When I went to pick up the correct solenoid in Port Lavaca, I caught the back of my short denim skirt on something in B & S’s truck that ripped a gash up a good part of the back of it. I was irked as skirts are growing harder and harder to find unless you shop at pricey online boutiques. This one was the exact length and heft that I needed for it to be wearable both in the summer with sandals and in colder weather with tights.

I’m not much of a seamstress, so I decided to try to repair the skirt using some iron-on fusible webbing and then finish off the repair with a few discrete hand stitches.

The few times that I’ve had access to 120V power lately, I just haven’t thought about the skirt. It was cool enough on the beach to be comfortable in my longer skirts. But it’s hot here and I miss having the shorter one. This afternoon, I decided to attempt a repair.

There was just one teensy problem: my iron draws 1,200W, 200W more than my inverter can handle. Gaaaaaaaaaaah.

There was my poor skirt, all trussed up and dampened (okay, soddened) and ready to go:

Never one to give up in front of a challenge, I remembered that for most of the history of ironing, women used heavy cast iron irons.

So I fired up the stove and a couple of minutes later, well:

It worked! The repair feels very good, but I will add a few stitches to make sure the ends are solid.

It’s true, necessity is the mother of all invention! 😀

I left all the windows and roof hatches open last night, so the rig was super comfortable to sleep. It’s actually rather cold in here this morning, but I know that won’t last long.

The kitchen hatch rattles like the dickens, so I’ll keep it shut at night from now on. It’s meant as an escape route, so it doesn’t have a cover over it. This means that one really good gust of wind could rip it of, another reason not to leave it opened while unsupervised.

I bought a pork roast when I did my grocery run yesterday, so I’m cooking it this morning before the temperatures rise. It’s starting to smell really good! That said, we’re only supposed to hit about 75 today and that sky looks suspiciously full of rain clouds. So the heat wave is probably over.