Things that tick me off Thursday

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good rant, but this one has been a long time coming.

Why are there no cute styles for stick straight hair?! Look for yourself. Every single hair style for someone with straight hair (especially in a medium length like mine) is down and layered. And probably curled. My hair doesn’t hold a curl worth a damn. And if it’s layered and you try to braid it, the results are less “messy cute” and more porcupine.

I don’t want to look like a porcupine. I also don’t want to spend an hour curling my hair just for it to be straight again before noon. Or am I the only person out there with slick, straight hair? Because ponytails are getting old, and my hair looks like hell if I grow it out long enough to make a decent bun. It gets thinner–and stringier–the longer it gets. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s the truth.

And in the winter (or just a dry climate) my hair looks like this:

Image courtesy of duckduckgo.com

I hate staticky hair, but at least if it’s in a ponytail it’s not sticking to my face…

So. Anyone else sympathize with me on this? Have hair suggestions (the quicker and easier, the better)? I’m open, because internet searches and pinterest don’t seem to have anything for me.

Saber Toothed Swap Goodies!

I’m probably a bit late on this, but if you were participating in Jungle January this year, Ms. Grievances added a SWAP option to the fun. My SWAP partner was Sarah from MusingsOfASeamstress, and she got me some fantastic stuff!

There’s a lovely ocelot print cotton(? It feels sort of like a crisp rayon challis), some delicious smelling lotion, and some cute socks (which I’ve already worn, ha!). Thanks Sarah!

Now to finish up with my blouse testing to cut into my new fabric…. 😉

Ugh! Why do I torture myself so?

Today I did a kettlebell workout for the first time in…well, let’s just not go there, shall we? Anyway, as I was doing it, I realized that I was gonna have to do some shopping. My several-year-old worn-through-a-pregnancy sports bra just wasn’t up to the job. My muscles weren’t the only things a bit sore after that. 😮

Believe it or not, that wasn’t the torture–the torture was the visit to Old Navy afterwards. The options around here for sports bras is kind of limited, and so is my budget, so I thought I’d check them out and maybe pick up a couple of nicer-than-I-have-now t-shirts while I was at it. <–Stupidest. Idea. Ever. Ok, well, maybe not quite as stupid as this:

Image found via Google

But still, it was pretty close. Partly because I *never* find anything there that I like, but mostly because the quality is exceptionally bad. Seriously, I tried on a sweater thingy and I could literally see my bra through it!! Yes, yes, light colored stripes, dark colored bra, yadda yadda, but still–it’s a freaking sweater. And don’t even get me started on the weirdly square shoulder points that were on everything I tried (and no it wasn’t from hangers–they were all folded). How do people wear that stuff and think it’s acceptable? If you’re looking for 1980’s power-suit-turned-sweater-like-shirt (and it didn’t even have shoulder pads–it simply defied gravity!) Old Navy’s gotcha covered. I will say that I was *thisclose* to buying a K-State tee from there because it was cute, but when I tried it on I realized that I’d constantly be pulling on it–I can’t put my finger on it, but something was off enough to have it twisting up and over my chest in the 30 seconds I was wearing it. Plus it was $22…I’m not going to pay extra for the privilege of pulling my shirt down all the time.

Someday I’m going to have to learn…I just am too picky to buy clothes anymore. Or at least not clothes that are in my current budget. So I guess I’m either going to have to “cheat” at a different store, or my sewing productivity is going to have to undergo a massive increase.

And in case you were wondering, I never did end up buying a sports bra….

Where oh where did my little tub go?

It seems that we’ve lost a few really random things in our move. So far we’ve been unable to locate:

• An entire cosmetic bag–I had a decent amount of makeup and now it’s lost in the ether.
• My hairdryer and curling irons. As you can probably guess, whether I like it or not, I officially don’t have a beauty routine…
• The container that stows away all of my plastic grocery bags that we use to line the diaper pail. This sucks, probably worse than the first two things. Those buggers are kind of expensive.
• My “sewing essentials” tub. This had my marking devices, seam rippers, buttonhole/eyelet chisels, fray check, one of those expensive Gingher seam razor blade things, and a few other bits ‘n bobs that are kind of crucial to sewing. Not only that, but they’re going to be kind of expensive to replace. 😥

I know that there’s always stuff lost in a move, but we’ve never lost this kind (or this much!) of stuff before.

In other news, the sewing room is nearly unpacked, organized, and ready to go. I’ve got a mess with the patterns, but we bought a “new” (ok, I’m pretty sure it’s older than I am) filing cabinet with like 5 drawers for the business, and I’m claiming the bottom drawer for the house stuff that’s currently residing in the lower drawer of my sewing room filing cabinet. So then I’ll have a second drawer in my little two drawer sewing room cabinet for the rest of my patterns. Yay! 🙂 If I fill that one up, there’s going to have to be a purge, because I want organization this time around.

