I want to teach myself to sew by replicating this apron, probably many, many times. I bought the apron; what next?

After spending a lot of the past couple of months in a Bon Appétit rabbit hole (thanks MeFi!), I'm obsessed with this apron that seems to be favored by many of the presenters. Despite its ridiculous price, I went ahead and bought one as a bit of retail therapy.

Well, it arrived today and I loooooove it. I want to give them to all my friends and family, and I want ten of them hanging in my own pantry, but spending $5K on linen aprons from France isn't on the agenda.

So, no time like the present to merge this motivation with another long-standing goal, which is to get competent with my sewing machine, a Singer from... maybe the early '90s? It was given to me by a friend about ten years ago, and since then I have used it three times, always with a more experienced helper to thread the machine, help cut the pieces, etc. The last time it came out of the closet was at least four years ago, so please assume that I am starting from zero.

I have watched a fair amount of Project Runway, but despite that I do not really know where to begin :) This tutorial seems reasonable easy to follow to make a pattern, but... then what? Is there anything more to it than just trying and trying again, presuming I can't ask or hire anyone for help in the foreseeable future? What is the absolute cheapest fabric I can practice on that will help me not ruin the first few yards of linen that I (with luck) will ultimately graduate to? Can I just use reasonably-sized rags/old clothes from the basement?

Any general tips on learning to sew on your own as an adult are also welcome!

Hi. I am looking for the best Mexican tamales in the South Bay/Torrance/Gardena/Lomita area of LA.

I am looking for, preferably, a bakery that sells tamales by the dozen all year round...pork in red chili and/or chicken mole are my favorite flavors.
Ramona's were only so-so, but they are now only seasonal;
The local Farmers Markets aren't selling prepared food right now [or if they are, let me know!!]
"The Tamale Man" doesn't look that tasty --but again, tell me if I am wrong!

Can you help a hermana out?

Me and my partner have decided to form a shared social distancing "bubble" with another of our couple friends. I believe we are following safe protocols for this but wanted to get an honest outside opinion as to whether we could be managing this better/safer/etc.

Here is the situation: I am a musician, and my main music collaborator used to live about a half hour from me. Back in January, he and his girlfriend relocated about 90 minutes away, in a major city that has had a large amount of COVID-19 cases. Where I live hasn't been as bad, but we are all still being cautious.

Musician friend and I are collaborating on a music recording project to combat boredom because we are both unemployed and obviously live gigs are right out. We have been doing most of our planning remotely, via Zoom and phone calls, but every now and again we do have to meet in person as his recording studio is in his apartment and sometimes he and the girlfriend come up here to ease the stir-craziness. We believe we are being safe in our methodology but wanted to confirm.

When we embarked upon this project, we made a pact with each other and our partners that the only people we would allow into our homes is each other. The way this works is, when I have to drive to his place to record, I wash my hands, mask up, and drive down to see him. He lives in a neighborhood with ample street parking near his building. When I arrive, I mask up again, buzz into his apartment, take off my outerwear and shoes immediately and keep it on a hook outside their front door, take mask off and put in my purse leave purse in one spot on a table, hand wash and hand sanitize. He and girlfriend also hand wash and hand sanitize, and have been cleaning all doorknobs and buzzer buttons and handrails of the stairs with disinfectant wipes before I arrive. When we record, we disinfect all microphones, headphones, gear we touch including instruments with wipes before and after use. When I leave, I wipe down the table where my purse was, wash hands again, mask up, drive home. All clothing I wear is promptly laundered.

When he comes up to work with me his protocol is similar: wash hands, mask up, drive to my house, where I have been disinfecting doorknobs and other surfaces. When he arrives, he parks in our drive, his outerwear and shoes stays out on our patio, he washes hands again and hand sanitizes, we rehearse for a couple hours, then he washes hands again, masks up, drives home, masks up, goes into building, washes hands. All clothes he wore go immediately into the laundry. Any surface he touches in my house gets pre-and-post wiped down with disinfecting wipes. We don't record in my home there is no gear to disinfect other than his guitar.

