UnderPleated

Coffee was longer than I anticipated yesterday morning which meant that cleaning started much later than I'd have liked however... my house is now clean-er although not spotless by any stretch of the imagination. It was the get us through kind of clean. In a couple weeks, I'll spend more time and actually get the crevices and cupboards.

When I emailed inquiring where my box of table paper was - after waiting two weeks - I received a phone message saying that it had shipped yesterday. Strange how that always happens. The answer is always yesterday. It arrived expedited mail which doesn't take two weeks. I believe them that it was yesterday but I think that's only because I emailed. Either way, it's a box of potential. Imagine all the patterns traced and garments sewn and fun had. And then there's the money saved by buying in bulk. All good.

I worked on the Burda 7400 pants last night. They're so easy you overlook the obvious. When tracing the pattern, I assumed the pleat looked like the one above bringing the two "clips"  together in the middle. In reality, it looks like...

... this with half the pleat starting at the side seam and both ends meeting at the "clip" that I had incorrectly assumed was the other end. With all the sizing lines on the Burda pattern, I missed this although it's not just the the fault of the lines. I saw what I expected to see.

It was only after I'd figured out why the leg bottom was so much bigger than the leg band, that I could clearly see the seam in the illustration in step 15. It's obvious now. I underpleated. This is often the case when we make a mistake. When we read the instructions or look at the illustration, we see what we expect to see instead of what's really there. The pants should be simple to finish now. Hopefully today. I'd like to wear them to work tomorrow.

This morning, I plan to clean my youngest son's bedroom. It's my last chance before he comes back from camp on Sunday and it desperately needs it. Cleaning it for him will give him a head start on keeping it clean. He thinks when his brother moves out that he can have both rooms. I think he could use more space but I'm not willing to give him another room until the one he has is clean-er. We'll see how that goes. Besides, his brother has six months to choose to move back. It might be best to leave that room empty for a while.

Several months ago, I started reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. When I wasn't getting through it easily, I put it aside until yesterday. It's a book about grief. There was a line about prolonged grief and its affects on the immune system that caught my eye. Something to ponder.

When you read a book about grief at a young age, you gloss over the details. It's happening to someone else. At a more mature age, its possibilities are too real. You realize this has and will continue to happen to you. Aging is such an interesting experiment. Like every other part of life, we don't get to practice. There are things I could have done better. Oh well!

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - actually seeing the instructions