Anticipation

I see now that at this point I'm averaging a post a week. Where has my blogging spirit gone??? Y'all know I still love ya, though, so here are some pics and a song. I'll be back to my regular posting soon.

Collage of a skirt I made the other day

My guy friend's trumpet playing brother doing his thing a couple years ago at a local venue. It was him and his wife who we stayed with in Dallas this past September while fleeing a hurricane. (They're in town now, and we all had the most entertaining time yesterday.)



Morning by Amel Larrieux
Something I'm sure a lot of kids have been waiting for on this day :-)






Me having a discussion this past fall on a subject I can't readily recall with historian and medical doctor Fred Jones at a locally owned bookstore/hot spot for discussions on society, culture, history, politics, etc. I sometimes fill in at the shop for the owner (an associate of mine) and one of the employees. I've worked 5 days over there this past week and will be back Friday.




Apple crumble pie...something I'm gonna be making later. mmmmm...


(photo courtesy of http://amandalwh.wordpress.com/2007/12/page/2/)

...That's after I finish altering a skirt for someone who needs it to wear today!

Wishing everyone lots of love, joy, food, and fun with family on this day and everyday! :-D

Be well.

peace

Low Frequency

Man. Something about me and December don't seem to mix.

This is only the 3rd post this month. I'm not sure what the it is. Might have been the school stuff, but it must have been the snow. Oh, but I hadn't told y'all that we had snoooow! It happened the same day of my last post, and it was probably going on--unbeknown to me--as I sat here typing at 2 a.m. that morning. I thoroughly enjoyed it despite the fact that it only lasted through the afternoon. By late afternoon you'd have never known it snowed. Ah well. I take what I can get. Snow makes me happy. Ironically, cold weather doesn't. And neither does snow like folks on the east coast are getting or were getting. :-/ *Has flashbacks to treading through what must have been knee high snow to get to school during my kindergarten days in Detroit. Cold to the bone.*

But to get down to business, I've got some new dresses. Finally. Seems I'm headed back into my earth tones after months of colorfulness.

Very busy print that somehow ended up in my stash. It woulda been great for some pillow cases or some other home interior use, but y'all know clothing is my thing. The key here was using that contrasting strip you see at the hem and going down the middle of the top and skirt to break it up some. It took some splicing and piecing together of the fabric, but I think it turned out pretty neat.

(Check out the collage)

This was supposed to have cap sleeves but I forgot to put 'em in. :-/
This one's now in my etsy shop.



I really, really like this one. :-) Plus, it makes use the massive amount of lace in my stash. It's interesting. I don't recall ever purchasing lace, but I bet there's enough in there to make a wedding gown or something.

I've got plenty more ideas floating around up top. Just gotta find the right materials so they can be expressed.

Have a luminoius day!
peace

From the Abyss

*shoos crickets out the room*

Y'all there??



Yeah..so um, I've been a bit out of commission blog wise for the past...what? 10 days?? Not typical, but considering the circumstances, I'm sure y'all can understand.

The primary cause for my absenteeism is the fact that I've been in labor. Yes, people, I am in the process of giving birth. Not to a baby, sillies, but to a product of literary sorts. As many of you may know (and for those of you who don't you can find out by reading this post
...or just stay tuned for what follows this parenthetical statement), I am pursuing a second bachelor's degree in English on a part-time basis (but am leaning more and more towards abandoning said degree and entering grad school next year). Well, this here is what we call finals week. Now, I'm not your typical "Oh my goodness!! It's finals week!! Cram cram cram!" type. No. I'm much too laid-back for that. However I am the "Wait til about five days before a lengthy paper is due, and get started on it" type. Always have been. Probably always will be. That's just how it is. And might I add that I've always done very well on college papers and have been the beneficiary of having such comments as "Wow," "Um..Why are you not in graduate school??," and "Out of all of my classes, this is the best paper" written at the top of my productions. **Horn tooting stops here** :-)

The consequence of this is me cooped up in the house on the bed, floor, or couch for hours on end, looking like a mad woman, eating peanut butter out of a jar, surrounded by books and articles and doodled on papers while determining the best way to arrange what it is I need to say. It consumes me, and I can hardly do anything else til the the final product has been printed out and put to the side ready to turn in to the professor. Well, it's two o'clock a.m. Thursday morning, I'm wide awake, and I've almost reached that point. A bit contradictory, I know, since I just said I can't do anything else til it's complete. But the end is in sight, and I feel as though I can ease up a bit and reconnect with by blog fam. And actually, why it is that I'm still up is uncertain to me. Even with the last minute writing of the paper, things have been progressing smoothly, and I've been getting to bed before 9 on most nights. The class isn't til 6 p.m., so there's plenty of time to add the finishing touches.

