its been 84 years…

We’re on day 4,528 of being iced in.

It’s all solid ice. It’s snow. No kids have been out making snowmen or having snowball fights in this – if you threw a chunk of this at somebody’s head, you’d kill them, it’s like throwing a brick.

Hasn’t really stopped us from getting out and about as needed though, Chase’s car is 4 wheel drive and he knows how to drive in inclement weather. Worst part of any drive was just getting in and out of the car on our icy driveway, but Saturday we went to Lowe’s and got some ice melt stuff and sand and that helped.

The worst part of it all is that no deliveries have been running, no FedEx, no USPS. So my new glasses that shipped 2 weeks ago are currently MIA. (For some reason they left Atlanta and went to Las Vegas for a few days?? If they hadn’t done that, they’d have arrived before the ice storm.) Our homechef is sitting rotting in a fedex hub somewhere. We’re supposed to start seeing some melting today as things get up into the 50s, so hopefully my glasses turn up this week and we get our next homechef with no problems.

We bought a bunch of food last week to eat all weekend and then just ended up going out a bunch. Met my parents for dinner Saturday night and last night got fast food. Kevin’s mom is out of town, so I’ve been calling to check in on him, but yesterday he wasn’t answering. At first it was like, ok, he’s in the kitchen eating (he leaves his phone plugged in in his room) but I tried again later and still no answer. And again later and still no answer. So we went over to check on him.

He got a talking-to for not answering his phone and also a chocolate covered rice krispie treat.

I finished my Jane Austen puzzle:

This was SO FUN. They have others in this same style and I want another. It was like putting together a bunch of mini puzzles and there was basically like something specific on EVERY single puzzle piece so it was easy to spot the pieces you were looking for. Unlike the Star Wars one I’m doing now which has a giant Darth Maul face on it and I have like 200 red and black pieces that all look the same.

Luna doesn’t know what to do when I’m doing a puzzle in the dining room and Chase is upstairs. The other night she finally settled into one of the new chairs.

And here she is helping me with the Star Wars puzzle.

Last night I was working on it and heard this pitiful meowing. It was one of our neighbor’s cats:

Luna heard it too, but couldn’t figure out where he was LOL. Neighbor Cat was looking in all of the windows at me, crying and I almost went to put a box and a blanket out for him – even though we know he has a heated bed accessible in his garage, but maybe something was keeping him from getting in his garage? But then the neighbor got home and he went running over there so I was glad I didn’t have to worry about him being out in the cold anymore.

Ok now let’s talk sewing because I actually did some this weekend!

So I have this gorgeous, floaty, soft double gauze cotton to use for this new Leia disneybound dress. It is so dreamy. And I was worried that if I prewashed it, it would stiffen up and loose that beautiful hand. I tested a swatch, just dipping it in water, and it did stiffen up. I had wanted to prewash this so I could fully wash it in the future – but I decided to skip it. If I have to clean this, hopefully spot clean and vodka spray will be fine — and if I do end up having to wash it at some point, I have a game plan (hand wash cold, hang to dry to 95%, then tumble dry on lowest heat with dryer balls for about 5 minutes to help restore some softness.)

I did steam the entire 5 yards to try to preshrink it as much as possible without washing. Which is the set up you see here. Did that friday night.

Saturday I got all of the pieces cut and then decided to just leave them hanging on my dressform for a day so if they were going to stretch, they would at that point.

Sunday morning

So I’m using a Mood Fabrics free pattern for this. I read some reviews saying Moods’ patterns are awful. And boy they weren’t kidding. The instructions are bare bones and I put things together a little differently, especially the cuffs of the sleeves – the way they did it would have left raw edges at the wrist, and had no opening, so I did them where they overlap and will have a snap so I can get them tighter, and the inside seam is enclosed.

But the biggest issue is sizing. I should have known I was in for a rough time when the cuff was like 3 inches bigger than my wrist, if I’d sewn it together the way they had indicated. I trimmed it down and still had plenty for an overlap. I got the sleeves mostly finished, got the pockets put into the dress panels, and got the front and backs sewn together and sleeves pinned in… and this thing is HUGE.

It’s supposed to be about calf length and it drags the floor on me. The bottom of the sleeve is around my waist and the pockets are at my thighs. Tonight I’m going to go ahead and do a running stitch at the neckline to gather it so I can properly try it on and see how much alteration I’m going to have to do. I think if I just cut the neckline down further around 3 inches or so it will fix the vertical sizing issue, but I dunno about the width. It’s supposed to be a loose fitting dress but I don’t want it to fit like a sack.

I want to get this part done so I can move onto the belt, which will be the fun part; I’m going to embroider it. And I want Chase to 3d print some buttons for it.

I need to pick out shoes to go with it. I have some ideas saved. Also need to figure out hair – I don’t think I want to do the normal buns, I think I want to do something a little more interpretive.