Archives for May 2024

I know, it’s getting a but dull around here.

As I said I did not get much sleep because I went to bed way too late. I did the usual morning things, knitted a bit, talked with my husband, did the dishes and such. It was clear that I couldn’t start cutting the fabric for the skirt before lunch because my husband wanted to make pizza from scratch and I wanted to use the kitchen table for the cutting.

So I helped to make some chard and zucchini pizza and a salad. Lunch was rather late but it was very good:

Then I took a little break, playing silly iPad games and reading a bit while eating chocolate and drinking tea. Just as I had decided to not wait for the boy to come downstairs anymore and had cleared off the table he showed up. He decided to eat upstairs and was gone after just a few words.

Then I finally could start to cut the fabric for my brown corduroy skirt. In the morning all four zippers had arrived and the new spool of thread in case I ran out. I have to say, when I finally started working on the skirt it was already 5.20. I started sewing around 6, ate leftover fried noodles for dinner and then sewed some more until I felt too exhausted and unfocused to go on. By then I had managed to put the pockets in. Which doesn’t sound like much but is one of the trickier bits on that skirt.

I then started writing this post, delegated the dishes to the boy, did Duolingo, watched some C-drama and went to bed.

The whole day, whenever I had a minute I started collecting things I need to take with my to Italy. And I also hung up two loads of laundry and folded another one.

Today there will be the weekly phone call with my mother, finishing the skirt (wish me luck) and packing. And going to bed early. Of course.

I actually got enough sleep, did my complete morning routine and such, knitted, unsure about my color choices for the mystery shawl, woke the boy up at 9.30 who then went, „I’ll stay in, the lecturer will put his lecture online, I’ll watch it later today.“ (Reader, he hadn’t watched it at midnight but well…)

And then my husband said, „You haven’t bought pizza ingredients, haven’t you?“ Um, no. Because he said that he wanted me to but somehow those ingredients never made it to any grocery list. Oops. Also, I had asked the boy to pick up dishwashing liquid on his way home from university or – since he didn’t go – to get some anyway. (Husband, „We have other dishwashing liquid, you can use that one.“ No, I can’t, it smells awful and makes my hands dry out and just, the smell, no.)

I did do everything as quickly as I could (even playing ‚Merge Mansion‘, ahem), set the sewing machine up for zigzag stitch again, had to start the hem something like three times because something went wrong every single time, tried moving the fabric under the needle and hit my finger. Oops. And that is how I figured out that I can’t listen to music while sewing.

I counted myself lucky that the day would only bring one guitar student (I was wrong, it was two), wiped the blood away, sprayed the finger with disinfectant and slapped a band-aid on. Continued to sew, had to start over twice because there was something wonky with the thread tension again until I saw that the thread had wrapped around the rod for the spool. Note to self: If you hit your finger re-thread the machine.

After that the sewing went pretty quickly and well. I ended up with a completed dress:

You can’t really see it here but the dress is clearly too small. It’s alright that the bust is very tight but the skirt pockets are gaping two inches and those pockets aren’t doing my hips any favors:

This is what happens if you cut the fabric years before sewing the dress and gain some weight in between. It should be wearable if I ever lose around five pounds or so. I hope.

The skirt is a bit too long for my taste, I remember thinking I’d try the maxi length and if I don’t like it I could always make it shorter. Looking at that picture I should definitely left off the pockets but well, I like pockets.

Then I ordered Chinese takeout, walked to the health food store for dishwashing detergent, pizza ingredients, potato chips and chocolate, dropped those off at home and picket up our lunch. I had spring rolls:

And fried noodles, as always:

At this point the boy hadn’t shown up at all. I then measured myself for the skirt, looked at the paper pattern that I had cut out in a size 14, at my waist measurement that clearly suggested I make the skirt in size 16, and started feeling a bit stressed about the fact that I still didn’t have a zipper. The one I ordered from an online fabric store was supposed to arrive on Tuesday, and the one I ordered from Amazon was not trackable.

I could save myself some stress by just accepting to wear a slightly too short denim wrap skirt in Italy. Or I could work my ass off and wear a slightly too tight badly sewn brown corduroy skirt.

Then I taught all the students and confirmed that, yes, using my injured finger to press guitar strings did indeed hurt but playing the piano didn’t. Yeah!

