Song: “Liquid Lunch” by Caro Emerald
Mood: 6.5
Nightmares: 2?
Okay, this is going to be a quick post. I just got a text from J, they just landed! Now it’s just picking up baggage and catching a 20 minute cab and she’s home!
So, my day in quick thoughts… let’s see…
Had some nightmares last night. Ended up falling into a panic attack for one of them which really sucked, but I only lost about an hour and a quarter from that. The rest of the night was a little restless but not too bad.
Did my exercises today. I don’t do them every day now – that experiment where I didn’t do them for a week proved that it’s a useful tool, but I’m not stuck doing it no matter what. I do feel better after I do them, though.
No construction today and it was very quiet out, which was really nice. I like how the snow muffles sounds.
Spent time outside in the car today. Didn’t drive it around at all but I spent my time there, and the stereo system in the car is WAAAY better than the one in the truck (although I’m not complaining, my faithful Ranger is way better than my crappy phone speaker).
Had another good talk with my folks today, we talked about all kinds of stuff. Mom and Dad are very interested in the sewing stuff, which still surprises me. I told my folks that they can certainly come out during the week – they don’t have to wait until a weekend to make a day trip. Of course, winter is going to be the main decider about when people can easily spend two hours on a highway.
Had a nice text chat with J’s aunt. She’s been feeling good over the past two days and is taking advantage of it, going shopping and doing some cleaning around the house. I’m glad she’s feeling well and I hope it keeps up!
Ran a bunch more seams and hems today. I also – for the first time – cut up some nice fabric and made something out of it. I decided to make a beanbag and I was very careful to measure everything out and make sure the nice red felt I picked was straight and at 90 degree angles. My only mistake was putting too much rice in it so when I went to sew it up, the rice forced the material over then I was closing up the last seam and locking it in (you can see the zigzag). I’ll know better next time but I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. It actually looks like someone measured it before cutting and sewing and cutting the zig-zag edges. Very little waste, too. Here’s a picture of the three beanbags I’ve made so far. From left to right: hand sewn and using t-shirt material, sewn with the machine (eyeballing it) using old denim, and measured and cut to size pieces sewn together with measured and drawn lines using red felt. I’m really pleased with the red bag. The only thing I’m not pleased with is my mistake of putting in too much rice and causing that zig-zag when I was going back and forth to lock the stitch.
I had to refill the bobble again today, but I did that AND rethreaded the machine just by going by the arrows and numbers on the machine, and… it totally worked first time! Oh, and speaking of thread, I tried sewing a simple hem in to see whether there was a significant difference between the stitches. So, I sewed a quick run with the machine set at single straight stitch with stitch width set to 4. Then I grabbed the cloth in both hands, took in a breath, and immediately yanked it apart. With the width set to 3, I was still able to snap the stitches, but it took a lot more grunting. Setting the width to 2, it took three tries, each with a progressively redder face, but I finally tore it, but when I looked more carefully, it was the material that tore, not the stitch. Same thing happened with the width set to 1.
Heard an artist on the radio today that I didn’t know anything about. Her name is Caro Emerald and she does music that’s kind of a fusion of 1930s swing, jazz, and more modern electronics. I’ve only been listening to three of her songs so far but I’ve been really enjoying them and will be listening to more of them tomorrow.
Ok, I see the cab pulling into the driveway – gotta go and get into prime hugging position!
Stay safe.