I think I’ve been reading too many sewing blogs. I started cleaning out my wardrobe and found a skungy old pair of jeans, and my first thought (after a friendly “Hey, skungy ol’ pair of jeans!”) was “Ooh, I could make this into an apron”. Not this kind; this kind. Only with a ruffle. I can’t find the original pattern I saw months ago, but it’s sort of like this, only nicer. It had gingham ruffles and the straps went through the belt loop, which I thought was pretty cunning. I don’t have any gingham or otherwise suitable fabric right now, but what I could do is use the legs of the jeans to make jeans for the baby. I used to have Opinions about babies wearing jeans, but then my sister sent some delightfully girly ones to the snortlepig from England. She does this. Not the worst sort of aunt to have, really. So I figure if I use floral yellow fabric to trim the jeans they’ll look sufficiently cutesome to prevent her being offered dope on the streets.
Later
Oh, smeg. I perceive now I made a tactical bish when I planned to do one obsessive thing every day. I forgot that when I get obsessive, it tends to last. (For example, Helpdesk Man nearly filed for a decapitation permit after I listened to the Wicked soundtrack and nothing but the Wicked soundtrack, and only certain songs on the Wicked soundtrack, for a period of about two months.) So after getting into sewing mode on Monday, I was more or less doomed. And I had sound reasons for going with it, as my being in sewing mode is a rare and short-lived occurrence, usually lasting only as long as it takes me to break two needles or unpick half a mile of errant seams, whichever comes first.
The upshot of all which is, I spent the rest of the day making tiny jeans. They’re nearly done - I got distracted making an arty pocket on the back with frayed edges. The blue trousies are done, though: I finished them this morning. I was planning to be cunning and make a tutorial to show how I did the jeans, but the camera ran out of batteries after Step 2. Which is just as well, as I spent some time painstakingly lining the pocket only to sew across the top, rendering it inoperable. Poor dude. Where will she keep her cigs?
Also, I have decided to make the jeans apron into a gardening apron, mostly in order to justify manufacturing a completely superfluous apron. I like aprons in theory but I have several and rarely wear them nowadays, seeing as how by the time I make it to the kitchen the dude has already liberally coated my clothes in bodily fluids. (So it begins. A year from now I’ll be clad only in a rough surcoat made from my own dreadlocks, and my bedclothes will be shredded into a nest from which I will crouch and chitter at the social workers.) Plus, I could put seed packets in the pockets, and use the ruffle to wipe my hands before heaving the dude out of the carrot bed. Although why I bother, I do not know - a year from now she’ll be crouching with me in the nest, dipping locusts into her own suppurating boils for a snack. I suppose Helpdesk Man will have eloped with the social worker meanwhile; he’s the fastidious type.
So anyhoo. Today’s Wednesday, which needs be Writing because it’s Bible study tomorrow and have I answered my seventy questions about Malachi? Not on your unacceptably-sacrificing nelly.
What is a nelly? It sounds faintly obscene. Oh, here we go. “NOT ON YOUR NELLIE! (or NELLY) ‘Not on your life!’ An intensive tag, dating since the late 1930s. . . . Short for ‘not on your Nellie Duff!’; and ‘Nellie Duff’ rhymes on ‘puff’, breath of life, life itself”. Will you look at that! Faskinating.