It is too hot to sew, so I spent several hours this afternoon on the sofa reading Victoria Goddard's The Hands of the Emperor and then thought that if I couldn't sew, maybe I'd watch some old episodes of The Great British Sewing Bee on iPlayer.

I went back to the first series, which I watched some of at the time but gave up on because I was a very new and unconfident sewer and watching people struggling to sew under time pressure just made sewing seem even more stressful. Rewatching from the point of view of a much more confident sewer, I thought that the first series, at least, didn't really seem to get the balance right, and spent much more time showing the contestants looking like they were on the verge of breaking down than looking competent and like they actually enjoyed sewing.

Also, I'd forgotten that Tilly from Tilly and the Buttons was on the first series. Her complete inability to deal with fitting her model's not actually very large bust explains quite a lot about her patterns. Also, how does someone who considers themself to be good enough to apply to go on a sewing-themed TV show have no idea how to add a patch pocket to a garment???

Obviously, a massive volcanic explosion was exactly what the world needs on top of covid and climate breakdown and general political chaos. Twitter is throwing up its hands and saying "Krakatoa!" a lot, though it may just be catastrophising. (Also, apparently there are people who have never heard of Krakatoa, which I find mindboggling.)

Other than that I have had a quiet Saturday. I went for a chilly swim, came back and assembled our new bird feeding station (we have put it outside the living room window, in the hope that we might get close-up views of birds, though so far none have found it) and then cut my hair (I thought I was past DIY haircuts, but the top had got really long and was annoying me enormously, and even if I had the time or the spoons to attempt to go to the barbers', it doesn't really seem like a smart move in terms of risk right now). And then I sewed a handkerchief out of an old pillowcase (I've switched to hankies recently as tissues seem to be in short supply) while listening to a sustainable sewing podcast, like some kind of utter cliche.

I made a jacket out of leftover bits of cotton twill, and lined it with an old duvet cover.



The back is quartered in the purple and blue (I was originally planning to do the same with the front, but forgot to flip the pattern pieces so it ended up half and half).

I am very pleased with it, and am now considering making more jackets out of other leftover fabrics.

I have worked my way through about 200 emails (I did have C keeping half an eye on my inbox while I was away, so some of the more straightforward things had already been dealt with), had various catch-ups (including with the person I thought was going to resign, who did indeed resign), and read (fsvo of "read") 51 job applications.

My bus in the morning was quiet, and almost everyone was wearing face coverings. My bus in the evening was busier and had a higher proportion of people who were not wearing face coverings, most of whom appeared to be (a) under 30 and (b) predominantly male.

I am very tired now, and have come home to find that my attempt to turn some fabric which was utterly gorgeous but which I was never going to use (white cotton lawn with a print of line drawings of sheep, when (a) I don't really wear white and (b) even if I did the lawn was too sheer to make a garment out of unless I want the whole world to see my underwear) into something I would use by dyeing it purple has resulted in the print being almost completely obscured, rather than, as I'd hoped, being as distinct as it was before, just on a darker and hopefully less see-through background.

Bah.

I'd been thinking that I'd like to make a waistcoat ever since waistcoats were the pattern challenge on the Sewing Bee, and I managed to find a women's waistcoat pattern which had what looked like a classic enough option (Jalie 3129) that it seemed worth giving it a go. I printed off the pattern last weekend, and cut out the pieces in a tweedy fabric I bought from John Lewis years ago intending to make a skirt out of it. I remember the label saying it was a wool blend, but from the smell and handle I'd say it was mostly polyester. It was also quite thick and textured and altogether a pain in the arse to work with, and I couldn't press it properly without risking melting it.

I decided I'd try to do proper pockets rather than the mock welt pockets from the pattern, which wasn't entirely successful, mostly because the instructions in my reference book were unhelpfully vague on exactly where you should place the pocket lining over the welt and the pockets ended up much shorter than I'd intended (though I also came to the conclusion that waistcoat pockets are probably never going to be particularly functional unless you have a pocketwatch - too small, too high).