His girlfriend works from home and keeps herself separate from us when we record in their home. My boyfriend lost his job due to COVID but busies himself with projects in his home office while we rehearse in our home. The four of us have mutually agreed that we are the only other folks we will allow in our homes and we follow this safety protocol to the T every time we travel to see each other.

So, question 1) are we being safe enough, or are we being dumb? None of us so far has gotten sick and we are comfortable with our routine. How could we improve our safety protocol? Neither of us stop at gas stations to and from each other; we gas up on our own time and hand sanitize after doing so.

Question 2) Musician friend and I are getting ready to record a video of us performing a duet in his apartment. Our mutual friends know we no longer live near each other, and my fear is that when they see evidence that we haven't been keeping six feet apart at all times in his apartment we will get scorned by our colleagues, or near the brunt of actual anger because they are not aware of our safety routine. How can we explain that we have been talking proactive steps to keep ourselves safe and have chosen to be a somewhat long distance social isolation bubble with each other when we release this video to avoid angry responses? Is it necessary? Musician buddy is ambivalent, but I am a worrier and don't want to inadvertently bring us bad publicity.

Please be gentle with me. We are doing our best and we so far have not gotten sick with this protocol. Our partners are also proactive in hand sanitizing and/or hand washing once one of us leaves the other place. Are we being stupid? Is there a way to explain this succinctly when we release our video to pre-empt any judgement?

Seriously please be gentle. My anxiety is on high alert just from reading the news each day and I really hope this community will refrain from a pile on because we are doing everything we can to keep ourselves and our partners safe.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you.

I'm sewing masks to donate, and a lot of the fabric in my stash is the Alexander Henry "Leis, Luaus & Alohas" print. What do we think about it? Is it racist?

I see this fabric a cheerful, but maybe I'm too accustomed to it. Or maybe it's charming and I'm overthinking it.

My masks all have a plain side and a patterned side, so any recipient could choose to keep that side hidden, but I don't want to make anyone unhappy about receiving a mask made from it. I'm donating masks through an organization and they're going to a large range of people.

The one vector between me and total isolation is my apartment laundry room. Am I overestimating my risk?

I am in a better coronavirus situation than many. It's me and my three-year-old, and there is no other adult to fail to comply with the rules. I continue to get paid and am working from home. I do get occasional grocery delivery, but I do have enough stockpiled at this point that I don't have to do that very often and I could cut that out if I need to for the time being.

I am prone to anxiety, and in the past have fixated on small details as an outlet for this. For example, when my son was a baby I did a lot of reading about and see if sleeping situations and was extremely vigilant about his crib and its condition. My rational brain knows that the odds for such a thing to happen are remote. But it was something I could control and it gave me comfort to control it. I feel like this laundry situation might be the same thing.

I do feel nervous when we go outside but I'm careful to not touch anything and sanitize our hands as soon as we are outside. So I tell myself that's OK. But the laundry...there is no getting around it. It's a communal laundry room. It's making me crazy to the point I've contemplated moving.

To be fair, the last time I visited the laundry room was this morning. I went first thing in the morning and the only person I encountered was the super, and she was gloved and masked and in the process of cleaning the elevator buttons. I do think my building is taking the reasonable precautions. I guess I'm just not really clear on how big a vector this might be? Like, I could be terrifying myself over a strawman here?

So, talk me down from the ledge. We stay away from people, we wash our hands as soon as we come inside. Are we likely to have anything dire occur to us from our visit to the laundry room?

I have a very large amount of papers that need to be counted, to the extent that doing it by hand will take dozens of hours. I have considered doing it by weight with an accurate scale, but I require a lot of accuracy, and some of the groupings of papers need to be separated, so I need to work in smaller batches. I was thinking of using a printer for this purpose - load up as much as it can hold, then "print" blank pages in groupings of 50 for example.

For this purpose, I can probably just get a used printer on ebay (I literally don't need it to even be able to print, just run through a center number of pages). However, I don't know what parameter I'm trying to optimize for. Typically, printers advertise a certain number of pages per minute. However, I'm not going to print anything on any of the pages, so it should run faster than this speed. How can I analyze the rate at which different printers will feed me blank paper (if such a performance characteristic exists)?

