random thoughts – Day 2,254 (Tuesday) – weather mood swing

It was sunny and hot (92 degrees). Until it wasn’t. Around noon, I ventured out to scope out the yard work situation. A small amount of raking occurred under the azalea and the dead leaves were set into the trash can from the free curbside stuff yesterday. I lasted about 10 minutes in the sun and heat before I went back indoors to sit on the couch under the ceiling fan. The window A/C units are in the shed, put there by a handyman last fall. 

Clouds collecting.

Later in the afternoon, it was cloudy. Then rainy and windy. It kind of snuck up on me. I was in the house with the shades lowered against the sun and heat, and eventually I realized it was less daylight-ish than it had been. When I looked outside, the clouds were gathering. With the sun in hiding it was safe to raise the shades and check out the changing conditions.

Before long, it got noisy with the wind whipping the trees across the street in a wild dance. Rain began pinging off the kitchen skylight and the metal stove vent pipe. Water poured off the roof and pummeled the back of the hydrangea. The sun reappeared while it was still raining, and there was some back and forth of clouds and sun for a couple hours and the temperature dropped to the 70s which was much more comfortable. The weather mood swing was in full effect. Whee!

Rhododendron is nearly ready.

Just as it was beginning to rain with a purpose, I noticed the rhododendrons are ready to start popping at each side of  the front door. After they bloom, I need to do a major pruning because they are wildly overgrown. There is another one in the back yard that is taller than I am and kind of scraggly.

I wondered how hot it would be in the lower-level church space where we dance on Tuesday evenings. It was warm, but not unbearable, but it got stuffier the longer we were there. It’s been better, and it’s been worse, and it surely will be both of those again. Hopefully, it will not be oppressive the night of our show.

We ran the dances for the show which was mostly okay until we got to the one where two of us are wrapped in silk veils. Silk is lovely and warm in the winter. In the heat it is hot and clingy and yucky. Just like last week, I kept stepping on the edge of the veil which made it hard to maneuver the thing. I have about three weeks to get that situation straightened out.

random thoughts – Day 2,253 (Monday) – treasure hunt

It was another beautiful weather day and I could get used to this, but I won’t because I know better. My heart has been broken by the weather too many times already in this lifetime. It’s supposed to be around 91 degrees tomorrow, and 87 Wednesday, but back in the 60s by the end of the week and for the next five days.

Sorting ribbons and trim and such.

The day didn’t have a plan, but a theme emerged along the lines of a treasure hunt. An excessive amount of time was spent early in the day looking for black Velcro which I was prepared to swear on my life existed in my sewing supplies. Four sewing drawers were rummaged through, plus two decorative tins with odd trims and notions, and the recently established and already messy ribbons and trims storage box. I found white and tan Velcro but no black.

In the process, ribbons and trims were carefully rolled, sorted by color and level of fanciness, and set in small snack size storage bags. Ribbon from two boxes were consolidated into one. 

After it all, I ended up using the tan fastener stuff on the purple velvet vest and it was officially declared done. The vest anyway. The top that goes under it still needs a tweak to tighten the bottom edge and while sorting through the ribbon stuff I got an idea for a potential change to the neck ties on the coin bra. And this, my friends, is how “work expands to fill the time allotted.” I anticipate more random change-ups in the next few weeks, mostly because there is still time.

Mid-afternoon, there was a curb alert post in one of the “buy nothing” groups with three chests with plastic drawers (perfect for sewing and crafts stuff!) and a big barrel (perfect for yard cleanup!). The post was 19 minutes old when I saw it. 

Finished. For now.

I mapped the route in Waze, then, as I was at the door, decided I should visit the loo. Along the drive, I imagined where I would fit the drawer thingies in the car, remembering halfway there that the cargo area still had two sets of snow shoes and some poles in it. As I drove up the destination street, a car passed me from the opposite direction on the cul-de-sac and I just knew it was the three storage unit things en route to their new home.

When I arrived at the house with the freebies, a woman was loading a wheelbarrow into the back of her SUV. She said she had come for the same barrel and storage things I had my eye on, but when she arrived, a lady was already loading all of those into her car. If only I hadn’t stopped for the toilet, I might have gotten at least one of the coveted items. Oh well.

