Home and Hobbies

The noble suitors, who have never sewn a thing in their lives, sabotage themselves by their own ambitions: they choose difficult fabrics to work with and cut huge, elaborate patterns and select gems and pearls and beads to sew onto it, and snip such long bits of thread that they lose time detangling their stitches, and ultimately resort to pinning bits together as they run out of time, so that their offerings initially look beautiful and flashy, but when the princess tries them on they stick her with pin ends and fall apart as she moves.

The humble protagonist uses a very simple pattern without embellishments and sews using short lengths of thread (snipped off and threaded for him by little birds of course) which don't tangle and therefore save time. His dress is plain by contrast, but holds together and the princess is able to move freely in it, and so he wins the contest and her hand.

I particularly think about the bit about threading the needle with shorter lengths of thread, needing to tie off more often but avoiding tangles and thereby saving time.

4th home renovation video - painting the office and building the bookshelf!

One comment I got a few times was that I should have also painted the ceiling, but left the wooden beams as is. And there's many reasons I didn't do this. 1) the ceiling is styrofoam and is a bitch to paint. 2) It's slightly loose so when you press on it, it moves up a bit, which would make it a bitch to paint, especially around the edges to get under the wood without accidentally getting paint all over the wood. 3) The cornices have something on them that makes the paint separate when you put paint on them, which would be a bitch to paint. 4) I only have a ladder that leans against walls, so I would have had to bought/hired another ladder/scaffolding to do the middle of the room, which is a LOT of extra cost. 5) I only had enough paint to paint the walls, so I'd have had to buy more paint for the ceiling. 6) I think painting the whole room green and just leaving the wood visible in the ceiling would look bad, actually. Like maybe a lighter tone of green between the wood would look nice but I don't think the dark green would look nice on the ceiling. 7) If I decided to repaint this room another colour one day, it's easier to paint the walls than it is to repaint a ceiling, especially when there's furniture in the room.

Someone said the green was too dark and I should have left one of the walls white. 1) The green is not too dark, I know because I use the room every day. There are 2 windows in the room, and a light-coloured floor, and a light-coloured ceiling, and a light-coloured bookshelf, so the room actually has plenty of light in it and light-coloured things for the light to bounce off of. 2) Leaving just 1 white wall would just make it look like I forgot to paint that wall. Like that's not an accent wall, it's just a white wall.

Then someone else said I should get rid of the ceiling fan and replace it with aircon. 1) Why would I get rid of something that came free with the house and works perfectly well and also doesn't look bad? The fan being in this room was one of the reasons I chose this room as my office. 2) Aircon is FUCK expensive to install (just the machine is R5K at the cheapest, then you need installation. Or you get the free-standing ones, but they take up SO much space), AND then on top of that fee they're also very energy draining and it'd add a huge expense to my monthly electricity bill. 3) Aircons are ugly and my fan isn't ugly. 4) Aircon is worse for the environment. 5) It doesn't even get hot enough here to warrant aircon. South African houses are built to keep the inside cool, if I have the windows open and the fan on the room should be cool enough, and this area only gets to 30 degrees Celsius a few times a year, usually in February, so it's really not that bad that I would NEED aircon.

And then the most recent comment I got said I should take one of the windows out and replace it with a door to outside. Which like 1) So I've already done renovations and have fit my windows with fly screens, and have painted the room, and NOW I should hire people to come destroy that work to put a door in?? Terrible planning. What a waste of money and time. 2) One of the windows is above the desk, so saying I should replace one of the windows is like, cool so I must also get rid of the desk then? 3) The house already has a front door, a door into the garage, and a backdoor from the kitchen. That's 3 ways to get in and out of the house, and 3 places I need to keep secure and remember to lock every day. Why on Earth would I need a 4th one? Especially into the room that houses my most expensive equipment. 4) I have a fly screen on the window, a fly screen for a door is WAY more expensive, I would never have the door open because it'd just let all the bugs into my office.