Asking for friend: Normally my temperature tends to run a little low: 97.8-98.3 is typical. For the past two months, my temperature has been consistently around 99.5, about a degree and half above what is normal for me. What would cause that?

I have a couple of long term, chronic health problems but no new symptoms that make me think I have a current infection. Blood tests taken shortly after this started were normal. Is this my new normal? Is there something I should ask my doctor to check out?

I just bought a Kindle for my Luddite poet friend and I want to fill it up with poetry from the last 50 years or so. Universally acclaimed, critically hailed, all-killer-no-filler, BEST POETRY EVAR is what I want. Difficulty: in English or Hebrew, published after 1970 or so, little or no free verse. Thanks for any suggestions!

Inspired by the whodunit question, and also that I am almost done watching the Americans and know I will miss it sorely...

There was a joke on Twitter like: Heist movies are popular because they offer a fantasy of being incredibly organized and detail-oriented

That's what I want! The broad tent version-- robberies, cons, intricate spycraft. Give me all the planning and technicalities!

The less obvious scratchers of this itch, the better. I was thinking about movies but maybe there are some books in this vein that you would also recommend?!

This is not a question about social distancing procedures as much as it is about the psychology of it.

We are a close-knit family living in four separate households in the same city. There are a few dozen cases in our metro area (under a million people). We are not seeing each other in person but we do weekly drive-bys where we stand under the balcony and wave while talking on the phone or shouting from the window. The kids seem to enjoy it mostly but I fear it might be confusing for them as well. Why can't auntie come in when she's already here? The toddler says solemnly, BECAUSE VIRUS, but I'm not sure how much he understands. He once told Grandma on the phone "Grammy is not coming cause she's angry with me".

I (the single aunt) work at a hospital so there is no way we can merge households (none of them really) and it looks like we have to be apart for who knows how long. Wouldn't it be psychologically healthier for the toddler and the other kids to just let the relationship slide for a while instead of maintaining this bitter-sweet balcony relationship? We do video calls but the small ones get bored easily. I'm okay with being more distant if it's better for them but I honestly just don't know. The parents so far are on the side of let's maintain as much (distant) contact as we can - if anything, I am the most paranoid one when it comes to contact precautions - but I'd like to make up my own mind. If we cannot see each other for at least a year does it make sense to maintain the closeness and how much of it? We were almost like one household in several apartments before the pandemic hit. Now we can't, BECAUSE VIRUS. I wonder if anyone else is in a similar situation and what your approach is. How do you make it easier on the kids?

I stopped wearing contacts for a few months and now they make my eyes red and unhappy even if I only wear them for a few hours. What have I done wrong?

I've worn contacts every day for years and years, but I recently stopped bothering on account of being at home all the time anyway. The last two times I tried wearing them, everything felt fine until I took them out and then I had red, irritated eyes and some discharge the next morning. This last time I only left them in for a couple of hours to see if it helped but I've had the same problem. Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks!

A couple of weeks ago when I went to log into Yahoo, I got the following message right after typing in my user name: 'Sorry, we were unable to proceed with your request. Please try again.' Since then, no amount of trying has gotten me further. Can you help me retrieve my account?

No matter what I try, I get the above error message as soon as I type in my user name. If I click 'Forgotten user name' I get the following:

'Oh no..

Your session timed out for security purposes while you were away... let's try this again.'

Initially, I thought this happened because I was trying out the ProtonVPN while trying to log in, and had been jumping around countries to test the VPN. But I haven't done that in over 10 days now, so in theory I reckon I should be able to log in, right?

Haven't found anything useful strictly about this on the internet like you sometimes do for error messages and have been effectively shut out of my account, which still contains a lot of important info. This has been my account for 15 years.

Not sure what other info to provide and not sure what help exactly I am hoping for, since I don't understand what's going on, but if you have any advice, I'd be grateful.

I'm using Firefox, and have myBlock Origin and Privacy Badger installed.

PS. Not sure this is relevant, but at around the same time my country's OLX has changed it's UI and I'm getting error messages each time I try to use it, something that roughly translates to 'The IP address you are using seems to be associate with a low-security source of traffic.' Noting this in case the two are connected.

All other sites I've tried to so far are working OK.

Thanks a lot!

