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Tuesday, August 6

The Parking Lot

The other day I was meeting with someone at work and she talked about "The Parking Lot".  She was giving advice to my new coworker that he didn't need to know everything right off the bat.  It was always okay to say "I don't know, let's put that in The Parking Lot and I'll find out for you".  It's good advice, he's not going to catch up to my 7 years of doing this in 3 weeks.

For me, this blog has become a parking lot.  Sometimes when I'm at work, ideas swirl around and they need to go somewhere so I can focus.  A quick post here serves that purpose (and lets me delay doing work I'm not all that interested in).  It's not so much , but it does become a storage place for ideas I need to set aside.

I haven't been posting much lately for a few reasons.
  • I'm mentoring "the new guy".  Either I'm looking at his screen or he's looking at mine.
  • That takes up a lot of time and I still have my own work to do, no time to procrastinate.
  • I'm interested in what I'm doing at work again so my attention span is better. 
  • I don't have negative thought swirling around that need temporary storage.
  • I spend all day in front of a computer, so when I'm home, I don't spend much time online.  If I don't find time to post at work, I'm not likely to post at home.
  • I don't have a lot to think about, I'm at an action stage more than a thinking stage.
This weekend was great.  We are getting the basement and hallways/stairs to the second floor painted on Wed/Thurs which means we have to declutter to let the painters get at the walls.  The basement is where we hang out, it's full of media and stuff.  We filled 14 52L totes with books, DVD's and CDs and 5 paper boxes of books.  And that's still not everything.  What can I say?  Mr. Lina likes his movies and we support a lot of musicians by purchasing CDs.

In May we (that's the royal we, meaning mostly Mr. Lina) sanded the deck and stained it, the focus being on the horizontal boards of the deck so we could set out our new patio furniture.  Sunday we finally had the weather and time to finish the railings.  We weren't sanding those down, just painting over them.  It was hot and sweaty work but it looks nice now that it is done.  Another box ticked off on the to-do list.

Mr. Lina started a batch of beer with a friend on Monday (a stat holiday in Ontario).  They are splitting the batch of a Belgian Tripel they are trying to clone (smile, nod, no it doesn't mean much to me either but if you want to know more, check this out).  So I had to clean the kitchen so they could make a mess of it with the beer making (which they did generally clean up).

And I sewed.  Yes indeed, I've made another Sorbetto.  This is now the 4th time I've made this pattern but I need that kind of low thinking/pre-traced sewing to get me back into the swing of things and this does fill a wardrobe gap.  There was still some thinking involved since the first two don't really fit well at the bust (not sure if they ever did or if it's a change in bras), even after #3 it still needed some tweaking.  I asked Mr. Lina to take pictures of me on Friday when I wore #3 to work, but it didn't quite happen.  #4 needs to be hemmed and we'll see how #3 did in the wash last night.  It's 100% cotton and came out wrinkly (as expected from cotton), hopefully it did all of it's shrinking in the pre-wash.

So moving two 64L bins of fabric our of my sewing room seems to have had a positive impact - productivity.  Saturday I'll be joining the Toronto Meet Up (details here - and I have a choice of new shirts to wear!), which means shopping, the opposite of decluttering.  I might have to keep an eye out for some white fabric.  We're doing a team fun day of lawn bowling on Monday afternoon, wearing white is required.  I suspect my pale beige pencil skirt that probably doesn't fit me at my present weight is a good choice for lawn bowling.  A white A line skirt might be in order and I'm sure the only white in my stash is broadcloth.

12 comments:

  1. Oooh, you are going great with your basement... We have a list to go through before August and we haven`t started yet.

    Can`t wait for Saturday!! After this weekend trip to US, I brought back 2 boxes of fabrics from Fabricmart which had been shipped to this friend`s place - one box was from last year and other one was from the June midnight madness. Still haven`t unpacked yet. I`d have to TRY not to acquire more fabric, this Saturday. I could use some foldover elastic and other elastics though. Would you know where I can get them.

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    1. Notions, elastics and trims are always a safe bet when on a fabric diet. I have bought most of my FOE online now that I think about it. Either sewsassy or porcelynne on etsy. But in Toronto... What about that little place on Cameron Street, the one in the basement? I bought some findings there, but they had all kinds of neat things at pretty reasonable prices. Or there was a trim store I went to with K-Line but it was pretty high end, I think you'd want to have a specific project in mind to purchase from them.

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    2. Little place on Cameron street, the one in the basement - is filed away in my brain for my next visit. sewsassy, eh! I've been wanting to buy stuff from them for long... bra making stuff - but after seeing Kristin just about explode, I think I'll wait on that order. No point in adding to stash.

      How was the meetup by the way? Our day in Buffalo went great and almost as productive as planned. Wish we had reached earlier and not stuck in border crossing for ages! And I bet everybody who didn't come to the meetup, were on that QEW road.

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    3. The meet up was good. I'll be posting about it shortly. A bit smaller so it was easier to talk to everyone. I'm glad to hear your trip to Buffalo went well.

      Yeah, bra making is not for the impatient, getting to the TNT stage is a bit of a holy grail. sewsassy has great underwires, way better than what I've seen in Fabricland. I also like their plush finishing elastic, it's not too stretchy so you get good support. I usually put in an order with sewsassy when my parents go to Florida. I got hit with brokerage fees the one time I ordered to home and it took forever to clear customs.

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  2. I almost said I wish I could go to a meet-up somewhere, but then I realized that at the rate I sew I definitely have enough fabric to last me easily until I graduate. So maybe it's a good thing that I'm not close enough to any. Glad to see you're getting back into the swing of things.

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    1. Shopping aside, it's just cool to meet people face to face. Last time I bought 1m of swimsuit fabric, 3m wide stretch lace and findings. All told, it's a pretty reasonable purchase. I had never been into any of the stores we visited that day so I spent more time just looking around and talking than buying.

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  3. Yay for sewing time! And for men that clean up the kitchen when they're done making a mess in it! ;-) Sounds like you've got your plate full with house stuff, seeing everyone else do renovations makes me feel guilty about all of the projects we're currently putting off....

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    1. This painting is reminding me why we haven't done much painting over the 9 years. This is not something I really enjoy but must be done. Don't feel guilty, you'll get to it when you can.

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  4. Being productive sounds good! I wish I could join you all for the meet-up so bad!

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    1. It is still a bit strange to me that you won't be here to participate. You'll certainly be part of it in spirit.

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  5. Loved meeting you at the meet up today. You are a sweetie! Take good care.

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    1. It was such a fantastic day and so lovely to meet you. My husband is out with movie making friends tonight and I passed, I think I've done my share of talking today. :)

      On the plus side, my fabric is already pre-washed. Yay!

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Thanks for your comments, I love to have a two way conversation. I seem to be getting a lot of spam from anonymous users and am turning off the ability to comment that way. I really would like to hear from you so if you do want to add your two cents without an OpenId, email me at seraphinalina at gmail dot com.