Back to Work

 ...an update of sorts.  I returned to my normal work hours last week so I guess I'm almost restored, lol.

My hip continues to improve; I've been released from physical therapy as they said I had improved enough.  I'm supposed to keep walking and do some strengthening exercises about three times a week.

Um.  yeah, sure...meant to do that...

But I am walking.  I've hit 7K steps pretty regularly and have even made it up to 10 k once or twice.  I'm at 8K right now and am planning to do some laps around the house to get up to 10 before I head to bed tonight.

The foot is still swelling slightly...more if I don't wear the compression socks.  At my post op visit a couple of weeks ago, I told the surgeon what was going on with my foot, and commented that it felt like a bad sprain.  I actually sprained that ankle really bad back in 2001, and it was very similar both in how it felt and how it was restricted.  He got kind of a funny look on his face and said, 'You know, sprains don't  really ever go away...in the course of the surgery we clamped your foot in a big boot-like thing and manipulated it pretty aggressively.  It's entirely possible we have aggravated that old injury.'

Well that would explain a LOT, lol.

But I can put on shoes and socks unassisted again, so that's a gain.   I feel like I'm about where I was a year ago, before the situation began to deteriorate at a faster pace.  I should continue to improve, so long as I keep moving, lol.

The finger is still bandaged.  It's extremely tender and I keep it bundled more to insulate it against bumps than to bandage the wound.  It is closing but it's slow.  And I'm making much use of the backspace as I'm posting because...9 finger typing...

On a whole 'nuther topic...We have gotten a dedicated room at church for costuming; a crew actually began the process of sorting and organizing the costumes last week; I'm going to stay late a couple of nights this week to do some as well. I'm told we'll need Bible costumes and some Dickens costumes for the Christmas production this year...not sure what else. Maybe we can get a jump on it and get some things created ahead of time; I'm thinking men's Bible costume vests/over coats, for sure. We seem to have developed a real shortage there... 

Not sure how well I can wrangle hangers with a bummed hand but we'll see....

...and the klutz is at it again...

 Got a mandoline (the slicer, not the instrument, lol) around Christmas last year; finally pulled it out to slice cucumbers for salad on Tuesday.

It was a fairly large cucumber, and I thought, 'My hand is a good 3" above that blade, I'll whittle it down a bit and then use the guard."

Stupid.  Stupid. Stupid.

I did fine for about the first dozen passes, then something happened...still don't know what....and the cuke twisted and threw my pinkie finger right down on the blade.

Y'all.  I was still on aspirin to avoid clots, post surgery.  That thing bled and bled and bled...we went to urgent care, where I went when I stupidly cut my index finger last year, but when I told them I was on aspirin they said I had to go to the ER.

So off we went...to the pricier (and closer) of the two hospitals.  It wasn't stitchable, so they put a compression bandage on it but it was still bleeding profusely after about a half hour (at this point I'd been squeezing my pinkie for about an hour and a half to two hours; my left hand was cramping) so they put some stuff on it to help the blood coagulate, wrapped it up tightly and told me to leave it for 48 hours. 'If it's still bleeding when you change the bandage, come back.'

It hurts worse than last year's injury.  Probably because my finger was twisting as it hit the blade.  I actually went looking for my post surgery pain meds  middle of the night on Tuesday, it hurt that badly.  But I had stashed them so well (didn't actually take them after surgery; it was never that bad) I couldn't find them.  I took an ice pack back to bed and managed to get back to sleep.

Well, not going into gross detail but the non-stick dressing completely adhered to the booboo so when we tried to take it off on Thursday...it pulled on the injury and it started bleeding again.

So we went back.  Following directions.  Was SO excited to go to the ER in the evening on July 4th, but they were surprisingly not busy, at least while we were there.

A soak in a sterile saline bath and the old dressing came free with minimal bleeding so I got bandaged back up and sent home with instructions to change it after another 48 hours.

Just changed the bandage again and that puppy is still oozing when disturbed. And it still hurts, although not so badly as earlier in the week.

