funnystrange.com

Strangest thing I have found while house cleaning: A long, stretched out blob of sort of clear, sort of white waxy stuff hanging from a wire basket.

It actually kind of looked like a translucent slug, which grossed me out to no end. But I poked it with a stick (a pencil actually) and it was inert. So I picked it up, determined that it was indeed some kind of hard waxy substance, shrugged and threw it away.

A couple of hours later I found the source of the weird waxy blob. See, a couple of years ago I had bought a couple of those devotional candles in tall glass jars. You know, the kind that usually have pictures of saints on them, but these were blank. I think I was going to paste VTW images on the side and give them as gifts, but I never got around to it.

Eventually they ended up stored on a shelf, on their sides to save space. Well, the wax inside these candles was so cheap that it softened and spilled out. It doesn't look like the wax ever fully melted to a liquid state; just slowly gooshed out in this big viscous waxy blob. We don't run the a/c much in the summertime but I didn't think it got that hot. The candles actually looked really cool with half the wax hanging out like that. I wish I had taken a photo, but I was in full-on cleaning mode so I just threw them out.

Coolest thing I have found while house cleaning: The manual to my sewing machine.

Really, this is an amazing thing to find. Because I love my sewing machine (it's a Viking 400). I bought it at a floor model sale about 8 years ago and it has served me faithfully ever since. However, I only use a tiny fraction of its capabilities, and I don't remember how to do most of the other features. Without the manual I would never have been able to use the complicated stitches. Heck, I couldn't even remember how to adjust the thread tension. Since they don't make this machine any more, extra manuals are hard to come by. I saw one once on Ebay for $40, and the auction wasn't even close to over yet. So you can understand how heartbroken I was when I realized I had lost the manual. And how happy I am to find it again.

Speaking of sewing, I'm working on an outfit right now that's causing some frustration. It's one of the vintage patterns that I got from Ebay. The instructions on the outside of the package weren't real clear, so I didn't realize the dress was supposed to be lined until after I started working. At first I figured I would just skip the lining, but then I got a little further along and discovered that one part of the dress wouldn't hold together without the lining.

OK, no big deal. I took apart what I had already done and found some old scrap fabric that would work for the lining. Figured I would just line that one piece. And yes, I did read the rest of the instructions to make sure the lining wasn't essential anywhere else.

I didn't get back to work on it until the next day. When, after sewing a few more pieces together, I decide that it just isn't going to look right if it's only partially lined. The lined piece will hang differently from the rest, the rest of it will wrinkle faster (it's linen), I'll never be happy if I leave it like this.

Heavy sigh, a bit more swearing, and I end up spending most of the day yesterday taking my work apart again, cutting out and edging the lining for the rest of the pieces. At least there was enough of that scrap fabric to line the whole thing, so I didn't have to buy more fabric. And that's where I am now, just about to get started on this dress for the third time. After all this, I hope it at least looks good when I'm finished.

Here's a photo of the pattern by the way. I'm making the second from the left (with short sleeves and top-stitching) in light green linen. I really like the back belt; I've never seen a pattern like it before.