Igenlode Wordsmith

I have just spent an hour in *finally* getting round to taking a tuck in the seat of the set of short-sleeved hot-weather pyjamas that ripped up the back this summer -- they are at least twenty years old (in addition to being second-hand when I got them!) and have now become so thin as to be indecent, so I am not sure how long the repair will last. They have only survived this long by virtue of being made of artificial fibre instead of cotton, and by being so lightweight that I only resort to them in a heatwave, but even synthetic will eventually chafe through with friction against the sheets...

Fortunately (being second-hand) they have always been on the large side, so they will probably still fit despite having had an inch-wide slice folded into the back seam. I'm afraid I didn't attempt to try them on to test the matter since I was already wearing far too many clothes and really didn't fancy undressing under the circumstances! So we shan't find out until next summer. I did, however, take the opportunity to likewise put away all the other assorted bits of lightweight clothing that had escaped the Great Changeover -- I always miss out a few things.

(I have just remembered that the reason why the linen jackets had not been put away was that I'd been planning to wash their collars first, but it is too late now...)

And while I was engaged in doing that, virtue was rewarded by my receiving two more hits on "Little Gentlemen" -- doubling the abysmal total on Chapter 2 -- and a subscription, which means that at least someone (and presumably not on Dreamwidth, since chapters always appear here first anyway for proofreading purposes) is interested enough to want to know what happens next :-)

I finally got round to cutting back the dead sticks on the mint and oregano (which I really ought to bring myself to get rid of, as it is still virtually flavourless).
I ( repotted the sorrel ) but the plant does seem to have survived.

Which is more than I can say for the new pot of spring onions, which are now all dead. The little tuft of chives is still alive, but not exactly thriving -- we shall see if it makes it through the winter.
I still have marigolds (second generation) and pot-marigolds flowering, and of course the pink Linaria. Both the garlics are happy.

( Front light )

( Drying out )

I got round to cutting my hair this morning, and have ended up with the sort of unfortunate glimpse-of-scalp patch round the back that is always the hazard of cutting by touch aided only by a three-inch pocket mirror.( Read more... )

I finally got round to sewing the missing press stud back onto my waistband (my expanding waist having been putting too much strain on it, I suspect, but the thread may have simply worn through), and after meticulously sewing all four sides of the stud and neatly finishing it off, I was just about to embark upon my missing waistcoat button when it dawned upon me that I had managed to sew the stud back on the wrong way out so that the socket was on the inside and there was no way to press the two halves together. So I had to unpick the whole thing, and of course couldn't face doing it all over again. The project goes back on the heap...

I had steeled myself to finally get round to sewing on a replacement collar button ( Read more... ) before I could repair the button I had first to reinforce the edges of the buttonhole.

( Read more... ) After a lot of effort and working back over the existing lumpy doubled section I eventually managed to create a reasonably neat and workable result, but it certainly would not pass any Savile Row standards.

(click to enlarge)

( Read more... )

Most people, of course, simply use the 'buttonholer' on their sewing machine and cut down the centre of the resulting rectangle -- although this leaves a raw edge between the rows of stitching it generally wears away in use in any case -- but since I don't have that option on my hundred-year-old machine I need to do the earlier tailoring techniques that physically enclose the cut edge, whether by knotting thread over it or by encasing it in a fold of cloth.... But really, using button-hole stitch is the harder of the two!

I now have not one but *two* ridiculously large mending piles... one upstairs and one downstairs :(
Everything from replacing a button to patching a ripped armpit and repairing a placket...

Among the hazards of writing in the small hours: dropping permanent ink on your pillow :-p

(The pillowcase wanted washing anyway, but that mark is never going to come out despite my immediate scrubbing: like Nancy in The Picts and the Martyrs, I shall have to pretend it is a drop of blood gone black :-D )

Interestingly the mould did pretty much come out, which is the difference between organic and inorganic stains...

(Incidentally, after washing my fingerless gloves to little avail it eventually dawned on me that the mysterious reddish brown stains on the thumbs and palms were in fact the result of walking around out of doors handling the leather binding of my current notebook -- which is evidently dyed that rich brown colour, and apparently not completely colourfast!)

And... once again the Great Changeover is completed, once again on *exactly* the same date as on the two previous years of record -- which is odd, because it's a different day of the week each year (so I'm not always doing it on a Sunday afternoon, for instance).

And precisely as I noted last year, the short-sleeved shirts really didn't get worn to speak of (I dare not cycle in them, for instance), and I have been existing in a state of semi-changeover for some weeks after partially emptying the trunks earlier.

( Pyjamas )

Up at three am wrestling with my accounts :-(

Around midnight I eventually traced the error in last month's figures to the fact that I had overlooked an unexpected twenty pounds of cash income and had also accidentally recorded an overall increase in cash in hand as a decrease instead.

I've now cleared up the discrepancies in my cash records for this month by referring back to my original notebook and discovering that I had omitted not one but two separate purchases at the market in successive weeks, and double-checking all my printed receipts to reveal that in one of them I had accidentally copied down the value of the change I'd received instead of the price I'd paid. Now at least that portion adds up... the rest will have to wait until morning.

[Edit: I spent a hundred pounds on clothes last month, and sixty-five the month before, including a new watch strap, two 'new' pairs of shoes (one second-hand, one kit) and a lot of underwear. I actually got to wear the sandals yesterday!]

Aaand... it's time to complete the great changeover again. On exactly the same date as last year, interestingly -- although I've been cheating, because I emptied the small trunk a couple of weeks back, which provided me with some more jumpers and a certain amount of spare winter underwear.
( Read more... )
The central heating hasn't come on yet, although the newfangled condensing boiler seems to run itself at random far more often than when I actually use hot water and hear it come on. Apparently this is the 'preheat' cycle designed to make sure the water in the heat exchanger is always hot... a bit like having to pay to maintain the temperature in an actual hot water tank, really :-p

Not only do my black dress shoes have holes in the leather of their soles, but the rubber of my sandal soles turns out to be disintegrating -- I keep finding little slivers of it on the floor :-(
And those are *not* resoleable. I bought them on holiday in Norfolk about fifteen years ago, where they were literally the only ones in the shop, and they turned out to be excellent walking sandals with shock-absorbing soles (despite not being billed as anything of the kind; they were actually quite cheap). But despite not having been worn all that much compared to my other shoes, they are now simply perishing from sheer old age.

I shall not find their like again :-(