I am SO SORRY I didn’t post last week. I planned to post, but Mondays have turned into cub scouts day, and this particular cub scout day I had DOUBLE cub scouts so I didn’t have time to write. Then the next two days I had a procedure (don’t panic it’s probably just stress related like everything else) then was catching up on home activities and work stuff and let’s be honest, doom scrolling. Then finally on Thursday I was cleaning up a bit before a friend came to visit on Friday. And then it was the weekend and Easter activities. Before I tell you about all that let me jump back to the Tuesday before Pax.
Will’s parents gave us this awesome Christmas gift this year to fly out to visit and watch the kids for a weekend while we did something fun by ourselves! Basically the only thing we ever want/need anymore. And it’s an extra bonus for Julius and Patricia who get to spend some quality time with Sugar and Daddy-O. Well on Monday night I stayed up late tidying up around the house but figured I’d do the bulk of the clean up on Tuesday night before his parents arrived. Well… at 2pm on Tuesday Will comes down and tells me (while I’m on a call), “my parents are at the airport right now. I got the the date wrong.” I was really, really close to homicide. Instead of committing murder I finished my last call of the day, then scrambled to do whatever clean up I could in the hour I had before I had to get Julius and Patricia to gymnastics (inconveniently it is the day of the week I have to leave work earliest). I was just starting to think the house didn’t look completely a shambles and that I could mostly live with it when Will and I both had to leave (Will to pick up his parents from the train station, me to get the kids).
Will and I are both leaving the garage at the same time something that almost never happens. I usually judge my garage being opened by the puller noise and chain movement ceasing. This time I was in a rush. I had hit my garage door opener before Will walked out since I walked out first. There was still a motor whine but I thought it must have been Will’s door because I looked up and saw the chain on mine had stopped. I then threw it in reverse and backed into the door. We’ve lived in the house for over 12 years and this has never happened to either of us so I was now really, REALLY upset. Luckily Will hadn’t left yet so he was able to pull my garage door up manually so I could get out. I got Julius off the bus and then sobbed silently on the way to get Patricia.
Julius and Patricia were so happy to see Sugar and Daddy-O when they got out of gymnastics that it made it all worth it. And then we got to spend a night with Will’s parents before we left for PAX the following night. We had a great time! Ka and Joe were there Thursday so we hung out with them and ate potatoes. When they left I got to play a great session of D&D (as a paladin!) Mark came in late Thursday and we played a lot of great board games (with Mark and Francisco) and ate more potatoes. I bought more dice that I don’t need and some earrings I didn’t need and some cute shirts and pins that I also didn’t need! Basically it was everything I could want and more! I’m so sad it’s over already.
PAX!!!!!!!!!!
Happy 20th PAX (Prime)!
Clefairy and Wigglytuff
PAX!!! Fireball island
Meowth, Vileplume and haunter (you can’t see him but he’s top left)
I’ve got a potato problem
This past weekend we celebrated Easter with an Easter egg hunt in the yard, Easter baskets indoors followed by a brunch that consisted of scalloped potatoes, asparagus and Eggs Benedict/Eggs Irish/Asparagus Eggs Benedict for the vegetarians (aka me). I made the English muffins, prepped the asparagus, and even poached the eggs the night before. All I needed to do before serving everything was: heat up the Canadian bacon (ham), heat the hash, cook the scalloped potatoes, cook the asparagus, heat up the eggs (3 min in water at 150F), and make the hollandaise sauce. It all worked out rather well! I’m sorry I didn’t take a picture though.
Easter dress
Easter egg hunt!
Easter brunch!
Oh and Mending March is over! But I ended up mending a bunch more things including: the hems on several shirts of mine and Julius’, my eye pillow, a stuffed animal bunny, 2 of Patricia’s dresses, my PJ pants, a pair of my shorts, another pair of Julius’ pants (he wanted stars on these), Patricia’s blue sweater, my white and blue sweater, one of my Bombas (I KNOW RIGHT) and a favorite pair of grey pants. I feel pretty accomplished overall. Many things saved from the landfill for a while at least. I want to show you how I mended my grey pants because I kind of love it and was complimented on them the first time I wore them.
I’ve been experimenting with the Japanese sashiko technique – which is a running stitch used in the art of visible mending. I don’t think there is any wrong way to do visible mending. The point is that you want mending to make your clothes look cool. And sashiko is the ultimate way to do this. (Just google sashiko, trust me you’ll be tearing holes in your pants just so you can patch them up). So for me I did kind of a crazy pattern that started out symmetric but didn’t finish up that way. I knew I wanted stars. (I will be honest the pants are dark grey so the first thing I thought of was the night sky and ACOTR.) So I used a black felt patch on the inside, bold white cotton thread and silver thread for accents. I also had a rip on the butt where I only used a few stars. We’ll see how they hold up. Julius liked them so much that the next day he came home from school with a rip in yet another pair of pants and requested I fix them up “but with stars this time”.
Julius’ star mended pants.
Velaris would be proud.
Star Jeans Mending
What you’ll need:
- thick cotton darning thread (or embroidery floss)
- silver thread
- a long needle with an eye long enough for your thread (I don’t have a very long one, I wish I did, but the longer the better for sashiko to keep your stitches straight)
- felt for mending
- pins or safety pins
- ripped item of clothing
- Cut a patch slightly larger than the area you want to mend or reinforce. I decided to reinforce the entire knee, since even though it isn’t ripped it was showing signs of wear.
- I next pinned the patch in place inside the pants (I used safety pins because I kept putting my project away and picking it back up again during PAX and I didn’t want to stab myself)
- Then I started in on the mending. I tied a knot in the back of my cotton thread and starting from the inside of the pants where the patch was, I stitched a straight running stitch down the pants.
- When I got to the bottom of the patch I moved the needle over a few mms then continued up the other way.
- When I’d covered the whole patch I switched to horizontal lines along the patch, crossing the other lines in strategic places.
- Finally I added in some x’s on top of the plus marks in a few places to look sort of like stars.
- Lastly I added some silver thread for more show.
Finished mending.
Star mending on my booty.
You get a pass for looking at my mending here.
