In Stitches

We have a neighbor who is a fairly recent widower. My husband spends a lot of time with him, which is hard to understand, but I guess it's all right. I've found that the only sure way to deal with this character is to out-boss him, but as I said, he is a widower and probably needs a little more outside guidance than he used to.

Anyway, he sends me his new jeans and pants to shorten. It's hard to find his waist size and leg length in the same garment. Maybe you know the drill -- buy the pants by the waist measurement and find someone to hack them off.

He sent over two pair of pants last week; they were probably Christmas present. I'm glad for the work as it gets me all the way across the dining room to my sewing machine, and the change of scenery is good for me. My machine does some neat things, such as an overedge stitch and a blind hem. These pants didn't need the blind hem -- why waste that on the jeans and cargo pants. And I did the hem on the jeans with straight stitching, because that is what they had in the first place.

I was puzzling over the second pair of pants, the cargos, when Husband came home from having coffee with the neighbor. If I cut the bottom of the pants at the hem, I might run out of fabric to make the pants the exact length. (Not that it would matter, because the neighbor isn't that particular how he looks, or he wouldn't be so laterally endowed.) Husband advised to just do what was easiest. So I did.

Husband took them across the street and came back with a $5 bill. I could have saved myself some fretting, huh, just by doing what was easiest? From now on, that's how I'll tackle the job. But the guy has, by now, twenty-nine pairs of pants. At his age, I don't think he'll need a lot more shortened!