the club can’t even handle me rn

Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary! That’s crazy. And means I’ve been blogging for 28 years. That’s even crazier.

We celebrated on Saturday – we had a full day of running around planned. Went to a new antique mall, went to the actual mall, etc. We had dinner reservations early – at 4:45, at Ecco:

I had the wild mushroom pasta. Up until a couple of years ago I hated mushrooms. It was a texture thing. I’ve slowly learned I absolutely love the taste of mushrooms so I’m slowly getting over the texture thing.

Our original plan was to go to this early dinner and then go see Mother Mary at the theater near there. But on Friday I was like, hey what if instead of doing that we just go buy desserts and go home and watch something at home? So that’s what we did, after dinner we went to Gibson’s for donuts, Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream, stopped at the book store, Plato’s Closet and Michaels and then went home (not necessarily in that order due to the ice cream).

We went through movies to watch and eventually picked Fackham Hall. It was silly and we both fell asleep at multiple points through it LOL

At the antique mall I spotted these:

I USED TO COLLECT THESE! These tiny little porcelain animals. Did a little digging yesterday and discovered they are “Hagen-Renaker miniature animals” – I used to buy them at Hallmark. I’ve never seen anyone else talk about them or bring them up, but now that I know their name I found lots of pics of them on google. I supposed my whole collection is still someone in my parents’ attic, wrapped in newspaper – I never unpacked them when we moved to that house in 1995 LMAO

Found a booth with some good vintage patterns, not just 80s/90s. They were all $6-$8 so I didn’t go crazy, I just picked one. Was really tempted by some of the others just for the fabric store stamps – one was stamped that it was bought at “Thrasher’s Cloth Shop” – mom didn’t even remember that one and my grandmas are now gone and I can’t ask them 🙁 A search found some folks talking about it on the “Things that aren’t in Memphis anymore” fb group. Another one had a Hancock location I didn’t remember existing, so it must have predated me as well.

Also got this vintage tshirt and this Queen Amidala stamp/envelope (it was $2, why not)

That antique mall we went to Saturday was great. Lots of variety AND a shop dog I got to pet.

Speaking of, in my HSV Expo recap, I promised a pic of the Star Wars sweater I got at the antique mall there:

Like I said even though I got it at an antique mall, it’s not really that old. I dug around trying to find out who made it and found a bunch on ebay – I think it maybe predates Disney? Maybe? No clue but it’s cute AF and I love it.

Let’s get back into sewing…

Despite my not feeling like working on anything I did actually get a decent amount of stuff done in the last week.

I went ahead and mocked up the entire blouse, so I could try it on.

Once I was happy with that, I cut into my silk charmeuse for the lining layers of the blouse and the skirt. I just did a simple A-line skirt for the slip portion of the skirt. Went ahead and assembled it, then took the skirt and the blouse pieces outside to dye.

It was a little messy. My spray bottle was for some reason spitting a bit even though this is the one I used for the lake dress and loved it because it had a fine mist, no spitting. So it left some dots and weird spots. Oh well, it’s under everything.

I also did a little ground work for another Dragoncon costume – I got it sketched out and pulled out a leotard pattern, ordered a yard of scrap spandex so I can do a mockup and then use it as lining. Also mockup a skirt for it. My lining spandex arrived yesterday so tonight I’m going to put together a mockup – I think this one should go together fast once I get into it.

Goals this week:
-Cut blouse chiffon for picnic, partially assemble top so I can start embroidery
-cut remaining chiffon into extra skirt panels
-get skirt assembled?? I’ve been avoiding it
-do cut outs on bodice outer layer (been avoiding that too)
-assemble mockup for the leotard costume
-start picnic embroidery?

Last thing for this post — I realized yesterday that me and Kevin wearing Luke and Leia together at HSV Expo was almost exactly 20 years after we first wore them together. We wore them together for the first time at MidSouthCon in March 2006!

Back when I could wear my belt in the right spot LOL Now I have to wear it practically on my rib cage. And it was shiny and new!
And I loved that shaggy haircut on Kevin. Worked better for Luke too. I wonder if his hair can grow out to that again or if it’s thinned too much? I’ll have to ask Frankie.