Tuck it Good

Last weekend we drove up to Westchester County in New York to spend a few days with some friends who'd moved there last summer.  It was a lovely weekend, and I brought my turquoise gingham dress and the white florals dress, both of which were great picks for our activities.

Over the course of the weekend, however, I realized that both dresses were not as flattering or comfortable with the elastic treatment in the front.  When I got home, I decided to convert the elastic to bust tucks on both dresses.  Rather than let them languish for several weeks while dithering, I pulled out my machine first thing on Monday morning and got to it.  

It was actually a pretty quick fix--the white floral dress took a bit more time because I didn't quite get the tuck placement right on the first try, but it turned out okay in the end.

(Note to self: tucks that start too far below the bust end up making the dress look too big on top). I wish this dress photographed better--the colors really are much more saturated that it looks like in the pics.

In any case, I'm much happier with both dresses now.  I also took the bottom crochet trim off of my Buttercup dress (aka the Ascension dress) and like it a bit more now as well.  

In other summer wardrobe news, I discovered that my Pincushion dress has grown unwearably big (and never fit properly through the shoulders and sleeves to begin with) and that it feels too kitschy for me now.   I also found that my beloved thrifted rayon dress has grown slightly fragile, so I bought a couple lengths of fabric to make up into Dottie Angel frocks to replace them.  I'm going to keep the vintage rayon dress, but save it for wearing once in a while during non-hot months when it won't get as much hard wearing.  I'm hoping to work on those in the next two weeks when the kids go to camp and the days feel slightly less hectic.

Yarn Along: Summer Busy

~knitting~

(sorry for the lime green background--it was the only horizontal surface big enough to photograph the vest that wasn't wood colored)

I'm making good progress on my dad's vest.  I have to sew up the left shoulder seam and do the ribbing on the arm holes before blocking, but that is small potatoes at this point.

The neckline, however, gave me conniptions.  I think I knit it and frogged it about three times before I finally got it.  In the end, I think it works, but the method for putting it on was a bit confusing.

I'm poking away at the Hitchhiker scarf, but it doesn't look that different from last week.  I also cast on my husband's neck warmer while we were away this past weekend, as it is a completely mindless knit.

~reading~

I finished a bunch of stuff in the last week or two, including Journey Into the Whirlwind.  It was excellent, and I'm actually finding Shalamov's Kolyma Tales a bit rough going after reading it.  

I think Ms. Ginzburg's book has better pacing and a sense of...I don't know, hope, maybe? that Shalamov's book lacks.  His book is really hard reading--you get to the depths of human misery and the capacity to animalistic behavior given the right conditions.

I'm still working through Secondhand Time; the chapter I'm on is about the 1991 coup specifically, and it is kind of slow.

Making progress, at least.

I started and finished a brief memoir by Jana Heksel about growing up in the GDR in the 1980s.  She is a couple of years older than me, so we have a generational similarity that I appreciate.  I thought the memoir was quite good, actually.  At the beginning, I was tempted to think that it was someone who hadn't really reconciled leaving childhood behind, but actually, the book is more complicated and nuanced than that.  She talks about how the last generation of kids to grow up in the GDR are really third culture kids--they have the communist heritage and culture, but have had to learn how to adapt and live in the West, while their parents' generation got left behind.  She has to grapple with the longer history of Germany in ways that her Western counterparts didn't--the GDR taught that history started in the late 1940s, so none of its people really dealt with the legacy of the Nazis, for example.  She has none of the anger that many of the older generation have about losing everything they held dear, but she does lament the cultural isolation that her generation often feels, and sometimes longs for the way it used to be.

Speaking of Nazi Germany, I picked up two books on the Holocaust this week--KL came highly recommended as an exhaustive study of the concentration camps, and I happened to see Ravensbruck when I was in a bookstore recently and I found a cheap used copy online.  I have a few more tomes to work through before I crack these, however.

I'm still working on War and Peace, and have gotten into Part II of Volume 3.  The Russian army is marching inexorably toward Borodino.  There is a beautiful scene in Part I during Natasha's extreme grief over her behavior with Kuragin and her subsequent throwing off of Bolkonsky that didn't make into the miniseries.  After months of illness and thousands of rubles spent on various "cures", she spends a week attending all the services of the Church, and preparing for communion.  She attends the Divine Liturgy at the end of the week, recives the Eurcharist, and the sacraments of confession and communion are really what put her back on the path of physical health.  I wish it had been included, because it really sheds light on how her grief was so spiritual, and how the rituals of the Orthodox Church helped her to heal and move on from it.

