Work in Progress Wednesday

Still in dress-o-mania sewing mode here, now working on Simplicity 2250 for Thalia's Easter dress. We found some really cute fabric at JoAnn's for this:



Sort of hard to tell what's going on with it on the hanger. I don't actually have the straps sewn on, the hem done, and a bunch of tedious little details taken care of, so no on-the-body picture yet.

The pattern was originally a contender for prom dress, but no more. If you look at the pattern envelope it looks as though it's sort of a cross-over bodice with all sorts of folds. Well, every stinkin' one of those folds is a meticulously marked and stitched dart, tuck, or some combination thereof. Also, the asymmetrical waistband is stitched with 5/8 inch seams -- it has as much seam allowance on the back as it has fabric on the front (why not 1cm, aka 3/8,seams to reduce bulk?). The 1 inch elastic in the upper back serves no elasticizing purpose I can discern -- just adds bulk to the seams.

The bodice is underlined AND lined, although the underlining pattern is actually the exact same as the lining pattern. I reflected on this and decided the 2 layers of lining-type fal-de-ral would be important with a sheer fashion fabric, since seams could show through. In our fabric it didn't seem necessary. Plus Thalia want to wear this to swing dances, which tend to be rather toasty affairs, so 3 layers of bodice (plus extraneous fabric from all the %^(*$ darts and tucks) seemed a bit much.

Thalia disliked the long ties in the back. Removing them would've made the top of the zipper possibly wonky. Plus I thought a center back invisible zip was sort of dippy, so we left off the ties and moved the zipper to the right side. Used the wider straps instead of the spaghetti straps (better for swing dances).

We also ditched the asymmetrical skirt -- on the pattern the right front and back has pleats while the left front and back has gathers. It struck me as silly, sort of weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird. So out that design detail went, to be replaced by gathers all around.

Overall, much bulkier and dumpier than originally envisioned. Currently a strong contender for stupidest pattern I've ever sewn, what with the overworked bodice. Also, why did the bodice of Simplicity 2253 fit her almost perfectly straight out of the envelope, while size 12 on THIS Simplicity pattern need to be taken in over an inch in the bodice, and is STILL baggy? The styles are such that the fit should be similar.

IN the meantime, prom is a week from tomorrow, and no real clue as to what she's wearing. And no real time to shop, what with Holy Week and time-consuming Girl Scout stuff happening this week. Stay tuned to see how this turns out.

Edited to add picture, admittedly with shrug over it so you can't really see the bodice (which might be a blessing):

Quick Look Back at the Weekend

Okay, I didn't have a camera this weekend, and I didn't have a chance to blog until now, but I did want to mention the most inspiring thing that happened: pick up day for April Showers. It's a Girl Scout program that distributes bags to houses one weekend, then comes back the next weekend to pick up the bags that have been filled with personal care items -- you know, that stuff that SNAP (food stamps) can't purchase but you will be judged harshly if you don't own and use, like soap, toothbrush, deodorant, combs, etc.

So, Saturday was windy and cold, and it was pick up day. Yeesh. We went around our assigned neighborhoods, picked up all the bags full of stuff (some people included food). Went to someone's garage, out of the wind, to mark out UPC codes and count how many items we picked up (Juniors got over 400 items, Seniors had over 1000). Then took them to a shopping center where I saw the most amazing sight of the weekend -- out in the cold and wind, dozens and dozens of Girl Scouts and adults sorting thousands of items into packing boxes (supplied, I assume, by Allied van lines) and then loading the boxes into Allied moving trucks. Wow. Y'all, the weather was crappy, and these people definitely had more appealing things to do with their time.

IT WAS SO COOL to see so many people (and corporations) work on this.

Thalia ended up spending most of the day on this project, both picking up bags and sorting paper products (you can't buy toilet paper with food stamps). Admittedly, though, she still felt energetic enough that night to go to SLUH's one act plays (SLUH is St. Louis Univ. High School -- the same place that she went to the dance a couple of weeks ago -- apparently hanging out with the SLUH crowd is becoming a regular thing)

I know I complain about Girl Scouts a lot -- many, many MANY things the organization does drive me crazy. But this was a shining moment for our Council, something they get right.

Homeschool Report

The major news here is that APOLOGIA HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY IS FINISHED! And Thalia was running around rejoicing that she never has to use another Apologia science book again in her life. She thought it was often silly, and the author's writing style got on her nerves (his sins included using "poisonous" when he meant "venomous", and using superlatives when he should've used comparatives). On the bright side, all labs were done in a classroom setting, which meant that there were several dissection specimens to compare, not to mention that it didn't smell up our own house.

Also finished is High School Composition 1, which was based on IEW, a writing curriculum we have never used nor have much desire to use. Her final research paper was on space opera. I read through it, and will be interested to see how the teacher grades it.

