After I made that last post I found that Garfunkel had, indeed, died. It was hard. I knew before I opened their box that he was going to be dead, and still I actually cried. I hadn't expected him to have rigor mortis yet, I can't stand that. Also Simon was cuddled up to him and started nudging on him when I opened the box, and that made me very sad. I thought, 'I don't cry at funerals, I'll never cry over a mouse.' And yet I did. Maybe it was something about being in the comfort of my own home.
Also, as I have stated before, I never had expectations of their survival. So I was surprised to be so upset. I see now that I must have grown some very fond ones in these six days. Now I'm feeling a little better, a little accomplished that I kept them alive this long. I just hope it wasn't a painful sort of alive, I hope he wasn't miserable. Garfunkel kept using the potty regularly up to his death, but he had gotten thinner. So had Simon. I don't know what's wrong, I'm only hoping the altered formula could help Simon. But honestly, he's starting to morph into Garfunkel: a curious tendency to curl up on himself, almost in a fetal position, and an unawareness of space. Probably weakness.
I wonder if I should have tried to feed Garfunkel more when I saw he was dying and wasn't eating quite as well. For Simon now I am feeding him every hour. When Garfunkel died I saw that he had two little bottom teeth, so I have given Simon some applesauce and oat flakes soaked in his formula, which he enjoyed. But he's constantly ravenous, something I don't understand. I researched mouse nutritional needs, and found that riboflavin, or vitamin b6, is very important. However, almond milk is notably high in it. I'm also giving them fat and protein, so I can't figure out what's going wrong. I could almost understand Garfunkel's just dying if it wasn't for the weight loss. They've both lost weight, and I only wonder how their mother's milk could have been so different. They eat well. It doesn't seem to me that they should be any thinner.
Now I'm in a quandary. To be honest I'm exhausted. We have places to go tomorrow. But I'm afraid Simon is going to get cold. After my accumulated nights of sleep loss I can no longer wake myself up in the night. Last night I slept like a rock from 2 a.m. until nearly nine o'clock in the morning. I don't know what I'll do, I need to reheat Simon's rice sock every few hours, and feed him. So my master plan seems to be to watch a movie (again - this has been my method of keeping myself awake), and stay up as late as possible? Anyways, that's my best plan. This sounds awful, but if he's going to die, I wish he would hurry up and do it, because I can't bear to think of him suffering and slowly going, or dying cold and alone in the night. I wish he'd die in the day, right after a nice warm feeding.
Every time I rub his belly to stimulate a potty I also have to wipe up his face, because we make such a mess with this formula. I'm afraid it has the worst sicky-sweet smell in the world; and now I imagine it everywhere. I nearly gagged when putting on the cocoa butter lotion I put on every night after my shower, somehow I imagined in smelled similar. Also when it dries it gets stiff, it's revolting. But we just aren't the neatest set, Simon and I.
So, we'll see what happens tomorrow. I feel sorry that I can't help them more. I don't know what I would have done if they had both lived to adulthood - the plan was to release them in the woods, which made me extremely happy until I imagined them haplessly wandering around, waiting for a handout before an owl or something swooped down on them.
Then I thought perhaps I could convince the family that we need two pet mice, but the odds of them really being both males is probably around 50/50 (and given my Kaley luck, probably much slimmer in this case) and I could just imagine waking up one morning to find that Simon was really Simone and she had given birth to a large litter. And then where would we be?
So I try to look on the bright side. But while this all saved me from the keep or release dilemna, I wouldn't mind being in it again.