~watching~

I finished the final season of Person of Interest, and I was pleased with how it ended.  I did think there were some narrative gaps in the final episode, but it was a satisfying ending.  I especially loved how they wrapped up Reese's story arc.

I started season 3 of Endeavour on PBS.org, and am going to start The Tunnel.  I really love Stephen Dillane, so I'm hoping this series will be worth watching.  I enjoy Shaun Evans' young Morse very much as well, and Roger Allam as Thursday is a treat.

I also started season 2 of Outlander (finally!)  I was so reluctant to start it--I don't know if I thought I'd be disappointed, or if I was just waiting so I could really savour it.  In any case, I think season 2 is extremely well done, at least so far.  I was kind of dreading episode seven, because there is so much sadness in it that is familiar to me, but I appreciated the way that they handled it, and I thought it was beautifully done.  It really did justice to the book and spoke truth to me.  I'm in the middle of episode 8, after they return to Scotland, and I get why people thought that one "jumped the shark" so to speak, but I think I understand why the writers changed what they did.  Dragonfly in Amber is an enormous book and to fit it all into 13 episodes is a feat indeed.

We've had a lot of busy the last couple of weeks, as we settle into our summer routine.  They are tearing up the street in front of our house to replace the water main and sewer lines, so that is a multi-month long hassle and parking headache. 

It's too bad because it makes a lot of dust and dirt, so we can't have the windows open during the not-super-hot part of the summer, but at least it makes for interesting window-watching!

It is also terribly humid (although the heat isn't too bad yet) and my legs are very swollen and numb, even in the morning, so that is a bit disconcerting.

Our neighborhood pool opened last week, so we are spending a lot of time at the pool this week, taking swim lessons and having some water fun before the older three kids start camp next week.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Talking Tuesday: Ken Myers and Mars Hill Audio

My husband and I have become great fans of Ken Myers and his Mars Hill Audio.  Everything I've read from Myers is articulate and thoughtful.  I confess I'm not a great aural learner, so I've not given his podcasts the time they deserve, but my husband has really enjoyed them.  Myers' most recent letter to subscribers was excellent and I decided it was worth excerpting here.
 

"Sociologist Christian Smith should have secured a trademark on his phrase "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." First appearing in 2005 in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, the phrase was originally coined to summarize the ways American teens described their own religious beliefs....In the last decade, pundits have frequently enlisted "MTD" to describe--and lament--the vague form of piety that is shared by a vast number of Americans, and not just teens.  God exists, he wants us to be good, he's not involved in our lives unless we want him to be, the aim of life is to be happy, and good people go to Heaven.  These are the basic affirmations of the MTD creed.

'The "T" in MTD should probably be interpreted in light of Philip Rieff's 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic.  Early in the book, Rieff asked what might become of societies that are so deeply opposed to maintaining moral restraint on behavior "that all communications of ideals come under permanent and easy suspicion."  In Rieff's analysis, modern societies are distinguished by their definition of the good in terms of personal freedom and happiness ("a manipulatable sense of well-being") rather than divine commands or natural law.  This ethos in modern culture is one of the factors that makes the MTD creed so plausible and intuitive.

...

'Unfortunately, it is possible (and in the opinion of some people, downright desirable) to understand one's personal life as a devout and theologically articulate Christian while thinking about public matters--politics, economics, education, technology--in terms that fulfill the creed of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  When Christians speak about encouraging "human flourishing," for example, do they have in mind social ends that reflect the centrality of Christ in all of reality (cf. Col. 1:15-20)? Or do they tacitly assume that the highest goods in this life are capable of definition and achievement apart from any distinctively Christian affirmation?  Is Christian belief a source of content for defining the common good, or is it simply a motivational tool that encourages some of us to work for what all of us want?

'The moralism of MTD affirms that people should be good, but it leaves defining "the good" up to individuals.  Christian theology makes it clear that what it means to be good is part of a larger account of the kinds of beings we are and the kind of reality we inhabit.  When Paul was in Athens at Mars Hill, one of his first public claims in that pluralistic setting was an assertion that God was the maker of the world and everything in it.  That is not just a "religious" claim; it is a claim about human nature that has consequences for all social and cultural life.  It's not just about morality but about metaphysics, about the nature of things.  Modern culture's moral confusion is a function of its metaphysical mistakes, so Christian championing of the common good thus requires more than moralism.

