Dude. It wasn’t even Wednesday when I posted this. It’s been a week, for sure.
I dabble a teeny bit in watercolors, and when I was trying to decide how to decorate this month’s calendar layout I thought a watercolor rainbow would be perfect. Of course, I couldn’t let March go without some shamrocks, too!
Here
I am! I had a bit of a crazy (but good!) week and then was sick all weekend. Bleh. But I’m back now, and I made a thing! [Aw, MAN! Apparently I didn’t upload the files I thought I did. Pictures coming tomorrow.]
A while back I saw this thing on Pinterest (because of course I did), and I’ve been meaning to grab some 
fabric to make one ever since. So when I was buying the fabric for Becky’s amazing Ponce de Leon costume (more about that in a later post), I grabbed some jersey to make a couple.
They took all of five minutes to make (I made mine with no seams, so no sewing!), and they’re super comfy and versatile. Instructions here if you want to make your own — be sure to check out the link to all of the styling options.
I’ve been consuming a lot of Mad Men lately. You know, to remind myself of the good old days, when America was great. It is disturbingly accurate. But the clothes are to die for. So as angry and heartsick as I get watching the show and understanding that there is much of America who still wants women and POC to “know their place” and gays to hide in the shadows, I try to let myself enjoy the bits that are not about that. At last year’s JDB Xmas party, one of my clothing swap prizes was a fabulous mod dress. I’ve been dying to wear it, and with the heat wave we’re having (70 in February? Tell me again how climate change is a myth.) I decided to go all 60s housewife. I felt adorable (but still pretty uppity) all damn day.
Okay
. Still have technical issues with phone posts, which is why no posts since Friday, as I was in Boston doing awesome things with the Docstar and then spent two days designing and sewing a Ponce de Leon costume. Like you do.
SO. Details on those things coming up. I’m going to play with my schedule to make sure I have time to actually blog from the computer, which will result in much more interesting blogs. And hopefully I will find a solution to the phone thing soon, because this is supah annoying. 🙁
You know how sometimes you go to the fabric store for one thing (okay, so like ten things, but not all of them were for me, I swear) and while you’re there you find the perfect fabric for a project you didn’t even know you wanted to make? So that happened the other day and now I have a new sweatshirt wrap skirt.
I’d originally planned to fold over the top and run some elastic through, but it turns out a yard is exactly the right width to wrap around me with plenty of overlap, and also i have a pretty enormous collection of buttons, so I thought it would be fast and fun to just graphics a couple of pretty buttons and make a couple of buttonholes and Bob’s you’re uncle.
I picked out a pretty purple velvet button for the “visible” button (which no one will ever see because it’s not a really fitted skirt and also I kind of fucked up the waistband because I’m a lazy sewer and I knew no one would ever see it anyhow) and a flat mother of pearl button for the inside. Then I sat down at the machine and put the right foot on and adjusted all the settings and…nothing. I mean, not “nothing”, but no buttonhole, just a knot.
Consulted manual, made minor adjustments, still nothing but knots. Thankfully, I was testing on scrap fabric so my skirt was still intact. Now, of course I’d already decided to wear this skirt — this one, not some other skirt — tomorrow, and I’m leaving for Boston first thing, so I needed to get it done.
So I bit the bullet and handsewed the damn buttonholes. I hate hand sewing. Hate it. But I have to say, doing buttonholes wasn’t nearly as bad as, say, hemming pants. And they’re not the prettiest thing I ever sewed, but I think they came out okay.
I’ve always been a sucker for Girl Scout cookies, so it both pleases and dismays me that Becky sells them. We buy a lot, and then I do a mostly decent job of not sitting down and eating entire boxes at one sitting. Since I’ve got an in-house dealer, I don’t usually buy them off the street.
BUT I discovered that one of my derbymates’ daughters was selling cookies from the other bakery this year, so I grabbed a bunch of boxes of cookies we don’t usually get (plus a box each of Thin Mints and Caramel D’lites [aka, Samoas] for comparison purposes when ours come in). Zack and I sat down for a taste test and OMG…they’re SO GOOD!
We started with the S’mores, which are a graham base with marshmallow frosting dipped in chocolate (our bakery has S’mores, too, but they’re a sandwich cookie — completely
different). Zack declared these his favorites. Then we moved on to the Thank Yous, which are much bigger than I expected. Each cookie has “thank you” printed on it in one of several different languages. The cookies themselves are a substantial brown sugary delight, with a coating of chocolate on the bottom. Nom. These were my faves.
Next up were the shortbreads. In retrospect we should have started with these, as they have such a delicate flavor I could hardly taste them after the rich S’mores and Thank Yous. Reserving judgement on these. Finally, the Lemonades. These were delish — similar to the Thank Yous, but more delicate. And also, you know, lemony. Much better than the Savannah Smiles we get, IMO.
It seemed a little ridiculous to buy all those cookies when I’ve got my own personal Girl Scout, but it was totally worth it.
Back in the dawn of the World Wide Web, I was a web designer. I haven’t been a professional web designer for a good long while now, but I still have cause to pull out the ol’ HTML toolbox every now and again. Like tonight, when I finally got around to setting up a redirect so that you (and I!) don’t have to type in the /blog part of the address anymore to get here. Woohoo!
(No picture tonight because I don’t have my phone handy and I’m tired and I considered just posting a screenshot of HTML but that’s like the still version of the typing montage from a hacking movie so no.)
I have had a very, very good birthday, thanks in no small part to my wonderful husband. This is what 44 looks like:
I’m still having image transfer problems and I have a hell of a headache so I’m not even trying to fix it tonight.