Got all ready to go on farmers markets tour, stepped outside, it started raining.
I couldn't think of anything useful that I could do when I was hoping to drop it any minute, so I took a hem out of a strip that I tore off a king-size sheet after we bought a queen-size bed, and intend to tear into sweat rags.
A missing pair of tweezers — they were in the pen-and-pencil tray — forced a thorough cleaning of the miscellaneous drawer in the kitchen. Inspired by that, I organized the mess on the leg board that I store on the ironing board so that I can have instant access to the ironing surface.
One of the papers that I threw out identified me as a 77-year-old female, so it must have been a while since I did that. Nice to move the leg board without anything falling off.
I shortened Dave's new pants yesterday, and mentioned it in the jersey diary.
Before breakfast, I pulled elastic out of HCJ#5 and threw it into the rag bin of the laundry sorter.
9:27 AM 7/7/2023
The new old pants aren't at all comfortable. Ten percent Spandex is way too much Spandex; makes 'em feel like polyester despite being ninety percent cotton.
I should darn the old old pants so that I can wash them, but I desperately want to work on the new jersey instead.
Washing white stuff this morning, as it's a good day to dry on he line.
I've picked the ragged hems out of my default jeans and begun picking at the frayed pocket. The other broadfall pocket also needs some twill tape re-sewn on the edge.
Meanwhile, I'm wearing blue floral linen jeans that look like pajama pants. I usually pick my longest shirts to wear with them.
Perhaps I should wear my off-white damask pants on cooler days. Even when mended the denims will be stay-at-home pants, and I'm never going to find a dressmaker to make me new black jeans so that I can demote my current save-for-good pair.
I picked the rest of the side hem out of the brakerchief I tore off the strip torn off the king-size sheet to make it a queen-size sheet, and put it on.
Wound a bobbin with dark khaki, zig-zagged some slits in my dirty-work pants, and put them back on.
The "cotton" capris are ten percent spandex, which makes them feel like polyester.
Decided to run the dirty-work pants and my bike knickers through a rinse-and spin during my nap. Removing loose dirt is good enough for kneeling-in-the-garden pants, and the knickers are clean except for conspicuous smears of sunscreen.
Evening:
I sat on the porch for a while and baseball-stitched the worst split separating the neckband from my prettiest and most-comfortable dirty-work shirt. I doubt that the shirt will survive its next trip through the washing machine.
The trouble with using old clothes for dirty work is that something kept back for good wears forever, and clothing that's shabby to start with doesn't wear very long when put to hard use.
I'm not really energetic enough to search for all-cotton shirts and pants as I used to do — and all the places where I used to buy them have long since been replaced. Except for Goodwill.
My next high-priority project should be putting pockets on my scorching-weather dress so I can wear it to church. I have the outer pockets cut out and pinned to the dress, but I have realized that I need to put them over patch pockets to hold small flat things, so I have to remember where the blue-flowered linen scraps are.
No, I need plain white linen of a lighter weight, and I see some peeking out at the bottom of the linen box.
I think I'll put shirt crisp in the hems of the outer pockets, but not the inner pockets.
I sure hope that Shirt Crisp is still available when I use up the sample.
8:46 PM 7/11/2023
Wanted to sit on the porch a while, picked out enough hem to make another bra rag. Then I nicked the fabric and *tore* the rest of the hem off.
A partial answer to the low count of pins: I found five in the crotch of YD#3 when I straightened out my underpants drawer.
Five? One should suffice.
Before breakfast, I put elastic into YD#7 to have something to wear while washing clothes today. I *think* that mark is purple; I've got to re-do my resistor-code kit. At any rate, the other marks from brown through brown-red are accounted for. black, brown, red, and golden-yellow flower are on the drying rack. Black is the beta pair, and flower marks an old pair made from the same scrap as Yellow Dozen.
This evening, I straightened the drawer so I could elasticate the remaining briefs in inventory-mark order.
Make summer jersey
I started wearing it a week ago. I think I need to move the pocket dividers.
iron yet another patch on yellow linen
jersey
I ain't gonna wear that shirt no mo.
hem the two pieces cut off the body-pillow
cases.
I did that long ago, and wore one of the resulting small pillowcases out and threw it into the rag bin.
remove ribbon from new sweat
pants
They are now old sweat pants.
Find roll of crochet hooks. It's
yellow plaid.
It was exactly where it belonged, where I'd looked dozens of times, hiding under a tatting shuttle too small to conceal it.
I changed the bed today, and got around to hemming the torn edge of the top sheet so I could tuck it in as a bottom sheet.
I considered pinning it, but ironing the creases worked very well. I eyeballed a quarter inch while stretching — sometimes with the help of a corsage pin — so that it would tend to fold. It folded so evenly that I guided on the fold and the stitches were a uniform distance from the other fold.
I think I need to loosen the bobbin tension of the Necchi just a tad, but will wait until the light and my brain are brighter.
After tucking the sheet in, I tore the same width off the other sheet, but left the torn edge raw — just put it on my side of the bed, like the first one.
Later I tore the strips torn off the sheets into ten sweat rags, then resumed picking out the frayed pocket on my old black jeans. The seams I want out were sewn *very* well, with black thread on fabric that is still sorta black, and the sunlight wasn't all that bright, so I knocked off about five.
It was time to start cooking supper anyway.
My sewing goal for this week is to wear my linen dress to church next Sunday.
I've forgotten why the yellow-linen scraps were in a box by themselves. When working on the cotton jersey, I put the scraps into the yellow-linen box to keep them out of the way, but not *too* out of the way.
While looking for underpockets for the linen dress, I moved the scraps from the taxicab jersey and the curry jersey into the yellow-linen box.
There's room for another sticker on that box, and *might* be room for a sticker under the "linen bias" sticker, but I don't *think* that I'll be putting any more stuff into it.
I added a sticker to the linen box to note that some of the sheer green scraps are marked for cutting bias tape.
Under that green linen and the bat-looking "shepherd's check" print linen, it appears to all be white in assorted unlabeled fabrics, and I decided that I need a break.
