I'm waiting!

I am waiting for 2 things I have ordered off the web. First, a cup. It is my braces consolation cup and will take a couple of weeks. Second, fabric.

I couldn't figure out how to get to Surry Hills in business hours to shop for fabric in person, so I decided to risk buying fabric online. Kelani Fabric has free shipping over $50, and it's easy to spend that. So this week I ordered 2 metres of 2 fabrics to make 2 shirts. I got a blue version of this (it's no longer on the website because I took the last of it) and a plain pale brown cotton. I spent Monday night recutting the pattern pieces based on things I estimate would improve it slightly. A bit better fitting sleeves, and a slimmer body. So I'll be ready to sew again next weekend!

Cross stitch.

Calling it finished while still finding more things to do. I had to repair a bicycle spoke.

This is a close up to show you how many shades of cream there are. And that it's all done on cream linen. It looks really beautiful.

This is how I stored it: rolled up in a piece of cotton quilt batting. Keeping it clean was really important, and it's picked up some brown spot stains somehow anyway.

I don't see myself ever doing a big cross stitch like this again. Cross stitch is nice if you have good light, room to spread out, concentration to read a pattern all the time. None of those things apply to me anymore. I live in a small dark unit, and craft gets done at night or when I take it somewhere like church. I think crochet is a better craft for me know because it is small and portable. Granny squares can be done almost without looking at your work, and take up a pencil-case worth of space.

Cancelled weekend productivity.

The weather was unsuitable for a drive up the freeway. So I got to stay home at the last minute and sew instead. I bought this pattern off the Internet recently and decided last week, since I'm so sick of my limited shirt collection (or have put on just enough weight since the bus commuting to feel limited), to give it a go before Peter Pan collars go out of fashion. I have in my mind some really nice blouses. But nice material is expensive. So before I cut up $70 worth of Japanese cotton I wanted to trial the pattern on something cheap. To make sure I make the right size and everything.

Last Wednesday I went to lincraft after work and I found some nice linen, but instead I decided to go for the cheapest stuff I could buy and still realistically probably wear. I bought some green knit, like for a tshirt, for $7.50/m and some grey stretch poplin for $15/m.

I washed the fabric with a load of sheets, towels and undies. I now have green sheets and undies.

On Friday night I traced the size M pattern pieces onto kitchen paper (this is a trick so that you can go back to the pattern and use the other sizes later, rather than cutting out the size you want and losing the rest), and pinned the pieces onto the green knit.

I got up on Saturday morning, had breakfast, got half dressed, and started work. I sewed all morning. I finish the green shirt after lunch. Not that i had lunch, except jatz and cheese. Observations: the pattern sizing is generous, esp with a stretch fabric. The sleeves do not fit well on the back of the shoulders, but I'm not sure how to alter it. The placket is difficult and totally redundant: I should just sew a fake placket on. I will never need to unbutton it. And the fabric was much too thick, esp for the placket and other fiddly bits. I did not notice that the pattern suggested very light fabric.

While all the sewing stuff was out and the house was already sew messy I thought I might as well keep going so I went straight on and started the grey poplin shirt. Again, the fabric was too thick, I think. Surprisingly so. But it was far easier to sew than the knit. So I am looking to buy something quite soft and drapey.

I left off the placket for now, I took the sleeves in a little but and made the collar go a bit closer to the centre front. I didn't use interfacing due to the thickness of the poplin. I put the collar on neatly, then realised it was all off centre slightly, so had to unpick it and put it back on. I overlooked the seams all nicely. The one thing to do is decide how to finish the placket area, because it needs something, for structural reasons as much as decoration. the collars are a little heavy and need some support to stop pulling on the neckline. So I'll have to sew on a fake placket.

The shirt is long enough to tuck in and actually looks nice tucked in, I don't traditionally tuck shirts in. The grey poplin makes it look smart. I'm in two minds about making a size smaller or not. I think it looks too big on me, but I can't try on a smaller size, can I. Thats the trouble with sewing. I think I'll go smaller next time.

The collar sits really nicely around the neck, even at the back. I am really obsessed with collars at the moment. Whenever I watch a vintage ABC or BBC thing like Miss Fisher or Call the Midwife I admire the collars on the dresses and shirts. Particularly on the working class women. Today, women can mostly choose from a business collar or a Chinese collar. The Peter Pan collar is a recent variation, I'm not sure if it will catch on or it is too babyish. But the old clothes on TV have heaps of variations on collars.

