Vote for Maggie!!

Just in case you somehow missed me putting this up all over facebook and Google +, here is an easy way to help the incredible Maggie Waterman and Albert Roberts with their big day

https://apps.facebook.com/offerpop/Contest.psp?c=267445&u=49293&a=254553244581393&p=57149201009&v=Entry&id=879864&rest=1

It's a contest from David's Bridal- whichever couple gets the most votes wins $2500 cash to spend on their wedding. You will have to like their page, but you can unlike it when you are done. This is a very easy way to help them out, and if any community can come together to make it happen, I think it should be ours!


Thank you!!

Day Two- The Southwest

Day 2 began in Arizona- really, incredibly beautiful. And like nothing either of us had ever seen before. Red desert with brush in all different hues of lovely earth tones, with incredible rock formations in all kinds of gorgeous hues. Interestingly, this was actually where we started seeing snow. Seeing patches of it dotted along this incredible desert was like some kind of fantasy alien landscape in Dr. Who. Incredible. 

Not my pic, but yeah, like that. Only actually awesome-er in person. 

Arizona was also where we saw the most traditional, kitchy, Route 66 roadside stuff (40 picks up the old Route 66 in places and runs close and parallel in others). Some of it was falling apart and kind of lovely in a gothic, oh look at that relic of a bygone era, kind of way. Some of it was alive and well....and downright mind boggling. 

Like this

This is advertised ahead by a big sign saying 'Pottery! Made by INDIANS!" 

The T-rex is just like a free gift with purchase I guess. 

Look closely. No, your eyes are not deceiving you. A little known use of the tee-pee, despite supporting a nomadic lifestyle, which I'm not altogether certain was actually practiced by tribes in the Southwest, was protection from indigenous predators. Like tee-pee sized dinosaurs. Learn something new everyday, right?

Day two ended somewhere in New Mexico late at night after Amy's First Snow Driving Experience (tm). This involved me parking my ass behind a truck going 40 miles an hour so I could follow his headlights with my blinkers on, looking over at Brian every few minutes and repeating "Thank you for not making fun of me." Gods bless the man, he never once acknowledged there might be anything to make fun of. 

I had really wanted to make it to Texas that night, but by 10 when the snow was starting again, we gave up and found the second awesome off brand motel (by then we had realized that the trick is to look for the Best Western or whatever that is big enough to advertise, then pull over and find the little guy down the block hanging onto its coat tails). Which gets us to your first actual picture, taken by us, of the trip

Soothing, restorative, booze!

Stay tuned for: Texas! and Missouri does *not* welcome you!

Escape from California- or,The Trip, part deux

Let's see, when last we left our hacking heroes, I believe we were hacking and wheezing in the safe warm refuge of Casa de Collier, deciding that just maybe trying to start a cross country trip wasn't exactly the best idea in the world. So instead the day involved moving very, very slowly (we felt kind of like this...only more pathetic) back to the City, and to the post office again, to mail yet one more box, then having a very late lunch with Jocelyn and Gilein, and finally crawling back to the Colliers to lie on the couch, blow our noses and stare at each other.

Actually, it was pretty nice and cozy. Nephie (the kitty) even came and kept us company. Therese always says there is something awfully romantic about that first sick together, and oh boy, was this it. We had packed a box of booze for the trip, and a great portion was consumed in hot toddies that evening. Bob and Sharon, we sincerely apologize for the great dent made in the Kleenex stash while we were there. We slept early and long. 

I tried typing 'hot toddy' into google images, but accidentally hit enter to soon. Apparently this is 'Hot Todd', a Disk Jockey from Norway. 

We probably could have used him when we were loading the car. 

Which brings us to Day 1, of The Trip proper. Now, according to Google maps, this was supposed to be a 36 hour drive. So I'm thinking, great, 12 hours of driving a day, three days. Easy. Done. We are still on The Plan (remember that? yeah, start chuckling....), it's just a day off. 

The Plan now was to get up, get out the door, drop off a few things to lighten the car with folks in the area, and hit the road by 10! Of course, there was a small hitch, when we couldn't find the keys....for an hour. But no matter, eventually they were located, under the purse I had emptied three times looking for them. Sigghhhh... but still, eventually, hit the road we did!

There was the usual trip down south- waving at Casa, stopping in Lost Hills, etc. I was extremely pleased that I had already been able to show Brian some of the wonderful beauties of our state...since this drive does not really do that. When we had to head East through Bakersfield to get to 40 I believe he described it as 'the most desolate slice of the Earth's surface' he had ever seen. Can't really argue....

It was a lot prettier once we hit 40. Talk about your dark desert highways, it really felt like driving through Hotel California, with a really beautiful nearly full moon overhead. Though the soundtrack inside the car was pretty much a chorus of coughing and nose blowing. 

Oh, and apparently the closer you get to the Arizona border, the more California tries to JACK YOU on gas. First stop on lonely road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, $3.99. Ok, 4 gallons later, we go on trying to make it to the next place. $4 motherfucking 32!. Yeah. Not only that, but the pump took forever. Like, I went in, visited the powder room, got one of those Starbucks things you only buy in gas stations on road trips, came out, and Brian has succeeded in pumping an entire 2 gallons of gas. Yeah. It took so long, someone came by and told us Arizona was only 25 miles away, so we decided to go for it with about 4 gallons. Cross the boarder to AZ, $2.99!! Thanks for letting the screen door hit me in the ass on the way out, oh state of my birth. 

