17 November, 2011

An outing to fix the sewing disaster

Today I tried to fix the sewing disaster by going to a different, bigger shop in a nearby city (eight minutes by train) to get the one remaining metre of black knit material that I needed to make the tracksuit pants (US=?sweat pants) for my eldest son. Of course they didn't have exactly the same material, in fact I was surprised at how little of this kind of material they actually had in any colour and how expensive it was. 

After I bought some material close to the material I already had, I wandered around the seven storey department store. I located the kids clothing and found I could have bought a very nice pair of tracksuit pants for each of my sons at half the price it's cost me to make the pants. So that's it. I'll finish these three pairs off and I'm not going to try it again. Much easier, less stressful, and to top it all off, much cheaper to buy them from the shop!

All three pants that I'll eventually get finished will likely end up as pyjamas anyway. Lacking a good pattern they've ended up too baggy in the crotch area, but they'll make comfy PJs . . . with fancy pockets, no less!

In order to feel as though I hadn't wasted a day on fixing this mistake, I included a couple other things while I was out traipsing around. I finally found some plastic cutlery for our camping trip next week. Our silverware was too heavy to put in our hanging cupboard under the awning of the tent. But you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find plastic cutlery in Japan. Disposable spoons and forks . . . oh, and chopsticks, of course. But not knives!

I found another small Christmas present for the boys, ate some lunch and headed back to the train for the trip home. On the way home I'd planned to stop at our old station and drop in on a friend at her shop. She's usually very busy, so I was surprised when she had time to go for coffee across the road. After we caught up I walked down the road to the hairdresser for a trim, which included a shampoo which was delightfully relaxing. And then I caught a train home again, feeling satisfied that my outing hadn't just corrected a mistake, but had achieved something positive too!

3 comments:

KarenKTeachCamb said...

Sounds like a very productive day. I know what you mean about ready made being cheaper than making your own stuff. Even in Australia I was find that for basics. Hope tomorrow is an even better day than today!

Helen said...

Yes, but are the trackies wide enough in the legs?

Wendy said...

Helen, looked like it. I think it is the non-stretchy ones that are narrower. These were more like standard sports pants.