Time Dig
You know those cut away pictures, where they show you the layers of history, buried in layers? Well, this weekend I cleaned my sewing room.
Oy!
I'm just finally getting over a particularly nasty cough that lasted me at least 4 weeks. In my typical hard-headed fashion, I mostly just ignored it, but after a while it began to effect my brain (which is why, even though I promised four parts, I've only posted three so far of my latest rant. Or whatever you want to call it). It's called being tired, I think. Actually, I've heard that if you get tired enough, your mental capabilities are very similar to when you're drunk. So you can imagine my ability to write was. . .impaired.
Anyway. So my sewing room was in dire need of getting cleaned before I got sick. Then I was sick, and not only was I ignoring the fact I was sick, I also had less energy, so I had to pick and choose a bit in what I did. Needless to say, I also ignored the fact that my sewing room needed to be cleaned, and continued to sew (and make an even bigger mess).
Then I finally got lectured enough on how I ought to rest, and I finally started taking a break. Then I asked my little sister, whose birthday will be coming up shortly, which she'd prefer, a stuffed animal or a dress? She replied, "A fancy dress!" Oh, well, that changes everything! Fancy dresses are fun. In fact, Fancy Dresses count as resting. Cleaning your sewing room mostly certainly does not count as rest. Now, a proper Fancy Dress uses scads and scads of Fancy Fabric, of course, and Fancy Patterns that use scads and scads of tissue paper, and if one is uncertain about anything, one must compare several Fancy Patterns. (Mine are Simplicity 7210, Simplicity 4899, and Simplicity 4980, which is now out of print, but uses the most fabric of them all. It's sort of similar to Simplicity 4451, or maybe Simplicity 8953.)
So I'm sitting there in my sewing room, fabric spewing out of my fabric chest all over the room, miles and miles of tissue paper floating about, and, of course, that it is the time my Dad chooses to poke his head in the room. He looks in, his eyes grow large as he looks about the room and tries to take it all in, and finally he just raises his eyebrows and grins real big at me. "Yep," I concede sheepishly, "Having fun, but making a really big mess."
I finally got to cleaning my sewing room. The first step was trying to get all those miles and miles of UNFOLDED patterns folded back up and put back in their envelopes!!! Do you suppose that would require super-human ability? No, because I did manage it, and last I checked I wasn't super-human. Then all the fancy fabrics (read: glitzy cheap polyester scraps that will some how turn into a princess dress at the stroke of midnight, provided you have some pixie dust) had to get un-spewed.
Then there were all the many messes leftover for the Happy-Baby present I made for a friend of mine, finishing it only several days after her due-date (thankfully the baby was late, so my present wasn't). She uses cloth diapers, so I had made her several in the "Fuzzi-Bunz" style; it was quite an adventure, as I'd never made cloth diapers OR used fold over elastic, AND I had quite a time getting the sizing right on the pattern I'd printed off the internet. Needless to say, not only were there fabric scraps and leftover notions, there were also piles of printed patterns deemed Not Acceptable.
In the mean time, I keep also shifting around the large piles of tissue paper and muslin pieces, some of which were past attempts at a sloper, some of which were refinements toward a perfectly fitting sloper, and some of which were the sad results of Drafting While Intoxicated (or sick and tired, as the case may be). Sorting them out to figure out which was which was not going to be an amusing task.
Other pattern pieces floating around included the "Oatmeal Bib" (for when the kids do everything imaginable with their oatmeal EXCEPT eat it) that I'd drafted, making a few with leftover fabric to send along with the diapers; 256 or so attempts at a bra draft (I'm getting closer, but I'm still not there yet. If you loathed bra shopping as much as me, you'd realize this project is worth at least 347 attempts, but who's counting?); an equally ridiculous number of attempts, as well as several successful renditions, at creating a perfect sphere for the reason of juggling balls (I did, brilliantly, figure out the exact mathematical formula for drafting a perfect, 4 panel sphere, which I think ought to get me some sort of statuette or something, commemorating my stunning mind. Unfortunately, the execution of said pattern didn't go so well; all 12 balls are already splitting and having their seams ripped out due to inappropriate fabric. The faux leather didn't have knit back, so all of that dreadfully boring sewing will have to be repeated); the 4-years-of-wrinkles Simplicity pattern that I swear I will someday make into a dress that actually fits; the pattern I cut out of newspaper for my youngest brother to make a simple shirt out of (which he did, today, but unfortunately that pattern also appears to have been DWI, as it some how has no ease whatsoever in the torso, but he seems fairly happy with it anyway); and several long scrolls of paper containing the quilting pattern I'm trying to get hand-quilted onto this quilt for my parents.
Besides this, there is the usual amount (for my sewing room, anyway) of fabric yardage pulled out for inspiration and never put back (well, more fabric than usual), junk that missed the garbage can (well, a bit more garbage than usual), tools and implements that were used and never put away (well, more tools that usual), yards of muslin for being cut into pieces and finding out it doesn't fit right yet, and pins that missed the pincushion. There is also the boxes of books and magazines, yet to be unpacked after the renovation; and the boxes of inherited patterns from my Great-Grandmother; and sawdust from when the boys were had the angle saw set up on my sewing room floor; and lentils that I had been using to stuff the juggling balls with; and, in general, total chaos.
But it's all picked up now, so don't get too scandalized!
Oy!
I'm just finally getting over a particularly nasty cough that lasted me at least 4 weeks. In my typical hard-headed fashion, I mostly just ignored it, but after a while it began to effect my brain (which is why, even though I promised four parts, I've only posted three so far of my latest rant. Or whatever you want to call it). It's called being tired, I think. Actually, I've heard that if you get tired enough, your mental capabilities are very similar to when you're drunk. So you can imagine my ability to write was. . .impaired.
