Ahoy There Sailor!!!

Here I am, sitting in a hot and humid Missouri home that happens to not have air conditioning. While you sit around and sweat it is only natural that one would dream of swimming and thus swimming suits.

Ahh... the fear and trepidation that strikes us as some think about swimsuit season.

The battle to get into (what most see as) swimsuit shape as they try to get rid of a few extra pounds that crept up over the winter.

The endless search for the perfect swimsuit, when we all know that it doesn't exist.

Either there is not enough swimsuit there (who's great idea was it to invent the bikini anyhow?), or there is too much that is not constructed to be flattering.

That pretty much sums it up for me. I will not wear a bikini because of the lack of cloth, and most swimsuits meant to be more modest do not exactly appeal to a young adult with fashion sense.

I have been looking for the perfect swimsuit just as everyone else has.

I made a list of all the characteristics that I would love to see in a suit and then spent time shopping online.

I wanted something with a vintage look.

I really like the nautical look.

I wanted modest, and yet cute.

I looked, and looked on all of the sites I could think of.

What I found wasn't what I was wanting.

So I finally decided to look no more and just design something myself.

I was able to incorporate all of the elements that I wanted.

I have now drawn up the design for the perfect swimsuit. (In my humble opinion at least.)

It has a vintage touch and appeal.

It is definitely nautical.

Finally, no doubt about it, it is modest.

I now have my new swimsuit. At least the design.

I shall just have to keep an eye out for the perfect swimwear fabrics to make it with.

I want to make the shorts out of a navy blue with six buttons and an attached white belt. I want to make the top with Americana red and white striped fabric and trimmed with white with the blue accents. The whole swimsuit will be lined and ideally have built in bra cups. We shall see.

I cannot wait till I find the right fabrics and actually make this suit.

It shall be an adventure to make my own swimsuit.

Well, what do you think of the design? Would you wear a vintage inspired nautical swimsuit like this?

Please, give me some input.

Oh, and final note. The "inventor" of the bikini as we know it today was a French engineer named Louis Reard. I suppose it is only fitting...

More Shakespearean Stuff

Some of you may or may not remember my previous post on Twelfth Night. The post was on my costume that I developed to wear as Viola/Cesario. I made a remark at the end about how I was trying to choose the next Shakespearean female that I wanted to do.

Well, as a follow up to that post I wish to fill you in with what took place a week ago.

I participated in a Shakespeare drama camp. We meet five times over two weeks and rehearsed and then preformed one-act versions of some of the Bard's plays. The group I was in did Much Ado About Nothing.

Thus what Shakespearean female I would do next was chosen for me. I was Beatrice.

I enjoyed it. The biggest problem I had was that I had memorized Beatrice's entire part when I was in 10th grade. However, we were doing a shortened and slightly more modern adaption. So for some of my lines I had a bit of a challenge not reverting back to the old English and the iambic pentameter. But I got it under control.

I never saw myself as an actress. I still don't. I really prefer being backstage and doing the tech stuff. However, I could potentially be persuaded to go onstage again for a Shakespeare.

Here as a few pictures of me. We really did not do anything much for costuming. Just found what we could in closets and from old costume supplies. I am afraid that there were not many good pictures of me. I do not photograph well.

Beatrice easedropping

Beatrice and Benedick

So I could not help but share this one last photo. Here is Dogberry with the darling watch.

It was fun acting Shakespeare, but I still think I prefer watching others do the acting and just studying it myself. As I said before, I am no actress.

Attempts at Scrapping

For the last few years I have had the honour of organizing a wonderful group of young ladies in a literature discussion group. The first year we read and studied Pride and Prejudice, the next year we did The Scarlet Pimpernel, and last year we studied The Tale Of Two Cities. We would always close our study off at the end of the year with a Christmas party. As a part of the party we would do a gift exchange. Last year I tried my hand at scrapping and made a set of greeting cards. I did it all free hand with my calligraphy set, scissors, and a paper cutter. I had collected and printed the fashion drawings from the computer and lightly coloured them with pencils. You cannot really see the colouring in the pictures because it is so light. I enjoyed it, and would enjoy taking up scrapping, but don't think I really have time to take on one more craft.

Here they are.

Bunnies

We have bunnies.

We got them a little less then a year ago. They are really cute and adorable.

There really isn't that much I can tell you about them.

They are New Zealand Whites. We have two of them and their names are Cotton and Cloud. I do not know which one is which in any of these pictures. They look too much alike. Then live in hutches outside and we pet them and feed them. We have them for breeding for meat. We shall probably never eat the mother and father, just the progeny.

Well, here the two adorable bunnies are.

What's that?

Look, I have pink eyes.

I like strawberries!!!

My ears are transparent!

I can't help it that I am this cute.

Yes, we are good friend.

Aren't they absolutely adorable?

Seussical!!!

