The Original Musings

And the new solo dress has been revised & updated!

Tomorrow we’ll be taking off for Cincinnati’s Queen City Feis.  This is her second Feis of the year and the first of two Cincinnati Feisianna each year.  She’ll be competing in six dances — Reel, Slip Jig, Treble Jig, Hornpipe, Traditional Set and Treble Reel — and we’re hoping for some more medals to add to the collection.  My mantle hasn’t collapsed yet, so there’s still room to cram in some more!

On a side note, this is one of the nice things about To-Shin Do — she wears her belts, and the diplomas hang on the wall in a frame.  No mantle crammed with trophies and medals and no covered boards loaded with ribbons to hang beside it! Speaking of which, she just earned her blue belt at the end of April.  Yes, I’m bragging.  I’m insanely proud of all of my daughters, their husbands and my grandchildren too, so don’t let me get started or we’ll be here all day!

She got new ghillies (soft shoes) at the Buckeye State Feis in Columbus and today she’s supposed to be getting new hard shoes as well.  Betsy at Ballinvilla had to order them in and they should be waiting for us when we get there.  Incidentally, Ballinvilla is our favorite shoe vendor — they sell both the Hullachan ghillies she likes as well as the Rutherford hard shoes she prefers — and I like to mention them whenever I can because they’re just such nice people.  Anyhow, back to the shoes … Although she’ll be wearing her new ghillies today, she won’t be wearing the new hard shoes to compete today …  she learned the hard way many years ago not to ever again wear new hard shoes at a Feis! At the end of the month we’ve got the Akron Feis, and then in June she’s got a Feis every Saturday (and one Sunday!) so both sets of those new shoes are going to be getting a hell of a workout!

You’ll find dress pictures in the gallery. It’s dress #9, in the solo dress album.  There’s before and after pictures so you can see the revisions the dress underwent between Buckeye State Feis and now.  The quick rundown … I shortened the dress, made the petticoat fuller, changed the belt to black instead of lavender (but kept the lavender bow to match the ruffle on the petticoat), added sequin trim on the bodice and around the neckline, and added AB Swarovski crystals in three different sizes to the bodice insert to add some additional sparkle.  I still haven’t decided if I want to scallop the hem of the dress itself, or perhaps add a row of sequins to the hem to add a little more glitz.  She wanted to go minimalist this time around, without any embroidery.  I did, of course, have to find a way to incorporate a butterfly into the design, so I used a sparkly pink one to hide the number clip underneath the belt!

The dress is made out of a really neat black faux velvet with deep purple gems woven into the fabric in a swirling pattern.  The bolt tag called it “Twilight” and I guess that’s as good a name as any!   It’s very elegant and it sparkles a lot even without the added bling.  The pictures really don’t do it justice — plus the lighting in the basement (where my sewing area is) blows chunks.  Too dark to take good pictures with just the overhead lighting and too bright to take them with my sewing lights on.  Maybe I’ll take the camera and try to get a shot or two of her today while she’s at the Feis.

I used the FeisDress pattern, but modified the skirt to leave out the kickpleats and stiffener.  There’s also no underskirt since there’s the petticoat.  It’s my second attempt at a fully soft skirt and I think it turned out pretty well.  The first one is the green and white one in the gallery which she decided halfway thru she didn’t like.  This time around she had a vision and I was actually able to pull it off!  (Yay, me!)

And now, bed … 7:30 is going to come really early in the a.m. — the Feis starts at 8:30, but looking at the stage assignments I don’t expect she’ll be dancing till around 11:00 or even later.  We’re going to shoot for 10:00 arrival (Missy wants 9:30 just to be safe, but I really think 10:00 is going to be plenty of time).  We’ll see how quickly we can motivate our lazy butts after we get up … and how many times I hit the snooze before I get the “NOW, DAMMIT!” alarm.  ;-p

I’ll post updates on my facebook and twitter pages throughout the day and full results here when we get home tonight!  Wish her luck!