...

'Paul's Mars Hill address includes Christian eschatology as well as Christian metaphysics.  He informs his audience that something has happened in history (the Resurrection) and something will happen in history (final judgement) that should order all of life.  Contemporary Christians are often tempted to present the Gospel in a more therapeutic manner as a story about personal healing and happiness.  The telos described in the Gospel is a renewed, healed, and united humanity, anticipating a grand and joyous wedding feast and a glorious kingship fulfilled.  By contrast, the telos of therapeutic modernity is more individualistic; it is finally about the triumph of the will, not the triumph of the King."

~Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio Listener Newsletter, Spring 2016

*I'm still working through my notes on Crawford, and am fast coming to the conclusion that I'm not going to be able to cover it in one post, so Talking Tuesdays in July may be all Crawford, all the time.

**On a different note, I'd like to offer up a new blog I just started following, by an American man married to a Russian woman who just moved to rural Russia with his wife and family.  His writing is articulate, thoughtful, and is fast becoming one of my favorite blogs to read.  He reminds me of my past life there, and of all the things I miss about living in Russia; I especially appreciate his everyday observations.  He's only been blogging for a few weeks, so I recommend to read back to the beginning of the blog to get the background on why they moved back to Russia, as well as the journey there and getting settled.  His most recent posts on politics and Orthodoxy are fascinating stuff.

Yarn Along: A whole lotta watchin' goin' on

~knitting~

Worked some more on my Hitchhiker scarf this week--I find it helpful to switch between projects so I don't get bored, particularly since I tend toward patterns with easy stitches.

Making my way up the front of my dad's vest--the little marker on the right is at row 67; I have to make 93 rows to match the front before I start binding off for the arms and shaping the v-neck.  So, nearly there!

I finished the back of my Sulka cardigan, but haven't cast on for the fronts.  I'm considering working them at the same time, just to save hassle.

~reading~

I'm dividing my reading between some relative fluff, and some heavy Soviet-era stuff.

My mother immediately absconded with this book when it arrived in February, so I'm just now getting around to it (she returned it to me in May).  It is a light but interesting read, and I have Witness2Fashion to thank for the recommendation.

I started Ms. Ginzburg's book and have hardly been able to put it down--it is so compelling and utterly devastating.  I did have to set it aside one night because I was starting to feel a bit paranoid about the world, and figured I needed a little space.

I'm still working through Alexievich's excellent book.  I'm finding this one a bit harder going than the Cherynobyl one.  The Cherynobyl book just grabbed me by the throat and I had to finish it in two days.  This one needs a more leisurely pace--the stories are more varied and longer, and span a bigger topic range.  Fascinating stuff, though.

I've got quite a reading list going at the moment, full of Soviet literature, memoirs, and basic history, plus a few tomes on East Germany as well.

~watching~

Speaking of the GDR, I watched the first episode of Deutchland 83 and found it quite interesting, but I'm not sure if I want to commit to the rest of the series.  I generally enjoy German films/series about the GDR (The Lives of Others, The Promise, Good-bye Lenin!, and Barbara are all high on my list of foreign favorites), but I don't know.  I'll keep it in reserve for a rainy day, I think.

Whilst working on various and sundry knitting projects, I devoured a British miniseries called The Game.  It is a spy thriller set in 1972, with MI:5 at the heart of the drama.  The whole thing has a lot of great twists and turns, and I really loved the set piece.  Plus the casting was quite excellent.  It has a LeCarre kind of feel to it.

I watched Labor Day with Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, and while I found the basic premise to be slightly unbelievable, I still enjoyed the movie overall.  I thought telling the story from the son's perspective was interesting, and kept the shots and narrative quite tight.  When it opens up near the end of the movie, it is a revelation.  There are some emotionally heavy things in the movie that I wasn't expecting exactly, but it gave the story weight and truth.

I rewatched Sunshine, with Ralph Fiennes, another favorite of mine.  I still find the sweep of that movie entirely engrossing, and was reminded anew of how much I enjoy Ralph Fiennes as an actor.  I showed the first hour of that film to my students when I was still teaching Modern Europe in grad school because it vividly illustrates all the changes and themes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe.  