When I was finally finished with teaching after 7 I texted the boy that I was ready to watch ‚Doctor Who‘ together he didn’t respond. I sent another text but nothing. So I climbed all the stairs to his room, knocked, called him and entered his room, found that he was totally absorbed by some video game and gave up. I got my backpack from the attic, went downstairs again, wrote another text, contemplated having rest of my fried noodles for dinner but opened the bag of potato chips anyway and a beer, waited for half an hour longer but then started watching C-drama.

Then the boy showed up, finally, apologized and we sat down to watch the „Maestro“-episode while eating potato chips and ice cream. We both liked the episode very much (the one before that not so much). I’m curious to see which direction they’ll take with the show, so far I’ve found the new season a bit uneven and wonky but more interesting than the one before that. Even though I really, really liked the characters on the Jody Whittaker show the stories were mostly not working for me.

We’ll see where there whole „powerful, magical adversaries“-thing will end up.

Then I went on to watch two more episodes of „Find Yourself“ at a time where I should have gone to bed already, then had a lengthy conversation with the boy about Warhammer and some other tabletop game that I’ve forgotten about before I finally went to bed, forgetting my night guard again which was brought home to me with painful awareness around 5 am.

So. Today there will be all the laundry, all the sewing and it looks as if my zipper is only (checks phone) 10 stops aways. Also, my husband has just realized that he will need to pack for next week and is wandering in and out of the kitchen every ten minutes to say things like, „Look, I knew we had another thermos. We shouldn’t have bought another one,“ holding up my water bottle that I was planning on bringing with me. He also asked, „Should we bring backpacks?“ Um, yes. What do you want to carry your stuff in? A duffle? I’m not sure we even have one.

I’ve decided to go non-minimalist this time and bring the 30l-backpack in addition to the 16l-backpack that I want to use as a purse. I might also bring my actual purse but that seems a bit like overkill. Or I could maybe fit the smaller backpack into the bigger one to carry and take it out on the train. We’ll see.

My first impulse was to try and fit everything into the 16l-backpack and the purse but I’m not in the mood for taking only one t-shirt and underwear and handwashing everything on the second day. I am a bit unsure if I should take the skippers with my orthotics. I might be able to get by walking barefoot in the house but I’m not sure.

But those are decisions for tomorrow.

I have to say that at least my mood has lifted, so there’s that.

I did the full morning routine, talked briefly with my husband over breakfast and then he had to get going because he had a date with his aunt to cart all the recycling away. That is one task that is hard to do without a car.

So I did Duolingo and the dishes and got ready to bike to the supermarket. I was a full thirty minutes earlier than usual, even. And that was with an extra large grocery haul, both bike panniers, my backpack and the basket at the front of my bike were full.

I came back, put the groceries away and had lunch. There were white sausages, soft pretzels, sweet mustard and dark beer. Apparently I forgot to take a picture.

Then the boy showed up, we talked a bit, he ate and then he went outside to spray paint his Warhammer figurines. My plan was to take a shower and then start sewing but – I need to cut my toenails. And then there wasn’t enough time left.

I taught my first student of the day, the second one canceled so I finally started testing the twin needle on a scrap of fabric and it was a disaster.

Taught another student, did some teaching admin including two phone calls. I might have booked four trial lessons… Which reminds me of the conversation my husband and I had over lunch. He started out with, „We really need to talk.“ Um, that sounds pretty ominous. And then he went on to say that he had the impression I was spread thin and he was worrying about me. And that I was doing too much and that the solution was not to stop writing or knitting or whatever but instead that I should consider teaching less. Huh. Might be a good idea.

I also just had the thought that I keep forgetting that I just had surgery and am expecting myself to just function normally. Which just might be a bit silly.

Anyways, I still used every free minute for my sewing project but a) turns out I don’t have as many free minutes as I think I have and b) I really had trouble with the machine again. This is how the test seam looked after tweaking the tension:

And this is the back:

At least this is just a piece of scrap fabric. So in the end I decided to just give up and try to figure out how to get everything back to where it was before so I could at least finish the seams with some zigzag stitch.

I taught some more students, talked with my husband and with the boys (separately), started writing this post, researched how long it took other people to sew a Hollyburn skirt (about 2 – 4 hours), did the dishes, decided that being so tired that you’re afraid to fall flat on your face is not the right state to fiddle with your sewing machine, did a short Duolingo lesson, wrote my list for today, watched an episode of „Find Yourself“, applied my new rule that I have to turn the TV off right after the episode ends, then get up and brush my teeth and went to bed.

