Scaredy Pants—a Finished Object(let)

The pajama bottoms are done! Woo-hoo!



I modified them only slightly by adding fullness in my fuller areas. I also chose not to add the pockets that were called for on the legs. These were mainly for decoration, placed on the outside of the legs near the knee. Personally I think pockets on nightwear are silly. Pockets on robes, essential. For facial tissue during allergy or cold and flu season, if for no other reason. But I am never going to go to bed with used Kleenex stuffed in the lower leg pocket of my pajamas. Talk about uncomfortable!

I slipped them on yesterday to do the final fit adjustment on the waistband and hemline. Eclair was sitting outside the bathroom as I exited. As soon as she saw me—and more specifically the pants—her eyes widened, and she backed away. Every step I took toward her, she took two steps back. I’m not sure if it was the dog print itself, or the red background, or that I was wearing red in pants. And red pants are not done! Definitely further experimentation is in order. Eclair has rules for living, and doesn’t deal well with change or disturbances to her reality. This could be fun!



I’ve started on the top, but I need to buy piping and fusible interfacing before I can go further.

I’m hoping that I’ll have both done to bring to knit group on Saturday. “C” requested it specifically. Don’t worry. I think it would be weird and a little wrong to bring used pajamas to knit group—even ones that are washed. So I won’t be using them until after I show them off.

Are You Wishing You Hadn’t?

I dedicated Saturday morning to analyzing my pajama pattern, and increasing the sizes (marking new cut lines) in the way I thought would give me the best fit. Then I set about laying it out. I was bound and determined that I was going to have all the pieces cut before the morning was over.

Even though last week I tried tried tried to ensure that I bought a sufficient amount of fabric, it turns out I was about 1/4 yard short. There was no way in hell that I was going to be able to cut out all the pieces—especially not all the really critical pieces—out of the yardage I had on hand.

But I recalled that there was a wee bit of my print left on the bolt after we purchased the previous week. I arrived at the store within minutes after they opened, praying that no one had bought the remainders.

I let “K” know that I needed to see her. Then I waited around about 15 minutes while she swept up glass from her rear entrance which had been smashed during an overnight break-in. The cat is fine, btw. I checked.

When she finished that, she turned her attention fully on me. Frankly I don’t know how she did it given the circumstances of her day, but I appreciate it. She remembered my angst from the previous week, and we looked over the yardage, pattern, and my temporary pins. (I had loaded EVERYTHING up in a bag to take to the store.)

Yep, I was absolutely right. I was short. Even if I took some length off the pants, which I could have done, I would not have had enough fabric. Mostly because the pattern makers have the sleeve as part of the top body, which greatly limits the amount of fiddling that can be done.

“C” from knit group arrived while we were in the midst of it all, buying more fabric for a lovely quilt that she’s started. Together we all re-measured me, and considered the pieces and fabric. “K” approved of my alternations.

That’s actually the word she used. “Approved.” I take that as a blessing.

We thought that maybe all I needed to buy of the remnant was the length of one top side. But as soon as she snipped it, “K” got this stricken look. “I just cut this.”

“Are you wishing you hadn’t?”

“Yes,” she said.

Turns out that I still would have been a bit short, but we finagled for another fifteen minutes or so, swapping pattern pieces around and re-considering the whole proposition. She ultimately cut a bit further down on the fabric, leaving a small snip in the middle of the piece I purchased. But the pattern piece that will go there will be placed far away from the snip, and therefore a non-issue.

Then we rolled everything up, I paid for my additional yard, she chastised/helpfully reminded me that grain line is parallel to the selvage and that I should under no circumstances use the doggies as a guide.

Tomorrow morning seems like an excellent day for cutting fabric, doesn’t it?

Report from the Front Lines of Sewing

Speaking plainly and simply, I have not attempted to sew a garment for fifteen to twenty years. During my stint as a pseudo seamstress, I made a number of items of my own design, with the aid of software, of course. And I took sewing classes under Linda Lee at her now-defunct Threadwear store. Under her tutelage—and Dort’s—I made some items that were so bias-heavy and high-fashion, that it would have made my much more experienced mother’s head spin.

These classes were neither easy, nor enjoyable, because I was reaching well beyond my skill levels. And most instructors can only take so much, unless they work at a South Korean driving agency, of course.

