Philosophical Nonsense

Somehow, I managed to make it onto the Dean's List for 2 quarters in a row!

5 more to go...

Also, I've had a hankering to try just a weensie bit harder to not look like Exhausta McHaglike.  So I picked up some lip gloss.  I dunno...we'll see. Lord knows since I single-handedly keep Chapstick in business it's just as easy to smear on some lip gloss instead.  Maybe eventually I'll get to the point of wearing makeup again on a regular basis.  I know, I know, it only takes a few minutes, etc., etc.,  I'll look a lot better with makeup on, more self-confidence blah blah blah.  As a fat chick, I feel more secure feeling invisible.  But wanting to feel invisible and yet wishing I wasn't makes for a heavy makeup addiction, even if I never wear the stuff.  One might argue that the makeup addiction is worse for never wearing the stuff.  So like I said, it's easiest to start off with lip gloss and see if I can get the hang of that.

Can you tell I've forgotten to take my crazy pills on a regular basis this week?

Which reminds me...brb, dosing myself.

It's probably bad form to reward myself for taking my antidepressant by scooping myself a large bowl of ice cream, but I haven't had dinner yet and dairy is one of the four food groups or whatever stupid chart the USDA is using these days.  So screw it.

I know part of the problem is what time of year it is:  Pennsic season.  As usual, I won't be going this year, nor will I be able to go next year (since I'll still be in year-round school).  Pennsic 2014 (er, I think that's, what, Pennsic 44? 45?) will be the earliest I will be able to go, which makes me all sorts of sad.  It's hard to explain WHY it makes me so sad, except maybe for this post I made back in the day.  It's just...promises, you know?  And the prospect of meeting some of you on my f-list (assuming I could work up the courage to stop by and say hello -- being just an okay costumer means that some of you all are like rock stars to me...like expect me to get a little starry-eyed and maybe even choke up a little bit if I ever meet you) even if it is intimidating! 

Yes, yes, I know Pennsic will still  be there, but adopting from foster care means there are enormous levels of governmental interference in our lives for an unknown and unpredictable length of time, and I'd like to go to Pennsic before having to negotiate crossing state lines with a foster child, and all the headaches that come with dealing with a bureaucracy.  I'll be 36 in 2014.  And considering my late 30s is (IMO) getting Too Old for first-time motherhood (especially if we are blessed with smaller children), that means we are very limited to how many more years we can put off Pennsic without also hanging up our chances to become parents.

Even if the photography is total crap.





Life must be terribly difficult as part of the Powell household:


ETA:

I found my house.  Now I just have to get through school to be able to afford it.

In a fit of antsiness, last night I busted out my embroidery materials for the first time in a couple of years and have started blackworking a shirt collar.  Well, I'm using Aida cloth and kelly green cotton floss, so it's not accurate at all, but it was in my stash, I didn't have any other use for it, and frankly anyone who wants to snark me for it can go hang. 

 In other news, I found out why I haven't seen any mice all winter...I found Princess's stockpile of mummified mousie corpses behind the couch. Eight of them.  *shudder*

Not bad for 6 hours' work.  However, I remember why I HATE crushed panne "velvet":  it stretches every which way and warps all over the place.  UGH.  Why did I pick this fabric, again?  Oh yeah, Boe has a wizard hat in purple velvet and if we can't dress in a coordinating pair, we can at least wear the same color.

That, and it was the nicest-looking cheap velvet-y fabric I could find.

Bitz called; my stepsister is having a costume party at her place on the 29th.  Woo!  I was getting worried that we wouldn't be doing much celebrating for Halloween this year and just sticking to handing out candy.  Good to know that we're going to par-tay (at least a little bit) and get our dress-up on!

So.  Naturally, this requires a costume.  And will my medievaloid stuff do?  Of course not!

So I am making a Regency frock (I'm thinking drop-front) with elbow-length sleeves, and if I have time, I'd like to knock out a spencer as well, since it's late October in Indiana and has been raining for a solid week with temps no higher than about 55 degrees.  I already have the underpinnings made, so literally one day's solid worth of work should be enough to get this outfit knocked out.  Bwahahahahaha!

Boe is going to wear his 16th century Irish stuff.  He's easy to dress.  :-)

I have achieved a kirtle.

I'll be darned.



