A Little Yarn On The Side

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.

It's the last day of March and I am still at 45 yards....because I started my new job on Tuesday! This has been the wildest thing.  My hip has gotten better, and I had started looking through jobs trying to decide what I could do that would work with my hip.  My background is outside sales and fundraising, which are both long hours and a lot of stress, and I don't think I'd be able to do that.  And not being able to sit for long periods of time rules out many things.  I had just been wondering about retail, when I saw an ad for a music store.  Did I mention that I have 4 guitars, a piano, a keyboard, and a trumpet?  So, it was just 2 weeks ago from tomorrow that I emailed my resume, had 2 interviews last week, and started Tuesday.  There is a lot to learn, and today will be my third day, and I still can't believe someone is going to pay me to talk to people about music all day.  If I could work yarn or fabric into this scenario, I might not even...

The pants are finished except for adding the elastic, which puts me over 45 yards so far for the year, and as my friend, Gaidig, pointed out, I didn't start trying to reach 200 yards until February, so being a little short this quarter is okay. The jacket is just down to attaching the sleeves and the narrow hem around the entire edge of the jacket, so it could still happen as well.  The tank top is pretty simple, and I've attached the facing (which I'd be showing you except black on black on black looks like pretty much nothing) for the neckline, but it's going a bit slower.  But I'll either get one more thing done by the end of the month or have two early projects finished next month. And without solving the question of whether my records are wrong, or if there is also a 6-yard piece of this fabric lurking somewhere in the sewing room.  Let's call it a secondary goal to know what's actually IN my fabric stash, shall we? Yesterday was Me Made Monday, an...

Thursday I did indeed finish the skirt! And for one brief, shining moment, I thought I had found a "freebie."  Last year I finished these pants,  up to the point where they would get elastic for the waist.  Since I was putting elastic in the waistband of the skirt, I put some in the pants as well, and was hoping to get to count the yardage for the pants--but I found I'd already done so.  However, I get to count it as a finished project, though as my goal for the year is 50 finished projects and I'm now at 26 with 3/4 of the year left to go, that's less exciting.  Oh well.  I do have a new skirt and a new pair of pants.  With--or in spite of--Theo's help,  I got the lining for the tank top cut out, sewed the darts and the shoulder seams,  and I am happy to say that I figured out this was not going to work at this point, rather than after sewing the pieces together at the neckline.  This is usually the sort of thing that I do...