Tag Archives: Sewing

the grain bag

Last year I bought a grain bag bag, and I have been using it a lot. However, I’m heading to Spain (in a week!!!), and the bag isn’t especially at all secure. And so I made my own, with a zipper on the top and inside zippered pockets for the ipad and passport/money.

Start with this:

Fold, iron, duct tape, sew, add zippers, seat belts…

And end with this:

The new bag is a tad bigger, and it’s wider at the bottom. This will be great for my upcoming trip. The older bag has better placement of the writing and logo.

Lessons learned:

Going to the junkyard to cut seatbelts out of cars is way a lot of FUN. It was a cold day with snow on the ground, so I didn’t fully explore the place. I’d been looking into trucks, thinking that they might have longer belts, but not really. Then I turned around and saw the “caution” writing on the belt in a trans am. So I just grabbed the two from that car.

Actually, it took a lot of effort to cut them out with a box cutter… which is a good thing!

The seatbelts from trucks, where they exist, are generally dirtier than those from cars. The passenger side belt is much nicer than the driver side belt. It’s likely that the two belts from a single car won’t match perfectly due to dirt and use, but a good wash helped that.

Having a business that begins with A does pay. Aable was the first junkyard I found in our area, so I phoned and then went out later that day. On my way I passed FOUR other junkyards. It’s as though every second business in Chelsea is a junkyard… it’s what a lack of zoning can do. I still think it was worth driving the extra couple miles… it was a huge yard, and the guy there was great.

I love my kenmore! It sewed through four layers of seatbelt, no problem… though by the end, and maybe it was six layers of seatbelt I tried to push it through, the needle bent…

Though it was a fun project, and something I wanted to do, it was also a royal pain in the ass. I think I spent four or five hours on the sewing, never mind getting the seatbelt, zippers (a trip to Waterville), buckley things, and most recently and yet to be added, a magnetic clasp.

There are a few other photos in this flickr set.

mushroom sweater update

The body is done! It was done two or more weeks ago… and I haven’t gotten around to picking up the sleeves. It’ll happen, but it probably won’t be finished until sometime in May.

It looks skinny, but as you can see, it’ll stretch. It’s sized for 50 inch chest, though I tapered for the waist. I’m happy with the shoulder detail, and that the back is about 2-3 inches longer than the front (the sides match up, I used shortrows).

gratuitous doggy pic

Gravy in socks…

crazy sink

I had to go to just about the world’s worst and least effective training a week or two ago. I work in an office… I don’t need somebody who is reading the slides and doesn’t really know anything about the subject to inform me about hazard communication (label your chemicals) and blood borne pathogens (um?).

Do you have two containers of toner? You need your material safety data sheet posted in the location where you store your toner. In case somebody accidentally ingests it. Give me a frackin’ break! And the bloodborne pathogens was all about hiv and hep C, and the information was not exactly right. I pointed these things out of course. And that all of us in the room were more likely to be exposed to ticks and Lyme disease, and even rabies in an office environment (bats flying about the old buildings) than what they covered. The response? Well, unfortunately OSHA doesn’t have standards for these things. Again, give me a break!

But the sink in the bathroom was way cool…

You have to step on the metal bar near the floor to turn it on, and then warm water sprays all down and around. Talk about a waste of water! But apparently the place used to be a factory, and everybody would have break at the same time, so at one time these sinks saved money.

Not so much anymore.

oddities

Can somebody explain this shadow?

etc

I had that nasty cold that’s going around. Mom felt bad for me and sent some lovely flowers!

I turn 51 tomorrow…

I hope to post about the snowpile. It’s practically non-existent, but it has become a tradition. So, stay tuned… I’ll take a photo on the first day of spring as usual, and announce a contest.

Clearly I have not been blogging much, nor have I been reading many blogs. In large part I blame Facebook, and also the Ravelry forums. Also, I have a new toy, that iPad, which is a lot of fun. However, I think I need something better to synch feeds with my Google Reader.

Feedly displays nicely, but there’s no organization… I can’t mark things as read, it doesn’t record that I’ve read things, AND it doesn’t grab all of the feeds, and of the ones it does grab, it doesn’t display all of them correctly or allow me to visit all the websites. So I’ve stopped using it. Anybody got a recommendation?

Did I mention I’m going to Spain?!?!?!?!

For two and a half weeks! With a friend!!! I’ll be posting pics to facebook, since that’ll probably be the easiest.