Monday 22 February 2016

marginally productive - slept strange hours on the weekend

I had trouble sleeping on Friday night, dropping off well after 3am, only to be woken just after 4am by a smoke detector in the building. It was the ground floor landing and hitting the reset button with a broom didn't stop it. So Amy (ground floor neighbour) was the only other person who reacted at all - insane considering there is only 1 set of stairs we can use to evacuate the property.  She called the firies (aka fire brigade) cos the last time someone ignored a smoke detector there was an actual fire, and there's an empty flat right in front of this detector.  The firies said it was faulty and dismantled it so it would stop.  Got back upstairs to bed about 4.45 and just couldn't get back to sleep. UGH

Went to the sewing guild and got cracking on the December dress, but ran out of brain about half 2, so grabbed a lift home by 3pm.  Thought I'd have a 1hr nap at 4pm, and then go to bed later in the evening. Except I slept until 1am .... a solid 9 hours.  Had something to eat & read until dawn after 6am, when I napped til 8.30am.  

Ran around doing dishes, laundry, sorting out the stuff between the old chair and the bed because I got my new winged armchair delivered.  Lovely 1950s furniture with castors on the bottom :D  It makes me want to clean up all my messy surfaces and do some culling. Both Ikea drawers are now fixed so I can reinstall them and put the patterns back and cull while I do that.

After lunch on Sunday, I shopped for groceries ... something I've avoided doing all year, so that's another winning thing.  But by the time I got home I wanted another nap, which I did not succumb to for fear of sleeping until 1am again. Without a functioning brain I still had had the smarts to not sew anything cos I knew I'd just have to reverse some newbie error. So I read for a while and then watched DVDs (Monsters Vs Aliens, Stardust) until it was bed time. Didn't want dinner either.

Friday 12 February 2016

Not quite abject failure but not much to show so far

A combination of summer heat (I don't have air conditioning at home, and my main windows face west) and a suddenly active again auto-immune disorder (aka The Evil) has impacted on how much sewing (and other real life things) I've been able to do this year. The first is beyond my control, and the second is a bit demoralising.

I planned to head up to the Roaring 20s & all that Jazz festival last Saturday in a fancy new 1920s dress, and got very close to finishing the dress before another bout of The Evil flared up. Instead of going to the Charleston Challenge, high tea and visiting a pub with a dixie jazz band, I went straight for the high tea in 1930s clothes.  Nothing like wearing a pretty hat and fun with friends to feel better about yourself. Bygone Beauties were even able to have a variety of gluten/dairy free treats for me.




I still want to finish the 20s dress this month as there's a historic dress picnic in early March. A fresh deadline means it won't hang around to become yet another UFO.

I thought I had some photos of progress on my UFO and January dresses but the only thing on my camera is this adapted sleeve for my Lilly Rose UFO.  I eyeballed the extra for a small puff at the top of the sleeve, as I'm fairly sure it's what I did with my first dress in this pattern. Hoping to finish that dress this weekend as the flare-up seems to be over.