Sunday, April 27, 2008

Organizing my Burda magazines...and not sewing

I've been cleaning up and organizing and not sewing. Now I think I'm just finding excuses to delay sewing and facing the UFOs. The sewing table is just about cleaned up and instead of finishing the Burda jacket, I organized my Burda magazines. I like to remove the pattern inserts and store them in plastic cd "crates" - they fit perfectly on-end.

Then I copy the pages with the line drawings (double sided) and store them in a notebook. I try to keep up with the issues but was surprised to find a year's worth of "un-organized Burdas." Yesterday I went one step further. I often flip through the notebook of line drawings first to find patterns to make, and then pull the magazine when I need to, but I can't tell whether a pattern is for woven or knits. So I decided to annotate the copied page of line drawings with "K" for knits, "S" for stretch woven, and "So" for stretch fabric optional. I was surprised how many pants and skirt patterns called for stretch fabrics. The problem is I have a lot of Burdas...going back to 1999. I only annotated back to 2007 yesterday but I can tell that this will be yet another way to delay doing any actual sewing.

I also didn't get to any sewing yesterday because the yard needed work. I tackled the very weedy back yard yesterday and pulled up A LOT of weeds - mostly grassy weeds, dandelions, and mallow. I find it quite funny that the Latin name for mallow is "Malva neglecta" - as in "you neglect your garden, you get mallow." I'm hoping to get some of the raised beds cleared of the now-bolted lettuce and cilantro and put in the summer crops. Yes, it's warm here already - in the 80's. My winter experiment of snap peas, broccoli, and cabbage did pretty well. We enjoyed lots of peas, a little broccoli (it bolted with the first warm spell), and some heads of cabbage. This year I'm looking at planting tomatoes, squash, peppers, corn and a few other things. Nothing too fancy.

It looks like it's going to be a good year for the fruit trees too. The plum is full of little green ones, the apricot looks better than last year, there are lots of little cherries (the birds will be happy) and the peach trees will need some serious thinning. A little pear tree we trellised on an espalier is also showing lots of little fruit. The only tree not fairing well is the almond and that is due to Mr. Squirrel who stole the young nuts before we had a chance to net the tree, which didn't stop him from stripping the tree last year so I guess we needn't have bothered. I'm not sure what we can do to prevent Mr. Squirrel from eating all of the nuts. The tree is in the front yard, so I don't really want to build some huge defense system.

Maybe I'll actually get to some sewing today. Imagine that! It's rather hot out this afternoon and my muscles are sore from all the weed-pulling. Ah, but there's laundry to do. But at least the day is mine to enjoy. A song came on the radio that made me recall my college days, when a beautiful Sunday afternoon meant pulling out the books and tackling my homework. Yuck. As much as I miss those years of youth, I am glad not to have to study anymore!

2 comments:

  1. I'm always interested in the way people store their BWOFs. My BWOFs are slowly but surely outgrowing the space I have to store them. But, I can't imagine getting rid of them.

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  2. Unfortunately no youth but I a studying.... Sounds like you're getting a lot done around the house (but you do realise you'll run out of excuses eventually don't you ;) )

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