My city (a close-in Boston suburb) is offering COVID-19 tests (viral, not antibody) to all residents, regardless of symptoms. I have no symptoms and probably lower-than-average risk of exposure but I'm considering getting tested. In a perfect-except-for-coronavirus world, who would be getting tested, and how often?

Presumably if my city Board of Health is offering these tests, they want residents to be taking them - our infection rate is pretty high. That said, I am probably at low risk of exposure relative to the average resident of my city. We're two-person household with no one working outside the home; I go out to buy food about once a week and take my spouse to medical appointments about every other week. Our city has a substantial working-class and immigrant population who are living/working in more dangerous conditions. Some of our neighboring cities/towns have even much higher rates of infection but we live on the other side of town from those communities and don't do our shopping there.

If I call and I'm able to get an appointment right away I guess I won't worry about it but if there's a backlog I'm not sure whether *I* ought to be getting tested. Is this the kind of broad testing that needs to happen to get positive test rates down to a manageable level, or should I skip getting tested for now and leave my slot and swab available for my higher-risk neighbors who are living in more crowded households and/or working outside their homes? I have basically zero concern that I'm actually infected, though of course if I'm infected and asymptomatic that would be really important to know. My husband tested negative about a month ago and has had no COVID-19 symptoms and minimal opportunities for exposure since - would it make sense for him to be tested?

Personal considerations aside, I'm mostly curious about what an optimal testing strategy (in the absence of test shortages) looks like, and given that the availability and accessibility of tests has changed so much over the past couple of months it's hard to get a straight answer about this. Articles, tweet-threads, etc. are all welcome on this topic!

I recently finished Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations. It was the perfect book for right now, accommodating my fractured attention span, frequent insomnia, and deep grief and despair at the state of the world. Almost every chapter was less than 3 pages, and most involve nature intertwined with family memories. What other books are like this?

I try to keep a bedside book I can read before I fall asleep or when I'm dealing with insomnia. Not only do I really like the format of chapters that are less than a few pages long, it helps if the chapters don't have a lot of continuity so that if I read one at 3 AM and forget it the next day, I can pick up at the next chapter without having to go back and reread.

I love the voice of women nature writers like Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Rebecca Solnit (her earlier works) but most of their books seem to have chapters longer than what my brain can handle right now.

Recommendations don't have to be light - explorations into grief and pain are okay. I prefer something with more modern language (for example, while I love Moby Dick and am rereading it right now as my non-bedside book, the language is a little too antiquated and "extra" for what I need in a bedside book).

Other books I've found which scratch this itch are things like a compilation of thirty years of a naturalists column from a local newspaper.

I'm going to be moving from a 1 bedroom on Long Island to a studio in Manhattan sometime in June. This will necessarily involve a certain amount of downsizing of stuff and furniture. Normally I'd donate items. What are my options to get rid of stuff now?

Why am I moving in the middle of a pandemic? To start residency now that I've graduated medical school, of course.

I've been working with this Excel formula for a month or so. It comes from Leila Gharani's Youtube tutorial.

=IF(ROWS($A$1000:$A1000)<$J$291,INDEX($B$2:$B$300,AGGREGATE(15,3,($N$2:$N$300="Japanese")/($N$2:$N$300="Japanese")*ROW($N$2:$N$300)-ROW($N$1),ROWS($A$1000:$A1000)))," ")

In this iteration, it's indexing column B, which is a list of movie names, and returning a list of every Japanese language film. Film languages are listed in column N. The formula takes advantage of Aggregate's "Ignore error" option; since Excel treats yeses as 1's and nos as 0's, dividing the aggregate results by itself returns an error for all the nos, since you can't divide by zero. Pretty clever. Then the formula multiplies the 1 by the row where it's located, and finally returns the smallest number in the list to the index function (then the second smallest, then third smallest as you drag down the formula).

My question is, how do I add criteria so the film not only has to be in Japanese, but also has to have a RottenTomatoes score of >75%, if Column T is RottenTomatoes scores? I'm feel I should just multiply the Japanese criteria by the RT criteria in brackets and then divide that product by itself, but I keep getting errors when I try this. Maybe my syntax is screwy?