Haven’t mentioned it yet

Been too busy trying to recover from this damn flu, and running myself ragged trying to keep up with the kid’s schedule, but …

Missy is dancing solo set dance at Oireachtas on Friday. Missy found out just before she got sick with the flu, and totally forgot about it (if you’ve had the full blown H1N1, you understand; if you haven’t had it, trust me, you can get so sick that forgetting things here and there won’t be surprising at all) so we didn’t find out till the Monday we were cleared for public contact again — that is, Monday the 9th of November.

Jeannie had bought Missy’s fabric for her new solo dress while she was here visiting — along with Missy’s birthday presents and agreeing to pay for the black belt club at To-Shin Do for Missy (see this post on Missy’s blog for details!) but I hadn’t realized she was going to need it yet, so I hadn’t started on it at all.

So, I am in the midst of a rush job. This fabric is amazing looking — unfortunately though, it’s not embroidering well, so we’re going with the bare minimum we can get away with and I’ll worry about reworking the skirt properly later on. AFTER Oireachtas. When I’m not still (a) trying to recover and (b) not rushing my ass off to get it done in time.

And of course she’s been having extra dance classes and workshops to get ready for Oireachtas — and she’s had To-Shin Do classes PLUS her graduation on this past Friday when she got her yellow/black belt. So I haven’t even been able to just sit down and work on it. I am finishing embroideries right now (knock wood! I’ve had to redo them so many damn times) and tomorrow I start putting it together.

Thursday is Thanksgiving dinner, here at our house, so I’m going to have to get it finished as much as possible by Wednesday since all I’ll have time for are the finishing touches on Thursday. She dances Friday morning. I wish her group was not till Sunday, give me a couple more days to work on it!

I have the Queen song “Under Pressure” stuck in my head right now … wonder why?!

A new project gets underway!

Last month Missy began making major changes in her bedroom. As soon as funds permit, we have a can of paint to buy, and then her room is going to finish undergoing a transformation complete with (here’s hoping!) stenciled walls hung with assorted sundry including embroidered kanji messages. “Believe” “Dream” “Dance” “To-Shin Do” “Ninja” (actually “Shinobi”) and so on. Just shy of a dozen. She’s talking about throw pillows with these words too! She also wants (yeahrightsure) a bean bag chair with all of these words embroidered on it. (That one ain’t happening.)

So anyhow, the transformation is underway and we’ve started accumulating the things we’re going to need a little bit at a time. Tonight, we got the stuff to make (hopefully!) stencils. (Including satin white paint and 14k gold metallic paint for the stencils as well as a silver/gold glitter spray for the ceiling — we still need to get room paint as well as rope lights.)

Knight Owl provided the kanji (incidentally, umm … I need two more — the one I sent you earlier in email as well as “God” please) and I did one of them up in a test tonight. So here’s the test run: 9488 deep purple stitches on white on white cotton. Whaddya think?

That, incidentally, says “Dream.”

This one for Missy to give as a gift

Wednesday, September 9 is An-Shu Hayes’ 60th birthday and they are having a party at the dojo that night after class. Missy wanted to give him something and after talking with one of the instructors about things he likes, the decision was made to create a golden dragon.

But first, the research! We knew that there were Asian dragons, and that they were different from the western style of dragons more often seen in this country — most importantly, Asian dragons are not winged. Well, turns out that’s not the only difference! Here’s some more info on Asian — and specifically, Japanese — dragons: In contrast to Western mythology, Asian dragons are rarely malevolent. Although fearsome and powerful, Asian dragons are considered just, benevolent, and the bringers of wealth and good fortune. The dragon is also believed to be a shape shifter who can assume human form and mate with people.

Chinese or Korean imperial dragons have five toes on each foot; Indonesian (and regular Chinese) dragons have four while Japanese dragons have three. To explain this phenomena, Chinese legend states that although dragons originated in China, the further away from China a dragon went the fewer toes it had, and thus dragons only exist in China, Korea, Indonesia, and Japan because if they traveled further they would have no toes to continue. Japanese legend has an opposing position, namely that dragons originated in Japan, and the further they traveled the more toes they grew and as a result, if they went too far they would have too many toes to continue to walk properly. These theories are rejected in Korea and Indonesia.

