Song: “Midnight In Moscow” by Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen
Mood: 6.5
Nightmares: 1
Not a great sleep last night either, but it could’ve been worse. Only one nightmare, but it had me sitting on the edge of the bed with my face in my hands, trying really hard to not wake J up.
My day went alright. Had a couple of conversations through text with people and got a couple of really funny pictures from one of my friends.
My sister called today and we had a good talk. My nephew is really enjoying playing hockey and his team has yet to be defeated this season. My sister is super busy (I have no idea how she does it) so I appreciate the time she takes out of her schedule to chat with me for 45-60 minutes each week.
Got a call from Dr W’s office today – he’s sick so my appointment today was cancelled. I hope he feels better very soon, but to be honest I wasn’t too unhappy about not having to go today.
The big news today was that I finally forced myself to make something with the new cloth that J picked up for me the other night – a towel. It took about five hours in total (and a couple of rounds of flop sweat) but the next one will go much faster than that. I lost some time because I washed the towel material last night but didn’t secure the edges so they fell apart, which required that I cut two new straight likes and remove the frayed areas. Of course the material is much larger than my desk so I needed to spread it out on the bed to get a look at it. Then I needed to fold it in half and then adjust so the frayed parts ended at the same place on both ends. Then I needed to mark it but I couldn’t figure out how to do that with the tape measure I had. A quick trip downstairs for the drywall square and I had two nice straight lines.
I measured again, this time for the first hem. I held it in place, ironed it, and then pinned it, moving along four inches at a time. Then I put it into the machine and carefully started sewing. It went pretty well and didn’t take me too long to get to the end. When I held it up to look at it, I realized that the hem was waaaay too big. So, I got out my seam ripper, fully intending to remove the stitching and do it over with a smaller hem. Unfortunately, I saw this:
See the white thread in there? ME NEITHER.
I did my best to remove the stitches for about 20 minutes and then gave up and hacked that part off and started again. It went better the second time, and, being happy with the way that hem went, I flipped the towel over and did the other side. So, here’s how it turned out:
The edges are a little wavy but I think that’s because they got stretched a bit while I was sewing them and I’m hoping they’ll shrink a bit when I give the towel another trip through the washer and dryer.
So… not bad for a first try, I think. A little woogly and it’s also kind of a weird size: 48”x21”. It was supposed to be closer to 23” but I lost some when I cut that strip off. Hopefully when I donate the stuff to a shelter they’ll still be able to use it if it looks a little odd or isn’t made to standard towel dimensions.
Over all, I enjoyed doing this today. It took a lot of time but I was getting used to how things worked. The sewing machine performed beautifully and I didn’t end up with any thread tumbleweeds or missing stitches or anything like that. Tomorrow I will either make another towel or some facecloths. Or something else entirely. I’m not sure yet.
I’m glad I tried this sewing stuff out. It’s a good hobby that tolerates interruptions well (and there were a lot of them today), and I already feel good about making a single weird towel to donate to someone who needs it.
No appointments tomorrow so I will crank up the music again and get some more stuff done!
Oh, and there is now yellow thread loaded in the machine for tomorrow. Should be easier to find if I want to remove some stitches.
Stay safe.