Chaos Attraction

Last Minute Gift Making

2015-12-12, 10:42 p.m.

Okay, I think I’m gonna cover Saturday in two parts. Here’s how the daytime went.

Saturday was busy in the morning. So ages ago I got the idea to make a few friends a sampler with this foul saying on it. I decided to design my own cross stitch rather than use the ones of it I found on Etsy, which turned out to be ...a questionable endeavor. Anyway, suffice it to say that I got cross stitch fabric, got the fabric set up, had thread already bought, and that’s as far as I got. Note that I never graphed out a pattern for it either at the time.

So Jess’s birthday is very soon (Tuesday), and I went out and bought some copper-without-actually-being-copper beads to make her some jewelry she can wear without draining the color out. While looking through my jewelry stash, I found the supplies I’d bought for this cross stitch and then was all LAST MINUTE PRESENT MAKING TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME. So I immediately got to stitching even before plotting out the lettering--which wasn’t the world’s best idea. My idea was to write all of the text out in bigger letters and then have a fallow brown field around halfway through the text--I don’t know why specifically, I guess to emphasize the barren or something. Anyway, not only did I have to finish that--I skipped nighttime activities and worked on it during lunch meetings and haven’t written my cover letter yet--I still needed to make a Joann’s run for some kind of cross stitch blocking board and a few other supplies to finish the thing off. (Like uh, duct tape to cover the edges because uh...I didn’t plan this ahead of time before leaping in.)

So I did the Joann’s run this morning and then went home and cross stitched like mad, finally finishing at 12:50 p.m. Then I still needed to iron it, attach it to the board, cut down the board, attach a duct tape frame because I’m lazy and despise buying actual frames, pack up the rest of the gifts, write on the card explaining this...I managed to leave for the post office at 1:15 and the PO closes at 2, so that was pretty good for me.

For the record, the ability to drive into the PO was completely clogged up, so I had to drive down and park in the nearest cul-de-sac and then stand in the usual long line, and then I annoyed the postal service lady for not having any damn clue what I was doing on sending something with super urgent shipping (which is to say, no, I didn’t do the postage and label ahead of time and apparently I was supposed to) because I never do that. Plus that was $20. But having a birthday in December is shitty enough without having your gifts show up a week late, so....I got out of there by 1:55, muahahahaha.

After that I did a bit of thrift store shopping and got a shirt for a dollar, hit the dollar store for Christmas wrappings, hit Grocery Outlet so I don’t have to go to the store again before January, and finally then headed home to eat because I hadn’t eaten jack all day. After that, I decided to look at the last thrift store that does Christmas sweaters in town. Most of them are in the “not particularly ugly, either pretty, raggedy, or blingy” sort of way, and I didn’t bother to photograph them. BUT....

I found an advent calendar vest! Seriously, there’s a grid and little flaps you can flip up to see things under there! Advent calendar vest!!!!!

Anyway, I bought it even though it has some problems: (a) if I were them I wouldn’t have charged $28 for it, more like $12-14, and (b) the little thread grids have half come undone out of the thing. However, I’ve got some embroidery thread around the house (see cross stitch project) and I can fix it up, and have been doing so. I wouldn’t have bought it had I not been able to fix it relatively easily. But seriously, isn’t “advent calendar” a great idea for clothing you haven’t seen before?!

I’ll get to tonight later...


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