In both Chinese and Japanese mythology, the dragon is one of Four Legendary Creatures guarding the four cosmic directions (Phoenix – S, Dragon – E, Tortoise – N, and Tiger – W). They are known as the Four Celestial Emblems and were frequently painted on the walls of tombs to ward off evil spirits. The Dragon (Guardian of the East) is identified with the season spring, the color green/blue, the element water (sometimes also wood), the virtue propriety, the Yang male energy and controls rain.

A description we found several places suggests:

The Japanese Dragon has the head of a camel, horns of a deer, eyes of a hare, scales of a carp, paws of a tiger, and claws resembling those of an eagle. In addition it has whiskers and is able to ascend to Heaven at will. This is merely a general description and does not apply to all dragons, some of which have heads of so extraordinary a kind that they cannot be compared with anything in the animal kingdom. The breath of the Dragon changes into clouds from which come either rain or fire. It is able to expand or contract its body, and in addition it has the power of transformation and invisibility.

I don’t know about the head of a camel, but our dragon has whiskers, horns, big eyes, golden scales, and three talon-style claws on each of his paws, so here’s hoping he’s a fairly good stand in for a Japanese dragon! He consists of 33,118 stitches in 6 colors (metallic gold, soft gold, metallic red, metallic white, emerald green and sable brown) on black felt with a glitter wash. We matted it — behind glass to protect it from dust — into an 8×10 frame.

In addition to the one above, there are several photos (none of which turned out all that great, because he’s too damn shiny!) in this album in our gallery.

Missy’s graduating!

I just had to force Missy off her computer where she was – unbelievably! – working on a math assignment. Willingly — enthusiastically, even! She’s got to get ready to go though because we’re on our way out the door: she’s graduating to her yellow belt at To-Shin Do and tonight is the graduation ceremony. She’s so excited — I’m not sure which of us is more proud of her accomplishment!

After her graduation, Maggie is picking her up and whisking her to Cincinnati for the weekend. She’ll have her back home on Sunday in time for her music lesson and in-between now and then the little shit gets to go to Olive Garden and who knows where else Maggie will take her. Ahh well, she’s earned it!

Sorry for the silence!

Got a lot going on, not much time for blogging.  I’m hoping things will somewhat settle back down to a more normal pace after the end of the month.

A few quick highlights … I twittered (& facebooked!) but didn’t blog yet about Missy’s Lansing results:  11th in reel, 9th in slip jig, 6th in treble jig, 7th in hornpipe and 4th (with a medal and trophy) in treble reel.  She’s a bit irritated that she didn’t do better, but geez, this is just her second feis after 10 months of not dancing!  I think she’s doing fantastic and her TCRG is pleased as well.  I swear, she’s her own worst critic.

Missy and I have sketched out some solo dress ideas, the plan is to start the new season with a new dress.  This time we’re going to try something a little different, see if we can’t start a new trend!  I think we’ll be going with a traditional three panel skirt, though.  She wants a one-piece, I’m leaning toward a two-piece.  We’ll see what happens.  We’re both thinking blues this time around, something deep and rich.  We’re broke as hell though, so whatever it is will be from something I already have on hand unless I can get one of the three we have on hand sold.

I had a doctor’s appointment last week Monday with all the usual lab work.  Everything must be okay because I haven’t gotten a phone call saying come back in.  The bruise on my inner arm has *finally* started fading.  Take my advice and don’t get diabetes.  Next appointment isn’t till October and that’ll be the flu shot appointment.  Missy’s already grousing about it.

I’d say that next week we start back up the homeschooling and she’s starting 9th grade, but if the truth be told, she’s never really taken much of a break this summer.  She kept right on working and has gotten about 1/4 of the 9th grade work done already; she’s trying to get herself ahead enough to test out and graduate early.  She wants to take off a few years to work and save up some money and then go to college later on.  She has goals in both dancing and To-Shin Do that she wants to attain before she moves on to college work; she’s got plans!

