UFOs coming out of my ears

Once upon a time my workplace made us do personality tests, supposedly to help our team leaders work out how to make the most of our respective strengths (and avoid our respective weaknesses).

I was horribly disappointed to score low in "creativity", but at least I could console myself with my high score as a "completer".

So why on earth do I have so many unfinished sewing projects (UFOs, but don't ask me what the "O" stands for - it's just standard sewist slang as far as I can tell)?

There's:

• the Chanelesque jacket - I made the fitting muslin, but didn't go any further. I've been thinking maybe it needs a hood (or an entirely different neckline) to avoid it looking like a failed Chanel jacket or - almost as bad - like a jacket that doesn't belong on my body
• the Burda tunic dress I made last winter, which I decided to refashion - so far all I've managed is to unpick the baggy puff sleeves and stick pins in the armholes
• the too-long and too-small tunic dress which I bought off TradeMe - I chopped the top of it off and cut a new (and wider) neckline and torso into it. It is currently full of pins
• the merino sack dress, which I wore to work anyway - before I remembered that I still haven't fixed the small hole I found in the sleeve. Plus I really want to add circular patch pockets to the sides for a bit of interest, but I will probably never get around to it now
• the tweed skirt (which came with the matching jacket that had the hole worn in a stupid place), which I mean to shorten and re-do the waist seam on. It is still stuffed into a big zip-up bag full of other potential refashions (not mentioned here)

If I ever get a couple of hours of free sewing time, I will be so undecided about how to use it that I'm likely to just go for a walk in the hills instead!

A couple of thumbs-downs

The other day I was in the pharmacy (the only other place I go during my lunch break is the public library), and the retail assistant (the very same girl I mentioned in my previous blog post) gave me a sample of a Dr Haushka Lewinn bio oil and a Dr Haushka Lewinn face moisturiser. She raved about the oil, saying it was supposed to be very good for ezcema-prone skin. Then I nagged her about my need for moisturisers so she gave me the other.

FYI - sad to say that neither of the above were a big success for me. The body oil promised to have a soothing effect on my delicate skin, but it wasn't any different than if I had used leftover cooking oil (well maybe better-smelling). The moisturiser was a stinger.

Home is where the pharmacist is

Anonymity can be a good thing when you go shopping, especially if you are the sort of person who buys a lot of stuff from pharmacies. I'm not even just referring to relatively embarrassing items like  condoms, tampons and haemorrhoid cream.

I go in a lot for my prescription medicines (for my allergies etc), but I'm also a frequent visitor because of my skincare experiments. Plus - I don't know about pharmacies elsewhere in the world, but the pharmacies in NZ are chock full of pretty things. Things like luxury toiletry bags and Disney-character shampoos for kids, and then there's the more usual stuff like fabulous perfumes and creams and so on that are like poison to my skin...and yet so attractive.

Anyway, yesterday I went to my local (pharmacy) for some non-soap hand cleanser, and today I went in for some antihistamines. The girl who served me said, very cheerily, that I ought to move in.

Normally if someone tells me this, then I know that I am becoming far too familiar for comfort. And I don't go back because now I'm too self-conscious about it.

But this time I just said that I'd only move in if she gave me a 10% discount for being such a prolific customer. And she did.

I have no intention of packing my bags and moving into the shop (it's too close to work).

I guess I'd be Sporty Spice then

Violet's Result: Your Style is Sporty! on quiz: What's Your Clothing Personality? Click here to find out how to define and improve your sporty fashion style. Quiz School Take this quiz & get your result

What s Your Clothing Personality? » Quiz Maker

Extracurricular education

I've been thinking about it for quite some time - signing up The Little Madam for Chinese language classes. One of the obstacles was the fact that I didn't want to pay the tuition fees (which aren't actually that much at $50 per term).

But mostly it was fear of having to commit to more parental volunteering.

My brother just happens to be the something-or-other coordinator of the Chinese school, and his kids go there too of course.  TLM loves their company and wants to go, 'cos she'll be in with the big kids. So tonight I put my stake in the ground (as they say at work) and told him to go ahead and sign 'er up.

The deciding factor? Frankly I'm embarrassed that our half-Chinese daughter has learned to speak Spanish (from watching Dora the Explorer), but can't understand anything my mother tells her.

We might have a winner - Trilogy and xma-ease

For several weeks now I've settled on Simple moisturizer - not because it does a great job, but because it doesn't hurt my face when I put it on.

But I recently tried some potentials from this little skincare boutique (called Earth 127 or something, the latitude or longitude of New Zealand I think it means) - the woman who sells the products makes her own lotions and potions, and she uses natural ingredients etc. The "natural" label is usually a warning sign that it will make my skin sting. Don't ask me why, it just often does. And sure enough, her day cream did make my complexion glow in a not-so-nice way. But her "rich" moisurizer didn't. The only things I didn't like about it were it's strong smell (frankincense perhaps, but I'm not sure) and the fact that it didn't moisturize the eczema-ry bits so well.

Then yesterday I got a couple of other samples from a health shop right next door to the Kumfs shop (where I have my expensive school shoes on layby) - one was xma-ease for the eczema-ry bits, and the other was a Trilogy moisturizer (it's NZ-made and possibly even from Wellington).

These two were a good combination for me - absolutely zero irritation and plenty of moisturisation. Not all day moisturization, but minimal flakiness through the day, and that's pretty good for me.

So I went back to get a tube of xma-ease, and might go back and get the potful of Trilogy too. But first I've got another sample of moisturiser to try, from the lady at Earth 127. When I told her what I thought of her samples, she gave me another one to try and promised to make something up for me if that's no good. Talk about good customer service!

More space AND more cash

Only about three years after we stopped using them (and about a week before we gave them away to the nearest op shop), I sold TLM's old high chair and buggy via Internet auction.

The high chair which was an upmarket Chicco Polly, went for a mere $41 - which is still better than seeing the boy haul it to the Dump Shop i.e. give it away.

The buggy, a MacLaren (not the racing car brand), was subject of a surprising last-minute bidding war. On Saturday the highest bid was a humble $11.50. Twenty four hours later it had climbed to a peak of $148! While that's just a fifth of what we paid for it new, it's still way better than the alternative (yes, the Dump Shop).

So now I have money to put on my shoes lay-by, AND we now have a free corner in the study AND a couple of feet of unclaimed space in the hallway.

The house looks almost big enough to live in now.

Today the world is much noisier...

...because I got my ears syringed this afternoon.

Yucky yucky, you're saying to yourself. Well, yes the stuff that came out of my aural cavities did resemble worm casts (or miniscule poos). Better out than in, I say.

Suddenly I can hear whirrings and rustlings and whisperings and sound of my jeans brushing past each other at the thighs when I walk. TLM, who is normally just loud, is now head-splitting. And when the boy says naughty things whilst walking away (to test my hearing), I can react with mock shock at his dirty mind.

The nurse who performed the syringing - the evacuation, you might say - was lovely and completely un-freaked by the amount of stuff that squirted out. When she'd finished, she announced that she could see right into my ear canal.

"Right through to the other side?" I joked.

The (retirement) Village

Today my brother, my mother and I went to inspect a retirement village that my mother is thinking of wait-listing herself for. It's one of those establishments which has: apartments for people who want to live independently but have access to lots of other old people; assisted living apartments for people who want someone else to worry about the housekeeping, heating and bill-paying; and rest-home apartments for...well, you get the idea.

It was the independent apartments she was after, and the display apartment we looked at was really quite nice - modern, reasonably spacious and low-maintenance. It's appeal to my mother was that it looked just like a "normal" apartment.

Then we went to visit a friend of hers, who has recently moved into one of the assisted-living apartments. It's a studio, so everything's crammed into one cosy room plus bathroom. This friend doesn't have to worry about power bills, vacuuming or cooking - the former two are included in his living package and the latter is sorted by the closeness of several small eateries nearby.

I haven't talked to the sales lady yet, but it appears that either you get the larger apartment and mostly look after yourself, or get loads of help but live in a cupboard.

And I think my mother is going to want the bigger living space AND the lotsa help.

Need shopping advice? Listen to Auntie Violet

If your body shape is an apple (I prefer to call it a wide-waisted hourglass), you can buy skinny jeans to fit your waist (rather than your hips) and the end result is a very nice pair of straight jeans!

It is utterly possible that you can pay $30 for a lovely tween skirt suit from an op-shop and spend another $25 getting it dry-cleaned, only to find that the fabric is the fibre-equivalent of rabid fleas. If the itch weren't enough, you might still find a previously unnoticed tear on the back of the jacket, which is somewhere you'll normally never see a leather patch.

You can spend big bucks on a pair of low-heeled, well cushioned and super-supportive black shoes which a) go nicely with your black tights and skirts, and b) will be perfect for those 50-min walks home from work - and then realise  they look EXACTLY like school shoes.

The big advantage of shopping where the customer service is terrible, is that you won't fee any obligation whatsoever to buy something from there.

black out

I'm currently labouring on a task which is both boring and requiring a high degree of attention - the worst of both worlds, really. So when my computer sputtered and went dark this afternoon, I was only a teensy bit annoyed.  Sometimes enforced breaks are all the breaks you get.

We figured that the power outage must be limited to our block, but the boy rang up and said it was out at home too. Apparently he'd just missed out on getting his vital beer lifeline, as the lights went out just as he pulled up at Pak'n'Save. Apparently alarms were going off, traffic was all over the place and rioting was surely imminent.

I wondered where our civil defense kit was, because it would've been handy to listen out for updates.

But after half an hour my colleague gave me permission to go home (not that he had any power to say yea or nay).

And by the time I was home the power came back.

Exploring her Indian heritage

TLM does not, in fact, have any Indian genes. But from the way she's decorated our clothes-airing frame, well...it reminds me of the inside of my friend Vinod's car.

This is what she likes

This one of the many gaudy trims that TLM loves so much. So I got her to find me a white t-shirt, and I hand sewed the trim onto it. Actually I had to sew it on twice, because when she wore it to daycare the next day kids kept snagging their little fingers in it.

At last, a novel I want to get my hands on

Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin is one of my favourite novels, and one of the few which I am happy to re-read multiple times. Not because I have a special interest in high school shootings, but because I was fascinated by how she portrayed something that people never admit to - having ambivalent feelings about your own child.

And now she's written about about a guy who decides to put his life dream on hold, for the sake of his cancer-stricken wife, So much for that. Time passes, the man's bank balance dwindles and his wife is still going to die. Like Kevin, it sounds like a really depressing read. But I'm convinced I am going to love it, because I myself am often tortured by the conflict between pleasing oneself and doing the right thing for someone else (it might be a Chinese thing, I dunno).

Though it might be a while before I am willing to shell out up to $30-40 dollars for my own copy. I'm so very used to borrowing from the library (even if it means waiting a few years for it to become available).

Blame it on the doona

I've just finished reading a book about skincare by Hugh Molly & Garry Egger, called Skin Fitness Safe and healthy skin care. I borrowed this from the library because it looked current and sounded sensible and down to earth. But now that I've read it, I get the feeling these guys are veering into crackpot-dom.

Basically, the authors - both Australian doctors - say that many skin problems are caused by overheating and over-cleaning of skin and hair. This appealed to me, because it suggested that I could save money on heating, soap and shampoo and improve my complexion. The before-and-after photos are promising - and all those people had to do was stop using their doona (that's Australian for duvet or comforter) and wash less often.

What's confusing though, is that the authors constantly refer to the Australian climate - which most of us think of as being hot and dry (except for Sydney and Darwin which I know can get hot and humid). What about people in far more temperate New Zealand, especially those of us who are living in uninsulated wooden houses and need to drape ourselves over the column heater night after night in mid-Winter?

There is nothing in the book which allows for non-Australian climates, which is a real shame. They suggest that you go to bed with just one blanket and maybe add a second one for winter. If I had to get through Winter with just two blankets, I'd never sleep (and my feet would freeze off). And nowhere in the book does it say what the ideal temperature is for one's bed.

So, while the ideas are worth thinking about, I won't bother trying to implement them. Unless I move to Australia.

Op-shopping

Lately I have been  buying pre-loved clothes online. I'm so much more likely to buy something online or from a catalogue than in a shop. Mostly it's because I don't get the chance to try it on first, which is the point at which most items are weeded out when I'm in a shop. Plus, I'm motivated by the prospect of getting something cheaply (which is relative in the case of designer clothes). And if I order something from a catalogue and it doesn't fit properly or look any good after all, often I can't be bothered sending it back. In other words, it's probably not very wise.

Most op shops, I can't bring myself to try anything on because the place just smells like old people. You know that smell?

Consignment shops tend not to have that smell, which is good, but then the prices are much higher.

Last weekend there was a big pop-up op shop near my home and I went down to have a look. I had to bypass the beautiful silk shift dress at $20 because it was a little too big and one of the darts was oddly puckered. And I bypassed all the trousers and skirts because they just looked or felt too used. And I bypassed all the sets of beautiful vintage buttons because they were all different sizes.

But I did find a lovely purple-y pink boucle skirt suit, which I bought just because I liked the jacket. It's roomy enough that I can wear a couple of layers under it, but the skirt is too big so I might cut it up and make a matching beret or something out of it. The jacket is very similar to the Chanel-style jacket which I have been trying to make (but haven't got very far on)*.  The only difference is that it does have a collar. Oh, and it is finished. I just have to get it professionally cleaned first because at the moment it does look kinda grubby.

As soon as it's wearable I'll post a photo up.

*This means that I now have even less motivation to make my jacket. This happened last winter too, when I planned to sew my own winter coat and ended up buying one on sale before I had even finished the test garment.

Argh!

So now it starts.

I have the cold that nearly killed the boy over Easter, and which gave TLM a few sniffles the week before that.

It'll be okay as long as this doesn't end up like last winter's  hell-in-a-snot-rag.

Real life window shopping

...is a way more difficult proposition.

It's easier to just not go near the shops in the first place. But I had some unexpected spare cash a few weeks ago and thought it wouldn't hurt to check out the second-hand shops (because that was all I could afford). I was quite sure I wouldn't find anything to buy, and I was right. But it was nice to have a reason to step in and have a look around, just in case.

So I then took the next step, which was to go into "normal" shops to window shop. I went into the Max shop, tried on a bunch of jeans, and found some I really liked. And I managed to walk out of there without spending a cent. 

A few days later, I went into Hurricane Jeans, which has the best customer service of any jeans shop I have ever been into. I tried on lots and lots of jeans, and found some I really really liked - Workshop skinnies with a high-ish muffin-busting waistline, dark (but not matt) grey-blue and more of a straight leg than a skinny. Even taking into account that fact that one of their mirrors was a slimming mirror, I was impressed.

Again, I left without buying anything. It helped that those Workshop jeans cost almost $200.
But there's a voice in my head that keeps telling me to go back and bring 'em home. I think I might just stay away from them shops for a wee bit longer...

online window shopping

It's quite addictive isn't it?

Dishwashing is contraindicated

I went to visit my GP last week, and as usual I had a shopping list full of things to ask her about. But to omit the TMI and suchlike, I'll just tell you that I was advised to stop doing the dishes if I want my hand eczema to get better.

Actually, what she recommended was that we get a dishwasher, but a) we can't afford any big ticket items at the moment and b) the boy is biased against them. And apparently wearing rubber gloves religiously for all dishwashing and cleaning tasks is not good enough, because the gloves themselves can harbour nasty fungi and bacteria. So I thought about how I was going to break the news to the boy.

The boy was not overjoyed to hear that he'd have to cook and do the dishes, though in my own private opinion which I pretty much keep to myself and a couple of hundred of my most attentive listeners/readers, he should count himself lucky that he's a bloke and therefore completely blind to all the dusting, mopping and bathroom cleaning that he hasn't had to do thus far.

I had told the boy this news over the phone, and all the way home I stressed that he might rebel and leave me with no option but to produce a line-by-line report of all the household chores that are mysteriously done, without his input, in order to avoid us living in a veritable pigsty, over the last decade we have shared.

But when I got home he was already finishing off a sinkload of dishes, and I mentally kicked myself for assuming the worst.