And yes, I know it would be a lot easier to do this using VBA, but I'm running the workbook on Sharepoint, which doesn't support VBA.

Thanks!

Twitter has announced it is shutting down its "Legacy Version" on June 1, 2020. I use the legacy version to get the functionality of Legacy Twitter that allows you to have a window open with a Twitter page up, and when a new Tweet happens, a "(1)" shows in the browser tab. How can I get that functionality? The solution needs to work in Chrome & Firefox, and whether I have a twitter account or not. I want to be able to open 3 or 4 or however many tabs with twitter accounts I'm waiting for an update from, and see a notification in the tab header that there's a new tweet.

My mom is 90 and the new Samsung we got for her is so newfangled even I can barely figure out its set up and functions -- especially related to SOUND as there is NO headphone jack, no Bluetooth -- only the new optic sound hookup for a wireless headphone arrangement -- which is constantly failing and needs resetting -- which she is clueless about.

Do there even exist nowadays televisions that are not so computer-modern high-maintenance 2001-Space-Odyssey delicate?

We're constantly having to go over to her house and f_ck with the set to get things functioning again as she can't hear without the headphones -- only for her to hit the wrong button on the remote while alone, and all is lost.

Thanks!

I am trying to find the paid death notices section in the NYT. I am a bit frazzled and can't find them with the newspaper's own search engine or with Google.

Not the regular obituaries written by journalists about famous people but the paid private death notices. I have read these all my life and now when I need them I can't locate them. When I search for "paid notices," "memorial," "paid memorial notices," or "paid obituaries" I just get other articles with those words in the text, or in one case, one paid death notice from 2006.
Can you please give me the search term to read the whole set of recent paid death notices in the NYT online editions? Or a link? If it matters I'm not in the New York area, though I don't think the online papers are localized like the hard copies of the Times.

Buying in the suburbs vs renting in the city? We are living in Vancouver right now, and we love a lot about it, but we could buy a place in the suburbs right now (which might not be true six months or a year from now). We are really torn, and I want some perspective on what moving to the suburbs is really like, and if owning is that much better than renting.

We've been renting a flat in East Vancouver for a year and love a lot of things about it. The proximity to work downtown, the neighbourhood feel, proximity to beaches and attractions, the kids' school (both elementary-aged), cherry blossoms, shopping, all the things people love about Vancouver.

We haven't been saving any money though, because our rent is outrageously high. We can buy a 2000 sq ft condo in Surrey for less than the rent of 1000 sq ft in East Van. We have a small down-payment saved up, but we're not adding to it anymore, so if we are going to buy now is the time. There are some very motivated sellers at the moment and prices have come down, which they NEVER do in the area.

But we are torn. Suburbs mean longer commute (and paying for transit instead of biking to work), longer travel time to all the fun things we love, changing the kids' school, further to the airport/ferry, the awfulness of moving, etc. We would gain some space, some privacy, some autonomy (paint walls! get a hamster!) and some equity.

Have you moved to the suburbs with kids? Was it worth it?

Additional details: I'm a stay-at-home-mom and my wife works right downtown in Vancouver. Both of our kids have ADHD and are ROWDY. Moving to another (cheaper) rental is out-of-the-question. Even though our current place isn't perfect, its good enough that if we continue to rent we just wanna stay here. If we bought, it would be into a strata, with all that entails. We have owned a house before but not in this province.

What used to be an annual May Day march for workers’ and immigration rights has taken on a different look this year due to coronavirus stay-at-home restrictions. This year, the march from Judkins Park to downtown Seattle has been canceled. Instead, march sponsors El Comité and the May 1st Action Coalition have scheduled a vehicle […]

The driver told police he accelerated toward the skateboarder, intending to “scare him.” But when the driver swerved away, the skateboarder jumped in the same direction.

Seattle police Friday released part of a recording of a mother’s frantic 911 call and footage from an officer’s body camera that includes a brief foot chase and the moment police shot the man suspected of taking the woman’s baby as he still held the child. The child was not hurt, police said, while the […]

Seattle police released portions of a frantic 911 call and a clip from an officer's body camera showing officers chasing and shooting the suspect at a Columbia City construction site. The 1-year-old infant the man had purportedly kidnapped at gunpoint was recovered unharmed from the scene.