Speaking of organization, does anyone have any good tips for storing the tracings they do of pattern pieces? That’s the one thing that my old sewing room seemed to be inundated with–bits of tissue paper pattern pieces that swirled around, got stepped on, wedged under the door, ripped on the ironing board, etc. It takes a lot of time to trace all those off, so I’d like a good way to store them that keeps them intact, but doesn’t require a lot of space/plastic baggies/etc. I think I’m going to do a better job of throwing the ones that didn’t work away though–I used to keep them to retrace smaller pieces on, but it just makes a mess…

 

Gratuitous sewing room photo/sneak peek.

Superstitious

Cue: Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitious”

They say that burying this little dude in the yard will help sell our house. At this point, I’m willing to give it a shot. Tequila even, if it’ll help.  Ha, see what I did there? 😉

Anyone ever buried a St. Joseph statue in an effort to sell your house? Did it work? Did you go with back yard, front yard, feet up, feet down, facing the house, what? Is it acceptable to put some plastic wrap on him to keep him clean so that I don’t have to scrub all his paint off when I’m supposed to dig him up?

Ah well, off to bury the hatch…statue. Fingers crossed and so on that it works!

New name, same blog

So I decided that the old name didn’t really fit the stuff I post about, and it was time for a change. I’m still working out the kinks, I somehow thought that the settings/theme/etc., would all transfer into the file that I saved. It didn’t. Which is fine, but I wish that would have been a bit more clear when I started. That’s alright, I was thinking about changing my blog theme and such anyway, so NBD–maybe this will be the impetus to actually pick a new one. 😉 There’s so many to wade through though, this might take a while. 😀

For now, the old one is still up, but I plan to delete it after I make sure that everything ported like it was supposed to. So far it seems like everything did, except my email subscribers (which supposedly wordpress will fix that, but I’m still waiting) so I’ll leave it up until that’s fixed. If you are looking to do the same, the process was extremely easy, you just save a file on your desktop, pick a new name, import the file into the new blog address and viola!

So anyway, I hope you’ll continue to follow me, because the only thing that’s changed is the name. 😉

New Year’s wishes and resolutions

Firstly, even though it’s a few hours away for most of my readers, I want to wish all of you a happy and blessed New Year! May the challenges be surmountable and the blessings many. 🙂

I know that we’ve got a lot of big changes coming with the new year, with a baby due in January, a move to a new city, and a major career change for my hubby–and that’s all before Spring is even over!! It will be exciting, to say the least, so I’m going to try to keep my resolutions to the do-able level.

My resolutions for 2014 are:

• Treat people with the same courtesy and goodwill throughout the year that I exhibit during Christmas. Why should it be limited to November and December?
• Do a better job of giving to charity. I always give the excuse of not having much to give, but I think it will help me remember that I am blessed–I have a home, a nice car, a healthy, beautiful family, and a wonderful husband who provides for us. Far too many others aren’t so lucky.
• Purge my closet. I have so many things that I can’t/don’t wear for a multitude of reasons (mainly they don’t fit my body/lifestyle). Someone should be putting these clothes to good use!
• Get out of my wardrobe rut. I feel like I’m constantly wearing the same thing–I need to break free! Especially if I’m going to be helping hubby with his new job, it’s probably a good idea to dress more appropriately, just in case. 😉
• Get out of my sewing rut. I’d like to challenge myself with at least one garment this year–a blazer, perhaps? Or maybe a cute fitted jean/moto jacket?
• Learn a new sewing technique, or at least master one I’ve tried before unsuccessfully.
• Be better organized. I’m terrible about planning anything from a menu to a sewing queue. It makes my life unnecessarily hectic, and with a new baby, that’s likely to spell disaster and a blown budget. I actually did a pretty good job on that with my sewing room this year, which helped my miniscule productivity immensely, so I’d like to expand it beyond the sewing room. 🙂
• Be a better mom. I’ve got a fantastic boy who’s already 7 and growing so quickly, I need to spend more time with him and less time plugged in. Sometimes I feel like my life is ruled by my computer, and I need to switch more of that focus to my kid (soon to be kids!) and even to my sewing and home life. I guess I need less inspiration and more perspiration. 😉

I think all of these resolutions are reasonable, since most of them are a mindset change. What resolutions are ya’ll scheming up?

Last minute Christmas sewing

I took it easy on myself this year, I figured I had enough going on that I didn’t need to stress myself out trying to make up gifts for people. Thank goodness too, since I’ve recently caught myself a lovely cold. Which is a fantastic thing to have so close to the holiday season, let me tell ya.

