How the days fly by.....

Here it is the end of February and my husband and I are both sick as dogs.  He has acute bronchitis and I've just have a head cold with body aches.  It stinks because it's spring time down here and the weather has been very nice.  Cool breezy days......great days for Vallie and I to take walks but no go.  I think Vallie would end up having to carry me home.

I purchased a new xs pattern....Rabbit House by Death by Thread hoping it would get me into the stitching mood.  Well it didn't.  I have been making shawls and neck warmers like crazy.  I send most of the finished ones up to my sister-in-law in Pa and she takes them to her church.  There's a group there that does shawls for nursing homes and she adds mine to them.  I don't know why I've been on such a binge of knitting and crocheting but it seems to be the only thing I want to do.  I have no idea why because there's so many beautiful xs patterns coming out.

Here are some of the shawls and neckwarmers I finished.....

I can't close without showing you an update on Little John.  I am so mad......I was suppose to babysit him tomorrow and I'm sick so I can't do it.  Peyton sent me this picture just the other day to show how Little John sleeps just like his father....one arm behind his head.

He's getting so big and he's beginning to get the dimples on his elbows and knees.  I just love them!

He also likes to show he's a big boy by sitting up and watching cartoons.  He's such a cutie pie I could just eat him up..

That's all for now except to wish everyone a fantastic weekend and that you have nice spring weather wherever you are.  Soon it will be summer down here and too hot to do anything.  If you've never been to Florida in the summer time.....don't.....you'll burn up with the rest of us.

Blessings Abound, Barbara

This and That....

Well here it is Thursday and dh has been back to work for 4 days and I'm beginning to get back to my old self and schedule.  Today was suppose to be laundry day but Peyton showed up with Little John and Chloe so we decided just to go for a walk and watch the movie "Cinderella" (more about that later).

 Peyton was sitting holding Little John and that's Chloe looking over her shoulder from the back of the chair.  Where the baby is....Chloe is.

Then when we went for our walk Vallie got tired because she's use to my "Old Lady Walk" and Peyton and Chloe walk much faster so she hitched a ride on Little John's stroller.  She's so funny and it's like Chloe's making fun of her in the picture.

I don't know how many of you ladies have seen the movie "Cinderella" but the blue gown she wears in the movie fascinated me so I did some checking.  Being a person who sews and stitches I wanted to know more about the dress.  After some research this is what I found.

Behind the many layers, the gown is a feat of structural engineering. We started with the underwear: the corset and the crinoline (skirt cage), which was made of steel.

Each of the eight versions of the gown is also slightly different. One was 2in shorter and a couple were 4in for the times when Lily had to run; another had holes cut in the sides of the skirt for harness work.

The hems got incredibly dirty as the shoot went on. That proved a headache – these dresses aren’t something you can just throw in the wash.

And it also wasn’t the most practical design. During filming, Lily and Helena Bonham Carter, who plays her fairy godmother and wears an equally huge gown, had to get used to it taking an age to be dressed. In the end, we got it down to a 20 minutes.

THAT DRESS... BY NUMBERS

3 Miles of thread in the hems

250 Metres of fabric in each dress

4,000 Hours it took to make eight different versions of the gown

10,000 Swarovski crystals hand-applied to the dresses

20 Minutes it took to get the dress on

4 Inches one dress was shortened by to help Lily flee the ball at midnight

The trickiest thing Lily had to do in the gown was dance with her prince, played by Richard Madden. They practised endlessly, but poor Richard kept treading on her hems. Of course, when it came to actually shooting, they were faultless.

While I was delighted with the dress’s reception, I was surprised by the obsession with Lily’s tiny waist. People seemed to think it was setting a bad example to young girls. Some even accused the studio of digitally altering it. Ridiculous.

The reason her waist looks tiny is because the skirt is so huge – it’s an optical illusion – and she’s wearing a corset. The film is set in the 19th Century and every woman in the film is wearing one, even the maids.

I understand people get upset when incredibly skinny models appear on the catwalk or in photos. But Lily is not a super-skinny girl – there’s nothing wrong with her body. Cinderella is a girl known for kindness and courage, so it’s sad people just kept talking about her waist size.
The top layer of the gown is silk crepeline, a very lightweight, fine silk. The layers underneath are made up of a synthetic called yumissima, an incredibly light (and very expensive, about £150 a metre) material which floats when thrown in the air. 

All of this just amazed me and I would love to be able to wear a dress of that type.  Today's clothes are so boring to what people use to wear.  But then I usually hang out in my pj's.  LOL

Blessings to All,
Barbara