SuperEggplant

The obsession with zippers continues. Check out the bouquet of zips that arrived the other day!

I will not hoard the zippers or the webbing. I will not hoard the zippers or the webbing.
Hey, thanks for all the advice on the glasses. I took them back today. I suppose I should have mentioned that I have a bit of a glasses curse. Every time I get new glasses, I have some sort of problem (it’s probably psychological). Anyway, these new frames sit a bit lower on my face than would be ideal, so I had a sneaking suspicion they weren’t centered. Well, they weren’t! I don’t know why opticians don’t first adjust the glasses to your head then mark the pupil position with a felt pen. What is with the big Viewmaster-like pupil distance measuring contraption? And they don’t adjust the glasses until afterwards! That seems wrong. I want some ice cream now. Heh.

Ha ha ha ha, I made another wristlet thingy!

This is a mini version. It’s rather japonesque, non? I put the Mr. Donut mug in there for scale. Here’s the lining:

So Carolyn was harassing me asking me about making a little wristlet for her after she saw the super cute ones that Hillary and thimble made. Since I am so efficient (you can tell when I’m being sarcastic, can’t you?), I got right on it and came up with this:

And here’s the interior, designed to help Carolyn get ready for summer:

After much laboring, I managed to finish my exoskin* jacket!

And here’s a closeup of the pocket:

Yeah, some of us dig orange pockets.
In general, though this wouldn’t even sell at a seconds sale but for all the blatant flaws, I’m pretty happy with it! I essentially made up the pattern, using various jackets and vests as guides. Now, my spatial skills are lacking (ask Peter. He will confirm this), but I do what I can. The pockets nearly did me in, but they turned out. And you can’t really tell from the photos, but that silverish piping is that reflective tape. Very outdoorsy, huh?
But working on that exoskin was very difficult. It is rubbery on one side, so the sewing machine does NOT like it. It just sticks to it. I couldn’t find any teflon tape around here, but I was/am too impatient to wait for my order to arrive, so I employed the tissue paper method, wherein I sandwich the exoskin between sheets of tissue paper. If anyone ever wants to torture me, just sit me down and tell me to get all the little bits of tissue paper out of stitches. Argh! You also can’t see what you’re sewing through the tissue paper (at one point I only had dark blue tissue paper). The walking foot helped somewhat, but it gave up when I tried to hem the jacket by folding up the bottom to stitch it down. I eventually had to rip that out and sew a Goretex band to the bottom then turn it up to hem.
I’m a little afraid the jacket is going to just fall apart, since the stitches kind of look like the bobbin thread didn’t really catch all the way. I don’t know what that was about. Also, it FINALLY stopped raining here, and it’s now in the 70s, so it’s a bit too warm for the jacket, but I reckon it’ll cool down before it gets into the 100s! I’d like a chance to wear it before it disintegrates.
*The exoskin was purchased from Rose City Textiles. Exoskin is used for water sports–it’s water resistant and rubbery on one side and fleecy on the other.