2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

TwibbleDee

@PipneyJane Are you trying to insert photos from Photos or from file?  I did that from Photos and it appears to have gone straight through. 

Laura_Elsewhere

@TwibbleDee, your picture showed up and is remarkably correct...

I'm hand-sewing this afternoon - we're both tackling the long-neglected sitting-room today, all day, and one of he things I've now been able to do that's been planned for months is to access everything I need, and cut out the wadding and red brushed-cotton fabric and red 1/4" organza ribbon and narrow black corded elastic to sew myself a new eye-mask for sleeping... I find it helps enormously, possibly because my brain is now programmed to send me to sleep when the mask is pulled down, a bit like putting the blanket over the budgie's cage  
I have a lovely one in lavender silk edged in old-rose organza ribbon with dusky-mauve stretch-elastic band but it would be better to have more than one so I can more often and easily wash one and let it air-dry. I thought ages ago how nice and soft a brushed-cotton one would be and how nice and midwintery the red brushed cotton I have would be, but couldn't get at the fabrics, the ribbon or elastic, not even at my good scissors! I still can't get at the sewing machine but in any case it's as easy as anything to hand sew

I am determined to force My Intended to clear more space... I want to be able to use our sitting-room occasionally to sit in!  

PipneyJane

TwibbleDee said:

@PipneyJane Are you trying to insert photos from Photos or from file?  I did that from Photos and it appears to have gone straight through. 

Not a direct upload.  The photo is already on my blog, so I was trying to post the link for it’s address.  

(I have thousands of photos.  Sometimes, it’s just easier to pick a photo’s address up from elsewhere and use that.)

- Pip

PipneyJane

Laura_Elsewhere said:

@TwibbleDee, your picture showed up and is remarkably correct...

I'm hand-sewing this afternoon - we're both tackling the long-neglected sitting-room today, all day, and one of he things I've now been able to do that's been planned for months is to access everything I need, and cut out the wadding and red brushed-cotton fabric and red 1/4" organza ribbon and narrow black corded elastic to sew myself a new eye-mask for sleeping... I find it helps enormously, possibly because my brain is now programmed to send me to sleep when the mask is pulled down, a bit like putting the blanket over the budgie's cage  
I have a lovely one in lavender silk edged in old-rose organza ribbon with dusky-mauve stretch-elastic band but it would be better to have more than one so I can more often and easily wash one and let it air-dry. I thought ages ago how nice and soft a brushed-cotton one would be and how nice and midwintery the red brushed cotton I have would be, but couldn't get at the fabrics, the ribbon or elastic, not even at my good scissors! I still can't get at the sewing machine but in any case it's as easy as anything to hand sew

I am determined to force My Intended to clear more space... I want to be able to use our sitting-room occasionally to sit in!  

I do wonder, @Laura_Elsewhere whether your Intended and my husband are related.  Mine is happy to stack stuff on the floor of the lounge, using it as a horizontal filing space.  (I hate it!). OK, I don’t play my piano and it’s well overdue for a tune, but I could’t actually get the lid up to play it, even if I wanted to. There’s too much crap on it and stacked in front of it.

Yes, I know, it’s a little bit of “Pot Calling the Kettle Black” and that I can’t put a pen down on an empty table without it looking like a bomb hit it, but it’s really annoying.  I may not be neat, but I do put things away and I appreciate clear spaces. (I don’t have the gift that is “neat”; I have tried to learn it by observation.)

- Pip

MrsCD

florianatwobob said:

Thank you for those @MrsCD they look just the ticket and crocheting in the spiral holds no fear for me  

Pleased to help 😊 🎄

MrsCD

It's our dining table that gets used as the place DH puts books and papers down! I've tried putting a nice fancy cloth on but didn't make any difference so I just leave the tablecloth on now to save the table from scratches.

Laura_Elsewhere

@PipneyJane, well our two OHs may be related but sadly you and I clearly are not - I have spent my life trying desperately to be more organised and neater and to put almost *anything* away, even just once would be a start, but I struggle horribly to establish even the simplest of habits. At my parents' when I lived there my room was known to friends as "the Trebus room", not entirely jokingly, after a famous hoarder whose Stuff-filled home featured on a tv programme... 

I manage a little better here but mainly because most of my Stuff remains at my parents'... I had viewed it as a great opportunity to properly sort and clear stuff but for several years when I went back the place needed all my energy to scrub it clean again; finally I managed to get my parents to agree to a cleaner, but then of course once I come home here again, they found reasons to pu off the cleaner. Finally my splendid and beautifully-organised Younger Niece took it on for pin-money, and greatly enjoyed getting them cleaner and more organised for a couple of years but then the Plague hit and so... but meanwhile here, one problem is that by the time I moved in, My Intended had already put all his stuff in the storage, and so quite a lot of my things have never actually had any home to be put away in... he's been "just about to" do something about this for 6 or 7 years... but at almost 53 I seem to be entering peri-menopause and the main symptom thus far is that if I don't have a sensible afternoon-snack then I become tearful about 5-5:30pm and end up sitting there sobbing my eyes out about what a dreadful housekeeper I am and how awful the flat is... 

I's actually quite comical because we've worked out that this is perimenopausal, and so M.I. knows he should go and fetch a Pepperami or bit of cheddar and shove it in my mouth, and about ten minutes later the tear ducts stop completely, and I feel completely fine, totally capable and competent and more than a bit foolish for forgetting the afternoon-snack...

But the side-effect has been that it's upset him enough to make him look hard at the flat and realise that I can't keep on top of it when so much of my stuff can't ever be put away - so we're gradually improving things. For example, he big storage area behind the bench in the sitting-room is now full of my unsorted stuff in boxes instead of being full of empty boxes that might come in useful... well, quite...

I'll get there.... slowly...! It's a very small flat, 5sq.m larger than the average UK one-bedroom flat, and I came from a six-bedroom house I'd lived in since I was ten, and M.I. came from a three-bedroom house he'd lived in for 15 years WITH a loft AND a double-garage-sized Home Office filled to ceiling-level AND a lock-up storage unit rented elsewhere...  

It's slow... but it's steady... 

florianatwobob

It’s our coffee table that becomes the bomb site and I hate it. I am guilty of helping create the bomb site but I am also the one that tends to shift the detritus that lands on it. 

I do also have 2 x 3m lengths of floorboards in the corner of my lounge at present that need to find a new home in the shed. In our defence rain has stopped play in finding room in the shed and I need to lay them flat  to prevent warping. 

TwibbleDee

Flat surface?  I can fill that!

florianatwobob

TwibbleDee said:

Flat surface?  I can fill that!

Ooooh can I fill it with my floorboards instead? 😉