Swimming in the morning.

The weather is SO DODGY at the moment. I planned to swim with a friend yesterday morning, so I got up at 6.30 and put my swimmers on, and it started raining, although the sky was golden bright. Disappointing. It was a generally disappointing day. This morning, it didn't rain, but my company cancelled on me so I went alone. It was still lovely though. I wonder what it will do tomorrow.

Swimming in the morning in the ocean, with the sun coming up and the air all fresh and only the morning people around you, is bliss. Even though it is stressful getting out of bed early, and fitting a swim and a shower and washing my hair into the morning dash before work, it is worth it.

Afterwards, I want to eat a bacon and egg roll. And I feel sleepy. That doesn't happen with other exercise, like morning Jillian. Probably the cold.

I wish I did something fun on the weekend, but it didn't work out. It rained when I wanted to swim, and then when it was sunny I couldn't think of anything to do, so I stayed inside all lonely. I did do a few satisfying things, however. I finished my cross stitch! (bar the spoke that has already come undone and the 6 stiches I've found uncrossed) and I cooked pasta for church, a pretty good pesto. I was impressed with it and I enjoyed cooking it.

I'm thinking of juicing. Finding it hard to eat veggies and fruit at the moment, so I'm thinking of doing some juicing to compensate.

First world problems: dentistry.

To be honest, it's not the orthodontics that are bad, it's the anticipation I build up and the disappointment that brings me down. Every time I set a pretend end date, like "surely they'll be off by the weddings" slash end of the year slash my next birthday slash family reunion, and passed it with braces on my teeth for the foreseeable future, I got depressed. Grieved a bit, set up a new pretend end date to anticipate, got disappointed again, and so on and so on.

So imagine how I felt, to have a REAL end date from the orthodontist, and turn up to get a cast made for my lower retainer wire, and also get offered another 6 to 9 months of treatment. Yeah. What a fun decision. The 'frugal and sensible' me says "get value". But the 'creature of anticipation' me can't face it easily.

I went to clean my teeth after lunch and thought "this should be the last week of cleaning my braces after lunch at work" and broke the dam of teary self-pity. And open plan offices are not tremendous fun places to vent and cry. Thankful to H who took me to the Lindt cafe. I wonder if they get many sobbing grown women ordering iced-chocolates. It was a very awesome iced-chocolate. Then we planned our valentine poems.

Bible study last night was good, although I almost walked away from the door and went home to wallow some more, and I was a little grumpy and unencouraging. We did session 2 of The Course of Your Life. My takeaway point was to be thankful for God's sovereignty.

Today I feel tired and frustrated still, but I'm getting closer to having a sensible perspective on it. I googled "robotic orthodontics" and found out what it actually is.




So I'm narrowing it down in my head to a few questions to ask next week, like,

1) will the gap bounce open again like it did the first time?
2) if, after 2 months or something really short, it looks like it's not going to work like the promises, can we just pull it off, rather than keep hoping.

I might be able to make the best of it yet.

Demilked.

Demilked is a website I just discovered this week. It's great. It's all designy stuff in one place. And a bit of it is at DIY level, it's not all just photoshop genius level. See these really neat finger paintings.

http://www.demilked.com/finger-paintings-judith-ann-braun/

Depressing.

My braces can come off next week. The 3.5 years of treatment has been disappointing, but at least it can be over.

UNLESS.

Today I was offered more treatment. Possibly less disappointing. But then it wont be over. Now instead of a week of happy anticipation, I have a week of depressing decision-making. I should probably do the treatment because once the braces are off there is no going back, so another 9 months of the latest technological treatment at no extra cost is better value than stopping short. I'm all about value. It's just that I was SOOOO CLOOOOSE to the end. And I'm pessimistic about the new treatment. It doesn't matter how amazing the robots are, my bones are hard, so I don't see how my teeth will behave any differently. The gap will surely still bounce back open. But then, it's been so long, what's a few months more to give it one last shot. I'm used to it, aren't I. It's not like I have anything else going on in my life.

Bathurst.