I think I will definitely not do the weekly cleaning today…

Just a quick note because I don’t have much time. See, I didn’t start writing this post last night in an attempt to get to bed early – it didn’t work. I have reached that stage of despair where you watch all the YouTube videos about how to develop good habits. I even saw one where a young, bearded man in his twenties touted a physical notebook as the solution. What you need to do is write down the habits you want to develop and the things you want to stop. Then, each evening you open your notebook, cross off what you achieved and for the things you didn’t do you have to write down why. So far so good. Nothing wrong with that approach.

And then he went on that a physical notebook is much better than doing it online because the chances of someone else seeing the list was much higher. And how embarrassing that would be.

Ahem. My family doesn’t walk around peaking at my notebooks. I’d say the chance someone sees and reads what I write down are much higher here, online, than in my bullet journal that sits in a bag right next to me as I type.

Also, the approach reminded me of the mindful eating journal I used to keep. You know the one, where I wrote down, „Ate a whole bag of chips, a bar of chocolate and half a bag of gummy bears despite being full already. I was angry and afterwards I felt sick.“ Is that embarrassing? A little. Would I do it again? Probably. In full sight of another human being? Maybe. Did writing it down make me eat less? Definitely not.

But I’ve read that for most people the act of writing these things down does make a difference. Well, good for you.

So. Yesterday I didn’t have much oomph but I really tried. I did walk to the pharmacy instead of my husband because he felt even more overwhelmed than me and then I didn’t have as much time for sewing. I spent ages pressing the skirt and sleeve seams, then started pinning them down and that was it. I had a break in the afternoon but I used that for contacting potential new students. Two down, two more to go. (I should maybe put on our website that we answer email much faster than phone calls. I did like that one caller mentioned I can send him a text, though.)

Lunch was mostly leftovers:

I didn’t teach all that much and had high hopes of getting some things done in the evening but apart from the dishes, hanging up a load of laundry and starting the shawl for the mystery knit-a-long I only watched two episodes of C-drama.

I was rather down at the end of the day because I can’t seem to get a grip on my life but this morning I decided to get back to doing kind and nice things for future me. So far I have written morning pages, done yoga and meditated. My blood pressure is a little lower.

Today will be insanely busy again including late teaching, so we’ll see what I get done.

I went to bed at midnight. In part because the boy was talking to me around the time I should have gone to bed, ahem. I woke up from the alarm and wrote morning pages but had to skip the rest of the morning routine because I was late.

I had breakfast with my husband then forced him to look at pictures of the apartment we rented in Verona. I woke the boy up. And then I did some more knitting and set up the cable pattern in the front. I’m a bit unsure whether it would hav been better to do the plain garter stitch version of this sweater because marling red and orange yarn is already a lot without cabled arrows joining in. I guess I’ll knit some more and make a decision then.

I only did the bare minimum of dishes because I had a lot of things I wanted to accomplish before teaching. First, I walked to our GP’s office to renew a prescription for my husband. I had offered because I was running errands anyway. Then I went to the pharmacy to get face creme but that had to be ordered. Which means today my husband will be picking up both his medication and my face creme. Then I did the health food store run, came back, packed the groceries away and sat down at the sewing machine. I finished the second side seam and pressed and pinned the neckband.

Then there was lunch. My poor, overworked and overwhelmed husband had decided to make some Greek food:

And no, we did not eat lunch on time. But we were only half an hour late. While eating we had a long discussion about resting bitch face and neurodiversity and assumptions. And about you can’t always see from the outside how people feel. It was a very constructive conversation but the topic made me fidgety and uncomfortable and I really wanted to have a break, eat chocolate and play iPad games. Instead I just tackled the huge piles of dirty dishes. And pots. Washing up, tidying and cleaning are very good for channeling restless fidget energy.

My husband dried the dishes, so it didn’t take that long, and I had fifteen minutes before the first student.

I taught four students, then had a one-hour break that I used to sew the neckband to the dress. Unfortunately I didn’t get more done but I also ran out of bobbin thread, had to re-spool the other bobbin I had prepared on the weekend twice and had to re-pin a quarter of the neckband because I had continues sewing without realizing I was out of thread. And now I’m worried I won#t have enough thread left for the skirt.

Then I taught two more students, ate dinner, finally played my silly merging games, read Twitter, started writing this post, watched and episode of C-drama, did Duolingo and went to bed.

I would have loved finishing the dress, I only have three hems left but that means getting the twin needle out and fiddling with the tension and I think I better do that today when I’m more awake.

