patable2010 | Entries tagged with stash challenge

TUESDAY

Sorting, sorting, sorting. Cleaning, too. Maude's 'sitting room' is clean and tidy. Moved new cotton and cotton cutters downstairs to attend to later. I have piles on my bed and the living room sofas. Sorted the linen cutters to purpose reducing that pile by a quarter. Re-discovered and washed/fulled purple wool; it'll be great for a couple chaparones. With all this stuff better organized it will soon be time to add to the stash challenge lists. For tonight though I'll sleep on Leofwyna's bed since mine is completely buried; lots more to do tomorrow.

FRIDAY

Leofwyna and I went together to Menards to get 12 bags of river rock to put down this year and other odds and bits that were on sale. Since it was raining we haven't yet unloaded the rock..

The next piece of white linen from the bag was once a nice big tablecloth embroidered with pink cross-stitch. I spent some time last year picking out the pink floss as it was a nice weight linen and I wanted a real linen shift to replace one of the cotton damask ones. So that's what I got done while watching three "Herbie" movies.

SATURDAY

Got a little yard work done today, mainly raking up where leaves accumulated in corners. The ground is still chilly so I didn't do any digging yet. When Leofwyna got back from her errands we got the rock unloaded. Put it in the backyard as there's no room in the garage. I checked to see if I can get to the lawnmower when I need it and am glad to say when the grass is ready so is the mower. I'd better get gas for it sometime though.

So tonight I picked at this and that but need to get thread the right color or switch over to the other sewing machine that will run the buttonholer and that one needs to be cleaned and oiled first and I wasn't in the mood so I ended up hemming a few of the smaller pieces of linen for headwear... crispin and barbette I think they're called.

MONDAY

Leofwyna got put on call today so she was still sleeping when I headed out for my haircut. I stopped at a couple thrift stores downtown and limited myself to a $3 bedskirt made entirely of cotton-linen blend (yes, even the platform) which I think I can get a shirt out of the platform and britches out of the skirt for a man's casual garb for gold key. I've gotta get the final details done on the gold key garb I've already worked on so I can turn it in to Marianne and get it off my bedroom door frame. I did the initial preparation of my federal tax return and don't believe the results. I'm going to do it over again another day to see if I come up with the same results. Also, I think there's a major typo problem with the Nebraska tax return as they have me subtracting what I owe in taxes from my adjusted income instead of from what I actually paid in for taxes. The result would certainly be nice to receive but is terribly unrealistic. This evening I finished stripping out and sewing together the last of the trim shirts and shut the lid on the now full trim box.

TUESDAY

Today I spent the afternoon waiting for phonecalls. It was a terribly nice day out and I had thought I'd work in the garden but I couldn't chance missing the calls so... Naturally none of the calls came in. Bummer!

Instead I got the wool apron dress sewed up; just handwork left to be done on it.

MONDAY

Got follow up responses back from three of the four applications I sent out over the weekend. It was simply filling their forms for the application but one of them had a personalized note indicating a selection process had already narrowed the field with me in it. This is slightly encouraging.

Got some sewing done... I'll put that on stash challenge through.

SUNDAY

Initially we thought we'd go to a movie today but on second thought decided to wait until Monday when theaters might have less business. Leofwyna is feeding a friend's cats this weekend and she stopped for groceries on the way back. She put together a tuna cassarole for our supper and for leftovers this week. Mainly we relaxed and puttered; I stripped a few samples.

MONDAY

We did choose a movie, Seven Pounds with Will Smith who we trust to put out a good performance. The advertising for this movie is unusual in its ambiguity with good reason. I'll limit myself to say it's a really unusual movie... probably a view once for the experience. It certainly kept one guessing and conjecturing all the way to the end.

TUESDAY

With Leofwyna at work I spent the afternoon on the internet doing further job search exercises and then spent some time this evening removing the old lining from Leofwyna's favorite 'snow removal' old coat. Last winter I'd finally found a lovely coat lining material on the flat fold clearance tables at Hancocks and got two yards at a 60% off sale so this is for the stash challenge as well as keeping a promist to repair the coat.