Aside from my perpetual date with pen and paper, this last week and a half has consisted of me finishing up that pant suit mentioned in the last post. Considering that the process of matching plaid lines and squares in that freakin' jacket almost drove me up the wall, and that I made the pants from scratch, it all turned out absolutely wonderfully! The client was ecstatic and I was pretty thrilled myself. **You may notice that I am not a pants maker (yet), so to turn out some as well-fitting as the ones I did was a pretty big deal for me. O.k. The horn tooting is over for real now.** I didn't get any pictures (which always seems to be the case when I do custom work for local folks), but I'll be seeing them again soon and will take some pictures then.

Additionally, I went on another short and sweet trip last weekend. Let's just say I didn't get nearly enough and want/need more.

I haven't created a whole lot lately besides concepts and a big ol' mess on the floor and in my bed (books, papers and such), but here's a collage of some of my work:

And a song just cause. ;-)






N'Dambi, "Soul From the Abyss"

Have a beautiful day!
peace

Back to the Middle

*Blog title inspiration*


I recently spent three relaxing and stress free days in a small community called Mt. Calm in north Louisiana at an unoccupied, fully functioning and furnished house owned and upkept by my dad. Just me. No computer and only 3 channels on the t.v. When I was younger, visiting my paternal family in this rural, secluded place frightened me. It was so quiet and dark and shadowy (at night) and wooded and just...out in the middle of nowhere. Now it's this type of environment that I crave when I need a break from all the realities of "grown up life." *Cues Martin Luther's "Growing Pains"*

And this time it was good. Really good. Doing absolutely nothing. Although I did visit my grandparents (a short stroll across the street) and had much needed conversation with my grandmother about life and family. In true grandmother fashion, she accosted me on several occasions with home cooked meals, non of which consisted of foods that I actually eat. She didn't know, so it wasn't her fault. She still doesn't know. Rather than admitting that I no longer eat most of the foods I grew up on and being subjected to that look and lecture that never fails to follow whenever the issue of my diet comes up around family, I just politely rejected any of the meals and got by on fruit and walnuts for 3 days. Nevermind the bit of my mom's peach cobbler that I tore into on Saturday night. My fatigued state on Sunday was the consequence of all the sugar and crust made with lard. :-/

Oh! Of course I can't forget to mention the bag of fabric, zippers, and other sewing supplies my grandmother handed over to me from somewhere deep in one of the bedroom closets. She used to sew and had forgotten about all this goodness that was left over from those days. You know I'm ecstatic anytime free fabric and notions enter into the picture. :-D

So today I'm back on the grind. Right now I'm in the process of making a pant suit for somebody to wear to a church revival this Saturday. The person came to me on short notice asking if I could have it done by December 6th, and unfortunately for me I said "yeah." And it's really only unfortunate because I didn't go to the store with her when she went to pick out a pattern for the jacket. As a result of not really having a sense of required time and effort, she chose one of the most involved patterns they had. See, when people don't sew or have an understanding of how garments are put together, they're likely to do this type of thing. It looks pretty, and they want it. Forget that they want in in less than 7 days and that there are a million pieces involved and all sorts of intricacies that have to be taken care of and that I've got all sorts of other things to do. I'm the one who agreed to do it, so how can I complain? Given my tendency towards simplicity, this is a bit more involved than I'd normally get, but it's good to have these sorts of projects from time to time. It's a reminder that I actually could produce more detailed pieces if it came down to it. So I'm giving myself until Thursday morning to get this done. We'll see what happens. One thing's for sure, though. Somewhere between make this outfit and working on other sewing projects and writing a 12 page paper for a folklore class and studying for a grammar exam, I've gotta catch up on my blog reading...the most important thing of all! :-)


peace