new year, new wardrobe

a lengthy moan about how difficult it is to be me...

Paper, scissors and thread have temporarily taken a back seat and I am currently channelling my creative energy into a well overdue wardrobe makeover. As Dolly Parton once famously observed, 'it costs a lot to look this cheap', or in my case, it takes a painfully long time trawling shops, trying on, sorting everything out into outfits, researching hairstyles and spectacle styles, altering dresses into tops, cutting out and making, crocheting accessories, and trying to find matching shoes, to look even remotely stylish.

I am not one of life's fashionistas. I do like to look nice, but to my eternal disappointment I am have never been one of those people who can artfully throw on any old thing, add a slick of cerise lipstick and go out looking stunning.

Lucky Moominmamma. All she needs is a clean apron and a smart new handbag and she's happy. In case you didn't know, I love Moominmamma. Just look at the blissed-out look on her face as she trips through the strange white flowers with her little bowl of fruit, surrounded by her friends and family...

As with pretty much everything I do, updating my wardrobe is taking endless amounts of time, energy, creativity and patience. I am absolutely hopeless at tackling more than one large job at a time. I have to throw myself at things 100% with no distractions, immersing myself totally, at the risk of obsession. It was the same with renovating my house (a pile of Period Living magazines as tall as myself, 87 tester pots of Farrow and Ball paint, uncountable pairs of paint-ruined jeans, hands the texture of sandpaper and a sad, ragged band of starving family members with no clean clothes); creating my garden (digging in manure at 10.30 at night in zero visibility apart from the outdoor security light, ransacking every skip in the area for reclaimed floor joists to use as steps, poring over thousands of gardening books, spending the housekeeping on spring bulbs, fingernails like a troll and too knackered at bedtime to do anything but collapse); my wedding (doing absolutely everything myself almost to the point of sectioning under the Mental Health Act, including the making of 80 assorted mini-tartlets in batches of four because I only had four tins the right size); and raising my children (I had to purposely starve myself of visual art, avoiding art galleries and refusing to draw anything non-child-related for several years). If I try to do more than one thing at once, I simply cannot manage it.

For some, a wardrobe makeover might seem like fun, but did I mention that I hate shopping? Oh, I love the results, the unpacking of treasures, but I can't bear the dry heat, bright lights and loud music of high street shops, the sweaty wrestling in changing rooms, the frustration of things not being available in the right size... More than an hour of this and I start to get panic attacks. Added to which, being a size 16 with a stomach the size of a novelty balloon means that I often feel more like a Master of Disguises as I desperately try to pick out things that might cover up the dodgy bits. Oh, and I can't wear tight waistbands, my feet are a funny shape, labels and lambswool make me itch, and I'm always cold, which means I have to wear more layers than normal people.

But, you're a creative type, I hear you say, why don't you make things yourself? Well believe me, I try, but I am just not a natural 3-D person. I cannot get my head around darts and shaping. If I follow a pattern I miss a bit, or my threads get tangled up in the spool holder, or I cut from the wrong side of the fabric, or any one of an endless number of other possibilities. My 'alterations' often end up padding out the fabric scrap basket, and the air is usually blue.

Nevertheless, despite all these handicaps I am persevering, and have had a great deal of success in the January sales, acquiring all sorts of delicious bargains. I have a dark brown lacy crocheted scarf on the go, I have successfully shortened a pair of not-too-unflattering jeans, and I have a simple skirt pattern ready to cut out and sew. And, I have done some research into possible hairstyles...

Did I mention that my hair is fine, flyaway, prone to kinking and frizzing in damp weather, grows oddly from the crown and was given its last cut by a trainee monkey? No? Well, perhaps I'll spare you this time...

One of these days, I might get round to doing some more art... maybe.