Meet "Dame Esmeralda" - Duct Tape Dress Form party

I'm doing a Craftsy class that includes a lesson on making a duct tape dress form. As you cannot do it yourself, the instructor suggested "have a party!" 

And so I did.

Four wonderful friends came around one Saturday afternoon last month (I packed the small boy off with my husband) and they wrapped me in duct tape.

Starting off. 

At this stage I was getting woozy.

Doing the sleeves.

Not long after we did the sleeves they cut it off me and we seem to have neglected pictures in favour of stuffing. While we did, we had a lively discussion about what to name my dress form and somehow we decided on Dame Esmeralda. I cannot quite recall all the conversational ramblings we took to get there. 

Done! 

Dressing her up in one of my shirts. Very happy with the fit.

Face off. 

There is something very confronting about seeing your body in a three dimensional likeness, especially when you are plus sized and not 100% happy with your body all the time. 

Esmeralda is going to help me fit clothes that I'm sewing but also help me design a crocheted cardigan. I've never actually had a dress form before so I'm looking forward to it. If I was going to do this again I might wait til Winter (it did get uncomfortable) and I might consider a less shiny silver armour duct tape. But these are minor issues. Overall, a very successful afternoon's work and at least one of the others is pondering making her own.

Craftsy crazy

My wonderful sister gave me two Craftsy classes as a birthday present last year, and since then I've thrown myself into it with enthusiasm. I bought some others for myself and got one from my father as a Christmas present.

Craftsy sells patterns and craft supplies as well as the classes, but the classes are the distinctive feature of Craftsy. Each includes hours of video instruction, often downloads of patterns or instructions, and ongoing support from the teacher in answering student questions. You can also upload photos of your own projects based on the techniques in that class. The video class format wasn't one I necessarily thought I'd like as I am a fan of book learning, but it has been much better than I expected. The Craftsy platform has a few quirks but is generally robust and makes things easy to follow. I love the ability to add your own bookmarks to the videos.

They've got an excellent selection of quilting, knitting, crochet, cooking, cake decorating and sewing classes and they've recently dramatically increased the number of fine arts and photography courses they offer too. They are adding new courses all the time. I have to remind myself that I don't actually have enough time, energy or talent to do all of the courses that appeal.

I've gone a bit wild with the free mini-classes as a result. I may have enrolled in... let's just say 'quite a few' and leave it at that.  I mean, free!! How could you not? Even if you did have willpower.

I particularly like the free cake decorating classes, as I have a lot of interest in cake decorating but am realistic enough to know I will never buy the supplies or take the proper time to get into it as a serious hobby. So buying a full class would be a waste, but I'm loving watching hours of free video on fondant and buttercream techniques, daydreaming about cakes I will never ever decorate in real life. Bliss.

A New Year and a new routine

Happy New Year!

New Year's Day is, of course, the traditional time to beat oneself up over the failures of the last year and make highly specific and probably unachievable goals for the next. The existence of N. has short-circuited both of these processes. As I've expressed on FB earlier this week, I read several 2013 retrospective pieces from friends and thought "I've been so unproductive... but wait, I grew a person in me." And I know that any goals I make for the next year will have to fit around caring for him.  (For instance, the first part of this paragraph and the last were written an hour and ten minutes apart, as N. woke up and I had to deal with changing him, feeding him and playing with him. It would have been even longer, but he is now enjoying some 'daddy cuddles' and I get a few minutes free to do this.)

It has been very easy to not do very much since he's been born, and not really have goals for the day beyond  caring for him except little things like 'do a load of washing', 'go shopping', 'go to parents' group', 'go to social event'. This is mostly because as Benj is taking long service leave, I feel obliged to let him enjoy this time off work too, so we've been lazing around a lot. Not to belittle the overwhelming demands of 'caring for N.' - we are finally on top of a lot of things, but his patterns seem to change every few days. We spend LOTS of the day feeding him, playing with him, holding him, settling him to sleep, bathing and changing him, etc. So it only seems fair that a lot of the rest of the day is relaxed.  But when Benj goes back to work, things will need to be different and I'll need to get into a new routine, one that tries to have a structure to my day and week and month.

I'm going to try to set up a 'crochet station' near his playmat, for example, so I can crochet for a few minutes while he's happily occupied. He doesn't really need more than voice input from me while it is moving around. If I have the project in a bag, it can just sit next to the mat and I hope I won't forget to work on it.

I think that is the key - having projects set up in easily accessible places so I can snatch minutes of time without having to waste them searching out materials.

I'm also going to vary things and listen to more Craftsy lessons while I'm feeding (mostly I've been reading on my Kindle or going online on my phone).  I've been going a bit crazy over Craftsy lately, which will be the subject of a whole other post.