Wombat Central!

Ohmygoodness, Kate! You must have been a blurr!!=20

-Irene

Today's total:

Made alterations in toile for Garden Frocks Fitted customer, deciding on sleeve length and hemline... All perfect and ready to roll! :)

Sewed up Silk dupion skirt: have lining to sew down round zip and silk hem to sew up by hand...

Sewed together 3 layers of the Voile toile for the layered frock Worked out (with a tape measure and Alan's help!) the horrendous yardage for this frock! It totals at 16.5m and a total cost of £235.39!!! This is beacause the layers are in 4 different colours, plus an organza shrug! Re-wrote contract and estimate with finalized details and fabric costs.

Made lasagne for dinner! (Failed miserably to splash pale pink T shirt with tomato sauce!)

Went and had hair dyed! Failed to fit in a swim! :( Went to Weight Watchers: have put on half a pound. Now have 3.5lbs to shift to be back where I want to be! No more peanut butter sarnies late at night! Must do more swimming!

Ate lasagne. (Yet again failed to get tomato sauce on pale pink T shirt!

Tomorrow's list:

Sew down lining on skirt and do hem Make minor correction to 3 layers of voile Sew up other two layers of voile!

Try to find energy to swim!

dress got done in less than 24 hours....made removable straps out of the fabric that I cut off the hem. attached some replacement beads where some had come off. Tacked the ribbon back on.

I have an appointment tomorrow for a cut and dye job - friend that does my hair is excited.....she is toying with what color highlights to put in and wants it to be roughly shoulder length when she gets done.

Dress will be tried on and picked up tomorrow afternoon, and I have another fitting scheduled for 130 tomorrow afternoon. This one will be another tux adjustment - needed by Saturday for the prom. have to rehem the pants and the jacket sleeves. I think this will be the last one that I do for this school year....time is running out.

After that, I pretty much have nothing scheduled, other than getting more work done on the largest of the signature quilt. everything is ready to be put together, just have to do some pressing before I stitch everything up.

hmm....and sometime this weekend, I have to work on clearing the drain in the upstairs tub .

Larisa....not in wombat central, but keeping busy, nonetheless...lol

Glad you are coming to the end of the madness! :)

Yesterday started madly and then went pear-shaped rather rapidly!

I got up and got James ready for his bus at eight...

I was about to start on my stuff when Alan piped up: Aren't you supposed to be at the hospital for a pain management appointment at 9:15?

Err... Yes! PAAAANIC!

Rapidly flung on some clothes and sewed up one of the two remaining layers of frock! Gathered up skirt, needles, thread and scissors and shoved then in bag... Ping off walls for 10 minutes while Alan deals with call from work, where HIS collection of wombats are doing headless chicken impressions... Went off to pain management clinic, which was useful and informative, and has given me the name of a new (to me) drug that might help with the present grumbles. Need to make appointment with nice Dutch quack on Monday. Got home and finished off skirt. Friend has date after work, so no swimming... Made lunch. Finished off layered toile: looks a bit bridal at this stage, being made out of white curtain voile! Press skirt. Take photos of finished skirt and frock toile. Skirt customer arrives for cuppa, natter, try-on, and pick-up. We like a good gossip! :) Customer delighted with yummy skirt! Frock customer arrives. I don't usually do such close appointments, but I knew the first one would love the skirt, and it would give the frock customer a chance to see what I can really do. :) More tea and natter! Skirt customer goes. Frock customer, her partner and I go through frock colours again, and we ring Henry Bertrand about prices as I have a feeling that for one of the colours it might be cheaper to get a 10m length at the next price band than buy 9.5m... This opens whole new bag of wombat stuff!

It turns out that:

1: I have been quoted a wrong price. The stuff we want is £15.59 for cuts UNDER 3m, £11.99 for cuts from 3-10m, and £8.99 for cuts OVER 10m. The only price I had been given was 11.99, but I remembered getting silk from them cheaper for a 10m length last year, so...

2: One colour that we wanted only came in a wider width, so was more expensive...

3: on colour was no longer available, and hadn't been for a while, so why had they sent me the swatch for it???

4: Two colours were miss-labelled, so when I first asked about yardage availability, they were talking about a different colour from the one WE were talking about! Luckily the customer's partner spotted this when we looked back at the shade cards...

I'd spent HOURS with Alan, laying out the pattern pieces and working out the yardage for each colour, and then working out the prices, and it was all for nothing! At least the customer was nice and knew it wasn't MY error, but it does mean they are spending more on fabric than anticipated! GRR! ARGH!