While typing, I realized that there is no black linen and was freaking out over where did I put the scraps from the facings and trims of the yellow jersey when I noticed that the bias box has a sticker saying "black linen scraps". Upon noticing that all of the larger pieces have true-bias edges, I put them into the bias box. Perhaps I should move them back into the linen box and add a "black bias" sticker.
Oh, ee, ooh, ah, ah! I have some *blueprint* linen. I should raffle it off to the lacemaker's list; my heirs won't know what it is.
7:04 PM 7/16/2023
Finally broke into the side seam securing the frayed pocket on my ragged jeans.
11:27 AM 7/17/2023 — I found some puzzles while sorting the linen scraps to make small pockets to sew under the pockets I intend to sew to my linen dress.
There are two hand-embroidered (embroidery includes appliqué) guest towels that I don't remember acquiring. They can't have been made much later than the twenties.
There are also three sixteen-inch squares with the first fold of a hem basted in. Was I making handkerchiefs or dinner napkins, and why did I stop?
When and where did I acquire blueprint linen? I should raffle that off to the lace list to get it into the hands of someone who will know what it is and use it with respect.
Meanwhile (11:38 AM 7/17/2023) I should get on with making those pockets, because I want to wear the dress next Sunday.
1:36 PM 7/17/2023
The morning consisted entirely of interruptions, but I did manage to cut two 3" x 5" pieces of white linen and take the Shirt Crisp out of the box.
I'm still walking around the box of knitting tools that I knocked off the shelf while putting the linen back. I did sweep the yarn bobbins back into the pile. Time for lunch and a nap.
8:49 AM 7/18/2023
HCJ#4yellow has hit the rag bin. Hemp-cotton jersey that has been washed hundreds of times makes excellent skillet wipes.
Bedtime
I spent the rest of the day riding to Goodwill (no hot-weather dirty-work clothes), Meijer (no pants hangers, but I did find digestive biscuits), and Sweet Corn Charlie.
No interruptions, and all I did was to cut out and iron on two Shirt Crisp patches, and press the turn-unders on the pockets and the underpockets.
HCJ#6 hits the rag bin. Again, long swathes of the waist elastic were exposed, so that the pants hung down in festoons, but I had to cut holes to get the leg elastics out. I wonder why the waist casing wears so much faster than the leg casings?
⁂
In the morning I stitched the ends of the hems on the pockets and turned them right-side out.
After my nap, I pressed the hems and the turn-unders on the sides. I plan to hand-baste the turn-unders at the bottoms of the underpockets, in order to miter the corners, or maybe trim them blunt to make brushing dust out easier.
Then I gave a full fifteen seconds of heat and steam to both sides of both ends of the hems on the main pockets, because I'd noticed a loose corner on the Shirt Crisp. I scorched some pressing cloth, but not the pockets.
The bobbin tension was a tad too tight, and it was puckering the seams, so increasing the top tension did not seem like a proper correction.
The mantra is "don't mess with the bobbin tension", but I didn't appear to have any choice.
Loosening it a tad made it tighter and puckerier repeat with loosening it a tad more. Perhaps bobbins aren't "lefty loosey"? I cranked it the other way: hoo boy tight.
So I cranked it one eighty to the left: still seeing the top thread on the bottom — but, glory be, I was also seeing the bobbin thread on the top! I'm finally ready to stitch the hems, and it's only 3:17!
But I think I'll have a digestive biscuit and a cup of milk first; I sweated a lot over this.
⁂
After stitching the hems, I went out on the porch to baste the underpockets. Spouse came out and sat beside me to read, so when I finished the pockets I fetched out the jeans I'm repairing. I found a frayed edge that I could pick the twill-tape facing off, then baste the frays and baste the twill tape back on, but it started to rain just as I was about to tackle a similar job on the other pocket, so I resumed pinning the main pockets on the dress to see where they should go.
I knocked my Grabbit off the ironing board in the process, and was much alarmed. My previous Grabbit broke during such an incident, but it turned out that the fall had only popped the lid off and re-arranged the insides. I was able to deduce how the two magnets should be arranged, and the lid popped right back on.
I had no clue as to which pole was which, nor whether they should point the same way, but it seems to work the same way it did before.
⁂
I measured both pockets ten and a half inches from the armscye, but one is a more than two inches higher than the other.
Both heights seem to be acceptable. I'll measure the permanent placement from the darts — and try on again before doing anything hard to take out.
After supper. It's time to shuck some corn and put it into the steamer.
The spilled knitting tools got in my way when I was pinning the pockets, so I gathered them up and put them on the box, which is lying on the floor.
I want to unscramble things before putting them back into the box, and there's a chicken pincushion that I want to photograph.
The inner pockets are attached, and the outer pockets are pinned for final stitching, but it's time for lunch and a nap.
I also have to iron the dress before Sunday.
⁂
Sewing large pockets to a fully-assembled dress was easier than I expected.
Which is a long, long way from saying that it was easy.
Now all I have to do is to iron it, which I plan to do after I switch to to Web-reading monitor and before I read the on-line comic strips.
When dressing this morning, I put my debit card and "papers please" into the other underpocket. Had I thought of that sooner, I'd have made the pockets a tad deeper, but they are deep enough. I also would like for the offering pocket to be a tad wider; I have to push carefully to put the bill in.
After my nap, I hemmed the torn edge of the sheet. I didn't do nearly as neat a job as I did on the other sheet.
The other sheet really, really needs washing, but changing the bed is hard to work into a schedule when the sheet has to be washed, dried on the line, and put straight back onto the bed.
So I'm measuring to see how much to buy of what to make another pair of sheets.
The sheet is two yards and thirty inches wide: 102".
The sheet is two yards and twenty-seven inches long. Allowing for hems and shrinkage, I need six yards.
Went to Lowery's today. To my disappointment, none of the wide fabrics were suitable, and wide fabric is too expensive to buy "eh, it'll do".
I'd check to see what I can get at Walmart if the net weren't down. I haven't looked at Dharma lately; they might have added a product. But again, the net is down.
I should have made the underpockets on the linen dress wide enough to put my hand in. The offering isn't the only thing I ever put in it.
The narrow underpocket, for example, isn't a good place to put change for buying a sandwich. But I didn't need the change because the sandwich place on the way home from church isn't open to people with bad eyesight.
