uhhhhhhhhnnnnnn.......

.....pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffsssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhht

that was my week, ending with 20 hours of halucinating.

awesome.

also, why do tattoos, years old, itch? i feel like a crack addict sometimes randomnly itching....

sharon, the awesome, got me a hat block.

i've also gotten rid (well jsut pushed to the back of my closet) of all my skirts, dresses, and heels. yes yes i'll look like a dyke but at this point i've become completely apathetic as to the point of trying to get a guy or girl. the only one who loves me is my bike and we'll be together all summer. i told my boss that she'll know i've lost it when she finds me under one of the cutting tables groping a manequin and being jealous of another manequin in the next room a la I Am Legend.

yes, that's me in my prom dress.
thats right, pink pleather.

why they didn't see something was wrong with me then....

dramapalooza to the point of migrains and other pains

yes, i realize its been a month. i never made any promises that i'd be perfect. that and i have a migraine right now. despite the double shot of tylenol i took. its probably not helping that i'm blasting portishead right now. or was lighting things on fire in my apartment earlier and everything smells weird now. but...a month in review i suppose

on a personal level, my life has been fucked. i can't find a more polite word or better way to put it. it has sucked and its given me this lovely migraine and other people ulcers and other people other things and it just sucks. i think things are getting better, but i can only hope

on the accademic level.....i have my CFDA scholarship due in like 13 hours and i'm nowhere near done. i should be doing it right now, but my head is swimming so i took a break for the moment. i didn't try out for project runway for two reasons: one, virginia would have killed me if i skipped her class again, and two, i knew they weren't going to accept a student.

i have been sewing a lot. the fashion columbia submissions are due next week and i'm just pouring my heart and soul into everything. it helps me ignore all the failures and nuclear explosions going on around me. one of the teachers who i TA for saw me working on a dress and told me "that's so you". i wanted to storm up to him and demand to know what made it be mine, because i sure as hell don't know what my own style is. my millinery teacher wanted me to write an artist's statement and it came out absolutely seething and self depricating. i go through moments where i feel as though i'll end up working at borders or whole foods when i graduate, and then i jump to the feeling that in 13 months i'll be packing my bags for europe to become the bright young thing of fashion design. (on a side note the tynenol [not only am i aware i spelled that wrong, i'm going to type all of this rather than fix it] is kicking in)

i've been thinking about my senior thesis and all that entails and i have most of what i want to do figured out. john always tells me to "keep it sleazy" and it'll have something to do with that. but as a way of keeping myself preoccupied this summer, i'm going to make a pre-senior thesis and make a 5 outfit collection for spring 09, and have my senior thesis be fall 09. i'm going to start sketching it next week and probably start draping in the next few weeks, maybe get some muslins put together for the last of the model fittings before the semester ends. vogue is having a warehouse sale mid may, so i'll buy my fabric then. my color scheme for it will be flat black, powder (that word seems to be spelled really funny) blue, and canary yellow. i'm going to call the collection "vespula" after the genus or whatever that wasps belong to. it has to do with my bike colors.

speaking of my bike....
yes that's me riding around on the fashion design floor


i rode 17.5 miles yesterday in 75 minutes. i also went across the bridge on roosevelt in the street on saturday.








well then this is my "wearable art" project from theory apractice. its based on "the dog" by goya, as i talked about a while back. i finished it a while ago, but just haven't gotten around to putting up the picks. i finished the second project in theory and practice as well but i need to take photos of it still. i kept the pattern for it, which was definitely a stretch of my skillz with the flat patterns in that i eliminated all darts and turned it into kimono sleeves with a surplice bodice. it was crazy and i made the pattern in like an hour. and then i hand dyed all the fabric.

well then there's this goofy thing. its one piece of fabric. the final finished garment has 2 buttons and three seams. so i'm calling it my 3-2-1 dress. it was an interesting and challenging experimentation in geometery and fashion, taking something from the 2D plane and pulling it up into the 3D. i could babble on about math and all that, but honestly the only person who would get it would be my ex and he could easy beat down my work into a pitiful mess if i tried to take him on in that realm.



