MIA

It seems that just about every other post I make begins with an apology for being so MIA, followed up with a lame excuse for it. But really, I have some good ones this time.

Lame excuse number one: our laptop died! Yes, it came to its' untimely demise a few weeks ago. The screen turned some crazy colors and then went black. No luck making it come alive again, either. So, as hubby says -- we now have a nice, big paperweight. And, many hundred dollars later, also a nice, new desktop computer from Best Buy!

Lame excuse number two: my heart hasn't been here. I'm sure you noticed in my last few posts, I've been far from myself. And I don't really want to subject you to all the gloom and doom that I find myself submerged in during bits and pieces of the day. I'm typically a very happy, optimistic person -- but this infertility business has made me a more anxious, stressed, sad person. Luckily, we've finally gotten a few pieces of good news that will hopefully turn into bigger, even better, pieces of good news. After a few weeks of feeling really, really sad, I'm feeling much better. And eager to be back! Lets hope that continues. If you're the praying type, hubs and I would appreciate all the messages to God that we could get. Thank you!

Now, the one good thing about this whole infertility business is that I've been pouring every free moment (so as not to have any extra time to over think things) I have into different projects and recipes from (where else?) Pinterest! One of my first projects was an infinity scarf. I was feeling the urge to buy one with the up and coming autumn season, but decided to try making one of my own first. And it was so simple, I promise.


The urge first emerged in the evening, so I dragged my eager husband along with me to JoAnn's to pick out some fabric (because goodness knows it takes me at least an hour to make a fabric decision. You might think I'm kidding, but trust me: I'm not). Unfortunately, even when he comes, it only cuts the amount of time it takes me to make a choice by probably a fourth. So about 45 minutes, five dollars, and a cranky hubby later, I skipped out of JoAnn's with a smile on my face. Don't worry, hubs was smiling on the inside; after all, if momma's happy, everyone's happy (never you mind the fact that I'm not a momma... yet).


Here's what we walked out with:

 

One(ish) yard of this purple, navy, white and tan plaid. I wasn't so sure if I was in love with it initially, but now I do really like it. Anyway, here's how it all came together at midnight that Saturday night.

First, I zigzagged the whole way around the edge of my fabric to prevent fraying. If you're fancy lucky, you could serge the edges of it. But I'm a teacher, so I'm poor and can't afford a serger unless I want to eat ramen for supper each night.

KIDDING! We already eat ramen for supper each night.

KIDDING again. Anyway.


Lay your fabric out in a single layer as shown above. Then, fold the fabric over so that the right sides are together, hot dog style (elementary art class, anyone? Mr. Raske, my elementary art teacher, had a thick, black, shiny mop on his head for hair. He eventually became my middle school art teacher, too, and the rumor around school was always that he had a TOUPEE! Trust me, it was a huge scandal that kept every pre-pubescent teen preoccupied for at least a few days in my middle school. Anyway, Raske always told us to fold our papers hot dog or hamburger way).

Pin the fabric together on the open edge like so:

(How impressed are you with my little point and shoot Canon PowerShot right now? That's a pretty dang good picture, if I do say so myself.)

After you've pinned it together, sew the baby up with about a 5/8 inch seam allowance. You don't have the remove the pins as you go (just sew over the top of them), unless you're weird like me and have an irrational fear of the sewing machine needle hitting a pin and making an awful "clank" noise. It happened to me once, true story. It made an awful sound that I liken to nails on a chalkboard. Eeeeee!

Anyway, yes, sew it up... except leave a couple of inches that are not sewn at each end of it... and don't sew it shut on short the ends. Remember, we're only sewing shut the long side. The short sides do not get sewn shut.

After you finish sewing it up (except for those two inches or so on each end), go ahead and turn it so the seam is now on the inside and you've got the right sides on the outside and wrong sides on the inside. Make sense? Good. If it didn't, here's what those two inches on the ends should look like:

See? No stitch at the ends.

So here's how mine looked after that:

Mmhmm, a nice long tube of plaid. In my messy sewing/computer room. Whoopsies. I promise it's much more clean now, thanks to my hubs. He's nice like that.

So next, we need to take care of those open ends. So now you bring those two open ends together and start pinning them together so that you can sew them together almost the whole way around.

So the thing is with this part, is you're not going to be able to sew the entire way round here. In fact, you'll only be able to sew about as far as the ends that you left open when you first sewed your fabric together (hot dog style, remember?). Which, my friends, is exactly why we left that two inches at each end: so we could get this part of the job done.

At this point, you should have the entire scarf pretty well put together. The only problem left will be that little opening there that we need to fix, as shown below.

For this little fix, go ahead and pin the fabric on each side of the opening together, closing up the hole like so:

Now you could do a little secret, invisible stitch here. However, at this point it looked like this outside:

And I know you can't see the interstate, but there was literally like, zero cars out there. Because it was midnight. Infertile people do weird stuff. Like start making an infinity scarf at 11:45 p.m.

Anyway, the point is, it was late and we had mass in the  morning -- so it was time to get the show on the road. So I opted to just sew a straight stitch with my machine just about 1/16 of an inch in from the edge of the fabric. It ended up looking just fine and dandy:

And so my infinity scarf was officially created! From start to finish (not including the whole, 45-minute fabric-picking-out-sesh), it took me about 20 minutes... it was awesome.

So naturally, after I finished, I couldn't just go to bed and be satisfied knowing that I made something neat. Oh no, I had to do something else. I had to take a picture and send it to my mom, of course!

Obviously my mom was mega proud of my mad sewing skills.

Unfortunately, this story ends sadly: I have yet to wear my scarf! It hasn't quite been cool enough yet. And I'm a horrible outfit saver... always "saving" it for a "special" day (which makes no sense -- what am I waiting for, the day I find out I'm pregnant? HA!).

Sorry for the snarkiness. It's because I've missed you. Have you missed me?

I promise I'll be back soon. After all, I did somehow find myself in a Zumba class today. And goodness knows I'll need to get that experience off my chest somewhere.