I have completed my Van Dyke seam.
Goodness, what an Event that has been.
It almost all went horribly wrong, but fortunately Mark telephoned in the nick of time. I told him what I was about to do, and he was able to explain to me why it was exactly the wrong thing.
I watched the man on YouTube again, and of course Mark was right.
Dearie me, I am such an idiot.
Anyway, I thought hard about it, pinned the pattern on the right way round, and after much contemplation, cut it all out, and indeed, I now have an exactly right Van Dyke Seam.
Exactly right in that it looks like the one on YouTube, that is, not necessarily exactly right in that it will fit into my bed head and have its joins in the right places for my buttons. I have no idea if this is likely to be right or not.
I am feeling very pleased with myself all the same. The next step is to turn the fabric the right way up and start pushing it into the little button holes.
I can sew in the little tufty buttons after that. I made those myself, did I mention that?
Anyway, I didn’t have time to start faffing about with tufty buttons in the end, because of course the upholstery is the last event of the day, after I have fulfilled all of my dutiful housewifely duties, and today they involved cleaning out my taxi and taking the kitten to the vet.
I was obliged to do the former, because I have been writing grumbling letters to the Licensing Department, complaining about their lack of enforcement of taxi regulations. Obviously I only intended that they should be applied to other people, not myself, but it occurred to me that in the unlikely event that they actually take any notice of me, I might be the first car pulled over to the side of the road, just for being a nuisance. There was one licensing officer once who got cross with me for exactly that reason, and popped up everywhere I went, demanding to see my fire extinguisher and checking the tyres. He once, gleefully, told me that he was going to put me off the road because the Savlon in the first aid kit was out of date, but we got another one in the chemist that afternoon, and so he was foiled.
Cleaning my taxi is just about my least favourite job in the whole world ever. It is like housework, only in the rain and consisting of other people’s mess.
I had another umbrella and twenty pence by the time I had finished. Also it wasn’t raining, actually it was fairly pleasantly clement, so that wasn’t so bad, and it is a nice umbrella, a very large one, I will try it out next time I have to take the dogs out and it is raining.
Also I have got a nice clean taxi to go to work, which is always very lovely.
I like having a clean taxi very much, just not the cleaning of it. It is like going on a diet, something nasty that has to be endured for the sake of a desirable end result, with the same risk that I might get sick of it halfway through.
I didn’t, though, and it will not matter if the taxi inspectors turn up with a flash and a bang and a puff of green smoke. The taxi is respectable.
Well, more respectable than it was.
Also I took Guffy to the vet. Guffy seems to have stuck as a name, although she gets called Kitty as much as anything.
The vet poked her rather gingerly, and asked if I was sure she was six weeks old. I explained that actually she is thirteen weeks old, just a dwarf variety. He looked suspiciously at her anyway, said that she was far too small to be microchipped, probably it would be too heavy for her little shoulders. Then he said she had fleas and gave me some free cat food with which to fatten her up.
He said that I should not worry too much, sometimes runts do very well. I hope she was not listening. Probably she wasn’t. She was busy trying to claw her way up my jersey and away from the vet by then.
I put the anti-flea treatment on her as soon as we got home, and gave some to the dogs as well. Then I went round spraying all of the carpets.
I hoovered some of them but not all because the hoover battery went flat for the second time today.
I am going to have to do some more housewifely hoovering tomorrow.
How I will look forward to it.
PS. I couldn’t resist poking the upholstery into its destination holes and have taken a photograph of the result. You can hardly see the amazing Van Dyke seam at all, you wouldn’t notice it was there if I hadn’t told you, but it is.
It is very exciting indeed.
