Chronic reader, creative dreamer, a LOT of hand skills to make things real, intense health issues that limit my activity, but not my creativity or dreams. Moved to southern Missouri with enough tools and junk to build a life that might work well with my health. One of god’s gigglers, I punctuate with smiley faces and exclamation points when I type, and smile and laugh a lot in real life. (Often at things no one else understands.) And I both curtsy at people (even when wearing grubby work clothes) and purr when hugged, both online and in real life. “Normal” is not a word that has ever been used for me.
Been organic gardening all my life, and bought 4 acres that I have designed from the ground up. Making it happen is being the most fun I have ever had in my life, the best 3D jigsaw puzzle ever! Reading Mollison’s Designer’s Manual was like coming home, ah, THERE I am! A reality where I can use all of my multifaceted talents and skills!
Dumpster diver, recycler, second hand store shopper, I tell people I am attracted to rust and lace. I have violated every warranty I have ever met, I’m a tool using animal, and I use my tools to modify everything in my world. And it only gets weirder...
Bricolage: something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things. Adding ier to a french word means one who does that activity. I am a bricolagier, the things I do are all made of a wide range of things that I have acquired from diverse places.
This came out of trash. I'm not using it for whatever it was meant for. But I am curious, I swear I have seen these before. It’s bugging me. What are these things?
About 2 foot long.
Pearl Sutton wrote:And it's October, and it's getting cold here! I have a half made pair of leggings out of a dark blue cotton sweater that I need to get back to. But due to health stuff I have gained some weight, wonder if they still fit? One of these days I'll dig them out to find out, if not I have another sweater waiting it the wings to be sacrificed.
:D
And that post was October 2023. Took me a while to get back to sewing sweater pants!
But here are the dark blue cotton pants! If I ever took a picture of the sweater before I started cutting I don't know where it is right now.
These are very soft, good for wearing, a problem for sewing on
They really were worth sewing, really nice
Showing you the weave
And the other sweater that was waiting to be sacrificed is a cotton/acrylic blend, I ended up scant on the fabric at the waistline and used two rows of 2 inch wide elastic (yay thrift stores! I got a big roll of blue 2 inch wide elastic for 1.50! Probably 30 feet or more) to bring it up to fitting over my tail. (I gots lots of tail to fit over!) This pair of sweater pants came out the absolute best one I have made, the most comfortable, and I am REALLY REALLY pleased with them!! The waistline worked so well with that elastic I went back and redid the waist on the blue cotton ones above, so you'll see the same elastic on it. When the elastic craps out (elastic always does) I'll use the elastic as the outer face of a casing by sewing to the back, and put a drawstring in.
My sacrificial victim of the day
So you can see the pattern well
Aren't these spiffy? I'm smug!!
Something I also did while making these is come up with something I could modify that is a thin slick polyester of some sort that are now pants that slide over these sweater pants, as I use them for underlayers. I'm hoping this will work like a skirt slip to keep them from binding to my over-layers (like my petticoats) (I wear a lot of layers!) as well as keep them clean longer.
I also make my sweater pants loose enough that I can put long underwear under them if needed. I wear a LOT of layers sometimes, it's my style, but I'm quite warm and look good in them. I end up looking like a pretty colored haystack perhaps, but it's a good look on me.
The birds learned that I had good eating on them tomato plants. The cardinals and robins hunt the tomato worms. I see them on the arbors, staring at the plants, then diving down and fighting the worms loose.
Do you have good predator birds this year?
Other thing I'd think about is my area got rained HARD for months. Lots of things probably didn't survive it. I know I have less butterflies than usual.
Ah HAH! I wondered what those were! I decided quite a while back to ignore them, they were never on plants I cared about, and didn't look like something to pet.
A) Would you be able to live on 25k a year less? What is price of living in Anchorage? Can you afford to be there? Can you get another job there doing something if that falls through?
B) What does your son think? Is he attached to things there or happy to move?
C) Is there a way you can lease out your place for a year and see if you really want to be in Alaska? I've heard the long darks really affect some people hard, including people who didn't think it would. A test run might be wise.
D) If you do sell and have to come back for some reason, do you have a plan B?
Other than those thoughts, I am also 62 and I made sure I have been the places I wanted to go, saw what I wanted to see, did what I wanted to, and have no unfulfilled dreams like that now. I'm glad I did when I could, I ended up with health issues that make it very hard to do now. I vote, if Questions A-D are accounted for in your head, DO IT so you don't wish you had. Even if it only lasts 3 months and things go weird and you come back, it'll be off your mind or you'll know better what you are doing when you go back again :D
Having "I wish I had...." in your head for years doesn't look fun when I see others with it. I'm glad I don't have those.
Randy Verburg wrote:how may i get a straight line from this pipe sticking out of the ground and across my driveway so i know where to dig, to fine the other end of the pipe which is buried under my driveway
Piece of string works well to trace a straight line
