uni progress impeaded, but not stopped, by art

[kareina]

Because Tasmanian houses (at least rentals in a student's budget!) are neither insulated nor heated, I have been wishing for a nice, warm cardigan that is long--at least down to mid-thigh in length. However, the few times we've had errands in town the only cardigans I've seen for sale were either too short, or made of a synthetic fibre. clovis_t calls me a fibre snob, but I don't think it the least bit snobbish to eschew synthetics. Not only are they uncomfortable to the touch, they tend to act like napalm if they get too near a flame and melt and stick to the poor, unfortunate soul who happened to be wearing them. Not for me! I'll stick to natural fibres in my clothing, thanks!

Last Thursday evening, I attended a "craft night", accompanied by baronsnorri, held in the geology department tea room. I worked on some repairs to his linen undertunic that had been made far too quickly, by far too many different sets of hands to have it done on time for his investiture. The seams which had been least well finished have now been done properly, and the herringbone stitching which had only been completed on the structural seams has now been repeated at the collar and cuffs, and it looks *much* better! He also worked on sewing, hemming a tunic he's been doing by hand. Pretty much everyone else present had knitting projects. Knitting is one of those skills I've never learned. I understand the theory behind the concept, but I've never attempted to put the theory to practice, and certainly can't spare the time to learn it this year.

So during the course of the evening, I mentioned my desire for a nice, long cardigan, and commented that I should have them make me one, since I hadn't managed to find one in a store. One of my office mates told me that they have a nice, long, wool cardigan for sale at 50% off the original price at Meyers in a nice charcoal grey. This sounded appealing, and clovis_t needed to head into town on Friday anyway, so I went down the hill with him. We did find the one that had been described, but it turned out to be a wool-nylon blend, so I looked around the store to see if they had anything else of interest (since lots of items were on sale, might as well). I saw a wool dress in a really, really pretty shade of navy blue (anyone who has been reading my journal long enough to remember the difficulties I had finding *any* decent shade of blue the last time I went clothes shopping will understand my joy at seeing this colour in a shop!), but I didn't want something that I have to pull over my head, I wanted something which I could easily pull on and off, and button up the front, or leave open, as I saw fit. So instead I wound up buying a nice royal blue lightweight wool night turtle neck shirt and a nice black knit lightweight cardigan, which look really nice together, and were both 50% off the marked price, which was in turn half of the original price.

But I kept thinking about the navy blue dress. If only they'd had something that long that opened up the front! This morning we called the store and found out that the sale is still on, so baronsnorri and I stopped in on our way to fighter practice and picked it up. it too was 50% off of the price marked, which was 50% off of the original price, so for only $35 dollars I've got a sewing project. It was fortunate that I started the project at fighter practice, because Mel was able to show me how to unravel much of the attachment between the huge turtle-neck and the body of the dress and how to run a spare piece of yarn (thank you baronsnorri for bringing some!) through the loops to keep it from unravelling any further. Alas, the bits at the side seams took forever to finally work the yarn out of the seams, and I was afraid to cut anything for fear that part of the dress would unravel as a result. Once I managed to detach the neck (which might be used for extensions on the sleeves, or might become pockets on the skirt, I haven't decided yet), I then had to sew new shoulder seams (using the yarn that I'd picked out of the neck attachment area), and then unravel the excess yarn above where the seam needed to go to make the shoulders fit. This process took a total of 7 hours of my day! (Well, that figure includes stopping for a quick meal of left-overs.)

Despite that distraction, I still managed to create three new figures showing the mylonites of the Collingwood River area, their collection locations and orientations, and photos with tracings of the details of the kinematic indicators showing that in the north block the faults movement was top-to-the-east and write 84 new words describing how many we collected and from where, and what the results for the northern block were. But I'm now quite sleepy, so the results from the south block can wait till tomorrow, I've still got to go for a walk and do yoga and get to bed. Good thing I read my 1000 words whilst eating!

Comments

[baronsnorri.livejournal.com]

Thanks for fixing my tunic, dear!

[kareina.livejournal.com]

You are welcome, thanks for driving me to the gathering so I could work on it!