Detectives do not believe the women involved are nurses, and posted photos of the suspects and a vehicle in hopes someone could identify them.

King County sheriff's detectives began investigating Bryan Neyers after two boys, ages 7 and 9, reported that the Maple Valley paraeducator had molested them at the child-care center set up to look after the children of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Neyers has since been charged with child rape and molestation involving a third child.

The high school senior was killed as he tried to flee from three plainclothes sheriff's detectives who sprang from the back of an unmarked van on a darkened Des Moines street the night of Jan. 27, 2017.

The victim, 16, suffered life-threatening injuries and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he remains.

Three Eastside Catholic players were under investigation for a parking-lot brawl as the team headed toward a second state championship. Prosecutors ultimately declined to pursue charges.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The parents of a black man slain in a pursuit by two white men armed with guns called for immediate arrests Wednesday as they faced the prospect of waiting a month or longer before a Georgia grand jury could consider bringing charges. A swelling outcry over the Feb. 23 shooting of […]

A 31-year-old Seattle man was arrested Tuesday after detectives discovered a body in his Renton hotel room, according to Renton police. Mercer Island detectives arrived at a Renton hotel in the 1800 block of East Valley Road around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday to follow up on a tip regarding a missing 61-year-old Mercer Island man, a […]

Seattle police say Leo Driver, 32, walked into the department's East Precinct and confessed to killing his girlfriend, Elisabeth Wright, in March 2015. Her death had originally been attributed to an accidental overdose.

The chase spanned three counties and ended when troopers rammed the man's car and forced it into a spin.

The shooting occurred near the 10700 block of 14th Avenue Southwest.

Another car had stopped at a crosswalk and, because the woman couldn't stop in time, police said they believe she swerved into an oncoming lane of traffic and hit the cyclist.

According to the police department, the officers who arrived at about 11 p.m. at the complex in the 1100 block of Sunset Boulevard Northeast were confronted by a man with a knife.

A woman called 911 and reported she'd been beaten and shot at by her boyfriend, who fled with their 1-year-old daughter. Seattle police officers chased the man on foot and a SWAT officer shot the man in the head. The man later died at Harborview Medical Center. He has been identified as 24-year-old Shaun Fuhr.

Along with a 2018 ruling by the court that the city had reached full compliance with a 2012 consent decree, the request would dissolve virtually all remaining oversight of the police department regarding its use of force and other issues.

Tacoma homicide detectives are investigating after a 51-year-old man was found fatally shot inside an apartment early Friday. Police were called to the 5100 block of South 58th Street for reports of a shooting. Police tried lifesaving measures, a Tacoma Police Department spokesperson said. The victim was taken to a hospital, where he died.  

The man, who was taken into custody on Wednesday night, is in "critical, but medically stable" condition at an Everett hospital.

Sitting at his home in Florida, new Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth can only wait, like everyone else, for a return to normalcy while monitoring pitchers that are spread out across the country.

The Mariners have 10 African-American players on the 40-man roster — the most in MLB.

Acta spoke candidly is issues in Dominican Republic and MLB players complaining about the proposed restart plan.

Gordon is active in a variety of charities and community work, including victims of domestic violence.

Instead of trading down to add more picks, the Seahawks selected linebacker Jordyn Brooks out of Texas Tech with the No. 27 overall pick. Wait, who? Allow us to explain.

It wasn't going to be easy for the Seahawks. The NFC West was already considered the toughest in the NFL in terms of balance and strength. And Thursday's NFL first round made winning a division title just a little more difficult for Seattle.

Taylor, who has drawn comparisons to Clark by several draft analysts and scouts could bring a level of explosiveness that the defensive ends on the roster simply don't possess.

With the 69th pick, Seattle selected guard Damien Lewis from the NCAA champion LSU Tigers. He becomes the 19th offensive lineman on the Seahawks' roster.

Here's a look at how Day 2 of the NFL draft shook out for the rest of the NFC West.

The San Francisco 49ers didn't have a draft pick on Day 2 of the NFL draft, but general manager John Lynch made up for it on Day 3 by acquiring Washington Pro Bowl tackle Trent Williams in a trade.