Simon and Garfunkel

So, here is the evolution of my formula recipe:
Almond milk.
That was the first. I then wrote to a vet on Ask an Expert in desperation, although small animals are not her expertise. I apologized, asking if she knew of any references or websites that might be helpful, that I could research myself. I received a very brief and a rude response: no 'sorry I can't help, good luck,' nothing like that. I'm sure it must have been far too demanding in her busy little online schedule to actually be polite and show a little compassion, even if she couldn't help. Needless to say, I will never use that service again.
However, after some research I was able to find this:

Mouse Milk:

12.1% fat

9.0% Protein

3.2% Lactose

An 8 oz. glass of almond milk is only 4% fat, and 4% protein. So I adapted my formula, so, after looking at some other recipes and suggestions:

1 tbsp. almond milk

.625 ml of egg yolk

A few drops of coconut oil (or a few slivers, if it's solid).

They ate this for two days. The first two days I got up at 3:30 every night to feed them, the third I stayed up till 1:30 to feed them and slept until eight in the morning. I haven't woken up during the night since then, I think all the sleep loss has built up.

Simon has gotten the hang of the syringe, he'll even get a powerful suck on it and stick his tongue down it. Garfunkel wants only to suck on something fleshy, I get a drop on the end of the syringe and then put it up to his mouth. It's hard to tell how much they eat, but Simon eats more.

However, they were both acting very hungry so I adjusted my formula again:

1 tbsp. almond milk

1.25 ml egg yolk

.625 coconut oil (perhaps a little more).

I didn't want to make it too rich, but I certainly don't want to slowly starve them to death. Seeing as I discovered that a mouse had made short work of 1/4 my carefully hoarded caramel chocolate Easter egg, I'm less worried about richness than I was before.

I've had them five nights, this is our sixth day. I never, ever expected them to live when I first adopted them. Then I hoped they would die before the night, because I didn't think there was any feasible way they would live through it. But they did.

Thankfully we're not too busy. I went to a program at the museum the day after we found them, but my wonderful mommy and sister took care of them then.

They stayed warm on their own the first two days, but it's cooled off a little, so I keep a rice sock warm for them and put their box on top of it in a basket. I've used the rice sock every night, as well.

I think it was on the third day that I noticed one of Simon's ears was perkier than the other. Now their ears are popped out and they respond to sounds; they can hear. One of Simon's eyes has opened, although the other shows no intention of doing so, and at their last feeding it looked as if Garfunkel's might open too.

However, at the last feeding I discovered something else about Garfunkel: he is dying. He's sluggish and would barely eat. He just wanted to rest. I shouldn't be upset, considering that I never thought they would live even one day when I first got them. But I am. Also, I feel that if Garfunkel dies his brother's chance of survival are cut almost in half. They snuggle together, stimulate each other. They need each other for warmth and companionship - they give each other somethings I could never offer. I'm convinced the only reason they've survived this long is because there are two of them.

It's almost time for their feeding again. It's been stressful and exhausting, it seems as soon as I finish feeding them it's almost time to do it again. I had plans of releasing them in the woods together. Now I'm not exactly sure what will happen.

This Is Inman.

