My MMMay'13 Pledge!

It's been utterly awesome to see so many creative peops signing up for this year's Me-Made challenge! In fact, I think we may be on track for a record number of participants, which is so damned exciting. Think of all those fabulous self-stitched items that will be getting a well-deserved airing for the duration of May, I CANNOT WAIT to see them! The signees currently range from people who have professed to have been knitting and sewing for 'a hundred years' but find they never get round to actually wearing any of their creations (hi Gill), to a signee who has yet to even make their first garment (!) (welcome and well done Flossie!) and every type of stitcher in between. If you intend to sign up, you have until midnight 30th April!

Don't worry, I hadn't forgotten to make my own MMMay'13 pledge! My, that would be embarrassing wouldn't it, if the creator/hostess of the challenge forgot to take part!? I delayed making this year's pledge because I was taking a slice of my own advice and having a good think about how to create a do-able but challenging pledge for myself this year. Here's what I've come up with...

 'I, Zoe of 'So, Zo...' blog sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '13. I endeavour to wear all me-made clothing with the exception of bras, socks, hosiery and knitwear each day for the duration of May 2013. I will also allow myself to occasionally wear second-hand jeggings but no more than 3 times a week.'

As you probably know, repeat participants of these challenges are encouraged to amp-up/alter their pledges each year to prevent their challenges from becoming easy and not a useful experience. It may seem to you that my pledge this year will result in less of a personal challenge than the pledges I've made in previous years, but believe me it'll be plenty-challenging!

In the past, I have really pushed myself to make increasingly difficult challenge pledges, like when I really restricted the use of shop-bought knitwear (I don't knit plus always feel cold, so coming up with solutions for that was most definitely a challenge!) or like last year when I gave myself the organisational headache of getting one friend or family member to also wear something I'd made for them each day.

At other times, life has thrown up things that have naturally made the challenges harder without me needing to come up with ways to do it for myself! Self-Stitched-September'10 was one such year. I'd just moved back to the UK having had to make a major wardrobe cull before dragging our belongings from Barcelona, through France, to the UK via trains, coaches and more trains. This year is firmly in the 'life making things challenging' category. Due to growing a human inside me, I'm finding that recently less and less of my wardrobe is now wearable. As garments have become too tight or short I've been putting them away in a cupboard and what is left on my clothing rail is increasingly looking like the type of vastly limited selection I was left with in September 2010! I've been making some mild-maternity friendly garments (some of which I have yet to blog) but I'm just not sure how long they will be wearable, hopefully until the end of May at least!

Anyways, if you have signed up for this year's challenge, I'm sending you a massive welcome, it's fabulous to have you on board. I'd love to head over and visit every single one of your blogs and leave a personal comment if you have one (which is of course no requirement for taking part in this challenge) but with nearly 200, there simply isn't time to do that plus eat, sleep and sew!