Washday is a bit late, so I put the elastic from one of the discarded HCJ briefs into YD#3 before dressing. "Before dressing" made it a bit awkward to get sunlight on the gap in the stitching while I poked the needle in! I used the fat needle for all elastics even though a bodkin would fit into the waist casing.
I trimmed the surplus elastic *after* tying the knot. Grabbing the end and the elastic with eyebrow tweezers and poking got the knot inside the casing. I'll mend the gaps tomorrow.
Bedtime: frayed pocket on everyday jeans
Upside of not being able to read my funnies. Also, I want to pick tomatoes tomorrow, and the linen pants that have been filling in have white flowers on them. (Making pants out of printed fabric was a *big* mistake!)
When it was time to re-stitch the mock-felled seam I'd picked out to free the pocket, I first basted the freed part of the pocket to the front, then basted the front to the back with the raw edges matching, then turned the pants right side out and folded on the old crease. It required a pin to keep the pocket in place where its hems crossed the seam, and I stuck two other pins to show where to start and stop.
I wonder whether I mentioned that I'd unpicked the hems, cut along the frayed edge, and basted a fold in just above the old stitching line? I sewed mystery tape on the hems before sewing mystery tape over the hem where I'd cut the frayed edge of the pocket off. That, too had been basted already.
The frayed edge wasn't on the pocket proper, but on the cutaway part of the front. I did have to re-stitch the quarter-inch twill tape facing the opening of the pocket proper, on both pockets. This was harder on the pocket that wasn't picked apart.
I wore my reserve briefs today, but YD#4 is complete, so I can dress tomorrow. I meant to finish several pairs, but DH got fed up with the state of the garage, and if I don't help clean, all my stuff will go to the landfill.
The cleaning isn't finished, so I may not get much beyond cutting five sets of elastics for YD#5–10 tomorrow. I don't know whether it's #6 or #7 that is missing; no matter what light I use to look at it, that mark is black.
When I started to mend the last gap in YD#4, I couldn't get the opening to lie flat no matter how I tried, and the elastic adamantly refused to be pushed back out of the way. I finally figured out that the elastic had somehow gone through the fabric. The fat needle I am using for a bodkin isn't sharp enough to poke a hole in fabric!
By this time, I'd worn the hole pretty big, or maybe it was big to start with — the knot had gone through that hole before.
Then I discovered that I'd done a *really* good job of tightening that knot; a square knot usually capsizes when you put tension on just one strand. This knot did turn into a clove hitch, but it was a strangle-tight clove hitch much smaller than the strand it was tied around. It finally came undone when I poked it with an old brass knitting needle I'd made of "ready to thread" brass rod back before one could buy fine knitting needles. Now that sizes smaller than two millimeters are again hard to find, I wonder whether fine brass rod is still available.
For those who came in late: "YD" stands for "yellow dozen"; the scrap of yellow jersey happened to make exactly twelve pairs of briefs. There is also a beta pair and an old pair made from the same scrap.
I get to strike "shorten Dave's new pants" off my to-do list before putting it on. He tried them on and they fit right out of the envelope.
I got the elastic box down, and decided to roll up the skein of quarter-inch elastic because it got in my way while I was getting out the cord elastic and the eighth-inch elastic. The reel was too small for a square snack bag, and just a tad too wide for the bags I keep thread in. I wound looseness from the core to the edge a couple of times, then squished a bit.
I'm almost out of the extremely-useful "pill pouch" size bags, and haven't seen them in pharmacies. I bought some 2" x 2.5" bags in Walmart's crafty-wafty department, thinking oh, boy, they don't have those obtrusive labels, but they are really 2" x 1 1/2", and the pill pouches are 3" x 2 7/8".
10:31 AM 8/8/2023
I put used cord elastic into the waists of YDgreen and YDblue. Definitely blue in the sunlight as I sat by the window putting in the elastic.
I finally found my resistor-code kit between two of the items on my to-do pile on the foot locker, but I think I'll use baby-blue Subsilk instead of opening the footlocker to get a more-suitable blue embroidery floss. I worked an orangey-yellow bar tack into the same holes as the invisible yellow bar tack, and intend to do the same with light or medium blue for the too-dark blue bar tack.
I wonder what my linen pedal pushers are doing in the pile? I don't find a clue in my to-do list.
So I shook them out: I hadn't had the wit to pin a note to them when putting them on the to-do pile.
I'm desperate for summer pants, so I tried them on. I'd sewn the right opening instead of installing hooks and eyes. O.K., I can live with that — less lumpy anyhow. Put them on: they lack about five eyes of being tight enough to stay up.
If I don't get that done by Sunday, I'm going to safety-pin them and wear them under my dress anyway.
Meanwhile — start cutting new elastic, or make lunch?
I chose lunch, but must have cut elastic sometime, as three 33" pieces were draped over the sewing machine when I looked around for something to do that I could simply drop when it was time to leave. I started installing them in YD 8, 9, and 10, and finished up after getting back from the appointment. I'm not sure which is #8 and which is #9.
On closer inspection, the one marked with sewing thread is definitely white. I think I'll sidemark the other one anyway.
Haven't mended the gaps yet; I plan to do so before measuring leg elastic for YD 5, 6, and 8 – 10.
1:31 PM 8/11/2023
YD#6 complete and in the drawer. I made an executive decision that that one was #6, and I "corrected" the blue mark that's too dark and looks black by oversewing with thread that is too pale and looks white.
I'll try to do better when I find #7.
7:46 PM 8/11/2023
At least the green mark is definitely green.
9:47 PM 8/14/2023
I count eight pairs of yellow panties on the drying rack. There are fourteen altogether: the dozen pairs, the old pair, and the beta pair.
So there should be six unfinished pairs lying around.
YD#5 is lying on the sewing machine, waiting for me to mend the gaps after installing leg elastic today. I had time to finish the job, but felt stupid and the light was poor.
Aha! there are three lying on the ironing board waiting for me to install leg elastic, not two as I'd thought. That's YD#8,9,&10. #11 is on the pattern trunk, waiting to be put into the go bag to have hand work done before sewing the casings, so it must be #12 that is in the go bag.
It all adds up.
