You may recall that, in addition to the workplace dramas, I have also been involved in a movie-like drama. The next episode of that is coming up.

So yesterday I cleaned out the high school Sunday School room. Some other people came to help me as time went on, and I had some boys carting random pieces of stage sets around, and girls doing creative things with the art supplies I brought in, and my co-teacher helping me throw out ancient debris from the cupboards, and it all turned out quite well.

I went home and scrubbed the kitchen and then went to lunch with my parents, and that also was a lot of fun3407 004. Then I took #1 son and my husband shopping.for clothes, and then came home and finished Pipes.

Here it is with its new long sleeves. I must get it up to #2 daughter while it is still cold enough to wear it.

If you ever want to lengthen or shorten sleeves, it is easy. It just takes a little math. Frog the sleeves back a ways. Then determine how many stitches you have, and how many you want to end up with at the cuff. Subtract the second number from the first. This will tell you how many stitches you need to decrease. Divide that number by the number of inches you want to add to the sleeve. For example, if you want to decrease 10 stitches over the course of 5 inches, you will need to decrease 2 stitches every inch. Then just do that and you will have the sleeve you want.

3407 006I also did some sewing, or at least preparation to sew. I was not ready even to do the muslin for the jacket yesterday, but I cut out an apron. I can hear you snickering. But I always wear an apron when I cook or clean, because it keeps your clothes clean and lessens the amount of cooking smells you carry around with you afterwards.

This pattern also gives me an opportunity to practice princess seams before doing the jacket.

The pattern is McCall’s 3979, a retro apron pattern, and the  fabrics are from the clearance table at Hancock fabrics.

They are supposed to have a Provencal air, though perhaps that would give the impression that times are hard in Provence. As you can see from the snap in my kitchen, the colors work well, even if there is something a bit odd about the chickens in their medallions there.3407 001

I have a bunch of chickens in my kitchen. It is like the mushrooms of the 1970s, I fear, although if you think of it as a Gallic rooster, it is more timeless. I also have dragons in my kitchen, as you can see. I don’t think I will dwell on this any more.

After I had gotten these bits of needlework done, I was having my typical Sunday phone conversations with my girls, and my husband overheard me saying I would have to go to the Federal Building this morning to undertake the next step in the weird movie-like adventure.

This plunged him into madness. Or at least a loony outburst. He was modeling it, I believe, on the last appearance of Rumpelstiltskin. There were many implausible and fearsome predictions, maledictions, and incomprehensible questions, as well as stamping and pounding.

 I offered not to go to the Federal Building, though I couldn’t resist pointing out the likely consequences of that. My husband stamped around some more.

Do you ever feel as though you would like to fast-forward through your life a little bit? Really, I am too old to want to do that. But I think I would like to be able to peer into the future, maybe just three months. Then I could remind myself, as I go through the various excitements of my life right now, that it would all be settled down by summer, and be stoical about the current uncertainties.

Given the impossibility of doing that, I will instead try today to embrace the excitements and uncertainties of the day and experience them as adventures instead of as irritations. I hope you can do the same. In the book I am reading — and I can recommend it heartily — I have just left the protagonists hiding under a desk with a naked woman. Chances are I won’t be doing that today. Otherwise, who can tell?