Maybe run down. Maybe coming down with something. We'll see. But Squiddle's Toothless costume is complete and got its first wearing today, at his Wednesday toddler group. Everyone was stunned that I'd made it. Um. I guess I hang out with too great a percentage of costumers/creative people? And have been sewing for too long? Because mostly following a commercial sewing pattern and just tacking a couple extra details on (after consulting 3x artbooks) does not seem that difficult to me.

Anyway, one of the problems with photographing a toddler in costume is his natural blurriness/always-in-motion/attention-span-of-a-sparrow factor. I will keep trying over the next few wearings, and see if I can get any shots worth posting here.

Haven't been posting as much recently for a few reasons. Part of it is weather; last week we had a brutal heat wave that renewed my vows to never move to Riverside, Las Vegas, or Texas. I am a delicate coastal flower or something like that. Another part is us having company! Wonderful Husband's friend Neil flew in Thursday for a Saturday wedding (at the Wayfarer's Chapel) and stayed with us until he flew out again on Monday. Spending time with him was a lot of fun. And a third reason I haven't been posting is that I've been taking my "Sew Something September" challenge moderately seriously and sewing most evenings. I've been doing a set of six green quilt blocks each week, and working steadily on finishing my medieval outfit before I tackle any new project.

Among other things I have been doing is working on the Singer 15-88 sewing machine, of course. I've discovered that polishing metal has certain things in common with smoothing spackle. As in, there's a limit to how much I can do each evening before I hit the point of index finger blisters. It's amazing how much black comes up on the cloth from something that looks shiny silver! Still, each round of polishing gets me that much closer to it looking almost-new. If I get home in time for sunlight this evening, I'll post some progress pictures.

After a summer off, my novel writing class starts up again tomorrow night. I haven't prepped and printed an entry because I hate what the next section of Queen's Choice is like and need to have at it with a broadsword. At least I was able to break through my block on flybystardancer's request for a ficlet set one month after Electronic Coupling. That was hard because I could not find anything further to say about the PxJ in that 'verse, so I ended up falling back and punting using another character.

Wonderful Husband and I have begun drafting plans for a road trip up through Oregon and Washington sometime in the next year or two. It'll be tricky to time it because I get two weeks' vacation a year and the majority of that is spent in England, with the rest slated to various conventions. (Yeah, yeah, first world problems.) So we'll see when it ends up happening....

Depression from earlier somewhat ameliorated. I indulged in retail therapy, using most of the Borders gift certificate racerxmachina and roseembolism gave me for my birthday to buy Fashion History, a book I've been coveting for a bit. So now I have lots and lots of pages of lovely clothing to look at and enjoy....