The side-lacing bodice closes completely at the bust but has about 4 total inches of room to close at the waist.  *sigh* This is what happens when one's bust is NOT proportionate to one's weight in general.  (Let me put it this way:  My weight is close to 250, and my bra size is a 44 B.  Yes, B.   I gained over 100 pounds as a result of medication and my cup size did not shift at all.  Quite disappointing, really.)   Anyway, the boning I was concerned about at the bodice's center front is necessary, it turns out -- it provides a nice line and keeps the bust from drooping into a wrinkled mess (the linen stretched a good deal more than I had expected so the pieces turned out to be a bit too big...if it stretches any further, I'll have to take a dart in from the side of the armsceye where my arms and/or overgown cover the seams).  So it all worked out.

The skirt is still obviously splotchy, but hey, it's a kirtle and the overwhelming majority of it will be covered by the overgown, so whatevs.

Now onto the overgown.  I need to dig through my stash to see what's available, although I already found a rather nice rust-colored linen that might work.  If I can find a smaller piece of linen in a color that isn't totally hideous with the rust and the slate blue, that'll be what I use to line the skirt.

Because I just stabbed myself in the hand with a needle and bled on a rolled pleat.

I've cut out a generic side-lacing 16th century kirtle.  The fabric I'm using is a linen herringbone with a very subtle silver stripe...It was once very light blue with a very bright silver stripe, but then I attempted to dye the linen a darker blue.  It's now a steel-blue/grayish blue color (Number 930 is the closest on my monitor) and the dye really toned down the silver thread to where it can hardly be seen.  When I dyed it, there were also a couple of weak spots in the linen, which meant I had a couple of fist-sized holes to pattern around.  This is one of the reasons I chose this particular fabric; the other reason is because the dye did not take evenly, so it's pretty splotchy.  I've tried to cut it so that the most even color is on the bodice pieces and the super-splotchy areas are in the skirt.

Here's hoping.

I've been working, as you can probably guess from my recent posts.  Sadly, this does not live me in a position to be able to do stuff for myself as far as Adria or really any reenactment goes.  Part of it is time, part is the heat in the doggoned house, and a lot of it is having Random Gamer Guy in my house.  How can I be completely myself when there is someone in my home with whom I do not feel comfortable? 

Let me tell you what sewing means in my home.  Generally, I get a wild hair at random, cut out whatever my new project will be, then spend about 12 hours at the sewing machine with my mp3 player plugged into my ears and singing at the top of my lungs.  There may or may not be a certain amount of undress, depending on what I'm working on and how many times I feel the need to measure progress or check fitting issues.  I might take crappy phone pictures to upload to Photobucket, might twirl around and act like a silly little kid playing dress up, but mostly it is just me, headphones in, sitting at the sewing machine, singing my lungs out and cranking out whatever my little heart tells me I need to make. 

The catch is that I am extremely self-conscious about it.  I generally don't even start a project when Boe is in the house -- it's okay if he's home once I'm actually working on whatever the project is, but all the anxieties and insecurities come out to play at the very beginning and it's better if I wrestle with those particular demons on my own.  Once I'm started, I can generally tune the rest of the world out, and it should tell you something that as a smoker, I can forget about nicotine cravings for those 12 hours (unless something is going Horribly, Horribly Wrong).  Naturally, I also forget to eat anything either, but Boe usually cuts me off at about 12 hours at the machine in order to make sure I eat something. 

But with a relative stranger in my home, in my safe place to be completely and utterly myself?   Well, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

My next completely off day is Thursday, the 17th. In looking at my calendar, the last time I was off of both work and school was Sunday, February 6. Life, as they say, is a box of chocolates...but in my case I seem to have acquired the mixed-nuts variety.

Let me see. Since I last posted, I have had about $8000 slip through my fingers, what with getting Boe a car, insurance, catching up on the utilities and mortgage, sending some money to my mom for safekeeping, paying for CNA classes, and getting new (much-needed!) glasses.

My sole splurge has been purchasing this and this.  They should be the last patterns I'll ever need to buy for SCA/Adria stuff.  So it was a worthwhile investment rather than a momentary pleasure.  I've been reading the instructions and the documentation and dreaming in my few off-hours, and I am really kind of hoping that this is my niche.

Boe's teacher's license will be in within a week.  My sister's giving me leads to jobs for Boe in Tampa Florida, where she lives.  My sister is lonely down there, she can be very shy and the only family down there are her in-laws.  So it would be pretty cool indeed if we wound up moving to Florida. 

Boe did not get the job in Vermont, or so we're assuming since we never heard back from that school.

Time for math class, gotta go.