my brain doesn’t work

I swear my brain has just ceased all function since starting to work from home. My days are all mixed up. My weeks are all mixed up. How is Christmas in 2 weeks? WTF. I haven’t bought any presents at all. I haven’t hardly thought about it. What is happening?!?! I am in a constant bubble of confusion.

And work has been crazy the last week because my email was down ALL WEEK. And today I’m sure I’m going to get the brunt of it as they got it working again and I’m sure I’m going to have people asking for statuses on emails I never got last week….

Anyway. Ya’ll don’t want to hear about work.

How about sewing first? There’s not a lot. But yesterday I did go to Joann and pick up some new interfacing. It’s still a pretty stiff interfacing, but not iron-on and not near as papery as the stuff I had leftover from Crait. I ripped the old interfacing off the lining pieces for the Raddus robe, and got new pieces cut for the sleeves.

I NEVER start with sleeves because I hate them! What is happening?!
Anyway, here’s one sleeve with the interfacing sewn onto the lining, and the lining attached to the sleeve. The top edge is still opening – it was still a bit too long so it’s pinned up along the bottom. Tonight I’ll flip it back to the wrong sides and bring that lower edge up, cut the excess out and do the same to the other pieces for the other sleeve I haven’t assembled yet.

But overall pretty happy with that sleeve. May bring that edge up again – I think this afternoon I’ll overlay my photo of it over a photo of Leia to check if I have the angle right before doing anything else.

That’s literally all the sewing I’ve done this past week.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been in my sewing room. I made a few videos for tiktok the other day, and discovered a light pink stain on the left arm of my form. All I could figure is that it was something that came off my mandalorian costume… since it has some red weathering on it. But that was a stretch as there wasn’t anything on the inside of that shirt that should have come off on the arm. Not 100% sure where it came from.

I decided the safest thing to do would be to dab it off with some water.

I got a paper towel wet and dabbed it against the stain – which immediately SPREAD, and GOT DARKER. It went from a very light pink stain that looked like a string to a MASSIVE RED WOUND that took up the entire outside upper arm of the form!!!!

I have no pictures of it like that because I was totally freaking out and on the verge of crying! i put some grandma’s stain remover on it but it seemed like more kept appearing elsewhere – just below the elbow, on the fingertips… It was so weird. It was like whatever it was was inside the foam of the interior arm and just being released.

Finally I took it downstairs, got a screwdriver and disassembled the arm. Took the metal connector piece off, stripped the fabric sock off and threw it in the washer immediately. The stain was still all over the foam rubber up arm. I tried some carpet cleaner, and more grandma’s stain remover. It’s still slightly pink on the upper arm but the rest of the arm has discolored to a yellow tone, everywhere except the hand (which had a plastic glove on it between the fabric and foam layers). The sock came out of the wash ok – again, slightly discoloured.

I’ve been letting the foam rubber arm sit out to dry out. Still seems damp every morning I touch it and I want to make sure it’s as dried out as possible before I reassemble everything. I think once I put the sock back on it it’ll be… usable at least. Chase contacted the maker to see if it was possible to get a replacement arm but haven’t heard back yet.

Here it is Friday night after the sock came out of the wash. See the colour difference between the hand and arm? It’s faded a bit as it’s dried but I don’t think it’ll ever be the same.

Just so ticked at myself for getting anything on it in the first place. And not just immediately disassembling it to clean the sock instead of trying to clean it when it’s assembled. Now I know.

Anyway, while at Joann I also picked up some new patterns! Yay!

Been a while since I caught a Simplicity sale, and it wasn’t a great sale… $2.99 instead of 99 cents. But there were a couple I REALLY wanted so I didn’t want to hold out anymore.

First is that JUMPSUIT pattern! OMG I have needed/wanted a women’s jumpsuit pattern for EONS.
Second – FINALLY a Harry Potter robe pattern. I can stop using my old modified, ripped to pieces, almost 20 year old generic robe pattern.
Then I also picked up that new American Duchess regency pattern, the Hocus Pocus rip off pattern (not that I need it having already made them, but it’s got some nice bones that might work for something else), and that buttoned up coat dress pattern in the upper right – it looked like it could come in handy one day, dunno what for.

Christmas decorations!

I finally got the tree decorated! The orange peels aren’t 100% on keeping Luna away, but probably like 95% keeping her away, so I actually put breakable stuff out this year. Fingers crossed. She HATES the smell of oranges (something we didn’t know til I peeled it for this), and she’s pretty much kept away from the tree since I put them down there. There was one soft one I had at the bottom knocked off the other morning, but so far that’s it – she hasn’t been underneath it trying to stalk us at all.

I want to make little christmas decorations for the contemporary.

Star in our front window. Also have the mickey topiary out on the porch, but that’s all the outside decorating we’ve done this year. I want to try to get some lights up out there, but haven’t had a chance.

Corner with my ceramic tree

Another view from the balcony, I have lights around the balcony railing over the living room (and garland coming down the stairs in the front). In front of the fireplaces are 3 LED trees we got at Costco… I can’t remember if I already posted pics of them? They’re super cool but as you can see, only one is lit up. Somehow the batteries have already died in the other 2 but that one keeps kicking. I’ll replace the batteries in all 3 closer to Christmas.

Fat Cat begging for food. We made broccoli casserole the other night, which included a can of cream of mushroom soup – she heard the pop top and came running thinking it was fancy food for her. She was disappointed.

Instagram Top 9… gee I think I see a pattern here.

Anyway, this weekend – friday night we went to see the church play mom directed, it was cute. Saturday Ash and I went to the Tiger football game! We had really great seats.