It wasn’t a total loss. I got three flower pots, a bucket, and an indoor plastic trash can which will work for yard work, it’s just smaller the usual yard size. In other words, I’ll probably be able to load it into the back of my car myself and drop stuff at the yard waste area without assistance. This is still hypothetical. I took the items from the car and set the flower pots in the shed and the bucket and trash bin alongside the shed. Then I went into the house. I did not dive into yard work when I got home. Maybe at the end of the week when it’s cooler. We’ll see.

random thoughts – Day 2,252 (Sunday) – sunshine and calcium

Ferns in the sunshine.

It was a day of more of the same, except the weather was exceptional. Blue sky, puffy clouds, abundant sunshine and 84 degrees. The ferns in the back yard woods were pretty bathed in sunlight. The walk around the neighborhood didn’t require a jacket and/or speed walking to not freeze.. Thrilling! 

Dance practice was good. Our new troupe tops came in and were distributed. They are even prettier than I hoped. We ran through the dance for the May 31 show and the full program for a June 13 performance, where I know three out of the five dances well enough for muscle memory to be in effect, but the other two dances I don't know well enough to even fake it.

The note came from my primary care doctor about a  week ago about the DEXA scan. The verdict is “osteopenia,” which was the entire message from my doctor. One word. I wrote back and asked “What am I supposed to do?” Minimal helpful and hard to follow information arrived – specifically, “eat at least 1500mg of calcium from food sources.” Very little other info provided.

Now I’m reading articles online and reading labels and looking at charts I can buy (no printer, so I can’t just whip one off) and discovering with dismay how much stuff I like has zero calcium (potato chips). And how little calcium seems to be in a lot of other things I actually like. Milk is popular in the lists, but it stuffs up my sinuses and makes my throat phlegmy and because of that I have hated it since I was a kid. Seafood is popular on the lists, but I don’t see myself or my grocery budget taking a shine to oysters (barf), crabs, or sardines anytime soon.

Yogurt isn’t as cruel to me as milk is, and I may have to boost consumption from a bowl to a gallon daily. Maybe an entire cheese wheel every day? Tofu is on the list, but I have never succeeded in cooking an edible version of it, and usually end out throwing it out. Dining out so I can have properly prepared tofu is not likely to happen anytime soon, but maybe I can find a tofu cooking school. This is going to be fun. And by that I mean, probably not fun at all.

random thoughts – Day 2,251 (Saturday) – swept

The weather, one of my favorite topics to whine about lately, was greatly improved today. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and windows were opened. It was everything I hope for in a spring day. There were town wide yard sale events in nearby towns, a yard sale in my neighborhood, and a farmers market opening, but I did none of these things. I got swept up in the purple velvet vest sewing project.

The day’s goal was to finish the vest. When the side seams were taken in and the neckline reshaped, the arm holes were affected and needed to be expanded. The gold trim on the edges of the vest had been removed in several work areas, and remained sewn in place at the back neck edge. Today, the arm holes were fixed and the trim was ready to be reset. There was a challenge.

The neckline had been reshaped from a straight vee neck to a curved line inspired by the belly dance Turkish vest design. When the trim was being reset, there was no longer enough, because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (old neckline), but I now had a longer curved one. There were two gaps in visible places where the trim ran out.

A message was sent to my talented and brilliant sewist friend with a photo of the trim gaps. She replied, “Space to sew on interesting notions?” I did the palm to forehead “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?” thing and sprang into action.

Gaps in the trim!

Scrap fabric from the big skirt project was fetched, which is, coincidentally, the perfect colors for the vest. In the space of 40 minutes, scrap fabric was lined with scrap fusible interfacing to provide support (proving that my tendency to save practically everything pays off eventually). From the scraps, paisley and floral motifs were cut out. These were pinned on the vest in the two bare spots, and elsewhere to make it look like a deliberate design.

Fray Check would help keep fabric edges from fraying. Surprise! When a bottle of Fray Check sits in a drawer for long enough (decades?), the liquid solution becomes a solid. The WalMart website was checked for the availability of the magic stuff, and a trip made to the store. This ate up a solid hour of prime sewing time, because it seems to be impossible for me to enter WalMart, find the needed item and exit immediately. The pattern drawer didn’t have any new costume patterns. The clearance aisle yielded a spool of trim for $1.50. The bakery discount rack was empty. The sweet potato fries were too high up on the freezer shelf to reach.

