Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Iris

I bought an iris this morning. Kroger had a little stand: "Spring Blooms--5 for $10." I don't understand the "X for Y" pricing system. Doesn't "$2" look more enticing than "5 for $10" or "10 for $20"? Anyway, I looked, pleased that spring was showing up one way or another, and a slender little iris caught my eye. I'm not much of a flower person, but I've always liked irises, for some reason. So for $10/5*1 I bought it. Even if it starts to die immediately I'll get several days' pleasure out of it.

Yesterday the binding for Marie's quilt kicked my butt. It's the very last thing I have to do, and theoretically what you do is sew one side of the binding to the top-batting-bottom quilt sandwich, then fold it over and attach it on the other side. But when I sewed the binding, by the end of the seam the sandwich was askew, with the bottom fabric an inch shorter than the top. I tried it again, pulling the bottom taut. I tried flipping it over. I tried using my walking foot. No matter what I did, the two sides wouldn't stay even. I brought it over last night for Edith's advice and her advice was adhesive glue, or desperate measures such as completely hand-stitching it. Hand-stitching the back half is bad enough, so I was going to try the glue, but then I thought perhaps pinning it to within an inch of its life might work as well. I've tried it on half a side and it seems to be okay--a little slippage, but not enough that I can't deal with it. So we'll see if that continues on the next side. If it doesn't, it's time for desperate measures such as folding the binding differently and sewing both sides at once.

Still no job, but I'm applying for several low-level things this week from the classifieds--the ones where you call rather than send in a resume--and we'll see what happens. I wish I could have used this time off more productively, but I don't think I did too badly, really; and I'll be more motivated to do more once I have more to do. Until then, job applying and binding applying and watering an iris.

3 comments:

koalabear100 said...

5 for $10 gives you more hints than $2. Intuitively, you know it's $2. But now they have made the suggestion--hey! Why not buy more than one? For a mere $10, you can get 5 whole irises! If you bought 3, you'd say you spent less than you would if you bought 5, but now you've bought 2 more than you originally would have.

It's a bit like pricing something at $1.99 instead of $2. You know the penny is immaterial, but $1.99 just feels better.

Jennifer said...

Koalabear is right, and beat me to it. :)

Good luck on the job. I've been checking state jobs for you, but there haven't really been many at all.

I feel for you on the binding. I've never done something so damned difficult before! That, I think, was the hardest part. And I really didn't do a good job. Next time I will try to do better.

Jade L Blackwater said...

Does gmail like me yet? ;)