repair instead of throwing away

My “to do” list is shrinking. It feels like a weight is lifting…

Yay.

Now all I have is hem one pair of pants, and take the rest of the stuff to the tailor, which I will do Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.

OK, I packed: burgundy skirt, black skirt, winter coat to take to Thailand. I threw out the jeans because the fabric’s not very good quality and they wouldn’t last much longer anyway.

The black pants… I was planning to do them tonight because I don’t want to take them to Thailand, but I don’t think I’ll have time.

But I will be back a week before work starts again so I will do them then, because I’ll need to wear them to work sometimes!

The Blue skirt… being honest with myself, I don’t think I’d actually wear a skirt that pale anyway… so I’ll take the fabric (which I love) to Thailand and see if they can fashion some kind of summer top out of it.

And – the black shoes that need to be stretched – I’m shipping them home, and I will deal with them there (in English, just to make my life easier for once).

I want to “recycle” (well, reuse) the lenses. The frames are now chipped and look crappy.I DID IT! It only cost the base price of the frame, no service charge to switch and fit the lenses. (WOW!)

The tricky part will be trying to communicate that request to the Japanese shop I buy frames at! Plus, Japanese businesses in general don’t do anything that’s not “standard practice” , so I hope that my request is normal. :-S

I took my landlady with me, and that made things a snap. The store only had 2 pairs of frames that were smaller than my previous ones. The styles were quite boring, but the whole thing only cost $50. Yay! More money saved for laser eye surgery :-D

fixed up my ironing board – put the layers of towelling beneath the board cover to make it thicker and easier to iron on. (AND threw the scraps away once and for all!)

And I actually read an excerpt from a book about how to NOT get those shiny iron marks on the fabric I’m ironing. (How “Pressing” is different from “Ironing”). It sounds a bit fussy, not sure I’ll actually do it, but it solved a mystery for me.

Hopefully now my (rare) ironing efforts will be more successful, and I will be inspired to do it more frequently.

On the other hand I still don’t know anything about starch.

applies mainly to the burgundy skirt, black skirt, black pants and jeans I mentioned before. And maybe to my winter coat. I know I can’t sew in a whole new lining on my own, but it would be an awfully bulky & useless item to take on a trip to a hot, humid country.

We’ll see if I have room in my bags!

I brought the shoes to work, with the intention of taking them to the cobbler after work. But then I realized that there is contrast stitching right across the area that needs to be stretched. AND that exact area has 2 layers of leather, not just one. Sounds like stretching them may not work.

Note: stuff like this is always more challenging in Japan, because I can’t really explain to the clerk what I want done… it makes tasks like this 20 times more daunting than they would be otherwise :-(

I’m kind of procrastinating and kind of giving up.

I still haven’t taken my shoes in to the repair place… there’s a cobbler in the station I transfer at (halfway to work). I’m sure it won’t be open that early in the morning, and I never have extra time before work anyway, but I could drop them off after work tomorrow.

I’m going to put the shoes in my bag right now!

I hope I remember to take them in tomorrow, I’ve been awful for getting errands done lately.

Get my black pumps stretched so they’re comfortable enough to wear for more than 5 minutes at a time.

+ Throw out everything that’s unrecoverable, such as my poor beloved black sandals – they are wonderfully comfortable, but I have worn them into the ground. Really. RIP (sob!)

Sewing list, starting from the easiest:

Navy pants – button

Green camisoleBrown camisoleWhite camisole – shorten straps (x3)

Pink shirt – mend seam

Winter coat – repair lining (again)

bra – broken strap

Jeans – take in waist (1/2 done)

Black pants – refinish hem

Blue skirt – try to remember what went wrong that made me quit last summer, fix it, then finish waistband.

Black skirt – take the waist in / or take to a tailor :-D

Burgundy skirt – shorten / or take to a tailor :-D

OR I could take the easy route and just eat like a pig until the camisoles, jeans, black skirt fit!

Anything that I don’t get repaired by June 2007, I am going to throw out.

I refuse to pack any of these unfinished projects / nearly wearable clothes across the Pacific Ocean to continue haunting me forever. So there’s my deadline.