Since Mother Eve in the Garden long ago

I reflected yesterday that I almost always feel better when I clean up or reorganize in some way, so I took the nearly-done dress off the top of the standing mirror where I'd put it and started actually hemming the lining (two birds with one stone!). It will take forever to do by hand, but it would probably take just as much time and four times as many pins to do by machine. And when I bought a mouse for the computer (thanks for the sensible suggestion, an_english_girl!) I picked up a large shelf thing to put my shoes on so they can stack instead of trailing out into the room.

I also put up one of the stick-on hooks I'd bought at the drugstore a week or two ago - in the kitchen, for my big frying pan. That freed up a shelf spot for mixing bowls (which fit much better there than the pan had), which in turn freed up a place under the rolly counter-shelf thing for various stuff that had been on top, as well as the dish-drainer when it's not in use, so I don't have to put it on the floor outside the kitchen. (Yes, I live in squalor.) So now I'm thinking up more places to put sticky hooks. Two behind the door for coats/bags, definitely. There are some smaller ones for lighter items that I could hang more kitchen implements that bang around in drawers on - the strainer, measuring cups, etc. - although that doesn't solve the problem of stuff outwardly looking messy.

I feel like a totally new layout might be good, but the tv kind of has to stay where it is, and the couch is dependent on that, and everything else is dependent on the couch, etc.

Time for the weekend-daily rundown of awesome getting-stuff-done that happened! This morning, I went to Waddington to have brunch at the creperie there - they had basically every breakfast thing ever, plus dessert, and it was too little crepe to too much breakfast, but it was good. If it weren't twenty minutes away I could see doing it again.

To walk it off, after I got home I went to get the week's bagels and then to the hardware store for epoxy, which I used to put a piece of woodwork back on my sewing machine's table and to repair the bit on my dress form stand that holds the form up - it was broken in half. I suspect it won't last and I'll have to go to SewVacDirect for a new one. The dress form is still way too big, btw. Maybe one of these days I'll take a blade to it again. And then later, before dinner, I went for another long walk (which is good as I just overdosed on cake).

Then I set up the covered clothes rack in my basement area, and took the Regency stuff hanging in my closet and the 1860s-70s stuff that was still wadded up in bags behind the couch and hung them on it. Now both the front and the back of the living room are clean! Tomorrow morning I'm going to start on the sewing stuff in the bedroom, so that I can figure out early if I do need another set of shelves to put things on, which I suspect I might. Then my entire apartment will be clean and organized, just in time for me to move away, possibly!

I really need to figure out what to do for my Garbage Situation, which is that I bought a regular kitchen/restaurant-bathroom garbage can with a domed top and a swinging door ... and it is way too big. I don't throw a lot of food away, but I generate so little garbage that it's decomposing and horribly rank when it's still empty enough that I feel wasteful getting rid of the bag. (I still do it, though, of course.) They didn't have anything smaller at Big Lots!

Watching Mad Men from the beginning. They're so young, it's ridiculous. And Sal, oh, Sal.

Oh my god, Don's face when Betty's giving the scar monologue, I'm a horrible person.

Okay, right now I am putting in the sleeves to the dress, and if it still looks terrible I'm seriously thinking of just taking it apart, possibly not even keeping the skirt (because the gathered point in the skirt isn't working well in this fabric either). Ugh, I'm so disappointed - this print is really cute and I was really looking forward to the dress.

ETA: Hmm, I put the right sleeve in and it all looks a lot better.

Tomorrow I am absolutely doing some more Victorian sewing. And I've decided, in the wake of realizing this '40s dress is not to be made in heavy cotton, to use the stuff I bought for the short-sleeved version - a check with florals - will instead be this dress (center version, obvs). I would like to make a blouse, a buttony one not a jersey one, but I have a very bad track record when it comes to finishing those. :/ Also I have so many dress and skirt patterns, and the blouses I like are so 'spensive.