I promised that as soon as my hands got better I'd start doing dishes again (until they got worse again anyway). But it's been a week and they haven't, so he might be in for a long haul...



 

non-petite jeans

Good as Gold were having a sale on their designer casual gear, so in my lunch break I went in to check it out. There were Cheap Monday jeans for $40, which sounds really cheap to me because it's a brand I've heard of and the denim is both dark and stiff. I dunno why, but dark, stiff denim always looks and feels more expensive than lighter or softer denim.

I selected two pairs in two different sizes, one was the size I hoped I'd fit into and the other was the size I was likely to fit into. They both had 34 inch inseams, which meant that I could probably make a nice shopping tote out of the bits I chopped off after shortening the legs. They were both of that expensive-looking super-dark, super-stiff denim.

The fit was rubbish.
While I did want a higher rise (just up to the belly button), the waistband on these jeans went right up to my natural waist. They would have gone further, but there wasn't enough width to allow it - therefore, the result was this crazy spilled-over camel-toe effect at the crotch. Also, the thighs of the jeans went all the way down to my knees.

I had truly forgotten how terrible designer jeans can look on a shortie like me.

From Chanel-esque jacket to Quasimodo jacket

Having lost my enthusiasm for sewing lately - what with TLM staying up later and leaving me with less me-time, and my current obsession with finding an affordable substitute for my Shiseido Benefience moisturiser.

But I did get as far as constructing a muslin i.e. test garment (hurrah, I finally thought of something useful to do with that ugly grey polyester taking up space in the cupboard!) for my Chanel-style jacket.

I had an awful lot of trouble with putting together the princess seams. I double-checked to make I hadn't inadvertantly switched the side front for the side back or something stupid like that, but the back piece look it was designed for a hunchback. The front pieces, on the other hand, were worryingly trouble-free and possibly designed for a woman without boobies.

The other problem was that the shoulder seam was about 2 centimetres too long. Postings on PatternReview said that they'd had to insert shoulder pads to fill in the extra, but if I did that I'd look like I'd forgotten to take out the coat hanger.


So instead, I increased the princess seams front and back, reshaping the back princess seams so they were straighter. Everything seems to fit okay now.

But I still don't get to cut out my nice fashion fabric yet.

Bodyshop Aloe Vera day cream and day lotion with SPF

The plus-side of shopping in the higher price ranges is that you're more likely to be given a free sample to take home. And thank gawd for that, because the Bodyshop Aloe Vera moisturisers did not really work out for me.

I had a quick squizz at the ingredients list and didn't see anything on my no-no list, but really - who's got time to go through about 20 funny-looking names?

The day cream was okay in that it didn't sting on my face, but then it didn't quite moisturise it well enough to satisfy me. If I apply it and have to apply a second layer half an hour later, then in my opinion it's not moisturising enough. Maybe, just maybe, it would do okay if my skin's having a good months. But not this month.  And anyway it cost $35 for a small pot that probably would have only last a couple of weeks.

I tried the day lotion with SPF too, from the same product range, but this really did sting my skin. No no no.

A bit of a shame really, because when I get free samples (or just good service) then I really want to like the product.

Cetaphil - The score so far

Remember the product I bought a week ago, full of hope and anticipation? No? Well it was Cetaphil Daily Advance Ultra Hydrating Lotion. Cetaphil is supposed an ab fab moisturizer for sensitive skin, and this one was a new product which promised to be good to my very sensitive, very dry skin.

To be fair, my skin has been under a bit of strain lately - actually, perhaps nervous breakdown would be more accurate. While it is always a bit sensitive, it is currently very touchy indeed, and my oily T-zone shrank right down to an oily O-zone (my nose, to be exact).

Anyway, I wasn't utterly surprised that this one lost the test. I tried it maybe 4 times over the last week and each time the result was an increasingly uncomfortable burning sensation. Maybe it was my own fault for choosing the un-reported-on Cetaphil product rather than one of the older, more established ones.

Monsieur Batignole - the reluctant hero

I think it's highly peculiar that the best selection of movies on New Zealand television - i.e. most intelligent, least likely to be aimed at the lowest IQs - are screened by Maori Television. Maybe because it's a television channel aimed at an ethnic minority, the programmers in charge want to catch some other minorities too (e.g. people who prefer movies that don't over-ly rely on car chases, frat parties and Jennifer Anniston).

Monsieur Batignole was quite an eye opener. Aside from being an engrossing wartime story of a French butcher who just wants to go with the flow, but ends up being a champion of Jews and the saviour of three young Jewish children - it was a history lesson for me.

Because it used to be that the words "World War II", "France" and "Nazis" used to conjour up just two images 1) the French resistance, and 2) a British sitcom called 'Allo 'Allo. I wouldn't have occurred to me that a vast proportion of the French population was more than happy to turn in their Jewish neighbours, especially if it meant they could raid those families' belongings. Monsieur Batignole's wife, daughter and son-in-law in waiting were all such opportunists, and M. Batignole was the odd one out only because he didn't want to get involved.

But he does, and he ends up risking his life to save three children from whatever hideous fate their parents faced.

Even the boy liked it, and he's not known as a watcher of sub-titles.

Skin care trials - Cetaphil

Today I bought a tube of Cetaphil Daily Advance Ultra Hydrating Lotion. It was about $17, approximately 2 thirds what I paid for the Simple moisturiser. I can't be bothered to go and check the size of the tube, but it's probably about 60ml. This is, apparently, a brand new product aimed at very sensitive, very dry skin - which is exactly what mine is at the moment. (Although to be honest my skin is going through an eczema-ry stage, so keeping my complexion well moisturised at the moment is probably too much to expect of any product.)

The ingredients list is (my notations are informed by the ingredient dictionary at the back of Don't go to the cosmetics counter without me): 

• water - top marks for not going for the more pretentious word "aqua"
• Glycerin - an known emollient (yay)
• Hydrogenated Polyisobutene
• Cetearyl Alcohol - an emollient and thickening agent (yay...I think)
• Macadamia Integrifolia Seed Oil (Macadamia Nut Oil) - a known emollient (yay)
• Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter) - another known emollient (yay)
• Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl acrylate Crosspolymer - forms a film over the skin to make it feel nice and smooth, but apparently also a weak skin sensitizer
• Sodium Polyacrylate - as above
• Phenoxyethanol - one of the less irritating cosmetic preservatives
• Tocopheryl Acetate - an anti-oxidant (yay)
• Ceteareth-20 - a fatty alcohol used to thicken the lotion
• Stearoxytrimethylsilane, 
• Stearyl Alcohol - a fatty alcohol used as an emollient (yay)
• Benzyl Alcohol - an alcohol known to have a potentially drying and irritation effect on skin (boo!) but at least it's near the bottom of the list so there's not so much of it.
• Farnesol - plant extract used for fragrance (boo!)
• Sodium PCA - water binding agent (yay)
• Panthenol - alcohol form of vitamin B (yay...I think)
• Cyclopentasiloxane - makes the skin feel smooth and slippery (sure, why not!)
• Dimethiconol - as above
• Citric Acid - prevents the formulation from being too alkaline (yay)
• Sodium Hydroxide - prevents the formulation from being too acidic (wtf?) and extremely irritating in large doses.

So, by the above list, should be okay to use. It's got heaps of emollients and slip-making agents and not too much in the way of potential irritants. 
When I got home with it this afternoon I cleansed, toned and then smeared a big gob of the stuff all over my face. It was already a bit irritated from this change-of-season irritatedness so I didn't expect the new moisturiser to make it all better. 

The good thing is that my skin didn't feel like parchment an hour later, and didn't make my skin feel any worse. 
I shall keep an eye out for how this product feels on my face for the next month (or until the tube runs out) and keep you posted.

Girl with the dragon tattoo

We only watched this DVD because a friend of mine put it in our mail box and emailed me to say how much he enjoyed the movie. I don't normally bother with thrillers, and if I'd known there would be a violent rape scene and images of brutalized female murder victims,  I probably wouldn't have put it on the other night.

