I’ve been to nine sessions at the sewing group, and here’s the progress I’ve made on my uppers:
I may be done, or I may fill in the flowers with embroidery. I haven’t decided yet.
I went rogue and did two unconventional things with my uppers. First, I made different patterns on each upper. Apparently, I’ve made some kind of cultural faux pas by doing this. All the locals have told me that I’m doing it wrong, often several times. I may actually have to make duplicates of each side just to take the heat off. Second, I did a mix of embroidery and beading, whereas people generally go with one or the other. The response to this has been generally favourable.
Faye and I have been taking a local sewing class together.
The teacher is a local woman. She doesn’t lead a class like a school teacher, so much as just hangs out, answers questions and helps people with their projects. If you ask for her help with something specific, she’ll happily show you what to do by doing the first steps for you. Unfortunately, as a complete sewing novice I had no idea what to even ask for help with. Luckily after a while of sitting around awkwardly, some of the other students began chatting to me and giving me directions.
These are the uppers I’ve produced so far using “chain stitch”. I did the blue flower second once I’d gotten a bit more experience, can you tell?
The class is all women—mostly older women, and a few young girls—except for me. I’ve spoken to one other guy who went to the class last year. He said he felt discriminated against for being male. I haven’t felt that myself. In fact, I was the first to finish stitching my “uppers” (that is, the sewn pictures on the tops of gloves or slippers) and the class seemed quite excited about that.
Still, there is a much stronger sense of gender segregation here than I’m used to in the big cities. There’s men’s roles—like hunting and fishing—and women’s roles—like sewing and cooking—and not many people try to transgress them. Apparently, while “out on the land”, women who try to go hunting (instead of staying at camp and cooking) face all sorts of opprobrium. I think it’s less of a problem for men to sew, but we’ll see how it develops.
I’ve also been sewing at home in the evenings sometimes. Faye and I watch netflix while I sew and she works on our wedding scrap book.
The kids came by trick-or-treating on Friday the 28th. We weren’t aware that this was happening in advance, but fortunately we had a supply of cookies on hand. Here, trick-or-treaters don’t knock or ring the bell, they just open the door walk right into your house. This seems odd when you are used to living in big cities.
There was an adult Halloween dance on the Saturday. Around 1/4 of the town was there, and there were some good costumes. There were decorations, smoke machines, strobe lights, laser lights, and chips and pop for sale. We played games like musical chairs, pop the balloons, and hot potato. It was kind of like a junior high school dance, with most people sitting around the periphery not dancing. There were some very functional door prizes:
