experimentation in regards to the ease of tight pants

shorty shorts with tights is my new uniform

Well I finished my thesis. And promptly the next week I got the flu and was dead to the world for like 2 weeks. Despite a whole week of on a diet of cigarettes, coffee, and no sleep, I completed everything and our photo shoot turned out spectacularly.

So yeah, this has been my baby for the past....uh.....Well I guess I sketched this up in the beginning of June during my digital photo class. It doesn't look too much like the early sketches, but I am happy with it. There is also a gown that was the bane of my existence for about a month, but we shot that in the second shoot which was this past saturday. Hopefully I can get my hands on the unedited photos this week and then I won't have the photos with the post work done until April. We shot all of my menswear in that shoot, which Fred graciously modeled for me, and everything came out perfect. I was telling him that sitting back and watching these shoots makes me feel like a mom sending her kid off to the first day of kindergarten.

So what's next? I have to have 2 collections done by April 11th (that weekend has become an apocalypse of sorts for me). One will be unisex urban cycling wear, which will be for my 3rd shoot in fashion styling. I'm going to base it off of the evolutionary path of the Proboscidea order, which is all the screwed up looking ancestors of modern day elephants. Possibly throw in my fav in the mix, megaloceros. But the second collection will be for the Hand&Lock competition this summer, but I also have to have it done by april 13th(awww my lil' bro's 18th bday) in order to enter for the Driehouse competition. So while I thought I was going to have a nice spring break of riding my bike and getting a tan and drinking some pbr, I will be spending it furiously sewing and embroidering.

Speaking of biking, Emelia died a bit ago. A winter of hard riding when she already wasn't the best suit ran her into the ground. I got a new bike, a Mercier Kilo TT Pro, which I named Barneby H Scotte. When I've got some cash, I'm going to have him powder coated, because the french grey he's got going right now isn't doing it for me. The weather is warming up and getting spectacular. Tomorrow is supposed to be 70 degrees, the first time we've seen that temp since Obama got elected. Needless to say I'm excited for the vitamin D boost.

Oh and the Andersonville Galleria opened after construction. I dropped off 7 of my hats there Saturday, so go check out my work and buy some stuff. I try to use all repurposed materials to keep the price down, since in this economy nobody wants to shell out $150 for a hat, but at $60 its a much better sale, and people feel good about recycling.

the ferral abyss

here's the creature in its natural environment, hipster art parties.

that's not to say that i've been partying. quite the opposite. I think this weekend was the first time i went out since like new years. I went over to the BC/AD show at Tandem, then the whole gang went to Dustin's bday show at BarbaraandBarabara. Good times, and good people.

so guess what i have been working on? yeup, that's right, thesis! I have to have it all done by feb 21st for my fashion styling class. EEP. especially now that i'm working on the knits part, i don't have enough roving, so I need to get my butt all the way out to Margengo in the next week or so. Definitely not a bike-able distance.

I trashed the kitchen with colored things while fred was out.

these dyes are fantastic. they do both silk and wool at the same time, which has definitely saved me money and time. it looks like sea salts when you open the jar up. my only problem was that the black reacted funny to my silk charmuse and now i have these orange spots on my linings. oh well, make it work.


as for what else i have going on, been busy busy busy. Its rare that i have more than 10 minutes to do nothing (hence why i've been gone for a while). We're in the last leg of winter and i'm pullin through for sure. the more days we have in the 30's, the easier it is to hop on the pony and ride. I've got a bunch of shows this weekend (and hopefully i'll be lining up a show of my own soon!) so i'll be riding about to those. and that saturday morning photo class. this past week i thought it might be a bad idea, but i sat through the class and realized it may be the best class i ever take in college.

and its still sinking in that in 14 weeks i will GRADUATE. defintely stickin around for a while here, but things are sorta fallin into place to stay here. It was reluctantly at first that i made the decision to stay, but now i'm glad i made the choice.

ugh, ok so what to do after thesis is done? another collection of course. I'm going to do menswear to go with my thesis, and fred's gonna model it for me. i totally want to have my dad's beautiful yellow lab in the photos for some reason. menswear can be so boring sometimes. and after that? another collection, this time unisex cycling/urban clothing. and after that? another collection. Hopefully me and alister will be doing a show sometime soon, we gotta talk it out with eman on thursday at his show, but i've become consumed with the architecture of bridges on goose island as of late. as the snow melts on my runs, the rust patterns on the metal is leeching into the ice and I've got a bolt of this wool voile that would make a perfect mini-spring collection. and i'd like to do several hats that are more art pieces to expand upon the idea. and all of that could be my final photo set for my styling class.

and did i mention on top of this that i'm planning the school fashion show? and i'm in a super intesnse history class as well?

AND BROKE

yeah, i need to sell some stuff, but there's some drama around that with a certain store in pilsen. grrrrr....more on that later

ur supermodels photos

Here's the photos, finally. So we had to go waaaaaay the hell out into the suburbs to shoot these, but i'm happy with how they turned out. all of the girls just had like prom dresses on and i had to build onto those with basically a lot of tulle and poly chiffon. i was a bit hesitant about it, but now that i see the final product, i'm pleased.
So this was one of the final shots, and as you can see, its the current ad campaign for them. i was standing just out of frame holding a reflector for hours shooting these since it was in an alley and there was no electricity

this is one of the pictures in Fashion Chicago Magazine currently

this was before a storm rolled in. It looks like a norman rockwell painting to me.

and here's the photo before it was made into an ad.

stylin

While I wouldn't say styling is my calling in life, its kinda fun. Its interesting to see another aspect of the whole industry, because without stylists, the public would never see those kooky photo spreads in the back of obscure fashion magazines from the UK. Lately, I've been doing some styling for UR Super Models and I finally got to see a few photos that we shot a while back. So go check out Fashion Chicago Magazine to see them. I helped out with the photo on page 12, as well as the ad on the last page. I'm slightly irked that they spelled my last name wrong, but that's ok, it happens sometimes. Certainly I've been guilty of mispronouncing names in the past. We shot again with the most amazing model this past weekend, and those photos will be up in the next issue of the magazine.

The shoot was in the The Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave. I've heard stories about this place, mostly in my nerdy binges of Chicago history on WTTW 11, but I'd never been in there before. I...was....speechless. It was the most beautiful building I have ever seen. I've been to San Francisco, I've been to London, I've been to Paris, but this, omg I want a studio here. Give me a broom closet if you have to, I'll be giddy like none other. I wandered around for ages. Plus I got to shoot with like the best photographer in the city, Robert Beczarski. He's so fun to work with!

I've got some of the photos from my first shoot, but there's trouble with uploading the pics. So I'll try again later, since they're pretty cool.

And in other news, starting in February, I'll be selling my millinery work with the Andersonville Galleria with Nouvelle Atelier. The store is closing for a few weeks to expand their space (dude this place is huge, and equally amazing), but there'll prolly be a grand reopening around Valentines day (i can't believe that that's already coming up). I'm really excited, its a great group of people to work with. I was really hesitant about staying in Chicago after graduation, but I think that the combo of seeing my designs being sold in stores and biking a hacked fixed gear through the winter have really reminded me how much I love my home and that I should let it nuture me for at least one more year. Plus the quality of Chicago fashion week has exploded in the past 4 years, to the point where it went from a novelty when I was a freshman, to this past year where it had a full spread in WWD. The opportunities in this city just keep getting better and better.

I'm really optomistic about my carreer in the next year, my personal life on the other side seems to be one clumsy setback after another. At least I have my two best friends.

two weeks into the era of my brain turning to mush

yeah I have 4 more weeks till school starts back up. It also doesn't help that in order to try to keep my room warm, I covered up my window with fabric before Fred put up that shrink wrap stuff, so my brain doesn't recognize that its daytime, so my sleep schedule is waaaaaay off. I just don't do well without school or a job. Also it doesn't help that I was sick for christmas. that sucked too.

so, as far as new years resolutions are concerned, I didn't go with the whole, oh I want to loose a certain ammount of weight kind of thing. Well, sorta. Its been almost a year since I started riding a bike in the city, and I've pretty much changed my whole way of life around it. I feel a lot better than I did a year ago, both physically and mentally. Its brought me a lot of self confidence, and a lot of fun. So my new years resolution is to compete (well just complete) in the chicago triathlon at the end of august. That gives me 8 months to train, which is more than ample time. I'm not worried in the least bit. And its not like I sit on my ass all the time and not get any exercise whatsoever. I can already do the required 25 miles biking no problem, on a fixed gear bike no less. And swimming, I was on a swim team when i was younger and worked as a lifeguard and swim instructor as high school jobs, so that's just about getting my endurance back up, because I know I can already swim a mile, its just about cutting down the time. The running will be the hard part. I got thrown off a horse when I was 13 and seriously jacked up my left knee. Before that I had been running 3 miles a day at home, which is how I lost a bunch of weight when i was in grade school. I'm just going to have to keep a close watch on how I take care of my knee, but I think that since I'm going to do my training so gradually, I shouldn't have trouble building up the strength. And I'm actually in better shape than I thought I was. All the biking and walking with Fred built up some endurance. I was able to jog/walk almost 4 miles this morning in like 50 minutes. A year ago you couldn't have gotten me to run more than a block at a time and I held myself back when I ran for a half a mile today. I'm really happy about this. I'm almost tempted to do the bike section all on a fixed gear, but we'll see when it gets to be summer and I start doing the swimming training, and how wiped out I get after all of that. It could be an excuse to go get a 10 speed, I've been thinking that would be my next bike purchase, especially since I'm still determined to ride to Milwaukee. By graduation I'd like to be able to do a 6 mile run and 25 mile bike ride together.