Having said that (and having got the boy to fast-forward past the anal rape), it was otherwise a good movie. It was not your standard cookie-cutter Hollywood thriller in which lots of women get to be murder victims - maybe because it's a Swedish film based on a Swedish novel.

What saved it for me was a) that there were plot twists that the boy didn't spot within the first five minutes, and b) the person who is instrumental in finding the evil murdering bastard and in making sure he gets his justice is a woman (that's the tattooed girl I'm talking about). 

The "girl" is undoubtedly troubled, with a history of mental illness and violence - but when you find out what her childhood was like, it's really not surprising. She's a professional hacker. Your eyes are probably rolling at yet another computer hacker youngster in a movie - but the boy (who is, as you know, a computer whisperer) declared her geekisms completely authentic.

Oh yeah, and there's a non-evil man in the movie too. But in this universe they are a rare species.

Quest for perfect skin care

It must be my advancing years or something, but lately my skin has been much drier and more sensitive than usual. This means that the cheap skincare alternative I had been surviving on (Simple) is not doing a good enough job for me.

But I can't go back to the superior stuff I was using before (Shiseido Benefience) because that stuff is definitely in the pre-redundancy price range. A single bottle of moisturer in that range could buy me cafe lunches for a whole week (which would be a nice luxury - I tend to have cheese sammies or dinner leftovers for lunch).

And the stuff I have used in the past (Innoxa) must have changed formula or something, because the last lot irritated my face like undissolved lemon juice on a paper cut.

So, for now, my sewing obsession has faded and in its place is my quest for better skincare. What I want is something that moisturises well - preferably all day, doesn't irritate my skin and doesn't cost more than about $30 per bottle (which should a couple of months).

I got this book out of the library called Don't go to the cosmetics counter without me (or something like that). It's quite bible-like in size and even in the texture of its pages. It's organised alphabetically by brand name and the author rates each brand's cleansers, toners, moisturises and cosmetics according to things like - value for money, presence of sunblock, presence of various high-tech ingredients which have been proven to have some benefit, lack of irritants, etc. There's even a short section at the back which lists which brands are known to be tested on animals, which are known not to be, and which brands are still keeping their animal-testing status secret.

I was interested that the Shiseido Beneficience products I'd like so much were given the thumbs down, because the author thought they were pretty basic for the amount of money they cost. And some of the lower-end brands had products which she rated really well. It's too bad that one of the Ponds products, which rated well and is cheap, is an animal-tested product. It's also a pity that, being an American book, it doesn't include any of the NZ brands, because some of them sound pretty good but are not cheap enough to experiment on.

Hugged by music

I went to a great new exhibition today in my lunch break.  There was a room full of Milan Mrkosich,

some of whose works remind me a little of Kandinsky (just a little - it's those little geometric shapes that somehow look miles deep ). There were several rooms full of Seraphine Pick, who does those scratchy paintings as well as spooky Hieronymous Bosch-inspired pictures like this one:

But the highlight was set within a sound-proofed room containing nothing but two benches in the middle of a circle of fortyy speakers on stands. Minutes after I walked in, a recording started playing; it was Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui, a Renaissance piece I'd never heard of, sung by a choir. You're supposed to walk around the speakers and hear the differences in the sounds that emanate from each one, but I didn't bother. I just leaned against a column and let the wonderful singing embrace me. It was eleven minutes of loveliness.

I think I might go back tomorrow.

Fair fare

I took TLM down to the community fair this morning. It was still manageably quiet at around 9.30, but an hour later we had experienced a veritable tsunami of humanity in the streets.

And there's this thing - first thing in the morning we walked past several food stalls just setting up with promisingly good food. But by 11.30 when my tummy's rumbling and TLM's stumbling, all I can find are hot dog stands and chips that've been sitting in the warmer for too long.

Fairs aren't half as fun you don't spend any money at all, so I tried to set a limit of $10. We scraped by on $13, which we spent on:
1 windmill
1 lucky dip (a crappy Barbie phone that makes godawful noise when you push the buttons)
1 balloon animal
1 raffle ticket
1 pot of chips and a fishball kebab.

TLM looked longingly at the bouncy castle, but they are never good value because they cost three bucks and she tends to want to leave after about 30 seconds. Fortunately, the zoo was having a Children's Day celebration and she got free bounces there when the boy took her in the afternoon.

A good day - I even got a couple of hours free to do some sewing. I made a mock wrap top in a slinky knit which fits great but is marred by an unflattering print.

My shrinking window, my growing daughter

After I get home from work I have a half-hour window of time in which I can do whatever I want (in theory). It's that time after TLM has gone to bed  and while the boy is whipping up something delicious for dinner.

That is, until the beginning of this week, when we decided it was probably time to let TLM stay up until 7.15 instead of packing her off to bed at 6.30. It wasn't that she was making a fuss about going to bed; more that she had started building increasingly elaborate towers of toys on her bed whilst waiting to get sleepy enough. The other night, she had piled a huge mound of dress-up clothes and fairy wands, the wintry fleeces that she got last Christmas and maybe 200 of her favourite soft toys on her bed. And a couple of library books and a few posters that she'd ripped off the walls.

I suppose we could have kept her bedtime early and just got her up earlier instead. But neither the boy nor I are early birds.

Ah well, I guess it just means that our little girl is growing up. And that it's time to let her in on my off-duty activities.

I would have voted for Obama too, if I was American

I don't mean to be cynical, and I do read the newpapers so I don't have my nose in fashion magazines (or my head up my bum, as the English are so fond of saying - not necessarily about me) 24 by 7.

But it seems to me that the Obamas' greatest achievement  since moving into the White House, is that we now have a pretty decent role model for "women of a certain age" who want to dress stylishly (as opposed to frumpishly, slutty or like their daughters).

Chanel-esque

For a long time I resisted the allure of the Chanel style jacket, mainly because I didn't think that the boxy shape, high rough neckline and cropped length would be very flattering on my body shape. But I have always loved the look of those tweeds and boucles that the genuine articles are made from.

And then one day I walked into my favourite fabric store and saw a lovely orangey fabric that looked perfect for a Chanel-esque jacket. But I had to walk away from it because orange is soooo not my colour.

I went back there the day after the boy's redundancy tax credits came through.

To cut a long story short, I ended up buying the lime green version, plus matching polyester satin for lining.  It's way more green-y and less grey than the photo suggests, and the satin looks kinda brown unless the light is shining on it. I would have preferred..I dunno, pink and lime green or maybe even something in violet or emerald green. But around these parts, the range of fabrics available for home sewers is pitifully restricted.

I'm going to use the celebrated Vogue 7975, which has a nipped in waist and the potential for the upper facing to flip down flatteringly while I'm wearing it (either View A without the ribbon ties, or View C with patch pockets instead of welts).

But it's highly likely that I won't be going the whole couture hog. This is because:

1. I'm too stingy to buy that back issue of Threads magazine that tells you how to quilt the lining and I haven't yet found freely available instructions online
2. The only chains I have come across are those el cheapo necklaces that you wear to go clubbing (or whatever it is young 'uns do these days), or the chunky ones that cyclists use to prevent their bikes from walking away
3. there'd be a lot of hand sewing involved

I know, you're saying "she don't even know how to make a 4-gore skirt without it going all monster on her - what makes her think she can handle a tailored jacket?"

And my answer is...I just want to make something that I can get excited about.

One for me, one for her

I finished that long brown skirt (Burda 8280). Here it is

 

You might be thinking "Gosh, doesn't it look rather enormous!" Well, you'd be right. It's made from a crepe-y viscose fabric that shrank alarming  during it's pre-cut out, pre-shrinking phase - so much so that I had to go and buy extra yardage (or rather, meter-age). But as I stitched it together, it slowly stretched out again...The day I wore this ankle-length skirt, it initially sat at my mid-hip. By the end of the day it was touching the tops of my feet and barely respectable. I'm not sure whether to just take it in at the sides or - gasp - gather it all the way around.

I also made this for The Little Madam, out of an old rib singlet of mine. The decorative elastic at the waist is actually pieced together from the internal bust support of the singlet.

 

I didn't use a pattern (I'm too cheap). I just traced around an existing stretch skirt, directly onto the singlet and took it from there. The trim is from a grab-bag of offcuts that I bought for 6 bucks, little knowing that most of it would be unused a whole year later.

