Stuff and things and stuff and things... [status]

A lot of my time this week is devoted to grading student lab reports, or attempting to recover from the psychic damage inflicted by grading student lab reports.

But there are still a lot of other things going on at the same time, too. I'm a little overwhelmed.

For instance: My Bicycling class is bigger than ever! But that means that I'm short on bikes for everyone, again. Even if we bring the Jolly Roger and Green Bianchi back in, I need 2 more. I also have 2 bikes in the lab that I need to get rid of. They were picked up as "roadside treasure" by a former bicycling student, but we just don't have the time or tools or supplies or space or inclination* to rehab them, and they're both small where I need medium bikes.

Coordinating with people on rowing construction tasks.

Tomorrow's driving errands list is getting ridiculous (moving bikes around, hardware store items, fish store items, boathouse items).

I should do a chair project photo update. I started noticing some interesting things about these chairs. But that whole project might get back-burnered again for a while. I may wind up taking apart and regluing one, to see what that's like and whether I want to do more than that.

Feeling like I need to brace myself for classes starting up again next week.

Anyway. Back to grading.


*One is a Mongoose. Enough said. The other is a vintage Murray Phoenix, complete with steel rims, suicide levers, and a need for fresh 27-inch tubes and tires, and probably more.

By the seat of my... [projects, sewing]

The other day, it finally occurred to me that, whenever I actually get around to this project, I should actually just use some of the fabric from some old, worn-out wool leggings as patch material for some less-old less-worn-out wool leggings (but still developing holes, argh!). I seem to consistently wear these things out in the crotch, most likely due to daring to wear them while bicycling. And they ain't cheap, and it isn't clear to me that there's a way to down-cycle them other than throwing them in a landfill (sigh).

Ages ago, I used to try to patch seat-wear in jeans, but I didn't entirely know what I was doing at the time, so I've mostly given up on jeans patches and figure there are waste streams for recycling denim, at least. Plain cotton also makes for good rags, unlike wool/synthetic blends.

I'm still kind of stuck on what kind of fabric to try out for repairing the seat on my older set of rain pants. The stuff on the seat of the newer pants seems great, so far, but there isn't any information on what the material is.

These projects at least all have the benefit of being fairly low-risk, since things are already worn out to begin with, although I will continue to wish that my clothes would last longer before they start to wear out. Unfortunately, I live in the US of A, where fast fashion makes it really difficult to find good, durable clothing.

Also, I have some work to do to figure out my sewing setup again.