Also felt too tired to iron the dress and two shirts that I washed today, plus a shirt that has been hanging around since the previous washday. The third shirt that was in the wash is, unironed, in the closet.
Ironed all the shirts today, but left the dress until later. That dress is a bear to iron, and I have another I can wear if it isn't done by Sunday.
Also ironed all four hems of the sheet I washed today, because I'd had to dry it in the tumble dryer. I didn't dampen the side hems.
When I put yesterday's laundry away, I wanted to put the yellow briefs in inventory-mark order, to even out the wear, and found that I needed #5, so I finished it.
While I was at the machine, I repaired the two breaks in the waist casing of the white front, black back pair. The stitching broke only in the black half. I used the yellow thread on the machine, since it wasn't any more contrast that the white thread it had been sewn with in the first place.
HCJ#7 was still pants when it came out of the washer, and I'm wearing them today, but I think I'll put them in the rag bin of the laundry sorter when I undress tonight. There's no wear except at the waist casing, but I'm tired of them.
Tomorrow I'm scheduled to ride my bike to a grocery where I'll buy a chicken to make a fancy dinner that evening, so I doubt that there will be time for sewing.
While dressing, I realized that I need to add "make do rag" to my list of things to do. The expensively-cheap linen I made my current do rag of is wearing out.
I appear to have thinking about writing, then failing to actually do it. Haven't been sewing *much*.
This afternoon I trimmed the threads on YD#8, #9, and #10 and put them into the drawer. That completes that; I'm saving #11 and #12 for the go bag — and my next appointment doesn't allow any time for sewing.
But I should organize the go-bag in case of ambulance.
Oops. In organizing my go-bag for tomorrow's trip, I picked up #12 intending to add it to the go bag in case I completed the hand work on #11 — and discovered that it was #11, with all the hand work completed. Too late to sew today, so I draped it over the sewing machine.
Now if only I could find the copy of Analog with a half-read story by Asaro in it. There are a *lot* of Analogs around here! I'd been hoping that I put it into the go bag yesterday, but no soap.
"The Space-Time Pool" turned up when I looked under a sheet of paper lying on the ironing board.
I hope Asaro wrote another story in this universe.
Tighten elastic in white linen
drawers
I couldn't figure out how I got the elastic in. Perhaps I put it in before sewing down the free edge of the bias binding. Appears to have been a repair of a worn waist casing.
So I pulled the elastic out where one of the two rows of stitches had broken, which by good luck was close to the splice in the elastic. I cut out an inch and a half, and overlapped by about half an inch sewing the ends together.
The pale yellow thread on the sewing machine is much brighter on white than I expected, but this *is* underwear, and I'll be in no doubt as to which stitches need to be taken out if I need to fiddle with the elastic again.
I tucked in a sprout on the hooked rug yesterday, and this evening I'm about to take the pillow cover that I washed today out onto the porch and baste it back together. It will be easy because all but one of the snaps that held the cover on when this was a throw pillow still work. I plan to leave a large knot on the outside for the next time I wash the pillow cover.
It's a feather pillow, and I've been using it on the bed. I probably mentioned making new cases for it out of the off-cuts of making body pillow cases into king-size pillow cases. One of those is worn out; I'll need to make a couple more soon.
Pause to update to-do list.
One of the finds at Aldi last Friday was five thirty by thirty-inch "flour sack" towels for $4.99. Thinking that they might be good underlining, I bought a packet and put it on the rag shelf of the linen cupboard.
Only now do I notice that the fabric is tracked — what crepe is called when it's not done on purpose. That makes it better for towels, not so good for underlining.
One reason that I bought it was that it was cheap.
I remember when a dollar a yard was expensive. My calculator makes this five-dollar bundle a tad under three and a half square yards.
At least I won't need to zig-zag the ends when I wash the fabric.
Today I bought six XL lace bras, three white and three black. That will allow me to save my four custom linen bras for times when I need to be particularly comfortable.
I plugged in the sewing machine!
Dave's new pants were delivered yesterday, and I finished hemming them up today. Had a terrible time getting the machine to work; finally noticed that the top tension had somehow been set to zero.
Looked through my two bags of garage-sale thread and found a spool of spun polyester that I thought matched the charcoal gray. When I sat down in sunlight to thread the machine, it was navy blue — but it matched the fabric better than black or medium-dark gray, so I used it.
Now there's another ziplock in the synthetic-thread drawer.
I secured the first fold of the hem with right-angle pins so that I could get the pins out after making the second fold.
Later, I pulled each pin back a bit, then pushed the point through to the right side so that I could *make* the second fold.
For each fold (false starts and fiddling omitted) I measured, stuck in a white pin, eyeballed around sticking red-head pins, then measured around, pulling two pins each time the next pin was a trifle off.
And I measured a third time after switching the right-angle pins of the second fold to seamline pins.
While the iron was hot to press the hem after stitching, I ironed a bit of selvage from very-cheap interfacing to a pattern that had torn off its brad, punched a new hole, and hung it back up. I'm not sure I hung it on the brad it tore off of. It's way past time to take all the patterns off the wall and look at them.
I'm using "cheap" in the quality sense; I've no idea what I paid for it.
Sometimes one *wants* thin and sleazy, but I'm a bit baffled by people who pay a lot for easily-broken basting thread. It must be hard to get such stuff out without leaving bits behind, and thread is easy to cut.
A bit of sewing: It's wash day, and I'd found a wad of dusty masks while tidying the bicycle stuff. I didn't want the strings tied around the other items in the washer, so I basted the masks into a pillow case. Without a thimble, because sewing while standing up caused it to keep falling off my finger, and the much-washed madras fabric is very soft.
I threaded the needle without cutting off from the spool, sewed the pillow case closed, knotted the end of the thread, pulled the excess in, then had another thought and knotted *both* ends and centered the thread with a couple of inches dangling at each end.
When I took the case out of the washer, I pulled on one of the ends until it broke, then pulled the other end out with no fuss or feeling around for the knot.
Why didn't I think of this decades ago.
When I knot the end of a thread, it's always basting or a knot that I meant to cut off, so I always want a big messy knot that's easy to see. I wonder whether I can still tie the small, neat knot that I put into the end of a thread when I thought that a knot could secure a thread that was subject to washing and wear?
