Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 41

Temporary Insanity

I needed pinking shears. A good pair, not some cheap pair.

I know my mom had a nice pair, one that probably needed to be sharpened, but certainly were high quality and worth spending the money to get honed, so I asked my dad, "Did we keep Mom's pinking shears?"

The answer was about what I expected. No and we'd gotten rid of all my mom's sewing stuff because at the time she died, I was certain that I would never sew and wouldn't need any of her things. I wish I had kept all of it now.

I'm kind of in a weird place, you know? Like I need things--like pinking shears--to do some of the sewing I want to try to do, but since I'm not sure this is going to stick, I hate to buy anything. And then if the hobby does stick, I want to have purchased quality items so that I don't have to re-buy them later to get decent equipment. But what if it doesn't stick? What if this is just temporary insanity?

That's why it would be nice to have my mom's sewing equipment.

I bought flannel/fleece with the plan of using it to line the inside of face masks because I'd read that it was more effective to have a mix of cotton and flannel. But I had to order a minimum of two yards. I never did make addition face masks after the first round, and I was thinking the fleece/flannel would work for a long sleeve top for sleeping.

But I read you're supposed to pre-wash your fabric and it started to fray immediately. I read that this material will do that, so it wasn't a surprise. But I need those dang pinking shears. Sigh.

My mom is probably looking down and saying, I told you not to get rid of all those things. :-)

2022 Planner Time

It's time to setup my 2022 planner. Actually, it's past time since I've had it for more than a month now (I think), but I switched planner companies and this one shipped immediately. My usual planner is being sent out now. I'm in their Facebook group and saw the announcement.

I'm pretty bummed about having to switch planners, but as I blogged about previously, my usual planner has junked up the page with so much busy work that it took away space from the items I use. And because of my personality and the way I'm wired, I'd be forced to fill in all that data even if none of it works for me. Just a very frustrating situation.

My new planner is larger in size. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. But the big issue is all the extra stickers I'm going to need to make. Things that were printed into my old planner and that I use are not in this new planner (like keeping track of water and vitamins). I decided the trade off was worth it, but it means a longer setup time and more preparation is required.

My troubles continued with my weekly planner that I use for my day job. I didn't want to spend a lot of money for one, but trying to find a vertical weekly that was cheap proved to be unusually difficult. Everything cheap was horizontal. I don't like horizontal. I also insist on spiral bound.

I finally ended up going with the same weekly planner I bought last year, which isn't cheap-cheap, but it was on sale, so better than it could have been. There is no setup for this. I just open it and use it.

But planner setup takes hours, and this year, it will take even longer since I have all kinds of new stickers to print and apply to the pages. I'm thinking maybe I'll do it over the long Thanksgiving weekend because I won't be so pressed for time. I hope.

Destructive Fail

I wanted to finish sewing my T-shirt. Did it look great? No. I made a size that ended up being way too big, and because I messed up the collar band and had to rip it out, I had small little holes around the neckline. I'd decided to continue anyway and take it as a learning experience.

So on Saturday, I bought a can of spray starch because I'd read somewhere online that I could starch the hem, iron it, and then throw it in the wash when it was finished. That this would help keep a nice edge.

This was the beginning of the fail.

I don't own an ironing board, so ironing means using an old bathmat on a hard surface. Since I had a lot of ironing to do, I thought I'd do it sitting at the dining room table. This was a bad decision.

My first problem was the can of spray starch kept slipping out of my grasp. I don't know why because I do weights at the gym, I do dumbbells at home, it wasn't that heavy. But I continually had it slip. And then it happened. It slipped out of my hand and hit the edge of my dining room table. It left a distinct nick. A noticeable nick. ::Sobs::

The second problem made itself known when I finished ironing and lifted the bathmat I was using. Now I had a big white splotch on my tabletop. I'm guessing from the starch? Maybe it was the heat? I don't know, but I ran for my wood cleaner and went at that thing repeatedly. I think I got most of it.

Now it's time to sew. With a twin needle. Gah!

My fabric got stuck in the metal plate below the needle within seconds. I couldn't get it out and had to take the plate off. The fabric still wouldn't come out of the little hole it was jammed into. I worked on it, my dad worked on it. No go.

I started using the sewing machine's screwdriver to try and push the fabric out of the hole. My hand slipped. The screwdriver hit the top of my dining room table.

It left a nick.

At least it didn't slide. It just hit and I jerked it back in time to prevent more than a pinpoint nick, but OMG! WTF?

That was the last destructive fail of the day. My final fail, though, was the T-shirt. The hem is wavy and doesn't look right. An online search says to use some kind of dissolving hem tape to prevent this. I don't own any of that. Looks like I have yet another purchase to make before I try a second T-shirt.

