Double Duty

First, apologies from the Practical Dancer. I had lofty, ambitious goals of regular posts that conveyed useful wisdom, all perfectly organized and locked down in files saved to my hard drive, perfectly edited and back up copies ready in case of the catastrophic event of a blog move.

Sigh.

The Practical Dancer has a day job. I have a "second job" of being a Dance Student, Dancer, and troupe member. I am a Wife and a Mom. I read incessantly about dance online. I sew whenever I can, and I have a house to clean, bills to pay, and cats to pet. And, I have some lingering New Year's resolution about "priorities." Like you, I have "a lot on my plate."

It is more important to me that I get these ideas out here for you than that I get them captured permanently on my overstuffed hard drive. Welcome to the new me, fast and loose, and forgive me for being gone for so long.

Now, for the post.

What I have learned in my overstuffed life is that in order to do fun things like go to workshops, the beach, or to visit family for the weekend, you have to spend a fair amount of time traveling. Time one could spend dancing or sewing. I used to just use that time to *think* about dancing or sewing, accomplishing about 2% of good in the process. Then, I learned a simple trick from the Great and Powerful Ozma -- you can, under the right circumstances, multitask! Since a fair amount of my travel is with someone else driving, I began to take projects along with me. Most of our sewing is hand work anyway. Why not knock it out when you are sitting down in a fixed environment for a while?

I made a set of gorgeous beaded sleeves on the 4 round trips to Baltimore when we were buying our boat. That would have been about 30 tedious hours if squeezed in "at home;" but, captive in the car, it helped time to fly by. (Still need to dance in those darned things.)

I almost completely made two little ruffled arm drapes on the way to and from a workshop. (Had to make the pattern and cut them out ahead of time, and do some of the finishing at home on the machine.)

And, yesterday, I worked out the pattern for appliques on a bra and got them sewed on in the 5 hours it took to go and visit family.

The hardest parts of this are 1) breaking down your projects into tasks that can be done in a car (while someone else is driving!) and that also fit the time you will spend in the car; and, 2) knocking out the pre-work and carefully packing so that you have what you need. You will get better at this with practice, as I have. Next thing you know, you will look forward to road trips and waiting rooms as time to sew.