thought a LOT since I began my Year Of Sewing Mastery, about how to bring more effort of organisation into the creative process - but now I see that I just need a good quality friend or two by my side, helping to bring the vision into focus!

That, and I've never had sooooo many resources: we have been discussing whether or not to buy another piece, or such an extravegant item - and each time I like to suggest erring on the side of positive action, of accumulation, of MORE - because we can, and because there is no harm in spending another 50c - and it will all add to this enormous bright palette of potentiality.

Every cashmere, angora, silk or other precious material we find, we add to the growing bulk, and we OWN it - because it is freeing up our needlework language, and bringing a glorious richness to the days we are working together...

So, the blanket coat of last week made a lurching side-turn - the sleeves went on - I was trying to let the lines of the pattern (the sort of pacman yellow circles) up the side-seams, and to have them emphasise the shoulders - but realised that the dress-form's shoulders are much wider than mine, and so with the also-much-too-long sleeves, the whole effect is very much not the elegant neatness I'd hoped for - it's temporarily more like a whacky costume than not...

I put it down for a few days, and am thinking to unpick it (the sleeve was only held in place with big messy stitches): there may even be a sort of shortcut to re-positioning the sleeves, as I can turn the seam inside out and pin it further down the sleeve/ inside the shoulder, then cut off the excess. Am not sure how the width of the sleeve can be easily altered though, without messing up the lovely alignment of patterns - but I shall try!

Okay: I am going to go and photograph some snapshots of the clothing all over the place - we got most of it washed and dried, just have to make another white washing cycle with the glorious linens we bought yesterday - mmmm; I'm so looking forward to pulling out my entire collection of vintage white pieces, and seeing what comes to my imagination!

Today is the time of taking the inspiration, the musings, the visions and sketches, the momentum, and acting on it. I love so much that I have a similar creative process to my fabulous guest, and that we can ebb and flow together in how we are mixing and matching, thinking and ruminating, and beginning another new manifestation surge... Heavenly domestic alchemy!

Love to you all, dearest sewing community folks! MANY blessings on your creativity today!!

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