serinde

Oddly, the woe of my evening was completely unrelated to work; my business day was moderately relaxed, not unpleasant, and tolerably productive. No, my grief can solely be laid to the door of NJ Transit, who:
- delayed trains going out of Penn Station due to congestion
- broke the train I was on (including the lights and A/C), inside the tunnel under the river, for half an hour
- fucked up the track switching between the tunnel and Secaucus, so once the train started working it still couldn't proceed
- once again shorted the trains on my line, so when I finally got on one from Secaucus, it was mad crowded

Thus, my 1-hour commute became approx. 2.5 hours.

Now, it is to be noted that while this is all vastly irritating, it's not actually devastating; so I can't quite explain why when sweh called to find out where I was, I burst into tears on the spot. Aikido has been lacking the past week, and I haven't even been able to make time for swimming, so maybe I'm steering perilously close to that crazy business again.

audiovile's day was worse. He stayed in for the evening and punched imaginary computer people in the head until he was ready for human contact.

Anyways, after suitable application of onion dip, pizza, and Dr. Who (I guess I can put up with this new guy...) I am feeling tolerably balanced, if awfully tired and slightly over-full. I hope to be properly productive this weekend.

Me: *zzzt* *snork* . o O ( goddammit, 7am, I had better get up )
audiovile: *zzzzt* *snork*
Me: *poke* Um, Steve, shouldn't you be up?
Him: I'm working from home today. I'm exhausted and I barely slept.
Me: I, and my own exhaustion from being unable to fall asleep due to your snoring, beg to differ.
Him: ... really?

Formerly, Steve only really snored when he had a cold or a severe allergy attack. However, in the past oh, 4-6 months, it's pretty much every night; and not just some heavy breathin', but the kind of loud snerking honks that make me think hardly any air is getting into his system. And this in spite of the fact that he's been on Allegra since March or so (which he says is making a difference for him during the day, at least). Is this that sleep apnea thing of which dire tales tell? I'm getting somewhat worried, not to mention tired of my choices of a) tossing & turning half the night with a pillow over my head or b) crawling into a bed at the top of the house...WHERE I CAN STILL HEAR HIM.

Beth lent me The Tudor Tailor and Elizabethan Costuming 1550-1580 so I could get off my tuchus and finish elibalin's full outfit. I am now filled with all sorts of crazy inspirational desire to make a whole bunch of clothes from this era. I am even having urges towards blackwork. CLEARLY, I AM SICK.

(I think it's because I have deep-seated needs for embellishment and shiny things, which my chosen century is somewhat more austere about.)

We've been working on the dress I wore for M & K's wedding (which was nowhere near done, and just sort of tacked and bodged into place--no one could tell because we are that damn good), because it is an awesome dress and deserves to be finished. And the goal was to have it done for arkham1010's wedding this weekend, because if there is no concrete deadline, we're likely to never get it done.

However, we still aren't. Last night the lining and the fashion fabric were together again for the first time, and Beth started adjusting the pleats & drapes, and we started making a list of just how much stuff is left to do, which filled a page in my notebook. And it's all hand sewing. That's not even counting that we're going to have to do another fitting session, because some bits aren't working quite right. (It's a very complicated dress, but part of the interest is that it looks very organic.) There is no way we can get this done by Saturday without taking shortcuts and half-measures, especially since Beth and I both a) have other commitments during the week and b) are bloody exhausted. Kasia wanted to try it anyways, but I put my foot down--I don't want another temporary fix, I want to do it right.

The only thing that irks me about it is that this means I didn't have to bail on the Bryant Park Movie on Monday night. Feh.

Work is such a fucking delight right now, I carved out five minutes I didn't have to get a whole separate icon for it.

When a level 10 empathy healer can't drum up trade for a mission team, it is time to go do something else for awhile. Laundry, perhaps.

Or, "sometimes a two-headed goat is just a random mutation".

I am working out, trying to get rid of the I Have Not Gone To Aikido twitches so I will be able to sleep. audiovile is running through TiVo'd music videos & keeping me company.