So the first thing I made was a couple of pairs of hot pads using the tutorial found on the CraftyAsianGirl’s blog. One set was K-State (already wrapped before I thought to take a pic) and the other are these purple ones. Both sets used the same grey fabric as the “gonna get dirty” side, and you can see the K-State fabric I used in the picture. A couple of things I thought I might mention–there is only one “pocket” doing it the way she instructs, I changed it to add a second pocket because that’s how some premade ones I saw were. The second thing of note: if you are making these and a man would be likely to use them you’ll need to make them wider–they fit my delicate female hands just fine, but they don’t fit my hubby’s.

Aren’t they cute? I sure hope they like them!

The next thing(s) I decided to make was something I’m calling “sleepover pillows”. Basically, they are just a rectangular pillow with a handle on one side for carrying around the house (or to a friend’s house). The covers come off for washing, and I just used pillow forms from Jo-Ann’s–they are smaller than a bed pillow and easier for kiddos to carry around with them. I did 3 of them; one for my brother, one for my little sis, and one for one of my sisters’ “step daughter”. Brace yourself for some eye-searing psychedelic goodness!

Seriously, this pic doesn’t quite capture the color saturation…

One thing that completely escaped me was making a gift for my son’s teacher. I had planned to make her either a baked potato bag or a rice heat pad. But, then I got sick and the kiddo got sick and it just never got done. 😦 It’s a bummer, but hopefully, other parents got her something cool and she’ll never miss something from us.

In the near future I’m hoping to sew up some more stuff for the baby, we’ll see how long it takes me to get to that, since the recipient hasn’t made it into the world just yet, and I’m a world class procrastinator. Previously that plan was to whip up a couple of swaddle wraps from here and a car seat cover (Kwik Sew 2997) for the baby. But then, Struggle came up with the Sewing for Little People Sew-Along, and I fell in love with the little newborn pants pattern she found on another blog. So now I’m hoping I can get all that stuff sewn up before the little guy gets here!!

How did everyone else do? Forget to get something made up like me? Plan everything well in advance and had a stress-free Christmas (NOT like me)?

Hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year! 🙂

Things that tick me off Thursday: Thanksgiving Edition

To my fellow US sewists, I want to wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving. May you have many blessings to be thankful for. 🙂

So my (well, actually my hubby gave me the idea) peeve today is the Thanksgiving day parade. It would really be nice if we could actually see more of the parade and less of the yahoos behind the table. So CBS, if you are listening, cut down on the camera time for the goofballs and give us more of the actual parade. Does this annoy anyone else?

Anyway, keeping it short and sweet today so that I don’t miss out on getting stuff in the oven on time! Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving, start of Hanukkah, or just a fantastic Thursday!! 😉

Vintage Perfection

Today was our town’s “fall festival” type thing at the historical center, so like good citizens we decided to check it out. While I’m sure you won’t be interested to hear about the slow tractor race (even though it’s pretty cool), I did find a piece of vintage perfection that someday I’d love to copy, since 1) I’ll never have the figure to wear that exact dress, 2) it’s not for sale, & 3) they’d probably notice if I stole it and wore it…since it was donated from a gal in town. 😉

So anyway, pictures or it didn’t happen, right? Check this beauty out!

Seriously, isn’t it just swoonworthy?!

I love the bias cut satin, the gorgeous lacy bodice, the collar, the criss-crossed stuff under the bust….the only thing I can think of that I don’t like about it is the fact that it’s not mine. 😉

Typically, I’m not a fan of the 1920’s styles–especially the “flapper” look. But if there was more out there like this, I could absolutely see myself wearing them (the description said this was worn in the 20’s). This is the cut that fits and flatters my body the best–it emphasizes the narrowest point on me (that’d be the underbust) without the pregnant look that a straight empire line gives. Sadly, I don’t know of many (or any new) patterns that really give this shape, and it’s pretty distinctive. 😦 Especially since I try not to look like I’m wearing the exact same blouse/dress every day. 😉

This shows the ties on the sleeves a bit better.

I wish I could have been able to tell exactly how the sleeves work, but “look but don’t touch”, you know how it is. They are probably just standard set in sleeves with a ribbon bow on the top, but I’m not positive on that, because I thought there might be a cutout/slit on the sleeve when I was looking at it from a different angle, but couldn’t quite tell for sure with the distance and inability to touch. I’m also bummed that I couldn’t see the back at all. 😦 It was pretty close to the wall and I couldn’t get quite far enough to the side to see the back.

There was another pretty dress, worn by the same woman, but it wasn’t quite as awesome. I probably also should have gotten a separate picture of the red jacket with the fur collar and pockets, but I was too distracted by the dress above.

I like this dress, the sleeves on it are cute and the lace detail is lovely, but it just wasn’t the stunner it’s companion is. 🙂

So what do ya’ll think? Am I crazy and this dress is really  hideous? Have you ever seen a vintage dress in a museum and fell in love?