Scottish Sundays, nothing to see here

Soooo,

Yes it is still Sunday. The second day of Sunday even. By law, no less.

We celebrate a second day of... a few things over here. Christmas, Easter and Whit Sunday. So today is the second day of Easter, a public holiday. Last Friday, Good Friday was another day off at work. Due to not sleeping, I took a few hours last week, at the end of the day, and sat in bars (don't judge me) working on clearing out my head. Seems I found me a spot, so I'll be returning there regularly. They don't look at you funny (much) when you whip out a stack of paper and a pencil and start scribbling and doing weird things with symbols.*

On Friday I got some help clearing cobwebs from a dear, slightly loony friend. Hefe Weissen is our mutual friend, and the bill was loads smaller than last time, so that was nice as well. I'll be taken a course in house renovation with her, free of charge, hurrah!

Due to this course, and me enjoying my... socks off (too warm for April), Scotland has been put on hold. It's all about feeling good about what you're doing,** and I've been having a bit of a good time lately, so I'm just going with that. I'm sure I'll get some kind of response on that later this week.

Anyroad, while I wasn't hanging around in bars or out eating or knitting a stranded sock, I finally finished the bfl/silk/silk 2-ply. 650 meters of it. It stunk when wet.



This will be a weird week, with today off, a short day on Wednesday because of tri-weekly appointment, and then a short Thursday to be un-rushed before the Big Night. To boot, the folks will be in Japan, and I'll have Friday to recover. Looking forward to it!***

* drawing charts. Stop that thought.
** it is, isn't it?
*** not the recovery bit, the bit just before that.

Strike one...

...project off the list, because it's done!


Not too awful long ago, I posted a picture of some fabric I got on the cheap.
Here's a reminder.


Since then I've been working on various projects, like "The Jeans Skirt" and "The Black Shirt." The black shirt is still on hold, for reasons I don't quite understand. It'll be cute when it's done, I just have to sit down and do it. In the mean time, other, easier projects have appeared as if out of nowhere (read: a combination of more cheap fabric and 2 new editions of the magazine I sew from) and the shirt has been moved down the list of things to make. It'll get done, I'm sure, sometime, and before July comes by. I promise.

Anyway, one of those in-betweeny projects was a skirt to go camping with. As I left Texas mid-winter, I didn't really pack any summer clothes, (wrongly) hoping I'd be back before summer. Not. This means I often despair at the clothes I do have here, especially when they scream "It's winter, it's cold, wear us" at me when it's clearly not winter out there and I definitely don't want to wear them at all. I can work around this, combine, make new things to add to the collection, but now there's a teensy weensy little issue with next week.

The Girls Weekend Out is coming up, and for the first year ever, we're going camping. Hurray!

But all my camping hiking gear (except for the boots) are somewhere in a storage bin under my bed in Texas. Not very useful when Texas is in fact about 5000 miles away. So I've been thinking of what to pack, and I've got it pretty much figured out as far as clothes are concerned.

Imagine the unimaginable, and imagine it'll be warm next weekend? Therefore, I made me this:



It'll do me just fine, I should think.



Now. On to the next project.

Dear Lord, I gone 'n dunnit agin...

... though not to worry, I didn't just buy more fabric, I did pretty things with some I got earlier.




I do apologize for the general crappiness of the images, but my old friend point-and-shoot camera now only takes 4 pictures on full batteries and refuses to turn on after that. And the charged batteries are 2 flights of stairs away from me, and I just can't be bothered to go get them. I already took my after-dinner-nap, you see?

Anyway, did you behold the pretty bad image of the pretty cute jeans skirt? It's very pretty, and it fits me as well! It took some hard work and some muttered swearing because the fabric is so tough, you can stand the skirt up without too much effort, just by itself. That makes me a little apprehensive for its first washing, but we'll see. It's about knee-length, before you ask, and that odd looking curve is the bottom of top-layer of the front skirt. It's one of my better projects so far, I really like how the fancy stitching worked out. Might wear it to work tomorrow, but then again, I might not, therapy late afternoon does not co-exist with skirts very well.

Now that there is a great gaping hole in my stash from the used jeans, I had a chance to go by market this morning, as we had to attend a meeting in the down-town building of UWV. I still don't quite get what we were supposed to take out of it, but I suppose being in the know about the numbers that mean very little to me is going to make me feel part of the UWV-Uitkeren family. Not really, not until they offer me a contract and take me away from the mean people at Randstad. Long story short, I had the chance to go by Grumpy Man on the market, and bought me some new stuffs. It's pretty too, but I worry about my pre-occupation with jersey these days. Bought some more black with pretty colours a few weeks back, as well as some leather for the hubby, who immediately planned to use it in the car. Not what I had planned, but there you go I suppose. Anyway, here they are.




I did already mention the "Therapy" word. It was going pretty well, or so I thought, and so he thought. Right up until the moment I finished Scriptfrenzy and decided to celebrate with wine rather than that cup of tea. It was a national holiday after all. I put back the cork and screwed everything up. Should've finished the bottle, but there you go. Moderation can be bad for you, don't you forget it. So now I'm thrown back a number of weeks, and getting pretty peed off with it. It hurt when I opened a closed door with my elbow. It hurt when I opened and opened door with my elbow. It hurt when I buttoned my pants this morning, and when I tried to close my belt. It hurt when I adjusted the panel of my jacket that got stuck behind the strap of my bag.

I must become a leftie for a number of weeks.

Which isn't working out very well so far. No coordination whatsoever, but I'm determined to move my computer mouse and try to relieve the arm that way. It's just not happy in general, feeling stiffer than before, and still doing that awkward and painful popping every once in a while. Mr. Torturer told me we have 6 months to work it out this way, which is absolutely doable, before we're going to take "different steps". Different Steps aren't any good. They're bad. Must practise more and more often. In fact, as soon as I'm done here, I will.

Last but not least a special message for Heidi and Nell.

Crunches hurt, but working hard. Belly sore, but will persist. Must not be chubby next week!