This is Inman. I meant to write about Inman when I had him, but I didn't. Inman used to live at the fair grounds, but apparently he hitched a ride in my grandparent's truck. When he tried to make a smooth exit at our house, my dad's dog Sadie decided to kill him. So Inman decided I looked like a friendly place to climb up, and to hang onto my back and sit on my shoulder for protection.
Our neighbors have lots of cats, Sadie is rabidly anti-rodent, and there is at least one known snake in the general area. Naturally I couldn't just let Inman out into this fierce unknown world. The way I saw it, he was on an odyssey, and it was my job to help him home. We were planning on going to a pottery exhibit at the fairgrounds the next weekend, and I planned to smuggle Inman, my little wood mouse, back to his home then.
Inman was not at all aggressive. He escaped immediately when I brought him in the house, but I caught him again. He was so tiny and good-natured. Terrified of me, but I put him in our huge aquarium, where he adopted the coconut shell hideout as his abode of choice. I gave him acorns and things and he would retreat there and eat them.
My dog Cami seemed to think I was playing with fire, and thought she should save me from myself by killing Inman. Naturally I had to keep a close eye on him. Then one night, although the lid was in place, Inman was nowhere to be found.
Then I saw a tiny little tail hanging out of the leaves of my potted anita.
I could have scooped Inman up right then, but I was afraid if I might miss, and he might jump down into the joyful jaws of Cami. So instead I grabbed her and locked her out of the room.
The next half hour was very interesting. I tried everything, but Inman successfully evaded capture. I tore my room apart, and finally Inman adopted the trunk my (very heavy) chinchilla cage sits on as his Alamo. He sat under there and wouldn't budge.
I rested a second, eying the trunk darkly and vacillating between threats and encouragement. (He was probably laughing at me, sitting there panting and talking to myself).
Then I pulled myself together and moved the trunk. And moved it and moved it, and swept all the timothy hay and fuller's earth sandbath out from under it - but Inman was nowhere to be found. And I have never seen him since.
I left food out lavishly, set several different kind of traps, involving food bait and buckets, that sort of thing. What you do for a lost pet mouse or hamster. But I never found a trace of him - no droppings, no sounds, nothing.
I read that while wood mice, like any others, can adapt to human habitation, they really do like the outdoors. They aren't often found in homes. So I assumed Inman had headed for the hills, and only hoped he had gotten there.
This was before Thanksgiving. Now, over the holidays there was food left out constantly, we were gone overnight and longer with dishes in the sink, etc. So you'd think if there was any little budding mousy community we would have known it. I had all sorts of food left out in my room, as usual, and it would certainly have been a nice place for a mouse to make itself at home; I was almost never up there. We were very busy.
Yet recently, within the past month, we have become aware that we have a mouse problem. My cat Hobbie has killed three of them. One was definitely a house mouse, not at all like Inman. But Hobbie only has three legs. He's missing his hind leg so he's not the best springer.
So you see, it would be easy to blame the particular quandary on me. Which is exactly what some people seem bent on doing...
Anywho, the other day we were cleaning out a crammed closet. That is, everybody else was, and I was holding Max who was sleeping. Just minding my own business, surfing the net and checking my email. Suddenly I heard garbled screaming and yells coming from upstairs, so sudden and unaccountable that I nearly fell out of my chair.
The words I caught were, "Oh no - Kaley - mice - somebody get Kaley - Kaley! - any more??..."
Needless to say I leapt upstairs, shedding Max somewhere along the way, out to rescue the animal life that had apparently announced its presence in a very unexpected way.
Apparently they were vacuuming, and vacuumed up a nice little mouse nest. And then they saw a baby.
I got the baby, and we all discussed the matter in the typical family way, everyone talking loudly over each other and half of us only listening to ourselves, and arguing about the fate of the little baby.
I cupped it in my hand and started systematically searching through all the shoes and things. I had cleaned them almost all up when I found my mousy friend's sibling, who was a little less alert.
I had just announced my new find when my mother shrieked and took off down the hall with the energy and agility of a whirling dervish.
"The mother, the mother!" She screamed wildly. It was quite comic. (Sorry, mom).
(Later, while was laughing at her, she explained that she is afraid of mice. I had no idea, I've always thought she wasn't afraid of anything).
Then I saw a very brave thing. The little mother mouse, her eyes looking ready to pop out of her head, was steadily making her terrified way towards me over the mound of blankets and other odds and ends we had tossed out. She was so scared, but she was coming, right to my brother and I, because we had her babies and she was trying to get to them, her children. I just stared at her, trying to think. I had entertained some plan of trying to capture them all and release them together.
But I didn't think quick enough. Everyone was talking loudly and moving around, and she scampered under my computer desk. I cleared everyone out and moved it, and she had pulled and Inman, and was gone. We haven't seen her since. But it makes me sad, to remember her looking and coming right towards us, so courageously. It's amazing how animals will sacrifice themselves for their young. Some people aren't even that brave.
So my sister and I secreted the two away. I quickly looked some things up on the computer, having no idea what to do with them. I thought they would die, but I mixed up some sugar water and fed them from a spoon. Later I added a little coconut oil while trying to figure out what would be the best formula. After dispelling certain family members' unfortunate misconceptions about the black plague and things like that, (which was spread by fleas, on rats, not mice - don't hate on the rodents), we tentatively decided that the babies would live with me, since we couldn't do anything else.
I found an article about raising wild mice. The author said she had raised baby mice on coconut milk, but almond will do just as good. So I soaked some almonds and made my own. (I'll tell more about that later).
I was thinking of naming them Poppy and Miles, but then the perfect name came to me: Simon and Garfunkel. They are two little bookends, after all. (If there had been three I could have named them Frank, Sammy, and Dean and had the Rat Pack, but they aren't rats, so that would have been cute but incorrect).
However, I was in fear of our lives yet: dad wasn't home. Mom talked to him on the phone and explained the presence of two new family members, so it wasn't any surprise when he got home. He probably wasn't surprised at all, he knows me so well, although he did ask my mother, initially, if we had flushed them down the toilet, which I find absolutely appalling. I reassure myself that he couldn't have been serious.

