March

Hi friends,

Wherever you are, your country must be facing some sort of shutdown in one form or another. Over in Singapore, we kinda had it easy from January to March. Our government did not order a shutdown and we pretty much carried on with our normal lives. Instead, our govt took many, many measures - in fact too many which kept changing that it was too hard to keep track. Well, sad to say it became clear to our leaders that a semi shutdown was needed as the number of infections kept going up. As of yesterday, we've had 1,375 infections and 6 deaths. A few clusters recently emerged in foreign workers dormitories and pres-schools. So I expect the numbers to explode in the next few weeks.

From today to 4th May, only essential services are open. Schools will go fully online from tomorrow. As for food, we can buy takeaway but no more dining in. We are asked to stay home but allowed to exercise in the park but not in groups and we have to adhere to safe distancing rules. We have a keep 1 metre apart rule in public. Take a look at this instagram account to see how it's applied - with tape and creativity.

The semi shutdown aka circuit breaker measures were announced last Friday at 4pm. So that gave everyone 3.75 days heads-up and of course locals ran to the supermarkets (even though supermarkets will remain open), bookstores and Ikea. In fact things got so bad, Ikea had to make a plea to people to stop going to their stores. Because of safe distancing rules, there is a limit to the number of people allowed in so there was a long queue outside the store. The public libraries also got flooded with people who were there to stock up before the month long closure. I too stocked up on my books but I went before the panic started and there was hardly anyone at the library.

For us, hubs has been working from home since March. My kids' universities too have already been functioning semi online. My cutting table became hub's office table. He also took one of my monitors. (I have 2) He sits 3 steps away from me and my pc. Next to him is my son's working area. My daughter's work area is the sofa where she has a small table. We spend most of our time in the living room. It can get quite noisy. The biggest challenge is hubs working from home because his working hours are from around 4pm to 1 or 2am. That's downtime for most people but for him that's when the day begins. Hubs the working person is quite different from hubs the person I'm married to. For one, hubs the office guy is quite inconsiderate. He turns on music rather loudly, watches all sorts of stuff (e.g. shoe reviews) loudly and farts up a storm. I had assumed that since he's "at work", he would adhere to office etiquette. I guess that's the privilege of working from home. Fart without restraint. Unfortunately, due to the position of his butt and where I sit, I get direct hit... And he eats non-stop. After his dinner, his mouth gets itchy and he eats some snacks. And then some more and more until his work ends. In fact, he never stops eating! I've always wondered why he smells of food when he returns home from work.

As for my kids, I've discovered that my son's idea of listening to his lecture is to log on and go back to sleep. I'm a bit concerned. My daughter makes the effort to wake up to listen to lectures. But listening to lectures make her go into a coma for the rest of the day. I think we're quite similar. If I watch a sewing video, I go into a deep sleep. I've discovered from listening to my daughter when she's on conference calls with her course mates that she has a scary serious voice. She also says stuff I've never heard come out of her mouth before like "It seems we have two trains of thoughts." It seems I have 2 daughters.

I hope we'll survive the next four weeks without anyone losing her mind (me). I've asked my family to exercise together once a day. I feel having some kind of routine especially one that burns energy will help us. My daughter says once a day is too much so maybe every other day. We'll see how it goes.

In March as expected, I couldn't sew much - too noisy and I've lost my cutting table to hubs. But I did complete 2 skirts for my daughter and I finally finished a lace scarf I started a couple of years ago.

This is the first skirt I made mostly to test the fit of the pattern on my daughter. She is a lot curvier around the hips so harder to fit. For the zipper, I used a centered zipper installation even though I dislike this method. I managed to do it without basting the seam because I find it horrible to remove the basting stitches. The skirt comes with two in seam pockets, a straight waistband and I used leftover fabric from my Cleo skirt. It is 21" long and sits on the waist.

And I completed the A line flare skirt with 2 pockets which my daughter likes.

I used a lapped zipper installation which I honestly find a lot easier than a centered zipper installation and the result is better. The zipper gets hidden.

When I was making the pattern, I forgot I was cutting on the fold and added seam allowances so I ended up having to add a little pleat to take care of the excess fabric. Actually I rather like the pleat and the next time I make a similar skirt I will add more allowances to make the pleat more visible.

The skirt is 25" long, has a straight waistband and 2 side pockets.

My daughter says she likes the skirt so I'm happy she's happy.

I finally finished this lace scarf (pattern by Eunny Jang) I started in September 2018. It took me so long to finish because it got so boring. When I started it, I was pretty new to lace knitting. Since then, I've completed a few lace shawls more complicated in design so it felt pointless. I was going to rip it out but then I couldn't because I had already completed so many rows. Finally I pushed myself to finish the edging on both ends but I couldn't understand what went wrong.

I have 47 stitches. To do the edging, I cast on 12 stitches. The edging pattern has 8 rows. For every odd no row, I "eat up" 1 body stitch which means I "eat up" a total of 4 stitches for every repeat. Here's the thing. After I've completed the edging, I end up with 3 stitches because 47 - 44 = 3. So what do I do with the 3 stitches? Remember I have the 12 cast on stitches? So I did nothing with the 3 stitches and did a bind off for 3 + 12 = 15 stitches. Wrong move. See the pic above. I get a weird pointy thing.

When I did the edging for the remaining end of the scarf, I thought why not add one more stitch to the 3 stitches so I could do one more repeat of the pattern. 3 + 1 = 4 and these 4 gets eaten up so I will end up with 12 stitches for binding off. Bad move. See pic above. I don't know what I got. Very disappointed indeed. I kept thinking I must have understood the pattern wrongly. But now I don't care anymore. I have moved on to other lace projects.