ok and that lump right there isn't really part of the garment. i just shoved some muslin in there because it was really funny how there was this random bump on the side that i later fixed.





so.....

i have to take photos of shtuff for fashion columbia submissions, so i'll get my photos up here so all 2 people who read this might see it. maybe i'll scan in my ideas for vespula as well. the new portishead album, if you have a chance to listen to it, is very much the mood of my two collections i'll be taking on in the next 8 months

finally a few pictures

so this is my broken hearted dress. its all a silk georgette that has a small bit of lycra to it, so i basically did away with the back zipper. as you can see, its super short. i started playing with some texture, just something that was not a princess seam dress. i hand dyed all the colors into it to make it look like an actual heart. i was just insensed the day i made it for various reasons that have....somewhat smoothed out, but i'm really proud of the dress. there's a jacket and a slip that go with it, but i'm displaying it in the columbia honors competition so not everyone was going to get it if i put all the components together. i doubt it'll win, but it'll be awesome just to have in a gallery out of the like 500 fashion design students
and this would be my sweater i made on the knitting machine. i made basically 10 yards of fabric and cut it into rectangles and then started pleating them like crazy (its really hard to see untill you get like 2 feet from it). nothing ends up being even and it looks a little sloppy but somehow really well put together. i'm in love with it, i think really because the sleeves sort of come out of the back waist, which is totally not how they were when i started out with just the 4 rectangles

a total mindfuck

so my boss lynda invited me and chad to acompany the Contemporary Fashion class on a visit to the SAIC's study collection. we both agreed we were embarassed to say we were from columbia. the instant we got off the elevator we were greeted with a display case with about 10 manequins, the first i laid eyes on had the same weaving texture as my broken hearted dress i've been working on/leaving out for everyone to come up and stroke my ego. all the seniors were like, hey kelly its your dress, do you know that designer? i got really defensive but it was just me and chad who seemed genuinely interested in what we were seeing. the other students that were actually from the class seemed bored by it all. it blew my mind, some of the stuff i saw. the head of the collections really made me feel ashamed to even call myself a designer, i'm just a manufacturer. how disgusting....so i went back to school and made my knit top for my theory and practice class that i was going to just piece together some rectangles of fabric i made off the knitting machine, instead i spent about 5 hours hand stitching in curved pleats into this thing. it fits like a mother fucking glove its amazing. sarah pointed out that i've begun to usurp the dress forms and my designs have started breeding, but if i can't put it up in the display case that HAS NOTHING IN IT FOR THE PAST YEAR i might as well have it up in the biggest lab.

i can finally wear my contacts again....

pardon me for not exactly being coherent, i just walked 8 miles in a skirt and 2" heeled boots. but it was well worth the vitamin D and meditative time. i went and walked south on the lake shore path to mcCormick place and back. i didn't wear any tights and probably about 3" of skin was showing between the tops of my boots and the hem of my skirt, but you would have thought i was wearing fuck me heels and a leather miniskirt the way that i was getting whistled at. chad's been saying at school that people are so used to long sleeves and high necklines that even a little bit of skin seems so risque that its pornographic. i went to walgreens on my way home and picked up some of that lotion that has the sunless tanner in it so by the time its shorts weather, i won't look awkward when i try to go outside
so on my walk to the red line, which i then discovered was rerouted to the elevated tracks for god knows why (i heard a red line caught on fire in the subway a few weeks ago), i discovered this at the southwest corner of van buren and plymouth court. there was an obvious seam on the underside which isn't as entertaining as the people who knit these things with dpns but still to actually find one gave me a bit of a kick.

i went up to the vogue in evanston, which is by far my favorite fabric store in the city. there was a big sale so it was a home crafty clusterfuck in there. i was the only person under 35 in there i think. everyone else was moms and grandmas making easter outfits for their kids or mother of the bride outfits or bad vogue "designer" patterns from 1998. having been looking at all the fall 08 collections coming up online and knowing that i'm in for six months of straight black clothing (seriously, black is the new black, and the new every other color in the spectrum, although black technically isn't a color, its a shade, just like white, but no white this winter) come octoberish, i kinda went nuts in the oposite direction

so i ended up buying just a whole big range of stuff, which i'm off to go drape right now

hey look its biological christmas!

