Last night my two small sisters came over while Helpdesk Man was out gadding. We watched The Truman Show, made a kind of faux pie thing with fruit salad in it and fettucine carbonara, researched the Great Exhibition and started making a kimono top for the snortlepig. Great larks.
I finished the top this morning. I’m not entirely sure about it, but it was very quick to make and covers her delicate wee neck and arms from the blazing sun better than my shirred tops do. And after all, if she ends up with a freckled decolletage before she even has a decolletage, her chances of making a profitable match are slim to nil. And who will support her during her bitter long years of barely-respectable old maiditude? Muggins here, that’s who. So I was thinking of doing another kimono top in a nice lineny colour, with slightly darkish red bias binding and some chunky appliqued flowers on stems. Thoughts?
We wandered over to the Gardens this afternoon for the shots.
I include this last not because it shows off the top, but because it is one of approximately three photos in existence in which the snortlepig and myself occupy the same frame. If I ever had to prove she was my daughter in a court of law, this could be an issue. In other respects it is probably a Good Thing, as I photograph about as well as Elijah Wood (no, really. Candid shots? Hoo boy. He does OK if you tart him up with lights and discreetly applied eye makeup, but slap him in a crowd full of fans and he tends to look geekier than they do. Which is endearing really, if anything, but presumably must be a trial to him as an actor. Interestingly, after I saw Sin City he has looked retroactively creepy in all the photos I took from the Return of the King premiere. Not that I look through them on a regular basis or anything; we were moving house. Still, though. And actually, my photography has improved somewhat in the intervening years… most of the premiere photos were of my thumb. And even my thumb is unphotogenic. It’s not the most Herculean of thumbs to start off with, me having dropped a ladder on it in my youth; but on camera you can practically see it squinting and holding its mouth funny. Quite fascinating. I wonder if it’s pathological.).
Other items of note:
1. I just discovered the best craft blog: Ruffles and Stuff. Lots of clothing recons, adult-to-toddler stuff in particular, and a lovely Victoriana twist to many of her projects which I can pretend is steampunk, not that she uses the term.
2. Helpdesk Man’s best friend mentioned the other day that he wanted to see our wedding video, and a cold chill ran down my back. Not just because of the oddness of a human voluntarily signing up to watch someone else’s wedding video - he was the best man and made a speech, so it sort of makes sense - but because in the three-years-in-November we’ve been married, I have been unable to bring myself to watch it. Is this common to brides, I wonder?
3. A flounce is like a ruffle, but instead of being gathered at the top which produces a bulky and textured top section, the flare is created by sewing the concave portion of a curved (as in gently U-shaped) piece of fabric to a straight piece of fabric, thus creating a smoother line. I learned that today. I learned what a peplum was the other day too, but I forget the finer points. Jackets have them flaring gently over the hips, sometimes. Not in my wardrobe, though.
4. As of the tail end of Season 6 Mulder’s hair has gone distressingly poofy. I hope this is a mere two-episode aberrance, not his new look. It’s practically a pompadour. Incidentally, does it not seem to you that hair in TV shows tends to get worse rather than better as the shows progress? Not universally - Friends comes to mind - but look at Cordy in Angel. Or Willow’s Season 7 look. Or Felicity, of course…
5. November starts tomorrow. NaNoWriMo. I feel distinctly uninspired.
Mathew Says: