So I ordered this pinky purple, 2-piece “lounger” outfit on sale (half off!) for wear around the house and it came. Cotton jersey. Very soft and comfortable. It was on the big side but I like “roomy” clothes. The problem was the pants. The elastic waistband was not tight enough — not “constantly having to pull them up” not tight enough, but “one good sneeze and they’re down around my knees” not tight enough. Well. That’s no problem. A small incision into the sleeve where the elastic is, take a hitch in the elastic, sew up the incision, no biggie, right?
Wrong. Made in China or some other far eastern locale, which means the elastic was first sewn to the edge of the fabric, then the whole shebang folded over and serged down. I had to take a seam ripper and carefully rip loose the entire waist band, trim the old elastic off, get the ironing board out and set it up, heat up the iron, turn and press in the sleeve for the elastic and pin it, power up the sewing machine, sew the sleeve, thread a new piece of elastic through the sleeve, sew the ends of the elastic together, replace the needle on my sewing machine that I broke not being careful when I sewed the elastic together, close the pocket, knot my threads and secure the ends. Took me over three cotton-picking hours! At least now, the durn pants will stay up. . . . .
As long as my day was already totally derailed, I started a load of wash, as my clothes hamper runneth over. Now it’s time to take the wet clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer. And, while I’m up, I’ll brew another carafe of tea. It’ll be a combination of 2 bags of Stash Tea’s Moroccan Mint and one bag of Twining’s English Breakfast. The Moroccan Mint is based on a green tea, which hath not sufficient caffeine for mine requirements, hence the bag of English Breakfast, which is a gunpowder (black) tea. I’ve just about used up this box of Moroccan Mint. The pot after this will be straight English Breakfast. I bought a pint of almond milk “creamer” to try, which wants straight gunpowder tea.
Right now, I’m listening to Soma FM internet radio’s Drone Zone. I was listening to Trancemission New Age, but it was getting a little too arpeggious for my taste. (Digression: There’s this particular “genre” of “New Age” piano music which I refer to as “arpeggious.” The rules of this “genre” of music are: You never play chords, only arpeggios, you never play more than two notes simultaneously, and you play molto rubato con morbidezza. The typical “artist” in this genre is some guy who teaches himself to play piano and learns some major and diminished chords. The next “wine snob” party he goes to, he casually wanders over, sits down at the piano and begins to “noodle.” Because the guy only knows major and diminished chords, only plays arpeggios, and plays slowly, it’s easy to string a bunch of chords together and sound like you know what you’re doing. The longer the wine party goes on, the better he sounds to his audience who don’t know anything about music either, and are half stoned on wine. All his wine snob friends rave over how good he is, invite him to their parties (“he plays so wonderfully. . . “) and eventually convince him to cut a CD. Since he doesn’t know how to write music, he just wings it and edits out 4 or 5-minute bits that sound good, and gives them very pretentious, New Agey titles which either have Hindu or Buddhist allusions, or contain the words “crystal” or “angel.” Ditto for the name of the album. A big code word for this kind of music is “heartfelt” — (read “musically untrained but he tries hard, bless him”). Another big code word is “etherial” (as in “musically incoherent and totally without melody”). In this “genre” of music, it is essential for the performer to be extremely laid back and New Agey, and to be pretentiously and elaborately vegan*. (“I only eat bread made from organically grown Triticum spelta that I get from this one farm in Germany that grinds it into flour on authentic megalithic basalt querns.”). He must also have some kind of schtick, like a set of crystals carried in a drawstring bag that he must arrange along the edge of the piano for “channeling” purposes before he can sit down and play, or wearing only “natural” materials like hemp or cotton, or wearing all white, etc. Eventually this guy gets a synthesizer and discovers how to make it sound like wind chimes. Here endeth the Digression)
In the knitting news, I try to keep something small to hand that I can work on in odd moments when I’m at the computer. This is a little hat I’m working on using Paton’s metallic yarn.
Our knitting group supports several worthy causes, one of which is the “Knitted Knockers” (I’ve got patterns but haven’t tried them.) These are knitted prostheses for breast cancer survivors using yarn that is soft and washable. Another worthy cause we support is hats — one lady does hats for newborn babies, especially preemies. Tiny little hats. Others of us, including me, do hats for cancer patients who have lost their hair as a result of chemotherapy. One reason I’m doing the hat in this metallic yarn is to make it an “evening hat” for a special occasion or something fancy. Cancer is pretty traumatic just by itself, but then for a woman to lose her hair makes her feel like a freak. Having a pretty hat helps. We scour Ravelry for pretty hat patterns to make so we’ll have something special to donate. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing a knitter likes better than a good excuse to knit something. This particular hat is called the Coriolis Hat. (cast on evenly divisible by 7; k1, yo, k4, ssk) I’ve got five or six balls of this metallic yarn in “jewel tone” colors. Still working on the shawls and my shrug.
Shortly after I moved in, I had gotten this little shell LED nightlight for my office so the fat(cat)boy could see to get to his poop box (yeah, cats can see in the dark, but not in the totally dark . . . ) and it works well. Now usually a bathroom will have a door that opens toward the right as you’re going in (most doors do), and the light will be on the wall to the left, just inside the door. Not so the “company” bathroom here. There’s not enough room on the little snubbin of wall on the left for the four or five light/heater/fan switches required to operate this bathroom. They’re on the wall to the right of the door. They’re easy to find in the dark if you open the door all the way, and then grope along the wall just past the edge of the door, but only if you know where to look. The average unsuspecting guest does not. So I got another one of those little shell night lights to plug in to the shaver/hair dryer plug by the sink, which provides enough light that you can see where the light switches are. It came the other day, and it’s worked out well.
It’s been so dry here of late. No humidity to speak of (under 40%, way under at times), and we’ve been having wildfires. If you hear this loud slurping noise, that’ll be me putting lotion on. I wonder if you can get Nivea by the barrel . . .
Gotta go take the clothes out of the dryer and hang them up. I’ll be folding up socks and unmentionables for half an hour. . . .
*I have nothing against vegans. What you eat is your own business and none of mine. What gets up my nose are people who do things elaborately and pretentiously, especially when it includes a Manifesto
The Owl Underground Archive II 