Wordless Wednesday

October 31st, 1976 (approximately)

Not in the picture -- Little Stuff finding this photograph in an album in September.




October 21st, 2008

Not in the photo -- Grandpa with wires in the barn, bending and fastening.
Also not in the photo, Grama with old white sheets, paintbrush, glue, needle and thread, etc.

Phew! (Almost Wordless Wednesday)

The princess costumes are finished. These are the latest three. I took the prototype to Little Stuff's house and tried it for size. Her Royal Highness requested bows on the skirts. Voila!

Musing about Nothing Much

Dress #3

and 4.

The idea is that Little Stuff is getting all of these in a 'Dressing Up' box, since she is fixated on princesses just now. Her friends will wear them for the party and then the dresses will go back into the box. I hope this works, as I do not want her birthday party guests to be disappointed. They are getting their crowns to take home, plus loot bags, plus sceptres if the ED and I can find enough the same.

The 'Dressing Up' box is my idea -- my daughters had one and they loved it. I made dresses and other costumes, plus junk jewellery, scarves, hats, artificial flowers and whatever else they liked to put in. They and their friends had a wonderful time with it. I was talking with the YD about this on Sunday and she says she remembers it well, plus my making costumes for school plays and shows and Hallowe'en.

The dresses are not as fancy as they look because all the fabric except for two pieces came from the remnant room at a wonderful fabric store in the city and cost about $2.00 (Canadian) per metre. The trimmings are mostly wired floral arrangement ribbon. I figure the average cost per skirt and vest combo is around $9.00, adding in elastic and velcro. And it is very easy to do, especially since I am making the vests reversible and thus avoiding bias trim. I may spring for some custom frogging closures, if I run out of energy to make the bow fasteners.

The Painted Maypole organized a send up of personality tests as this week's Monday Mission. Hers is really, really funny. You can see it here. Her post got me thinking about personality and personality tests. There is one you can add to Facebook. I have done mine and each time I did it, it came out as something different. I am either an INFJ, (Sage) or an INTP (Theorist). I am both amused and bemused by this; some of the explications seem apt and others are just not anywhere near.

And so, who am I? In fact, if I think about it seriously, I really am not sure who I am. I am one person at home with the husband. I am quite another person when I am running a Board meeting. (Catch me telling JG that he's out of order -- not one snowball's chance in hell!) I am not the person I want to be -- who is, after all? I am not the person I was 25 or 50 years ago (and thank goodness for that!). I guess I should be happy that, whoever I am, people seem to like me and work with me. And I should get on with cutting out dress #5.

I have a flight of male goldfinches at the nyger feeder, glowing in the late afternoon sun. I have a wild turkey stomping around in the dead leaves in the little bush below the screen porch. The Canada Plum and the trillia (ums?) are blooming and there are two red ones in the patch beside the kitchen window. My bearded iris got planted this morning. The lilac are budded out. How I love spring, blackflies and all.

I should put in a post label called 'babbling on'.

A Window

Did I mention, the last (long ago) time I posted, that I am making seven princess costumes for Little Stuff's birthday party? Here are the first two. Three broken needles, innumerable rethreadings, too many replacements of a loose footplate and recurrent tension problems all make me think it is Time For a New Sewing Machine!!! I even have a clipping of what I want which has been sitting on my desk for a year. I need, as my daughter's friends used to say, to get a life.

Oh, yes, one of the skirt elastics unthreaded just as I thought I was done. Grrr. And when I tried to iron the gold overlay on the pink outfit, it fused to the iron. Luckily it scrubbed off easily, as I like my iron and do not want to buy a new one of those.

Five more to go.

And then I may get back to regular posting. Or not, if I also have to replace this computer. It is slower than molasses etc.

What else have I been doing besides sewing? Line dancing, for one thing. Love it! I got an MP3 player for my birthday, and am now trying to learn how to download the music I need for the dancing. Anyone know who is the perp of Liar's Waltz? Can't find anything other than a group of that name. And they don't play waltzes. We are to the level of learning 'four wall' dances now in the class I am taking. A four wall dance is one in which the whole line of dancers turns a quarter turn four times, ending up, one hopes, back facing the original direction. Sometimes I even do.

