Category: To Occupy my Time

Requiem: Rubber Scraper

Received for Christmas one year from my Aunt Carol (“It will not melt up to one thousand degrees! One Thousand Degrees!” she said more than once) there is also a larger green one.  It’s been a handy fellow, not melting at all and very good for scraping the last bits out of the peanut butter jar.

Sadly, the silicone has given up the ghost.

Trimet employs white-out to eliminate racist statement. Probably not ironically.

“No Blacks.” Someone had graffitied, in answer to the statement, “What makes this place great.”
Then the word “no” was covered in white-out.
I don’t really know if it was a Trimet employee who used the whiteout, or a random passerby with whiteout in their backpack.  Either way, I snickered.

Tabloid format and recipes? No go!

Here I am on the train, reading my paper.

And here I am reading the recipe for Greek-Style Souffleed Omelet.

And here I am having to turn and read over the fold.
In the old, pre-tabloid days, printing a recipe over the fold was no big deal because you could just open the paper and cut the recipe, right over the fold.  But now two parts of the recipe are on two different pieces of the newspaper. Which means taping things together.  Grrr.

Laurel Dress. Making more bias tape and a setback.

I concluded I did not have enough bias tape to complete this project, so I made some more.  Matt helped.  I have good spacial relations, but not good enough to be 100% confident that I could make the bias tape exactly as before with those stripes.  

Also, I discovered my iron has sprung  a leak.  I store it on top of the file cabinet when I’m not sewing and I discovered a wet, rusty mess below the file cabinet.  This involved moving the file cabinet and cleaning under it.

Then I propped it up on bars of soap so air would circulate under and dry the bottom, without leaving rust stains.

I felt very smart to think of this solution.

Should there be any future reference needed, this is the way you slice your stripy bias tape to get bias tape to come out vertical.

Here’s my new bias tape maker!  It’s the yellow thing on the right, nosed against the iron.

Here’s my good helper.

And here I am sewing together sleeves.  You can see where the iron drips.

I don’t disagree, but that doesn’t mean I have $1600.00

O, the Oprah Magazine has this feature every month.  It encourages you to purchase well-made, classic things because it pays off over time.  This month they have a Burberry trench coat.  I love it.  It’s beautiful, and in Portland, Oregon, would be my main coat for three of four seasons.  There’s only one problem.  The cost.