I don't think I'll try.
More tidy-up sewing. While straightening up the four-wheel walker, I reflected that I'm not going to wear my old hot-weather dirty-work pants any more this summer. They are far from worth mending, but I don't want to throw them out when I have only one other pair that I can garden in when the sun is hot, so I darned them enough to survive a trip through the washing machine. There are lots of slits in the worn leg, but I don't think any of them can propagate very far.
I used dark-kakhi thread. I should photograph that bag to illustrate leaving the sales slip with the thread, so that when the thread is on the machine I'll know what thread the empty bag is for.
Together with the kakhi thread to illustrate keeping a needle in the bag with the thread.
Yesterday I picked out the misplaced bar tack and repaired the pocket divider in my woven-cotton jersey.
I used yellow thread and worked from the inside so that the back stitches wouldn't come all the way through the black-faced elastic casing, then worked a bar tack at the top in black "quilting" thread.
Once off the casing, I switched to running back stitch down the crease to the old stitching. When I turned to the right side to finish off, I found that the two rows were somehow an eighth of an inch apart on this side. Just inspected it again, and I still don't know what's going on.
I cut the thread and hung up the jersey. I wore it this morning for a quick trip to dump ill-fitting clothes at the thrift shop, pick up lunch at the sandwich shop, and buy Walgreen's out of AREDS 2 capsules. That's a three-month supply, so I'm not worried about them still being out when I need more.
Anyhow, the pocket seems to work, so I won't worry about the space-time anomaly.
Finally sewed the extra hook on my linen-cotton pedal pushers. Now the pocket is supported on both sides.
While I had the stuff out, I marked my default jeans for sewing on six more eyes, but after I'd sewn one, the light was too faded to continue, so I stuffed everything I needed into the back pockets of the jeans and hung the jeans back in the closet. I had put the eyes into the fuzzy-toothpick case of straight pins to keep them from getting lost, so I put it back into the kit and put the kit into the jeans pocket. But the kit has no thimble; that one is missing, so I used one from the sewing-machine drawer, and put it back into the drawer. I carefully put it into my shirt pocket whenever it was not on my finger so it wouldn't wander off too.
I think the thimble that belongs in the footlocker/futon-arm kit got into one of the kits in my go bag. Along with the thimble that belongs on the magnetic pincushion.
I've finally found a use for the teeny ziplock bags I bought thinking they were pill-pouch size. When I was putting things away, the bobbin of polyester upholstery thread refused to stay wound long enough for me to let go of it. I thought of a pill pouch, then remembered the teeny bags: perfect! No excess plastic, and no unwanted writing.
The pill pouch my wax was in looked ratty, so I fetched another teeny bag. The bag won't quite close, but it closes enough to keep the wax from falling out, so I used it anyway.
Just checked the arm of the futon: I have bigger pieces of wax, but none that are smaller. Perhaps I'll cut one of the thimble-shaped pieces in half.
Specifically, the one in the footlocker/futon-arm kit.
So I got up and did it. My Exacto knife proved to be the proper too.
But it was more like cutting a slice off one side than cutting in half, and the wax sticks to the bag when I'm putting it in or taking it out. I have a feeling that I'm going to revert to excess plastic.
I weigh 139.8 pounds, and need to sew one more eye on my linen-cotton pedal pushers.
Pocket divider quilting-cotton
jersey
Heavens! I went looking for my resistor-code kit and found it exactly where it belongs!
⁂
Took the pile of mending and some other stuff off the foot locker so I could get at my box of floss. I found a lot of goodies I'd forgotten about, including a ziplock of name tags, which I transferred to the drawer under the Necchi.
I thought for a moment that I had no violet floss — most of what's still in the floss box is brown — but then I turned the snack bag of pink floss over and found that there were two cards in the bag. I rather suspect that it belongs in the backpack of embroidery-gig supplies, but I put it back after removing a two-strand piece of light violet.
The pink card looked exactly the same, with a long (presumed six-strand) piece wound lengthwise and about two needlefuls of two-strand wound crosswise over it. I wonder what I'd been up to.
⁂
Too-dark bar tack oversewn and YD#7 back in the drawer. I cut the violet thread in half, wound the pieces side-by-side, then found the two pieces of purple and wound them next to those.
And the resistor-code kit is back in the tray of the pattern trunk.
I should find a darker gray floss.
Sewed two more eyes on the everyday pants yesterday, wore them today regretting the three I didn't sew on. After I do sew them, I think I should move the inner hook toward the inner side of the pocket.
Still need another eye on my house pants.
Washed clothes today. There were five coarse-muslin sweat rags in the load, and none in the drawer. I'm sure I made an even number, so I checked the inventory marks: red, orange, yellow, green, and violet. So brown and blue are missing, and if there are an even number, there must be a gray.
Still haven't sewn the extra eyes on my pants, but I'm getting more motivated every time I put them on.
I dumped the out-of-season drawer yesterday, and among the do-rags was the muslin cap I made for Back to the Days. I tried it on, and found that it fits under my helmet and covers as much territory as a scarf, without thick tails wrapped around my neck. I may put the yellow do rag away for the winter Real Soon.
Supposed to rain on Saturday, when I'd planned a three-loop ride to hit all the farmers' markets, the Legion pork-chop sale, and the Lions craft fair.
Darn Alpaca tights
I wore my strongest magnifiers and kept moving my chair to stay in the sun, but darning black medici on black alpaca was often by guess and by golly. I turned the tights inside out afterward, and wove medici back and forth through the weak spots.
Now I'd better find the silk tights I plan to wear under them. And put elastic in the ankles of the nylon wind pants I'll probably wear over them for fear of snagging tights that would cost a thousand 1970 dollars to replace.
And hope for clean roads when it's cold enough to wear them.
I was surprised that the remaining Medici in the chocolate-truffle tin was a needleful more than enough to do the job.
I wound off eight more needlefuls and put them in the three pill pouches that were in the tin. Had to pick a lot of dust and cobwebs off the skein of Medici. I was careful that the two threads in each needleful ran in the same direction. I used the needleful that I was about to use to weave on the wrong side to measure them, that being easier than using the yardstick to measure twenty-nine inches. I quickly realized that I should put the measuring needleful back on the table before I broke the thread where my thumbnail pressed it.
