Fate feels that way, obviously, since I’m having to unpick a sizeable chunk of the mate’s beanie! For some reason, and I truly don’t get why, it’s too big even for Dr B. The mate’s head is about the same size, so if it’s big on Dr B, it will be big on our mate. So, you know, I could run a bit of shirring elastic through it – as you might recall, I’ve rescued many a saggy beanie by that simple trick – or, since it’s knitted in the round, I could just pull out the ribbing and redo it on smaller needles. I say “just”, but four inches of ribbing will take me quite a while (there’s too much else happening at the moment for uninterrupted knitting time). That, however, is probably what I’ll do.
And then there was the, “Please could you fab up something to put this recording device into?” request, sent in my direction at about 8.30 one night. Yeah right. That saw me scratching about for hours, trying to work out how to get a thick result that would protect the device, a firm bottom that would provide extra protection and a soundboard of sorts, and a suitably fine fabric for one end so that the recordings wouldn’t be muffled (all before 9 o’clock the next morning, when YoungB was scheduled to take it with him for the day’s work). I hunted down some denim and thick corduroy in my “these might come in useful one day” basket and sacrificed a plastic lid to make the base (using what I had; and at that hour, I couldn’t have done much else).
I also had to wrestle with a zip. “You’ve got this fabulous machine now,” Dr B said. True. I haven’t yet had much chance to play around with it, though, so although I did some of the straight sewing on the new machine, I had to pull out the old Singer to do the zipper (or spend a lot of time trying to figure out zippers on the new machine). I’m not particularly good with zippers, although I’ve done some that are very neat and they almost always do the job for which they’re intended. This one didn’t. It was the first I found that looked about the right length but it needed to be a sturdier beast. My fault entirely, though in my defence I’d add that time was a constraint, I ran out of it, I’m old enough to need more beauty sleep than I was going to get and finding a better zip wasn’t an easy option at that hour. Of course the zip broke the first day of use.
Now I have to unpick my very tidy work and redo it with a tougher zipper that I eventually tracked down at the bottom of my notions drawer, one flung in my direction once by Dr B, I seem to recall, because it wasn’t up to the job for which he required it but he thought it might come in handy for me. I know it’s not one I bought and I think that’s why I didn’t immediately fossick about looking for it: it hadn’t registered as being something I’d purchased with a particular project in mind (or any project at all, actually), so it was just there awaiting its moment. Right. At midnight, there is no moment. It’s all, “Can I make this work or will I have to get up early?” The latter was the case, but I still failed.
So there you are, Fate is laughing at me because I now have two projects to reverse, one knitting and one sewing and, yeah, when? Oh, I forgot! Dr B thinks we need to recording device tomorrow, so we’ll need the case tomorrow. I’m trying to work, but if you hear me snarling from where you are, you’ll know I’m wrangling with my seam ripper. Will that be okay?
tingledfangers 