So that's one skirt for me, and one for TLM.  And you know what? I reckon she won.

Three times free - lunches

You may recall that last month I distinguished myself at work by gobbling down three ice creams in one session, outdoing any of my workmates (though to be fair one of them is a vegan and there is only so much popsicle you can suck).

Well today I had the opportunity to do the same with lunches.

The big all-day meeting that had been planned for today, which I was not expected to attend, got cancelled. But the lunch was not cancelled, so all the staff were treated to free lunch.

Unfortunately for me, I had only just eaten my home-made roast pork sandwich (not free-range, but at least the poor animal's suffering was not for nought). But I did my best and heroically chowed down in a piece of ginger crunch and a few slices of tropical fruit

Fully sated by now, I was off to an afternoon meeting - actually the afternoon session of another all-day meeting (one which I had been invited to, but had completely forgotten about) - and arrived just as the other attendees were diving into a yummy looking spread of club sandwiches, chocolate cake, more tropical fruit and cook meats.

But two lunches in a row was all I could handle. If I'd tried sample lunch number three, I would have done a Mr Creosote all over the nice conference room.

It's just as well, as I'm watching my figure.

Motherhood gives me gumption

Don't you hate it when you get on the bus in the morning to get to work, and find the vehicle is about two thirds full of loud and obnoxious teenagers? It could have beeen a peaceful, brains-off journey - a chance to catch up on your sleep, perhap. But instead you are forced to suffer inane chatter at top-volume, in surround-sound.

I found myself on such a bus and sitting next to an under-showered teenage boy, though to be fair he wasn't contributing to the general noise pollution. But I couldn't wait for the herd of kids to evacuate at their high school bus stop.

And when they did, my seat-mate stood up, swung his immense back pack over one shoulder and silently waited for me to get out of his way.

Still seated, I smiled at him and asked "And what do you say?".

He was good-natured enough to throw me a big sheepish grin and say  "Excuse me".

The question of shoes

Those high heel platform shoes are so hot right now (if you say it like Jacobim Mugatu from Zoolander it sounds better). I quite like the look of them - something about those curves and wotnot - but am sensible enough to know that I simply cannot wear them. And if I could, then I certainly wouldn't be able to walk in them.

Most of the time I wear sensible shoes that are wide-ish at the toe and low-ish in the heel.  They are comfortable and mimimise the likelihood of me falling over and breaking an ankle or two. But there's no denying that I look better in a bit of heel (because only people with Audrey Hepurn-esqe physiques look really good in ballet flats).

Wearing heels increases your sex appeal. Wearing flats increases your agility.

So I guess the question I must ask myself is this:

Do I want to be able to attract men, or do I want to be able to run away from them?

Well seeing as I already have the much-desired attentions of lovely fella, then it has to be the latter...

Sequels I have loved

There are very few movie sequels that I have loved. I loved Matrix. I didn't love the sequels. In fact, I thought the third and last one was a complete waste of time with all it's messianic-references.
The same goes for Alien and Terminator - loved the originality of first one, hated the straight-forwardness of the sequels


Sometimes it's better just to let a story finish without trying to explain the 'verse it inhabits (I'm talking 'bout you, Matrix).
With Alien, the monster surprise was no longer a surprise.
With Terminator, maybe the novelty just wore off.

And yet..and yet...I loved all the Die Hard movies. Why is it that I did not get tired of watching Bruce Willis getting older and balder and getting his body beaten up all the time? He's not pretty like Johnny Depp. Maybe when a sequel that is really just another story with the same main characters as the previous film, it works.

Harry Potter -  yes I have enjoyed every single one, despite whinging about how Hermione's really not supposed to be that pretty, and all those stereotypes about fat boys, and all that boring quidditch. These stories were all designed to follow on from each other, conceptualised from the start by the author. I guess that's why these work whilc others don't.

Lord of the Rings. It's really one story split up into 3 movies, which is similar to Harry Potter.

Anyone else got any theories?

Wanting to end poverty gets personal

When you find that, after you've paid this month's bills, there is only a couple hundred dollars left in your bank account for groceries AND you only just got paid, like, 2 days ago - that's when you realise how close you have gotten to being poor. Obviously, we are not talking sell-your-body-for-food poor, but poor as in - if we don't do a strict budget and stick to it right now, (or the boy gets a job) we are in serious danger of having to use the credit card just to get by.

I'm sure we'll break even, if we can drastically reduce our spending on things we don't need (magazines, DVDs, clothes, alcohol, smokes, fabrics and other sewing stuff, toys for TLM...)

The boy has offered to drop his wine habit and reduce his cigarette use, which is commendable considering they are his only 2 vices and he is quite addicted to both.

As for me - I aim to buy no more new fabrics or clothes. This means that, apart from my meagre stash (it fits into 2 medium sized shopping bags), I will be forced to forage in my collection of clothes-I-have-become-too-fat-to-wear i.e. refashioning. Maybe this is a good thing.

There is another option - I have been whining for a couple of years now about my seemingly uncontrollable weight gain. I've gone up 2 dress sizes since I stopped having to taking TLM on 3 buggy rides every day to get her to nap.

I'm thinking now could be a good time to stop eating.

Sicko

I am, of course, referring to the documentary by Mike Moore, in which he compares the US's healthcare system very unfavourably with that of Canada and the UK.

Now, I know that Mr Moore has been known to be a little biased in his film-making, to push for his view even if it means excluding evidence to the contrary. But I don't know him to be a liar.

Even taking into account what I know about the man (and I'm still a fan), what I've learned about the American health system is truly shocking. My understanding of the system was that - if you could afford health insurance or had it as a job perk, you'd be fine. If you were old, you'd be covered by Medicare. If you didn't fall into either category, you'd be at the mercy of a small number of overcrowded public hospitals. And I thought Sicko was going to be a rant against the need for health insurance.

I really wasn't expecting it to be a rant against the health insurance companies themselves, that their goal is to deny any claim if they possibly can in order to save money - to the extent that the pay of doctors employed by these companies went up in direct proportion to the amount of money they saved.

In comparison, the residents of Canada, the UK and even Cuba, enjoy free medical care and cheap or  subsidised medicines (I know, in real life there are waiting lists - but it's better than being told you can't get it at all). Moore even took a group of Americans who'd been suffering health problems caused by their time doing voluntary rescue work at the 9/11 site - all of whom had been denied health insurance funding for medical treatment - and took them on a trip to Cuba, where they received free and un-rushed care in a hospital, really cheap medication and a hero's salute by the local fire brigade.

And the most shocking thing is that this film was released well before Obama became president. And it's STILL looking like America is not going to get universal healthcare.

It's made me extremely glad to be living in New Zealand where, although it's not free to see your GP and neither are medicines, both still affordable enough that most people who need help will get it before its too late.

Probably the umpteenth blog post about Avatar.

So last night the boy and I went out to the movies for the first time in probably a year. Avatar wouldn't have been my first choice (I would rather have gone to see Sherlock Holmes or Where the Wild Things Are - and then there're all the less mainstream movies that I don't bother to find out about any more), but I knew the boy wanted to see it.

I booked us for the 2D version, because I was sure the 3D version would give me a headache at the very least - feeling slightly nauseous after ten minutes of Coraline in 3D (on DVD) had been a useful clue.

As it turned out, even watching Avatar in 2D was enough to give me a headache. Though I would have to blame the fact that it was too long, kept me up well past my normal bed time, and had a cookie-cutter storyline (not to mention the oft-observed racial stereotypes portrayed here). Having said that, it was pretty much what I was expecting - including the excellent special effects.

My personal highlight of the movie was watching Sully's avatar wriggle uncomfortably in his new g-string (the standard uniform of Pandora's natives - of course). It was the one sign that maybe James Cameron wasn't taking himself too seriously.

Disguise yourself as nature

I think black suits my colouring, but the main reason I wear it is because it's supposed to go with any colour. And, unlike colours, you can wear it head to toe without looking like a giant child's toy or a funny-shaped cupcake.