Stupid. Stupid.  Been saying that a lot.

So much for getting back in the sewing room.

Sigh.

I am going to get myself some of those chain-mail gloves, lol.

I lost my blogroll...

 This hurts...

I had a long list of blogs that I followed from back in the day.  Unfortunately, some of them have fallen into ...other hands?...and were now being updated with non-sewing material, to put it mildly.

I repeatedly tried to edit out the blogs that were now talking about stuff other than sewing, or that set off my Unsafe Site alert when clicked, or that were now just filled with crazy asian script, but I could. not. get. Blogger to save updates.  The Save button just would NOT activate.  I tried over and over, over several months.

Then I hit on an idea...what if I just made a new blog list widget, with the bloggers that I could remember who were still publishing?  I could copy and paste from the old list pretty easily.  Then I could delete the old one and hopefully not get those random non- sewing links showing up

It was sad to go through the list and see all the fine folks who were no longer blogging.  And, it's true, some had even reactivated after several years of being dormant...that was exciting to see.  But truth was...any non- active blog seems to be subject to being hijacked and used for other purposes so I took a deep breath and just listed the ones I thought were active, as best I could remember.

It saved it...in the wrong place.  I tried to move it, but no dice, so I did a new one...again...

It saved, I thought, but all I managed to do was get rid of both the old list and the list in the wrong place.  The list in the right place, for whatever reason, didn't save.

So I will likely have to reconstruct it all from scratch again and that will take some time.

Bummer.

I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when I can't actually sew, lol.

I will say I am recovering from the hip surgery slowly.  It's one week out today and I actually managed to lift my foot high enough to get over the edge of the bathtub, so I could take a real shower.  Hooray for small victories...

New Parts....

 Specifically, a new right hip.  Installed on Thursday...and I'm really amazed at how little pain I have today.  And today is worse than yesterday, lol.  I figure tomorrow will be about the same and then we should start seeing improvement.  I hope to be consistently walking without the walker in a week.  I can do it a little now...but I'm trying to be good....

Incredible what new tecniques are out there for these things.  That surgery took 30 minutes.  

Maybe in a few weeks I can actually put on my own socks and tie my shoes again....

And get back into the sewing room.  I'm behind. ;-)

A little tomfoolery...

 So, nearly 7 years of planning came to fruition last week when the total eclipse went right over my parents' farm.

The kids came up from Florida.  My sister and her family came in from NY state and Pennsylvania.  

It was a family reunion...and a perfect day.

The best picture was taken by The Artist, who climbed up on the tallest grain bin to get his vantage point.

If you click on the picture to make it bigger you can even see Venus.  The house I grew up in is there in the trees, lol.

My ever practical hubby waited until after the event to order T shirts....he wanted to make sure the weather cooperated and we actually saw it, lol.

We saw the  2017 eclipse at Tennessee's Fall Creek Falls State Park, so the shirt he picked was appropriate.

If you look really, really closely...you'll see two red French knots indicating the approximate locations where we were when we saw them.  It was kinda frustrating, because the map isn't accurate...the 2017 path is marked too far south, and this year's path is marked too far north.  

Ok, adding a closer shot because I could just barely see them in the other:

So, yeah, very approximate, lol.

A wee bit of Fray Check on the back to make sure the knots stay knotted and...custom shirts, lol.

The next Big National Eclipse will be in 2045.  I'll be 86.  Not sure I'll make that one, lol.  But if I'm still around I'm sure I'll try.  

It's that cool. 

Hey! A New Top!

 So I didn't think I would be doing ANY sewing for myself any time soon.  The church choir has dropped the 'seasonal color' thing we've done for so long and are just wearing, well, Janice Rigg's 'Common Wardrobe'...without realizing it, lol.  Denim with neutrals.  So, I figured...no more choir-driving sewing.

But.  Turned out that only sorta applies.  We got word early this week that for Easter we are to wear kind of a salmony pink or a turquoise/aquaish blue, with the neutrals.

