Today I am thankful for what will be a short and (hopefully) quiet work week. I have some work-related research to do that I’ve only gotten to lightly touch on the last week because it’s been too busy for me to dig in. So I’m hoping to get a lot of that done! And after such a busy week last week I’m glad this week is only 3 days. Really looking forward to a long weekend.
Evenings last week was a little bit of sewing… and a lot of Christmas decorating. I’ve been SOOOOO excited to decorate the new house. I mean we OWNED this house last Christmas but the former owners rented from us til January. So I had to wait a whole year to finally decorate. Of course I say all this without really having pics to show… but I’m not done! So once I’m done I’ll take pics and post them.
Got the tree up – lights on, monorail track set up (YAY!) – but no ornaments yet. Luna’s been in the tree a LOT and yesterday I decided to try the “orange peel” trick I’ve read about, since we had an orange in the house. I peeled it and put the peel in a bowl under the tree and… yep, she hates it. LOL. So far so good, she hasn’t been near the tree in nearly 24 hours which is amazing. I guess I’m going to have to keep buying oranges so I can keep fresh peels underneath the tree.
Anyway, hoping to add the ornaments next weekend. We were hoping to buy a new tree for this year – but it’ll probably be for next year. Want to get a silver tree!
Also got most all the other little things up, nativity, ceramic tree, garland, a few lights.
Got these cool colour-changing LED trees at Costco last week.
And here’s Luna (pre-orange peel) being obsessed with the monorail around the tree.
If I turn it on (even with the orange peels right there!) she just wants to sit and watch it and follow it. She doesn’t mess with it. She just wants to watch it. It’s so cute.
Also – I have 2 monorails. I have the set I bought when Ash and I went to Disney for Christmas last year – the one I had shipped home. We decided on the monorail to go around the silver christmas tree we hoped we’d have for this year LOL. But then we got that second set and the Contemporary on facebook marketplace back in August! I set up the second monorail but it was too much… Chase is going to look at printing taller pylons for the second set so we could maybe “stack” them. (But once we get the silver tree, we can put one around that one, and the other around the old tree, which I’m hoping to either put upstairs or in the dining room window. Altho I do want to get the train set at some point too so maybe we need 3 trees…).
So let’s switch to sewing.
Got Arwen’s facings machine sewn in, and side and back seams basted together. I still need to machine sew those seams, but I’ve had her hanging off the doorframe the last couple of days to relax… I doubt it’s necessary with this fabric but I’ve gotten into the habit of hanging everything prior to hemming just to make sure nothing is going to stretch out funny later on.
The other night I decided to get started on Raddus Bridge Leia’s underdress. The best thing I ever did was reorganize my pattern collection a couple of months ago… I put them all in the exact same order my online Pattern Collection Folder is in. So I looked through my online collection… picked out the pattern I wanted to use, and then it was super easy to actually track down the pattern itself.
So I picked out McCall’s M5155. I’m never going to put this through Rebel Legion approval or anything so honestly I’m not even concerning myself with whether or not it’s accurate. It’s got the high waist, some width for gathering. I just raised the front neckline up and made a new front facing piece to fit it.
Cute look:
And sleeves. All just pinned onto the form right after cutting. With a scrap for the “belt” just so I could see what it was going to look like.
I’m not so sure about the sleeves. First off, they’re going to be HUGE. Sleeves from patterns are always huge on me to start with, do I just have tiny arms or something? But these are also 2 piece sleeves which I’m waffling on. I think I probably have enough fabric I could cut new sleeves and still have enough for the belt piece. Going to play it by ear.
Since that pic I’ve gotten the sleeves sewn together (and my machine was skipping stitches like crazy. I was like WTF where did this come from! Thankfully the first bit of trouble shooting I did found the problem – my machine didn’t like the bobbin I was using. Different bobbin worked fine.), but no pics. Hoping to get the facings sewn in tonight. Then I think I’m going to do the belt piece next – then decide about the sleeves, and hem last. I’ll probably be done with this this weekend and then I need to start thinking about the robe. I haven’t thought about it at all. I feel like at one point I saw a pattern in my collection I thought would be a good starting place but no idea what it was. Also need to get ancillary fabrics for it – lining, interfacing, etc.
Christmas cat break
Friday night and Saturday day we ran some errands getting ready for Friendsgiving on Sunday. But Saturday night I had tickets to MST3K LIVE!
I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale months ago and got 2 seats in my favourite sitting location at the Orpheum, the Grand Tier. I decided to see if dad wanted to go with me, since he and I always watched MST3K Saturday mornings.
Parking was a whopping $25 I guess because right around the corner the Grizz were playing the Lakers and everywhere was price-gouging. And traffic was a mess. Between that and the super long line for merch I didn’t get a tshirt or anything. But that’s ok because the show was really fun.
Joel!
The movie they riffed was No Retreat, No Surrender which was super awful and I now I want to make Chase watch it.
Really horrible zoomed in shot of Joel and the bots on stage.
Curtain call
I hope this is something they do again. Though I bet they don’t come to Memphis again, it was not sold out. Maybe 3/4 full š
Sunday was getting the house ready and cooking for Friends giving!
Everything was really good! We had soooo much food. I have leftover steak and mashed potatoes for lunch today. After dinner we played some games and it was a good time.
So like I said at the beginning of the post, 3 day work week this week. Yay. Hoping to get some stuff around the house done. Thinking about maybe trying to do a white backdrop shoot? We haven’t done one in 2 years!! I’m getting behind! If we do, it’s only going to be like 4 costumes max, don’t to wear myself out. And trying to think of things I can shoot without having to do too much work. Maybe Crait Leia, new Belle (redo the wig?), Dr Crusher, and either Misato or Jedi Leia. Only reason I’m a maybe on Jedi Leia is because I was looking for the belt last weke and couldn’t find it?? I’ve stuck it somewhere and now can’t remember.
ANyway. Have a nice thanksgiving!