duchessgrace

04:23 pm: I must be a masochist
Ok, really, if you've known me for any length of time, you *know* I'm a masochist already, but just in case you were still wondering...

Following my buttonholes on fleece project, I've decided it would be a swell plan to finally spin up some soy silk and cashmere blended fiber I have had laying around for ages. Fibers are slippery, fluffy, and short. Ever so very short. Which makes for some challenging spinning. I'm determined though, I can do this. Eventually.

Oh!! And I have a meeting for another part time temp lawyer job tomorrow so think happy thoughts. What with planning 2 weddings, part time work like this is perfect for me.

05:24 pm: Sewing annoyance
Fleece + automatic buttonholer = snaps!

Why is it that the practice buttonhole worked, with the exact same fabrics, but the actual buttonhole on the coat refused to cooperate? Why?! Oh well. I think the whole thing was a little thick and sticky...maybe if I used some tear-away stabilizer next time?

09:18 am: Is it just me
or does Outlook crash a lot?

I'd sort of like to beat it with a stick, but somehow I think that might just possibly not be the best solution.

10:24 am: feh
homesick and sulky today, in a pouting-like-I'm-5 sort of way...i think i'll go sew something.

09:07 am: feh
This part of the world is very silly. It maybe, might, may snow today, which around here means a light dusting at best, so they have closed all the schools and courts down. I could see closing things had it actually snowed last night as predicted, but this is just silly.

I and I thought I was a weather wuss.

03:53 pm: OMG
I passed the bar!

10:06 am: 15 more days
Till I hear back from the Bar. Gah. I think it's starting to get to me...I haven't been able to sleep through the night in a week...unless I down half a bottle of wine that is, which does nothing for the diet or the quickness of mind the next day.

I also seem to have developed some form of ADD...I can't focus on anything for more than 90 seconds it seems. I think I need to start going to a yoga class or something...

01:44 pm: Oh my
So we have no date set, location settled on or anything like that, but me being me, I am of course looking at dresses. Holy mother of God. Who wears half these things? Lots of it looks like tranny wear, which is great if your a drag queen, even more is hung on models who look like they just died of consumption. Forget about the strange things that get glued to the models heads...ugh. At least it's entertaining.

I really don't want to sew my own dress...just once I want couture made for me by someone else. Besides, who needs the additional stress? I've already got to plan 2 weddings, or at least 2 receptions, adding a gown on top of that is a bit much.

Tags: wedding!

09:10 am: It's offical!!
We're getting married! After all of this will he/won't he worry, we went ring shopping yesterday and are officially engaged!

I'm so excited. He's the best man in the world, and easily the best thing that's ever happened to me.

09:16 am: Costume update
I have fabric! When I can find my camera, I will post pictures, but for now here is the plan...

The LYM will get proper pants made from a black light suit weight poly, which is poly, but a very nice one and looks and hangs like wool. It's washable and I don't feel like spending wool prices on something he may or may not ever wear again, and that I may or may not screw up utterly, so this is a good compromise. The waistcoat will be a light green, tan and sort of beige color stripped fabric, shit from a nice light cotton sateen and a probably tan or maybe burgundy cravat, all under a charcoal gray morning coat. All I need to do is fine a top hat I want to pay for and can travel with, and suspenders.

For my new dress, I have a nice burgundy taffeta striped with chocolate brown, tan and some sort of gold color. The jacket will be chocolate brown faille with, I think, black trim and fringe. I've seen brown and black done together before, and it actually looks much richer than the brown trim did. I'm going to make the jacket with a v-neck, so there will be an under blouse in ivory with pintucking, machine embroidery and lace. I decided to do a blouse so I could wear it under a swiss body at some point as well as the jacket, and because chemisettes and separate sleeves can be a huge PITA.

I don't know what I'm going to do about headwear. Stuffing a bonnet and top hat into a suitcase sounds like a bad plan, and I don't particularly want to carry on a hat case, since we're flying out for Christmas and will then have to carry the thing back, along with whatever else we buy/get. I suppose I can always ship the hats back. I'm also having arguments with myself about wearing a hoop. I think it would look better to make a modest hoop, but I've got no idea if something like the TV hoop could be forced into my suitcase.

Now I must attempt to resist all my pretty fabric and sewing plans and actually get some work done. Working out of the house is much harder when there are exciting sewing projects at hand.

Tags: sewing

02:13 pm: Costume question
It appears that the LYM and I will be able to attend at the very least closing day at Dickens Fair this year. Yay!! I'm trying not to get too excited, work issues being what they are nothing is too certain at this point, but that hasn't stopped me from planning costumes. Since the LYM, who is the best boyfriend/whatever ever, got me a spanky new sewing machine for my birthday, even if I don't get to go making new costumes will give me a chance to test out all the new features I have at my disposal.

Anyway, he has a modern morning coat in charcole gray which means that while it isn't perfect I don't have to make a frock coat. Yay! I'll probably buy pants, becasue I hate making pants, and also becasue somehow it turns out to cost less to buy them then it does to buy the pattern, fabric, and all the fiddly bits. I'm making the waistcoat and shirt. For me, I need a new dress. My red and black dishcloth dress that I wore to the last Dickens I was at (in 2006) fits fine, but it's a little too casual to look quite right with his suit. Besides which, I want a nicer day/dinner dress, something in silk maybe. My question is this...how common is it to see differant fabrics for the bodice/jacket part of a dress and the skirt in the late 50's? I found one fashion plate that shows differant fabrics, here but that might just be the way the illustration was colored. I haven't seen any extant gowns made that way, the only other places I recall seeing such a thing is when the jacket is really outerwear. My thought was to do the skirt in a stripped silk and make a solid velvet jacket of some sort, mostly because those are the fabrics I seem able to find in the stores around here and I can't seem to find anything I like in sufficient quantities to do the whole dress.

