Nearly four-year-old J told me the cover picture on this delightfully funny book is all wrong. Men do the vacuuming, she told me. And in this house, mostly her Dad does. Joel's away and while we miss him, I also miss our partnership in keeping our home running. I found Mrs. Murphy Hires a Cleaner at the local library. It's actually a good intelligent, fun read if you can find a copy. An adult only read, though!
My dress is cut out, zipper in, most pieces sewn together and now I'm working on the neckband. Here's a photo one small alteration to show the colour. I'll soon learn if my alterations all worked. It's been time-consuming so if t
he dress works out, I may regret working with the less-expensive velour rather than comfortable, warm, stretch velvet. The dress was waylaid by J's request for a housecoat. She picked out the fabric from the stash -- pink, of course. I thought I was done and J was ever so pleased. She likes that the fleece is cosy and 
warm and perhaps feels she now has a housecoat like everyone else in the house. But then she asked, "Does my housecoat have housecoat pockets?" No, I responded. "Would you like housecoat pockets?" "Yes." So, I'm not done yet.I love ordering from Fabric Mart in Pennsylvania but between the exchange rate and the increase in shipping costs from the US to Canada, this occasional venture may be even more occasional. No more surface mail to Canada so what used to take three and a half weeks now takes 10 days. That's the bonus. But my $46 US order of fabric ended up being $93 Canadian once the exchange rate and shipping were added. Still,
this is pretty good for 7 1/2 yards of beautiful fabric plus 2 lbs of buttons and 4 lambskin oval patches. The purple is Cotton basket weave, the navy is worsted wool, the tweed Silk Rayon and the cream is Microfibre Suede. I accidently only ordered one yard of the latter for a Joel shirt -- which is barely a back and a sleeve for him! The buttons - a few are usuable for projects -- but mostly J and I find good games with them