I also rewatched The Girl with the Pearl Earring over the weekend and enjoyed that very much.  It's been a long time since I read the book, so I can't remember how faithful the movie is to it, but I thought the way the movie was shot was fantastic--every shot is like a painting, so beautifully done.  I loved all the subtle details in each frame.

I started season 3 of Peaky Blinders, but I think I need to watch that in paces.  The show is very well done, the casting and acting are top notch, but it is very gritty, and I have to take that in small doses.

I finished season 2 of Endeavour (what can I say, my endoscopy/dilation laid me up for a week!) and loved it.  I'm eager for season 3 to start on PBS this weekend.  There is another series on PBS that intrigues me called The Tunnel that is set to start this month as well.

I discovered that Netflix has picked up a few episodes of Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting and watched that a few afternoons when I just wanted something soothing and quiet.  Ponchik watched one or two with me (she was on a nap strike a few days this past week and I was desperately tired from everything after the procedure) and kept asking about where his hair was when the camera would cut to a shot of his hand painting. 

I've been on my own with the kids a lot in the last three weeks (hence the large number of series/movies watched--evenings are long and I don't sleep as well when I'm on my own!), but my husband is back now for the foreseeable future, so hopefully things can settle down again into our summer time routine.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Talking Tuesday: Crawford and the Attentional Commons

I'm still working through my notes on Matthew B. Crawford's excellent book, The World Beyond Your Head, but how's about I leave you with a little appetizer to whet your whistle?

A great deal of the book is focused on how our attention is constantly being diverted by external forces, and how those externals have a negative impact on our well being as humans.  Crawford works through a lot of examples of how this plays out, sometimes to devastating consequences.

Writes Crawford:

"Yet, it does not occur to use to make a claim for our attentional resources on our own behalf.  Nor do we yet have a political economy corresponding to this resource, one that would take into account the peculiar violations of the modern cognitive environment.  Toward this end, I would like to offer the concept of an attentional commons.

There are some resources we hold in common, such as the air we breathe, and the water we drink.  We take them for granted, but their widespread availability makes everything else we do possible.  I think the absence of noise is a resource of just this sort.  More precisely, the valuable thing that we take for granted is the condition of not being addressed."

Crawford notes that the right to not be addressed is being constantly trampled upon by global corporations eager for eyeballs on advertisements; every blank space, every quiet moment is slowly being monetized.  That monetization has a tremendous affect on our ability to attend and self-regulate.  Crawford goes on to say:

"Self-regulation, like attention, is a resource of which we have a finite amount.  Further, the two resources are intimately related.  Thus, if someone is tasked with controlling her impulses for some extended period of time, her performance shortly thereafter on some task requiring attention is degraded.

Without the ability to direct our attention where we will, we become more receptive to those who would direct our attention where they will--to omnipresent purveyors or marshmallows [referring to the famous "marshmallow experiment" of the 1960s]"

~Matthew B. Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, pp 11, 16

Stay tuned--I'm hoping to strategize some ways to reclaim attentional commons, even if only in the home, or in small ways, plus I have a lot more I'd like to write about the book.

~wiws~ Cherry Blossoms

Can you stand one more Dottie Angel frock?  Yes?  Good.  This is the last new thing I made for my summer rotation (although I think it was one of the first dresses I actually sewed for it--I think I used this fabric to test the pattern redraft of Simplicity 1080; I wasn't especially attached to it, so I figured it wasn't a great loss if it didn't work out)

This dress was what convinced me to go back to bust tucks.  I tried elastic on this dress first, and it just looked weird, no matter what I did.  I was almost ready to chuck it, when I thought of trying the bust tucks again and that saved the dress!

I used Art Gallery fabric, rather against my better judgement.  I've worked with Art Gallery's mid-weight cotton line several times before, and I've never really been pleased with the end result.  My main issue with Art Gallery fabric is that while it is technically quilt-weight fabric, it actually feels and behaves more like shirting weight poplin.  Which is fine if you want something crisp and structured, but that really isn't my style.  It ends up feeling too fussy and fitted to me.

I will say that I think the fabric works better in dress form, and I think this will be a fine summer dress, however.  It was 85 degrees by 7:00 a.m. this morning, and humidity is back in the 80 percentile, so I had a chance to test it out in the yuck.  I'm headed to church in a little while, so we'll see how it holds up to little child wrangling for two hours.

