Monday, February 29, 2016

Cost of Bandaids vs Dressmaking Dummy

Some people say that Leap Day is when girls can ask guys to marry them. If the guy refuses, he owes the jilted girl twelve pairs of gloves so she can keep her wedding-ringless hand covered up.
 Others celebrate St. Oswald who died on this day in 997.
I chose to commemorate this rare day by showing you my sewing wound. 
No, I wasn't trying to sew my leg. I didn't get it caught in the sewing machine, either.
What happened is that since my sons got too "old" to put on my sewing projects for me to hem, or fit and pin, I just sew them by myself. I've tried "stuffing" my tenor saxophone case (trying to make it more round than rectangular) to use for a dress dummy, but it didn't work. So I just put my sewing project clothes on inside out and pin them with safety pins (it usually takes more than one try until they fit right.) Then I take them off and alter them on the sewing machine.
This works pretty well, UNLESS THE PINS POP OPEN. I got a four-bandaider scratch when this happened recently, but I didn't lose too much blood. 
Having survived this painful encounter, I've wondered if I really even want to keep sewing clothes. I started as a teenager because it was hard to find things to fit a six foot tall fourteen-year-old in 1972. Still, sewing has served me well over the years in making unique, one-of-a-kind clothes that actually fit me, as well as clothes and toys for my sons, and even the backdrop for a community theater production. Over the years, I even wore out an all metal sewing machine.
But in the amount of life I have left, do I really want to spend it experimenting with fabric. thread and patterns when sometimes the things I make don't look as good in real life as they do in my head? I've even ordered some things from online tall store clearance sales.
The funny thing is, once I get them, I usually alter them on my sewing machine!
I'd better hang onto it.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Trying to Get the Bank Before Closing Time

When I went through my bank's drive-through, I noticed a BIG gap in the fence. 
I couldn't help wondering what had happened. Were the roads slippery? Was the driver distracted? Or was it someone like me who desperately wanted to get to the bank before it closed, and thought they'd take a shortcut?
Have you ever gotten to the bank just as The Holder of the Key is walking away from the front door? Would you be the kind of person to dash up to the door, pound on it and beg to be let in, or would you be more likely to meekly drive away?

Monday, February 15, 2016

Head Over Heels

I have always thought of this statue as being Bob and me, so when it fell off my desk, decapitating us, I had to wonder... 
does this mean that we are goners? Have we lost our heads? Or are we head over heels in love?
Bob glued us back together, so now we are happily reading books and holding bunnies once more, so perhaps it means that even if things go wrong, they can be put right again.
What do you think it means?

Monday, February 8, 2016

Doggy Snow Cone

I don't know what's on the snow outside our back door, but our dog, Bibs, thinks it's delectable. Every time I let her out of her dog run, she trots right on over and licks and chews a gouge in the snow in that one certain spot.

I'm just a little bit wondering if something spilled there, or if something's going to surface when the snow melts... something I might not want to see... like, I dunno, a body?
(What do you think it is?)

Monday, February 1, 2016

Fairy Godmother Flowers

After writing a newspaper article for Miss Ephraim with a Cinderella theme, I came home a couple of days later and found a big bouquet of flowers.  
The card said, "Thanks for being our Fairy Godmother," and was signed by Miss Ephraim, Amelia Spree Nell, and her mother, Kathy.
Wow.
Did I feel like a princess?
Yes.
What makes you feel like a princess? (Or prince!)