Thought I had something that would work, but the scales have crept up a bit over the last year and...it was too snug.

So, what to do, what to do.  I had a sweater the right color in the closet, but I needed a top to go under it.

Dug around in the stash and found a stripy knit print that I got for the Hydrangea wardrobe.  

Timestamp on this photo is 1:26 PM

Time stamp on this photo is 4:08.

Of course, if this had been The Great British Sewing Bee I would have had about an hour and a half to do that, but I went carefully and did a couple of extra steps to hopefully keep things humming along.  Something hosed up in the tension on the double needle hem so it's a wee bit tunneled, but that'll be our secret.  At least the pinks match...

I need something I can get on and off quickly because I will have about 15 minutes to change into my bible costume after the choir leaves the platform before I have to be in place for the mini-production we're doing this year.  And then, when that's done...change back to the choir clothes to repeat the process for second service. 

I will take a mesh bag to put over my head so I don't smear the makeup.  Hopefully. LOL.

But at least I have made SOMETHING for myself this year...

Up late but done

 So, this is the last bit of sewing that I have to sew for the Easter production; dress rehearsal is tomorrow so I had to finish tonight.

I told myself I had to be done by midnight; I have a whole hour to spare, lol.

Another lady is making black costumes for the two Pharisees in our cast, but we needed something resembling the prayer shawls that peek out from under the head drapes.  As I mentioned in the last post, we had some from when we had blue and white Pharisee costumes and at first we thought we'd just sew black ribbon over the blue ribbon.

But, you know, ya never really know what might be useful in the future and we might need those blue-ribboned drapes, since we still have the blue-and-white costumes they go with, so I just decided to make new ones with the black ribbon..

Now, I want to say right up front that these are in no way intended to replicate an actual tallit.  This is stage costuming and is meant to suggest it only.  Despite my usual over-the-top dedication to being authentic, this is something I think is better served by suggestion.  Using an actual tallit with an otherwise inaccurate costume just seems ....wrong.  So we have reasonable facsimiles, not actual replicas.

That includes the tassels.  In the older ones, I just used purchased tassels but sewing notion availability being what it is nowadays, the only tassels I could find in the right size (and price, lol) were red and black, which wouldn't do.  So I bought several skeins of ecru embroidery floss and set about making my own.

And I made tassels, not proper tzitzit, because...well, the whole cultural appropriation thing, and I had no idea how to actually make tzitzit and I didn't really have time to research it.  I had made tassels before, as part of a project with my jr high girls class back in the day,  so I at least had an idea of where to start.

And I took a shortcut.  The instructions I'd had on making tassels began with wrapping the floss around a card...and, you know, those skeins are really already looped around.

So I just cut 'em in half.  Carefully.

Then I cut a length from the extra skein I'd bought  and tied off the looped end of the half-skein, after draping a bit of blue floss over it (the blue thread is specified in Numbers, so I used it, even though it's not proper tzitzit)

I tied it tightly , then cut another bit of floss and tied it off just below the bend.

I wrapped the ends of that second piece around and tied it, then wrapped them around to the other side and tied again...several times... and finished it by pulling the ends down through the middle.  This looks rather muddled, but you can see the large darning needle I used to pull those ends through.

Then I trimmed off the ends even

Sewed them onto the corners of the drapes.

And here's the finished product. 

 I don't think it will show much; I think there's a black head drape that will be over it. But I haven't seen the new costumes, just the inspiration picture, so I'm just going off of that.

Now I need to go collect my old costume and head drapes and such to take to church tomorrow.  It's a short production...only about 25 ish minutes...so we will have regular choir first and I'll have to change from church clothes to the bible costume pretty quickly.  Without smearing the makeup, lol.  Gonna try the mesh-bag-over-the-head trick; hopefully that will work.

I have more bible costumes to sew this spring, but they are for the kids ministry at the church where my two younger kids are on staff so they can wait until after things settle down a bit.