Then I took the far end of the broken-off thread, matched it to the end still attached to the skein, and used it for a measure, since two strands of Medici are about right for most darning jobs. Two strands are flatter than one, so I'm glad that I stocked up on Medici before it was discontinued.
Sometime or another I cow-hitched a small gold-color D ring to each end of the skein. That makes it easy to find an end. But it's a bit awkward to get both ends to dangle down when I hang it on the shelf bracket.
I have three spare brackets for my "standard" shelves (the supports for the brackets that hold the shelves are called "standards"), which I use to hang tape measures, needles, mardi-gras beads, a whisk broom, and the small skein of black Medici.
Discovered a hole in a pocket of the shirt I'm wearing; added it to the to-do list. The thread on the Necchi is the darker kakhi; I'm tempted to use it anyway.
11:06 AM 10/9/2023
When I emptied the off-season drawer, I found a quick-and-dirty muslin cap I'd made for a Back to the Days of Kosciusko festival, and it is perfect under my helmet: it covers more territory than a do rag, but doesn't have long tails to wrap around my neck. I'm pretty sure I didn't take notes while making it and I've forgotten where I got the pattern, but I think I can make a pattern by measuring it.
This morning's first chore is to pick off the quarter-inch bonnet strings and sew on half-inch tape. I'm tempted to use the soft thick unbleached tape; it might fade to match the cap with repeated washing. But cold-weather head gear doesn't get washed frequently.
11:33 AM 10/9/2023
So I laid out everything in the tapes box on top of the freezer, selected a reel of half-inch twill tape, cut two pieces extra long because the reel hadn't been boiled, put everything away, in the process pinned the two cut pieces to the cap and realized that the unbleached tape was a better match to the color, cut one unbleached tape to match the previously-cut tapes, realized that *that* tape *had* been boiled, cut the second tape to match the first, put the cut tapes into the bag with the reel they had been cut from, put everything away, and I'm ready to start picking the old tapes off.
I'd better put on a sweat shirt; it's 51F on the porch. Well, fifty-one at the airport, but it can't be much warmer here.
1:42 PM 10/9/2023
I think the length of the ties is just right.
I tried to take a picture, but the three that didn't miss the ties entirely were shots up my nose.
I'll have to check whether my phone does selfies.
4:07 PM 10/9/2023
I'll wager it does, but the so-called manual won't give me a clue.
Washday. I plan to inspect the briefs when they are dry, because at least two have broken stitches. After starting the washer, I inspected YD#yellow and YD#green, which were still in the drawer. The *fabric* was broken for a tad under half a centimeter in the front seam of green. Perhaps a flaw in the goods, more likely a broken thread while sewing.
I took YD#12 out of my go bag and took the yellow sewing kit out of the yellow newspaper sleeve. All yellow; the scissors are yellow, the thimble is brass, and the wool with the needles is a scrap from my jacket-style cycling jersey.
Both the needles in the wool were threaded; one had been left threaded to make it easier to pull out of the wool, the long-eyed needle had enough thread to baseball-stitch the hole and a lot left over. I secured the ends of the thread by overcasting for half an inch on each side of the hole.
The cushions on the chairs on the porch weren't as dry as I thought they were, but the one I sat in wasn't wet enough to dampen all the way through my sweat pants, and they dried almost instantly when I stood up.
I brought in the cushion that I didn't blot.
When I'd put everything away, I spent a couple of minutes doing a job that has been pending for months.
Yea, many months ago, I noticed mold spots on my dancing boots, brought them into the laundry closet, and failed to find the saddle soap. It probably dried up and got thrown out ten or twenty years ago.
So I dropped the boots and their box into the laundry bin and wrote "saddle soap" on my shopping list. To my surprise, none of the stores that still sell shoe polish sell saddle soap. Eventually I learned that stockers take the "saddle" in "saddle soap" literally, and put it in the huge-pet department.
I don't get to horse-supply stores very often at the best of times, and my travels have been sharply curtailed for months, but a few weeks ago I found a spray can of "Leather, Vinyl & More..." cleaner while sorting the shelves, and threw it into the bin with the boots.
After putting the darning tools away, I checked on the washer, and there was nothing in the laundry bin but the shoes and cleaner and I hadn't selected the next item on my agenda.
So I finally read the instructions, then squirted some on a moldy area, mopped it up with a paper towel, then used the wet towel to clean the rest of the shoe.
But they aren't put away because I want them to air a while before I put the lid on the box.
⁂
broken stitch YD#10
YD#Black: broken stitches on beta
britches
Nope, not done, but I examined the slightly-damp briefs and draped #10, beta, and either brown or purple over the sewing machine to finish drying.
I must review and correct the inventory marks while I have them all clean except the pair that I'm wearing.
Tomorrow is for shopping.
Today's ride was rained out, but I didn't do anything else either. I did fiddle with the project blogs for the pink jersey and the 18th-Century cap. Created a link to this blog from ROUGH063.HTM mostly from memory, and it worked the first time.
4:52 PM 10/14/2023
Leaky pocket on striped work
shirt
Hardly seemed worth changing the thread on the sewing machine. I also found a bit of hem that had come loose and re-stitched it.
This shirt isn't up to much more wear; I must get around to sewing timer pockets onto other shirts soon. Real Soon Now.
Frayed spot on hem of insulated
jeans Said jeans were in a batch
of too-big pants I took to a charity shop a few
weeks ago.
shorten parlor drape I've
forgotten why I wanted to do that.
Notes taken yesterday:
10:47 AM 10/20/2023 YD#10 repaired and in the
drawer
There were a couple of needle-cut holes; I
baseball-stitched one of them.
11:19 AM 10/20/2023 Beta britches repaired and in
the drawer.
This time I backstitched both sides at once,
turning the work over at every stitch to see that
the other side was caught.
There were rather a lot of needle-cut holes.
I stab-stitched the baseball stitches, turning the
work over to bring the needle back up.
12:16 PM 10/20/2023 YD#1 repaired and the tools
put away. I put the shard of beeswax I
shaved off the one in the futon/footlocker sewing
kit into the bag with the yellow thread.
I was interrupted a few times, twice by spam
calls.