So this is the little tartan box they live in. I got a necklace in it several years ago. They're so tiny, so it's quite snug. I punched some air holes in it with a pin.
Here they are in comparison to my finger. They don't look so fuzzy any more, we all together make a soggy mess while they're feeding and they look rather grungy. Their mother would be horrified, I'm sure. But this was from the day I found them. They're unfortunately a little thinner now, too. Especially Garfunkel. He hates the syringe, he wants to suck on a nipple, and of course they don't make mouse-sized nipples. But I think someone should.Here they are, looking so nice and healthy. I estimate them to have been about a week old when I found them. Here their eyes were closed, as were their ears.
So, these are my little darlings. It's a lot of work, they have to be fed every two hours. I bet they'd eat once an hour, but it takes me altogether about a half hour to do their feeding, and all the sterilizing and warming up of formula. I really can't see feeding any oftener.
So, here's a close-up. Hopefully they'll live to adulthood and we can see what a resemblance they bear to their possible ancestor, my old friend Inman.

The Plaid Shirt

So here is the finished shirt! All ready for fall. I rolled the sleeves, but I didn't make that permanent because I wanted to be able to scrunch them up if I wanted to. While that's a nice, trendy idea, I don't think I ever will, because it's such a bother. But it's a possibility. I put three gathers down each side on the front to make it more fitted. Since it's plaid it just looks neat anyways. I also removed the pocket flaps and buttons. It was very easy, and now it doesn't look like a sack anymore! It would also look cute belted. I couldn't think of anything else to do to it, so I stopped there.

Of course I'm scrunched over in most of these pictures, I realised, so it's hard to tell the difference.

There is an interesting story here. . .my sisters and I went out in the woods to do this, and my nine-year-old sister Grace took the pictures. Now, there's a little girl who may give me a run for my money! I was very surprised, she seemed to know exactly what she was doing, like she'd done clothing shoots a million times before. ;-) She was like:

"Okay, turn a little bit--lift your head up more--and move your arm, move it a little to the right--okay, hold that. *flash* Okay, now I'm going to take a vertical one. Very good! Okay, now we'll do one next to the tree. . ."

I told her I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face!

After a while she just started taking random pictures, all of which turned out great. She centered them, adjusted the zoom, etc. I take about five pictures before I get one I'm happy with, but she's very conscious of all the picture-taking steps. For instance, we were actually "done" picture-taking when I started finding mushrooms. . .I dug the one in the picture above out of the leaves, and she snapped that one.

The pleats. . .

