Dress Makeover

Yesterday I made over a dress that's been in my closet for six years!  

That is a post picture, btw.  Previously, it had fit me something like a garbage sack, so I added in a sash in the back, seen in these two pictures:

Oh yeah, taking pictures of your back in a mirror is SUPER HARD!!!!  Anyways, I made each side of the sash out of a long thin piece of fabric.  I folded it in half, right sides together, and stitched it with a reverse seam allowance (is this a thing? I want it to be a thing) of 3/4" (aka, there were 3/4" that would actually make up the sash, and the rest I trimmed as close to the seam as possible.  I then stitched one end shut and turned it right side out with the help of a plastic stick from an Edible Arrangements thing and a lot of hope.  Finally I top-stitched with the tiniest possible seam allowance to make the whole thing flat instead of tubular.  Result can be seen here:

I inserted it by opening two seams in the back of the dress just a little and sewing the open end of each sash piece into the seam.

I also replaced this elastic, because the elastic it came with was DEAD.  I used reclaimed elastic from an old pair of underpants FTW!

Adorable picture of dog's nose in corner is adorable.

The final major addition I made was pockets!

pockets out, like a hobo -- see how huge they are?

hand in a pocket

The dress had two layers, so I drafted in line pockets and sewed them into the inner layer as seen here.

I then ripped part of the matching seam on the outer layer and re-hemmed it so I can access the pockets!

All in all, I'm very pleased with myself for making a previously useless dress into something I'll wear over and over again all summer long!  And all for free, with stuff from my stash.

Acne Week 1!

Took some more pictures today.  Tried smiling in them, in an effort to look a little happier!  Here they are:

Left Side

Right Side

Straight on.

I think I'm seeing a bit of a reduction!  One weird thing I've noticed is that my acne seems to be better in the morning and then worsen over the course of the day.  These pics were taken at about 8:30 pm, for reference.

For this next week, I'm going to continue to work with the Earth Child soap and Tea Tree Oil solution at night.  I'm also going to look into if there's a good way to exfoliate.

Working on Acne. Week 1

I'm pretty much counting on having few to no readers right now...  Starting a deliberate journey to help heal my acne by taking embarrassingly close up pictures of my face every Wednesday.  Without further ado, here are this week's terrible pictures:

Right side of my face

Left side of my face

Straight on

So yeah, I look pretty bizarre... hopefully I'll get better at taking pictures of myself.

Routine I've been using up until now:
-nighttime washes with LuSa organics earth child soap.
-every once in a while topical tea tree oil, undiluted.

 My plan for this week:
-nighttime and morning washes with soap
-5% tea tree oil solution applied to face before bed
-eliminate processed sugars and grains from diet

I'll check in next week with a new set of ultra-flattering pictures and a report on how well the week goes.

Tights and Vibram FiveFingers

I love wearing my VFFs, and I love wearing skirts.  Problem: in the winter it's too darn cold to wear skirts without tights.  This leads to the following problem:

Feet in tights just don't work with VFFs... it's the whole issue of not having toes thing.  So I decided to grab some scissors and see what I could do.

I put my scissors into that hole and then cut it open just enough for my big toe to pop through.  I then repeated with a small hole by my baby toe and repeated the process for my littler toes.  I cut a large hole so that all four of my toes could get through, and the tights were held on by a swatch of fabric hitting me right where a flip-flop would.

And voila!  I now have toes to put in my VFFs !

All problems with skirts, VFFs and winters are now solved.  This solution was significantly warmer than going without tights, and looked just fine once my feet were in the shoes.

Falltime

I've very mixed feelings about fall.  Of course, it's been especially strange this year, because first we had indian summer, then snow just before halloween, and now it's been well into the fifties and sixties for days, but with the change from daylight saving time back to standard time, the fact that it's fall is really setting in for me.  It gets dark so very early.  I struggle with this, because sunlight is very empowering for me and a huge mood booster.  Some days it's hard to do anything at all, just because it's so damn dark and dreary.

At the same time, however, there are parts of fall I absolutely love.  The quintessential fall day where it's 45 and blindingly sunny with crunching leaves underfoot.  Mulled cider and other fall treats.  Halloween and Thanksgiving.  There was even a time when going back to school was quite possibly the most exciting part of the year, except for maybe my birthday, which is also in September.

These past few weeks have been major knitting times for me.  I find knitting to be a really excellent fall and winter activity, though I love it all year round.  This year I'm working on Christmas presents all ready, with two hats finished for each of the girls, and about a third of one arm for a sweater for Patches done.

Getting work done has been difficult.  I've done very little in the last few days other than knit while watching TV, and sometimes it feels really good, but at the end of the day, it always feels like I've wasted myself and my time.

My Dream

I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with this blog, but I feel like I need a place to keep a journal that is slightly more public than just my documents folder...  Not sure why I feel that, but I figure I'll give it a try.  The title comes from a song in Once, that rings true with me because it speaks to the effect little cracks can have on a life.    The lyric goes: "little cracks they escalated/ before we knew it was too late," and resonates with me because sometimes I feel like I spend my time trying desperately to keep the little cracks in my life from escalating.

Anyways, now that we've got the depressing story behind the name of my blog-thing out of the way, I'm going to write down my dream for my life, because I want a record of it somewhere.  This is my ideal version of life, one towards which I'm hoping to work, even if I can only actualize it in part.

When I'm grown, I dream of living on a small working farm.  Not that I'd like to be completely self-sustaining, because I also feel drawn to work on things other than sustaining my family, but this is what it looks like.  Patches and I and our children live in an old farmhouse on a big plot of land in the southern tier of New York, relatively close to Rochester so I can still see my family.  We have a nicely-sized family, somewhere between two and four children of our own.  On our farm, we'll have a big garden full of beautiful heirloom vegetables, along with an orchard with apple trees and pear trees and peach trees, and a berry patch.  We'll have chickens for eggs and meat, along with a cow for milk, maybe some pigs for garbage disposal and meat, and some sheep for lawn-mowing and wool.  In addition, we'll have dogs and cats as both working animals and pets!

We'll live our life on the farm, opening a small school in an outbuilding, where we teach children a semi-standard curriculum while working in work on the farm and sustainability education, as well as stewardship for this earth we've been given.  We'll try to live with as little impact on our land as possible, and we'll be part of a close-knit community of people who care about the world and each other as much as we do.  We'll be close enough to a city to not miss out on the cultural opportunities present even in a relatively small city like Rochester, but we'll be able to see stars at night whenever it's not cloudy.

We'll live together forever, laboring in love for ourselves, our family, and our land.  I'm not sure how we'll get there from here, but I feel drawn towards this life.  I want to make my own small impact on the world around me in any way I can.  I feel so disconnected from the world right now.