I made this gentleman a month or so ago, when spring seemed far away. We’ve hopefully had our last freeze of the season (although, being Oklahoma, it could certainly surprise us again), and I can’t wait until I can plant some new flowers in the flowerbed. In the meantime, I need to make more elephants! I really like the shape, and it’s letting me experiment with embroidery.

So where have I been lately? Sewing! Well, mostly. First there were the allergies, which are still ongoing, but… I was asked to sew a sideless surcoat as a gift for the Queen before Gulf Wars. (Translation for non-SCA folks: for a lady in this medieval reenactment group I’m in.) Only I had no pattern. Or fabric. And had less than two weeks. At least I did have her measurements…

I got a pattern from a friend and ideas on what decorating bits to do. Normally I sew mostly in linen, but a sideless surcoat needs to be out of something stiffer so it won’t scrunch up weird in the front (due to not having any sides, see). Because of that and the time crunch, I went with a nice cotton twill. The only problem was that the local Wal-mart was out of the burgundy… I wound up driving 60 miles to the next city over to buy some. The yellow bits (and white bits) are linen, the yellow dyed that way from the white. It didn’t come out as deep a shade of yellow as I wanted, but it’ll do. All the bits (stars and suns and lion-dragons) are simply ironed on with Heat’n'Bond Ultra Hold. I sure hope it holds like it says it will…

While there are things I don’t like about it, they’re practically all things that I had to do because of the time issue. But since it went together so well and easily, now I’m back to thinking about making myself some new dresses, particularly since my “newest” dress is around five years old now!

Oh how I hate allergy season. It’s been so dry and unseasonably warm here that all the cedar trees are LOADED with pollen, and it’s making me want to claw my face off. What better thing to do than to stir up some dust by cleaning the house and building myself a new computer (necessitating digging into the old computer, which is dusty, of course)? But anyway, here I am now, on a zippy fast new computer and a box of kleenex at hand.

Karen over at Blogging Baby posted about an article I found
about the phrase “Gotcha Day”. Both of our kids have such days coming up — Niki’s is April 10th, and I’m trying to think of what to do for it. And what to call it! I’m thinking about “Forever Family Day”, since it was the day she really entered the lives of not just us, but our extended family and friends.

Asha’s is in May, but it’s only a week after her birthday, so I’m even more unsure what to do about that one. Of course, she’ll just be two, so I’m probably off the hook for a few more years…