Definitely my main reason for doing this is because I've basically been handed a genetic death sentence from my mother's side of the family. Like that list of family medical history that they ask you at the doctors, I just say yes to everything. Its really bad. And my dad's side isn't any better, but I look at the health of my mother and her mother in comparison to that of my dad and his dad, and I realize that I need to take care of myself now in order to not be knocking on death's door at 50. Fred got me cooking a lot of stuff, albeit I still suck at cooking, but its all veggies and healthy stuff. And that's a start. I stopped drinking soda and juice awhile ago, and I stay away from a lot of dairy, aside from a glass of keifer, which is crammed full of good stuff. And I look at my little brother, who, not that long ago, was a little stick twiggy kid, and now he looks like he's gonna bust out of his shirt at any moment. That's definitely an encouragement, that my genetics do support getting lean and healthy. So I'm not looking to loose any certain ammount of weight, or fit into a certain size of clothing, its more of just being able to be strong enough to do this physical challenge. Seriously a year ago, the thought of riding a bike on the city streets, especially one of those awful hipster things, 20 miles, would have been pure fantasy, and yet I did it effortlessly the other day. So yeah, I'm lookin forward to it. I just gotta get money together now for the entry fee, a wet suit, those shoes that triathletes use, maybe a 10 speed bike, a summer bike jersey and shorts....

And as far as fashion stuff is concerned, although I feel like the past 2 weeks have been spent doing like nothing, I'm going to be sold (hopefully) in two boutiques in the Chicago area. One's up in andersonville and I've got an interview about that this weekend, and the other one is for sure in Pilsen and will be opening up in February. So when I find out more about both of those, I'll be sure to be jumping up and down about it. And I have a photoshoot hopefully a week from now for my grad application to the Royal College of Art (not like i'll get in, but its kicking my ass to do shit) so I'll have those photos in a few weeks.

and here's the dumbest cat on earth. she likes to chew electrical wires

less than 100 days till spring

ok its less than 100 days till spring. less than 70 days till the DTV conversion in chicago (not like i really care). less than 60 days left in my winter break. less than 50 days till obama becomes president. so what am i sayin? that soon it will be time for this:
i can't wait to put away the wool socks, the multiple layers of gloves, the knee high boots, and the thick coats. most of all, i can't wait to not be blown half off the cortland street bridge as i ride back from watching that crazy 3 story tall metal bucket pouring thing in that industrial park. or maybe i just can't wait to have a cycling tan again. its almost gone! arg.

oh god finally done!

oh holy crap, i finished the semester! and all my muslins fit perfectly. it was freakin great!
bear in mind that this is not my color scheme at all

Here's 3 of my 6 looks (i didn't have time to fit on the other outfits and dennis told me that my fit was fine enough that he was confident that it'd be fine) with the coats and jackets

this is my sweaterdress and leggings. you can't really see the seaming on the leggings but there's a double layer on the inside of the legs through the ass in the back (ideally i'll have enough fabric left over when its all said and done for riding in the spring[less than 100 days!])
this is my sweatervest with the leather skirt. there will be a long sleeved chiffon blouse that will go underneath it.

this is my top with leather pants. again you can't see the seaming but the top will be out of melton wool and chiffon and the pants will be black leather

here's lenny dickin around with another classmate's muslin. he also drunk dialed me asking about plain weaves last night at 5am. awesome

my boss gave me an xmas present (a freakin sweet candle that makes my room not smell like a dirty fixie and sweaty shoes) and the bottom of the bag was full of candy that i gave to fred.

seriously almost there....

last minute millinery work.....

dinner....

and these would be a fraction of the cats that i had to care for over thanksgiving break. it was more bs than i'd like to go into....