Sewing the waistcoat together was quite good fun (you sew everything together inside out and then pull the waistcoat through a hole in the lining, like a magic trick - on the Sewing Bee they referred to it as "bagging out", and it seems to have been the technique of the last series), but once I'd finished assembling it I realised that either I'd found it harder than I thought to sew straight on the nubbly fabric, or it had slipped when I was cutting or stretched after cutting, or possibly a combination of all three, because the front points had ended up all wonky and the tweed pattern made it very clear that it had strayed off-grain. It also turned out to be slightly too small to button up comfortably, and I also realised that the style that had looked like classic menswear on the pattern was actually more femme than I wanted - the v-neck too low, the tailoring lines accentuating curves. Basically, a fail from start to finish, but good learning: next time I try to make a waistcoat, I'll use a smoother fabric which can stand up to pressing, and I think I'd be better off starting with a men's pattern (probably the Belvedere Waistcoat) and adjusting the fit than assuming I can short-cut with a women's pattern. (Also a useful data point for the debate I'm currently having in my mind about whether I want to go for a more tailored look or stick with looser, more fluid garments; tailored clothes tend to be more strongly gendered.)

Today I met some friends who I haven't seen in person since before the pandemic, at a riverside cafe-bar in Benson (specifically chosen for having lots of outdoor seating, as I don't think any of us felt entirely comfortable eating indoors). I was quite nervous about it, but it was actually rather nice (it helped that we had a table right at the edge of the seating area, so didn't have other people on all sides).

After I got back, I assembled my swimsuit pattern, but haven't quite dared to cut it out yet.

And this evening I will be avoiding the football by going for an evening swim. With any luck it will have stopped raining by then.

After a couple of weeks of hot weather, it is now too cold for shorts but muggy enough that jeans are too warm, so today I ended up pulling out a pair of cropped trousers I bought from Fat Face a few years ago, which I like a lot apart from the fact that they had ridiculously small pockets - the kind that are so small that you worry that even a tissue might fall out, and which there is no possibility of fitting a phone into.

It struck me this time that a person in possession of a sewing machine and lots of scrap fabric really shouldn't have to put up with too-small pockets. So I found some leftover fabric and spent an hour or so adding a few more inches of fabric to the bottom of each of the pocket bags. And now the trousers comfortably fit my phone with absolutely no danger of it falling out, and are therefore much more wearable.

One problem with sewing your way through a global pandemic is that it hasn't exactly been possible to pop into a shop with a scrap of fabric to hold it up against the giant Gutermann thread display and select the right colour thread. Instead, I've had to resort to holding the fabric against my computer and phone screen, trying to work out if the display is rendering the colour properly or not (my phone is more accurate than my laptop, but not perfect) and blessing the fabric sellers who give you a box to tick if you want to order a matching thread (though several only seem to do that for some of the fabrics) or who will pick out a different colour to the one you ordered if you email them and ask.

But no longer! Now I have a Gutermann shade card of my very own! No more relying on digital renderings of the colours!

(Yes, it is possible I need to get out more, but hello, global pandemic here. I'll take my excitement where I can find it.)

I spent yesterday afternoon working, and was determined that today should be a day of doing relaxing non-work things. Which ended up being going for a swim in the lake (because after the recent rain the flow on the river is pretty strong again, so that there were moments in yesterday's swim where it was impossible to make any headway upstream against the current) and making a changing robe out of Mountain Warehouse microfibre towels, because the one I made out of fluffy cotton towels last year is a bit too bulky to squeeze into a tow float if I also want to carry warmer clothing and not just shorts and a t-shirt.

I am still feeling knackered and really not ready to launch into what's going to be an extremely busy week at work tomorrow. I hope that working yesterday will have been enough to prevent me from failing to meet three significant deadlines, but there's still an awful lot to do to get there. And I would really rather like to just stay in bed and do nothing.

When life is pants, make pants.




*or, preferably, lemon drizzle cake**

**T did in fact make lemon drizzle cake today, although the lemons hadn't been given to us by life so much as bought by us from Tesco's