i have been ill, actually only for the weekend so that's not much of an excuse. i'm only required to be at school 36 hours a week between classes and work but i find myself there more like 60-70 hours, so i haven't had much time for anything outside of the labs beside beer and sleep and the gym at 6am. after about 48 hours of being ill, i'm rather sick of it and ready to go back to being well. this is good considering a year ago i would have been out of commission for a week.

so i went down to pilsen yesterday to check out the Textile Outlet at 2121 21st st. erin lives literally around the corner at the hoyne exit of the damen stop on the pink line and i've traveled there many a time to visit her, but this was the first time i'd made the venture in the day time. my opinion of pilsen had been somewhat positive from what i had grown accustomed to seeing, but the arial view of the CTA revealed that it really truely is the shithole my upper middle class white northern suburban upbringing had lead me to believe. have i mentioned that i really love living in printer's row? as for the textile outlet itself, i was rather overwhelmed by all the STUFF. i had to take several tours around the place to really grasp a sense of what they had. i was pleased as to the crazy deals i got (like $75 for what would have cost $250 at vogue) but i was disapointed in the lack of selection of wools. now that i've mastered the pattern making skills of flats and draping, a lush italian wool makes me tremble. had i gone to this store say 3 years ago when all i worked with was knits, not knitwear but just cheap knits and lycra prints, i would have been estatic, but i couldn't help but feel that vogue in evanston had a better selection. but i suppose i must remember it is pilsen and there's a certain demagraphic they're serving versus that of evanston. but if i ever need the perfect trim or just the right zipper or any sort of chiffon, charmuse, dupioni, or wool crepe, i'll go to the textile outlet. otherwise, its vogue for me.

so last weekend i went all the way out to portage park. and now you may ask, well where the fuck is portage park? its close enough to ohare that you have to cover your ears when a plane soars over, and you can make out the faces of people in the windows. i went and checked out Midwest Discount Yarns. again, kinda pleased, kinda disapointed. yes i got one hell of a deal, but i don't think i would go back. i really wanted to jump into a big project on the knitting machine at school instead of waiting two weeks for a package to come and then another week for the lazy fucks in the dry cleaners to tell me i have a package.

On the way back from that (i think i spent about 6 hours on the blue line that saturday between my errands and then going to chad's that evening) i stopped and checked out the salvation army just off the grand stop on the blue line. holy shit this is my new favorite thrift store. it had sooo much stuff. i also loved that they separated all the old lady sequiny stuff into its own section. i almost bought one just for the shits and giggles of it. What i ended up buying was some sweaters (ralph lauren angora and a 100% cashmere) and a crazy knit dress that somebody made back in the 70's
sorry its hard to see, my camera isn't my biggest fan. but my mother said it looked like something her mother's friends would wear back in the 60's. i'm tempted to wear it today but i feel so blah being sick that it would negate the kitsh and cute factor

i also went into the basement of the salvation army into the "bric a brac" room. wtf is bric a brac ? it looked like a whole lotto junk to me. but i found a section of luggage, and as much as i am not a purse girl (the shoe fetish is enough for my wallet) i found an old samsonite carryon from the 70's. and for $2.06 after tax, its a whole lot of awesome. i know i can beat the crap out of it and it'll be just fine, plus when missy and i get a pug (as john told me last night, we're making it sound like we're getting married, to which i asked if it was making him jealous) the bag is big enough to hold him. i totally want to have a mismatched collection of vintage samsonite now

on another note, i have this crazy awful bolero jacket from the 80's that my mother owned (god knows why) in her late 20's. So i make people try it on just for shits and giggles when they come over to my place, as i have finally learned to have enough patience and self esteem to let people in my work place. chad tried it on and then took it a little too far

i suppose there should be other news but i'm just busting my ass at school working on things, to the point where i almost fainted pressing a collar on saturday. i got into a big argument with my ex, which started off with what was him just acknowledging that i was wearing jeans which my brain somehow warped into, wow you look like shit in jeans. what it basically boiled down to was, well why the fuck don't i call more often, which is what everyone else who knows this whole story has been telling me. i tried to dismantle my phone out of frustration yesterday.

