If You're Trying to Find Me at Rhinebeck...

... look for this:



I pressed in the pleats this evening when I got home from work (a very rare day shift, but I survived). There are certainly things I think I could have done better, but it's my first ever truly wearable sewn garment and I'm quite pleased with it. Even more so considering I constructed it using instructions and ideas gleaned from online (i.e., no pattern - I have a book on kiltmaking on order, but it has yet to arrive).

Will I be making more of these in the future? I can almost guarantee it. What better way to show off those sexy knees?

Supposed To Be

There were supposed to be kilt photos, but when I downloaded them onto the work computer last night they were too damn dark to see any detail on the kilt. They showed off my legs nicely enough, but I'm really not enough of a hits whore to show gratuitous leg shots. When I have a chance to lighten them up in Photoshop, I'll see what I can do.

I was also supposed to be home sleeping right now, but I'm sitting here at the clinic waiting for a phone call. Rosa's condition got slowly but progressively worse after bringing her home, so David drove her up this morning so I could take her down the road to see the neurologists. Now I'm waiting to hear results of a CT scan, and there will probably be surgery involved. She's a good surgical candidate, in general, but a horrible patient, so to say this situation is worrisome would be an understatement.

UPDATE: There was no surgery. It was a tumor within the spinal cord - the worst possible scenario. Despite her pain and despite being barely able to walk, she started the day off wagging her tail and happy to go for a ride in the truck, and I decided that after almost 13 years together, that was the best note for her to go out on. David, Paula, and Wendy all drove up to say their goodbyes with me. This is the first time in 16 years that I've been dogless and it hurts horribly, but it will be okay.

She's Here!

This had arrived when I got up today. It's a crap photo, but I wanted to hurry up and snap a photo before work and I knew the flash would only bounce right back off the mylar dust jacket cover. When I ordered this, I had figured from the price that it would probably be a later printing, but it appears to be from the original 1988 printing, and in about as perfect condition as you could ever hope for. I am most pleased.

And keeping things in a Scottish vein, last night I finished pinning out pleats on the kilt I started just over a year ago (I didn't want to believe it was that long, but I checked.). I decided a month or so back that I was out of my fucking mind to try to tackle a full 8yd. kilt when I just wanted something for casual wear and I had never done it before. So I cut it in half.

No photos yet, but all I need to do is finish basting the pleats for ironing, handsew the hip-to-waist taper in the pleats, finish the aprons, afix a waistband, get straps and sew them on, make a buttonhole on the left hip for that strap to pass through, and sew in a broadcloth lining. I'm hoping to get this done by Rhinebeck, but that's what I was hoping for last year, too, so we shall see.