While I have a car, I drove to Bathurst to visit Grandma. I left at 6.30am on Saturday morning and had a lovely easy 3 hr drive. I didn't do anything exciting, I just hung out at home. I did Jillian and cross stitch.

And had a My Kitchen Rules marathon. I'm kinda hooked. The common mistake is, I don't think people understand the effect of scale. Cooking for 12 is different to cooking for 2 or 4. And it's surprising that people don't seem to do a proper practice run. It's either "I cook this all the time!" (but not for 12 people while also cooking 2 other courses, dummy) or "I wanted to try something different". There is a lack of logistical planning.

So anyway, because I didn't do much worth blogging, here is a photo of a toilet paper dolly.

Going west.

I'm driving to Bathurst for the weekend.

Hand-drawn Disney short.

Some fancy way of combining hand-animation with CGI stuff. But also it's super sweet.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2013/02/cgi-meets-hand-drawn-techniques-in-this-hopelessly-romantic-disney-short/272784/

Church design.

Sharing this because I like it. I recently helped with a new logo for my old church. T drew a lovely tree, and I made it into a vector logo and added the type. See it here.

http://maitlandchurch.org/

Also, take note of a very well thought out and nicely designed church website. T is a pretty good photographer, so all the lovely candid photography is real, not stock. It really makes a difference. I use stock a lot, and when you see real people in the actual real place, instead of American models, it makes a nice genuine impression. Also, the information is thoughtful, like how long church runs for and what to wear. And it's not hard to find out about Christianity. It's my favourite church website.

Elementary.

It was an intelligent show. They did not, in the first episode, reveal a grand plot, the start of a season-long story arc, a nemesis… it was simply proceedural. If it gets a long story arc of some sort, even if it's just a character development one, not a 'catch Moriarty' thing, it would be excellent.

The main characters, Sherlock and Watson, were mish-mashes of the types. My flatmate thought Sherlock was a Robert Downey Jr ripoff, I think he was broader than that. (I originally thought that out of RDJ and Benedict Cumberbatch, Cumby was the more authentic Sherlock but having gone back to the books, it's possibly RDJ. Because Sherlock Holmes does box as a gentleman's sport, and does have a sense of self-deprecating humour occasionally, and some rare self-doubt. He is obsessive and arrogant and intelligent and a drug addict, but he is not a COMPLETE sociopath and probably not even on the aspergers/autism spectrum, and he is refined.) Anyway, there are so many shows with the Holmes/Watson dynamic, like the Mentalist with Patrick Jane and Lisbon, that it was never going to be a highly original interpretation, esp following so soon after RDJ and BC. It was well written and well cast, though. Sherlock had the pointy nose and the drug problem and the facts and "deductions". Watson had the post-traumatic stress of professional malpractice, and a valid excuse to move in. There is no Lestrade, but there is the other guy, Gregson. It had a good look, and a sharp soundtrack—I liked the pop songs and cello music was very effective.

Cross stitch... almost.... finished....

I'm up to "finishing"!!! I did the last bit of the leaves on Saturday. So I've practically finished.

I still have to do the face, the bicycle spokes, and the silver border. And then check carefully for anything I missed. I'm on track to finishing it this month.

Being the closest to the airport.

I am often the place to crash for family using the airport, and last night both sisters stayed over and I dropped them off early before breakfast and work. I walked to work at 7am. It was way too humid, in fact there was a lot of sea haze in the air, I could smell the ocean and visibility was quite short, so the air was golden, but it was very sticky for walking.

Last night we went for dinner at the spot, joined by my sisters friend L who moved to Newtown 3 days ago and is enjoying exploring Sydney. Good on her, I didn't really enjoy exploring Sydney so soon, I was so in shock at the weather and the flatmates and stuff when I first moved here.

We shared a Greek meat platter and then went to Kurtosh, and shared a kurtosh, enjoyable for all, and Julia also had an iced chocolate which she said she rated the best, no. 1 iced chocolate she's ever had. It was quite different from a normal iced chocolate, it was like whipped chocolate cream on top, and it tasted like chocolate. The service was really good and it was rather quiet and nice... It's getting hard to get into Kurtosh these days, probably because of the kurtoshes and the iced chocolates and the coolness, so it is nice to know that it's relaxing in the evening.

It was so nice, it felt like a Friday night! And then I still have real Friday night to look forward to, which is eat street.