hopefully i'll finish my jilted lover ensemble today and have some pics of it later. i feel like its one of my strongest pieces ever

in soviet russia, clothes wear you

so as much as i don't like to buy clothes, vintage and thrift store stuff is an exception. or hats. erin, john and i went up to the belmont stop, and if you're thinking what i'm thinking pinky, fuck yeah! that had me floating a good 3 inches off the ground all day. when john and i got off the brown line, i didn't recognize the area of weird crappy stores, sex toy shops with shady clinetelle, and random goth-opotomus that i had known since i first started columbia. instead of the blue light special courtsey of the CPD, i was greated with a jamba juice and a potbelly's in a trendy new apartment complex. families walked down the street with kids, the bars looked like upstanding establishments. i think the last time i went there was to get my last tatoo, and that would have been a year ago. nevertheless, erin and i went shopping on a fashion design student's budget after john couldn't find his credit card and went back to the city to find it (i couldn't find it in my apartment despite the logic that it would have fallen out of his pocket last night ;) . ) and we made out like kings. we went to the new belmont army surplus, having not been in it since it got torn down to make way for the new belmont platform. we tried on a miriad of military hats, with erin settling on buying a compass built onto a watch. i found a military uniform belt from the USSR with a big soviet star and hammer and sicle on it. i then also found a Soviet woman's military uniform. its robin egg blue and made out of a synthetic knit, but its just fascinating the way its put together. it looks great with the belt. its totally cut for someone with a figure like mine, rather than super skinny. then we went over to hollywood mirror and tried on like 8 million hats. its funny how i ignored vintage hats for so long. this one's felt in a sort of pumpkin color with a thick band of pheasant feathers around the browband of it. its got the little combs to hold it in my hair and, this was my fav, its from old school marshall fields and company. now i have 2 hats from marshall fields. i'm still hopin macy's dies and goes to hell and marshall fields can come back to its former glory.

so i'm feelin good with all of that, especially now that i think things are better between me and john. i showed him the muslin i was making as a representation in fabric of goya's the dog

and he couldn't offer any improvement, which really was a fair bit of praise. i'm really excited to make it. i wanted to get fabric this weekend, but then my friday night plans changed quite a bit and its too damn cold to go tomorrow. maybe i'll go before i have to go to work on monday and snag some stuff at fishman's and vogue.

i also think i've lost a few pounds lately. prolly because my diet is composed of tea, fruit, and cigarettes. feels good though. i just in general feel really great, considering i got my ass handed to me on several levels at the beginning of the week . i truely feel that this semester will be the best ever!

things sort of pick up occasionally, only to get bitched out by a stout british woman

soo.....i didn't call my ex, but had a lengthy conversation during my lunch break between classes with him of cabbage and kings. that left me feelin pretty good as things were on the awkward side for a.....well hell actually since october i'd say when i first started avoiding him. and then i had millenery (don't fucking ask me to spell that [on a side note, erin and i agreed that in some point in conversation i have to use the phrase "lets get to the dickin" and my phone has decided that instead of spelling "fuckin" it will now say "dickin"]) in which we commenced the making of the hats. now i know how to knit a hat, but the tackling of that form with the lines of a cut fabric and how to take on the form in pieces rather than out of a sculptural form. it would be like making a mosaic on a curving surface rather than a clay sculpture. i wracked my mind for a bit with the usual hesitation and anticipation i have when taking on a new topic but then jumped in with the ensuing fervor. our first project was hats constructed only from fabric so i'm making as i would like to call it, the 1 point perspective surrealist berret. you'll see


so, after discovering the cigarettes in my case from my grandfather were stale (never a good thing when you're stressed) i paced nervously in 711 and then got my ass handed to me over the work i'd done for the CFDA scholarship. oh and chad ditched me and erin when we were supposed to go have a beer. just one nice big cold beer, maybe a goose island 312 would be great. maybe i can be all sly and get my ex to come with and then get him drunk enough to come home with me.....if only. nah its just been a long week already. i kind of like that my classes are spaced out by 3 days so i'm still at school every day but i have a good chunk of time between to get work done. i mean its not like i'm doing a whole load of work being a TA...except that damn monday class. its like going on a two hour jog.