Anyhow, we made it across the boarder, where amazing rock formations loomed large in the moonlight, found the first of several cheap offbrand motels, and just poured the remaining scotch into a mug. I think we'd given up on dayquil or any such nonsense at this point. The old ways really are the best. 

Dewars, you beautiful bastard. 

So there you go, that was Day One. We didn't actually take any pictures, since we had forgotten to put batteries in the camera, and by the time we hit anywhere pretty it was dark. But Hot Todd ought to keep you going for awhile ;-)

Edit: I'll give you a little preview of Day Two- there are Dinosaurs. And 'Indians!'.

On the Road...or desperately trying to be.....

So, here I am, in KY. Feels like I should have done something to document this epic adventure, but at the time we were mostly just trying to get through it. But I suppose a quick longish recap is in order.

Our original goal had been to take off by the morning of Dec 27th, get back here by the 30th, drop our stuff, spend a night in our own place, then head to our friends' place in Ohio for their legendary New Year's festivities. And what a lovely plan it was. You may now laugh accordingly at our hubris :-P 

First of all, it soon became clear that taking off on the 28th would allow for more packing and cleaning time. We were also pushing off family xmas festivities at Chateau Marmoset since The Sick (tm) had already begun taking its nasty toll. As luck would have it, it hit the Empress and myself first. This was in fact very lucky, because while I spent Christmas, boxing day and the 27th in a feverish haze (ok, xmas was a feverish/drunk haze....), Brian was actually able to get the car loaded. I truly wish we had thought to take a picture. It was a freakin' masterpiece of boy brain tetris-y goodness. 

Now, according to The Plan (tm), we should have been done with SF at that point, except that by evening there was still stuff we were gonna have to mail, the attic hadn't been swept, and Mr. Cushing was clearly beginning to descend into his own unfed/sick haze. 

That night we were given soothing restorative booze and noms by the Empress and Consort. We went and slept down at the Colliers since leaving a car full of all my worldly belongings in the upper Haight overnight didn't exactly seem like the *best* of all possible ideas.... The Plan (tm- you may now be addding your own laughtrack everytime you come across this term) was to wake up ungodly early, dash *back* up to SF for the last of my stuff and some cleaning, have a quick brunch with Jocelyn back in RWC, hit the road by noon, and Arizona by midnight!

Go on, laugh all you want, we deserve it. I'll just wait. 

You good? you sure? ok then. 

Next Morning: grooooannnn, *hack*....*crackle of joints*...

"Honey......... I don't think we should drive across the country today...."

.............

"yeah".

Anyhow, this post has already become very long and has included absolutely no fun pictures of any kind. Because we were too tired and harried to take any. So instead I'll just leave you with this picture I recently dug up from the Liebert/Waterman Apartment days of me and the Awkward Turtle. Because yeah. 

To be continued....unless I get bored, distracted, or sleepy....

Hey, 2000 blog views. I would be excited if most of them weren't some spambot from Russia I don't know how to shake.....

Summer Sewing Projects cont'd

So, going along with the 'I totally actually do things" track (which, ironically, helps distract me from actually doing things....like school...la la la!), this was the summer of handwork. See, one advantage to having previously mentioned handsome young man live two thousand freakin' miles away, and having to spend all of your couple time on skype, is that you have lots of time to work on those projects you would otherwise never get to. Like

Couching the grommets on a dress you made two years ago

Maybe next I'll get crazy and finish the inside of the arm holes :-p

and that blackwork project you've been meaning to get going forever

ok, this one actually came to faire too 

Photo by Laurie Tavan

So, there ya go. I do, in fact, do things.....now to stop blogging, get off the internet and actually go do some more of them :-P

Follow-up- not my strong suit

So if anyone is actually reading this blog, I realize it must look as though I never actually accomplish any of the projects I outline here. This is not entirely true- I mean, does my ambition sometimes get a little ahead of my energy and time? well, yes, but not entirely!

Case in point, I actually did accomplish many to most of the things on this list, as evidenced here

Seeeeee? I do things!

Photo by Toni Tumbusch

I made a whole dress, even. And stays, though you can't see them. And went out and found gloves. And Maggie did incredibly awesome things to my hair.


The stays were from the Sense and Sensibility pattern. Everyone warned me before I started that the gussets need to be bigger than the pattern tells you. I wasn't quite sure how to figure this out, so I just kind of eyeballed it on paper and held it up till it looked about right (this was the project of 'dear lord my life would be easier with a dress form')- in the end I think I just added about a 1/4 inch on each of the four and it fits well.

My super-scientific process;The first one seemed two big when held up to my boob, the second just right (did I mention I want a damn dress form?).

 The bigger change was actually in the back- Laura helped me fit it and we ended up chopping about four inches out . We also moved the straps a little.

(back originally one piece without a seam)

Once this was done it had enough tension to fit pretty well with just the boning channels down the middle, without adding all the other boning in the bust. I added some quilting seems underneath for a little extra support. Having worn it three times now, I am quite happy. I fully *intend* to make a slightly prettier pair someday, with like real eyelets and stuff.... (yeah, right :-p).

Notice the beer stain? yeah, cause I'm a lady like that. 

So there ya go- I do actually do things! I'm just terrible about actually blogging them.

Oh, and the incredibly handsome young man by my side? Well, in case you live under a rock or people who aren't on my facebook are actually reading this, which would be nice to think...well, there had to be some motivation for all this work, right? ;-)