This is disheartening and I feel sick every time I think about my poor table. :-(

Too Much

I blogged about trying to clean my office. And a few hours not being enough time to finish it. There are a few issues going on.

First, I have the closet jammed with office supplies. I need to sort through it and find out what I still need. For example, I found ink cartridges for a printer that I don't use any longer and they were more than ten years old. Like those would work even if I wanted to use that printer again.

Second, all the reference books I have.

I don't use my reference books. Almost ever. When I need to find a piece of information, I look it up online. And I have a lot of books. The books you see in the picture? That's only some of what's in my office. I have an Ikea bookcase behind me with 12 cubbies--six on each side--filled with more books. I mean filled.

Honestly, I could get rid of most of the books. It would give me more space to store the things I really do need to have handy. But I carefully picked these reference books out over years. How do I just get rid of them? And what if I get rid of one I need later?

Some of the titles are writing books. Those I would probably hang on to, so the left side of the desk books would stay. It's the right side. The dictionaries and thesauri, the language dictionaries, the grammar books, my HTML and CSS computer coding books. I search online for answers on all these things.

I don't think I'm ready to part with them.

There's also old computer equipment to get rid of, but that requires removing hard drives and I just don't wanna.

There are drawers to clean out and organize. A large lateral filing cabinet that also needs some TLC and the filing cabinet I still have in the garage that needs to have its contents transferred to the one in the office.

So much to do, so little time (and interest) in doing any of it.

Finally Finished Sewing Something

It's not the T-shirt I've been struggling with, but I finally finished a sewing project!

I love knot bags. They are reversible! And they're perfect for knitting project bags, but they're expensive. I had the cotton material already--bought to make more face masks that weren't needed--so I thought, why not try to make my own knot bag?

I did some online searches and found a pattern (with tutorial) at On the Cutting Floor. It was slightly too big for the fat quarter cotton I had, so I cut it down to the size of the batting outline on the pattern. FYI, I didn't do the batting. I have a bigger knot bag (that I love) and bought on Etsy and it didn't have batting, so I decided not to bother.

There was a second problem. One of the handles was supposed to extend 8 inches and there wasn't room for that either. I decided I would cut out a piece of handle and sew it on. When I created it, I did it to match the original handle width. That's why it's wider than the bag's handles. I trimmed it on the fly, which might not have been my best choice, but it turned out okay.

I decided to add the lining fabric to the main fabric and vice versa. I thought this might give it a fun look and I think I was right about that.

Instead of following the tutorial from the website where I found the pattern, I followed the instructions of Crafty Patti (love the name!) on YouTube. The video starts with instructions on how to create your own pattern for the knot bag, and I do want to try that at some point, but not for this project.

She started with sewing the straps together before sewing the inside neck and top stitching that.

Next up was sewing the actual bag part of the bag.

The last section to take care of was sewing the outer edges of the straps. This was the hardest part of the entire project and it was where I made a few mistakes. Fortunately, with the dark material, they're nearly invisible. :-)

I think it turned out really well for a first bag.

I jammed the T-shirt from hell inside the bag to give it some heft for the pictures.

FYI, Crafty Patti's instructions are thorough and clear. I found them very easy to follow even if I did have issues with my sewing ability. I want to give it another try, and this time I'll have a little experience behind me. If I struggle with the outside of the straps again, I've seen different construction methods and I might try one of those.

Overall, though, despite burning myself multiple times with the iron, having to cut down my extra pieces of handle on the fly, and having my bobbin jam up, I think it turned out well and I'm really happy. From now on, I get all the knitting project bags I want and for a hell of a lot cheaper than Etsy is selling them for. (Although definitely not as beautifully sewn!)

Happy Halloween!

  

Happy Halloween, my friends!

Office Chaos

Every time I clean and organize my office, I swear that this time it will stay organized. There will be no clutter. I loathe clutter. There is no clutter in my house--anywhere except my office.

I don't know how it happens.

Some of it is yarn related. I either need to knit faster, stop buying yarn, or figure out a way to create more space in the closet under the stairs.

Now I'm starting to accrue material as I try to learn how to sew. Material, an extremely large cutting mat, and big ruler.

I also bought some plastic storage containers to help organize my office and those are taking up space along with candles, and notebooks, and books, and index cards from when I thought that was my brilliant planning idea, and my packet of calendar pages I use to track time in The Paladin League series. Pens. Post-it notes. This year's planner. Next Year's planner. Well, the list goes on and on.

The thing that's so frustrating about this is that clutter short circuits my brain and I can't concentrate as well because it bothers me so much. And yet my office looks like this. Again.

I'm hopeful this time that the storage bins I bought will help me keep things in control. Who knows? Miracles happen.

I'm writing this post on Saturday, and when I finish, I'm tackling the office. I'm not looking forward to this.