i think i'm going to go drape an acid green turban.

ok sorry i have the tv on in the background and its the pbs channel out of milwaukee channel 20 and there's this dude who talks about astronomy and he's soooo creepy. the production is so bad. its called "stargazer" and its produced by the miami museum of astronomy.

this is the creepy guy

ok back to the hats and hoping i can talk to him more tomorrow....he made talk of needing something draped and gave me the suggestive eyebrow with talk of making a facial sculpture. that's promising, not that i want a gigantic maze of copper wire that i put in my mouth....

whatever, on to hats!

a good excuse to call an ex....

so i must regretfully inform all of those out there who cared that, i did not get accepted to central saint martins. a year ago i would have been utterly crushed, but now i'm just gonna suck it up and finish my degree at columbia. I will reapply next spring to grad school there. which now means that i can avoid talking to my dad about wasting 3 years in chicago. oh chicago, i must deal with thee for 18 more months now. its...alright. I suppose as a consolation prize i have a huge portfolio thanks to the photography skillz of zoe. and as my mother pointed out, there really aren't any other juniors in the school with a reputation like mine. so the plan is to keep on truckin through senior thesis and graduate in spring 09, and then try to get out of chicago. BECAUSE I WILL NOT WORK AT WHOLE FOODS WHEN I GRADUATE. that's a scary thought, graduation.....senior thesis is a scary thought too, now that i think about it. and as much as i was applying to run away from all my troubles, my severely intoxicated friend told me to shut the f**k up about all of it and just call him. so that will be my evening tonight, even if its just a friendly phone call, i've shut him out far too long. and i need some intelligent converstation that pertains to something outside of fashion design, because i do not want to talk about the draping qualities of silk charmuse any more!

so for anyone who had well wishes for my application, i thank you. wish me luck getting out of here next year. as lynda has said, i either have to leave the country or move to LA to work with knitwear. and i don't really see myself as a california girl. but i will get my senior thesis fabrics from there. ugh and i have to get a graduation audit from bob blynn now. damn

painting on the zebra stripes

So i must say that i have the schedule this semester of....a normal adult. I get up at 6:45ish, go to the gym or sleep in till 7 and just take a shower, watch the news and get ready for the day, then go to school/work until 5ish and then hit the local bar with coworkers. It struck me at some point on tuesday. maybe its because i made a tailored suit last semester. or maybe its because i'd love to just throw it all out the window in an instant and take with me only what i could drag and check at ohare.

i saw the crazy one on the way out to have a smoke the other day. there was a long jaw dropped pause as i walked by, followed by a mumble about chopping hair. that was a good cigarette.

my skinny jeans fit yesterday. i was elated. they got new food in the hokin cafe, its all yuppie healthy, but it makes me feel good. well so do a few trendy beers, and its about the same price. i've been experimenting in new tea flavors in the morning after 2.5 years of english breakfast.

i got my hands on some vintage patterns as of late, with more coming in the mail soon (i need to have something in the mail other than 7 [yes i got 7 in one day i'm serious] credit card applications). i'm really quite interested in the way the patterns were put together back then. the ingenuity of some of the most simple garments simply blows my mind. of course i started with the hardest and worked my way backwards.

I started my hat making course the other day, and its probably the one i'm most exicted about, although my printing and dying teacher seemed like she was going to have a touchy feely aneurism when she found out i'm both in her class and the TA for her fundamentals of textiles course. Our first project will be soft hats, as in no buckram or felting, but straight fabric sewn together. most of the designs i came up with were loose and gauzy turbans. i found some acid green knit wool today at Vogue fabrics that would be perfect.