About that time I started working from home, and it became both less convenient, and less desirable, to make fashion-y clothing.

Fast forward fifteen years, and I’m rendered temporarily insane at a Columbus Day sale at Hancocks, where I decide to purchase several patterns for night and day wear. Ee-gads! What was I thinking?

With Christmas money in hand, I headed to the really great fabric store, heretofore referred to as LFS, and bought some funky fabric for new winter sleepwear. I had the wisdom to ask to speak to someone experienced in sewing clothing (as opposed to quilting which is also a strength of the store) to ensure that my choice of fabric would work for my desired application. “K” helped me. She agreed that the fabric would work, then she helped ensure that I purchased the correct amount of yardage.

Then she said something that rocked my world: Sizes on sewing patterns bear no resemblance to ready-to-wear sizes. And to prove it, she whipped out her tape measure, showing me on the chart just how far off I was in estimation. Dang it! And to make it doubly frustrating, she demonstrated that I’m one size at my shoulders, and a different size... well... everywhere else. Now I’m faced with a fit issue, and I have little to no inherent skills to solve it.

I’m hoping that the solution lies somewhere within this stack of library books.



In other news, I was forced to frog my first Can Can sleeve a few days ago. Do you recall the mistake that I made in the lace pattern that I decided wasn’t going to be noticeable and therefore wasn’t a big deal so I forged ahead anyway? And do you recall that within a row or two of that my needle broke (around the end of Repeat 1), leaving stitches hanging out in space? I did my best to capture the suckers, but I lost my double yarn overs. And something didn’t look quite right when I tried to rebuild them.

But still, I decided it wouldn’t be noticeable, and therefore wasn’t important, so I forged ahead.

A week later, I finished Repeat 2, and stood back to admire the lace. Lace which had at least two known errors in it, but no matter.

Then I saw it. Back at the needle break row, at the point where I’d attempted to rebuild my yarn overs, I had dropped a stitch. There it was, hanging out in space, clear back at row 24. Sure, I had been aware during the rebuild that I was short a stitch, but I assumed it was part of my yarn over fiasco. I simply increased by one in an inconspicuous spot, and soldiered on.

With no way to repair the lace, I actually witnessed myself tying a length of my fiber through the dropped stitch, attaching it to its neighbor. Because it wouldn’t be noticeable, right? Then I went to bed.

What came next was a scene from a movie. I spent the night tossing and turning, mulling over the issue in my head. I knew what I needed to do, but I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t dammit!


The moment before the frog.

When I got up at three, I started a pot of coffee, picked up the sleeve, and ripped before I’d had my first cup. Some things are best done when not quite awake.

Too Cool for School

I call this the ultimate travel tool by NEC: glasses that provide translations to live speech. A small projector is fitted into the glasses frame, and beams the text translation onto the retina.

It’d be like living in a foreign film with the subtitles turned on.

How cool is THAT?!

Once Again, I Scratch my Head

I stumbled across this story recently on the BBC web site. Given that it involves the conviction of 23 CIA agents, and the “extraordinary rendition” program of the post 9/11 Bush era, shouldn’t I have read about it on the CNN site first?

Except it’s not there. Not there at all. At least it wasn’t there as of 11 a.m. today.

ETA: Finally the story has appeared on CNN. Of course it was a whopping 45 minutes after I was looking for it.

It’s one of the few disappointments I have with American society that we or the media or both behave and think as though reality stops outside our borders. As though what other countries think about us and our behavior bears has little to do with who we are as a people.

And BTW, weather systems do extend north beyond our border with Canada, despite what we see on American TV.

That’s it for the soapbox. Back to work for me.

Piece on Earth

It took me about half a dozen hours spread over a few days, but I’ve finally managed to cut the last strip of fabric for the main body of my Quilting on Rails, or winter quilt, project. These seven strips will assemble in a specific sequence to create two distinct quilt blocks, set at 90° to each other.



I have fears and concerns about this project. I always do. “Did I buy sufficient fabric?” is top of the list. Remember, the original pattern is for a much smaller quilt. Yes, I’m fairly confident (but not completely confident) that I applied the correct proportion calculations to scale up the original fabric specs to my new size. But then I run into moments like this:



where the fabric is cut far from straight, and I wonder how critical this loss of fabric might be.

