totchipanda

Boooooo daylight savings boooo. I slept OK saturday/sunday, but terribly last night. I dreamed, bc I remember dreaming (about work, extra boo), but it always felt sort of surface-level, not deep.

Belly is nearly healed! I have been forgetting about it and so walking with my usual amount of energy. A couple of days of rest have been good :3

Friday night I finished cutting out the hemd, pulling threads and cutting. I still have wrist and neck bands to cut but plenty of fabric for those. I am following this tutorial, and made my armscyes a little deeper as she notes that hers was very tight. I sewed down 14" and flat felled about 12", to leave myself room for adjustment and gusset insertion. Hemming the neck took awhile (i was being very deliberate about it), but is there anything more delightful than hand-sewing linen? I didn't measure any of it, just eyeballed it, finger-pressed (or used a bone tool), and off I went. Then I marked all the dots for smocking and even started to gather them up. I said I would sew until 9, and I did, when it was time to finish dealing with my mountain of laundry and go to bed.

My work is having an equipment sale, and they let me purchase something I really wanted -- a projector! It's fantastic!!! I set it up Saturday morning in the sewing room, because what I really wanted, and have wanted since I was about 16, was a way to enlarge a gridded pattern without a lot of drawing or math skills. And also to trace off some of the indie patterns without having to either pay $4-8/sheet* or tape together a million pages of paper.

*This is an eminently reasonable price, I have just been funneling all of my cash into car payments for so long that spending that money on paper when I could be buying groceries was just a very easy choice to make.

So I spent some time projecting A0 patterns on the wall and measuring them out and what not. They look so small! But they seem to be exactly as they should be. There was a box that was supposed to be (x)" (it differed between patterns, even from the same company), and getting the file to show was a bit of trial and error and also not fully exact, but certainly close enough. The biggest issue was that it was nearly illegible. Fine if you are only doing one size, but if you need to grade in and out you better know what lines you need.

The second biggest issue is how do you get the tracing made without being in the way of the projection. I did not have long to spend on that because I would have needed to cut paper, hang it (hopefully in a way that didn't leave me holes to patch when I finish the wall), move the two tables out of the way, and then I wouldn't be able to even DO anything with it, so I did not try.

Instead, I pulled Millie, my newest old machine (class 15 clone, Royal York), out onto the table. She does indeed sew beautiful little stitches! I am worried about the motor though, it sounds and smells terrible. It's also of the age where, even though the colour matches the machine, the label on it indicates it is a shoe machine motor. I am watching YouTube videos of potted motor repairs, specifically from a guy who does vintage sewing machine repairs, and especially looking for the type of motor I have. A few of my machines have these motors, so I will get lots of practice!

Again, did not have long to spend on that, as I then had to get ready for my sibling's birthday lunch. It was, alas, the day of a long-running social event that my mom attends, so we nearly ran into her as well (we knew it was a chance). And then I headed to my friend's house for board games, where I did not INTEND to stay out as late as I did, but that's how the games go sometimes. We left just after 11pm. My roommates were in bed already, J was even asleep when I got home, and the next day they teased me about their wayward teenager being out until all hours lol.

Yesterday I attended Kendra's wig class online, which didn't REALLY tell me stuff I didn't already know. I really ought to get her book, it would be a nice and useful addition to my library.