The Great Pumpkin Saga

So, since I can't hit a Starbucks every day, I've really, really been wanting to get some canned pumpkin so that I can make those pumpkin lattes at home! However, when we went to the grocery store, they were actually sold out of canned pumpkin. At a Wal-Mart supermarket. Apparently they were also sold out of pumpkin at my Nana's grocery store in Florida, and she says it's just been a bad year for pumpkin, causing a shortage of some sort. (Which bodes ill for Thanksgiving). Whatever the cause, I was forced to take pioneer methods and make my own. Seeing as we have two pumpkins from our garden, I chose the smaller one and decided to make my own pumpkin puree. You cut up the pumpkin into halves or quarters, put it in a pan, cover it with tinfoil (this takes a lot of dexterity and meditation--believe me, it's not that easy!) and then bake it at 350 until it's soft and the edges are browned and wrinkled--just like baking a squash, if you've ever done that. Then you manage to scrape it out (don't believe Internet stories that you can just peel the skin off) and puree it in the blender. My online sources assured me that after having fresh pumpkin puree I would never want to go back to store bought, but I'm not quite that enthusiastic. It took forever for the pumpkin to cook! I finally bumped it up to 375.

I found this inside the pumpkin, growing in the rows of seeds. Apparently one sprouted. . .and started growing. . .and turned green. . .all inside the pumpkin. Which seems impossible to me, but whatever. You can see the trailing white tail it has, that was almost rooted in the pumpkin guts, I pulled it out and could feel it separate from the pumpkin. Too weird for words, I know. Although perhaps professional pumpkin puree-ers see that sort of thing all the time.

I thought it was interesting how the pumpkin was whiter and softer at the top, and then got yellow and firm--an entirely different consistency altogether. Very pretty.

Also, I decided to be very thrifty and roast the seeds. You can see I got quite a lot from one small pumpkin.

And they're an excellent excuse to take yet another close-up of something.

Ah, yes--the puree. I'm going to freeze it instead of canning it, which seems way over the top and entirely unnecessary to me, when I have a much simpler method of preservation. Until the power goes out, of course. Aha! Now for the most important part. . .the only thing that got me to even look twice at that pumpkin in the first place.

Here is the pumpkin latte mixture in the pot:

And the lovely end result! Two delicious pumpkin lattes. Although I will admit, I decided it needed more pumpkin than the recipe called and it was a little chunky. And I got distracted trying to explain the concept of a matching mug to an anonymous family member and the mixture boiled, which may have made the coffee taste a little strong. But otherwise, completely delicious!

The Old Plaid Shirt

So this is my trusty old plaid shirt. I've had it ever since I was ten. I believe my aunt gave it to me--it was hers before that, so I don't know how old it is. The arms are a bit short, and as you can see, it is truly horrible in its sloppiness. (Okay, so pairing it with an orange shirt and plaid skirt did nothing to make it more attractive, but you get the idea). It makes me look like I've raided the closet of a lumberjack, and I don't think I've worn it in public since I was eleven or twelve.

But I love this shirt! It's so soft and comfy. I always wear it as a jacket around the house, and a few times when I've been really desperate in winter (our house is big and old, and subsequently gets really cold, we don't have central heat) I've worn it as one layer out of many. All last winter I always put it on over my pajamas when I woke up in the morning for added heat after leaving my warm bed.

But it's always been a great regret that it's too sloppy to wear in public! However, upon receiving the newest Anthropologie magazine, I was a bit inspired. The setting was very artistic and interesting, telling a story, which I liked a lot, and the setting they used--autumn woods and weekend cabin, as well as some small-town/general store settings--seemed very North Carolinian to me. And of course, since it's their fall mag, there was a lot of inspiring plaid clothing!

As you can see in the above picture, the shirt has pocket flaps and buttons. I didn't put it on all the way because I had already started altering one side before I thought to take before pictures. ;-) You can sort of see the pleats on the side that I'm holding out.

Here are some good befores--I hadn't done anything to it at this point. The cloth is good, even after many years of wear. It's 100% cotton, and Faded Glory, which I'm pretty sure is a Wal-Mart brand.As you can see, the torso is very roomy, the arms strangely short, the pocket flaps persistently wrinkled and the whole thing just rather frumpy, lifeless, and limp. I believe a good shirt should look attractive all by itself on the hanger--if it doesn't, it probably won't look much better on the wearer.

