It's written in American ...

Somewhat belatedly, Amazon have delivered my copy of "Sewing for Dummies."

My imediate reaction was "what the hell is a Notions counter?"  Images of some kind of inspirational tick box were swiftly dismissed as the next sentence mentioned "sergers" and light dawned.  The book is written in American.

I can adjust to that.  I spent a lot of my childhood in the US.  I'm versatile.  I understand that "pants" in American is "trousers" in the UK.  I no longer suffer boxer-shorts imagery when I read about the construction of pants and the selection of fabric needed for such.

I'm also retrospectively very glad indeed I didn't read this book before embarking on Antigone costume hell.  If I'd read through chapters 1-6 as recommended, I would never have impulse-bought a sewing machine at all, still less constructed 17 more or less useable sets of random pajamas.

Not that the book is bad.  Far from it.  It is very good.  Relentlessly cheery and full of useful information, it has inspired me to make a duvet cover and matching pillow cases.  It will give me the toolkit I need to make normal things.  It will educate me in the proper use of a sewing machine and offers handy tips on fabric choice, needles, corner turning and other basic mechanics.

What it won't do is tell me how to make costumes.  For that, I am turning to this:

Janet Arnold looks like a kind of goddess to me.  Her books combine beautiful illustrations with simple patterns and from these I will work to make wonders out of old curtains.  I will start simple and work up.  In theory at least.  The temptation to make a set of boot overlaps is nearly overwhelming.

The Notions counter?  It means Haberdashery.

Getting my cookery mojo back

Made a chocolate cake yesterday. 

It was (and what remains, still is) delicious.

The only reason this is important is that I needed a confidence boost. 

I enjoy cooking and I'm good at it.  So, when I made some vegetable soup last week and it turned out to be as interesting as dishwater, I panicked.  It also looked like dishwater.  This is not how it works.  I can make vegetable soup - done it many, many times with uniformly great results until this one epic failure.

Instant crash of confidence.  If I could not make vegetable soup, using the same ingredients and whatnot that I've always used, who knows what else might fail?  Possibly I would no longer be able to make cake.  This was a tormenting thought.  Cake has ALWAYS been my thing.  Failing with cake would be unthinkable.

When confronted by a crisis of this nature, I did what I always do.  I procrastinated and let my inner self nag me.  Surely it was better not to make cake than make cake and fail? 

"We're talking about cake here.  You've been making cake and cooking regularly since you were 10 years old.  And let me remind you, that is now a very long time."

"Gee.  Thanks, inner self.  You really know how to give a person a boost."

"It's not meant to give you a boost, moron.  It's a reality check.  Get that butter out of the fridge and BAKE."

My inner self has these dictatorial tendencies.  I cringed away and whimpered.  And got the butter out of the fridge and baked.  In a blur.  On auto-pilot.  In exactly the same way that I'd made the failed soup that started this whole confidence crisis.

It worked.  I feel better now.  I still don't know what went wrong with the soup, mind.

This probably has wider applications, but I'll take being able to cook again for now.