Saturday, January 13, 2007
We went to Novaki's for my birthday, and it was great. Novaki's is always great. Novaki's sister has our order (1 cappuccino, 1 hot chocolate, 2 ricotta cannolis--no nuts) all memorized, even though we only go there once or twice a year. That's very impressive. She always thinks the cappuccino is for Dean and the hot chocolate is for me, though. But that happens pretty much everywhere.
Posted at 8:23:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I decided that my goal for 2007 is to eat kidneys.
Wow, I got an e-mail from "Middletown Russell Circ" about my interlibrary loan book! Instead of a phone call. That's pretty cool. When did they switch??
Posted at 12:44:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Posted at 5:45:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The D.B.G. was at SBUX again today! He and the Marshmallow Guy were paling around, acting goofy. Everyone was in a silly mood. Devil Beard Guy told me, "We're going to retire at 30 and buy a boat!" Me: "A pirate ship?" D.B.G., grinning, "Yeah!!"
At the post office, my pal the bearded mailman recognized my car and brought my packages up to the front desk for me (he'd already loaded the regular mail into the truck, but snagged the packages so I could have them right away). When I saw the packages, I said, "Oh--it's my birthday tomorrow!" and he said, "Happy birthday! How old're you? 19?" I cracked up and answered, "Yup!"
Here's another, slightly better, photo of my new coat. I forgot I took it yesterday. It's still all blurry, since it's a Zi photo, but at least it shows the whole coat.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Dean whimpered because I didn't mention the pouch I made him on Monday. It's Tango color-schemed with a black leatherine body and a tan zipper. I was going to tell about it, but he took it away to put in the plane before I could take a photo!
Posted at 7:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It's used to hold the hand-held transceiver, antenna, antenna cord, and push-to-talk switch, and it fits in the pocket on the back of Tango's passenger seat. [Dean made me write, "Note: a tranceiver is used for radio communication. The plane has two onboard, but it's a good idea to have a hand-held backup for a power failure emergency." Aagh!] The items fit in it perfectly, and the two-tone look is very spiffy.
Okay, here's my secret project! It involved gifts for Jan's birthday, so I couldn't reveal it at the time.
Posted at 1:38:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
For Christmas, Jan gave me a collection of really fantastic striped fabric, and I've been dying to use it on a project with my new rolly cutter. When I got the zipper windfall, I knew what to do: lined, zippered pouches! I found instructions on the Internet, which I mostly followed but improved upon a little bit through the course of learning how to make the pouches.
Before I made any pouches using my cool striped fabric, I first made a test pouch just to see if I understood how. I didn't want to mess up any of my stripes. A while ago, Susie gave me this great mermaid flannel, and I have a lot of it, so I used that since I knew even if I messed it up I'd still have plenty left. (I wanted to use fabric I liked for the test, after all; if all went right, it would be a keeper.) Here's my first try: the mermaid pouch, with a cheerful yellow zipper. It turned out really good, except I somehow managed to make the fish swim down on the back. (Obviously, they are feeding on algae and stuff off the bottom.) So that was my first lesson: double-check the pattern on the fabric! I haven't really decided that to do with this pouch yet, but I love it. It's insanely soft and touchable.
On Sunday (Jan's birthday), I was ready to attempt the real thing. I came up with ideas for three pouches.
1. An orange-striped one lined with white vinyl, designed for a tooth accessories, like if you want to bring them on a trip or just somewhere that you might want to brush your teeth (work, somewhere you're going to have a meal, or whatever). The case fits a toothbrush, a travel-sized tube of toothpaste, travel floss, lip balm, a contact lens case (orange, of course) and mini hand lotion (all included, natch), and, since the inside is vinyl, it's okay to stick a wet toothbrush in it.
I was worried about working with the vinyl, but I didn't really have any problems with it until it came time to pull the whole thing inside-out through the little hole in the bottom of the lining. (You blind-stitch this hole closed afterward.) That's the trick to doing the lined pouch with no seams showing; it's very cool. The vinyl did okay with the turning inside-out part (although I should've left a bigger hole), but I found out that it's impossible to blind-stitch vinyl by hand. So I ended up cheating and sewing the bottom of the lining with the machine. There's a tiny ridge down there, but it looks nice and neat and is probably more waterproof that way. Lesson: don't even try to hand-sew the bottom when you're using vinyl. It's fruitless.
