Sunday snippets

in which our plucky heroine has a productive and pleasant weekend with Heather, Brandon, and Young Anna...

They arrived late on Friday night, but Saturday was sunny, so perfect for various yard related chores. As they had come down here with the newly acquired trailer, it was possible for Brandon to get more trailer experience as we took all the assorted salvaged fencing and wire crap from the backyard to the transfer station recycling over in NW, (since the local recycling station closed down). While on the way home from there, a stop at Linnton Feed and Seed meant that new red wigglers for the worm bin were also acquired. While he and I were off doing that, Heather and Anna pulled gobs of weeds and cleared away the south side yard debris.

After lunch, a hole was dug near the south edge of the front yard, in the sunny spot carefully away from water lines, pavement, and house foundations. We removed the ornamental plum sapling in favor of making a new home for my fig trees.

I think that they will be much happier in the ground than in pots in the driveway, and my hope is that they will no longer need daily watering in the summertime, and that they will also enjoy the more abundant light. Now I just need to study up about how best to prune them to encourage a larger first crop...

Saturday night there were some misadventures in restaurant poor service*, but eventually we ended up at Wong's King for Chinese food, which was delicious, and piping hot!

Sunday was a trip to Costco, and some planning for what various kinds of SCA sewing projects will need to happen before camping season starts up again. It will be Brandon's first year of doing SCA things, so he needs some basic kit, Heather needs a warm wool hat, her daughter Genevieve needs some new clothing because tweens keep growing, and I lent young Anna a Viking Age apron-dress, in case she wants to try out the eventing along with them. I have a pile of wool and linen all labeled in the SCA closet waiting for me to get to all this sewing!

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Since I'm gradually transfering my most used TNT patterns to cardboard, it would be useful to come up with pattern hangers, and I saw these on a page of image searching... they seem to be pretty easy to make from heavy gauge wire, if I can find a source?

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WT(everlovin)F... the DSL internet was funky all Sunday morning, went out early afternoon, and apparently was related to no dial tone on any of the phone jacks which was discovered when I was doing troubleshooting. Then spent well over an hour on hold, only to have Century Link drop my call, go through the robot phone tree again twice, wait on hold again, and finally get a customer service person this evening who ran several tests on the phone lines from their end, and magically at that point everything started working again. I am baffled annoyed frustrated and confused, as well as relieved that I don't have to spend several hundred dollars on a service call. Am wondering if the outage was related to the high winds today, but it does seem peculiar that it would have coincidentally been fixed and as good as new at the very same moment that the worker was talking with me on the phone and "testing" the line... I'm just glad to have online access again!

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February SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	one pelican head	restrung grey beads	paper recycling
2	second pelican head	dial tone regained	frontyard prunings
3	rubakha trim printed	bra elastics renewed	bag to Goodwill
4	leggings trim printed	Arlys circlet	paper recycling
5	black/grey shirt	An Tir pennant	metal recycling
6	x	leggings pattern	yard waste bin
7	x	Karla sewing machine	x
8	x	fig trees planted	x
9	x	new worms for bin	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I am grateful that I have a cell phone and have speaker phone - I was able to get a bit of sewing done in the almost two hours I was on hold, with the speaker phone set at maximum volume to be heard over the sounds of the serger!

*we went to my current former favorite dim sum place, Ocean City over on 82nd for an early dinner at around 6ish. The restaurant was not yet full of dinner guests. The dishes we ordered were, (with one exception the steamed broccoli with garlic), put on the table cold or room temperature, when they should have been heated to serving temperature. This was both unappetizing and potentially hazardous. When we finally managed to get the attention of a server, they were confrontational rather than helpful.  While I will miss some of their unique dim sum offerings, I will not be returning there ever again.

Friday fragments, mostly textilia

in which our plucky heroine catches up on a few things...

Springtime seems to be a bit early this year, but these crocus are a welcome sight nevertheless...

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found a length of some tweedy (if thin) jersey knit in a medium grey in one of my fabric bins, and so cut out another pair of cropped leggings. They will be part of my SWAP 2020; despite the early flowers, it is still chilly enough that these will be a welcome addition to my everyday wardrobe. They will have a blockprinted trim along the hemline, using some recently carved counterchanged triangular blocks:

After several years, my pattern for leggings has been deteriorating, with the blue tape peeling up from the paper, so I transferred it to cardboard for future use. It would be great to get most all of the basic garment patterns in cardboard, which is ever so much easier to use than thin paper patterns. Cardboard is more difficult to store, but I suspect that space in a closet could be found, particularly with more decluttering

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the black/grey gingham flannel shirt is completed, and my guesstimate for how long to make the sleeves turned out to be just right. I will be making a note of that on the pattern for future reference, and foresee some additional shirts (as opposed to blouses) in my future sewing at some point...

The collar and neckline of the shirt, showing two different sides of the polkadot fabric (yoke facing, and bias binding along collar shirt seam), bias and straight-of-grain use of the gingham flannel.

The successful tower placket, both closed (above), and open (below)... again showing how I used the polkadot fabric to line the cuff and also to create the inner placket.

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started once again on the cuff embroidery for my rubakha... I'm more pleased with this iteration. Once I finish the embroidered arches, I will be outlining the printed motifs in the same metallic thread.

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February SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	one pelican head	restrung grey beads	paper recycling
2	second pelican head	dial tone regained	frontyard prunings
3	rubakha trim printed	bra elastics renewed	bag to Goodwill
4	leggings trim printed	Arlys circlet	paper recycling
5	black/grey shirt	An Tir pennant	-
6	x	leggings pattern	-
7	x	Karla sewing machine	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - I am grateful that I know enough to be of help to others, which contradicts my chronic imposter syndrome. I was able to help Karla with her sewing machine, which turns out to be a very nice commercial Singer, I am guessing from about thirty or forty years ago.

sad in sunshine

In which our plucky heroine is sideswiped by songs...

An essay posted today, about being "friends first" in relationship, hit me most painfully. Because I always have failed to be in that sort of relationship, for various reasons. Just as when I was a young person, looking wistfully at those older than me who had sweet dearloves to walk with hand in hand (and more), I now look wistfully at my friends, and strangers on the street, who have another person by their side, some newly found, and some for many years. I just never got the hang of that sort of connection, but not for lack of wanting to, or for lack of awkward attempts, though less of those as years and decades pass. I know that well meaning people post that there are all sorts of love, and I greatly value my friends and parents and siblings, but there is none to know my inner stories, and no kindly hand when nightmares darken my dreamlands, none for me to know well enough that I can hear what they say in the quirk of an eyebrow, none for me to know enough that I can notice beauty and say "x would love this.."

I make do. I value all I do have. I write here. I share my knowledge in teaching. I create durable beauty in the work of my hands, that will long outlast my own lifetime. But oh how I wish that there was another who journeyed interwoven with my life.