She Does Not Wish After The Cloths of Heaven

WARNING: The following contains many details on sewing, and gratuitous cats.

I didn't have work today (or yesterday, being Sunday), so I've been sewing Steph a new shirt. Because I can. Because the material was cheap. Because she'll owe me. :-D

It was a bit frustrating yesterday, when cutting out pieces, because Rosie the Cat (and Ziggy, the Black) took turns reclining on the laid-out cloth, black as heaven's midnight, and embroidered with... flowers (my ability to make poetic allusions to Yeats' work is, alas, somewhat flawed. I almost got some material midnight black and striped with silver, but it seemed possibly a bit tacky. Not that Steph would worry, but...). I don't know what it is, but cats will always lie on my sewing, or sit in the middle of a card-game if they can possibly get away with it. Or sit on my lap as I type. Or scream to be picked up and cuddled because I haven't cuddled them For All Of Twenty Minutes. Rosie's utterly favourite pastime, though, and I don't know how she acquired a taste for it, is pins. Posibly it is the bright colours of the heads, or something, but she stalked over to watch me skewer the paper pieces to the cuttable cloth, patiently waited for her chance, and then 'gan to pull one out while I was looking the other way. Then she chewed on it. Then she dropped it, and went for another. To save me from heart-palpitations, she hasn't swallowed any, and I took care to keep her away after the first time.

Anyway. I have been a busy little bee cutting out bits and cursing because the embroidered pattern makes the cloth one (1) order of magnitude more complicated to cut out than it might otherwise be. No matter. One problem is that I'm using a very basic pattern. I have the yoke pattern cut precisely, but the sleeve and body parts are only roughed out - they have been drawn enough that I can mate the pieces to the yoke but everything else falls off the neatly-cut newspaper 'map'. It was very handy when I was drawing the pattern, and there is little point in making it more precise because I tend to vary those details anyway, but it does mean that cutting out pieces involves a fair bit of measuring, calculating, and sketching before I even get to cut. Sigh.

Today, I sewed the yoke and the sleeves. What I've got right now looks very weird indeed - a narrow band of cloth with two large pieces hanging out from either side. Actually, it pretty much looked like that this morning. This afternoon I was sewing over the basting, turning bits inside-out, top-stitching, and doing nifty triple-seaming on the sleeves, but none of that makes a big difference to the overall appearance. It's just quality sewing, and I trust that you will appreciate it, Stephanie.

As to the weather, it was utterly ghastly last night - very hot and warm. I was trying to sleep in that, with a mosquito in the room so I had to drape a sheet over my head to keep it away, making things hotter, and Rosie, who doesn't object to heat at all sleeping on my legs. Urk.

They say that there will be a thunderstorm tonight. I jolly well hope so. I don't want embroidered cloths, enwrought with any kind of light. I want RAIN, HAIL, THUNDER. Maybe a bit of LIGHTNING, though I tend to think of that as more of an applique, or possibly some kind of paint-splatter effect.

That's all.