Back from my trip abroad. In my last post I described how baggage restrictions limited what I could take with me.
Since we were restricted to cabin baggage only I was unable to take along my Swiss army knife, mini-leatherman or even the little penknife and can opener that usually rides on my keyring. I will admit that there were several times I missed these tools. I doubt a trip of more than a week would be practical without them. For one thing, my nails grow rather fast and need regular trimming.
One item I did insist on taking was my medical kit, although I removed the haemostats from it just in case there were any objections. Most of my general emergency kit remained at home but I did decide to take my sewing kit from it and stow it with the medical kit.
I think it is seldom that I have had a trip where the sewing kit was not needed. Something about being far from home seems to increase the likelihood of breakage. For this particular trip its use was more mundane. My girlfriend wished to modify her bikini to reduce the area of tan lines. She was initially dubious about the “invisible” thread in the kit but once she tried it was of the opinion that it was rather clever.
As an amusing aside: One restaurant we frequented showed videos from a fashion channel, often promoting bikinis and swimsuits. My girlfriend is Brazilian and what many fashion designers regard as “daring” and “sexy” my girlfriend considered “massive” and “suitable for grandmas”.
My little sewing kit fits in a plastic tube of about 1cm diameter. At the bottom are two generic white shirt buttons. It also contains five safety pins, one needle, one sailmaker’s needle, a piece of silk and a length of invisible tread wrapped around half a used matchstick. The sailmaker’s needle is magnetized so can be used as a compass. It is wrapped in the silk to keep it isolated from the other metal items and can be remagnetized by stroking it with the silk. The safety pins can be used as general pins to hold things together while sewing.
Since my sewing kit saw use this trip I replenished it yesterday. To each needle I added about a foot of doubled invisible thread so they are ready to use in the future without any fiddling about. Sewing is easier if you keep a relatively short thread on your needles and you have less trouble with knots undoing if you simply double the tread and join the ends in an overhand knot. Several metres of extra invisible thread were wrapped around a new used matchstick and added to the kit to replace that used by my lady.
A repair item that I did not have but would have liked is my little roll of electrical tape. My hand-powered torch from the 99p store got dropped out of the bag and the plastic lens holder broke. Having some tape and/or a small tube of superglue, as found in my larger kit would have been useful.
The medical kit did see some use. My lady rather misjudged how much sun she got on the final day and was in considerable pain since the nearly empty after-sun lotion got left behind. She had also had something of an allergic reaction to something she had encountered while horse-riding this trip. We had to buy some expensive products at the Duty Free, one of which she informs me contains so much yogurt it is edible. Using yogurt for sun-burn is something one of our new Greek friends had introduced me to that very trip! The painkillers in my kit did provide some relief from her burns and the TCP in the kit had some effect on the allergy. I did suggest she try the Oil of Olbas on her skin too, but she stuck with the TCP.
More details on my medical kit and other topics in future post.
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