A Little Yarn On The Side

It's cooled off to be more like a normal spring, so today I'm wearing the new peachskin jacket:     which had to be ironed this morning.  Seriously?  I guess the paisley fabric pretty much spoiled me--it doesn't wrinkle AND doesn't pick up cat hair.  I think maybe it's a good thing that I have several more months until I can buy fabric--it might take me until then to figure out how to smuggle cat hair into the fabric store to test any and all new fabrics before buying.  And then I'll probably have a really easy time not buying fabric once they ban me from the store...........

This was an exhausting week at work.  Good, but exhausting.  I was back in the main store 2 days for piano training, and the other two days in my store, I sold two pianos--bringing me to three total.  Guess that was good training.  The fun this is, selling pianos is like working at an animal shelter.  I really  like the people who bought them, and I'm so excited about the pianos finding good homes--it's just the most fun thing ever. I didn't get a picture of the first two pianos, but this found a home on Wednesday.  Thank heavens.  This beauty only arrived in my store on Monday and I was already trying to justify two pianos in our house.  However, it is going to have three little girls to love it and I get to have it in the store for three more days before it goes to its forever home.  Win-win. Yesterday was the second full day of training on pianos, and when we took a lunch break, I was just feeling so overwhelmed that I dropped in...

....and broke my first cello string.  It's much trickier than it looked when someone else did it.  But I got the second one on without issue and even got it tuned.  And I've sold two used pianos now, which is a lot like working at an animal shelter.  Not all used pianos are capable of even being tuned, so they're hard to come by and need to go to a good home where they will be loved and taken care of--and I have to say, both pianos went to great people.  I'm really exhausted by the time I get home, but I am enjoying the new job.  And this morning I even had enough time to start sewing the new blocks together.  If I do them all in order and keep them chain pieced while ironing, I think I'll be able to put them together how I laid them out.  This is the theory, though I've noticed sewing theories tend to blow up on me a lot.  I wonder if this is what it's like to be a chemist? I was really dragging this week, so I rested all day Sunday, bu...

It's getting harder to remember what I have worn for MMM and what I haven't, but I think I haven't worn my new tunic:   which you would actually be seeing if my arms were longer.  BUT I TOOK A SELFIE!  And it wasn't just a shot up my nostrils!  On Friday I decided to cut my hair short for spring, and this is what the lady who cut it came up with.  It took a few days, but I like it.  And I'm rather proud of myself for trying a new hairstyle.  I'm not very good about that.  I'll do shorter and longer, but it's generally about the same.   And this makes exactly TWICE where a stylist's ideas for my hair actually worked.  Not bad for 45 years............

 I'm a bit sore today, so I've been resting on the heating pad and working on the Begonia Swirl:  which is REALLY close to being done.  I'm on the last row of the pattern, though there's still a really long purl row to be done, then the elastic bind-off, but I'm still really, really close to being done.  Then I'll have used one entire ball of yarn for this month.  Whew!  What will I do with all the freed up space????

My day off was mostly spent with the cats alternating custody of me:  Calisto is still new at Sewing Interference, but Theo is nothing short of a pro.  As soon as I looked like I might grab something else, he was ON IT.  I think they miss me.  I did manage to get the new blocks sorted pinned, and ready to be sewn:  I'd hoped to finish the chiffon jacket, but there's a part that isn't working, so I think I'll be hand-sewing that part into place.  Maybe I can get that done tonight or tomorrow. Eventually (because this was Theo's favorite part), I got this ready for quilting.  I think just a little stitch in the ditch is in order here--I don't want stippling to distract from how much I love this print. I even finished the day with my table mostly cleared off, so I almost started cutting out the next project, and I have this BIG container of fabrics prepped and ready to go right outside the sewing room door, but I reall...

Theo has discovered my secret morning crafting time, darn it.

