Well this is depressing

The cats are not losing weight. If anything, they are gaining. On the plus side, their super duper expensive food has resulted in less poo in the box. That's always a good thing. But it hasn't resulted in less cat girth.

Here are their results to date:

I'm pretty much stumped at this point. We're trying to do the right thing by our cats' health but clearly this isn't working.

I have been a little busy

New Look 6071

And I have pictures for you this time. I have a dressmaker’s dummy (form?), which works for showing the clothes. Truth be told, I’m a little disappointed with how it works to use for actually fitting my clothes. I can adjust the thing a bunch of different ways, but at the end of all the dial twirling, it’s still just measurements around – there’s no way, for example, to make the back narrower like mine and forget about getting the bust to be my size. I think this dress form is maybe a B cup. We won’t talk about my cup size – suffice it to say, I’m a bit further down the alphabet.

But the dress form at least lets me show what I’ve finished.

First up is the New Look dress I mentioned last week. I promise the dress doesn’t look quite so saggy on (again, it’s hard to replicate the human body on a dress form) but you can see how the cross over stuff looks. I'm very pleased with the way this dress fits me; best of all, I did no altering.

Frankendress 1

Next is a dress I cobbled together from two patterns (a Frankenpattern if you will). I’m quite pleased with this dress actually. The original pattern (McCalls 6069) calls for a cowl neck in the back, and I found that both annoying and excessive. So I took the back bodice from another pattern, re-drafted my armscye and here’s the result. The fabric is pretty interesting too. It's a sort of waffle weave, almost like long john material only much thinner. There are tiny sparkled throughout – it's a subtle effect, but they're there. I want to find a skinny black patent leather belt to wear with this and I may take this on our trip next month. If you’re wondering, the dress form has a winter white turtleneck on it. I find the white less distracting than the red of the form. Unfortunately the white sort of shows through plus I didn’t pull the sleeves through (didn’t want you to think this is a jumper).

Frankendress 2

Next is a dress on its third life. It started as this skirt, which I realized was not at all flattering on me and even if it were, I’d never wear it. Then I remade the skirt and added a bodice to become this cowl neck dress (which is, yes, McCalls 6069). Again, there’s just too much material and I never wore the dress. So now it’s resurrected itself one final time. I like the neckline on this dress and I’ve always loved the material. I think/hope it’s a keeper in this form.

Frankensweater

Finally, today I did another Frankenpattern. I have a waterfall cardigan that is about as tailored as those things gets. I also have a pattern for a more typical waterfall cardigan but didn’t want swaths and swaths of fabric in the front. So I traced out the front of the RTW cardigan and sweated bullets over the armscye. I like the fabric, I’m so-so on the results. We’ll see if it continues on in this form or if I give up on it or make it come back as something else.

I'm in love

With a brand of socks. Let me explain . . .

So colorful & comfy!

I’ve always bought cheap running socks. My running socks needed to meet just one requirement: they had to stay up on my heels. You’d think this would be an easy requirement to fulfill, but that wasn’t the case. Things only got worse when the running sock fashion turned to the invisible socks. (Did you even realize there are fashion fads in running socks? Seriously . . . )

Oddly, I had the most success with Target socks. They were made of some cheap technical material so they wicked away any moisture, and they stayed up on my heels. I bought probably seven pairs and used them a lot. Alas, in the last few years even Target has moved on to the invisible running socks and so my supply has been dwindling.

When I got my new running shoes last month, I tried them on with a pair of balega socks. They felt amazing on my foot and helped the shoe fit even better. So I got two pairs.

But they had a problem and for once it wasn’t centered on staying up on my heels. No actually they were too big. If you look at the size chart, technically I’d wear an M in these socks. My feet are nothing but skin and bones, I’ve got hardly any meat there at all. Really I need an S. So I ordered three pairs directly from the company – I got three different types and all three are a size S.

Wow what a difference. They stay on my foot where they should and are just all around amazing. Of the three styles I bought, I love them all but one pair is too thin to use with my current running shoes. That’s OK, I wear other shoes too, other athletic shoes even, so I am positive they’ll get worn.

The only problem now is I have two pairs of size M socks. Kent’s got great big clodhopper feet so he can’t use them. Maybe the cats can play with them.

When the cat's away

Kent’s not actually a cat but he is out of town for work – he left this morning. So rather than sit around and feel sorry for myself, I cut out and sewed a dress. Disclaimer: no pictures because I cannot seem to take a decent self-picture to save my life. 

Anyway. I made New Look 6071 with long sleeves out of a purple ponte knit fabric. Fortunately I read reviews by others who’ve sewn the dress because the directions get wonky at step 7. That’s unusual for New Look patterns but this time it flat omits making a button hole for the self-wrap front of the dress.

When my photographer is back at home, I’ll get some pictures. I’m just glad to have done something constructive today that had a happy ending.

It lies

And I should have known better. I got a barrette, thinking it would make a nice change from a ponytail holder. Since I have very straight, very soft hair, I knew I'd need something that would really grip. This one claims it's slide-proof.

Wrong! I put it in my hair and within 10 seconds, no joke, it slid right out. Back it goes to the store. I guess I'll just get more ponytail holders.

I can see clearly now

This is not a 9-11 post, although it is a post about living and dying.

My daughter-in-law ran a half marathon a couple of weeks ago, a really tough one in the heat at Virginia Beach. Partway into the race, she and her running partner turned the corner and saw an apparently fit man who’d collapsed. He was being given CPR, EMTs were on their way as was an ambulance, but it was not enough. He died.

My DIL wrote a very moving post about that event, the thoughts that went through her head when she saw him, and her struggle both that day and the next week to make sense of something so random and arbitrary.

Years ago I either read or heard in a sermon (don’t recall now which it was) something that made sense to me. Basically, the author or speaker said, until we come to terms with the facts of our deaths, we’ll have a hard time making sense of our lives. I took that to mean that if I want to live a purposeful life, and feel as though at the end of it all I spent my life doing things that matter to me, then I need to be deliberate in what I do and how I live.

As another friend of mine posted today (and I’m paraphrasing), you just don’t know if today’s the day you’re on the wrong plane or in the wrong building. I think J would agree – she’s comforted by her faith, and she’s aware now in a different way that yes, life is fragile and arbitrary. We don’t know when the end comes. Better to live deliberately and to enjoy the moments we do have.

I have a tattoo of a sun face. I got it in 1999 as I came out of a particularly dark time in my life. That tattoo was a permanent, visible commitment to myself that I didn't have to live in a mud puddle or stick around with negative, emotional vampires. About five or six years ago, I got it recolored; I want it to stay vivid. I always want to remember that commitment and even more I want to live it.

No cats on the counter!

Yeah . . . right.

Chloe is the best cat in terms of staying off counters. As we're fond of saying, even her poop doesn't stink. Eddie doesn't get on the counter either, but it's not because he's virtuous. I think it's because he's hauling a lot of mass and getting up that high can be a challenge.

Wally is different. It doesn't matter how many times we holler at him or simply pick him up and remove him from the counter, he's positive it's his. I came out to the kitchen the other day and found him curled up on the counter taking a nap.

He's a brazen cat.