Tank Top Part 2

The first tank top attempt was a little blah. I'm not a huge fan of big, billowy tops so I'll never actually wear it. But, extend the pattern a foot and a half, add a tie in the back, and I've got a summer dress. Like everything else, it's only half done. There are some poofy issues in the back (excuse the black bra) that need some googling to figure out. The ties in the back are only pinned on and there is no hem but given one more impatient burst of craftiness, it will be done. Hopefully in time for next summer.

August is the busiest time of year for my hotel. It's like all other 11 months get crammed into this one. My GM likes to say "every day in August is balls-to-the-walls". It's a constant sprint, all day, every day and a mental brain-melt. And for that reason I cannot understand why in the little bit of free time I have this month, I can't stop spending it making little dresses and tank tops and stationary. You'd think I would just sleep.

My first atempt

I've got such a craft-bug lately. Below is my latest spur of the moment attempt.

I roughly followed belle epoque's pattern for this tank top. I wanted to have something I could make in about ten minutes, so I whipped out an old skirt from our give-away pile and got to chopping it up. It's not the prettiest looking skirt, so it makes some sense that it doesn't work out to be the prettiest looking top, but it was quick and easy and a nice trial piece before investing a itsy bit more time in making a top I'll really wear.

Despite apartment life, things can flourish

Until very recently, most of my plants have died from apartment life-- the lack of sun, the air con, the hard tap water, etc. But, check it out!

Things are blooming and leaves are sprouting! Between the plant lights and the fertilizer we might have some hope.

Day at the beach

Charming picture of our bums soaking up the sun. You can't quite tell in this picture, but we were surely the only ones rocking out on the beach in a faux-leapoard fur beach blanket.

A couple posing for a picture with their feet in the water. It's interesting to see "tourist" pictures being taken at home. Looked like their son was showing them around for the day.

This family was hilarious. The mom was kicking and cussing up a storm as her hubby picked her up and tossed her in the lake and the little girls just screamed the laughed the whole time.

I mostly sunned myself and took random pictures. Just loved this home paint job-- purple and blue like a mood ring.

Found on the beach

There is a squishy wooden ball on my drive home...

And it confuses me.



Really-- who builds a 12 foot tall bendy wooden ball? It was bizarre watching this guy slowly roll it around the yard. Then, about a week later, on my drive home I see that it's partially filled up with plastic milk jugs. It's a blurry, unsafe, taken-while-driving type of picture but... I just don't get it. Now the squishy wooden ball is somewhat deflated and depressed looking. Like that lumpy rock from the zoloft commercial.



For sunnier news, this weekend we went to my folks place for a bit of a pool party.

Hubby and I were in charge of filling the pool. It took a minute to figure out the hose situation-- twist this, turn that. Finally, I feel the hose start to shake, and in the same breath that I said "oh, I don't want to spray myself in the face", I point the hose in a different direction and spray my father directly in the face as he is standing next to me. Priceless.



The air was sizzling and the water was icy.



Standing was good. The few brave men that sat in the pool, kind of froze their tushes, but it beat the heat. And it was great fun watching them shiver and splash each other.



I just dipped my toes.

Eh Gawd I Can't Stop

Goodbye sweet wedding dress.



Hubby and I planned our elopement in less than a week--very little time to hunt down a wedding dress. The one I fell in love with, conveniently happened to be a $16 summer dress from Forever 21. I wore it to the wedding, rolled in the grass afterwards for wedding pictures, threw a tank top on over it to our after-wedding-dinner, wore it to a cousins graduation, out grocery shopping, park walking... and today, I've chopped it in half. The top part of this darling dress always required a more-complicated-than-I'm-interested-in type of bra work. So, I've loped off the top bit and made a skirt.



It's reversible between wedding-dress-white and some pretty blue knit I had in my material box. Besides the wrinkles and the loose threads I still need to tighten up the waist band so the dress doesn't become an ankle bracelet and figure out how to make the double layers look more purposeful and less like a wayward slip is inching down. Though, trying to figure out how to make finished edges and a seamless waist band on a reversible skirt gave me an awful headache, so I'm not sure that I want to work on this any more.



I also made some pomegranate-purple shorts and tried my had at an aqua dress. The dress came out so meh, I'm not quite willing to photograph it yet. Hopefully I'll have this sewing bug out of my system soon. Since I don't have a dedicated sewing room, my sewing machine has taken over the dining room table and my cutting/measuring/re-cutting area has taken over half of the living room. Pretty soon we'll be engulfed in scraps and pins.