15th Thursday
After I finished writing my blog last week I started working on my mending basket. My husband needed one of his belt loops reattached. I did this by cutting a small scrap of denim from the stash and pinning it to the inside of the jeans. I then used matching blue thread and sewed over the hole, using a denim needle in my machine, in multiple directions to create a new bit of secure fabric. I then trimmed the excess of the patch, then VERY slowly sewed the belt loop down. About half the time I was manually walking the foot to make sure it wouldn't break.
After that I fixed my daughter's leggings. She wore a hold in the knee of one pair and experimented with scissors on another pair. I happened to keep the bottom part of another pair of leggings that I cut off at the knee. I cut out cute shapes and attached them with fabric spray adhesive before sewing them on. The patches on the knees I had to sew by hand as they were too tiny of tubes to fit around my machine.
I also started cutting the drapes for Blur's bed. I planned on just making a tube at 1 end and running
the closet pole through it. However when we tested this (using safety pins) the fabric had way too much "grab" and wouldn't slide easily. So I talked to my son and we decided to try grommets. However by this time it was after 9pm and I was exhausted. I did look around online to see what my options were.
16th Friday:
After I got Thomas off to school I went to Joann's Fabrics. I found the drapery section pretty quickly. They had packs of 1 9/16" grommets in sets of 8 for $12.99. This was a lot more than I was hoping for but I had a 60% off coupon. I was getting really tired of running around at this point so I went ahead and grabbed the second one, too. When I got to the counter the woman asked me if I wanted to use a second coupon; the machine accepted it so I basically got buy 1 get one free! That I can handle!
So I got home, followed the sewing directions that the grommets called for, and started measuring and spacing everything out. We ended up using 7 grommets for the short side and they work great! This did mean that 9 was not going to work for the longer side so I was going to have to buy another package. But I was also babysitting a friend's kids after school, so that was as far as I was going to get for the day.
17th Saturday
This day started off pretty well! I was up and had the right amount of caffeine and took Thomas and Anna out to a local game shop. Thomas, and sometimes Blur, play the Pokemon League playing the trading card game. While Thomas was playing his games, Anna and I were taking turns playing Pokemon Go; the store is a gym. ;)
Saturday was also World Wide Spin In Public Day! I brought my spindle with me and some alpaca wool. When I'd had my fill of Pokemon Go, I pulled them out and started playing with yarn. :)
Later in the evening I was invited over a friend's house. Anna came with me. She played with her favorite person in the whole wide world while I played fiber and yarn with my friend. She let me pick out some funky yarns that I am going to explore ideas with for a fiery Charmander tail.
18th Sunday
I was expecting guests and my apartment was rather a mess. So after church we came home, had lunch, and got to work. Unfortunately Blur hadn't slept well the night before and he wasn't able to concentrate so it was just Thomas, Anna, and I tidying up. We worked (well - I did, they goofed around) for a good part of the day. I still didn't get done as aforementioned goofing around led to more messes than progress.
Blur really needed a nap and my monkeys were anything but quiet. So I decided to run a few errands while he got his nap. I went to the dollar store to pick up foam boards for bug mounting kits (more on that later), and went to Joann's again to pick up another pack of curtain grommets. We got home tired and hungry. Blur wasn't much better.
This is when the nightmare was found and The Peanut Purge began. Fortunately, something came up and our guests cancelled / rescheduled as I was not happy with the non-cleanliness of the apartment and too tired to really enjoy company anyway.
19th Monday
I knew today was going to be a long day so I wanted to start it well. I got up a little early and made my coffee. I grabbed my sock knitting, my audio Bible, and sat in front of Blur's new S.A.D. light. I had a peaceful few minutes before the kiddos go up and the chaos begun.
This day the Peanut Purge really got going. I finished 5 loads in the dishwasher!
Meanwhile, I got down to business with the curtains. I really wanted to finish today if possible so Blur could sleep and I could move on to other things that need my attention. I remeasured, and re planned my first thoughts. I decided to cut some squares of the fabric to staple gun into two sections of the bed. Of course my staple gun was out of order so I asked my husband if he could figure out what was wrong with it. (Turns out there's a bent piece of plastic inside. He got it working but it is still slightly dysfunctional. I didn't care as long as it got through this job.) The stapled worked out rather well!
Then I started hemming. and doing the grommet placements. I didn't get to this last part until after Thomas and Anna were out of school so it took longer than it should have, but it DID get done! Blur climbed into his bed and I tucked my head in. There was still light coming in from a crack next to the wall. So I climbed up and cut a long strip of the fabric and started stapling it to the wall. Then Blur helped me take out Thomas' mattress and he stapled the fabric to the edge of the bed.
When we tested the light again, it was -perfectly dark-. I held up my iPhone's light to the fabric and only a pinprick of light came in. Whew! It's done at last! My son is soooo happy!
**Fast forward to Thursday morning - I went to wake him up and Blur popped his head out of his bed and declared that he had SLEPT. He was coherent and himself today. All this time and money investment is paying off. I pray that it continues!!**
20th Tuesday
The Great Peanut Purge continues, including the part where I exploded the pillow.
Thomas is in the Royal Rangers at church. If you don't know, it's like a cross between Boy Scouts and Awanas; they do both Bible merits and skill merits. I am one of the leaders in his group and I am in charge of the skill merits. The current study is insects and the boys need to mount some bugs as part of their participation. I needed to prepare some kits for them to take home. I cut up the foam board to roughly 8x10" and gave it a grove for tidy mounting. I stuck 5 pins in scrap foam board pieces and tossed these along with some baggies and magnifying glasses into a big zip lock bag. I also needed to make up some how-to instructions to help the kids and parents at home. I looked up some stuff and the smashed some info together on a page with my usual software and called it good.
By the way, I am usually using Pages for most of the graphic designs. I unfortunately don't have any fancy graphics programs available to me right now. I'd love to have Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw again someday but with all the technology changes I know I'll have to learn it from scratch. So that's why I don't usually do logos for people.
21st Wednesday
While getting ready for the day I had an unexpected visitor. When I got out of the shower in the morning some of my husband's pillow fluff came off the towel and stuck to me. lol. I was being haunted by the pillow that I murdered!
I met up with a friend at a coffee shop and had a grand time chatting and knitting in public. (I seriously need to ask my friends if I can use their names / pseudo names on my blog. lol) She is fantastic fun to play yarn with, or anything really. She had scored me someone's destash material and brought me two bags full of fantastic stuff; there's even some dress up stuff in there! My family *loves* to play pretend.
While I was there I finished knitting the first sock of my current pair, had some delicious coffee, and some wonderful company! Of course when I got home the Peanut Purge resumed.
22 - Thursday
I got up and did another load of dishes, now used to the continual cycles. I'm on to the less-used stuff and just cleaning and reorganizing my cupboards since they are empty anyway. After Anna went to school I escaped to lunch with another friend. We had some really nice 1 on 1 time which we'd never had before. We'd always had the kids around so this was refreshing to not be interrupted or have to filter ourselves.
Afterwards I wondered down to Joann's (I swear I don't usually go this often!) and bought fabric for Thomas' birthday gift. (His birthday is tomorrow.) While we will be having his party in a few weeks I still wanted to do this on time if possible. I am sewing him a blanket. His comforter was very old and was a hand-me-down. It had Thomas the Tank Engine on it. He loved it dearly but was literally falling apart. We've been talking about a replacement for a while and he wants a Pokemon Blanket with the reverse side his favorite color - highlighter pink. I think I might go blind but I'm going to do my best. Here I go - wish me luck!
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