I slept well and woke from my alarm. And I didn’t even have to set it to 6.30 because the boy had decided to skip his first lecture in favor of sleep. Then we had the „the subways aren’t running“-panic again. The third public transport app for Munich that I consulted finally gave us note that the subways were indeed running but also apologized for the fact that most apps didn’t show them. They’re working on it. One question is why a city needs that many apps but that is because there are so many different companies providing public transport.

So the boy left and I did yoga and meditated for the first time in ages. Then my husband and I were sitting down to breakfast together when the boy texted me asking why he didn’t have his train ticket anymore. We signed him up for the special discounted version of the Germany ticket back in October and thought that was it. Spoiler: it wasn’t. So there was a lot of texting back and forth and looking things up and in the end we figured out that he had gotten an email (news about your train pass) with an attachment that said his pass was canceled. In the attachment. Because universities operate on a semester basis, and of course you need to prove you’re still enrolled to qualify for student discounts. Duh. What with all the thyroid surgery and such I had seen that I hadn’t paid for the ticket since April but hadn’t done anything about it.

Which is all fine and good but not what you can tell the ticket inspector. And even if you could the fact that you’re on a train without a valid ticket remains the same, so the boy was written up.

Meanwhile my husband had left the kitchen huffing and puffing because back and forth texts about missing train passes are not appropriate for breakfast. I mean, they aren’t but then we weren’t the one standing on a train being interrogated by a ticket inspector unsure whether you did something wrong or whether you’re the victim of a technical glitch.

So I logged into both the boy’s university and his public transport account, resubscribed to his train pass and was completely sure it would take days to get it going because a human being had to look at it first. Imagine my surprised when the boy texted during lunch telling me he had a train pass again. He had logged in to buy a ticket for his ride back home (no need to get caught twice in one day) and there it was.

I did the breakfast dishes, read a bit, listened to some Schumann (piano quintet in E flat major exquisite) and then went off to fire up the iron and the sewing machine. I pressed some seams, did some understitching, ripped the understitching out again because it looked bad, cut up veggies for lunch, re-did the understitching, took a shower and complained about my husband complaining which made him leave the kitchen table at lunch yet again. He was also angry that I didn’t mince the coriander even though I had promised to do so but I had trouble taking a shower and chopping herbs at the same time. So he did it but he didn’t like it. Lunch was delicious and I spent the time reading a bit more of „Sweet Danger“ by Margery Allingham:

While eating I had to text with the boy again because he had gotten a message that his package had arrived and he was concerned that a can of primer would go off in the heat. The package that had arrived was not the can of primer but instead a book of Italian arias for my singing students. He had used my account to order some stuff and when I ordered it was still set to his name and address so it was accidentally shipped to him. Who lives in the same house.

Anyways. After that I went back to the sewing machine, pinned the two big side seams together on the dress and sewed the first one before it was time to teach. In between I answered half a dozen texts about teaching. Rescheduled lessons and such.

I had a one hour break in between students because of the rescheduling and was totally set on using that for sewing but when I spent some time on Ravelry looking through the forum thread for the Fitton’s Dynamo pattern something caught my eye and I realized that the yarn I ordered wouldn’t be enough. Because I had thought it needed 500 meters of yarn in total when in fact it is 500 meters of each of two colors. Duh.

Good thing I hadn’t finished casting on then. So I went into my stash, pulled out two more colors, decided on one, started the project and ordered more yarn. The same day I also ordered a new thermos because when we take one with us to Verona there won’t be one for the boy as well. And we’re a bit short on tea thermoses anyway. Well. We have the huge one that I use for chamomile tea and the big one that my husband uses for black tea. Also a smaller one that the boy uses for herbal tea and one that doesn’t keep things properly warm for black tea that no one likes. Also, that one isn’t really a thermos and is just open so can’t be used when traveling. With a new black tea thermos we could have one for downstairs and one for upstairs and if the boy doesn’t return it in time for breakfast it’s no big deal.

My plan was to eat dinner in front of TV so I would go to bed earlier. But. Instead I ate dinner in the kitchen while waiting for my evening tea (teabag in mug, chamomile/fennel) to finish steeping, then talked with everybody else, then watched 2 1/2 episodes of C-drama (it’s just really, really good), then was unsure if I should just go to bed or do the dishes first and then ended up starting this blog post while the boy was taking a shower, brushing my teeth at the kitchen sink and going to bed with the kitchen in shambles.

And I thought today would be the tough one.