Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

Today's sewing project was a Greek peplos, which is essentially two giant rectangles sewn together. I needed more summer wear for LARP, so this should do the trick. I based it roughly off these instructions.





I used plain raw cotton, and a cotton tablet-woven belt. The neckline is sewn together using hand-made glazed clay buttons (not made by me, but purchased at a Medieval fair).

Two weeks later, and I think I'm finally over this cold. My lungs are still tetchy, but I am thinking of giving them a test drive by going for a run shortly. I've also finally scheduled an appointment with a sports doctor about my ever-problematic foot. I sure hope he can figure out a solution. Last week, it blew up after a dance class and was hurting like whoa and basically feeling like it was filled with a bunch of randomly-placed bones and tendons. When my foot is acting up, I can't dance for shit, not even floorwork.

I attended an ATS class with mystress yesterday. It was nice to dust off some old moves I haven't thought about in over a decade. I'd forgotten all about the tribal variations of the camel. I always liked those! It's too bad I won't be able to attend all of the classes, but at least I'll get a refresher. And now I am thinking about breaking out the kasiklar for the first time in ages. I used to play those, sometimes even in performance. I remember once combining them with floorwork, even, which was kinda neat!

I've been doing so much dancing lately, and I love it. I'm intrigued by the differences between contemporary dance and belly dance. Right now, the fashion in contemporary seems to be in keeping the movements clean and unadorned, whereas in belly dance, so much is decorated with flowery arm or hand movements. I want to look into taking regular technique classes, but think I might have to travel to Guelph to do so. I guess I have some research to do!

In case I haven't mentioned it, f00dave got hired on at a sweet job, and now I am planning on going back to school for the winter term. I only want to go part-time, but I'm excited. I'd start in the fall term, except that I'm going to the UK for a while in mid-September, so that screws up the term. In the meantime, I'm studying outside of a university environment. I'm taking dance, yoga, and art classes. My first sumi-e class is this Friday, and I'll be starting an advanced yoga class on Thursday. I'm excited! As for university, I'm thinking of fine arts, classics, and/or Latin.

I'm also looking forward to continuing my adventures in textiles and costume design. I currently have no projects on the go, but that's partially by design. My office is in a dreadful state, and I'd like to get some semblance of order before I mess it all back up again. That being said, I think I'll try my hand at making a Viking hat, next.

I'm contemplating putting together an introductory workshop on tablet weaving. I want to experiment a bit more, first, though, so I can figure out how to fix other people's fuck-ups. I could also put together a workshop on how to make Rus-style poofy pants, or how to make a Viking tunic, but I think those might be less interesting to most people.

Last fall, when I was looking for whatever work I could find, I found a position for a party facilitator. Essentially, the worker would be in charge of running clothing swap parties. I thought that sounded pretty spiffy. I like clothing swap parties. But then I was reading more about the job, and found something peculiar. No item of clothing was to be more than a year old.

I don't own much that's a year old or less. I do most of my clothing shopping at vintage, consignment, and thrift shops. I find the stuff is both more economical and more interesting than stuff bought at the local Reitman's or whatever. And so I lost interest in the clothing swap party job. I applied anyway, but never heard back. I can't help but doubt it was a real job, anyhow.

Right now, I'm wearing a pair of leggings that I bought within the last year. Everything else is either of unknown age (blouse and skirt from clothing swap parties, one party being over six years ago), or at least four years old. I'm sure I've had these socks over ten years, now. I don't think I look shabby.



Link time? Ok.

Fantasmagorie: I'm a movie star! I co-star in this concept art film created by WhiteFeather. Check it out!

How to Make Oatmeal . . . Wrong: McDonald's: "From a marketing perspective, they can do almost nothing wrong; from a nutritional perspective, they can do almost nothing right, as the oatmeal fiasco demonstrates."

Clothing Sewing Patterns: Free patterns, from the very simple, to a bizarre creation of Alexander McQueen. If I ever finish my current project, I might give McQueen's shirt a go.

Forward Into the Past: A day of history brought to life. I signed up for a bunch of workshops, including on tablet weaving and naalbinding. Yay!

"Zombie" Ants Found With New Mind-Control Fungi: Awesomely creepy fungus. Right out of B-movies.

I was uploading a photo of my sister, and FB suddenly went tits up for me. I didn't worry. Sometimes the site crashes. I got an error message that read, "Account temporarily unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes." No biggy.

I tried again later. Nothing.

An hour or so later, it's still not working. But no one else's account seems effected. No one can access the wall on my account. So I submitted a report. Here's hoping they can resolve the issue. I do the bulk of my networking and event wrangling from there.

EDIT: It's alive again.

In other news, right about now, I'd like to scoop out my uterus with a grapefruit spoon. I had raspberry leaf tea, but it didn't seem to do diddly. So I took an Advil, and am waiting for that to kick in. I need to be functional, and not all bent over and clutching my abdomen. I have to teach a bootcamp class tonight, and I also need to go out for a few errands. There are library books awaiting me.

Ah well, I'll just do some reading for now, waiting for the meds to kick in.

In other news, one of my students gave me a set of weaving sticks last night. So now I have a new toy to play with. I ordered in an inkle loom, and am anxiously awaiting its arrival. Whee!

Link time!

Some fabulous leggings (thanks, chernobylred): Striped! Skulled! Mediterranean! Want.... I also want to make my own pair of these cage leggings. Easy peasy.

Historic Enterprises Dark Ages Clothing: Some excellent resources for my costuming endeavours, here. I want to make a whole outfit.

For sale, the house with a very strange hiss-tory: Desperate realtor slashes price on Idaho home infested with SNAKES: I'm not afraid of snakes, but there's no way I'd want to live there. Snake poo everywhere. Ew. And it would stink.

Basic Tablet Weaving: What I've been working on, rather sloppily.