Thalia is still working on Microsoft Office, Art, History and Lit. of the Ancient World, and Geometry. We're going to do a half credit of Logic when some of this other stuff gets finished up. She's done enough Phys. Ed. to count as a half credit -- which I think might be the most we'd put on a transcript -- learning about weight lifting, floor barre, yoga, and various other techniques used by physiotherapists.

In the meantime, Annabeth took her new bento box to co-op classes with her:



French toast (sprinkled with powdered sugar) cut into bite size pieces, a line of fresh broccoli, then layers of ham, cheese, and scrambled eggs. The butterfly is ham and cheese. Eaten with chopsticks. She was amazed at how much food was stuffed in the little box.

At some point in the past few weeks we finished Story of the World 4, the modern era. Depressing with all of the wars, but on the bright side I knew how to pronounce most of the names in the later chapters because I remember hearing them.

Annabeth has been working this week on her creative writing class project, so we've skipped work in Writing with Ease. She continues to work in RightStart Geometry and Life of Fred fractions. She's decided to start up Mango French again (Mango is an online program available through our library's website). And she's spent much of this week working on various Girl Scout badges covering science, small business, crafts, art, writing and social studies.

Plus piano, voice, dance and theater classes. But no actual performances, thankfully. Well, except choir, but that's not a major event.

So, onward into the weekend.

The Weekend So Far

Friday night Thalia had a dress rehearsal for Clue down at Crestwood Plaza, so Annabeth and I took her there, arriving just as classes at The Clark Academy, which is located next door to the place we were going (Dayspring -- old Eddie Bauer store, and Clark is in the old American Eagle), were letting out. Many shouts of delight and "HEY, we haven't seen you guys FOREVER!" as we unexpectedly ran into Irish Dance friends. Fun.

And no trip to Crestwood is complete without a visit to Animegroll, which is just around the corner from Clark and Dayspring. Annabeth selected this bento box and bag for less than $3.50 each:


Catbus purse in the background from previous shopping trip to the store.

Annabeth and I spent much of the rest of the evening plotting lunches to out in the box. She made French toast on Saturday morning, and I think a piece is going in Monday's lunch with some scrambled eggs, ham and cheese, and broccoli. Or not -- who knows what inspiration may strike when faced with the blank canvas of the empty box.

Anyway, Saturday night was the actual performance, for which Thalia wore her Peacock Dress, Simplicity 2253:




Another look at it:



We left out the big ribbon clumps on the left shoulder, and stuck a bunch of peacock feathers on instead. Also added a spaghetti strap to the right shoulder for that extra feeling of security while playing World Map Twister with Colonel Mustard:


These 2 did the best job in the entire performance. I think they were trying to out-crazy each other.

Afterwards there was rejoicing backstage:


And then a trip to Ted Drewes -- several hundred other people had the exact same idea:



The less glamorous parts of the weekend featured picking up thousands of sweet gum balls from the front yarn so we could sort of drag a lawn mower through it. Thousands more still need to be removed. Ideally one of tonight's predicted storms will down one of the trees (ideally plunging it deep into that area of zoysia grass that's creeping over from the neighbor's, and killing both tree and grass-- both sweet gum trees and zoysia grass really need to be banned from planting around here).

And tonight -- beginning on an Easter dress.

Weekend

Friday night: SLU High School Sophomore Spring Semi-Formal



Thalia went with a friend of hers who claimed his mom was forcing him to do this. I think his mom was pretty smart to insist -- most kids this age are fairly clueless about how to take a date to a dance, and therefor this is a great time to learn because everyone is just being awkward together. Better now than at age 25 when everyone else seems to have figured it out already.

Thalia had fun. She noted that it was the first time she'd been to a dance with such a high percentage of guys (SLU is an all-male school, so it was a one-to-one ratio). She also commented that her escort could give lessons in chivalry to other guys, what with the wrist corsage, the holding open of doors, etc. etc. I need to tell his mom that.

Saturday morning: make up class for Clue.

I had gotten Thalia's Mrs. Peacock dress nearly done by then -- Simplicity 2253 by Jessica McClintock :



We're trying to balance slapping it together because it's a one shot costume, and actually doing a decent job so people don't think I haven't any idea how to sew.

They needed a makeup class because the teacher had gone to Great Britain for spring break and had trouble getting back into the U.S. Not to be confused with all the kids in our church's youth group who went to the Dominican Republic on a mission trip and had trouble getting back into the U.S. Or Thalia's science teacher who went to Italy for spring break and had trouble getting back into the U.S. All had different reasons for the hitches, but, really, what a weird sequence that for 3 days straight we were hearing about people missing flights, getting delayed, etc.

Anyway, the show is next week, and Mr. Body hasn't memorized his lines. This may seem to not be a problem since he is mostly a dead body, but, really, IT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. So Mr. Body came over to our house Saturday afternoon to work on lines with Thalia.

