Morning after

I'm stiff in my joints and still kind of sandy at the edges of my eyes from last night.

It wasn't until the minute hand had reached 4 and the hour hand 3 this morning that I came to my senses and made a conscious effort to crawl under the covers and get some sleep before work, maybe 4 hours if I could swing an immediate blackout. Not sure if I did, but getting up was actually less of a problem than usual.

It began at around 20 minutes to nine in the evening, when alone in my flat I'd sent a text to my under-the-weather D to wish him a good night and to get better soon. As soon as I put the phone down I was filled with a restlessness that seemed to come pummeling at me from somewhere. The corner of the living room, to be exact. It was where I'd left that huge pile of bolts and bolts of fabric; the spoils of my treasure-hunts in Toronto which have to date translated to nothing but a filled IKEA bag full of intriguing patterns and flowy textures - laying still, gathering dust.

A particularly striking bolt of violet wool was lying in a lazily folded pool underneath my favourite black wool coat - a russian-army inspired uniform jacket with silver buttons, in bobbly black wool but with a very feminine cut. It was as if they were both eyeing me lazily, like cats, wondering "Well, when are you going to get to it? We're ready when you are."

And suddenly I'd gathered the ruler, the grading curve, the pencils and chalk, the crispy roll of tracing paper and cleared  the table - there was room, there was light, there was time. And finally, too, the urge. Unrolling the paper with a crispy hiss and hearing it crackle as I was pinning it to the centre-line of my softly bumpy coat felt good. My day job doesn't afford me many tactile sensations.

After months of half-hearted and time-pressed poking at Operation "knock-off and improve my favourite coat", I was suddenly filled with a before-midnight surge of... Craftiness. It was like my hands were suddenly itching to spread out seams, pin symmetry lines, flatten tracing paper, use the tracing wheel to follow and painstakingy copy all the seams of my favourite coat and hopefully level it up when I re-create it out of the violet wool. The more I worked, folded, pinned, stretched out and smoothed, with my mug of tea ready at arm's length, the more energy I felt. A buzzing, tireless interest in what I was doing, a feeling of joy and relief that comes when you pick up a handicraft that you've left lying for so long that you're afraid that you've forgotten how to do it. Even drawing on the paper, instead of writing, felt familiar and feverishly lovely after months (years?) of only typing and dragging a mouse. I flipped through my hand-written notes on how to knock off clothing patterns (something I learned in TO) and remembered, as if scaps of my teacher's voice were stuck in my doodles, what it felt like when I learned how to do this.

I worked and worked without a break for about four hours, finally finishing the pattern pieces to make a replica of my coat. I cut out a 'muslin', or a dummy mockup, from a hideous easter-egg patterned cotton I kept for the purpose (the feeling of a brand-new, sharp pair of scissors going through crisp cotton still tingles in my palm), and pinned and STAPLED together the pieces to see what it looked like. So now. Was it anything like the original?

It was, but needed a few adjustments, I decided after pulling it on at 2:30 am and getting pricked by the pins. I glanced at the modification sketches I'd made in my notebook - when I'm done with her, this coat is going to be a little less military and a bit more ladylike... But most of all, I'm kitting her out with longer coat tails á la pirates of the Carribbean...

To be continued. Until then, operation "Ooh lala, zis belle coat violette!" Is currently best viewed hanging on a hanger on my bedroom door - complete with staples, taped-on experimental extensions, and hideously bedecked in easter eggs.

Nights like this are totally worth it. :)