A Little Yarn On The Side

I've now gone 50 days without buying fabric!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I've come close, I've even had fabric in an online cart, but I didn't buy!!!!!!!!! Now just 316 days left to go................

Which is, truth be told, my least-favorite holiday.  I grew up in a small town with a VERY large extended family--many of which married REALLY young (usually because of unplanned pregnancies, of course)--and if you've experienced either scenario, you'll know that either of them means there's an inexcusable number of people constantly asking you when you're going to get married, why aren't you married yet, and making sure you really felt that you were unacceptable as a single person.  It got so bad that I dated someone for more than a year without telling my mother because she wouldn't lay off the incessant nagging about being married.  So, I am understandably touchy about anything that makes unattached people feel bad.  Do you remember Valentine's Day in grade school?  We'd decorate shoe boxes or made construction paper envelopes, then we'd all go around the room and drop Valentine's into the boxes.  Every single one.  I loved that.  It didn...

Just not Andy's Valentine's Shirt...................oops. It's the 3-Hour-Shirt from McCall's--which, of course, took the better part of 2 days NOT including cutting and laying out the pattern.  I think they use football minutes.  There was a brief moment of time when I considered trying to embroider something on the pockets, but after the horror of top-stitching on corduroy for the jacket, I just wanted this DONE and off my table.  I went with the mandarin collar to make it a bit less painful.  I don't think even my nifty new point-turner could make collar points in corduroy.  Instead, I opted to liven up the shirt the easy way--with cool buttons. In my button stash, I had quite a few options, but these were short one button, so I used these instead: which add a bit of femininity to an otherwise unisex shirt, and are shank buttons which worked much better with the thicker fabric.  And....................I love this shirt.  I already ...

....but things reached a desperate point today.  I had some time for sewing today, but things had reached SUCH a point that............. I had to clean the sewing room. I know!  And perhaps I should have suggested sitting down first, but it might lessen the shock if I assure you that cleaning the sewing room isn't the same thing as the sewing room really BEING clean.  That really would be a shock.  But I did put a lot of things away, dusted a great deal, and threw away scraps of fabric, interfacing, and stabilizer.   For me, that's huge, because little bits of interfacing or stabilizer are IDEAL for buttonholes and other little projects, but 1.) there's still plenty of scraps around, and 2.) they had cat hair on them. It all started with this: which are the washed and ironed fat quarters of this little incident in August, which, again, are not part of the 18-yards end-of-the-year "hurrah" my Visa and I had.  The chef set has been used, but I'v...

This is from Dolce & Gabbana's Spring "ready to wear" collection , though where one goes dressed as a kindergarten art project is unclear.   I have decided it is all about attitude.  In my life, this would be "whoops, I forgot that last pattern piece," but in D&G's world, it is fashion.  SO, my jacket does NOT have wonky, ill-advised top-stitching--it is an artistic expression of the meanderings of our lives....especially when we encounter corduroy. I just needed a better spin doctor.

Saturday we went cross-country skiing with friends,  which we honestly weren't sure I'd ever be able to do again.  We did regular Nordic, where the motion is completely straight ahead using a track, which is actually a terrific motion for my hip, and which I've been practicing in the pool for years now in hopes that I could do this.  Even though it's February, the snow conditions were a bit more spring-like than I'd counted on, so I walked down some of the hills, but it was fantastic, all the same.  The trail is 5-6 miles, so I was exhausted by the time we got home, but my legs weren't.  In fact, Andy and I went for a 3-mile walk yesterday just to loosen up the muscles.  I had prepared myself for spending Sunday in bed on the heating pad, but I really felt fine except for being a bit sleepy as I didn't sleep very well.  So, with the money I'm saving by NOT buying from Nancy's Notions, I ordered snow shoes last week and we're going to try them ...

Well, they're done.  Mostly.  The "directions" said to topstitch 1/8-inch from the edge to close the gap,  which is REALLY fun when it involves FOUR layers of batting, and was even MORE fun to rip out.  None of the images I could find on the internet included the second row of stitching, so I don't think anyone else could make it work, either.  When the trauma has lessened, I will be slip-stitching the opening closed like I should have done in the first place.  ANYWAY, they are done, I have used my kit, and I have even packed away the pattern including my notes for how I think a sane person might have approached this little endeavor: I am very proud that there is no profanity involved.  There are no small victories with bad projects.  As nothing puts a bad project in perspective like an even worse project, I added two more wonky lines of top stitching to the corduroy jacket, did the hand stitching, then plopped it on Milo to get the ...