While I'm struggling a lot more with not buying fabric than yarn, today marks 9 months since my last yarn purchase.  Not that I'm knitting enough to shrink my stash or anything, but in the past, being busy actually encouraged my yarn buying.  I'm not sure how that works out, but perhaps buying yarn (which does take MUCH less time than knitting) made me feel like I was knitting when I really didn't have time to do any knitting. Maybe on Friday I'll line up some traffic light knitting--I once made almost an entire baby sweater while waiting at stop lights.  Sure, it was over the course of an entire year, but it certainly beats sitting there.  I don't have to wait in traffic very often, so I think it would be more of a sock or hat sort of thing, but all knitting is good knitting.  Except maybe mohair........

So I get home from work between 6:30 and 7:00, which doesn't leave much time for crafting, especially because I'm tired and we try to get at least a one mile walk in after dinner.  Last night I was so tired that I was in bed by 9:00. Since I'm a morning person in general,  I'm getting up early so I can get my stretches and physical therapy exercises done, and if I don't take too long to get ready, I think I can squeeze a bit of crafting in before leaving for work. Today I got two more strip sets sewn, and I'm ironing a few before I need to leave.  The cats haven't yet caught on to the morning program, so it's possible I could actually get a fair bit done this way.  15 minutes without kitty help is probably as productive as one hour WITH assistance,  right?

Some of us can sew.  Some of us can take decent selfies.  I've decided I'm really better off with the former because I get clothing out of it.  However, that means that while I did figure out something to wear for Me Made Monday today,  I don't have a picture yet and I have to leave in a few minutes.  In 2007 I made the long version out of yellow gauze.  This is the skirt that prompted the pattern comment, "Cute skirt, but pattern written by sociopaths with dyslexia," so I think it was so traumatic that I never took a picture of the final skirt.  Anyway, the more accurate picture would be of me continually tripping over the blasted thing anyway, but action shots are hard for a knitting blog.  It is suddenly 75-80 degrees, which is unseasonably warm for us, so the two remaining jackets and the new yellow cardigan are sort of pointless right now, though it might cool off a bit later in the week.  That doesn't help for Me Made Mondays, but ...

So while there is still a black tank top to be finished, I started my morning with this: I had read that to preshrink precuts, one should steam them with the iron.  I have also read that wizards use owls as a postal system and that true princesses can feel a pea underneath any number of mattresses, and while I'm not exactly sure about the pea thing or whether owls really would ever carry packages, I am pretty well convinced that steaming strips doesn't really shrink them.  I could have paired the unshrunk strips with cotton batting and just hope for the best, but I have enough trouble with quilting without throwing unpredictable shrinkage into the mix.  So, I sent them through the washer and dryer in a lingerie bag, which works pretty well as long as you don't mind ironing a bunch of VERY wrinkled strips and have a pattern that doesn't require strips to be exactly 2.5-inches wide.  Oh yeah--what could possibly go wrong here.  The strips are set for a...

It's 40 degrees this morning, and will be an unseasonably warm 80 by the end of the day.  I used to fret that I didn't have and appropriate clothing for such temperature swings, but I have now decided that there IS no appropriate clothing for 40-degree swings.  For Me Made Monday I opted for the first 25-piece jacket I made:   which is, incidentally, not warm enough for morning and too warm for afternoons.  But it looks spectacular in my closet, don't you think? Tomorrow I have the day off, so I'm hoping to get some more sewing & quilting projects prepped.  I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that I haven't been sewing in the evenings after I got the jacket finished.  I need VERY simple projects when I'm tired, and while I still make an awful lot of stupid decisions, trying to lay out fabric while tired isn't one of them.  Not anymore, at least.  Or not this week. It has now been 102 days since I last bought fabric, and there w...

Okay, so new jobs interfere a LOT with sewing.  Who knew? I had the day off today, so along with a three-mile walk, making a LARGE pot of spaghetti sauce for lunches for most of the week, I finished the black jacket: which is actually much darker in real life and covered in cat hair--they DID have a lot of sewing time this week, it seems.  Another 2 and 3/8 yards out of stash, so I'm just short of 48 yards for the year.  The shirt ran into a bit of a snag, so we might need a bit of time apart--which probably works out well since I won't have another day off until Friday. That should give it plenty of time to think about what it has done.