On the To-Shin Do front, she’s graduating next Friday (a week from today) and getting her yellow belt.  (She’s planning on going for the black belt, and she has no intention of stopping there.  She’s decided that she wants to make this lifelong, she says that there’s more than just the belts to mastering it and her intention at this point in time is to just keep going.)  She’s done so well so far and I’m of course bursting with pride!  As promised, she’s gotten her tabi.  She tried to tell me she hadn’t officially earned them yet, since she doesn’t get the belt till the end of the month, but I told her to go ahead and start wearing them — and Mr. Norris concurred so she gave in.

She’s got a party tonight with some friends, the annual 4-H party.  And another one coming up – September 9 is An-Shu’s 60th birthday and there’s a potluck and party at the dojo that night.  She’s got a wall hanging planned for him, I told her I’d help her digitize it and then stitch it out for her.

The gerbils (Danny and Chouko) have another litter of babies — four of ‘em.  That brings our total gerbil count to 11.  The big hamsters (Houdini and Bess) have just had a litter of babies as well, our first set of babies from them!  We’re not sure how many there are, about 7 or 8 it looks like, but it could be more.  Bess is being very protective.  So our large hamster count is 2 plus however many babies there are.  Maggie’s already requested a set (boy and girl) as soon as they’re big enough to give away.  All of our small hamsters are past their fertile stage (for the most part, the females are only fertile the first year of their life) so we won’t have any from any of them.   Our dwarf hamster count is thus holding at 8 (well, 7 dwarves and 1 roborovski to be precise).

The doggies are *not* going forth and multiplying, because all three of them are fixed, and thank God for that.  I do not need puppies too!

I have a stack of articles bookmarked that I plan on blogging about — including one about the various Czars that have been appointed by The One, and of course there’s plenty going on in the world, I’ve just been too damn busy to write about it!

Bear with me and things will hopefully be back to normal soon!

Just a little something to share before I hit the hay

Today at To-Shin Do, Missy was informed that she will be receiving her next belt (yellow) in the graduation ceremony at the end of the month.

I had promised her a pair of tabi as a reward for reaching the goal (rather than my just buying them for her, she wanted to make them a goal to work toward) so she’ll be getting those too.

I’m so proud of her!

This Sunday is the Great Lakes (Lansing, Michigan) Feis.  If she can keep the high she’s got from the news about her graduation, she’s going to have a great day there, too.

Now what we REALLY need is to have a good day on the used solo dress rack this Sunday and sell one (or two … or all three!) of the solo dresses we’ll have up for sale too.  I’m going to put the prices down low in hopes of selling them without having to advertise them.  One of them is *never* worn, one has been worn about four times and the other one is her pink and black one that she wore for about a year and a half.  I figure I’ll put $300 on each of them and see what happens — hopefully, someone’s going to get themselves a bargain — we could really use the money (to pay for the graduation & the tabi if nothing else!).  ::fingers crossed!::

Leaving Wednesday, returning very late Sunday …

Missy and I will be out of town for the annual SimuCon convention in St. Louis. Blogging has been sparse of late as I’ve been spending most of my time getting things in order for the trip. Thankfully with Missy’s new dance schedule she won’t miss any dance classes though she is missing a workshop. Her ban is finally going to be up on July 10 and thank God for that, because she’s driving me crazy wanting to get back to Feis’ing!

Her To-Shin Do classes are such that she can go any days, it doesn’t matter which as long as she gets in two classes each week, so instead of Tuesday and Wednesday as she normally goes, she went today and will go Tuesday, thus getting in both classes. While at To-Shin Do today, she earned her training stripe, which means she’s close to her next belt, at which time I owe her tabi. She’s doing so well!

As for the ‘Con, we’re driving (because I sure as hell can’t afford for us to fly!) and the plan is for us to be leaving around 9:00 Wednesday morning. That’s the plan anyhow. Knowing us, we won’t leave till closer to 10:00 and I’ll decide it doesn’t matter because after all we’ll gain an hour of time on the way!

“See” you all on Monday!