Saturday, February 18, 2017

It won't fray

Hotsurenai

Uniqlo consists of anywhere from 50 to 100% of what I'm wearing at any given moment, especially in winter. I've had a love affair with Heat Tech thermal underwear for at least the past seven or eight years. I live in it. I wear it to work, and when I get home from work, I take off my sweater and pants and throw on a fleece top over the long sleeved T and leggings, and sleep in it. I get up in the morning and throw on my windbreaker and go running (full disclosure: this happens much, much less frequently than it should).

Sometimes, though, I want to stay warm while wearing 3/4 length sleeves, and the short sleeved Heat Tech scoop neck just isn't going to hack it. Plus, the long sleeves poke out of the cuffs of my altered Uniqlo dress shirt.

So today, I altered the sleeves of my long sleeved Heat Tech scoop neck.

I cut off the extra length of sleeves.



In a perfect world, I would be filthy rich and could afford to buy and have space for a serger. But the world is imperfect. So, I folded the cuffs over twice, and stitched them down at four points with hand stitching (I could have used a sewing machine, but with only about eight points to sew a small number of stitches, I decided it was too much trouble to drag it out of the closet).


I wore it to a party under a dress with 3/4 length sleeves. It worked just fine. It has gone though the wash twice, and so far, there are no signs of visible fraying.

I've also read on a blog that you can cut the neckline open for plunging V-necks and off-the-shoulder tops, but I haven't seen any crash testing done on those, nor have I done it myself.

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Trying to get out of this funk I’ve been in for the past 2 1/2 weeks. This is the longest one since 3-11. They usually last less than a week. The other day, I started feeling short of breath when all I was doing was standing there. I am wondering if this is part of (peri-) menopause, or if I am under too much stress and need a career change, or if I was just hypoglycemic or something. I’m in my mid-40s, the workload certainly was crazy that day, and it was around 1 pm and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so it could have been any of the three.

I’m trying to be responsible for my health, but the world is not cooperating. It’s been too cold and windy to run, so I’ve been making do with doing Jillian Michaels’s 30 Day Shred. Some exercise isalways better than no exercise. This past Friday, I tried to book a mammogram and they said they were full until the end of the month. Unfortunately, the end of the month is when my Pumpkin City-issued mammogram coupons expire, so I’ll have to wait for the next set of coupons to arrive (sometime in April). I’m trying to look on the bright side. So many women are getting mammograms and finding breast cancers that would have otherwise grown fat and content and spread all over the place! This is a good thing.

The other thing that’s potentially lengthening my misery is not sewing. I haven’t done anything since the New Year Holiday. I want to shorten the sleeves on a new Uniqlo blouse I got last fall, but after a washing, the sleeves are a little tighter than I like, so I’m wondering if it’ll be worth the effort. I have a blazer with sleeves that could use shortening, but it fits so nicely around the shoulders that I’m not sure I want to mess with them. The contrasting lining is really cute so it looks nice with the sleeves rolled up, so I want to keep the cuffs loose. My white jeans need replacing (the narrowed seams are starting to fray) so maybe that will be my next purchase/ alteration. Or, it might be my summer shirts.


I found a new fashion blogger that I liked (I need new fashion blogs to follow because my favorite bloggers have outlived their useful lives and become commercials for the companies that pay them to wear their clothes and carry their bags and fly on their airlines.) She dresses almost entirely in Uniqlo. Note I said “liked.” I liked her until I realized she was 10 cm taller than me but wears jeans three sizes smaller. This makes 1) me jealous of how slender she is 2) her blog becomes irrelevant to me because even if I can afford the clothes she blogs, they will never look the way they do on her on me.

So, here's to hoping next week will be better than the past two.