Thursday, May 24, 2012

Hi from NYC!

Just a 3 hour stop for now before I head to upstate NY and Montreal. I'll swing by for a true whirlwind visit on the way back. I feel like I'm soaking up some hip history in Times Square!

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Hey did this thing upload a few days ago? Anyway if not it's been super fun to check a few things (Central Park, Chinatown, lots of food) off the bu key list. Two action packed days of walking everywhere and one morning left before it's off to Boston. Too short a trip for a big beautiful city!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Scalloped Heart Dress



It's been another two weeks of adventure in the realm of sewing for me.  Ages ago I had decided I would try to make a dress to wear to an upcoming wedding, and I'd found this great retro pattern that looked fairly simple.  I had made a mock up and a casual summer dress with the pattern (which...had problems with going wrong and wronger under another deadline), but I thought surely, the third time would work perfectly.  Ha!  Just goes to show nothing goes according to plan.

This is the dress I ended up with.  There's been a few late nights tearing out my hair and a ton of stitches regarding the skirt - the first draft of the dress ended up with an alarming amount of poof.  Like absolutely ridiculous amounts of poof.  With the clock ticking (I leave in 2 days and I had to leave time for actual packing and prepping to go) to a deadline of Sunday, I frantically thumbed through my patterns to find an alternative skirt.  So, in the end the dress looks not very much like my original pattern, but woohoo! - I have something to wear to the wedding.

These are the two patterns I based the dress off of.  It was a bit of  hack and slash to put those things together after the Poof Incident, though not to bad since the waistline is about the same area.  It wasn't as hard as I thought to tackle the pencil skirt, actually, though next time I'll know better about how to adjust the pattern to fit my hips better.  The hardest part I think was that the dress is now PRETTY SNUG right at the waist after I added in the zipper - it just took up a lot of the seam on the side.  Sadly I won't be able to gorge myself in the week leading up to the wedding, when I'm visiting New York - oh no!


I found a good scalloped edge tutorial which helped me out for the neckline.  This is the second attempt at a heart cutout for the back.  I totally forgot to attach a stiffer material to the back of the dress so it only really holds its shape if I'm not moving my arms around.  Seems like that heart cutouts are a pretty popular thing, judging from Etsy. :).


I'm very relieved it's finally done, so I took a dancing pic to celebrate.  The dance pose was inspired by the Chinese Dai ethnic group, which is very well known for their peacock dance.  The traditional costume includes a long narrow  sarong-style skirt, so the dance moves don't feature a lot of open flexibility in the hips.  My hands aren't so perfect but, eh. :)  Taken using the timer off my Canon 7D, lit with natural daylight and a ring flash.  Note to self to use a more powerful flash and/or ought to have used faster shutter speed to catch movement without blurring.

Next stop - mad amount of laundry, cleaning the house, and packing for the trip! :D










Thursday, May 10, 2012

Farmer McDoris

Greetings from the garden! It's that time of year when all those seeds and little sprouts that looked so unhopeful and small weeks ago are starting to come into their own. My previous garden posts were about the boxes I made for trees, but today's garden vegetable plot actually came into existence shortly before those boxes were made.

Last winter I saw a Frame-it-All kit at Home Depot on sale (about $100 on the off season) and I just had to get it.  It comes with plastic brackets and  composite timbers that allow you to build a modular garden.  I went for a 4' x 8' plot.  The particular kit is meant to do a 2-level plot but I wanted to just go ahead and make everything 12" tall, so I had to get 2 extra pieces of 2"x6" redwood cut to 4 foot lengths to make up for it.  The plastic brackets make this thing super easy to construct, you just need a drill to attach the pieces and it just stacks together!

After that I did lay a piece of landscaping fabric down although I don't know that it was necessary.  I threw in a couple inches of bark nuggets to help with the drainage (since this will sit forever on concrete,  I don't want it to be sopping wet 24/7, though I think having it be damp when I water it is OK), and then hauled bag after bag after bag into it.  THAT took a couple of weekends because I would only want to buy/haul a few at a time!  I mixed all kinds of brands of dirt, compost, and some pearlite, figuring the type of dirt will all average out in the end.

After that I put in some seeds and seedlings and now 3 months later I have a ton of lettuce, chard, radishes (wait. there IS a slight problem where I don't actually eat nearly enough leafy greens), my tomatoes are starting to fruit and I have some green bean plants and peppers getting more optimistic looking.  I would like to put in a drip watering system for this bed, but the size of the plot, mulch,  and the shade from the leaves means it doesn't dry out TOO fast.  I still have to water it daily on very hot days, but last year I had plants wilt from heat if I didn't get to give them some water twice a day.  This is doing all right and if it gets too hot I can set up a little open shade to cool it down.

Next step: make myself eat tons and tons of leafy greens!!