Ramblings, rumblings, grumblings, and rambling grumbly rumblings.

It was quite the day: busy, tiring, dusty, hard, sweaty, good. I'm ready for bed now, waiting for Katie and Michelle to get their showers. Last night Michelle and I were up until 2:00am dyeing, washing, rinsing fabric. Tonight, I think I'll be in bed by 11:00. It's worth hoping.

I spent most of the day - except for an all too brief afternoon nap - in the basement, working on making the shop once again, a shop. After we closed Seamlyne at the end of 2006 I re-purposed the space to computer consulting. Now that we're reopening (and my principle computer is now upstairs) it's time to re-purpose again.

Today, I finished carpeting the space - I did about half of it somewhere around 2005 and never made the time to do the other half. It's cheap carpet, but it warms the space adequately, makes it a little more barefoot-friendly down there. Rolled and folded for all these years, it's a bit wrinkly, but in just the few hours it's been down - taped into place using heavy duty double sided carpet tape - it's already starting to relax into place.

Now that the kids are old enough to join us down there as they wish, the goal is to make the environment down there as pleasant as possible. We got an old loveseat from Michelle's parents - it has a twin sized Hide-A-Bed that I can think of a few uses for - that will provide comfortable seating. A TV and DVD player provide entertainment; we'll get a converter box so the old TV can pick up the new digital TV signal; we have an old PC downstairs as well.

Probably the biggest step for me was taking my Old Computer Desk apart to its components with the intent of turning the two legs of the "L" into sewing tables. They're precisely the right height, and I'll be cutting at least one hole so I can recess the domestic straight-stitch and put the deck flush with the desktop - something like the picture on the left, there. (If you sew, and you've never sewn on a sewing machine with a working surface two feet square, you're really missing out.) I'll probably do the same with my small serger. It just makes the work go easier if the working surface of the machine isn't raised above the surface of the table: easier to maneuver the garment; easier to see what you're doing; much much easier on the back.

If anyone has a small computer desk and/or TV stand they'd like to see hauled away, please let me know. Those are the two pieces we're missing.

Michelle, thinking ahead, God bless her, made a terrific soup for our supper, so we wouldn't have to order-pizza-or-starve. She also made garlic-cheddar biscuits. Supper was very good.

There's more, I'm sure, but my brain is turning to mush. Time for shower and bed.

I surprised myself a little last night. For the first time in about a year, I sat down to make a pair of tights.  Well, actually, four pairs of tights, but I was only concerned with finishing one. I'll do the other three tonight.

Except for being a lot slower - the big serger is in storage downstairs so I'm on a small, domestic Juki - the tights went together just the way they used to. Like riding a bike, to put more wear on a threadbare old analogy. Once I got back into the groove of it, it was kind of fun, like revisiting an old haunt and finding it more or less the way you remembered it.

I've reopened the Seamlyne website to new tights orders. My motivation is two-fold: I've got fabric to clean out of the basement, and we could use the extra money just now. My selection of colors is limited, but that's really the only limitation. My patterns were right where I left them.

Lots of green, lots of brown, a little wine, a little navy. Notty, there's purple in there too that I'm holding back you you :)

I've also got a box of tights that were cut out but never assembled that can go in the off-the-rack section. That ought to be fun tracking down the pieces that are missing.

I've also put the design site back online, hoping to generate some traffic there. As I've read back over it, I've found some items I'd like to change - most notably in the footwear section - and probably will over time. For the time being, it's just good to see it again.

So, spread the word, my friends. I'd appreciate all the publicity I can get.