Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Happy New Year

We rang in the new year sitting on the couch with old friends and sparkling grape juice.  After we slept in, we went on a tandem ride to the beach.  We had a slow leak in the back tire and a spectacular pop in the front tire.  I watched the dolphins swim while Bad Dad changed the tubes in both tires.  I forgot to take pictures then, but I did snap a couple of pictures while riding along Esplanade.  (His cell phone was handy in the seat-back jersey pocket .)



For you statistics wonks, I'm posting a tally of 2013 projects that I bothered to document on my spreadsheet.

For ? # of Projects
Me
21
Iris
18
Home
10
Others
49
Total
98

I clearly need to improve my selfish and selfless sucker sewing ratio.  Although I made 98 projects, nearly 4/5 of them were not for myself.  Moreover, some of them were made for complete strangers through CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates).  What is wrong with me?

I've done a lousy job on the Stuff Diet, too.  How did I use only 98.5 yards to make 98 (92 sewn, 6 knitted) things?  It seems that I did a fair amount of refashioning and working with recycled materials in 2013.  Developing a reputation for refashioning can be dangerous.  People keep bringing me stuff to refashion.

I spent one month helping my mom move out of her house and settle into a much smaller apartment in a more convenient location.  She sent me home with over two dozen event t-shirts collected over the last 20 years.  I refashioned them into about 10 long-sleeved t-shirts.  My doctor has just offered a dozen more shirts left behind by her sons when they moved out.

I purchased or brought home (through free share tables) 246 yards of fabric and used 98.5.  I measure fabric when I bring it into the house and before I cut it.  Even optimistically allowing 10% for shrinkage because I prewash all of my fabric one or twice before cutting, that still leaves an embarrassingly large net increase.

The $$ doesn't bother me because most of the fabric I buy is industrial waste purchased from odd jobbers for $1-6/pound.  Furthermore, I sew most of Iris' and my clothing and sew for friends and strangers, too.  My sewing studio just needs more breathing room.  I will give away some stuff to good homes until I find a comfortable and workable balance.

Let's not get into the UFO (unfinished object) count.  Why did I finish only one (unblogged, too!) sweater and leave four sweaters awaiting a few hours worth of seaming/finishing work?  I'll write more about this sweater later.  It's fantastic.  I love it.  Even Iris likes it.


Iris has taken up making and I need to rearrange the sewing room to accommodate two makers and our ongoing projects.  This may involve hiring a handyman and more IKEA kitchen cabinets.  It will definitely involve giving stuff away to make more room.

Right now, we're making soft-circuit bracelets with LEDs and felt.  That means I can't sew until we finish that up and put those materials away.  We had some engineering design disagreements and the fact that I wanted to do more research before proceeding to cut.  She actually said, "Now I understand why you are a theoretical physicist."  How sharper than a serpents tooth…

I had the self control not to bring up the Dunning-Kruger effect.


4 comments:

  1. Kudos to you for your self control! A great many people have this condition; someone just mansplained sewing a baby quilt to me yesterday! I've made dozens, he's made none. But he knew just what to do!
    It's nice that you're making something together. My kids will design things but leave the engineering details up to me.
    They are more meticulous cooks than I am. I'm a better baker, but I've had more practice. There's a lot to be said for the make mistakes and learn how to fix them method.

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  2. Heads up: There's a weird sign-in box when I visited your blog today, asking me for a username and password, mentioning "Colette Media" and saraimitchnick.com . It's not happening on any other blogger blogs I've checked.

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  3. Sorry, the address it's showing is saraimitnick.com

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  4. Oooooh, that sweater is beautiful! Hope you found some time for seaming.

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