This month is sheer misery for meetings -- and some of them are up to two hours' drive away. Sigh. I went to one yesterday, we settled a tender, we thought, and when I got home there was an email waiting saying that the decision we had come to was not in accord with the CHC's policy on tenders and we would have to meet again. Grr #2.

However, the first hummingbird arrived today, all the trillia are in bloom and it is cool enough that the blackflies are not totally obnoxious. I need to transplant my iris, pdq. In between costumes three and four, perhaps.

I volunteered for this costume thing. I love to make costumes. But it sure is eating into my blogging and reading time.

And JG wants shishkabobs for supper. Is he threading little pieces of stuff onto skewers? Hah! So I am signing off, and you know where I am going. Grr #3.

I know I go on and on about Spring – obsessing over the first crocus and the last snow pile. For those of you who live in more blessed climes, it must be more than slightly boring. But I can't help myself. Sorry about that. I guess I'm a Spring junkie. Today it is raining and that makes the tree trunks darker, providing a wonderful contrast with the tiny pale and rust red baby leaves, with the birch catkins, with the green and white lichen prominent on the wet branches. Every tiny leaf has its own bead of moisture; each little miracle of a grass blade is bent under its load of raindrops.

My violets are in bloom, making a deep purple and green leafed carpet along the edge of the lawn. My daffodils are dancing in the wet wind and the paper whites are almost ready to go pop. I can see the flower buds on the lilac. I can also see the white inner wood where the mice ate off the bark this winter. Let us not go there. The iris shoots are up and the day lily leaves have grown a foot this last week. Pretty soon the trillium stalks will be visible. And the star flowers and the trout lilies will bloom. I'm drunk on joys to come.

One joy that has already come is the neighbourhood bear who outsmarted me this year and caught me with my birdfeeder up. I'm told the bears came out of hibernation late, hungry and mean because of the deep snow and certainly the bear that wanted the sunflower seeds was not in a good mood to judge by the number of tiny pieces he or she made of the birdfeeder. The garbage and feed bins are all now locked into the metal walled storage shed and I am waiting a few days for Ms Bruin to move on before putting the (metal) contingency feeder out.

The year we realized we had to bear proof was shortly after we moved out here full time when we woke one morning to find a half grown bear walking our metal garbage pail along the way circus animals push cylinders. The YD was staying with us and when she yelled at the bear it stopped playing with the garbage pail and walked toward her. She was not amused. We also can't keep compost bins intact, leading me to compost in a pit behind the garage where nothing can get broken. The raccoons love this too. They also love the barbeque and I get little greasy paw prints on the back porch railing and kitchen window. Nature, saturated fat on tooth and claw.

I have to make a run to the city later this week to buy fabric suitable for princess costumes. Little Stuff will soon be turning five and wants a Princess themed birthday party; Grama opened her big mouth and volunteered to make princess skirts and tops (with Bows, Grama) for the partygoers. As for how many costumes, the rule is as many guests as years for the birthday child, but somehow the number seems to have grown. The ED, when we were discussing this, asked me to make sure not to agree to make costumes for her and Little Stuff's father. They do not want to dress up as princesses. I guess when Little Stuff and her mother were discussing the party, she told her mother that she and Grama had planned the costumes and it was all taken care of. End of subject.

The ED sounded somewhat bemused and a bit worried. It can't be harder than making sparkly tops for her whole highschool gym team, I told her. (That was crazy. I bought a little less fabric than I needed for those and ended up having to piece each and every one.) I'm actually looking forward to the princess job – I love to make dress up costumes as you can whack them together and not worry about perfect sewing. I love Velcro; it sure as dickens beats button holes or sewing on annoying little snap fasteners. And my machine has the fast hem setting.

The poor old machine is at least thirty five years old, though, and it is wearing out. I will soon have to shop for another one. This is a bit daunting, as the new machines all seem to have onboard computers and a huge number of settings I figure I will never use. Oh well, it will be fun to go and look. And maybe I can learn machine embroidery. Once I learn how to load the MP3 player I got for my birthday. Mutter, grumble. I am being dragged, whining, into the 21st century, competent or not. I am also going to need a new computer soon. Which will require learning a new operating system. And hooking all my printers, scanners etc. up to it requires finding all the patches for Vista. Plus reinstalling all the software, and getting upgrades for that.

Even thinking about it makes it necessary for me to go and have either a cookie or a nap. Or maybe both.