WEDNESDAY

Leofwyna did get to work again today. I went to feed the friend's cats today and while out stopped at Goodwill to see if the White Christmas video was still there; I wanted to be able to surprise Leofwyna with it. It was gone but I did find a replacement wooden dish drying rack. We've had the last one wired together and I'm delighted to find a similar one. I got most of the new lining in Leofwyna's coat this evening. Just have one sleeve left... the seams are so thick I've hand sewn most of this except for machine stitching the lining seams.

THURSDAY

Spent the day transcribing Standing Bear Part Two and starting Part Three. It's always a good thing when this process is on an interesting subject. That is the case with Standing Bear because twenty years ago at work we were doing a dramatization of this subject for public television.   This time is more for a historical documentary.

When Standing Bear was being done then I had only been working with the producers a couple years and it was a real learning experience seeing how a television show of this type goes together. There was all the planning years before hand, most of which I'd missed for this program but I got in on the process of finallizing the script, selecting actors, arranging for production sites, costumes and props, making travel, room and catering arrangements. Whether youj're doing 60-minutes, 90-minues or 120-minutes the actual amount of material taped is many times this amount (perhaps 10-20 times as much) which is then cut down into the final program.   And locations were in several different places for various lengths of time. I got to go on a couple of the out-of-studio shoots to manage the paperwork and talent payments. And since I'm a deft sewer I got to work with the costumer a little, too.

When the shoots were all finished and rented costumes were returned to the West Coast the locally made costumes, which were thoroughly and roughly used, and uncleaned (phew), were going to be thrown away I claimed the big box full and made several lovely quilts from them. Being on the inside certainly had unexpected benefits.

On an unscripted program which is full of interviews instead is when the transcription work comes along. The 10-20 times rule still applies but in this case ALL the interviews must be transcribed. Sometimes the interviews are highly informative and interesting. Other times the subject is difficult to transcribe because of accent, multiple people like in a meeting, or noisy background; that's when it becomes exceedinly tedious. And then sometimes the subject simply is not interesting to the transcriptionist, that can't be helped I suppose but then it's deadly tiring. This was particularly true for me when the subject was football... OMG some of those people are inarticulate! In spite of this I really, really miss that job!

Anyway today when I was just shutting down to get ready to go to fiber arts Gyda called to let me know it was cancelled due to threat of ice storm. Probably a good thing as when Leofwyna got home she said it was really icy-bad out there. I worked on the sample quilts while Leofwyna put in some computer time.

FRIDAY

I thought the sun was trying to peep through this morning when I woke up so I scooped snow and de-iced the car hoping the sun might finish the job with the ice under the snow. No such luck, the sun vanished totally about the same time I went in. Oh well. Went to get groceries, sent out a couple more job applications at the University and then worked on the transcription again until supper. Finished the last of the poly-blend quilts and counted them up prepratory to shipping them out to Kronberg. There's 20 tops for the church ladies to tie and bind for their African missions. I'll be glad to get them out of the house. I'm back to cleaning samples again, this time the cotton-blends.   These will probably go to Kronberg too but I'll have more fun with these and make them more organized so they'll look better and will probably be used for stress situations like fire, flood or tornado sympathy offerings of a more local nature.

SUNDAY

Went to Hancocks and found aqua cotton duck for a pair of britches to go with the XLg doublet. Stopped at the grocery store for soda and found manager's special pork and beef. Threw the beef into the freezer and the pork into a crockpot with lentils and carrots. Apparently I didn't put in enough liquids cause the resultant mess was a failure; fortunately the pork will be salvageable shredded with barbeque sauce for sandwiches. Spent the evening stitching up strips of sampler fabric.