I think this was also my first go at a kangaroo pocket.  I drafted my own and have been pretty happy with it.  It is different than patch pockets, and goes much faster, but I think it only looks right with certain prints.  One of these times I'm going to try inseam pockets on one of these dresses.

I did worry that the fabric would wash me out, but I think the pale blue background works with the blue undertones in my skin.  Plus, pale dresses in the summer heat are a must.

Just the facts:

Cherry Blossoms dress: Art Gallery fabric (via etsy), Simplicity 1080 (modified), self-drafted kangaroo pocket, bias tape, elastic

Shoes: Dansko via ebay

Earrings: Ireland

Necklace: inherited from my gram

Summer Separates

Some days I feel like I can't get a good photograph for no love or money, and then other days, they all turn out well and I have to weed out some!  This was such a day (and sorely needed after several days of rubbish photo sessions)  It is supposed to be a corker today (the couple of days of weather respite appear to have been a welcome blip on the weather map) and the next week looks to be warm and humid.  So it goes.  We do live in The Swamp, after all.

It does make me grateful for the new ductless AC on the back half of the house.  It isn't the same as central air, but it does keep the temperature in the house a more constant 80 degrees, as opposed to the 85-90 degree in-house temps we are used to the in the summer.   I'll take it!

As for my clothes today, I am wearing a faux-Liberty lawn blouse from the same Robert Kaufman London Calling line as my other lawn dresses this season.  I debated about making this particular one into a dress or blouse, and decided I could use an additional blouse more than another dress.  

I sort of bought the twill to go with the blouse, but it will also coordinate with my Strawberry Fields blouse and a few other things in my closet this season.  As I said, my palette this summer is heavy on the turquoise blue and red.  I think this blouse will look nice with my red twill skirt as well.

Originally, I was going to make a straight-up Portrait blouse, but then had the idea of using just the top half of my Dottie Angel frock, with modified side seams for better fit, and a curved bottom hem.  I did it on the fly, so I'm not sure I could exactly replicate it, but I am pretty happy with the fit!  There are no darts or other shaping, but the fitted side seams help that a lot, I think.  

This is probably the best fitting skirt of the rotation, but it still has a few little wrinkles on the back side.  I'm probably overfitting it in the back, but I can't stand skirts that are too big in the waist, and it is quite challenging to get the right shaping between my hips and waist with the darts.  I do think the longer zip helps on this skirt. 

I did make a little sewing discovery while cutting this skirt out--I saw an online photo of someone's pdf skirt pattern ready to use, and she had cut the darts out on the paper pattern.  I thought that was absolutely brilliant!  I always find transferring the darts to the fabric to be the most pesky and error-prone part of the cutting process, and being able to just transfer them while I was chalking the cutting lines was so much easier.  I do think it contributed to better darts on this skirt.

I thought I had written down all the changes I made to this skirt, but I fear I wrote them somewhere random and cannot find them now.  I try to write it all in a black notebook that I use to plan projects and log writing ideas, but I made this skirt during a distracted week in May.  So it goes.  I do find that I have to fit each skirt individually anyway, because the fabric behaves differently, but still, it is nice to have a reasonable starting point.  Hopefully I can locate my notes before I have to make another one.

Just the facts:

Liberty blouse: Robert Kaufman London Calling lawn, Simplicity 1080 (shortened, modified), bias tape

River Twill skirt: Robert Kaufman Hampton twill, Anne Adams 9481 skirt pattern with McCall's 6361 pockets, petersham ribbon interfacing, all purpose zip, dress hook and eye, snap

Earrings: etsy

Shoes: Saltwater sandals

Deco dress

Thank goodness it is Friday, amiright?

Nearly done the dress parade for my summer rotation (I know, I hear a collective sigh of relief from the interwebs).  I think I have one more dress to show (plus a couple separates)

This is the Deco lawn dress, from the same Robert Kaufman lawn collection as my Liberty dresses. This is one of my favorites from this rotation.  The print on this one reminded me of some Deco prints from the 1930s, hence the name.

The colorway was a bit tricky to photograph--it is a deep coral color, very pretty, but since most of my back drops involve a lot of brick, it is hard to find a place with enough contrast.  So it goes.

