Busy!

drink:




eat:




dress:



dress:



dress:



sleep:



(okay, yes, that's Xander sleeping, but trust me - he's a helluva lot cuter than me sleeping! Plus I think it's adorable that he plants himself wherever I've been the most - so since I've been doing a lot of sewing lately, he's curled up by my sewing machine. And I know I promised not to post too many pictures of my cats, but COME ON! That's freaking adorable!)


Occasionally I even knit:


Okay, so I haven't photographed any of that lately. Hey, did I mention I've also been working full-time at my temp job? Yikes!

Working from Home

This is how my mornings usually go when I'm working from home. I get up at around 7 (okay, 7:30) and get some coffee and turn on my computer. I open Firefox and my mail, and I've already drunk the first cup of coffee, so I get another cup (and manage to drink this one slowly). I spend approximately two hours doing mostly useless stuff on the computer machine. Some of it isn't so useless, but it's mostly checking out recaps on TWOP, making snarky comments on other peoples' status messages on Facebook, and catching up on the latest inanity on HuffPost.

At some point, I realize that I am hungry, and I spend 20 minutes trying to find something to eat that doesn't require any actual preparation. By the time I realize that I need to actually prepare something, I give up and have a bowl of cereal. By this time, it's 10:30 and I'm awake enough to try to get some work done.

Four hours later, I'm still in my pajamas, I'm hungry again, I haven't brushed my teeth, and my feet hurt because I'm standing there barefoot. I'm also not being very productive, because I haven't put my contacts in, and it's amazing how inefficient you can be when you can't see what you're doing.

New plan: one cup of coffee, oatmeal, brush teeth wash face get dressed put in contacts and go to work! I'll let you know how it turns out.

I'm making a Hawaiian wedding dress for a friend of mine whose wedding is the 30th of this month. She's pregnant, so the plan is to make a dress that can be quickly and easily altered if necessary, and that gives room for the baby belly. She lives in Houston, so fittings are tricky. She flew in last week for a first fitting, and although I took photos for my reference, she really doesn't want pics of what she calls "The Casper Dress" (because the mock-up is in white muslin) being shared, and of course I respect that!

So here's a pictorial diary of the process, sans human body:

First off, padding my size 6 dress form to resemble an actual human woman (as opposed to an LA actor-size woman.)

First, I used an old tee as the base for the padding:



Then added a layer of batting over that:



And then tacked the batting to the tee using a really long whipstitch:



I then draped a fitted sloper in muslin and sewed it into shape:



And fitted it over the padding, safety pinning the back and adding a bra in the size of my client:



I padded it out to a standard size 12, so that I can use it again. Then I can customize the hips, bustline, and waist to the size of the person I'm draping for. For this one, I am also adding a "baby belly" section.

At some point I'll put a zipper in and finish the raw edges so the entire thing is encased, but right now I am working on the wedding dress!

Draping it was so much fun! I love being able to throw fabric on a form and be able to see right away what it looks like, as opposed to flat pattern drafting. The first fitting went pretty well, and now I'm adjusting the pattern and doing a second mock-up. The challenge here is that I won't see the bride again until three days before the wedding, so I'm putting seams in strategic places and building room into them. We've also done an elasticized back -- similar to a sundress -- both for her comfort and to allow for any changes her body may go through in the next few weeks.

This is such a challenge, and so much fun! I'll be posting followup pics as I get them done.

Spoiled again!

Gentle Readers,
It's been a long long while since I posted here, and for that I offer my sincere apologies. And now I have so much to blog about (the Final Four, the massive [to me] amounts of money I spent on yarn while in St Louis for the Final Four, the Final Four!, the wedding dress I'm making [GULP!], my latest adventures in knitting, the Whedon-stalking that I'm hoping to kick into high gear later this year, and of course my deep and abiding love for parentheses) that I don't even know where to begin!

But the incredible generosity of my spoiler in the Ravelry Warm-Ewe-Up Winter Swap cannot go another minute without being acknowledged!



Y'all, "WOW" does not even begin to cover it. Underneath all the goodies is a knitting needles roll-up bag from Katie Fleck Designs which happens to match the boxy bag and the zippered bag that I received in two previous packages. This is so great!!! A place to put my needles! And I love the pattern of the fabric. I take the boxy bag with me everywhere I go, it's absolutely perfect and I love it so much. I'm so excited to add the needle case to it.

This is the first best:

I love how she used little post-its to cover up the parts of her message that referred to the stuff I may not have opened yet! Isn't that great? Because of course I tore open the card immediately because I couldn't WAIT to find out who it was! And she of course knew that I would do that!

And the spoiler is: mobarger!

Ok, so last month when I got package #2, I got a little obsessed with trying to figure out who my spoiler was, and I narrowed it down to about 4 peeps in the group, but I kept going back to mobarger. She farms full-time in upstate NY and also works full- time and STILL manages to find time to knit. That's inspirational.

Also, there must be something in my genetic memory (both sets of grandparents grew up on farms) that makes me long for a farm. It's completely unrealistic given my career choice, but I still fantasize about living on a small farm. Oh, I know it's an obscene amount of work, that's why it's a FANTASY! But I was pretty darn excited - word of warning to Mo -- I'm coming to visit you someday! I think it was the pics of the roosters that did me in. That and having read BOTH The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the past year has made me really think about where food comes from, and why oh why we are so OK with the industrialized process from which so much of our "food" comes from in this country.

But that's a rant for another day.

Now for the close-ups!

Lovely Linen Yarn. My mind is spinning with the possibilities!



SCHAEFER!!! I've been lusting after this in various yarn stores for months. I must be psychic or something because every time I've decided, regretfully, not to purchase any. And LOOK! I'm being rewarded for my restraint:



TREATS!



Look at all those tiny little chocolate sheep! And my two favorite kinds of chocolate bars: cherry & almond in dark chocolate and ginger in dark chocolate. YUM YUM YUM! Yes, you can see I cracked right into one of those already.

In the back is a mug from the Ithaca Coffee Company (it has a rooster on it! How cool is that??!!) with BEANS from Ithaca Coffee Company - it smells HEAVENLY. This morning my roommate was about to pour me some coffee and I yelled "NOOOOOOO!" and ran into my studio where I had just photographed everything (yes, I actually photographed everything BEFORE COFFEE. Does that tell you how excited I am?) and had to get my new mug and wash it so I could use it.

yes, I am a five-year-old.

THREE - count 'em, THREE patterns - two for socks (hooray for socks!) one of which teaches the toe-up method on one circular -- which I've been dying to learn! She also sent me some gorgeous sock needles to replace the ones I broke. And some lovely lovely little bits: a tiny little ornament with a sheep on it, a sticker from Ithaca Coffee Company, and a vinyl sticker that says "knitgirl"



I feel like I'm in that lovely state of bliss that you get after a well-prepared meal and a few glasses of wine. This was my first yarn swap and I feel so very lucky to have gotten Mo. She got to know me SO WELL and obviously took the time to pick through my blog and my wishlist and find things I would really love and appreciate - and many things I needed as well. Her generosity leaves me speechless.

Ok, not speechless, because that would never happen.

Mo, thank you so much.

ETA: Did anyone else notice that the colors of the knitting organizers and the colors of the yarns I just got match the colors I've selected for my blog? Is Mo really that clever, or is that just a coincidence? Inquiring minds want to know!