Anyway. So my sewing room was in dire need of getting cleaned before I got sick. Then I was sick, and not only was I ignoring the fact I was sick, I also had less energy, so I had to pick and choose a bit in what I did. Needless to say, I also ignored the fact that my sewing room needed to be cleaned, and continued to sew (and make an even bigger mess).
Then I finally got lectured enough on how I ought to rest, and I finally started taking a break. Then I asked my little sister, whose birthday will be coming up shortly, which she'd prefer, a stuffed animal or a dress? She replied, "A fancy dress!" Oh, well, that changes everything! Fancy dresses are fun. In fact, Fancy Dresses count as resting. Cleaning your sewing room mostly certainly does not count as rest. Now, a proper Fancy Dress uses scads and scads of Fancy Fabric, of course, and Fancy Patterns that use scads and scads of tissue paper, and if one is uncertain about anything, one must compare several Fancy Patterns. (Mine are Simplicity 7210, Simplicity 4899, and Simplicity 4980, which is now out of print, but uses the most fabric of them all. It's sort of similar to Simplicity 4451, or maybe Simplicity 8953.)
So I'm sitting there in my sewing room, fabric spewing out of my fabric chest all over the room, miles and miles of tissue paper floating about, and, of course, that it is the time my Dad chooses to poke his head in the room. He looks in, his eyes grow large as he looks about the room and tries to take it all in, and finally he just raises his eyebrows and grins real big at me. "Yep," I concede sheepishly, "Having fun, but making a really big mess."
I finally got to cleaning my sewing room. The first step was trying to get all those miles and miles of UNFOLDED patterns folded back up and put back in their envelopes!!! Do you suppose that would require super-human ability? No, because I did manage it, and last I checked I wasn't super-human. Then all the fancy fabrics (read: glitzy cheap polyester scraps that will some how turn into a princess dress at the stroke of midnight, provided you have some pixie dust) had to get un-spewed.
Then there were all the many messes leftover for the Happy-Baby present I made for a friend of mine, finishing it only several days after her due-date (thankfully the baby was late, so my present wasn't). She uses cloth diapers, so I had made her several in the "Fuzzi-Bunz" style; it was quite an adventure, as I'd never made cloth diapers OR used fold over elastic, AND I had quite a time getting the sizing right on the pattern I'd printed off the internet. Needless to say, not only were there fabric scraps and leftover notions, there were also piles of printed patterns deemed Not Acceptable.
In the mean time, I keep also shifting around the large piles of tissue paper and muslin pieces, some of which were past attempts at a sloper, some of which were refinements toward a perfectly fitting sloper, and some of which were the sad results of Drafting While Intoxicated (or sick and tired, as the case may be). Sorting them out to figure out which was which was not going to be an amusing task.
Other pattern pieces floating around included the "Oatmeal Bib" (for when the kids do everything imaginable with their oatmeal EXCEPT eat it) that I'd drafted, making a few with leftover fabric to send along with the diapers; 256 or so attempts at a bra draft (I'm getting closer, but I'm still not there yet. If you loathed bra shopping as much as me, you'd realize this project is worth at least 347 attempts, but who's counting?); an equally ridiculous number of attempts, as well as several successful renditions, at creating a perfect sphere for the reason of juggling balls (I did, brilliantly, figure out the exact mathematical formula for drafting a perfect, 4 panel sphere, which I think ought to get me some sort of statuette or something, commemorating my stunning mind. Unfortunately, the execution of said pattern didn't go so well; all 12 balls are already splitting and having their seams ripped out due to inappropriate fabric. The faux leather didn't have knit back, so all of that dreadfully boring sewing will have to be repeated); the 4-years-of-wrinkles Simplicity pattern that I swear I will someday make into a dress that actually fits; the pattern I cut out of newspaper for my youngest brother to make a simple shirt out of (which he did, today, but unfortunately that pattern also appears to have been DWI, as it some how has no ease whatsoever in the torso, but he seems fairly happy with it anyway); and several long scrolls of paper containing the quilting pattern I'm trying to get hand-quilted onto this quilt for my parents.
Besides this, there is the usual amount (for my sewing room, anyway) of fabric yardage pulled out for inspiration and never put back (well, more fabric than usual), junk that missed the garbage can (well, a bit more garbage than usual), tools and implements that were used and never put away (well, more tools that usual), yards of muslin for being cut into pieces and finding out it doesn't fit right yet, and pins that missed the pincushion. There is also the boxes of books and magazines, yet to be unpacked after the renovation; and the boxes of inherited patterns from my Great-Grandmother; and sawdust from when the boys were had the angle saw set up on my sewing room floor; and lentils that I had been using to stuff the juggling balls with; and, in general, total chaos.
But it's all picked up now, so don't get too scandalized!
posted by Tatterdemalion | 5:12 PM
2 Comments:
You of course forgot to mention the spare Dinosaur DNA. Nevertheless, deeply amusing--there existing a correlation between the depth of stuff in the room and the depth of amusement provided to the reader.
What, of course, Arlan is referring to, is his rendition of this old joke:
Martha's Letter to Erma
Martha has spare horse DNA, but according to Arlan, I have spare dinosaur DNA.
Authorities can neither confirm nor deny the existance of DNA in my craft room, but I would just like to point out that trisauratops not only make excellent barbeque, they're are also particularly tasty when you stick a haunch full of rosemary and garlic and roast it. It makes it a lot easier to serve those big family dinners around the holidays without running short, too.
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