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Jun. 24th, 2024 09:57 amThe days passed slowly on my mini-vacation, making it feel much longer than it was. Which was actually a good thing. I feel like I've been off work for a month instead of a week, and I felt very rested by the end of it. The days were not boring, they just seemed to stretch out forever. I blame all the damned summer sunlight. My body doesn't want to know that it's evening until the sun is down, and when that doesn't happen until 9pm, then the days seem stupidly long. Because they are.
Anyway, Tuesday after work I picked up M and the baby and we headed to the airport to drop him off. We splurged on taking the tollway the entire way there and back, rather than fighting rush hour traffic on some of our worst roads, so we'd be on the road for as little time as possible. When I got home, I gave the baby a cool bath, some fresh clothes, and a bottle to rehydrate her, and she was happy as a clam.
Wednesday, as I sat and ate breakfast, I watched Tookie shuffle over to the sewing corner and pee right in the middle of the floor. This spurred a Great Cleaning Tornado - I swept and scrubbed the entire living room floor, rearranged the sewing corner by moving the desk to a different wall, moved the project baskets so they were both underneath the desk, took the crinoline and its petticoats out of the closet and set it up for upcoming Dickens sewing, washed a load of dishes, and deep scrubbed the cat closet. The baby and I then did a quick grocery pickup at the nearest Walmart, making it as fast as possible because of the heat. Feeling very accomplished, I made myself a taco dinner.
Thursday I decided to get started on the ruffle monster dress project. I sat and stared at my fabrics for an hour or so, redoing my math over and over, before finally cutting anything. After seeing the difference in how nicely they gathered, I was very determined to cut my ruffles parallel to the selvedge rather than the cut edge. To keep my math easy, I tore some 60" wide panels, which I then cut into 4.5" strips that would get sewn together into one big long strip to be hemmed and gathered. I say this as though it all happened on the same day, but it absolutely did not. As of right now, I have one ruffle strip sewn together and hemmed, and the gathering stitch has been run through it, but the ruffle has not actually been gathered or applied yet.
Anyway, I do have all the strips cut for the first tier of the skirt. The plan is for 10" of each tier to be the plaid, 7" to be plain black, and to have three gathered ruffles (I originally planned knife-pleated ruffles, but that would have eaten way too much fabric) applied to the plain black piece. Yes, this will take forever. It's already taking forever! After five days of as much work as I could muster between baby duties, I have only managed to assemble one ruffle out of nine. I am glad I am starting this project now, which hopefully means I will actually have it done by December.
In sadder news, it doesn't look like Tookie will live to see the end of the month. She is nearly 20 years old, and in the past weeks she has been declining rapidly. She's thin as a rail now, barely eats a bite or two, and is very weak. M and I made her a nest of blankets and towels in a cozy spot on the floor and put a bowl of water beside her so she doesn't need to go far. The entire time I was off work, I would pick her up and take her to the little box so she could do her business, and then carry her back to her nest once she was finished. I told M to keep doing that during the day while I'm at work, because she's too weak to get there on her own. Poor old lady. We're trying to make her last days as easy and comfortable as possible. She's been a great cat.
Anyway, Tuesday after work I picked up M and the baby and we headed to the airport to drop him off. We splurged on taking the tollway the entire way there and back, rather than fighting rush hour traffic on some of our worst roads, so we'd be on the road for as little time as possible. When I got home, I gave the baby a cool bath, some fresh clothes, and a bottle to rehydrate her, and she was happy as a clam.
Wednesday, as I sat and ate breakfast, I watched Tookie shuffle over to the sewing corner and pee right in the middle of the floor. This spurred a Great Cleaning Tornado - I swept and scrubbed the entire living room floor, rearranged the sewing corner by moving the desk to a different wall, moved the project baskets so they were both underneath the desk, took the crinoline and its petticoats out of the closet and set it up for upcoming Dickens sewing, washed a load of dishes, and deep scrubbed the cat closet. The baby and I then did a quick grocery pickup at the nearest Walmart, making it as fast as possible because of the heat. Feeling very accomplished, I made myself a taco dinner.
Thursday I decided to get started on the ruffle monster dress project. I sat and stared at my fabrics for an hour or so, redoing my math over and over, before finally cutting anything. After seeing the difference in how nicely they gathered, I was very determined to cut my ruffles parallel to the selvedge rather than the cut edge. To keep my math easy, I tore some 60" wide panels, which I then cut into 4.5" strips that would get sewn together into one big long strip to be hemmed and gathered. I say this as though it all happened on the same day, but it absolutely did not. As of right now, I have one ruffle strip sewn together and hemmed, and the gathering stitch has been run through it, but the ruffle has not actually been gathered or applied yet.
Anyway, I do have all the strips cut for the first tier of the skirt. The plan is for 10" of each tier to be the plaid, 7" to be plain black, and to have three gathered ruffles (I originally planned knife-pleated ruffles, but that would have eaten way too much fabric) applied to the plain black piece. Yes, this will take forever. It's already taking forever! After five days of as much work as I could muster between baby duties, I have only managed to assemble one ruffle out of nine. I am glad I am starting this project now, which hopefully means I will actually have it done by December.
In sadder news, it doesn't look like Tookie will live to see the end of the month. She is nearly 20 years old, and in the past weeks she has been declining rapidly. She's thin as a rail now, barely eats a bite or two, and is very weak. M and I made her a nest of blankets and towels in a cozy spot on the floor and put a bowl of water beside her so she doesn't need to go far. The entire time I was off work, I would pick her up and take her to the little box so she could do her business, and then carry her back to her nest once she was finished. I told M to keep doing that during the day while I'm at work, because she's too weak to get there on her own. Poor old lady. We're trying to make her last days as easy and comfortable as possible. She's been a great cat.