Tags: sewing

09:38 am: I survived!
My brain is still mush, but I survived the bar exam and my trip to Japan.

The short version...

The bar exam sucked. But it sucked for everyone so that's fine.
Japan was awesome. Not speaking the language or having a clue about the writing was very scary. The food was great, I got my black belt, the whole experience was really amazing.

I will write more later when I am somewhat more coherent. At least today I woke up knowing what country I was in. :)

11:10 pm: Arrggg
I have lost all ability to study and am attempting to learn evidence from YouTube. The sad thing is, this is pretty helpful, if you need to know what hearsay exceptions are anyway.

This one pretty well sums up the last 3 years though...especially the bit about the voices...

12:33 pm: Less than 2 weeks...
Two weeks from right now, I'll be halfway done with the last day of the bar. Agh. Best not to think about that...I have nearly 2 weeks to memorize 22 subject areas of law (including nice, concise, manageable things like Federal Income Tax, cue the sarcasm), pack for Japan, and get my shoulder better after a less than perfectly executed crash into hard wood floor on Sunday.

Had a bit of breakdown/freak out on Monday, but hopefully that's now done with. I've decided to not worry about the whole diet/weight thing until after the exam. As silly as it sounds, that by itself has taken a lot of stress off. Trying to plan meals right now is just too overwhelming. If I find something that sounds appetizing, the last thing I need to worry about is how many calories and grams of fat it contains. I'm making fairly reasonable food choices, I just can't deal with the stress of counting points on top of everything else.

I think I finally managed to get through to the LYM about a few things too...at least I hope I did, and he's not chalking it up to bar related hysteria. Probably my level of anxiety is contributing to my inaiblity to cope with it, but the concerns and worries are still there.

Now I must get back to second half of what I hope and pray will be the last practice exam I will ever take. Please god, let this be the last one...the idea of having to go through this again is really and truly the most horrifying thing I can conceive of right now.

11:18 am: Arrggg!!!
Bar exam is 2 weeks from Tuesday.

Sob.

I just have to keep telling myself that this is not the time to start questioning things, just keep my head down and study.

11:02 am: Need a fashion opinion
I'm getting new glasses tomorrow...are transitions lenses dorky? They seem to work better than they once did, and have to be less dorky than those clip on sunglasses things...

Give me another year out here and someone is going to nominate for What Not to Wear...

09:21 am: Am I nuts?
Or is it too much to ask that a course for while I paid in excess in $2500 would be able to get their sh*t together well enough that the class would be in a large enough room with functioning power outlets and AV equipment, and would not require us to change rooms 4 times? Please. Don't even get me started on the total lack of parking, flaky "course proctors" (who just have to push a button on a DVD player) or the inconsiderate morons who show up 20 minutes late for *every singe lecture,* including the practice exam.

Maybe I'm totally unreasonable but these seem like things they should be able to work out.

It hardly helps that today is probably their biggest organizational disaster to date, and I'm in pain because of killer Japan wood floor training over the weekend. At least most of the bruises are covered with cloths, that always helps avoid difficult questions. I'm feeling pretty good about the whole aikido thing though. After all the crap I got a couple weeks ago, two (!!) of my instructors finally told me I was making good progress. I'm starting to think I might survive this trip after all!

08:03 am: Book meme

08:08 am: Ick for peat bog fires
I live in a swamp. Some nearby swamp has been on fire for awhile now, filling the air in my part of the swamp with thick, nasty smoke whenever the wind shifts. For some reason I am having extreme difficulty with the fact that when it rains, the smoke is worse. Does that confuse anyone else?

I wish it would just dump buckets so the the smoldering peat would go out, that would be nice. I'm tired of smelling like peat bog smoke.

Nothing much else to report...they've got me doing break-falls on wood gym floors to get ready for Japan (where we don't get the benefit of tatami mats while being tossed about). There's an odd similarity between that part of my training and the bar prep stuff...I may be getting beat all to hell but the only way out at this point is through, so I shake it off as best I can, apply some arnica, and keep going.

03:09 pm: Yay for faire!
Last weekend the LYM and I did make it out to the VA Faire last Sunday, even though it was 100 degrees out with a heat index somewhere upwards of 110. At least there was a bit of a breeze going, it wasn't as bad as it was on Saturday. It's not a large faire, and the heat had knocked a lot of people out the day before, but we had a good time. He actually liked it! He was huzzahing and everything, and even asking if they needed singers by the end of the day! I was amazed. I think it helped though that everywhere we went people were stopping us to tell us how good we looked. It turned out that they had a little costume contest, which we ended up winning (not saying much though, there were only 2 other entrants and they were in Victorian corsets).

Anyway, here we are in our middle class attire. The LYM's turned out pretty well, except for the shoes. I need to make him a better shirt and shorten the doublet sleeves, but I'm otherwise happy with the doublet. My over-gown needs some boning down the front, and I've decided to do hand-bound eyelets down the back of the kirtel rather than lacing it up with sewn in bars. It was pretty difficult to get it closed up all the way with the bars, which is why the front of the overgown is a less than smooth.

Now I must get back to the never ending studying. Thank god we don't have lecture on Monday, I might be able to get mostly caught up!