And no, I didn’t buy this fabric at the really great fabric store. I bought it at better-but-not-great stores. If I had bought it from the really great fabric store, the clerk would have pulled a weft thread and used the gap as a cutting line.

Given all the above, there is every possibility that I might run short on a color or two, which is part of the reason I purchased two patterns for each fabric placement. That will allow me to add an additional fabric to the mix without it being obvious.

A few days ago I completed my planogram for the topper:



According to it, I need 143 total of block A, and 119 total of block B, in order to make the quilt the correct size. The disparity in block numbers can be accounted for in the final layout. To reach my desired dimensions, it turned out that block A both began and ended the rows, and began and ended the columns.

Next step was to inventory my strips.

Block A

Fabric 1 Midnight: 76 (this fabric is also used to make Block B)

Fabric 2 Moonlight on Snow: 43

Fabric 3 Crocuses: 39

Fabric 4 Ice Storm: 43

Block B

Fabric 1 Midnight: see above

Fabric 5 Pine Needles: 42

Fabric 6 Wool Blanket: 49

Fabric 7 Crackling Fire: 50

(In case you need the stats to build your fantasy quilter team, that means I cut 342 strips of fabric from 1 1/2" wide to 2 1/4" widths, in approximately three days.) Because I need more of Block A than B, that’s a weak point. Especially with the Crocuses concept fabric.

I have one additional unknown, and that’s how many blocks I can create out of the strips once they are assembled. I could do a rough calculation based on the standard width of fabric, but I have some fabrics that are narrow than others. It’s best to hold off and exercise some patience at this point.

But strip sewing will have to wait. Once I start, it’ll be miles and miles of using one color of thread and one kind of presser foot. And I have another sewing project, using very different thread and a very different presser foot, that is destined to slip in the queue while there’s still a chance.

Here’s a hint:



More on that later.

V

Normally I shy away from sci-fi attempts on broadcast television because networks are notoriously fickle, and shows rarely last long enough to be satisfying. (Defying Gravity, anyone?) But I’ll stick my toe in the water for V. I absolutely adore Morena Baccarin, and have since I discovered her on Firefly. (A stellar series, and yet another that was felled by the network axe. BTW, anyone else catch the Halloween episode of Castle? Loved Nathan Fillion’s space cowboy costume, which was a wink and a nod to Mal, his character on Firefly.)

I only have a vague recollection of the original V when it came on in the mid-80s, so it was an eye-opening experience to catch an original episode during a V marathon on the Syfy channel yesterday.

The hair! The fashion! I can assume that the starlets were cautioned to stay away from open flames while in costume.

No question that you’ll find me in front of the television at 7 CST tonight. The only question is: is it a Can-Can series, or a Radha series?

Stay tuned!

Purge


A office relic of another era, used to sort papers prior to filing. Fifty cents OBO.

With the last piece of furniture in place, I assessed the house. Rooms, for the most part, are in darn good shape. There are a few notable exceptions (garage, conference room/place where everything office-essential is stashed, etc.), but basically things are exactly as they are and exactly as they will be.

Which leads me to a critical problem. The basement is so full of stuff that it is nearly impossible to walk. There’s not even room for more shelving. And shelving is critical.

I know that the basement situation is going to become even more dire in the twenty+ years we intend to live here. To make matters more complicated, both sets of parents are currently downsizing. Stuff has already come to us. More stuff is headed this way. A few items can go into the attic, but precious few things are safe to keep there.

Given that, I realized that I need to do a more thorough sorting and purging job than I was able to accomplish leading up to our spring garage sale. While I had promised myself that I wouldn’t have another sale, I can’t get around the fact that that is exactly what I need to do. Well, maybe I won’t have another sale, but I’m certainly going to send stuff to my folks’ for their multi-family extravaganza, held annually in March. Does that seem like a long ways off? It’s not. March is just a stone’s throw away, given the busy holiday season ahead.

This is serious, folks. If I haven’t used an item in ten years, then do I really want to hold onto it for another twenty? Probably not. Still, I have an uncanny way of getting rid of something exactly a month before I need it. It’s that kind of thinking that can get a gal into trouble.

There are a thousand things I’d rather be doing right now, with a nap top of the list. But all I have to do is remind myself that it would be nice to have a gathering of friends for a Sunday afternoon in December.

And so I soldier on.