I shall start this week of overdue posts with a collection of pictures from Seussical. This was the latest theatrical production that I assisted with. I was a seamstress and the wardrobe supervisor.

Seussical is a musical based on a collection of the books by Dr. Seuss. It chronicles the adventures of Horton the elephant and his struggle to protect the Whos and the egg. It also follows Jojo the son of the Major of Whoville and his adventures at the Butter Battle and with the Hunches.

For a complete synopsis check out Wikipedia.

The entire amazing cast!

 The saucy jungle ensemble

Kanga the Sour Kangaroo and her baby

The dashing Wickersham brothers

The adorable Gertrude

Gertrude has her tail at last

Amazing Mazie and the darling Bird Girls

Sensible Horton and irresponsible Mazie

The talented Circus ensemble

The cheerful town of Whoville

The enigmatic Cat in the Hat and Jojo

The Beach singers and Fish dancers conjured up from Jojo's imagination

The fierce Cadets with their General

The most helpful Hunches

All is happy in the end as Gertrude and Horton welcome the darling elephant bird into their new family.

It was an amazing production and I was very honored to be able to work with all of these wonderful people.

I miss you all!!!

Trying to get to the present

I am trying really hard to sit down and catch up on posts that I have gotten sooo far behind on.

I have the dream that some time this summer I shall catch up on all my past posts and be posting on current events. I want to be able to post about the current projects that I am working on and not all of the ones that I finished two to three months ago.

Well, I suppose that this quote fits me really well though.

"They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!"

-Dr. Seuss

I will be trying really hard to catch back up and be posting about my current projects and adventures. However, for a while here you (dear readers) shall be subjected to several posts on topics that you probably have heard all you really care to hear about.

Oh well, I am a cruel person and I am going to post them anyhow. (cue evil laugh)

So for roughly the next week I shall try to daily post an overdue entry.

To begin I shall not give you one of the posts that I have had partially completed and waiting to finish. Instead I shall share some pictures that I discovered which roughly chronicles the history of my hair.

This is actually kind of amusing...

We shall start back when I was just a little girl...

I was never allowed to have long hair. I always had a short chili-bowl type cut. I always wanted to be able to grow my hair out, but my parents would not let me. Finally when I was about 10 (2003) I convinced them that I was old enough to take care of it. So I grew it out and my hair got rather long. I had it down several inches past my shoulders by the time I was 13. A few months before returning to the U.S. for  my sisters wedding in 2006 I tired of my hair and got a bob cut. By the time of the wedding it had grown long enough that I was able to get an updo. So I decided to allow it to grow back out. When we returned to Botswana (yes, for those of you who did not know it I was an MK) it was slightly past my shoulders. I decided that I wanted to get a perm so that I could have curly hair like I always wanted.

Amusing right?

You shall all be disappointed to find out that this picture is not the result of the perm. The perm did not take... both of the times.

This picture was the result of sponge curlers so that we could prove to the hairstylist that my hair would take curl.

The perm still did not take...

I suppose I was just not meant to have curly hair... thankfully.

Moving on.

By the time we relocated to the U.S. in 2007 my hair had gotten pretty long. I got a long layered cut for the first time.

In the summer of 2008 I cut 10 inches off and donated it to Locks for Love. I then continued to let it grow. It had reached this length by 2010.

When it was long I would do all sorts of fun updos.

In February of 2010 I again had 10 inches cut off and donated to Locks for Love.

I thought about keeping it short and bobbed, but I went on ahead and let it grow.

That summer a lady in our church lost her hair due to cancer. So in July my mom and I buzzed out heads in support. My hair was long enough that I was able to again donate 10 inches to Locks for Love.

Having a buzz cut was fun and cool in the summer, however, I do not think that it shall be something I do every summer.

I let it grow until about November. Then decided that it was it was looking shaggy and got it trimmed into a pixie. I really liked this length.

I then let it grow for the next five months without cutting it at all. It looked really shaggy for several months, but thankfully they were the winter months and hats do wonders.

So this is what it was looking like come April. I am the girl on the left in black. Yes, these are some Seussical pictures.

Here is a back view. Yep, I am doing clown makeup.

My latest cut was here in the beginning of June. I had it all evened out and got a layered bob once again.

After taking tons of pictures I got rather bored.

So after some quick calculation my hair has grown roughly 50 inches since I was 10, and 30 inches of that has gone to Locks for Love. Forty-five inches in 8 years means 6.25 inches a year, or 0.52 inches a month, or 0.12 inches a week, or 0.017 inches a day.

For some final random notes, I love to style hair and that is why I am again working on growing it out so that I can do historical updos.

I also like using natural shampoos and rinses, thus avoiding using chemically loaded commercial shampoos and conditioners.

There you go.

More information then you could ever want to know about my hair. 

For those of you who are wondering about this post, I think a one sentence explanation clear everything up.

 I just saw Tangled for the first time this weekend.

 Yes, I enjoyed it. However, I am not a major princess movie fan.