Sewing: The Chimera Series

Every year we go to the film festival. And every year at least part of my reaction is, "I really need to do something creative." Not that I think about doing films--I know that films involve almost zero overlap with my skill set. Usually, I think that I should do more work on writing fiction. But then I don't. I'm not driven to write fiction; as I've said more than once, I don't want to write fiction, I want to have written it. I want that badly, but not enough, so far, to actually do much of the writing,

There's nonfiction. Like, say, this blog. I often consider the idea of writing a nonfiction book or at least longer hunks of nonfiction involving more dedication and effort, but, well, what about? The three categories that tend to come to mind are Information, Humor, or Angst. Well, yes, writing truthful personal things doesn't need to be Angst (hey, does the Dewey Decimal System have that as a category?) but that tends to be how I think if it when I imagine myself writing it.

But this year, I find myself thinking of sewing. That strikes me as alternately silly and just right. Returning to that skill set issue, sewing would address the areas that I've always ignored. The visual, the tactile, working with my hands, and the Putting Myself Out There realm. Yes, it's almost entirely self focused (I'm not interested, right now, in sewing things for other people, except maybe Himself), but that doesn't mean that the neurons that it exercises couldn't be useful in other areas.

I have a lot of sewing projects that I'm thinking about, mostly in terms of art and creation rather than having something to wear. That's not to say that they'll look like arty clothes; it's more about the motivation being creativity rather then primarily function. 

So I'm planning to, er, plan. I want to write a series of posts detailing my ideas for garments that may or may not become real. The first term that came to mind for these garments was "vaporware" the term for software or hardware that sounds like a great idea but may never happen. But that sounds both negative and too high-tech. The dictionary's last definition for chimera is "an illusion or fabrication of the mind, especially an unrealizable dream." That sounds a bit pessimistic, but I like it anyway, especially in combination with the primary, fantastical-monster definition.

So off I go. First project to follow soon.

Image: Wikimedia Commons