Dear sewing machine. suck it. love vampy

As I have the memory span of a goldfish, I decided I wanted to make some dresses. I KNOW I am shit at sewing, but somehow a combination of forgetting how much I whined last time, desire to have pretty dresses, and pretty much complete denial that there is something I am useless at allowed me to think I can make myself a dress.

I bought this dress a while ago, and I LOVE it. But I don’t really like the fact that it’s a halterneck, and the net is itchy. A sensible plan would have been to make an underskirt and deal with the halterneck, but well, that was sensible, so instead i decided I will make a similar dress based on this shape but with real straps and no net….and if i do make a petticoat for it to add volume, it’ll be from non-itchy net.

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I bought pretty fabric with blueberries on, partly cos it was pretty, and partly cos it was cheap. I forgot to photograph it though, but well, it has blueberries on, use your imagination. Ok, someone on rav asked for a pic, so i guess you get to see it too. Here, blueberries.

blueberries

Being a cheapass with a strange body shape, I gave up fairly fast on the idea of finding a pattern that would do what I want (seriously ebay, fucking £15 for a vintage pattern, REALLY??)…I may consider spending that on a pattern that I knew would actually fit me, but seeing as I’d have to adjust it in lots of places, £15 can fuck right off. Hell, that’s more than the fabric cost.

So I sat on my living room floor with a couple of dresses for inspiration, and approximately 12 miles of muslin. I did some tracing and highly technical drawing in biro, then a bit of cutting and pinning, finally I actually did some damn sewing, and I came up with this:

icansew

After a contemplative nap, i realised i didn’t like those straps, so i took it apart and redid it, and came up with this:

icansew2

It looks a little crappy cos it’s big on the ribcage and the straps are too long, but on the real thing i will actually measure and fix the straps myself rather than getting gren to do it, and the back will be smocked or shirred or whatever the correct technical term is for ‘made elasticy so it fits without me needing to subject myself to the trauma of trying to sew in a zip’. I am hoping that this, and the use of a fabric that is considerably heavier than muslin will mean that the real thing will fit better and look better. At the very least, at least my nipples won’t be visible through it.

I have defeated you in round one of this battle sewing machine, please play nice tomorrow when i begin work on the real thing. Thank you.

The internet has ruined me

The weather has been strange here the last week or so, changing from sunny to rainy at the drop of a hat. This has meant that twice this week, on an early evening drive to the next village, we have seen rainbows. My first thought was ‘omg cool, damn, why didn’t I bring the camera’…closely followed by ‘WHAT DOES IT MEAN????’.

For the entire car journey, both times, we alternated shouting ‘single rainbow half the way!!…omg single rainbow ALL the way, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? omg wait, double fucking rainbow…ALL THE WAY’, and laughing hysterically. For anyone who has no idea what i am referring to, hand in your internet membership card immediately.

Also, unrelated to the internet, today’s rainbow was REALLY fucking awesome…as we were driving out of the village, we could actually see the end of it skipping from garden to garden. I have never seen the bottom of a rainbow before, so that was really cool. Also, when we got to the next village we were at a better angle than in my village, so it had got brighter throughout the whole journey, and once I’d stopped driving, I noticed that right at the top of the arc there were 3 rainbows…not like the normal extra rainbows you get spaced really far apart, but 3 all squooshed up together. I made gren take a pic on his phone, so if it comes out, i’ll post it.

Aaaaaaaaand, part 2 of how the internet has ruined me, after the first rainbow incident, we went to the shop, and as my uterus was still rebelling at the time, I decided I needed cake. However, as I rounded the corner to the cake aisle, I noticed something shocking and amazing. CHERRY PIE WAS ON SALE FOR 1/3RD OFF. While gren was buying his beer, meat, and toilet paper, and whatever other crap he buys, I conducted a long conversation with myself about the relative merits of cake vs. pie. Sadly I was unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion before gren found me and asked why the fuck I was standing staring at the dessert shelf drooling and muttering to myself. So naturally i bought both. Even with hindsight, that was a wise decision. And i still have pie left. nom.

The internet is also mostly to blame for my obession with goatse, LSG girls’ boobs, and expensive German yarn… for that matter, the internet is entirely to blame for the fact that I now share a house with a man who pretty much only buys large quantities of meat, chips, toilet paper and beer whenever we go to the supermarket, and then invariably looks at his purchases and says ‘it’s gonna be a good night’ to the cashier. To be fair though, while his dietary habits are somewhat disgusting, he’s a pretty fucking awesome lodger…there aren’t many people who would sit in a car with me for 10 minutes screaming ‘WHAT DOES IT MEAN???’ and laughing like a crazy person.

So yay for the internet, I guess.

Also, I am sad today for a reason that is SECRET so I’m not gonna tell you. BUT, I still managed to write a mostly coherent post with no wahhing. I also realised that I have approximately 90 pints of homemade cider waiting to be drunk, and a bottle is in the fridge right now. OMG, and apple mead that needs bottling. If I can find 6 bottles, I’m gonna go do that RIGHT NOW.

soooo wiiiiiiiiiiiide

new lens. love.

took a quick wander up the road to get a few shots to explore the wideness of the lens. I love it, there’s very little distortion of the edges at 20mm…a considerable amount more at 10mm, but I like how it looks, cept when i’m taking pics of myself and it makes my arms wider than my head. Still, love love. I just have to wait until i can go somewhere pretty to use it properly.

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