SIDE NOTE: The show is April 9 at 7pm in the Dayspring at Crestwood, which is very near Clark Academy (that is, east end of Crestwood). TIckets are $6.

That evening Thalia and Mr. Body went to a Teen Trivia night (this was NOT a date, okay?). Their table won, which was pretty cool

In the meantime, Annabeth had gone to a Bronze Award meeting at a friend's house. And the mom suggested (ahead of time) that whoever wanted could spend the night. So, of course, Annabeth spent the night since she's now at the age where that's the coolest thing possible to do, especially with this group of friends.

Which all added up to Rick and I having a Saturday night to ourselves! Woot!

Sunday: Ballpark Luncheon and Silent Auction Fundraiser for Thalia's choir, which is going to Colorado in June.

Although most of the items in the auction were Cardinal-related, we ended up winning tickets to a Bach Chorale performance, and also a set of voice lessons for Thalia. Rick is somewhat bitter about missing out on the Cardinal tickets for the Saturday before Easter. I'm hoping the weather will be crappy that day so he doesn't keep going on and on about it. Crappy weather is a definite possibility ... remember how we were having a mini-blizzard last weekend so everything ended up cancelled? Today it was 90F with high winds. Gack.

In the afternoon Rick took Thalia out to teach her how to rotate tires on my car. Did I mention that she has her learner's permit now? So she's learning all about cars, and hopefully now has somewhat of a clue how to change a tire.

Now the weekend is winding down, and we're checking to make sure the basement is ready for if/when the tornado alarms sound later tonight. The past 50 hours have been pretty busy, and I'm ready to conk out.

Homeschool Expo: In Which We Once Again Display Our Geekiness

Last week was the local Homeschool Expo, which is a conference devoted to homeschooling. I usually avoid things like this like the plague, because the idea of voluntarily going to a place that is crowded, noisy, and involves lots of shopping makes me jittery (I also dislike going to the mall, particularly at Christmas). Plus at a conference you actually pay for the privilege of going through that particular hell.

But the kids' Musical Theater classes were presenting pieces from their productions -- Annabeth's group was doing 3 songs from Mary Poppins and Thalia's group was doing some numbers from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown -- during the Talent Show, so we HAD to go on Thursday night, which is the free night when all the vendor stands are set up and thus even MORE people come into the place to browse and buy. Gah.

Add to this that Thalia and Annabeth have never really been aware that the Homeschool Expo exists, so they were naturally curious as to what it's all about. I logged onto the Expo website to prove what a waste of time it all was and discovered, lo and behold, that Jim Weiss was going to be there. Yeah, Jim Weiss, whose audio books we've spent hours and hours and hours listening to -- THAT Jim Weiss. Thalia grew up listening to him tell stories via our stereo. And thus began the kids' campaign to go back to the Expo and hear him talk. Also, there was a seminar on high school that really did sound interesting once I actually LOOKED at the schedule rather than just simply dismissing it as silly. So we bought passes for the Friday and Saturday sessions.

And arrived Friday morning to hear Jim Weiss tell us about historical heroes. Amazing stuff. He spoke for an hour or so, without notes, pausing at one point to mention that he really hadn't planned this out -- he was just seeing where the stories went. Afterwards we left for lunch, and the kids spent some time pulling out our old cassette tapes from Chinaberry Books that had been our introduction to his storytelling years and years ago.

In the afternoon we went back. The kids went to a session in which Mr. Weiss was going to explain how to weave a story, although apparently he asked the kids whether they wanted to learn THAT or just have him tell more stories, and the kids voted for more stories (although I have the impression he did explain to them some of what he does). In the meantime, I learned about the various kinds of test that high school students can/should take.

The kids wanted to get some of the Greathall Production CDs before we left. I sort of wanted to wait until Saturday, but it was apparent that the stuff was selling like hotcakes. So we selected some to purchase. And I asked if I could snap a picture:


"You gotta know -- you're a rock star in our house!"

And went home with plans to return Saturday afternoon for his final talk. But, alas, the snow started falling after lunch, and we would've been slogging back to the Expo during the worst of the storm. So we stayed in our cozy home, secure with our stack of new CDs -- I'M SO GLAD I LISTENED TO THE KIDS ABOUT GOING AHEAD AND BUYING THEM FRIDAY!

We're thrilled that we met another one of our heroes -- seeing Rick Riordan last October was another one. What a banner year!

Performing

Irish dance performances. Lots and lots of Irish dance performances. I stole these pictures from a friend's mobile uploads, by the way, because I've reached the point of Irish-dance-performance-photo overload, and rarely bother.



(The following is the photo we used to figure out that she took off her missing headband BEFORE we left ST. Clare's, by the way, so it's sort of like forensic evidence.)


And then 2 performances of Mary Poppins, with Annabeth in the role of Mary Poppins. Here she is telling Mr. Banks what's what.


And now we're mostly tired, and trying to catch up on the laundry.