Progress!

So life moves on and things have actually gotten done! Yay! With Dad and the girls coming up to visit us in a couple weeks, Seth and I have been getting ready for that, and getting the house ready. Our goal is to have the guest bed for Dad and a couch in the family room by the time they come. Seth's Dad has a twin bed he's going to bring down, but I saw a furniture ad in the paper for a red twin/full bunk bed that looked kinda like the one in the red room at home on a super clearance sale for $150. That'd be pretty sweet and then we'd have bunks for guests if we needed 'em so I went over to look at it. Unfortunately, the bed was apparently made for midgets as there was only 2 feet of clearance between the lower bunk and the upper. No exaggeration either. It was kinda scary to lay down on. So we skipped getting that. No worries, the bed from Seth's Dad is still coming.

However, I also sat on a few couches while I was there, and lo and behold, a near exact replica of my favorite couch in another store... for $700 less. The colors are different. Black, grey, and cream instead of tan and browns, but wicked comfy.
Also, it's huge, seating 4 comfortably. At least one, possibly two of the girls will be able to sleep on it when they come over. Depends on how tall they are. We're going to get an air mattress or maybe one or two of these suckers. I think that would hold up better over time than an air mattress. Also, don't be scared guys, but we do have the occasional common house spider that skitters across the basement family room floor. They're harmless, but peace of mind will probably be higher to be off the floor with the cot. Heh.

Also, Michael and Caroline! Want to move back to Utah? I wouldn't mind the $5K for referring a software developer to Overstock. If you know anyone else who'd qualify for the job I'm sure you wouldn't either!

Ok, so other stuff that's seen progress. I continue to putter away the Plunderhosen project. The Pants have been fit and are currently in the construction phase. The Most Impressive Codpiece in the World™ is shaping up to also be the most complicated part to construct. Because I obviously don't need a codpiece, I've had to do some extensive work on the shape of this. Mainly this involved making it slightly less... well, the emphasis will now be on the poofs of silk spilling forth rather than the, er. shape of the codpiece. Unfortunately, Janet Arnold neglected to mention exactly how the slashes were finished. They look like they were bound in a self-bias, though that would definitely be a pain in the behind to do on as small of a scale as these slashes are. With that in mind, I decided to simply create them as large bound buttonholes/ miniature bound pockets. This is a modern technique, but creates a beautifully finished slit that's wide enough for a lot of silk to come through without stretching the shape of the codpiece and has the added benefit of being pretty simple to do too. Very detail oriented, which is why I spent 3 hours doing half of the codpiece and will probably spend another one (going faster now that I know exactly what to do) to do the other side.



Once the codpiece is put together, I can sew together the pants. The pants come in roughly four layers. From the skin out they are: the lining, the foundation breeches, the poofy silk, and the panes of velvet. The lining and the foundation are pretty much the same thing. The only part that is actually visible of the foundation pants are is behind, which is why when you look at the picture below, there's velvet sewn in odd shapes on it. Also, this pants pattern is the most bizarre and annoying to fit ever. I've never seen any other type of pants cut like this, probably because it doesn't make any sense to do it this way whatsoever. While sizing it to fit me, there were many frustrated howls of "Who designed this thing!?" heard coming from the sewing room.



Sorry the pictures aren't very good. Its better when I take photos in my sewing room during the day, like this one, which displays the fabric selection accurately. Unfortunately since I needed to scrap the work I'd originally done and start over, I didn't have enough of the purple velvet to do the pants and the doublet in it. Fortunately, my friend and co-conspirator in all things costuming, has a fabric stash the size of Alaska and had that blue velvet hiding in one of her boxes. So the doublet will be one in that, with purple trim and the pants will be with purple panes (and behind) and blue velvet trim. It was awesome how well that blue velvet matches the blue silk, eh?