0:01: Your humble correspondent: Oh blech, it's My Chemical Romance. Fast forward.
Steve: Now, they did have one damn cool video. It might happen again.

0:45: YHC: ...this is kinda okay.

1:15: YHC: It doesn't suck. I...almost like it.
S: Yeah, it's sort of a departure for them, isn't it? It almost sounds like they went to a party, had a really good time, and then came home and wrote a song.
YHC: Well, it's still about the woe of teenagerness. But it's not *whiney*.

1:30: YHC: Wait. This is really familiar.

1:40: YHC: IT SOUNDS LIKE GODLEY & CREME.

1:55: YHC: "Life Is A Minestrone", in fact.

I have some several updates stewing around to post, but they are back-burnered for continued mail system follies and a concatenation of other work matters. That is all.

(I realized now I never posted part 1. Oops.)

I decided this year to finally make good on my promise of several years' standing to Claire to fit her for a cotehardie. (It helped that I finally feel like my skill might possibly be up to the task.) I had the first go at it in, erm, March I think? Whereat even after paying close attention to having been fit myself any number of times, and consultation with sundry online sources, I simply could not get it to work. So I called in the Marines, and after our usual false starts at trying to get anything scheduled, Beth and Kasia came over last night to set me on the true course.

My Big Damn Error was that I failed to keep a straight grain across the front. (Also, it is noted that using a twill for your first effort is perhaps making your path rockier than it needs to be.) I also cut away too much at the armholes, having forgotten the pull-up-and-out bias stretchy bit of managing the top front, and leaving not enough to pin the stuff you're pulling to, though that was not tripping me up in my first attempt because I wasn't doing that bit correctly. I also should have kept the bodice somewhat longer--7" below the waist was Beth's thumbnail guide; basically, long enough to go over the widest portion of the hip.

I was somewhat comforted to know that my other large woe, to wit when I had the subject lay down for the moving-boobage-up portion of the pinning and the entire back of the garment kept creeping upwards only to be discovered when she stood up that it was horribly awry, happened again this time, much to the chagrin of my panel of experts. The cause for this appears to be because the subject's waist does not markedly go in (her figure is exceedingly slender) and so the body's natural curvature doesn't hold it in place when gravity is taken out of the equation. This is not a problem any of the three of us have. Ahem.

Kasia's advice on how to deal with inevitable puckering was very aikidoesque. UNIVERSAL APPLICATION, YO.

A recap of pointers & ideas:

1) Keep the center front straight--even laying it out and pinning it on a table is a reasonable start.
2) Mark the grain line, and then KEEP THAT LINE STRAIGHT. Also, mark the cardinal points of the smallest point of the subject's waist at each seam. You can even make your grain line "ruler" at the smallest point of the waist, though of course it may wander slightly as you adjust things.
3) The curvature of the center back is super-important; fit it, pin it, and sew it so that you get as precise a curve as you can while you're pinning everywhere else.
4) That puckering often means you need to release pins along the side seams, but not always where you think you do. Listen to what the fabric is telling you, but gently direct it where it needs to be.
5) When in the lying-down part, you take the front shoulder bits, pull up, THEN out. You are making bias stretchies on the idea of making the excess fabric that you might otherwise have to take a breast dart for go into the fabric that'll be cut away for an armhole. (The more breastage, the more difficult.)

We did not finish, but it's getting there. (Note to self: dinner should be faster.) We are meeting again next week, at which point the fitting should be complete and I should be able to fly solo. Until I have hysterics about cutting into the actual dress fabric, anyways.

Steve picked this album up last fall based on the recommendation of some reviewer or other (I'm not clear on the details). As often happens in these cases, its arrival was preceded by him constantly playing a few tracks he'd downloaded; and as often happens in these cases, I was just sort of vaguely aware of it and 85% tuning it out. My general impression was "somewhat-goofy, almost-parody of country rock, with a singer just nasal enough to bug me".

In the interim months, I became aware of a desire to hear the whole album. So I would play it in the kitchen, mostly still not paying attention. Then I ripped it to my MP3 player and actually listened to it, particularly the lyrics. Now I can't live without it.