/notes
On Monday, I did a lot of thinking about cutting bras from the scraps of my proposed pink jersey.
On Tuesday, I selected a brown floss to mark a pair of Fox River socks as mates, then added the needleful to my resistor-code kit — at which time I noticed that although it's impossible to mistake for black, it's very little different from orange.
And could be seen as gold.
⁂
The conclusion was that three bras would take four yards — and the fabric isn't eight yards long.
After unrolling the fabric to measure it, I set up the Necchi with basting thread to zig-zag the ends, but have not yet done so.
⁂
Today was washday. While waiting for the washer, I zig-zagged both ends of the pink fabric and put it into the laundry bin. I'm not in a rush to wash it, because I don't know where to put it. If I hang it, it might stretch, if I fold it it will develop pressed-in creases, if I put it back on the roller, the center crease will reappear.
Just checked a longer cardboard core from the closet: only 38" long, and the cloth will be 57".
The broom handle the roll used to hang on is 48".
When I took the bonnet strings I picked off the cap off the line, I put them in my pocket, but only one string was in the pocket when I wanted to put them on the ironing board. Something so small will never be seen again, but least the value is also very small.
I will have to wash the fabric soon, as it completely fills the laundry hamper.
So I got up to put it in to soak overnight.
And the pink fabric is on the top shelf of the sewing-room closet.
There was a rather exciting interruption when I was halfway through folding it, but that account is in the Thursday Banner.
Yesterday I inspected all the YD inventory marks, and concluded that only the gray and the blue needed to be done over. The brown looks black, but there is no black bar tack that's all by itself. I'll have to find a proper brown when I get around to finishing YD#11. (There is lots of brown floss in the footlocker.)
I have scads of sewing threads, plus two bags of unsorted threads that I bought at garage sales, and not one is gray. I knew that I wouldn't buy gray for the embroidery gig, but thought that it would be easy to find a clear blue.
This morning I finally cleared a space for the KikStep and got the box down. There *was* a gray, but no light blue. But one blue is at least lighter than what was on the mark — and the silver gray is a perfect match for the mark on YD#8. I oversewed it anyhow, as a larger mark will look grayer.
Pause to put "gray floss" on my shopping list.
⁂
elastic on pink garden sweat
shirt
The pink shirt was in the load of wash, and came out surprisingly clean. After my nap, I sat on the porch to undo the ends of the two rows of straight stitch and withdraw the bad elastic.
My arm measures eight inches at the bottom of the sleeve. I figure to cut eight inches and let the seam make negative ease.
I found a pair of garters in the scraps-of-quarterinch-elastic bag, gave them an experimental stretch, put the safety pins into the safety-pin compartment of the desk organizer (It's labeled "stamps", and threw the elastic out.
I can't remember when I last needed garters.
I needed to wear the garden sweatshirt today, so I got around to zig-zagging over the raw edges of the elastic casings. While wondering which thread to use, I remembered winding the weathered layer off a spool of Belding Cortecelli cotton when I wound the basting bobbin, so I got that out and wound a Necchi bobbin.
The free arm of the Necchi made this job *much* easier!
This morning, I needed a job that I could walk away from without even putting it down, so I began to hem up my black print skirt.
I tried it on and decided to hem up an inch and a half instead of one, and use long stitches in case that wasn't enough.
The current hem is five inches wide, so I marked eight inches from the bottom. (The extra three inches will be folded in half.)
Since I'm marking on the wrong side, I thought I could use my blue wash-out marker, but it doesn't show nearly as well as my white Nonce pencil.
I hadn't gotten very far into the marking when the emergency did indeed happen, but I finished after sunset this evening. Picking the old hem out is a job for daylight, not to mention that it's almost bedtime and I haven't read my funnies yet.
And daylight may be gone before I recover from tomorrow's chili cookoff.
Well, that's queer. While brushing lint out of the crease of the opened hem, I noticed a very light streak across one of the breadths, lined up perfectly with the threads where-ever slubs let me see where the threads were. And now that I mention it, slubs are much more common exactly along the edges of the streak, particularly the upper, more-distinct edge. It's two and a half inches wide, and the upper edge is about a quarter inch below the crease I brushed lint out of. The lower edge is a tad less than an eighth of an inch below the crease of the first hem. (I'm describing the skirt with the hem unfolded as it is now; before I picked the hem out, both edges were up.)
I've shortened this skirt an inch twice before, so there is a third crease in the middle of the light streak.
I don't remember seeing this streak when making the skirt, nor yet when I shortened it — twice! — but it doesn't show in the slightest on the right side, so I may have dismissed it as of no importance.
After half an hour of nap after the party, I still wasn't asleep, so I went out on the porch and picked out the old hem. It was surprisingly easy. The stitches weren't particularly long, but they weren't particularly short either.
Now to pin — I might up and get this job finished today.
Or I might prefer to visit with guests.
10:11
All pinned, with an absurd number of pins because I am nervously awaiting a phone call and didn't want to expend CPU cycles on deciding whether or not a given pin was necessary.
12:13
Assorted interruptions dealt with, hem stitched, three creases pressed out and one crease pressed in, skirt back in closet.
I dealt with the surplus of pins by taking out two at a time. After much fiddling, found that setting the needle in the middle position and guiding the fold of the hem close to, but not quite at, the left side of the opening in the zig-zag foot, worked best.
I hope that I don't also need to take up the slip. If I do, I can wear the short slip on Sunday. I'll be wearing tights, after all, so I won't be cold.
I compared the flowered skirt to the black one before picking the hem out, and it was exactly as long. I'm going to wear the black one a few times before I shorten it. I won't want it until the Sunday before Christmas.
hem up black print skirt one inch
I've been wearing the skirt every Sunday. Bit awkward on the flatfoot bike today. Rode it up the hill because I was carrying a bag of canned goods, was glad of it coming down because didn't want to spend a lot time getting snowed on, and my footwear was not appropriate for snow.
I got the oversandals down, and I *can* wear them over the sandals I wore today, but it would be better to carry the thin sandals in my pocket.
I bought two pairs of "merino wool" socks yesterday. (I do wish people understood that "finest" is not always "best", but I guess that I have to accept that stocking wool is extinct.) They are only a third wool, and they are a quarter acrylic, almost a quarter nylon, and the rest rayon and Elastane.