I've also decided that raw edges= great for students. i made a jacket in all of 45 minutes. take that project runway. of course it wasn't my pattern, but i did alter it quite a bit. and i made a belt. i'm wearing it tomorrow in a sort of victorian equestiran meets the freak i was at 17 affair. if it wasn't going to snow 18" tonight i'd wear it with heels but i nearly landed face down on Polk St tonight, so time to bust out the steel toe knee high boots.

icanhazowls

so there's owls living in the playground for the school in dearborn park II. they were really puffy because it was so cold.

in other news, i've been working from a whole bunch of vintage patterns that i got my hands on, which is totally awesome. they all have raglan sleeves, and just the construction has been really interesting. i got my hands on a couture pattern from the 30's that i spent a lot of time on.

i finished my first pair of socksthey're regia 6ply. i tried to make the stripes match up and they didn't, so when i gave up on that, they suddenly matched up. but now i understand why soooooooo many knitters make socks. its really rewarding to finish an actual garment in just a few days. i've already figured out what i'm doing for my next pair.

omg!

i know i haven't had the time to put up my stuff on here and all that jazz, but.....

norah gaughan commented on my stuff on ravelry! omg! even if i don't get into central saint martins, this is totally worth having Zoe take all those pictures. i think the only way that could get any better would be like if alexander mcqueen gave me an internship. that certainly brightened up my day considering i've spent the whole day sitting on my couch having jacked up my knee....somehow. it hasn't hurt this bad in years

a slight moment of peace....

so my stomach nearly ate itself on sunday with the stress of the shoot. but i want to strangle zoe because her photos turned out so absolutely amazing. seriously i want to just start jumping up and down and squeal. but i can't put any up yet because zoe asked me not to. so....they'll be up in a week or two when she gets them all tweaked in photoshop

as for me, i thought i'd have a moment or two of rest, but alas i am a fashion major and want to shoot myself yet again.

shit shit shit!

ack! sunday is very quickly aproaching an i feel as if i've gotten nothing done! i blocked my skirt last night and now my apartment smells of wet dog. i think part of my problem is that i like to hand sew everything so that takes centuries worth of time. so i'm going out of my mind workin on this shit. oh and did i mention that i'm working 12 hours today? it really fucks up all my plans. i mean....that's a HUGE chunk of change but really....i wonder if i'll get paid overtime.....unlikely. so yeah, i'm not going to get much in the way of sleep tonight and i plan on pullin an all nighter saturday night.....


so wish me the best of luck and i'll prolly have the photos up here next week

also, we came to the conclusion yesterday that perhaps Bush isn't as stupid as he seems, he might just be dislexic and unable to read a teleprompter

6 more weeks

so i have six more weeks of ....this

i was feeling lonely, but maureen reassured me that i don't need anyone to make me happy. i had a long chat with matt yesterday. it was nice. he's now a born again christian but he didn't try to cram anything down my throat. and i really did take what he said to heart. and i know he might think i pass off what he said about how he prays for me every night, but knowing that someone out there cares about me like that really makes me want to stop all my bitching about men and all those troubles.

on the i'm gettin the fluck out of here front, i've now got two models for my portfolio shoots and the first one's comin up real soon! i'm really proud of the woman and artist i've become. not in the sense that i'm like nah nah i'm better than you, but just that i'm happy with what is born from my hands and my mind. i'll never need children when i can give birth to these things.

yes, i do still struggle with the depression, yes sometimes things bother me, but i've fouind that the buisier i am, the better i am. i may be exhausted but its still a feeling of accomplishment. i'm glad to have the jobs and education that i do because i'm surrounded by people who care about me. i don't need a man or a woman to confirm anything in my self esteem for me to feel good about myself

taaadaaa, just in time for when i need my energy most, may i present Seasonal Depression!

i seriously fucking hate this shit. and chicago weather does not help. the next two months will suck, unless somehow prince charming comes out of left field and sweeps me off my feet. yeah i'm glad i'm still good friends with john because it certainly helps to have someone know how my messed up head works. but i totally blew off my tailoring class this morning, actually i've only missed an hour of it so far. if i finish my piped button hole NOW i can be there by 10-10:30 and just get a late arrival instead of an absense....*sigh* i just need to be more strict oon myself with this shit. i need to get over that men are assholes and somehow i always get treated like crap. i just need to focus on my work. i thought about quitting one of my jobs but i could never give up working at loopy and being a TA actually makes me get 10 hours of work done a week as opposed to bumming around my appartment. so yeah if you see me give me a smile because i'm bound to need it from here till december ....12 i think

so i said i was miserable at upkeeping these things

so yeah, here's a quick low down on what my life has turned into since the lazy and crazy days of summer

i'm taking 4 studio classes, 3 of them being senior level classes, 1 with the head of the department.

