That was the weekend that was (10/365)
Jan. 10th, 2021 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartI'm sure weekends used to be longer. This one barely seems to have started and it's already finished.
Still, in the last two days I have:
Been for a 10-minute swim in water that was somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees (we had two thermometers, which as always gave different answers, but at any rate both read about a degree lower than they did last weekend). It was bracing but utterly exhilarating. I find that cold water swimming gives me the kind of burst of endorphins I normally only otherwise get at the end of a really long walk, or maybe after climbing a mountain, but it does it after five minutes and not hours of slogging.
Been for a 4.5-mile walk down the canal to the nature reserve and back. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of the otters (I think very early is the best time to see them, and we were there late morning when there were quite a lot of people around) although we did see a very sweet little fieldmouse on the towpath.
Cut my hair (9mm on the back and sides, 12mm on the top, and didn't touch the quiff). It's nearly a year since my last £50 haircut with my old hairdresser; after she left hairdressing to go and work as a teaching assistant I tried going to a barber and ended up with a cut that I liked just as much for less than half the price, but that was at the start of March and ever since then I've been cutting my own hair, having panic-bought a set of clippers online shortly after the start of lockdown. The first few tries were a bit hit and miss and I ended up with a longish all-over buzzcut a couple of times, and tried to leave the top longer once and ended up with it looking rather odd, but I've now settled on something that I'm pretty happy with, and I'm saving a small fortune compared to what I used to pay.
Cut out another set of underwear (Muna and Broad Banksia Bralette; and Waratah Undies). Underwear was my Christmas break sewing challenge, because my underwired bras were digging into my rib cage in a tedious manner and I thought how nice it would be to have fun, non-wired bras instead, and I thought I might as well do matching knickers while I was about it even though I have no complaint about my plain black M&S multipack midis. So far I've been using leftover jersey from making t-shirts, of which I had quite a lot, and in this case also the t-shirt itself, which was made from a free pattern and came out too cropped and too boxy for me; this will be my fourth bra, although the jersey I used for the second one turned out not to be stretchy enough, which meant that it felt more like a binder than a bra (which wasn't really a problem) and started ripping at the seams very quickly (which was), so I've had to bin it already, and third pair of knickers. I've found that cutting out small pieces in stretchy fabric is much easier with a rotary cutter than scissors, and got to use my new A1 size cutting board this weekend, which is much easier than the A3 one I had before which meant I had to keep repositioning things. I have also discovered, that in the absence of fancy pattern weights, the collection of brooches I used to wear when I wore jackets for work make a pretty good substitute. Though I may buy some actual pattern weights too at some point. Or make some from fabric scraps and rice, if we no longer have to horde rice against Brexit and panic buying. (I always swore by pinning, but weighting actually seems to be better for stretch fabric.)
I suppose that's a reasonable amount of things to have accomplished in two days.
Still, in the last two days I have:
Been for a 10-minute swim in water that was somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees (we had two thermometers, which as always gave different answers, but at any rate both read about a degree lower than they did last weekend). It was bracing but utterly exhilarating. I find that cold water swimming gives me the kind of burst of endorphins I normally only otherwise get at the end of a really long walk, or maybe after climbing a mountain, but it does it after five minutes and not hours of slogging.
Been for a 4.5-mile walk down the canal to the nature reserve and back. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of the otters (I think very early is the best time to see them, and we were there late morning when there were quite a lot of people around) although we did see a very sweet little fieldmouse on the towpath.
Cut my hair (9mm on the back and sides, 12mm on the top, and didn't touch the quiff). It's nearly a year since my last £50 haircut with my old hairdresser; after she left hairdressing to go and work as a teaching assistant I tried going to a barber and ended up with a cut that I liked just as much for less than half the price, but that was at the start of March and ever since then I've been cutting my own hair, having panic-bought a set of clippers online shortly after the start of lockdown. The first few tries were a bit hit and miss and I ended up with a longish all-over buzzcut a couple of times, and tried to leave the top longer once and ended up with it looking rather odd, but I've now settled on something that I'm pretty happy with, and I'm saving a small fortune compared to what I used to pay.
Cut out another set of underwear (Muna and Broad Banksia Bralette; and Waratah Undies). Underwear was my Christmas break sewing challenge, because my underwired bras were digging into my rib cage in a tedious manner and I thought how nice it would be to have fun, non-wired bras instead, and I thought I might as well do matching knickers while I was about it even though I have no complaint about my plain black M&S multipack midis. So far I've been using leftover jersey from making t-shirts, of which I had quite a lot, and in this case also the t-shirt itself, which was made from a free pattern and came out too cropped and too boxy for me; this will be my fourth bra, although the jersey I used for the second one turned out not to be stretchy enough, which meant that it felt more like a binder than a bra (which wasn't really a problem) and started ripping at the seams very quickly (which was), so I've had to bin it already, and third pair of knickers. I've found that cutting out small pieces in stretchy fabric is much easier with a rotary cutter than scissors, and got to use my new A1 size cutting board this weekend, which is much easier than the A3 one I had before which meant I had to keep repositioning things. I have also discovered, that in the absence of fancy pattern weights, the collection of brooches I used to wear when I wore jackets for work make a pretty good substitute. Though I may buy some actual pattern weights too at some point. Or make some from fabric scraps and rice, if we no longer have to horde rice against Brexit and panic buying. (I always swore by pinning, but weighting actually seems to be better for stretch fabric.)
I suppose that's a reasonable amount of things to have accomplished in two days.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-11 12:34 pm (UTC)