So with that philosophy in mind, I decided to renovate my old shirt and make it wearable for this fall.

So, these are the befores. . .afters to follow. . .

This Summer

Well, I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I'd just write a thing or two about what I've been doing lately. I have this nagging feeling that I need to hold my blogging claim down.

Hanging out in the woods . . .It makes me feel all Pathfinder-y. :-)

...Writing a lot. Although not in the picturesque manner depicted below. It's more like this:

Sit at the computer. Get distracted because I left the French dictionary on my desk open. (Who knew that 'être perdus' means 'get lost' in French? C'mon, that's useful knowledge right there. You never know when you may get harassed by some confused French tourist).

Settle down to write again...hear suspicious activity in the hallway...leap up to help my sleepwalking brother to the bathroom before anything unsanitary happens...sit down to write again, wondering how I can use the previous experience to help me feel what I'm writing better...start humming and thinking about what I'm going to wear tomorrow--and then rattle off ten pages of what is now probably watered-down, pulp-fiction-writer-on-a-bad-day (the remnants of my creativity). Then I realise it's one o'clock. [Who reset my clock?!?! Who reset all the clocks?!?!] Yeah. And then I go to bed.

I just sort posed that picture because I thought it looked so pretty and romantic. I'm sure writers in Oz have set-ups like that, anyways.

I'm assuming that since I write for pleasure (or at least, that's what I tell myself), people who write as a job have it really rough. Gosh, they might actually have to write straight through twenty minutes, without stopping once to play a game of thought-provoking solitaire!

So, back on topic:

Sewing...this is something I'm making for my sister's Civil War doll. Actually I've done a lot more to it since this picture was taken. I've some other projects to, all of which I had honest intentions of posting about. I'm sure I will. . . soon . . .

. . .Getting very excited about two movies: Where the Wild Things Are;

and Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. I've watched both movie trailers about five times.

I've also been waiting for the Holmes movie for well over a year now, which does a lot to increase the suspense and make one prepared to be happy with anything. (By anything I mean Mr. Downey). Anyways, I don't want anything for Christmas except tickets to see the Holmes film! And I really want to take my little brother Josiah to see Wild Things--it's his favorite book ever. I think I've probably read it at least sixty times in the past month. I can actually recite the whole book in its entirety.

Looking at mushrooms, and being prevented from eating them by my mother...

Watching airplanes take off and land, which was surprisingly fun--every time they go down that runway, you think: it's impossible. How can something like that lift off the ground and fly? But it always does. ;-D (Kudos to the Wright brothers).

Also, I've watched Into the West. Wonderful series! Very realistic and historically accurate, as far as I could tell. Of course I have a thing or two to say about their erratic character follow-up. Advice to Steven Spielberg: if you're going to put your name on something, make sure their plot development is flawless! Really, we've come to expect better from you!

But other than that, it was wonderful. ;-)

And also, I'm reading Jane Austen and vintage science fiction simultaneously; an activity I highly recommend to everybody.

So, there you have it.

Current Project

So. . .I was inspired by Grosgrain to try to make my own clothing. I thought to myself, what an easy, sensible, relaxing way to add to one's wardrobe! Without the stress of shopping! (I love shopping, until I realize I've been at the mall two hours, tried on five dozen things and bought nothing, either because it doesn't fit right or because I'm a hopeless miser, and the lights and the noise make my ears buzz until I can't think--and I flee to the car (skipping the bookstore in exasperation and exhaustion) with nothing to show for a whole day spent in the city).

I chose a pattern rated easy--a little sundressy, 1947 number (same year as my car. . .so I had to get it). I thought I'd fly through the thing in a day or two, after cutting-out, of course.