But I've bought some fabric for a skirt, and its a chocolate brown with pink embroidery. Sounds pukey, but actually quite pretty (at least in my opinion).

And that got me wondering what on earth would I wear with it, because according to Trinny and Susannah I really should not wear browns.

I had an epiphany while walking from the bus stop to my house this afternoon. Why not take nature as my inspiration i.e. if two particular colours are found in nature, then they will probably look find in your outfit.

This means that:

• green goes with red, blue, yellow, white and orange (flower colours)
• blue goes with white, green and yellow (flower and sky colours)
• brown goes with green, black, yellow and orange (forest floor colours)
• white goes with white, blue and black (snow, sky and zebra colours)
• red goes with nude, green (bleeding person and flower colours)

and so on.

Of course, there is always the chance that you'll end up being mistaken for the landscape.

It's a summer...no, it's a winter!

The summer wedding that we went to yesterday, which  I'd especially bought a summer maxi dress to wear to, turned out to be more of a winter wedding. In fact, I wore the exact same dress that I wore to a mid-winter wedding 18 months ago (only this time the dress was a bit tight but the shoes weren't). Plus, I had on my new opaque tights and woolly coat which I'd had to take out of storage.

So my new summer dress hangs unused, as do most of my other summer clothes. And I read in this morning's paper that the rest of our summer is going to be just as disappointing. If only I'd known this back in spring, I could have saved myself lots of what-to-wear angst.

On the bright side, I won't feel like an odd-bod for lusting after the tweeds I see featured in Northern hemisphere magazines. I always prefer winter clothes anyway.

p.s. TLM came along to the wedding ceremony in her new Dora dress, which she insisted on wearing instead of the RTW dress I'd picked out for her (and looked adorable, of course). I'll take it as a complement.

Three times free

So, Gen-i was offering ice cream to its corporate customers as Christmas presents - well either that or a donation to charity. I'd like to say that we (that is, my work) went for the donation option, but greed won out. We'd requested that they deliver the yummy goods after Christmas, when more people would be back at work, you see. And it arrived today at midday.

There were 15 ice cream items for the 9 staff who were in today, delivered by a charming Oirish chappie who is in NZ for his working holiday. Fortunately, there was a range of goodies - ice blocks, vanilla tubs and those ice pops that come in that unnatural shade of blue (plus sprinkles, for extra artificial flavouring goodness). Otherwise, the chocolate-shy woman might have missed out, and the vegan definitely would have.

I wondered whether I could get myself sick on ice cream, like - how many would I need to eat to get sick to my stomach?

As it turns out, more than three.

The others waited for the sugar high to kick in, anticipating either high jinks or emotional chaos (like PMT, perhaps?). Well they were disappointed. Probably all I got was fatter (in my defense, all I had for lunch was 3 Krispie biscuits and an orange).

Selfless sewing

After the boy went and bought some off-cut Dora the Explorer fabric, I decided I should try and make a dress for The Little Madam. Although she is mad keen on the Disney Fairies and Disney Princesses, there is still room in her heart for Dora.

So I picked a few potential sewing patterns and asked TLM to rate them, and her favourite by far was McCall's 5033 - which requires a really large amount of fabric for the circle skirt.


My main obstacle was that the shop only had this pattern in Girls sizes 7-12, whereas I reckoned I needed a Childs size 4. So I did a bit of tucking here and there on the bodic pattern pieces, and quite a bit of tucking on the skirt pattern pieces (so they'd be less of a circle and require less fabric). I also bound all the raw edges with bias strips instead of lining the whole garment, and didn't bother with the inside ruffle. When I was just about to put the zip in, I realised that the binding added too much bulk to allow for zip insertion. So I hand sewed snap buttons instead. (The photos posted here are pre-fix, as described below).

TLM loved her dress right away, but one of the snap buttons kept unpopping, which to me meant that a) I needed to replace those buttons with a zip and b) I had got it slightly wrong when re-sizing the bodice pattern piece. I spent a couple of hours last night trying to fix this by inserting extra fabric at the back before putting in a zip. But now it's too big!! Maybe I should have just added more snap buttons instead...

If I had to do all this again, I would definitely line the dress instead of binding all the seams - it would have taken less time and added less bulk. Anyway, TLM still loves it so I should just let it go shouldn't I?

That went far too quickly

I think Summer happened maybe three times over the Christmas and New Year break, with plenty of rain and gustiness in between.

We finally got a perfectly gorgeous day today, the last day before I go back to work. We managed to fit in:

• a load of washing; 
• a playdate at the public swimming pool (where TLM pranced about and learned to steer clear of the squirty things that spray warm water in your face when you least expect it); a walk in the hills for me while the boy took TLM to the zoo; 
• sewing TLM's Dora dress (using pink Dora fabric which the boy bought pre-Xmas, plus some purple quilting fabric which I'd originally intended for a loud Sixties tunic for myself - I'll post a piccie when it's completed); 
• and many games of Snap.

So tomorrow it's back to normality - for me, anyway. For the boy, it's a week of being TLM's main playmate for another week before daycare starts up again. He's gonna be tired by Friday.

Well, that's one way to keep me up for the New Year...

Like most people who have young children with early bedtimes, and who are really anal about sticking to those early bedtimes, and have no one to babysit for free on New Year's Eve anyway...we had no plans to go out for NYE. The most I was hoping for was an uneventful evening followed by an early-ish night, to make up for waking up at 4am this morning and not being able to get back to sleep again.

But here I am, at 12.07am, having just kissed the boy. "How did you do it?" I hear you ask. Well...I ended up spending the whole evening in the hospital with my mum because she was suffering from really bad vertigo. That in itself doesn't sound bad enough to warrant emergency medical attention, but when you add type 2 diabetes, a recent change in medication and a steadfast refusal to follow a low-sugar diet - her light-headedness, dizziness and vomiting could have been a symptom of something really serious.

The silly woman didn't even bother to tell me that something was wrong, until I called her at 6pm.

The worst part for me was probably holding the almost-big-enough plastic cup under mum's chin as she threw up strange solids that didn't look anything like diced carrots. It almost made me bring up home made banana cake I'd chomped through an hour earlier. The next worst part was accepting a free surplus patient dinner (very nice of the staff, thank you very much) and realising that hospital food is every bit as bad as everyone says it is.

The best parts were being told that her affliction is not life-threatening - just scary, and that she could stay there overnight for observation (and someone else taking her to the toilet in the wee hours - oops, a pun!).

Happy New Year!

District 9 is really really good

District 9 is one of those rarities - a science fiction movie which has a good plot.
Set in Johannesburg, it's a story about a population of aliens who've ended up as refugees in this unfair city. If you know anything about South Africa's torrid history, then the apartheid theme will hit you in the face. It also reminded me of the news stories on tv that I've seen, about refugee camps and the treatment of the people who live there because there really is nowhere else for them to go.

But it's not all depressing. The man who's got the job of organising the removal of the alien population to somewhere 200 miles away, is quite a comical figure. He ends up being the hero (or anti-hero, perhaps).

I wonder if the timing of the remake of V was coincidental?

TLM and Christmas

This is the year that TLM remembers what happens at Christmas time. She started nagging about getting decorations up about two months ago, and has been counting down the sleeps for about two weeks now (literally).

She is also the one person in our household who is the subject of great present-giving splurging. I hope she likes the dolls house that could well become an heirloom - everyone else is getting a daycare calendar or something from the bong shop up the road from work (they sell toys too).

She knows the words to Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, We wish you a merry Christmas and Jingle Bells - well, the bastardised Kiwi versions anyway.

She remembers our holiday this time last year, up the coast at the beach. And she knows that we aren't going anywhere this year - but she'll be very happy to have girlie parties in the tent staked out in our back yard.

And I'm looking forward to receiving my first Christmas gift from her, which I spied drying on the top of the wardrobe (it's a painting).

Saved by Glassons*

I now have a dress for my cousin's wedding. It took me 3 shops and 50 minutes and cost me $40. I have definitely broken my own record for quick and cheap, and it's actually something I like - not a desperation buy.