As they had made a balls-up and were anxious to put it right, I persuaded HB to hold enough of the colours we DO want from them for 3 weeks, as the customer is off to parts foreign for a fortnight, so won't be here when the new swatches for alternate colours arrive! They will usually only hold for 2 weeks, so I won that point!

I did find some replacement colours from another supplier, but their price was £21.67 or something for anything less than 25m! This is the difference between buying from a manufacturer and dyer and buying retail! Mind you, all these prices are ex VAT, and there will be postage: add postage for each parcel and then 17.5% and you get a true picture of the amount being spent on fabric! This ain't no cheap frock!

In the middle of all this, friend rings up: date has gone pear-shaped, she'd like to rescue the swimming! OK... Now I'm swimming again (goody!), but have to think up dinner for 4 not 3, and we haven't done the grocery shopping...

Finally manage to fit frock on customer and sketch in style changes and pin in fitting changes (very minor! Yay!). Next fitting appointment fixed for 14th May.

This will give me time next week to do the changes, plus the rest of next week's sewing work, prepare for guests next weekend (means clearing sewing room! ERK!!), and clear the landing and hall of sewing machines, books, and other tat ready for the decorators to come and redo the hall after October's inundation by rain. This is good, as the hall will all be done by the time the frock customer gets here again. I can't cut wedding stuff or have customers here, OR do any sewing while two large chaps and a pile of scaffolding fill the stairwell!

The good thing at the end of the day: I did manage 50 lengths of the pool, and dinner (flung together out of what we had!) was both tasty and Weight Watcher friendly! And this morning I managed a lie-in until 8 am! :D

An extremely hectic day!

Do you ever stop Kate? Do you even sleep? You appear (like my DH) to thrive on having a full schedule and tight deadlines, but I hope you take some time for yourself occasionally.

Good luck with the decorators/fabric suppliers/doctors as necessary.

Lizzy

To quote Warren Zevon: I'll sleep when I dead! ;)

Nah... Yesterday was rather busier than many, but fairly typical of this week! I like the variety and excitement, but I have learned to pace myself.

Larisa, it might be a quick fix like I had yesterday. DD and I both have long hair which gets washed in our upstairs tub. Find and untwist a flimsy wire coat hanger, and bend the short twisty end back on itself to make a hook. Lift out the tub drain stopper and feed in the hook. Twist the hanger to snag the hair and pull it out. You'll soon see why it wasn't draining. Liz

I can only hope it is that easy! Right now, waiting for tux "customer" to get here (this is all volunteer work for a local charity) and also waiting for the final fit/pick up for the baby pink formal....both for proms on the 5th.

Have gotten chopped and dyed...hair is now shoulder-length with chunky red and blonde streaks through it. NOt too short, and not theatrically dramatic, but enough of a change to add some life to my hair :-)

Will do tux measurements and marking, then attack the tub. Doesn't take me too long to hem pants and jacket sleeves, so I will sork on them tonight and probably have it ready for pickup no later than Tuesday (tomorrow is all day church related activities).

Then back to the quilt, make a tote bag, start on DDs new summer wardrobe......and whatever else crops up :-)

Larisa, being active is good

Pace? As in flat out? Pedal to the metal? That's quite a pace.

I get bored easy... ;)

Never! If you started to get bored, you'd just think up something interesting to do.

My dad's a retired plumber and says it's not just the hair that's the problem, it's all of the conditioners and moisturizing bodywashes and soaps. Hair AND grease. See if you can fish some of it out with a coat hanger (this is SO gross), then dump in some drain cleaner. Get the kind meant for protein clogs. I've had good luck with Drano's Foaming Pipe Snake. If it seems like it helped but the drain is still kind of slow, dump another bottle of the same stuff down there.

Eventually though, you may get to a point where you're going to have to snake out the drain. You can rent a snake at most hardware stores, but like bikini waxing, it's so much better to have somebody with experience help you the first time.

I suppose so... Last week it was a banner for the Scouts for St George's Day! :) Today I cut out a couple of dresses for a customer.

Took overflow drain apart...LOTS of hair, none of it mine (my hair is

*not* straight!)...darins better and smells better!! Have to take it apart again and lower the actual float thingy so that maybe, it will work in keeping water IN the tub. Right now, we have a separate drain cover that we have to use because it doesn't come down far enough to stop the water from just running out .

Larisa, thinking about getting a plumber's license with all the work I've been doing in this house....will leave electrician's license up to DH to get.

At the flea market my DH got a long plastic thing, with teeth, to ram down in the drain and it will pull up all sorts of hair and stuff. It cost less that $5. There might be one at Wal Mart or K Mart. HTH Barbara, still in FL