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Yes, I’m proud I got angry.

Why? Well…

The last week of November my friend and I went furniture shopping for her and her boyfriend’s new apartment. We drove out to the middle of nowhere (seriously, this place is in between two cornfields and there isn’t much of anything else around) to a furniture store that we’d had good luck at before and we found the perfect light gray couch for her, there wasn’t a matching chair so we hunted around for one she liked and when we found one we asked the sales lady if it came in gray. The sales lady said it did and showed us a picture on her computer of it in a nice dark gray. My friend loved it and bought it. There was a snafu and it took longer to get the chair then the sales lady originally said it would. But it finally got delivered today. I was at the apartment with FBF (friend’s boyfriend) and after it was delivered he came into the kitchen where I’d been sitting to stay out of the way and he asked me why we’d got a brown chair to go with a gray couch. I thought there must of been a mistake, they’d simply delivered the wrong color. So FBF called them…. ten minutes later he was still getting the run around because apparently that was the color we ordered. FBF tried to explain that it wasn’t what we were supposed to get though and that the sales lady had told his girlfriend that the chair would be gray.

Now, I’m not an assertive person with most people (and certainly not strangers), I hide from conflict and/or play peacekeeper (except with my brother, you’d think we like to argue as much as we do it) and I’m also very anxious talking on the phone, I have to psych myself up even just to call a friend or a family member. But at this point I was steaming, they were just repeating the same thing over and over and acting like they couldn’t do anything about it despite it being their mistake. I took the phone from FBF and told them in no uncertain terms that the chair was supposed to be gray. That’s what we were told, that’s what we saw on their computer. It wasn’t gray. So what were they going to do about it. In less then five minutes we’d worked out that they’d come Monday to pick it up and give my friend a full refund. To be clear, I let my anger bleed through in my tone, but I was perfectly polite the entire time.

I’m glad it worked out for my friends, but I’m also proud of myself for taking that phone in the first place. I’ve been working on the whole “talking on the phone” thing for almost two years but this is the first time I felt confident enough to actually want speak to a complete stranger.

As for being more assertive? I may have to do that more often when it’s called for, it’s much better than letting someone walk all over me.

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Fairy Wings

I finally got to work on my Halloween costume today! I’m going as an Autumnal hippie fairy and today I made my wings. I love them and just have to show them off 🙂

They’re made from clothes hangers (not the kind you buy but the kind that skirts hang off in some stores), hose, silk flowers, and a LOT of hot glue (I burned my fingers twice, OUCH!).

Anyway, here’s some in-progress shots:

collage

And here are my finished wings!

Fairy Wings

Now I’ve just got to crochet my belt and practice applying my glittery eye makeup, I might just have everything ready by Halloween!

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Fashion Feature: Crochet

Okay, I’m kind of taking the easy way out on this fashion feature because if there is one thing I don’t have to research or look for pictures for it’s crocheted clothing and accessories. There is really nothing I like better, and one of my favorite things to do is crochet. The dresses and other clothing you’re about to see? Basically my dream wardrobe.

Sadly, it can be difficult to find dress patterns in English. Crochet dress making seems to be more of thing for Japanese and Russian designers, although sometimes you can find a chart for the dress you’re eyeing, then of course you have to translate the symbols. But none of the dresses here had links to patterns so these are just to look at, there are some patterns at the bottom of the page for little touches of crochet.

So, no one is quite sure how crochet got it’s start, there are several different theories and all of them are worth a read if you’re interested in textile history. Historic pieces of crochet do exist but I won’t be sharing any today, for this one I’m sticking with some modern day examples of gorgeousness 🙂

Click on any image for a larger picture.

If you’re looking for a more subtle touch of crochet in your own wardrobe you might be interested in some of these ideas:

Click on any image for a larger picture.

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Diagnosed

I had so many plans for this blog that totally didn’t involve my health (or lack thereof), I have ideas and even a few posts that just need a bit of tidying up. But sometimes life just sucks. Not that I’m really surprised, I’ve been looking at all the possibilities since December of last year and wondering which it would be, but finally getting diagnosed is just a bit… well… final, and it’s also kind of scary. Honestly I was hoping for osteoarthritis because, hey, at least it’s not an autoimmune disease. But instead I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and I’m left wondering where I’m going now. I’m not big on taking medicine but apparently that is my only option to actually slow the disease. Damn.

I am also starting on an anti-inflammatory diet and a new exercise routine. The next couple of months should be interesting. I just… I’m scared but I don’t really want people to know that, I don’t want my loved ones to worry any more than they already are. I have a lot to think about and it’s overwhelming me a bit.

I fully intend to keep this blog going, including my fashion feature posts (even though I skipped last week’s, sorry!), but I think the focus may shift a bit as obviously my current focus has to be my health while I work out what this means for me now and in the future. Also, hand pain makes typing difficult which is the main reason I’ve been silent lately but hopefully my doctor and I will get that under control soon.

