Have you ever known one of those people where the nicest thing you can think to say about them is, "I don't think he hits his wife-- yet"?

Well, he is not coming to work for me at White Hart Faire!! Hooray!!!

Seriously, I would never have wanted to hire him in the first place, but I put out an open call for volunteers at the fencing club, and his wife just assumed they would be welcome. They (well, actually, she, he doesn't fence) worked the fencing demo at KCRF a few years back (while Mondo-Jerk sat in the booth all day, taking up the one dry, comfortable seat, not participating in the demo, not interacting with the crowd, not disciplining his out-of-control child [0], and just generally being in the way and sucking up available oxygen).

But once the wife realized that I am in fact the general manager of our booth, and I have both expectations and standards for behavior, she decided that they didn't want to work for me anyway.  And told me so, to my face, like she expected me to be upset or something.  So-sorry-we'll-miss-you-seeya-bye. 

Seriously, if they'd shown up, it's even money that I'd have fired them and had Security throw them out before noon the first day.

[0] Said child hit me in the back with a broadsword, and Mondo-Jerk got into my face about it when I demanded an apology.

I was feeling in a sewing mood, so I pulled out my mother’s old dress form and set it up.

One of the difficulties with the home sewing industry is that the Powers That Be decided that everything would be designed for a B cup. I guess it’s easier to design clothes for the moderately flat-chested. Unfortunately, that leaves those of us more bodacious in the ta-ta department SOL, because altering a pattern for a fuller bustline is one of the more difficult and fiddly operations. Once again, I find myself asking: if American women are getting so darn fat, why can’t I find any clothes that fit?

The dress form is, needless to say, designed for a B cup. To alter it, I sized the ribcage to fit, then dug into the back of my drawer and found a bra that fits but I never wear because it’s not very comfortable for more than a few hours. I stuffed the cups with torn-up paper towels. Yes, I know polyfil is more traditional, but I didn’t have any lying around the house.

I swear, I giggled for an hour. Someday when I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll make the dress form pinnable and squishable by covering it in quilt batting.

Later on in the afternoon, I cut the blue rayon I picked up in Dallas for a skirt. It was about two yards short for a full circle skirt, alas, so I did my usual draw-triangles-and-let-the-geometry-work-itself-out four-gore skirt. It’s all done except for fastenings and hemming. I’m letting it hang for a few days before I pin up the hem.

 A lot of people want to know what my garb looks like: this is a fairly representative sample.