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.