The Beer Garden

I’ve been thinking for a few days that I’m so pleased with the way my tatted-trim T-shirts have come out, I want something better than ordinary ol’ sweatshirts for winter — something I can fancy up a little, though maybe not with tatting; given the timing, I’d settle for store-bought trim till I could make something.

And I’ve always liked tunics, so when we went to Wal-Mart today, I looked through a couple of pattern books, and found one I liked a lot.  Then I noticed the price!  Great good gods, $15.95 for a few pieces of tissue paper that I could only use once or twice?  I’m not that much of a spendthrift!  Maybe I’ll be able to find one at a yard sale for a quarter, later.

In the meantime, I’m trying to make my own pattern, using an old shirt that fits okay to the waist, and modifying the measurements below that.  Plus it’d be nice to have sleeves the right length, and if I get brave, maybe even making the sleeve seams match where my shoulders really are!

I’m not much of a seamstress — at least I wasn’t back when I had to take Home Ec in high school — but I’m hoping some of the skills I picked up from quilting will transfer enough to let me do this.

If any of you out there are familiar with making your own patterns and sewing from them, I’d love to be able to ask you for advice! 

We went out to the field today on the chance that Ernesto had blown down the wing from Mr. E’s Senior, and were pleasantly surprised to find that indeed it had!  The 4 servos survived, even though he had to replace a couple of wires and dry one of the servos out, plus get rid of a colony of ants that’d already (!) established itself inside.  Oh, yeah, he had to empty some water out of it, too.

Even more of a pleasant surprise was that it was in far better shape than he’d expected from what it looked like up in the tree.  If it dries un-warped, it’ll be repairable, along with the fuse, so he’ll have gotten the whole plane back and (with a lot of work) flyable again!