What to say about this dress?  Not much.  I used the bust tucks, the slightly lower back neckline, back elastic--pretty much similar to my other Liberty dresses, and several of my other summer dresses.  I think the shaping came out quite nicely on this dress.

Since the weather broke, I'm finally starting to shed some of the water my body has been holding.  (4 pounds in 4 days, so far)  It feels nice not to be sloshing around so much.  I still have a couple of pounds of water to get back to where I was before I blew up like a balloon, but at least things are headed back in the right direction, so to speak.

Because lawn is so thin, I found it best to use a low number needle on my machine--I may have even used a stretch needle, because lawn does have a bit of mechanical stretch to it.  

I know I'm kind of a one-trick pony these days.  I'd apologize, but I'm not really sorry.  I wear almost everything I make now, and I'm pretty happy with most of it.  I am happy with the mix of ready-to-wear and me-made in my closet, and I think that is a good thing.

I made all my summer dresses a tad longer than I've been making these frocks, because I realized that I really prefer slightly longer dresses (43-45" is my ideal), mostly because I want my knees covered when I sit down.  I have short calves but long thighs, so that means a longer skirt length to accomplish this.   I often have children climbing all over me and the best way to avoid a major wardrobe malfunction is a bit of length over the knees!

I happen to think the slightly longer length is a little more flattering, but who knows, maybe I'll change my mind again next year--I seem to go back and forth on hem lines from year to year.  

Just the facts:

Deco dress: Simplicity 1080 (modified), Robert Kaufman London Calling Lawn, bias tape, elastic

Teal cardigan: Express, via ThredUp

Necklace: flea market

Earrings: Target

Shoes: Dansko via ebay

What's Up, Buttercup?

I admit, I may or may not have titled this dress Buttercup, just for the blog post title.   The fabric is from the Buttercup line at Cloud 9 fabrics, so that had a bigger role, but still.  A good blog post title is not something to sniff at.  Because that sort of thing is important, you know. <snort>

In any case, I greet you all on the feast of the Ascension of our Lord!  I'm off to church in a little bit, so I'll try to keep this brief.  We had a big storm yesterday that broke the humidity and heat (finally!) and it is a breezy 60 degrees today!  I wasn't expecting it when I got dressed today, so I was scrambling to find a cardigan to throw over this.  The liturgical colors for today are white, so I thought this dress was perfect.

 

I decided to experiment a little with trim and ties on this Dottie Angel frock.  My first attempt at ties, on my very first Dottie Angel frock, didn't go well.  They looked really strange on me, and hit me at a weird place on my torso; I've been reluctant to try them again, but I had some crochet lace that was a perfect match for the fabric, and I thought the light colors could use some contrast, so after a bit of waffling, I decided to go for it.  I think it works!

I did have a very hard time getting them even from one side to the other--I think I took them out and moved them a few millimeters about four times!  I do kind of like the ties on this version, but I think that is partly because they are so far to the back, and also I think the wider crochet lace helps keep it all smooth.

I edged the pocket facing with the same lace and am very pleased with how it came out.  

I also put trim around the bottom, and it was difficult to get the lace "caught" in the seam and keep it all even along the edge.  I'm still not sold on the hem trim, and may end up taking it out, but I like the rest of the effect.

The fabric is a mid-weight cotton, and feels quite nice against the skin.  It behaves well, doesn't wrinkle too badly (I took these after a fairly long school drop off--traffic was terrible this morning!), and despite the pale color, I think it suits my complexion well enough.  It's not my favorite dress from this rotation, but I will still wear it and enjoy it.  

I decided to add this tealy-blue cardigan from the spring into my summer rotation because it goes well with this dress (and none of my other summer cardis work) and with the Liberty #3 dress.  With the sudden change in weather, I may need some layers for a week or two.

I'm still recovering from the dilation earlier this week--it has been slower than some of my other procedures, and I'm still having a lot of difficulty getting food down.  It is a little better every day, but everything still hurts on the way down.  I think the fact that it is getting better is a good sign.  Probably just needs a few more days, and then we'll see.  Everything is still swollen and inflamed, so it is hard for me to evaluate how successful this one was.

Just the facts:

Buttercup dress: Simplicity 1080 (redrafted), Cloud 9 Buttercup fabric, vintage crochet lace, vintage bias tape

Axcess cardigan: via ThredUp

Necklace: flea market

Earrings: gift (thrifted)

Shoes: dansko via ebay