Pants Progress Continues; One Gerbil Does Not

Oh, this morning Lucas told me I'd better come look at something. One of his gerbils was lying dead in the food bowl. The other one kept sniffing at his face and putting his paws on him. Lucas said, "I think his brother killed him." I said, "No, he's just trying to wake him up to play." (That would've made my neice burst into tears, but Lucas is tough sometimes.) He finally decided it was his fault somehow, and hey, if that motivates him to be a better pet-owner, who am I to disagree? I did reassure him that their time was officially up last October, so I'm betting on natural causes.

Anyway, he wanted to bury him in the backyard, so after school today we double-bagged him in Ziploc (thanks to Dean for retrieving the body for me) then taped him securely into a box and buried him a foot and a half under a bench in the backyard. Lucas wanted to put some flowers on his grave but didn't think I'd agree to breaking off one of the new pink Taiwan cherry blossoms. When I did, he gave me a big hug - most awesome moment of the day.

In sewing news, I'm learning that you can go your own way with patterns if you know what you're doing. I'm taking Jennifer Stern's jeans class on PR and I paid extra for the videos on how to do it. They're awesome! Here's what Vogue said to do with the coin pocket.


Frankly, I had a Mad Cow moment and forgot how to miter a corner, so I had to pull out a dang book! Then I realized how bulky it was going to be and used Jennifer's suggestions instead - you're not going to see the bottom, after all, and it gets topstitched anyway!


And her fly came out perfect because of an odd way she does the seam allowance using Wonder Tape, but I did it the Vogue way, resulting in a wee bit of wonkiness that I shall photograph tomorrow. Vogue also had me enclose the edges of the fly and fly facing in bias binding! Not sure why exactly, but it's cute.


Anyway, I'm ready to sew seams and place carriers next, so I hope to have some pictures of a final product soon. Off to watch her video on flat-felling...