I just tried one on — a tad too long, but no more than can be stroked in. I can wear them as skin layer, and the length *might* make them work as middle layer, but they kind of overdo the elastane around the instep. I think this is supposed to be "support".
Turned them inside out, and there is a wide fringe at the edges of each color patch. I wonder whether it's topologically possible for knitting machines to use Mary Thomas's "festive knitting" trick?
I also wonder what happened to knitting socks all in one piece, without improbable patches? At least these don't have a knitted-in billboard, just stripes and patches. And two of the patches are the heel and the toe. Which match.
I've worked on Dave's watch cap a few times. One more darn, and I'm going to give it to him and start on my banana-wool jersey, which I wore yesterday. There's only a needleful or two of medici in the "wool jersey" antacid box, but it looks as though most of the mending will be done with silk, so I won't look out more just yet.
darn Dave's watch cap
Put the final stitch in the watchcap this morning, and hung it on his hat hook.
I wore black velvet sweat pants over my tights yesterday, and hung them up with my hat and scarf. No coat. Once home, I hung the sweat pants and my tights on the Sunday-clothing section of the closet rod. I think tights will suffice when I walk. (I hike up my skirts when riding the flatfoot bike.)
clean Capezio
All the shoes needed was a quick swipe with a wet rag.
On Thursday, I noticed that the waist elastic of YD#7 had come untied; when I retied it on Friday, I noticed four places where the waist-casing stitches had broken and come undone. It's still draped over the sewing machine waiting for me to change the thread.
Washday. My older pillow case was worn through close to the bottom seam, so I changed from black thread to yellow, sewed across, and tore off the worn part before starting the washer.
Of course it wasn't that simple. Went to the cotton-thread drawer in the treadle, could find only the brighter yellow and a bag containing two receipts (I threw out the more-worn one), a needle stuck into yellow wool, and a spool of the lighter yellow that was too near empty to thread into a sewing machine.
It didn't take too long to remember that I'd put the lighter yellow into a newspaper sleeve with YD#12. But why the machine spool rather than the hand-sewing spool? I consolidated the two bags, which put two needle swatches in the kit. (It also contains SuperSnips, a thimble, and a fragment of beeswax.) I think that there is room to add the machine spool and the bobbin.
Then I thought I could guide on the print. It is too faded and indistinct once under the foot, and I'd picked a path that went too near the hole, so I drew a line with my air-erasable marker and started over. This faded remarkably fast. Back when it was possible to find information on the Web, I spent a few hours learning that air-erasable markers are PH indicators in slightly-basic ink, which is slowly neutralized by the carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) in the air. The cloth must be ever so slightly acid, perhaps from my sweat.
Even tearing wasn't simple, as the fabric is so worn that it wanted to tear in all directions; I ended up cutting some of it with scissors.
And there is a worn spot in the unfaded part of the case. High time I got on with making a new one. Two new ones, since the other small pillowcase is one of two bits I cut off body-pillow cases to make king-size cases, and the other of the pair is long gone.
I've sewn the loose corner on the phone pocket of the banana wool jersey, and stitched down the flat fell of the shoulder seams. I think that all that remains is the divider between the handkerchief pocket and the wallet pocket.
I was baffled by a patch of fine darning on the back until I held it up to the light. Appears to be moth damage.
Oops! I forgot to mend YD#7 and put it into the wash. It wouldn't have taken long, and my white poly bra would have benefitted from a longer soak in strong detergent.
My warmer pair of yellow gloves, still wet, are now on the to-be-darned table. I would much rather replace them, but finding simple gloves is rare; being fussy about the color is not available. I do have two pairs of white gloves, one of them as yet unworn.
I used red sewing thread to put a bar tack on the back of each new glove, then checked: they fit tightly enough that I can wear the old white gloves over them.
Which I will do tomorrow; I must locate my split mittens Real Soon Now.
⁂
assorted mending banana wool
jersey There are still two small holes,
but felted wool isn't going to run or ravel, and I
couldn't decide whether to use Medici, darning
silk, or buttonhole silk.
YD#7 mended and in the laundry bin, YD#8 mended and in the drawer. I didn't feel sufficiently intelligent to sew the casings on YD#11.
I also took a few stitches in my yellow gloves before the light got too dim to see what I was doing.
Not yet recovered from not sleeping on the night between Wednesday and Thursday.
Left glove darned and back on the pile of gloves.
I should have darned the right glove first and thrown the left glove away.
snap on black Sunday shirt
Just under the wire; I need to wear that shirt in the morning. The sun hadn't set, but I had to use a lamp, and sewing black-on-black by artificial light isn't easy.
Finally finished pinning the casings on YD#11, and the machine is set up with yellow thread, but I think I'll wait until after my nap to do things that aren't easy to undo.
Too busy yesterday (the feast was delicious), but I stitched the casings this afternoon. I hope to put elastic in . . . well, why not now?
⁂
That took longer than expected, but YD#11 is in the go bag, together with a spool of brown thread for making the inventory mark. I also intend to do prophylactic mending on the crotch-back seam where a stitch in the center tends to break. I probably won't mend the gaps where the elastics went in by hand. If I finish #11, there is still some hand work on #12.
Assuming that this time the surgery actually happens and we don't get right back into the car and go home again.
There being only a needleful or three on the spool in the go bag, I added the spool on the machine to the kit — and it, too, is nearly empty. May be a trip to Lowery's in my future — or I may use the darker yellow in the needle when I finish YD*12. (I *think* there is plenty of the lighter yellow on the bobbin.)
Or there just might be enough left on the spool.
Jeanie is coming along tomorrow, and bringing her knitting bag, so I added a pair of black socks I haven't been taking places for fear of bad light. (Yellow on yellow is easy!) Perhaps I should take out the hardback book.
Now I'm possessed of fear that my magnifying glasses are not in my little bag of stuff, but that bag is on the very bottom.
So I checked, and almost didn't get the packet of nose tissue back into the bag. Bag, coat, cane, all near the door, hat and scarf in the bag, papers in folder in side pocket of bag. . .
On to Part One of 2024
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