2. The second one I made was a litle cash stash pouch. It has wiggly blue stripes on the outside, and is lined with dark green felt (green for greens, of course). The zipper is also green (the whole thing looks kind of minty).
I intended it to be big enough for a Starbucks card/credit card, but I found out that even if you plan the width to be wide enough for something, you have to remember that the zipper doesn't open as wide as the entire width of the pouch, so it's impossible to get something the exact width of a pouch into the pouch. At the point I discovered this, I really really liked the little pouch anyway, so I decided to finish it off and keep it as it was. It's the perfect width for a folded-up bill and/or a bunch of coins, and it's nice and small and cute and easy to fit in a pocket. I ended up liking it better this way.
3. Final pouch! This one has ultra-cool multi-colored outside fabric, matching yellow-based multi-colored lining, and a gorgeous mauvy-zipper (I adore the way the zipper matches both fabrics). I also sandwiched gold felt (not that the color shows anywhere, but it's golden yellow) between the outside and the lining, to give it padding and body. It's sewn to the outer fabric, so the lining is free and lining-like.
You'd think I'd have my techniques all down by the time I got to the last pouch, and that it would be a cinch. Not so. For some reason, this pouch took me hours. It was jinxed. Just about everything that could go wrong, did. Maybe I was getting tired. I had developed some excellent improvements to the instuctions by this point, including my favorite: using a zipper much longer than needed, rather than one approximately the desired length. Having an extra-long zipper is tons easier to work with, for reasons I won't go into here. Unfortunately, in the process of making this pouch I managed to zip the zipper pull right off the end of the zipper (after I'd already cut the stoppers off) not once, but twice. It was a huge Suder and a two-man job to get it back on again. Lesson: don't, under any circumstances, do this!! Normally there's not much danger of doing so, because you don't cut the stoppers off until after you sew the side seams together. But I was having trouble with the zipper catching on the lining (because of the extra-thickness of the felt padding), so I needed to take out the side seams to remedy it. Anyway, after many, many problems that I won't get into, this pouch now looks fabulous (and the zipper works perfectly). I made it the size for storing fingernail accessories (like nail files and scissors and stuff) but you could keep anything in it. This pouch is very, very pretty, and I'm quite proud of it. I'm glad I didn't end up jumping up and down on it and throwing it out the window.
Here are of all three pouches together: side view and top view.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Wow. I finished my project. It was quite the project. It would've been much easier if I was more experienced with it, but I'm not, so it took all day. For some reason the last part was very problematic (I had to redo it about a quintillion times), but it turned out very nice in the end. I also learned many lessons for future reference. I am going to write them down in a draft post so I can remember what they are, and when I reveal what the project was I can post it. (Yes, I will reveal eventually. I'm not that much of a tease.) (Okay, I guess I am that much of a tease, but I really will explain in this case.)
Posted at 11:01:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I finished the first item for my secret project and it is pretty cute!
Posted at 6:26:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Dean and I went to Rocky this afternoon, and the Marshmallow Guy was sitting outside at one of the smokers' break tables talking to the Devil Beard Guy! Even though D.B.G. doesn't work at SBUX anymore, he must've stopped by for coffee and to see the old gang.
Dean told me to get out of the car first and "go talk to my pals" or something like that. :-) I didn't really talk to them, but I said "Hi!" very smilingly as I walked up to the door, then added, "I missed you!" Devil Beard Guy said, "Aw! I missed you, too!" Caitlyn made our drinks (talls in grande cups), and my tall dry cappuccino weighed nothing compared to Dean's tall chai latte. It was hilarious. It weighed about as much as an empty cup. Perfect.
Today is Jan's birthday and I hope it's a very resplendent one. Even though I am a slack and didn't send her card or gift yet. But I am going to write the card today. I think that's my new slack slackiness tradition when it comes to Jan's card. It's kind of good, because then I get to think about Jan a lot on her birthday, since we always write each other a special letter in our annual cards. Happy birthday, January. You are grand!
