General Update
First off, Sable seems to be pretty much recovered — or at least as much as his age will permit. He’s eating his dog biscuits (can’t catch them very well any more, though), and has actually gone out for a run. That by itself seems to have worked wonders for his morale!
Otherwise, I spent most of the day working on my tunic pattern, with critiques from Mr. E, mostly regarding sizing. He’s a lot more concerned about shrinkage than I am, so he wants the pattern to be quite a bit oversized, where I want it closer to a normal fit since almost all fabrics these days are pre-shrunk, and I plan to wash whatever I get before cutting out the tunic in any case. So I guess it’s mostly an annoyance, if a time-consuming one; I think I had to re-do the body about twice, and I’m on version 4 or 5 on the sleeves — though I can’t blame all of that on him.
What happened was that I couldn’t remember how to do set-in sleeves, except that in Home Ec class it’d been absolutely miserable. After my first couple of tries (not counting the one where I asked for his help, which resulted in lots of work and a total mess), I resorted to the Modern Wonder, and found a simple way to do it on the ‘Net. That method worked marvelously well, so I finally got the entire muslin pattern assembled and on. As I thought, it’s pretty oversized, but I keep telling myself it’s easier to cut fabric off than to add it …
Oh, yes, one more thing. Back shortly after I was put on the wound vac, I persuaded Mr. E to let me get a haircut, because the long hair I disliked kept getting caught in the strap. I went to the first "beauty" shop I could find (strike while the iron is hot, y’know), but the results were … um … less than satisfactory. So I let it grow out for a few months, so the next person who tried would have something to work with, and hit the DAFB barber/beauty shop yesterday, since we were up there anyway.
This time, the results were everything I could’ve hoped for, and I’m extremely grateful, as you can probably imagine! I also learned the modern name for what was called a "duck-tail" when I was much younger (and, according to the beautician, was a "duck-ass" for a while, which gave me a bad case of the giggles). These days, it seems, it’s known as a "wedge", a name I shall have to remember! I also think I’m going to see if Mr. E has film for his camera, and get him to take a couple of reference pictures in case the name changes on me again.
On that note, I think I shall call it quits for the evening and go get some supper. Rest well, all!