I haven't taken a photo because it needs shortening. But it's a black maxi dress with a deep V neck at front and back, and shirring just under the boobies, in a cotton/viscose/lycra knit which drapes really well without clingy to anything dodgy. I'll have to be careful with the hemming because I have ruined knits in the past when the presser foot action has stretched the fabric out and I've ended up with a rippled and warp hem. So I may even do it by hand.

Funny, I always thought a long dress would just make me look like one of those Greek columns you see holding up banks (or perhaps a hot water cylinder with arms and head). I'm quite happy with this one, and the boy is too.

*Also known as the House of G - it is THE place for cheap 'n' cheerful women's clothing.

Nothing to wear

This happens every bluddy time.

I get an invite to a wedding...and I have nothing to wear.

The last wedding I went to was over a year ago in mid-winter. I managed to find a nice enough dress to wear, that looked nice with black shoes and black opaque tights.

But this one is in summer. Also, that dress is now too tight for me.

I have considered buying evening wear ahead of time, so that these last minute panics don't happen. But what's the point if I get too fat to wear it by the time I need it?

Can anyone recommend a shop that sells glamorous-looking tents?

A name change - and about time too!

I was never entirely happy with Short and sweet like me as the name of my blog. It's amazing that it's lasted about 4 years.

Never mind. I have thought up a new name, one which more accurately describes my posting personality.

I might even change the image in the header - but don't hold your breath.

Finally, the end to my shirt refashion

It started out as an attempt at clevergirl's "man's dress shirt transformed into woman's shirt dress". The boy had donated a lovely designer shirt with fine blue, black and white pin stripes and pale blue french cuffs. He said he'd stopped wearing it because of the ironing. And I felt that I really had to not stuff it up completely. I was really keen to keep the french cuffs, and also wanted to make a garment with longish sleeves so I could wear it in winter.

Unfortunately, although the shirt was an XL, I am not an XSML. There just wasn't enough fabric in the right places, for me to turn the shirt into a shirt dress - well not one that I could fit into, anyway.

Also, without a dress form (or willing slave to pin-fit it to my body), I wasn't able to properly fit the sleeves back onto the torso of the shirt without it looking like I was trying to wear a man's shirt.

Eventually I bought New Look 6808, intending to make the view represented by the pink top with the side-on bow, with long, french-cuffed sleeves.

And I did make it. But when I put the sleeves on, well...let's just say it was not a flattering look. It probably didn't help that, with my wide torso, I should not be wearing tops that stop at the top of my hips. Nor tops that are fitted at the waist. Nor pale blue fabrics.

Go on, chortle. You know you want to.

After a couple of sleepless nights trying to figure out how to save it, I decided to just get rid of the sleeves. My arms are probably the skinniest part of me, so showing them might overcome the lack of attractiveness everywhere else.

This is way better, especially if I can remain upright while wearing it. Because othewise I keep wanting to adjust it.

What I've learned from this tortuous experience - that I still have much to learn about what styles suit me.

Santa gets it wrong

We had two children's Christmas parties to attend, in the space of 3 days - both of which required the donation of a named, wrapped present so that Santa wouldn't have to turn up empty handed.

Now, TLM has been very vocal lately about what she want's for Christmas. She would like lots of love-heart jewellery.

This might be why she was slightly deflated when she opened up Santa's first present, the first Christmas party, to find that it was a pair of bracelets covered in a tiny cherry print. (Fortunately, she does like them now.)

I hoped that TLM would feel better about her second present from Santa, presented to her at the Chinese pre-school Christmas party. It was a green tartan handbag in the shape of a scary monster (it even had bloodshot eyes and sharp teeth). I'd bought it with my 6 year old niece in mind, but changed my mind after seeing the battery-operated voice-changer (3 different voices!). Well...I was very extremely wrong. TLM hated it. She even started getting teary-eyed and whiny - though that might have been also because she was a bit tired. Anyway I felt like a terrible failure as gift-selector.

Then my niece did something really kind and lovely. She offered TLM her present of Dora pens, declaring that she was too old for Dora. TLM was once again all smiles. And when I offered the niece the rejected monster handbag, she was all smiles too.

Body double

I'm thinking of getting a dress form, to help me with my sewing. I feel like I shouldn't 'cos they aren't cheap 'round this part of the world - around 350 bucks - but I did source one that's about 60 bucks cheaper (this is it here).

It would certainly make clothes-fitting way easier (unless I'm making trousers, because those things don't have crotches or legs), and I'd be able to learn how to design by draping.

But on the other hand, maybe it's still an extravagance. I've made do okay so far, and anyway fitted tops and dresses tend not to be very flattering on me. So maybe I don't need one.

The boy says I should get myself one and call it a Christmas present to myself. But my taste in prezzies doesn't normally run that expensive.

I dunno I dunno I dunno...

pirates

There is this shop I walk past on my way to work called Calico Jack's or some such name. Being where it is i.e. in the middle of boho-ville, I have never been inside. The shop window is always full of freaky spider-web patterned tights and tartan trousers a la Westwood, which I find highly amusing and sometimes even quite cool - but not anything I would wear. In other words, it is probably too young for me.

So I went in today and found that it is in fact a pirate shop (according to the chatty young man who charmingly called me darlin'.

Apart from the freaky tights and the tartan trou and the safety pin-trimmed corset mini dresses, are:

• little hand bags in the shape of almost-cute monsters
• tins of plasters decorated with fairies, monsters or skulls and crossbones
• books of pirate tattoos
• cigarette cases covered in voluptuous gypsy women sporting eye patches

I even found a few things that I would like to get as Christmas prezzies for the niece and nephew. But first I have to check out the bong shop up the road - they have fake-tattoo ink and invisible paints that glow in sunlight.

V

We watched the first half of the pilot episode of V last night. I don't remember much of the original series, though I do remember that the one time I attended a sci-fi convention party, there was a rather voluptuous woman in a painted-on vinyl suit with lacing down the legs - just like one of the V characters.

There was no such costuming last night - no-one dressed like they couldn't decide between Catwoman and Liz Hurley in that Versace dress and tried to do both at the same time. But the serenely gorgeous Morena Bacharin from Firefly is in it, (so is Alan Tudyk but he dies in the pilot) so I guess the overall affect on male viewers would have been similar.

I read in some reviews of the show that the original series was kind of a reference to Nazi-ism, while, with the timing, the current series could be read as anti-Obama scare-mongering (death by universal health care!). But from what I have seen of it so far, the Nazi references are still very strong (not that it's a bad thing).

I'll give it another few episodes I think.

Call it the Northern hemisphere influence, or a late start to summer

I've never had my colours done, but I'm pretty sure I'm a Winter. I also seem to be a Winter in my clothing preferences. Maybe it's because now I'm older I am no longer happy to walk around in shorts and tank tops (well not in public anyway). I dunno - but anyway I do find it hard to get really excited about summer fashion, but am always interested in looking at great boots, jackets and dresses that go with black opaque tights.

So, while I ought to be focusing my sewing energies on, say, some cool summer tunic tops or - heaven forbid - aprons and whatnot to give away as Christmas presents...I am thinking of making a jacket.

Those peter pan collared jackets really appeal to me, but I have to find one that doesn't go all the way up to one's chin, which is a sure way get that no-neck look.
So here are some patterns that I'm considering:

New Look 6852 (the pinky coloured one at the bottom)

















New Look 6736 (the shorter one)


Vogue 8300 (the green one)

Vogue 8623

Actually, Simplicity 4412 would be perfect - but the shop that sells Simplicity patterns is too far to get to in my lunch break, and anyway it's out of print :-(
(which is why this is the only image I could find for it in the five minutes I gave myself)

My wallet thanks me for dithering

It's supposed to be a Libran characteristic to swing from one extreme to another (thereby achieving balance overall), and I wonder whether this explains why I splash out on $360 boots one day, but will refrain from buying a beautiful bit of fabric at $12 per metre; why I spent a couple of hundred bucks on concert tickets to David Byrne for the boy last Christmas, but this year am thinking of just getting him a joke apron.

The boy often tut-tuts me if we are out shopping together and I can't decide whether I want something badly enough to actually buy it. But I reckon such indecisive behaviour has probably save us tons of money over the years (making up for when I have cost us tons of money...).