ETA: Apparently it's going to take more than a few hours to whip this room into shape. It's better, but some of the improvement is stop gap.

Lost in the System

Over the years I've been blogging, I've talked about jumping around from system to system, trying to find the optimal way to keep all my information for a book and/or series in as few places as possible. I've yet to find the perfect system, but I do like the one I have now. Mostly.

I use OneNote and Excel to keep track of everything.

I like OneNote because I can save web pages, images, text--anything I need. I use Excel to primarily keep track of characters and settings. It's not one program to hold everything, but it's close and it's working.

But my earlier experimentation led to some fun recently. I needed to find some information from a story I wrote in the Blood Feud World.

I started with my computer files. That's where I was keeping pictures. Nothing. Not a single image.

Next I went to OneNote, but I found what I expected there. Nothing. Because I'd written this story long enough ago that I was probably not using OneNote the way I use it now.

Where else could it be?

I decided to check Scrivener. When I was writing only on my MacBook, I used this program pretty much all the time. Since I have the Windows version and I needed to transfer the information into Windows anyway, I tried to open the file there. It took some conversion, but I got it open.

And I found what I needed. But it wasn't a matter of copying and pasting the pictures I needed. That would be too easy. I don't know if it's a Scrivener thing or a conversion thing, but I had to make a copy of the photos inside Scrivener and then I could copy the copy and paste it in. Major pain.

An example of having to recall and hunt down a previous system I used. The scary thing is that I don't remember everything I've tried and I know I didn't blog about all of them.

Deer Me

There are a number of reasons why I'd rather work from home than in the office, but the biggest reason is the driving. I hate driving here. It spikes my anxiety into outer space.

I have to contend with people driving crazy-fast and tailgating me at high speed. I'm surrounding by fifty bazillion semi trucks most mornings. It's stressful and miserable and I'm shaking by the time I park my car.

And last week, I had an extra bonus stress event.

I'm driving on the highway, doing about 60 mph. The speed limit is 55, BTW. There isn't a lot of traffic at this time of day in this area, but that doesn't mean it's a relaxing drive. My story will explain why.

There was a little more traffic on the road with me this morning than usual. I had just passed a car who was holding down the left-hand lane (I was in the right and had been there since I got on the highway) and had another car behind me. Fortunately, he wasn't right on my bumper, but I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

Because I'd just gone past this other car, I didn't have my bright headlights on. Georgia apparently doesn't believe in putting in lights on their highways or freeways and it is very dark on the roads, especially where I was driving. Suddenly, my regular headlights pick it up.

A deer is just standing in my lane of the highway.

I slam on my brakes. I can't swerve because there's a car to my left and I'd read somewhere recently that drivers shouldn't swerve to avoid animals. Something about it being dangerous for some reason or another. But it didn't matter, there was a car there.

I can see the deer getting closer and closer to the front end of my car.

My foot has that brake pedal to the floor.

I'm inches from the damn deer when the idiot thing finally realizes that maybe it should move. And it ran toward the right, into the grass there.

If he hadn't run, I'm sure I would have hit him.

Yes, this is why there isn't one minute of my commute that is stress-free. Because from the time I leave my house until I reach the city where I get on the freeway, I have to keep my eyes peeled for idiot deer who stand in the middle of the damn road.

When the deer threat ends, the semis and idiot driver threat begins.

I'm just grateful that I didn't hit it and have to deal with that damage to the car and maybe to me.

Do You Remember Me?

I am horrible at remembering people I don't see all the time. I always have been. When I was a kid and went to our family's Cousins by the Dozens picnic, I only knew my immediate aunts, uncles, and cousins. The rest of them? Well, I saw them at the picnic or at weddings and funerals. I had no clue who they were.

This is my explanation for why my least favorite question is: Do you remember me?

It happened to me on Saturday. Again.

I was grocery shopping and got in the check out line. This guy got in line behind me and he started talking to me. I'm actually used to this. The weekend before, a guy started talking to me while we were getting gas. No biggie. And then he asked the question I never want to hear. Do you remember me?

Nooooooooooo!

Panic now sets in. My brain scrambles as it tries to come up with a name. The guy is wearing a face mask and he lowers it so I can see his entire face. Damn, I still can't come up with a name or even where I know him from.

He was really nice about it, but it was pretty clear I was clueless. As it turned out, he was someone from my day job. We'd be in the gym at the same time pretty much every day. (The gym is in our office building.) But I hadn't seen him since we were sent to work from home in March 2020, and even though we've been forced back to our cubes, I hadn't seen him in the gym. And his hair was a lot grayer than I recalled, which also threw me off.

Sadly, this happens to me often enough that I should be used to this by now. I'm not. I honestly wish people would never ask, Do you remember me?