Back at home, there was an epic battle to get the cap off the new bottle of Fray Check. When I couldn’t unscrew it by hand, I tried my back teeth, which hurt but didn't help with the cap. Running the cap under hot water finally worked. The effort included swearing and the composition of an imaginary letter to the Dritz company about the excessively tight cap.

Almost done.

Finally, all the edges of the motifs were treated with the Fray Check and set to dry while I finished trimming up loose threads on the vest. The hand sewing of the motifs was slow going. It took a couple hours to stitch a paisley shape at each shoulder area, which isn’t even where the trim gaps were. 

It wasn’t quite finished today, but almost (which really only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and thermo nuclear warfare). Definitely tomorrow it can be completed after dance group, unless the gorgeous weather on tap sweeps me up in a hike or some outdoor frolic. 

random thoughts – Day 2,250 (Friday) – a break

We caught a break from the rain. The day started out gray and cloudy, but the weather improved and it was sunny later in the day.

Velvet dance vest,
ready for rework.

The indoor part of the day was spent milling about. There was some reading (The Cactus, by Sarah Haywood) and thinking about alterations needed to a newly acquired dance costume vest. Then, I reviewed some pattern pieces on hand, plucked out about a mile of stitches, and set about altering the piece.

There was trim to be removed and seams to be opened and restitched to take the top in a bit. A neckline modification needed to be drawn on paper, then the fabric cut, and edges hemmed. Fasteners needed to be shifted. More trim needed to be removed.

As the daylight that is so good for ripping stitches dimmed, I set the project aside for the day. It had already consumed more time than I first imagined, but that seems to be the case with all the sewing projects lately.

Part of the problem is I am winging it and learning as I go with most of the alterations. The biggest lesson is that it seems easier to make something from a flat piece of fabric than to alter a completed garment. The big challenge with sewing from scratch is finding a pattern to follow (or making one) and finding appropriate fabric. Also, seamstresses doing alterations deserve every cent they request in payment.

The outdoor part of the day happened around 6 pm when I took a break from the costume project and left the house for the first time in a couple days. I walked to the mailbox, then looped around the neighborhood. It was so quiet. I saw one car traveling on the street, and one other walker. Trees are still blooming, lawns are fresh and green, and the spring yard ornaments and décor are popping up in yards.

random thoughts – Day 2,249 (Thursday) – more rain

The rain continued. It was steady and at times, very heavy, and dampened (ha, ha) my enthusiasm to leave the house. I did not enjoy it. The forecast for tomorrow is “expect light rain.” I will probably not enjoy that, either. I’m thoroughly over it. 

Rainy day cake.

Today, I read. Baked chicken with honey, soy sauce, and ginger. Baked and frosted a cake. Practiced a dance. Worked on the straps for a dance top. Watched the water flow down the driveway. Looked at the back lawn and woods which were vibrant and lush during a lull in the precipitation.

Today’s high temperature was 53 degrees. The bright spot is projected to be Saturday with a high of 74 degrees, followed by Sunday at 81, Monday at 80, and Tuesday at 89. I hope so. I’m counting on it. My sanity depends upon it.

random thoughts – Day 2,248 (Wednesday) – chillin'

At 5:40, the morning brightness nudged me awake. By 6:00 I was out of bed and making coffee. That was possibly the brightest point of the day (in terms of illumination). It wasn't long before it got cloudy and gloomy. It rained (again). It was chilly outside (still). I was inside chilly and grumbling about the heat being on (again). I thought April was the month of showers and mud season but this year May is heavy in the action. Blah, blah, blah. 

Current table mess.

It was a day spent in the house with the exception of one quick trip out to mail a card and pick up some photo test prints for a project. Broccoli and brussels sprouts (current favorite vegetables) were roasted and lunched upon with risotto (current favorite grainy thing).

The dining / sewing table now has a bunch of photos in addition to piles of patterns and boxes of pins. In addition to looking at photos, there was time spent working on dance costumes (still), reviewing videos of the dances in the show, and practicing dances. Blah, blah, blah. 

After the upcoming shows are done, I wonder what I’ll do with all the free time. And where I will fit all the costumes. It will be fun to find out.