Anyway, we have started the ball rolling on the getting of Christmas gifts for TLM - I got her several tubes of acrylic paints so that she can colour her skin and clothes...and maybe make a few marks on paper while she's at it. I plan to decorate a box to put them in (she loves containers), so she will always have a nice container for her painting gear.

Does anyone know how to paint a fairy?

Neil and Simon, we're coming!

It's been years since I've been to a Festival of the Arts event - the tickets are usually pretty expensive and anyway I've become such a homebody.

But Neil Gaiman and Simon Schama (of History of Britain fame) are two of the writers who are taking part in the Writers and Readers programme. I really enjoying Schama's History, while Gaiman is the boy's all time favourite auther.

So we are going, recession be damned!

yeah baby yeah!

I've been "reading" Fashionable clothing from the Sears catalogue - Early 70's. It's just terrific.

My first thought when I saw the word "Sears" on the library book spine, was that it couldn't be very interesting - after all, aren't they purveyors of el cheapo pre-fashion-conscious, mass-market American clothing? But I had a quick squizz and then checked it out. And in the last week I've been poring over every page, going goo-goo over the dresses, tunics and shoes.

What I wasn't expecting was that I could actually see myself happily wearing some of those outfits (but not with the corresponding hair-dos and make-up - and probably not in those synthetic fabrics).

Now, I was only ten in the early 70's. So you can't blame my sudden love for early-70's fashion on nostalgia (though I do remember flared trousers, and the advice in Woman's Weekly magazine was to avoid them if you have short legs). Although the recent 60's and 70's revivals might have something to do with it.

What I love are:

• tunics
• A-line dresses
• mary jane slingbacks
• crazy prints
• big, flappy collars
• contrast trim
• coats with topstitched like it was going out of fashion
  

I'm not so crazy about the dress-over-trouser look, but I was quite surprised to see it there. I'd always thought this was a recent trend started by Kiwi women who wanted to hide their bums. But there it is, in an early 70's American mail order catalogue. I guess American women wanted to hide their bums too, even back then.

It feels kinda cool to be able to slot myself into the late 60s-early 70's fashion peg. But I'd have to be careful to avoid the paedo-chic look, because some of those outfits are really only suitable for teenagers.

I've since gone back to the library and checked out the Early 50's version of this book, but it's not nearly so inspiring. It's probably because womenswear of this era was all about the cinched waist, and if I tried to do that to myself I'd faint.

Monday morning meetings

I don't know why, but I have an awful lot of trouble staying alert at our staff meetings. They are always on a Monday morning, when you'd think people would be at their most alert - but not me. I manage to keep my eyes open, but thank goodness I don't have to do anything other than listen and nod my head occasionally.

They must all think I don't do much because I never speak up to tell everyone what I've gotten up to in the last week. I doubt they think I'm just tired from my wild and crazy weekends.

On the other hand, afternoons are not a great time for meetings either because of the great possiblity of post-lunch drowsiness.

Perhaps there is no good time for a meeting.

A long and winding road

To recap: I started out with a pair of men's Lacoste faded denim jeans, which the boy had thrown out because the knees were ripped.

I had a grand vision of turning it into a shell top, sorta like the kinda you might to work under a jacket, but denim. A bogan corporate look, if you will.

Unfortunately, it looked very very bad on me.

And here is what has happened to it since:

I found two pairs of old jeans of my own, and decided to add them to the top and make a dress. The jeans were both different types of denim and different shades of blue.

I couldn't decided whether to go deconstructed and obviously made from 3 pairs of non-matching jeans, or to aim for a more sophisticated look. In the end, I put the whole thing through a navy blue fabric dye to even up the colours.

What I didn't forsee was that the white thread I'd used on all the seams and topstitching would not dye. Also, it was supposed to have an empire waist, but something happened there...
So now I have a very Seventies-look denim dress, perhaps a bit home-made looking but I guess that was part of the Seventies thing too, no?


Here it is anyway. I'm gonna wear it for a while before deciding for sure, but I'm thinking of adding either a minimal ruffle down the centre front, or else a row of small white buttons (blue would have been better but I got 3 kinds a blue goin' on here).

I know what I like, but I may not know anything about fashion

A friend of mine very generously shouted me a ticket to a design school fashion show. I was keen to check out what the creative young things are doing these days.

There were some nice tailored items that I could imagine being worn by fairly normal people in the street, many fanciful outfits that I thought belonged in the Wearable Arts awards and a few that were kinda uninteresting. There were clothes that made music when the models walked (cute, but potentially life-threateningly annoying), clothes refashioned from jeans (a nice idea but hardly original), and architectural constructions that looked like their creator was channelling Issey Miyake.

Obviously, the outfits looked like they were designed for 20-25 year olds.

Funnily enough the award-winning collections were, almost without exception, the ones containing the clothes I just didn't get and couldn't imagine anyone wearing outside of avant garde fringe theatre.

Although, perhaps some of my less-than-positive reactions were the result of fashion-fatigue. At 2.5 hours (with a 20 minute break in the middle), it was awfully long.

It was great fun though, and well worth the half hour walk in gale force winds to get there.

Finding gods

We've been watching a TV series called John Safran vs God. It's really quite interesting. Safran's an amusing Aussie who, in this series, explores a wide variety of religions around the world.

Although he's funny, he doesn't mock the faiths (okay maybe a little, but only occasionally). He's (mostly) genuinely curious and open-minded, whether he's trying to find enlightenment in a Buddhist monastery, participating in a Voodoo ceremoney or being smeared with chicken blood in an African magic ritual (to undo a curse on Australia's soccer team).

So, really, this show would be more accurately titled John Safran looks for God.

The last episode was really quite freaky. Safran decides that all his toe-dipping into the religious pools around the world may have left him vulnerable to demon posession and visits an exorcist. The freaky thing is that, in the exorcist's hands, Safran really does behave like there's something bad and weird in there somewhere. Even his camera crew admit they've never seen him act like that before. It certainly didn't look like an act to me. The whole thing ends with Safran, who is Jewish, giving into the exorcist's pressure to become Christian, as "the next step" in his cure.

Unfortunately, there's no debriefing afterwards - so we're left with no idea as to what Safran remembered of the experience later, or whether he regrets giving up his Jewishness.

A party

What a week - it started with funeral service, ended with yet another cold and in the middle was a (in my humble standards) great Guy Fawkes party.

The party was held at a co-worker's home up in the hills overlooking the harbour. She has this amazing house whose walls are almost completely comprised of glass and it sticks out from the hill like a big glass elevator on one of those fancy high-rises. I only knew the hostess and two others, but the other guests were really easy to chat to, so I had a really nice time. It reminded me of the old days when I used to go to parties full of strangers and pretend to be tiddly just so's I'd have an excuse to brazenly break into conversations uninvited.

At 9pm, we all went out onto the deck to watch the fireworks display on the harbour. Nothing beats actually being on the harbour, craning your neck to watch the lights explode like an imitation supernova, but even from the hills it was quite spectacular.

It was also bloody freezing, and all because I was too lazy to go downstairs to retrieve my jacket.
Is it just a coincidence that I've now got a cold, or is it really possible to "catch a chill"?

We said goodbye

Funnily enough, for a person who claims to have far too much black in her wardrobe I did not have a plethora of funeral-friendly outfits. Of course, it didn't really matter what anyone wore, because our faces were not exactly festive.

The place was completely packed; cars parked each other in and there weren't enough chairs for all the folk who'd come to say goodbye. The casket entered the room accompanied by a Maori chant which I don't know the name for - like a powhiri but probably different. Members of the family and old friends, often overcome by emotion, recounted anecdotes from the editter's life and reminded us of the qualities that endeared her to us - the super-quick wit, the scarily sharp memory, the ease with which she made friends and her way with children.

Of course, I teared up as soon as we arrived and didn't stop until the end of the service.

I would have liked to stay after the service ended; to join in with the the reminiscing would have made it easier for me to walk away with happy memories in my head. But I had to get back to work, so we said our goodbyes to the ones we knew - only to return because someone's little blue Chevrolet Cruze had parked us in (which no one would admit to owning, but which mysteriously disappeared soon after I made the request public).