MONDAY

Threw a load in the washer but forgot to follow up the rest of the laundry. Cleaned up the kitchen. Pat R called to arrange for me to transcribe a couple audio tapes for Chris L's grant proposal for the Standing Bear program. I'm to pick them up Friday noon. Finished up three sample tops that I'd started last week and then one more start to finish. There're lots of sniglets all over the floor and tracked onto the carpet upstairs; I really need to get out the broom and carpet sweeper sometime soon.

MONDAY-TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

I spent three evenings piecing four tops from the fabric gleaned from the sample books I brought home last August. These will be passed on to my hometown church to be finished for African mission quilts. The rest of the time has been spent doing the housecleaning and cooking for Thursday, busy-busy-busy.

Tonight we spent a little time relaxing together over a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle; it turned out to be a rather easy one and is already put away again.

Thanks to femdekeroas encouragement I'm adding my entries from the Stash Challenge community here too. It does make it easier to refer back to my entries by having them here.

FRIDAY

Today I finished all but the lacing holes on the XLg doublet then cut and sewed up a Med doublet using a bedskirt I'd picked up nearly four years ago at Goodwill. I also had a fine cotton... something (sheet or tablecloth?) that I cut for the XLg shirt. The foundation for the bedskirt is cotton-poly so I'll use that for a Medium sized shirt. Took some serious rummaging through the piles to find the white cotton thread I knew was there somewhere. It was totally chilly outside so I was glad to stay in working on these.

SATURDAY

Encouraged Leofwyna to go to Omaha today to shop for uniforms; decided not to ride along this time. Instead I sewed up the two white shirts to go with the doublets for gold key. Just have fastenings left to do on them.

SUNDAY

Today we rearranged furniture in the living room and cleaned house prepratory for the Holidays, then I served up the rest of my crockpot pork as barbeque sandwiches with beans for supper. Tonight cut a workman's shirt from three tan linen skirts which were nearly the same shade and texture [thrift store finds over the past few years]. Looks really good actually. Again there's still fastenings needed but figure on doing lots of fastenings at one time before Yule Court in December when I hand this stuff over to the Barony.

I notice an entry I thought was made in the stash challenge community is here, not there. While I've been working on the stash challenge I posted to that community instead of here... so if I post here too everyone would get it twice, that doesn't seem optimal. But if I want my journal here to be complete I need to figure out how to make it happen both places without doubling up. This is giving me the headache. Obviously there's more figuring this site necessary.

THURSDAY

Spent a good part of the afternoon working on the stash challenge doublet as I wanted it to be ready for hand detailing at Fiber Arts Meeting. Tonight was the first renewal Fiber Arts meeting and I've determined to make these meetings as when they were done [sporatically] some time ago it was on Sunday afternoons when I was working and couldn't attend.

We had a nice farble and a bit of show and tell. I was able to show Sash what I was doing with some of his scrap bag, pointing out how I scrimped and pieced to get some of the larger doublet pieces accomplished. It was rather funny when he said he had another 20-yard piece of the stuff! Oh well, I did accomplish my intent to do something from the scrap stash and I'll continue as I started.

MONDAY

Apparently I loafed... I can't remember Monday.

TUESDAY

Today I sorted through the bag full of my peer's scraps. Some time ago I'd learned he simply threw away scraps and didn't hang on to remnants of projects at all. I was aghast and insisted he should pass his scraps on to some worthy individual so they wouldn't be wasted. He decided no one should be stuck with this stuff but troublemakers so I've the privileged individual. Since I was careful not to be greedy and so didn't suggest inititially that it might be me, I was delighted.

Granted the large garbage bag full of scraps produced a full grocery bag full of trash bits but I ended up with lots of promising bigger bits. This afternoon I cut out the pieces for an extra large sleeveless doublet from the aqua/gold cotton-blend brocade. I also sorted through my pile of 'thrift store linen garments of all sizes' and found a nice yellow-gold gathered skirt with just enough fabric for the lining of the doublet. I must confess I did have to piece together some of the narrower pieces but this will be for goldkey and will look just fine.