i've been very honored to have a job at both Loopy yarns and as a TA in the fashion department for columbia

john moved in with me, then moved out

i turned 21 and didn't have the time to party

i really got ticked off last night by an asshole who had been leading me on

so i finished sewing my first corset....and its super cute.....i've definitely learned a lot about my sewing skills and patience from all of this. its by no means perfect and i'm sure in a few years i'll look at it and laugh just like i laughed when i found a dress i made when i was 17. it doesn't really reduce my waist at all, which never really was a concern of mine because i already have a bitty waist, it was more about keeping my boobs in place....which it sort of does....that's the part i need to work on better, and i need to make it be tighter in the hips. it certainly is tight on my ribs....and i can see why some corsets go up in the back to cover up the pudge that appears.....i think if i loose some more weight, i should be alright . although i avoided using a busk on this thing, i realize that i do need one as its a bitch to get in and out of without pulling the laces out. now i'md just curious to see if the "corset diet" dustin described works....

eh...

so, somehow i managed to get commissioned to make a wedding dress for a girl i knew back in gradeschool. i was flattered that she chose me to make it, but then this sort of came at a weird time. i've been going through some serious funk lately, so to suddely have this girl who i knew back when pogs were cool get married, it kinda weirded me out. i mean, we're barely 21, it just strikes me as weird for her to be the first of the 30 or so of us that went to gradeschool together to get married. plus it also kinda felt like a nah nah i'm getting married and you're writhing on the floor in confusion. but i can get over that....i started smoking for no good reason and i'm beginning to think i'm getting addicted....but never fear i can always hop on the metra and "visit" my family and go to the gas station and grab a whole bunch of cheap cigarettes.

but yes, back to the dress. so i was looking at wedding dresses online, and i think i need to go into bridal design because this is a total rippoff. i mean, $3000 for a dress you will wear ONCE. psssht i sit around in my junior prom dress that i shelled out $300 for and use it as pajamas (yes, i'm crazy, i'm well aware of it). i mean, considering it sounds like she just wants an A line strapless princess dress, i shouldn't charge her that much, plus she probably will want like taffeta or satin (*puke*) for the dress so the materials won't be that much either unless it gets into bridal lace.

i'm really bad at keeping up with this thing

so.....now that i find i have 15 minutes to blow before doctor who comes on and i'm sitting here listening to the same flaming lips song for the past 2 hours, i suppose i'll blab on about something. lets see, in a moment of grace i broke my toe, and the next week i got my bike back together. consequently i found i now have a 24 1/2" waist. i decided to start making a corset. after lollapalooza i'm going to get the rest of my tattoo on my side done so that i won't get any more shit for it. i've been knitting like crazy and sewing a few things too, but mostly knitting. i just haven't gotten around to taking pics of everything. i hope to have my corset done by wednesday so i can wear it to that concert so that i won't have to constantly be going to second base with myself in front of poor gus. in a more realistic sense, i'd like to have it done by friday so that i can wear it on the weekend just to freak out my dad and get a good laugh from my uncle. one thing that i discovered today that really peeves me is urban outfitter's DIY looking shit they're selling. it looks like a 3rd grader put it together, an american 3rd grader. and they're selling sewing patterns too at $15 a pop when i know Joann fabrics sells that same brand at like $1 every so often. and they were shitty patterns too, but i'm free from that toil now.....and i finally got around to making a dress with pockets hidden in the side seams. i've just got to finish putting in the lining and put in a zipper and i'll be super cute. my hair's finally long enough to go in that bun thing i used to always do, so that's been stuck on the back of my head lately, except now i have bangs which i never used to do. and i'm covered in freckles and doctor who is on!