Ahh, Sundays! A big stretch of unplanned time — my favourite thing. I could really use a month of Sundays.
I had another go at sewing. I started with making shorts from a pair of cargo pants. That was always my mother’s trick when my brother or I put a hole in the knee of our jeans. In this case, I got a hole in the trousers from a drop of sulphuric acid — you know, as you do. (Craig and I took a jewellery-making course last year so we could make our own wedding rings, and sulphuric acid is used to clean off the silver after you’ve been blowtorching it.)
Result!
I also put a hidden stitch in the side, because I was forever having to hike these up: a size 32 is baggy on me now, so now they also fit much more comfortably.
As they said during WWII, “Make do and mend!” I’m looking forward to getting to alter and salvage a lot of things now that would have just been waste.
My ulterior motive in doing this was to also get some pieces of fabric to work with. The bottom parts of the legs gave me some nice canvas material to use, so I set about trying to make a better version of the change purse.
The first try came out okay, but the material was too bulky, so the second version ended up as a puffy cube that didn’t fold closed well. (The image this one brought to mind for me was “executive killer whale”.)
I used a button my friend Lisa gave me at Christmas to hide the mess I made while inserting a magnetic snap.
In spite of what I just said about waste, I decided this one was a write-off — sorry, a “learning experience” — and tried again. This time I thought, “Stick to what you know” and made a little fabric envelope. (Imagery-wise, this one is uncomfortably death-camp-ish.)
Sewing that Velcro on after the fact was a b@„¢*ch, and gave me a couple of chances to use the seam ripper that Lisa also gave me.
I put the button on again, this time to make the thing look a little cheerier:
It’s a mess. I’m well aware. Again, though, it’s my mess.
I have a habit of doing this, jumping into a new skill at the deep end because there’s a particular result I want, rather than going through all the lessons from the beginning. At this point in my life, I’m okay with that. It’s how I learn, and I do keep learning.
(I credit my client, Strategic Coach, with instilling that idea in me, that my abilities and my way of getting things done are the perfect ones for me, and there’s no one else I should be trying to be. Last month marked my thirteenth anniversary of working with them, and with each passing year I’m more impressed with the people I work with there and the things the organisation achieves. And I’ve been working with them longer than I went to school — gosh!)
~
I’d got up early in the morning because a friend of ours was scheduled to drop by for tea later, so I made a skillet apple pie for us to eat, along with some muesli bread and then some pancakes for breakfast. In the evening, for supper, I made parmesan aubergines baked in a tomato sauce — mmm!
All of these recipes came from a miracle of a cookbook my mum gave me for Christmas — low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free dishes that keep turning out really, really well. Instead of making bread that resembles crunchy dog treats, I’m now producing spongey, sliceable, toastable loaves!
Our friend Donald came by in the afternoon, so Craig and I took a break. It turns out he was our first foot, and he’d just happened to bring a bottle of whisky. I’m not generally one for the whisky, but this was an occasion, celebrating a new year with a friend who’d lost so much in the last. He’d brought Clynlish, which is made in a town called Brora, not far from here (relatively speaking), and poured out a measure for us all.
We toasted then had a sip. What a complicated experience for my mouth! A celtic knot of fire wrapped itself around my tongue. When the liquid had gone down my throat, I breathed in and my mouth filled with the chimney-smoke from a peat-fire. Then my belly warmed up like someone had turned the furnace on in a cold house.
I still can’t say I like the stuff, but it’s a lot more interesting and real than, say, vodka and Coke (blyeech!).