Stuck in neutral

I had a lovely Thanksgiving. Four days of (relative) relaxation on a 150 acre farm just outside of Annapolis. (And if anyone is interested in buying it, let me know and I'll arrange for an introduction. It's on the mainland side of the Bay Bridge. Includes a 200-year-old recently renovated farm house and several new outbuildings. One of a kind property on the water.) I don’t know what it is, but since my return to the real world, I just can’t motivate to blog or anything else. Maybe it’s the short days – although I can’t complain – my office faces south and has a huge window. More likely it’s the cold. I HATE the cold. I had to spend 13 years and two weeks (not that I’m counting, or anything) in Minnesota, and I did not acclimate well. Christmas is only 3 weeks away, and my house looks like it threw up on itself, and that’s without having pulled out the decorations yet. Next weekend Sweet Daughter and I are heading to Williamsburg to meet up with a handful of people both for me to do some fittings, and to get a muslin fit (for me!) for my riding habit.

I’m thinking a hot buttered rum and turning in early tonight might not be a bad idea.

Could you repeat that, please?

So, I’m running around this morning packing for a trip to visit family this weekend when I hear Shorter Half in another part of the house yelp “What??”

Apparently he was listening to the radio which was prattling on about the TSA. He stepped out of the room for a moment only to return to a voice saying “… after you finish checking the body cavity you can return the legs to their tucked position.”

I really, really hope they were talking about turkey at that point.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Family Fun

It being up near 60 degrees this afternoon, we decided to go outside and shoot the pellet guns.

There was a lot of this:

And then this:

With the Big, Bad Wolf properly perforated, it was time to move onto a more traditional target.

SD was not happy with her results. It didn't matter to her that she hit the center line, because she didn't hit the center of the target. She aimed for the center, but hit high, not once, but twice, and was quite frustrated. And when she hit outside of the circle, she insisted it wasn't her fault, she wasn't aiming there!


Here SD is earnestly explaining that she was aiming at the center and so the shot that hit outside the black must have been caused by a problem with the pistol. We explained that the pistol is a tool, and doesn't arbitrarily do that. She wasn't buying it.



You can see that SD is utterly dejected by her inability to hit dead center of the target. To try to illustrate how well she did, Shorter Half and I each took a shot at the target behind her head. Well, not while she was standing there, of course. But to show her that we can't always hit the center either. She refused to be consoled, even when we told her Miss Breda would have been impressed.

She was frustrated, and not having fun, so we decided to switch it up and gave her the option of firing my pellet rifle using a rest.

She liked it. A lot.

Still a bit high, but the important thing is that she had a good time, and stopped only because she was getting cold and it was getting dark.

Fun was had by all, and plans have been made to do it again tomorrow.

Monkey see, monkey do

Sweet Daughter has strep throat, but was finally feeling well enough tonight to eat something other than ice cream. She wanted pizza from a local restaurant, but I told her we couldn’t eat in as she was still technically contagious, but we could phone the order in, run in and pick it up and eat it at home. But she had to promise not to touch anything. So far, so good.

I phoned the order in, threw on my shoulder rig, reminded SD to put shoes and socks on, and I put on my barn coat. I checked in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t printing, and SD asked what I was doing. I explained and ask if she noticed anything. I then grabed my purse and my keys and turned to find SD asking me if I could see the note paper under her jacket. She had carefully placed a folded up piece of note paper under her jacket in the same vicinity that I carry my pistol. Darned if she didn’t keep it tucked away the whole trip to pick up the pizza and back without dropping it or calling attention to it, taking it out only after we got back in the house.

4,400 more

We're up to 6.270 stitches

Sweet Daughter came home from school early yesterday with a temperature of 103 and change. She slept all afternoon while I worked from home, and then work up promptly at 4:00 this morning. That meant I did, too. We kept her home and she was reasonably chipper, but started complaining of a sore throat around lunch time. Yay. That probably means a trip to the pediatrician tomorrow (just in case it's strep) which means she'll be exposed to even more germs.

And this is why I have so much leave on the books.

Waistcoat and breeches alterations

The breeches and waistcoat have been altered. So has the fingerprint on my needle-pushing finger, I think.

The waistcoat and breeches began looking something like this:

Note the 1750’s cut to the waistcoat, and the, um, baggy fit. Ditto for the baggy breeches.

Now, I understand that it is nigh unto impossible to buy something ready-made that is going to fit in the proper 18th-century manner. Men’s smallclothes (the waistcoat and breeches) were form fitting without being restrictive. Well, except for the seat of the breeches. Breeches were snug from the crotch to the kneeband, with the seat cut full so that one could actually sit in comfort.

Anyhow – the waistcoat was too big for the owner, so the back and sides were pinned to fit, and a new armseye drawn in. the tails in the back of the waistcoat were shortened, and squared off, instead of being flared. The front of the waistcoat was cut away at an angle, and shortened a bit. The cut-off bits of the waistcoat tails were made into new pocket flaps. There was a narrow band of fabric sewn over the neckline which was removed, and the resulting raw edges turned in. This was all done by hand, in part, to keep the cotton lining (hawk, spit!) from drooping as is often found when a garment is bag-lined. (This is basically when a garment and lining are assembled separately, then placed right sides together, edges matched up, and sewn around the outside, leaving a space to turn it all right-side-out again. This kind of lining tends to sag, especially if the outer fabric and lining are made of two different types of fabric. So as I opened up all the seams took them in, and re-sewed the lining to the seam-lines.

Side view - front has been shortened, and angled. Back has been shortened and squared off.

Front - enlarged armseyes and altered neckline.

Original pocket flap on top, new and improved version on the bottom.



The breeches … well they’re better than they were, I hope. These were also impossibly large, so I pinned the inseam until they were a bit snugger. I didn’t pin too far up, IYKWIM, but later, when I transferred the marks to the inside of the breeches, I extrapolated my sewing line up through the crotch. I took 98% of the stitching out where the kneebands were attached at the bottom of the leg, leaving the end with the buttonhole still attached. I ripped out the inseam seam, and then re-sewed it using my penciled-in line as a guide. Then I ripped out the stitching “gathers” over the kneecap. I understand that you need some extra ease over the knee area so you can bend your knee. What I don’t understand is why the gathers were over the knee on one leg, and behind the knee on the other. (Shakes head sadly) I tried to iron the wrinkles out of the fabric, and then I ran two rows of gathering stitches around the bottom of each leg opening, about ¼” and 3/4” away from the cut edge. I then drew up the slack in the gathering stitches as far as I could without actually putting gathers into the fabric. This is called “easing”. I effectively had the diameter of the leg opening as small as if it had been gathered without the unsightly wrinkles. I briefly considered hand-sewing the kneebands back on. I looked at the sheer volume of visible machine stitching on those breeches and laughed at myself. I figure that people are more likely to notice the hand stitching on the waistcoat than the breeches anyway, so I shortened the kneebands (since I had the legs were now narrower) and machine-sewed them on.

New stitching line drawn in.

The "gathers" at the bottom of the leg opening.

Leg opening with the extra fullness eased in. Those are wrinkles you see - not gathers.











What 1,870 stitches looks like

Sorry, it's just knitting, nothing gruesome.

Not much, is it?

But this gives me something to work on when my needle-pushing finger is too mangled to push a needle.