Ha. Ha ha. Clearly I need a lot of practice. Here's my chosen pattern and fabric:

I'll skip the trauma and heartbreak of the cutting-out. Well, actually it wasn't that bad, I managed quite fine by myself, except for a few small glitches I won't bother to elaborate on--but I suppose that was only because you don't have to read the directions to cut out a pattern. The direction page is a real tear-jerker, albeit in an unconventional way.

Well, in defense of Butterick and Co:

I am an incompetent beginner. At least, I've never sewn clothing on my own before. I don't understand their sewing-circle lingo, which is so familiar to Butterick's steady, regular customers. However . . .

Things would have been a whole lot easier if the instructions had been put clearly and understandably. However, with the evidence given I could only assume that their main interests lie in preserving ink and paper, because directions were sparse and not that helpful to people who actually need guidance. It makes me wonder what a "hard" pattern is. Don't save trees! Make things easy on us!

The top is self-lined. So you cut out two of everything (four fabric pieces in all). I assumed this meant "just sew everything together like normal, only with twice the thickness you would usually deal with." My mother expressed some doubts, but after reading the incomprehensible directions left looking dazed and confused, now unsure what I was supposed to be doing, and what a "self-lined" garment was at all.

Well, it soon became apparent that I was doing everything quite wrong. . .apparently I needed to act as if I was making two bodices. Then later I would sew them together, so there would be no raw edges. Hence the word 'lining.'

Well, this called for me taking everything apart after I'd sewn the whole bodice together. I probably just should have plugged along and done things my way, but I'm trying to actually learn how to sew.

Somewhere in this time I went outside and threw sticks at the basketball hoop. Hard. (It was the easy alternative to bursting into tears and throwing a Scarlett O'Hara fit on the floor). However, I have notoriously bad aim when angry, so one stick sort of missed and dented my dad's truck/experiment. I think it was the one he wants only for spare parts. . .but afterwards I was almost reconciled to the fact of ripping apart everything I'd spent the best part of a lovely day doing.

I suppose it's enough to say that after three and a half hours I'd almost gotten past step one.

And then of course, today brought more drama. We forgot to get a zipper, so that will halt progress for a little while, but reading the instructions as to how to put the zipper in left me wondering if I shouldn't arrange some sort of protest outside the Butterick building. Not only are their directions unfathomable, but their "helpful" illustrations only serve to confuse things more.

Now I wish I'd never read it--I think I knew how to put a zipper in, before, and now I'm only filled with doubts. It's the One Ring of instructions--you want to use it so bad--it seems as if it could be nothing but good to use it--and when you do you're left exhausted and deceived. I now have total sympathy for Boromir. The effects it has on your personality are just unaccountable. (For those of you who are uninitiated, I'm referring to The Lord of the Rings).
So today, after resewing the front of the bodice for the sixth or seventh time--I do not exaggerate, that's probably an understatement--I finally got it right! With some ugly puckers right in front. Then I realized I'd sewn the sides wrong . . .

All in all I haven't learned much more about sewing, but I'm an expert at ripping out seams!

I've been working on this for about a week now. Also, I had (of course) chosen and orchestrated the pieces I wanted in front. Well, a few days ago I'm taking out some seams, ho-humming my way along, when suddenly the (brand-new) sewing scissors (that belong to my sister) jam, for no apparent reason whatsoever. As usual, I used brute force to fix them, without thinking about possible consequences, and--SNIP--it cut out a nice little triangular flap in the very front of the bodice as I made it close properly. I ended up gluing it. I can't sew it, that's for sure. Then I'd have a thread-wrapped cocoon-shaped pucker in the front of my dress, and that would be worse.

So, my "easy" dress is nearly done. However, I'm beginning to think buying clothing is much cheaper and simpler. The money I'll have to pay for counseling in regards to all the anger and depression this dress-making has caused would have justified a Marc Jacobs evening gown.

But never mind that. I'm planning a nice trip to the mall to relax after the whole traumatic experience is over. Wearing my perfectly-fitting, imperfectly-made new dress. Hopefully.