That shirt

Well let's see, it's only been two months since I last blogged here. Good grief. But in the meantime, I ran an election (and lost) and learned a whole lot (and blogged over there). And I started novelizing the emails I wrote in 1995-6 when I was in London for a year (for NaNoWriMo). And yes, I finally finished that shirt:

I can't believe the rookie mistakes I made on it, which came from not being able to tell the right side from the wrong side of the fabric. Only I can tell where the errors are but I do know what I did. I used to sew the collar and cuff facings down by hand but for some years, I've been attaching the whole thing by machine. I describe the process here where I attach a collar to one of my husband's shirts. What I did with this shirt was attach the band to the right side (instead of the wrong side) and now I have to deal with the machine stitching being more visible (to me at least) that I would have liked. C'est la vie.

So, now I'm free to start a new project, and I don't know what yet. I was making this template shirt in anticipation of wearing the finished gold silk one to my charity gala, but as the date got closer, I knew I wasn't going to get it done, so I looked at some of my "old" fancy dress things to see what I might wear instead. I had made a "Chinese" dress quite a while ago (I don't think I blogged about it so it must have been before 2005) and used a new pattern to do it. When I tried the finished dress on, I was shocked that it didn't go over my butt and so I never wore it. I kept it because it looked so cute, in red faux Chinese embroidered satin, and because I had hopes that I would lose ten pounds or so. When the Oriental theme of the gala was announced, I hauled it out of the cupboard, dusted it off (literally) and tried it on, thinking I'll finally give it away to the Sally Ann. Imagine my surprise when it fit! My husband has been cooking vegan for the last few months and I have benefited by losing enough weight that the dress now fits. So that's what I wore!

I told people that I have lost ten pounds because of my husband's cooking but that never does come out right. He has lost over 25 pounds. It's cutting back calories of course, but also no saturated animal fat that makes a big difference. These two photos are a good contrast too, showing me tense in one and relaxed in the other. The camera does not love me, I know, but it is interesting how some pix are so much better than others. Plus you get to meet my hubby, although you can do that more at his blog which he kept nicely over the summer when he was biking to work and taking photos. Now that he is on the bus for the winter, he is not taking so many pix.

So there, I am mostly caught up to date. Oh yes, I had to take my sewing machine in again to be repaired, as it was breaking threads yet again. Most aggravating and disappointing, as I bought a Singer to have a better quality machine.