So… yeah, that’s what is going on with me. I’ll be back with something else soon I think, although the Lily Munster dress experiment has been put on hold for a bit so I won’t be posting about that for a while. I am making myself a fairy costume for Halloween that doesn’t require any sewing so once I finish up the wings I’ll share some pictures 🙂

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Fashion Feature: Unusual Suspects

For this Fashion Feature I want to take a look at some really unique and interesting clothing creations, ones that aren’t made out of the normal fabrics and such. No, these are made from things like real live flowers, candy wrappers, and teacups! Gracious, I can’t even imagine the design process on some of these, not to mention actually making them! Or wearing them for that matter, although some of these may not have been made to wear, on the other hand some of them obviously were.

I found quite a few unique, weird, pretty, and artistic dresses while I was researching this blog post. It was an odd rabbit hole to fall into but I’m kind of hooked 🙂

Click on any image for a larger picture.

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Fashion Feature Part Three: 1500s

Examples of dress from the 1500s:

Click on any image for a larger picture.

Part One Here

and

Part Two Here

There is a lot more I could explore throughout these eras, I mean I don’t even consider this scratching the surface! So definitely expect more history and pictures in a future Fashion Feature.

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Fashion Feature Part Two: 1300s and 1400s

Not a lot of real examples here, paintings and reproductions are the order of the day when we’re going so far back in time.

Examples of dress from the 1300s:

Click on any image for a larger picture.

Examples of dress from the 1400s:

Click on any image for a larger picture.

Part One Here

And

Part Three Here

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Fashion Feature: 1300s, 1400s and 1500s

Bit of a broad scope here with three hundred years of fashion, but I was doing some research and ran into an old friend; also known as Sumptuary Laws, these pesky little laws were meant to impede the extravagance of dress so as to restrict lavishness and to make clear the distinctions between levels of society (sumptuary laws weren’t just about clothing either, they included such things as food and furniture but we won’t get into that here). Sumptuary laws are very popular throughout history and date back to ancient Rome, for some reason the ones from the 1300s through the 1500s are my favorites to read about.  For more about Elizabethan sumptuary laws involving clothing (as well as horses and swords), including links to the statutes with updated language and punctuation, you can check out this page at elizabethan.org. Although sumptuary laws are actually really fun to read about, I’d definitely rebel if anyone tried to pass them into law now. Anyway, I got so lost in sumptuary laws that I ended up getting a bit far away from my original topic of 1400s and 1500s by going too far into the 1300s so I just decided to throw the 1300s in here too, mostly because I fully plan to expand on these eras in future posts so I’m using this post as a bit of a starting point.

Getting Dressed: Not an easy thing when you have so much to put on. Here are we have a couple of ladies showing us just how fun this can be (well depending on your definition of “fun” I think I’d probably enjoy it, until I had to do it every single day). On the left we have a Renaissance dress and on the right we have a Tudor dress. And just below are illustrations of both men’s and women’s dress in early Tudor costume and late Tudor costume.

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Early Tudor Costume

Early Tudor

Late Tudor Costume

Late Tudor

Because this post was getting pretty picture heavy, I’m splitting it into a total of three parts. For more see:

Part Two Here

and

Part Three Here

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Too Young, Too Old.

I’ve been listening to Sabrina Carpenter’s album Eyes Wide Open she seems like a younger version of Rachel Platten. Although I like Sabrina’s music very much, I think I relate better to Rachel’s, maybe because Eyes Wide Open has a recurring theme of Sabrina saying she’s not too young for love or to know what she wants (I agree, she isn’t) but I’m a bit too old for anyone to say I don’t know my own heart or mind because of my age (though that doesn’t stop people from trying).

Sometimes I kind of want to turn some her lyrics around to say I’m not too old, because I’m not too old for young love (is anyone really?) or to try something new and different (purple hair anyone?). And sometimes it’s the exact opposite because I’m not too young to know what I want from life, relationships, etc. nor am I too young to understand how unfair the world can be (though I’d like to get back some of my innocence on that last one).

Oftentimes it’s “you’re too young to do that” or “don’t you think you’re a bit old to act like that?”. What exactly is the right age where we can act however we want and do what we like without someone commenting on our age? I feel like it should be whatever age we are now. Why should anyone be limited by their age? How old you are has nothing to do with your aspirations or even your maturity level. I admit it, oftentimes I’m not very mature and those are the times I tend to enjoy the most. I can “Adult” when I have to be mature and get things done but it isn’t necessarily something I enjoy. A good mixture of maturity and immaturity seems to me to be the key to both, getting through, and enjoying life.

This slightly rant-y post is brought to you by a mid-twenty something girl who is tired of being told to act her age, especially when other peoples’ ideas of “acting her age” don’t really jive with her’s. She is nowhere near ready to “settle down” or start a family, nor is she too old to collect (and by that she means play) with stuffed animals.

And to end this post on a different note; my favorite song from Sabrina Carpenter’s lovely first album is We’ll be the Stars and here’s the video for it:

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